#Will take you to the beginning

[worddevdealswithml]

Side Effects Include: Empathy

Chapter 34 (End):

Three plates of leftovers, a couple best-of-three mechastrike duels, and two completely unexpected kisses later (what could she say, he turned really red, and it was too adorable to pass up), Adrien finally ran out of excuses to stay. Not to say that she wanted him to leave; it was just that according to all stated logic, he had come here to make sure she was okay, and the longer he stayed, the more awkward questions there might be all round.

So, when his ride finally arrived, she’d made no bones about him needing to leave promptly.

She’d said it honestly, but he’d leaned in, and wrapped his arms around her, and she’d had a hard time holding onto that commitment.

“See you tomorrow night?” he whispered.

She tried to maintain her composure, an effort that was made all the harder by the fact that she knew he was entirely aware of exactly how she felt, and laughed.

“I’ll leave the skylight open.”

His arms tightened for a second, and then…

He pulled away, took a deep breath.

“I’m glad that you’re feeling better after your nightmare, Marinette,” he said, a trifle too cleanly, and winked at her.

She giggled.  “Well, I’m certainly glad you stopped by to make sure I was okay, and for no other reason.”

He started walking away.

--

It had been over a month since Ladybug had done, that, to Destruction Worker, and Hawkmoth was rapidly losing his mind.

He was nowhere near giving up yet, but it seemed like every villain he sent out… Grandshake, defeated in 4 minutes, Zillionaire, just over 2, and the 42nd rendition (43rd?  He was losing track) of Mr. Pidgeon…  Of course, he never really amounted to much, but under ten seconds of not amounting to much?

Ladybug had been bad enough before, when she just had a knack for planning around his supervillains, but now the balance had shifted, and unless he focused on strength, she could usually win in a straight-up fight.  And if he did focus on making them strong, they were usually animalistic, and she just planned around them like it was nothing, to say nothing of the fact that Chat Noir was still a completely viable threat in his own right, and the other Miraculouses she could call on…

Nathalie had visibly deteriorated since she’d started working with him, and if he kept this up, he’d lose the only asset that was keeping him from being completely outgunned…

And… And also Nathalie. It wasn’t like he’d enjoy that, either.

He could try turning her into Catalyst again, but that would require engineering another mass event like he’d done on heroes’ day, and he didn’t even know where Lila Rossi had gone.  He didn’t have Volpina, and he could barely afford to have Mayura.

Still.  He’d keep trying, and eventually, he’d hit on something that could get him a victory, or, if nothing else, at least another Miraculous that wouldn’t put his assistant into a coma.

But for now, who knew when that would happen.

--

A particularly astute observer would likely have noticed that something was going on, starting shortly after a nightmare-inducing villain had attacked.

And now, two months hence…

Ladybug stood there, a bored expression on her face, finger wrapped up in the cord of her yo-yo.

“I told you I would,” she said, sounding almost annoyed, “so I don’t think you have anyone to blame but yourself.”

Chat Noir laughed. “And I told you that I’d welcome it, and I certainly do.”

“I remember you saying that, certainly,” agreed Ladybug, “but I don’t see any of the reporters you were hoping for, which I think leaves the advantage with me.”

From the way Ladybug rolled it her eyes, it was safe to say that Chat Noir had winked at her.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to entice you into doing this again at a better time.  In the meantime, I’m not complaining. You already had me wrapped up in your charms.”

Ladybug sighed, and Chat Noir rose slightly higher above the ground as she put her face in the hand that was holding onto her yo-yo’s string.

She muttered something under her breath that an astute listener would have parsed to be something about regretting that his Miraculous was keeping him from being affected by his position.

“I get plenty of practice with the blood rushing to my head anyway,” he said, “after all, I spend plenty of time with-

“You already used that line!” cut in Ladybug.

“And it worked so well that time!”

“Well, maybe I don’t want it to be that simple for you,” said Ladybug.

--

The clip went viral almost the instant Alya posted it, but deep down, she knew that if they hadn’t prevailed on her to cut it off there, it would have been even more popular.

--

“Alright then,” said Chat Noir, craning his neck so his face was a bit closer to her.  “Then how about this one…”

He said something, not quite audible, and Ladybug went pale, the string she’d been holding onto almost popping off of her finger.

“Ah—” said Chat Noir, now in a pile on the floor, “too… Too soon?  I’m…  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, if you want me to wait until some other time, or—

His rapid backtracking was suddenly cut off, as Ladybug, who seemed to have pulled back into white so that she could slingshot directly into a bright red, wrapped him in what must have been a bonecrushing hug.

Most viewers would have agreed that Ladybug didn’t say a word, but Chat Noir, apparently would have disagreed with them.

“Oh,” he said, after a second, “I see.  I really do mean it, you know.”

Ladybug let out a weak giggle.

“I know you do, you silly kitty.”

--

Alya of course, told them all about what she’d seen, in person, the next day at school.

“I’m serious,” she said, leaning forward onto the table they’d co-opted to eat on, grinning wide, “I swear to you, after everything, they’ve got to be together.  Like, I don’t know what he said, but from the way she just dropped him, it must have been something serious.”

“Or it was just like, ‘I’m covered in mud, and you’ll get your yo-yo’ dirty,” said Nino, shrugging.

“Hush, you,” said Alya, “I’m not kidding.  They asked me to cut the footage, seemed really serious about it.  I’m pretty sure it was something personal.”

Adrien idly reached out a hand, and rested it lightly on Marinette’s back, low enough that nobody else at the table would see it.

//

Relief, presumably that Alya actually did cut the footage, sparks lightly into shock, and settles back down, as she almost casually accepts the contact.

“Well,” she says, “I think it’s great that you at least respected their wishes.”

Alya laughs, a trifle ruefully.  “Yeah, I mean…  I’m just imagining how popular the clip would have been if I’d gotten the whole thing, but… I guess it’s for the best, right? I’m fairly certain that at least a few Akumas were caused by a lack of privacy, and… just imagine Ladybug and Chat Noir turned against the city.”

“Well, I mean,” says Nino, as there’s a twist of distaste from Marinette, “he’s after their Miraculouses, right?  He’d probably just have them hand them over, and untransform them.”

“Well, I don’t want to find out what he’d do with them anyway,” says Alya.

“Probably something big and villain-y” says Nino.  “Hey, maybe that could be your next article.  Top 5 things Hawkmoth would do if he did get Ladybug and Chat Noir’s Miraculouses.”

Adrien rolls his eyes, and as Alya and Nino continue their discussion, he looks over at Marinette.

She catches the movement and looks back at him.

Her expression is even, and more questioning than anything.

She feels… Honest, and open, more than anything, and right now, that is exactly the thing calibrated to set his heart racing.

Alya and Nino are busy with something else, so it’s not like anything stopping him from…

No.

As much as he’d love to even the score between them, vis-à-vis who catches the other off-guard with a kiss, right now, what he really wants…

He wraps his arm the rest of the way around her waist, and slides her closer, until she bumps up against him.

And there, the sun shining through the window, his friends hammering out the details of a new article, and Marinette beside him, lighting up his heart from the inside out, Adrien is happy to sit, and he knows, knows for a fact, that she’s happy, too.

And that’s all he needs to know.

 -The End

[swordheld]

alex dimitrov, from “march” in love and other poems.

text id under the cut.

[Text ID: “March” Every time I feel close to understanding the world the white kettle on my stove sounds and I rise, attending to it with annoyance and the pleasure of the unmade cup of tea. This is what it’s like to live in March or perhaps always, an unconvincing word in any context. Blue-gold on night’s branches what part do we take in the play? Whose turn is it to perform competence and knowledge in the absence of both? Unable to feel anything against the wind I know it is spring. Time tells me so. Never (equally as unconvincing) have I been someone with faith in order and human law. Love is unpredictable. Spring arrives regardless. End ID.]

[ash-and-starlight]

I had a few doodles of izumi lying around so piled them all together

Yes izumi is a sweet, shy, soft spoken kid, yes she knows how to use 27 different weapons

Some additional ramblings — her weapons are inspired by wind and fire wheels (they’re not throw weapons but let’s pretend that sokka customized them to fly just like boomerang so that he & zuko could gift their daughter the coolest weapons imaginable.) Izumi is the first firelord to go ice dodging as a coming of age ritual and got the mark of the wise (sokka is So Smug.) And I love love love the hc of Senna as zukka’s second daughter because it means that zuko is related to Yet Another Avatar like,, the comedic potential,,, he’d freak out so bad

[sunshine-zenith]

AU where basically everything is the same, except everyone is just kinda convinced that Batman is also Kryptonian.

Like. They see Superman do inhuman feats. They see Batman do (seemingly) inhuman feats. They see Batman and Superman hanging out. And they just think. Oh. They must’ve been neighbors or something

There’s this entire community online that’s convinced Batman can fly and fully intended to fly (hence naming himself after a flying animal), but since Superman made it his thing, Bats just kinda doesn’t because it would be awkward. You can’t just steal your homie’s signature move, it’s rude

Bruce never comments on it in either persona. Clark doesn’t know how to feel about it. Certain members of the JL kinda wanna ask but don’t know how to bring it up because of the whole Destroyed Planet and/or Dead Parents thing

[brother-emperors]

this was one of those comics where the script seemed funny to me until I started to figure out the dialogue placement on the page, and then it got melancholic.

like, sometimes a figure leaves a story in a way that lacks a body to bury, and your comic script starts to look like:

anyway, obsessed with the weird™ space that those who fought at philippi on the side of the republicans occupy after and the way that roman memory works. so the memory is being re written, but you’re still remembering.

empire and memory, alain m. gowing

the augustan aristocracy, ronald syme

society6 | twitter | ko-fi | deviantart

[figofswords]

I feel like gender nonconformity is often taken to mean like. presenting as the opposite of whatever your assigned gender is. like as an afab lesbian if I want to be gnc that means I have to dress super masc. but I think for me at least gender nonconformity is more about completely divorcing yourself from any expectations of gender presentation one way or the other. I can dress masc or femme or androgynous, I can wear makeup or not and shave my pits but not my legs, I can be whatever I want to be on any given day without regard for what I’m “supposed” to wear. when I first started really thinking about my relationship with gender there was a period of time where I felt to be valid I had to dress really butch or it didn’t count, and if I wore a skirt that meant I’d been faking it. but I didn’t WANT to dress super butch all the time. I didn’t want to be butch or femme or androgynous or or or or, I wanted to wear what I wanted when I wanted. ultimately I gave up trying to pin down and put a name on my gender identity. I said to hell with it all. my pronouns are what they are and I dress however I dress and I don’t owe it to anyone to define any of that. my gender nonconformity isn’t a nonconformity with femininity specifically; it’s a nonconformity with any sort of gendered rules of presentation. and that was a really freeing thing to figure out. and I think that in online queer communities there’s really this pressure to put a label on everything and to identify as a specific thing and to prove your validity within your identity. non-binary doesn’t have to mean androgynous. gnc doesn’t have to mean butch. and I guess this pride month I’m just really thinking about that, that really all that being queer is about is saying a big fuck it to it all and just…existing, however you want to exist. wear what makes you feel good. be whatever makes you feel good to be. to hell with it all.

[lollytea]

Is it too much to ask for one of those "it's a wonderful life" type things where Luz gets to see a timeline where she never came to the Boiling Isles

[windy-apple]

[iindigo-puff]

Shoma Uno: Boléro IV ~New Breath~ • World Championships 2022

[dootys]

A little gift for @s0ftmary..

I just wanted to draw her happy moment with her husband Tommy 🥰

[magicsewerman]

Waiting

[dirt-grub]

Have you ever wanted to take the ENTIRE uncut personality quiz from Pokémon mystery dungeon explorers of time/darkness/sky, without having to restart the game/have the game in general? Well, you’re in luck! I transferred the entire 64 question quiz to my uquiz, word for word!!! Have fun!!!

[sophiekarim]

Someone needs to write an explicit version of that “I did it to get it out of my system” “and is it out of your system?” scene from The Wicked king. Like.. what if J said no?

UPDATE: Guess I’m not the only one who wants this 😂😂

[panharmonium]

this is legitimately one of my top five favorite kakashi scenes.

i love seeing kakashi break the rules in the name of doing the right thing, and this scene especially is particularly satisfying to me, because his moment of defiance here is, to my mind, long overdue.  

one of my eternal frustrations in early naruto is how the leaf village administration gives kakashi the job of caring for a group of super high-needs children and then continually makes that job as difficult for him as possible.  they task him with being solely responsible for the development and well-being of three twelve year-olds - a group that includes naruto (a walking disaster with a god’s power trapped inside his body) and sasuke (a genocide survivor fixated on killing his own brother), BOTH of whom are being hunted by different groups of supercriminals - and then the village keeps getting in kakashi’s way or dropping the ball or actively ordering him to prioritize other things.  

so much of what goes wrong with the kids in this period is the result of other people interfering with kakashi’s work or being negligent or endangering the kids/putting kakashi in impossible positions.  team 7’s first big mission sets the tone for everything that comes after, with someone else’s lie putting kakashi in a situation where he has to single-handedly protect not just the client who deceived him, but the three children who were supposed to be the clients’ other protectors.  and after that, the list just multiplies:

ten anbu operatives can’t manage to protect sasuke’s hospital room from orochimaru’s minions, so kakashi has to do it himself and then whisk sasuke out of the village for a month, leaving naruto in the hands of a substitute and sakura with her parents

genma orders sasuke to chase after gaara when the chunin exams blow up, saying “you’re at chunin level already,” which forces kakashi to immediately dispatch more kids to bring him back, because “ffs NO i do NOT want him out there doing that why the fuck would you tell him to do that?!” 

aoba runs his mouth off about itachi when sasuke is standing RIGHT THERE, instantly undoing all the work kakashi just did to prevent itachi and sasuke from coming anywhere near each other (and thus sending sasuke to that disastrous first encounter, the outcome of which ultimately leads to sasuke’s defection)

jiraiya decides he should let sasuke try to fight itachi himself, “out of respect for the boy’s feelings,” leading to sasuke ending up in a tsukuyomi coma

tsunade orders kakashi to drop his teaching work and leave the village on a mission even though a) he’s just gotten out of his own torture-induced coma and b) sasuke is having a crisis that kakashi is trying to manage

and then when kakashi gets back from that mission and finds out that surprise, all of this meddling has led to a disaster, tsunade tries to order him away AGAIN

but this time - he just says no.

he walks right out of her office.  he turns his back on her.  and there is NOTHING i love more than seeing kakashi embody the philosophy that he’s chosen to adopt as his guiding light: those who break the rules are scum.  but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.

it’s not that he doesn’t understand where tsunade is coming from here.  but he knows she’s wrong.  she’s making her decisions based solely on concerns about the Leaf Village being in a tight spot - feeling like they can’t turn down missions because they’ll appear weak and thus become vulnerable to attack when they’re already operating at half strength.  she sends a group of twelve year-olds to bring sasuke back because supposedly the village can’t spare anyone else, “even if it means letting the sharingan fall into orochimaru’s hands” - but like.  it’s not the sharingan.  it’s a child.  sasuke isn’t just a repository for his hereditary jutsu; he’s not a pair of eyes to be passed around from one wielder to the next.  he’s a human child.  

tsunade doesn’t know sasuke.  she’s new to the situation and doesn’t know enough about it to understand how serious it is.  i don’t even think she was still in the village when the uchiha massacre occurred; the timeline makes it sound like she left long before that.  she doesn’t really understand who sasuke is or how much trouble he’s in - she makes her decision because she feels like her first priority has to be the well-being of the Leaf as a whole, not the individual people who comprise it.  kakashi, though, who a) lives his life by a very different philosophy and b) does understand sasuke’s situation, would not have dealt with the issue like this, and if the village had let him do his job from the beginning, things wouldn’t have gotten to this point in the first place.

kakashi is horrified that tsunade sent a bunch of twelve year-olds out to fight orochimaru’s ninja, and i think he’s also probably angry and/or frustrated about having been ordered out of the village in the first place.  he was dealing with the situation before tsunade sent him away.  he interrupted the fight between sasuke and naruto even though he himself had literally just gotten out of the hospital, and then he continued addressing the issue with sasuke privately (unlike jiraiya’s non-attempt to address it with naruto, when he said he was going to give naruto a talking-to but actually flaked out).  kakashi knew sasuke was struggling, and he was doing all the things a teacher is supposed to do to address it, but then he was ordered away, and even though it was just for two days, it was enough time for everything to go to hell.

if people would just let him do his job - if the administration would let him focus on the task they themselves assigned to him - things would be different.  but everybody wants him to do everything.  they want him to be everywhere.  they want him to protect the nine-tails jinchuriki (who is also kakashi’s dead teacher’s son), and train the last surviving uchiha (which is a task only kakashi and his sharingan can perform), and give equal attention to a third kid, for good measure, and they want him to do it without stepping away from any of his other burdens, all while other people around him constantly frustrate the progress he makes.

so this time, when tsunade tries to send him away, he refuses.  he disobeys her orders and walks out of the room.  he doesn’t care about the rules or what he’s “legally” obligated to do.  he knows what the RIGHT thing to do is, and so he rejects his new mission in favor of rescuing the kids.

i love these moments.  i love when we’re shown so clearly the person kakashi has chosen to be - someone who does what’s right, not just what he’s told.  he made an active choice many years ago to adopt that philosophy, and he’s been living by those new rules ever since.  he's wiser now than he was when he was a child - sometimes you have to break ranks to do the right thing.  sometimes you have to buck the system, even if it means you might face severe personal consequences.

he had one of two choices: either save the mission or his comrades.  of course, according to the law of the village, you cannot abandon a mission.  but to save the life of his comrades, he put the mission on hold.

kakashi may have spent a good chunk of his childhood trying to reject everything the subject of that story stood for, but none of his attempts to harden his heart ever stuck.  he is, in the end, his father’s son.

[last-smoke]

what if i… was leaning against the wall… next to you .. aha ha, just kidding.. unless..?

[thisiswhereikeepdcthings]

I'm kind of surprised that I haven't run into any fics yet where Tim's parents bring something Super Cursed back from one of their archeological digs and either Baby Tim or Robin Tim has to deal with the fallout. Have you/your followers ever encountered one?

I haven’t seen any like that but now I’m very interested

Anyone else seen something along these lines?