#but I think it’d be funnier to make him suffer even more

[aphrodaisyacs]

AU where the Todoroki siblings are tall af because they all inherited Endeavor’s Tall Genes™... except Touya, who remains the same height as canon.

Shouto is 1.8m and still growing, Natsuo is the same height as Endeavor and even Fuyumi is taller than Touya by 1cm. Every time there’s a family gathering poor Touya is forcibly reminded that he lives in a family of giants.

“It’s ok, you’re still taller than me,” Rei says while patting his shoulder sympathetically, and it only makes him want to jump off the nearest cliff out of frustration.

[therealvinelle]

Ok I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I'm just now copying your Norwegian Bella AU into a text translator, and if you don't already have 50 people in your inbox demanding a translation then shame on ALL OF US because this is glorious! And while Google Translate does have a certain charm (it translated "piper hun ut" as "she beeps") I'm curious to see how you'd put it in English.

Troquantary is referring to this post. In which Bella doesn't speak English.

Fun fact, you're the only one who's gone into my inbox to request this. I was so sad, had the translation half-written and everything, but I was too proud to beg. So thank you, Troquantary, for popping this ask.

As for the dictionary fuckups, sounds about right. I made a few typos, too, that made Google Translate suffer even more. (Such as managing to mix up "henne" (her) and "hendene" (hands), resulting in Aro patting Bella instead of clapping his hands. Poor Google.)

Also, there are a few cultural references and language things that would be lost in the translation, in an attempt to keep them I included notes clarifying things.

Some things, like Aro and Carlisle's very old man way of speaking, are easier said than done to translate, you'll have to bear with me there.

Additional notes are that I added a few things to this version, many of them because translating is hard, but a few because while translating I thought "oh you know what would be much funnier-" and then wrote that.

Alright, without further ado:

When Renée left Charlie she did not go to Florida, she went to Oslo. And she went all in to make her daughter a true Norwegian, hiring Norwegian nannies and making sure never to speak English around the child. Since transatlantic flights are expensive, little Bella Swan rarely got to visit her father, and as such she never did learn what should have been her native language.

She quickly forgot what English she did have in favor of Norwegian, with the exception of words like “Yes”, “No”, and “I’m Bella”.

The few trips she took to visit her father were all the more awkward than in canon since she couldn’t play with the Black kids. Let not the blame fall upon Charlie: he took Norwegian classes and speaks conversational Norwegian. He can’t speak to Renée, because her Norwenglish is incomprehensible even to Norwegians, but he can communicate with Bella.

Not that he’s had a lot of chances to do so.

Bella makes it to seventeen years old, she’s in second grade at Handels* and is a major outsider among the preps there, and then Renée marries a handsome skier**. Together they shall travel the continent all winter to participate in as many skiing races as they can, and in the summer they’ll take gigs at Hurtigruta to see the coast.

*“Handels” is the nickname for an Oslo high school infamous for its pupils being rich and beautiful blonds who are going to be CEOs when they grow up.

**Skiing as a sport is huge in Norway

***Hurtigruta is a famous ferry that travels across the Norwegian West coast

Bella, who sucks at skiing and is too young to work at Hurtigruten, takes the hint.

With dread in her stomach and dictionary in hand she goes to her father in America.

Where she doesn’t speak the language.

Faen.

Charlie gives her a car, and I wish this meta was set in the present because I could have joked about electric cars and the automat only driver’s license*, but Twilight is set in 2005 so I can’t. The car part proceeds without drama.

*An increasing number of Norwegian youth take the driver’s license for automatic cars only, and we’re the country in the world with the highest percentage of electric car purchases.

School is worse than in canon, because she is now a thousand times more sensational than if she was merely the new student. She is from another country! All of Forks keels over with excitement.

To make matters even worse, our girl doesn’t understand a word of what people are saying.

She is too awkward to let them know she doesn’t know English. It’d become a thing, and they might think she’s dumb. To be fair, it’s not good that she’s been through primary, secondary, and now a year and a half of high school and still sucks at English.

So she nods, smiles, mumbles “Hi, I’m Bella” to the new faces, and blushes heavily when anybody says anything.

People assume she’s shy. That’s a bit boring, but oh well.

She has her biology class with the redhead hottie she noticed during lunch. She watched him and his family, they were fascinatingly pretty, but she doesn’t know anything more about them. Sure would have been great if she could have asked the tiny girl (was it Jess?) about them.

Biology proceeds as in canon - Edward badly wants to eat the delicious girl, but fortunately doesn’t.

She runs into him in the office when he tries to switch to another biology lesson, but she has no idea what he’s saying so she only has the suspicion that this somehow concerns her. Which is still uncomfortable, but Bella is probably the problem here. The hottie surely can’t be.

He’s missing from school for a week, Bella finds that weird.

He returns, and to her great horror he starts talking to her.

“Hello”, he says.

Bella dies inside. He’s too handsome!

"I'm Edward Cullen," he continues, and ok, she got that. The hottie is called Edward, that’s good to know. She’s not sure she caught that last name, though, Köln?

He says something else, it’s gibberish to Bella even though she’s concentrating, and at the end there he says “Bella Swan”.

She gulps.

"I'm Bella Swan," she confirms and nods. That should be correct. God, she hopes it’s correct.

He smiles a crooked, boyish smile. She’s awed. She didn’t think it was possible to be so beautiful.

He says something else.

Bella didn’t catch it.

She blushes even harder, she hasn’t been more embarrassed in her life. Here he is, the most handsome guy in all the world, and she has nothing to say to him. Literally, they don’t speak the same language.

She should tell him.

It’s one thing to chicken out of telling the town she doesn’t speak English, but there’s something different about Edward Cullen. He deserves the truth.

But...

He’s the most beautiful person she has seen in her life. He is American, too, so the odds of him knowing Norwegian are microscopical. If he finds out she doesn’t understand a word he says he’ll stop talking to her, and selfish as she is she doesn’t want that.

So with a slightly guilty conscience (but not enough to fess up) she contributes to the conversation with enough words and smiles to pull through. "Yes", "No", "Thank you", and "That's nice".

He is surprised by several of these answers, but instead of giving her odd looks and losing interest he grows more invested in the conversation.

Class ends.

The next day the near accident happens, and he saves her. She is stunned - dear god, did he just pick up a whole car? After teleporting across the parking lot..?

Soon she’s in the ER, and more than a little bit stressed about that fact since she knows the Americans have a terrible healthcare system.

She hopes Charlie has an insurance.

An insanely beautiful man walks into the ER, and Bella is shocked. He is just as handsome as Edward and Edward’s lunch friends!

He introduces himself as Carlisle Cullen, and Bella can only assume this is someone’s older brother. Possibly related to the blonde girl.

He smiles at her, says something, and she answers, "I'm Bella Swan."

He frowns.

That must have been the wrong answer, then.

His hands return to investigating her scalp, and to her great surprise he switches to perfect Norwegian, "kjenner De* noe ubehag når jeg holder her?" Do you feel any discomfort when I touch here?

*De is the Norwegian polite pronoun for “you”. Du = thou = the French tu, and De = you = the French vous. These polite pronouns went out of use in the 1980’s, save for when addressing royal persons, and would be considered antiquated in 2005.

He hurries to add, "Norsk lærte jeg i... fjor sommer. Det var et nettkurs." I learned Norwegian… last year. Online class.

"Hvilket da?" Which one? Bella asks, because Charlie needs to hear about this. The doctor has beautiful, if slightly outdated, pronunciation.

The doctor’s smile turns uncertain. She gets the feeling there’s something he doesn’t want to say. "Husker ikke," I don’t remember, sier han etter en litt vel lang pause.

That’s a shame. And weird.

"De hadde hellet med Dem i dag, som ikke ble truffet av den bilen." You were lucky today, not getting hit by that car. he then says, noticeably changing the subject.

"Det var ikke hell, det var Edward," It wasn’t luck, it was Edward, she replies sharply.

The doctor definitely looks uncomfortable.

She continues, "Han krysset skolegården på et blunk, og plukket opp hele bilen. Jeg så det," He crossed the schoolyard in a moment, and picked up the whole car. I saw it,

The doctor laughs. "Om han kunne det hadde nok gymkarakteren hans vært meget bedre. Nei, frøken Swan*, jeg beklager å si at det høres ut som at De er litt omtåket. Det er helt normalt ved hjernerystelse." If he could do that, his PE grade would be a lot better. No, Miss Swan, I’m sorry to say you seem confused. That’s normal with concussions.

*Addressing a young woman as “frøken” is even more outdated than using polite pronouns.

Why does Bella get the feeling he’s lying?

She’s discharged.

We’ll jump ahead to her trip to La Push - that trip uneventful, since Jacob knows she doesn’t speak English. They stick their hands in their pockets and stare at the sea.

The next day she’s shanghaied to Port Angeles, because apparently she said “Yes” at the wrong time when talking to Jessica (Turns out Jess’s name was Jessica!) and accidentally said yes to a day trip to Port Angeles.

Like in canon she wanders away from the others, and as in canon she is nearly gang raped. And again as in canon she is saved at the last moment by Edward.

He buys her dinner, and she can’t believe her own luck- and misfortune. A date with the most handsome guy on the planet (hence the luck) and she can’t say a word to him (hence the misfortune)!

He says things to her, lends her his jacket, and really this is it for Bella, she’s peaked, life can’t get better than this.

(That’s a lie, it would be better if she spoke English.)

He’s so amazing.

She’s gotten pretty good at navigating conversations with him, so she nods and aha’s her way through.

In his car on the way home the tone takes a more serious turn.

He asks her about something, and it’s a serious question, that much she’s gathered. She answers in the confirmative.

He is silent.

Did she say anything wrong?

(Edward, on his end, just asked if she knows what he is. She said yes, so calmly, not even a trace of fear in her.)

A few days later he takes her out on a walk in the woods.

He shows her a meadow in the woods, and when he steps into it he lights up in the sunlight.

Bella is in shock.

She knew there was something different about him, but- holy cow. This guy isn’t human.

Is she dating a god?

She stumbles into the clearing after him, and they spend a day together where he says things, and she can barely hear any of it (nevermind understand it) because she’s so distracted by how pretty he is.

The next day he takes her to a house in the middle of nowhere. She doesn’t want to guess that this can be where he lives. Surely gods don’t live in houses?

He shows her inside the house, and introduces her for Dr. Cullen and a lady with a name she doesn’t catch.

Bit weird that these two are acting like a couple of parents, they’re far too young and divine for that.

Edward shows her around in an old-fashioned office, and she doesn’t know what to make of i when she sees a painting of Carlisle. Edward launches into a long story when he sees her watching it, unfortunately she doesn’t catch any dates or artist names. At one point she heard the word “suicide”, though, and that’s not good.

She doesn’t get much out of the story.

The baseball game doesn’t happen because Bella didn’t pick up on what Edward wanted and didn’t realize she was being invited to a thing. They spend the afternoon watching a movie instead.

The relationship continues, impeded slightly by communication problems, but she’s mostly able to cover those up.

Until her birthday comes around.

She gets a papercut.

Jasper lunges at her. Edward throws her into a glass table, and then everyone is leaving.

Carlisle is kind enough to switch to Norwegian when he’s stitching up her arm, perhaps remembering the last time she was his patient. "Jasper har ikke vært på dietten vår så veldig lenge." Jasper hasn’t been on our diet for very long.

"Diett?"she asks. She’s never seen Edward eat anything. She wasn’t clear on what the Cullens ate, honestly she thought they were above such things. She was thinking maybe photosynthesis. The knowledge that they apparently eat food astounds her, but diets?

"Dyreblod istedenfor menneskeblod," Animal blood in stead of human blood, Carlisle clarifies.

Whachasay?

Carlisle gives a slight smile. “Jaspers liv som vampyr fikk en brutal start." Jasper’s life as a vampire got off to a brutal start.

...

Vampire?!

Bella’s missed something here.

Oh dear lord, oh fy faen, she has missed something.

“Åja”, uh huh, is all she can say, and suddenly she’s very aware of the fact that she’s sitting there with a bleeding arm.

And Carlisle.

Who is a vampire.

Over the course of the following conversation Bella makes a host of discoveries.

Edward has been a vampire this whole time, and he’s a telepathic vampire. Whether Bella should be a vampire too or not has been a matter of hot debate, but due to religious reasons Edward doesn’t want that.

Carlisle also brings up how Edward died of the Spanish flu.

"Jeg var under den oppfatning at Edward fortalte deg bakhistorien min?" I was under the impression Edward told you my back story? Carlisle asks at one point, and Bella just has to ask very nicely if he’d be so kind as to repeat it.

Turns out the guy is nearly four hundred years old.

Jaha.

Jahahaha jaa ha.

That’s… a lot.

She wanders out of the house in shock, and hardly notices Edward’s strange behavior over the next couple of days.

One day he picks her up at school, and takes her behind the house.

That works out.

He’s a vampire, but he never hurt her. He is endlessly beautiful, perhaps easier to love now that she knows he’s not a god. He’s her Edward, and that’s suddenly easier now that she knows.

They can still be together.

But now that she knows this about him, it’s about time he knows something about her as well.

It’s time to finally be honest with him.

So when he opens his mouth, she opens her mouth as well, but she doesn’t get any further than to “Edward-” before he launches into a monologue.

She’ll have to wait until he’s done before saying her piece. It’s a bit embarrassing, but it doesn’t seem like he intends to stop talking anyway.

And what he’s saying seems to be serious, so it’s probably best to let him finish.

Edward concludes his monologue by kissing her forehead. Then he disappears.

Where did he go?

A big unsure, Bella goes back to the house. She’ll just have to wait until he gets back.

She doesn’t know what to think when Charlie returns from work and tells her the Cullens have all left.

Oh, god.

Edward must have found out she doesn’t speak English.

She made a mockery of him.

He has every right to leave.

Knowing this doesn’t make it any easier to live with.

Bella sinks into a depression.

The hallucinations begin, as in canon, though Hallusinward speaks Norwegian. Thank god for small mercies.

The friendship with Jacob (dictionary in hand) blooms, as someone has to help her see those hallucinations.

The cliff diving happens, and Alice shows up. Bella’s not sure what this is about, but she has gotten good enough at English to know that something bad happened, and Alice wants them to do something.

She’s a bit surprised to find herself on a plane to Italy, though.

Alice tells her to “Run to Edward” and ok, she got that, actually.

So she saves Edward.

After that she’s taken into the sewer, which turns out to house dozens of vampires.

Bella, Edward, and Alice are received in some kind of hall, where an unusual vampire has quite a bit to say. She understands some of what he’s saying, at least the part about “la tua cantante”. She knows a bit about Italian, see, so she knows that he’s talking about a song now.

She wishes she knew the context.

At one point he takes her hand, and appears fascinated by it. She wonders if he’s a palmreader. Not very vampirey, but what does she know.

He asks her a question.

"Yes," she says.

Saying yes has gotten her this far, after all.

But when he lights up and claps his hands together, and Edward and Alice stare at her in shock and betrayal, she knows she must have said the wrong thing.

The two are dismissed from the room before Bella can do or say anything, she’s just listening to Edward make a racket outside in the hallway.

Not good.

The unusual vampire brings her further down in his sewer palace to a basement, and she is given comfortable clothes to wear.

This is getting terrifying.

The vampire leans towards her - and she chickens out.

"Jeg snakker ikke engelsk!" she squeaks. "Non habla ingles!" I don’t speak English.

Han stanser, og ser forvirret ut. "Que- Hva behager*?" I beg your pardon? spør han etter et øyeblikk.

*A very formal, and slightly outdated (you can use it, but people will think you’re putting on airs. And they will be right) way of saying “excuse me?”

Sobbing, Bella tells him the whole story, from how she didn’t want to be the weird kid in school to how she’s now somehow in Italy without knowing why nor what she just agreed to.

When she’s done the vampire starts laughing.

"Dette forklarer jo en hel del," This explains quite a bit, ler han. "Men, kjære Bella, jeg er redd det ikke endrer noe." But, my dear Bella, I’m afraid it changes nothing.

He tells her that she has agreed to serve him and his army of undead warriors into eternity.

Well fuck.

"Du skal få slippe det, når du ikke visste hva du samtykket til - men skjebnen din forblir den samme. Loven er loven." You’re released from that promise, as you didn’t know what you agreed to - but your fate remains the same. The law is the law.

After a moment of silence, during which she looks terrified, he hurries to add, "Vi har en lov. Du må bli en av oss." We have a law. You must become one of us.

A law that Bella Swan has to become a vampire?

People are finally speaking Norwegian, and Bella is still lost. And it’s too embarrassing to keep pestering this poor, polite man with questions.

So she nods.

He gives her a glittering smile, and bites her.

When she wakes, Aro offers her an English course. A language course that, naturally, leads to her staying in Volterra. Why not learn a few more languages while we’re at it, dearest Bella?

Some time later Edward breaks into Volterra to save his Rapunzel, only to barely recognize her now that she’s a vampire who says things. Lots of things, she talks all the time now. WHAT DID ARO DO TO HER.

Too mortified to admit that she never spoke English, Bella claims she’s been brainwashed.

Aro is having too much fun to correct her, and the whole sad affair sets off a regrettable flood of rumors.

[robininthelabyrinth]

"The Untamed", but Jiggy has a white cat whom he tells everything.- May or may not be sentient or 'spiritual' like Fairy in the book. (From an idea I've thrown around with my friend @yraelviii)

ao3

He found the cat in Qinghe.

“What are you doing here?” Meng Yao said, crouching down to try to scoop out the little handful of white fluff underneath his cabinet only for it to bare its infantile fangs and him and hiss, moving its butt around as if it thought his fingers ought to be running in fear from its fearsome pounce. “How did you even get in here?”

The cat – a kitten, really, small and scrawny, dirty and covered in ashes as if it had just run out of a forge, but no less passionate for it – squirmed in his hand as he picked it up.

“Who owns you?” Meng Yao asked, and the cat hissed viciously as if to shout no one owns me!

Something about that echoed in Meng Yao’s heart – no one owns me, he thought – and so he fished up some extra meat from his plate, filled a small platter with water, and used the sleeve of an old outfit that needed to be taken to be laundered anyway to wipe the grey ash off of the cat’s white fur while it was distracted by sniffing suspiciously at the food and water that it ultimately declined to consume.

“Just this once,” he told it.

-

Doing good work will often only bring you more work, Meng Yao reflected, and so it was with the cat as much as with anything else. He still didn’t know how the cat managed to get into his rooms, and he sometimes dwelled on paranoid suspicions that there were hiding-holes in his chambers designed to allow others to spy on him, just as there had been in certain rooms in the brothel – though even at his worst moment of uncertainty and doubt he didn’t really think so. He knew that it wasn’t Nie Mingjue’s style even if Meng Yao had been someone important enough to care about, and anyway he didn’t question his own ability to discovery such a thing if it had really existed. He’d checked.

At any rate, however it kept getting into his rooms, the cat was now a regular presence there, lurking around.

It didn’t want to be petted and greeted all attempts to feed it with utter disdain, but despite its general standoffishness it seemed to like being in the same vicinity as Meng Yao, enjoying nothing more than to settle haughtily by the window in his room and watch over Meng Yao as if it thought he might get lost without its supervision.

Meng Yao thought it was probably someone’s pet gotten lost, or maybe even just a feral cat from outside (Qinghe had a fair number of them) that had figured out that it could access the good life by going inside, but it was very hard to sincerely worry over the ill-intentions of a cat, and he was already very busy.

If he didn’t need to care for it, then it wasn’t adding to his troubles. Let the cat sit where it liked!

Meng Yao had found that life in Qinghe was both different and similar to life in Yunping, the only life he had to compare it to, and it amused him to think of the great and righteous Nie sect as an overly large brothel, with the main difference being that they sold their strength where women sold their bodies. In both places there needed to be order, someone to sort things out and tell people where to put things and what to do; in both places Meng Yao, with his quick mind and excellent memory, his sense of understanding people and anticipating their needs, was utterly invaluable in arranging such things.

He had, admittedly, expected it to take a little more time to climb up to the top – the only person he couldn’t understand in this place was Nie Mingjue, who was far too easy to deceive and smiled at him like he really thought they were friends instead of just being master and servant, who appreciated his talents and told him so, who shrugged off his mistakes and had faith that he would do better, who ignored his status instead of lording it over him the way Meng Yao had expected him to. Even when he was angry, when he shouted and slammed his hands against things, Nie Mingjue never once mentioned Meng Yao’s background, and the only things he seemed to hold against him were his own mistakes.

Meng Yao still didn’t know why Nie Mingjue would act so rashly as to promote someone he had just met to a position as high as viceroy, much less actually trust him, but it didn’t really matter. However quixotic his method of reaching a place of power, he was here and his next task was to keep his place until he’d made a reputation for himself.

Part of that he did through his work, good critical work that people needed and which had always won him gratitude even if not respect, but the other part of it was in cultivation. That was the way in which the Nie sect was not like a brothel: you couldn’t just be clever, you couldn’t even just be beautiful - to be respected, you had to cultivate.

Not that wanting to cultivate was a problem for Meng Yao.

He’d always had a memory like a sponge and a body that obeyed his every wish, his childhood of mimicking the beautiful dances of his mother and her ‘sisters’ serving him well in transitioning to learning the sword even if he was years behind everyone else; his mother had bought a thousand fake cultivation manuals for him and he’d learned them all, each one of them more useless than the next, and now that he was here in the cultivation world at long last, he was finally, finally, finally able to cultivate for real.

Using Nie sect methods, of course, even if that wasn’t what he really wanted.  

He’d started as soon as he could when he arrived, endlessly grateful that the Nie sect provided training sabers without cost, and he’d snuck one away back to his room so that he could practice on his own time, knowing it would take a long time to form his golden core. He’d debated with himself for a long time as to whether or not it was worth it to invest in a real one – if the training sabers were free, then real proper Nie sabers were somehow three times as expensive as the swords you could buy in the marketplace, and you could only put in a deposit without any notion of when you’d actually get the saber, apparently subject to the contrary dispositions of the spiritual weaponsmiths that made them.

In the end he decided to go for it more or less on a whim, emptying out his hard-built savings to place the order, even though he knew he would one day need to discard whatever they made for him in favor of a sword.

The Jin sect would accept him one day. He would make them.

(If the Nie sect cultivation style was good for one thing, he thought as he went through endless drills of slashing and thrusting, it was that you could work out your anger while you were doing it. There was nothing quite like imagining the face of someone you hated and then bringing down the practice saber in a vicious slash, and oh, but Meng Yao hated so very many people.)

The cat liked watching him train most of all, although Meng Yao suspected it was because seeing him jump around panting was funnier than watching him sit at his desk and gracefully write out letters. It would occasionally start purring, a sound a little like a crackling fire, and eventually Meng Yao got into the habit of going to run his fingers through its fur as a reward for himself when he successfully completed a training sequence.

After a while, he started talking to it, too.

“That commander,” Meng Yao said as he brought the training saber down. His real saber was still on the order, probably stalled purposefully; the smith assigned the task was probably one of the people that thought they were too good to deal with him because of who his mother was, and it’d all been a waste of money in the end. Completely a waste, even if Nie Mingjue had smiled so happily at him when he’d heard about Meng Yao placing the order, his eyes warm and soft and how had that man survived so long in this wretched world of politics and pain, didn’t he know he would always be deceived and betrayed?

Why should he be the exception to the rule, when everyone else had to suffer?

Meng Yao threw away the unhelpful thoughts and thrust the saber forward, as if piercing his invisible opponent straight through the chest.

“That commander.” He minutely corrected his form and stabbed again, this time as if piercing through the belly: a gut wound, a slow and awful way to die. “He’ll regret what he said to me.”

The cat’s purring intensified.

Meng Yao briefly had the wild thought that it approved.

“I just –” Another thrust. “– need to figure out –” An overhead slash. “– how.”

-

Meng Yao ended up taking the cat with him when he left Qinghe.

It probably was someone’s pet and he was opening himself up to a charge of stealing, a charge he wouldn’t be able to defend himself against now that he no longer had Nie Mingjue’s protection –

(Nie Mingjue who had wept tears and blood at what Meng Yao had done, betrayed at last after having finally encountered a deception he could not swallow, who had banished him from the Unclean Realm even after everything Meng Yao had done for him – who had, despite it all, still hidden an entire bag of gold and Meng Yao’s favorite Qinghe snacks in Meng Yao’s things with a short note claiming that it was for unpaid wages. As if Meng Yao had ever let a single pay period go by without claiming exactly what he was due. As if Nie Mingjue still cared despite throwing him out, as if he worried about how Meng Yao might live, as if he hadn’t given up the privilege of caring about things like that – )

He didn’t really care.

He wanted the cat, so he took it. It was the least Qinghe could do for him.

The cat spent all its time in his new rooms in the hotels he stayed out as he traveled: in his bedroom and study, the little gardens that, when available, he liked to use to train in the mornings and evenings. It would even follow him when he took a bath (although that was with great reluctance on the part of the cat, and only if Meng Yao were taking an especially long time in the bath and the cat was worried he’d drowned, yowling angrily as if it could revive him through the power of its voice). If it had once belonged to someone else, it now belonged to Meng Yao, and Meng Yao didn’t give away anything that was his.

“I’ve made worse mistakes,” he said defiantly to the cat, which blinked at him from its side of the carriage he’d used some of the gold to rent. “It’s only that I don’t want to review them in order to think of which ones those might be.”

The cat got up, stretched its back, and walked over to butt its head against Meng Yao’s hand before turning and going back to its spot by the window.

Meng Yao wasn’t sure if that was a sign of agreement or if the cat just thought there was a treat in his hand. Not that the cat had ever accepted treats from his hand.

He still wasn’t sure what the cat ate, actually, but he was sure the cat would make its feelings known now that they weren’t somewhere with a dependable kitchen, though he supposed there was always the possibility that it would start picking up hunting.

“Wen Chao said that they’d aimed at the Cloud Recesses,” Meng Yao said, deciding not to dwell on the things of the past. There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do about Nie Mingjue’s betrayed eyes or the snacks he hadn’t even known Nie Mingjue had known he’d liked, about the hand-me-down guans and trinkets that Nie Huaisang had insisted were part of his wardrobe when he’d helped him pack even though he knew Nie Huaisang still wore them sometimes, about the fact that he should have been ordered to take the Nie sect’s braids out of his hair when he passed by the gates for the final time since he didn’t deserve them anymore but the two disciples there had just nodded at him and let him pass without a word – nothing to do about the saber he’d ordered, still on the list to be made, and maybe if he made something of himself out in the world alone he would one day come back to claim it at last. “That’s where we’re going now. Lan Xichen might be in danger. I have to help him.”

The cat made a sound like it was considering hacking up a hairball.

“He was kind to me,” Meng Yao said, feeling defensive. “The only one who never judged me –”

Since he’d decided to forget about Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, wiping it out of his mind as if it had never been, that was even true.

“– and he’s a proper gentleman, a good man. I’ll help him.”

That Lan Xichen was also a powerful man was something he wished he didn’t think of, but he couldn’t help the way he was.

“After I help him, I’ll figure out what to do next,” Meng Yao said, like a liar, and the cat looked at him like he was stupid – which he was being, because of course he’d already planned out what to do next, figured out his next move, and there was no point in lying to a cat about it. Meng Yao had skills that were only useful in management, not labor, and the only thing he left to sell was information about the sect from which he’d just been ejected. “No one owns me, right? Let it be the Wen sect.”

The cat did not purr, but it didn’t condemn him, either.

That would have to do.

-

It was a good thing that Meng Yao’s cat was self-sufficient, he thought, because he had neither the time nor the stomach to feed it during his time at the Wen sect.

If he had thought he had worked hard at the Nie sect, he now knew differently: at least there the worst he had faced from his colleagues had been disdain and not outright murder attempts, back-stabbing and undercutting to try to show off to Wen Ruohan, and all the while the man himself demanded more and more from him without the slightest care for his own well-being. He was grist to the mill for Wen Ruohan, no matter how much the Chief Cultivator enjoyed having another man’s prized deputy as his own – Wen Ruohan might had been very nearly driven insane by the Yin Metal, but he still remembered old grudges – and it was night and day away from Nie Mingjue’s reliance on him that was based on trust, rather than reluctantly satisfied suspicion and paranoia.

Meng Yao had hidden the cat as best as he could from the start, thinking rightfully that people would try to use it against him, and to his relief it seemed that no one else had yet laid eyes on it and identified it as his own, despite its white fur standing out like a beacon to his sight. Unfortunately there were some people that had managed to figure out that he had a cat, even if they didn’t lay eyes on it themselves, and he’d had more than a few incidents in which someone had left poisoned meat out on the floor by his room in order to catch it.

The cat seemed as unimpressed with that as anything else.

Instead, the cat seemed to have taken up hunting as its pastime. It brought back the corpses of small birds, the Yin Metal-infused little spies, full of resentful energy, that Wen Ruohan had developed for his sons to use. At first Meng Yao worried about the cat getting somehow poisoned by them, but time went on and it seemed to be fine, even thriving. It had grown into a proper cat now, no longer a kitten, and it enjoyed licking its white and shining fur until it was gleaming.

It didn’t like Meng Yao’s training sessions as much – he trained with a sword now, two-faced just like him, and in a dozen different styles, Wen and Jiang and Jin, always Jin – so sometimes Meng Yao would go back to doing the old Nie sect style again, knowing the cat would recognize the familiar movements, and it was a surefire way to get the cat to purr.

The Nie sect style was also still the best for getting out anger, all aggression and sharp movements, and Meng Yao still had a lot of anger inside of him. He was starting to think he always would.

At least here in the Nightless City he could kill the people he hated, as long as he did so in low and dirty ways that didn’t trouble Wen Ruohan or interfere with his plans, and yet every time he did it, he felt no relief, only a vile and wretched stickiness that came, perhaps, from that awful Yin Metal that he had schemed over yet couldn’t seem to escape.

The cat didn’t like the Yin Metal one bit. It hissed and scratched, and in one notable incident seemed like it was going to pounce on it directly if Meng Yao hadn’t caught it mid-leap and shoved it into his sleeve before anyone had noticed it.

“You’re going to get me into trouble,” Meng Yao told the cat next time he trained, using the soft sword he’d hidden away for a time of need to hack and slash in the Nie way, which didn’t work with a soft sword at all but which made him feel strangely better. He was currently imagining Wen Ruohan’s head underneath a saber, his head and the heads of all those corpse puppets he’d created. “I will cut you loose if you do that.”

The cat rolled onto its back and showed its soft and fluffy belly, which only the truly unwise would seek to lay a hand on – Meng Yao still had scars – and Meng Yao rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know,” he said. “No one owns you, not even me. But do me a favor and don’t screw this up for me. Not when I’m so close.”

Lan Xichen had been accepting his letters and feeding them to Nie Mingjue, who trusted as blindly as he ever did. Meng Yao wished sometimes that he didn’t, that he would learn, that he would put some defenses up on that stupid reckless heart of his, but on the other hand it suited his plans very well that he didn’t.

Soon, he thought. Soon.

Soon he’d know what he needed to do.

-

“Now he chooses not to trust people,” Meng Yao complained to his cat. “Now. Now!”

The cat purred.

It wasn’t that Meng Yao (damnit, Jin Guangyao, he had a new name, he was Jin Guangyao now) couldn’t understand Nie Mingjue’s reluctance to trust him – fool me once, fool me twice, but three times seemed to be the other man’s breaking point – and in some ways he understood it more than ever now that he had been accepted back by the Jin sect, clothed in the gold he’d always deserved to wear.

Jin Guangshan hadn’t lost much in the war, not like the other sects, and the second it was over he was already scheming. Meng Yao – Jin Guangyao – was pulled right into the thick of it at once, less for his spying capability than for his sheer disposability, the fact that Jin Guangshan wasn’t willing to burden his pure and righteous heir with black matters that he was more than happy to taint the son of his whore with. With Nie Mingjue, general and hero of the Sunshot Campaign, representing the only real threat to the Jin sect’s domination, even if he didn’t want to be, Jin Guangyao was bound to be in opposition to him.

It made sense for Nie Mingjue not to trust him.

It irritated him regardless.

Still, lack of trust or no, Nie Mingjue had succumbed to Lan Xichen’s impassioned arguments and had agreed to swear brotherhood with him, even if Jin Guangyao suspected that Nie Mingjue’s primary motivation was to keep a better eye on him and scold him the way he did Nie Huaisang. It would be politically beneficial to Jin Guangyao to be tied in such a way to Nie Mingjue – it would suit his own desires as well, though that was less important – and so he had of course agreed as well, and he was planning on going to their oath ceremony in the outfit he had chosen for himself, gold from neck to foot, a sword he’d taken from the treasury since no one would order him one of his own, and a hat on his head like the ones his mother so admired to make up for his lack of height and to hide the Nie sect braids he still habitually wore underneath.

An old habit, and one he really ought to break, really. Ideally before Nie Mingjue figured it out and told him to cut it out.

There was a knock on the door, a familiar pounding, and the cat looked up, intrigued, even as Jin Guangyao sighed voicelessly to himself. Perhaps he had waited too long.

Perhaps it would be better to make a clean cut in this way, too.

He opened the door.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he greeted, thinking to himself that it would only be a few more hours before he was entitled to call the man da-ge as if they were nearly equals and how strange that would be. “Can this humble one help you?”

“Can I come in?” Nie Mingjue asked gruffly, his eyes lingering on Jin Guangyao’s uncovered and Nie-braided hair, just as he might have expected. Had expected.

Jin Guangyao nodded and stepped back, allowing him in, and closed the door behind him. “Could I get the sect leader some refreshments?” he asked politely, but Nie Mingjue seemed to have come to a stop right in the entranceway, surprise written all over his features. “Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Mingjue was staring at Jin Guangyao’s cat.

“…Sect Leader Nie?”

Did Nie Mingjue not like cats? There were an endless number of feral cats in Qinghe, so it seemed implausible, and yet, here Nie Mingjue was, looking at the cat like he’d never seen such a thing before in its life.

Of course, at that exact moment, Jin Guangyao’s cat, the traitor, hopped off its pillow and went straight to rub itself against Nie Mingjue’s leg, purring like a little maniac.

Jin Guangyao stared at it, feeling thoroughly betrayed by what he would have previously said was his thoroughly unsociable cat, who had taken years to warm up to him enough to give him half the attention it was now bestowing freely on Nie Mingjue. Was this the heavens deciding to mock him for his earlier betrayals?

Alternatively, Nie Mingjue might just be very good with cats, which Jin Guangyao could believe. Perhaps he even carried in his pockets some of the Qinghe vine that cats were said to be so enamored of, although certainly Meng Yao’s cat had never once before shown an interest in such things before.

“…what’s its name?” Nie Mingjue croaked, voice hoarse. He was still staring fixedly at the cat, looking as though his entire world had shattered around him. He hadn’t even looked so unsettled when Jin Guangyao had so viciously mocked him at the Nightless City, and at the time he’d thought he was going to die and be turned into a corpse puppet to murder all his loved ones.

Jin Guangyao was tempted to say something rude or facetious, something like ‘I just call it Cat, why, do you name random cats?’, but the cat had been a good companion of his for a long time now and he couldn’t do that to it, even if he was currently planning on taking an extra long bath to force the cat to miserably linger by the door to the bathing room, screeching in unhappiness at the wet, but bravely (if grumpily) supervising him to make sure he didn’t drown.

“Hensheng,” he said, because that was in fact what he’d named it – it meant hatred for life, which was not exactly an auspicious name but which had stuck from the very moment he had thought it up – and waited to hear Nie Mingjue’s judgment. “It’s not normally quite so sticky,” he added in an attempt to save some face. “With most people.”

“Well, it’s me, that’s different,” Nie Mingjue said, and maybe the man really was just the human incarnation of the plant cats liked so much. Meng Yao really wouldn’t put it past him. “You...you cultivate in the Nie sect style? Still?”

Jin Guangyao blinked, surprised by the change in subject.

“Yes,” he said, a little hesitantly. He cultivated many styles now, although it was always the Jin sect style when he was in public. But he still had all the anger in his belly to vent – even more so now than before, anger at his father, anger at Madame Jin, anger at his brother born to a blessed life, anger at all those disciples that sneered at him even after he’d been legitimized, anger, anger, anger – and the Nie sect style had always been the best for that.

And anyway, it made the cat purr.

“Is that a problem, Sect Leader Nie?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Nie Mingjue said, and when he turned to look at him his eyes were warm and soft the way they’d been all the way before the fiasco with Xue Yang, shimmering with tears of joy and a smile that seemed to come straight from his heart, the foolish easily deceived man. It was so unexpected that Jin Guangyao actually took a full two steps back, his jaw dropping a little. “I’m happy for you. Very happy.”

He actually wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, dashing away the tears.

“You should come back to the Unclean Realm to pick it up when the brotherhood ceremony is done,” he added nonsensically. “I can’t imagine how long it’s been waiting for you.”

“…what?” Jin Guangyao said. “Pick up what?”

“Hensheng,” Nie Mingjue said, which – what? “Your saber. Hensheng.”

His saber?

The saber he’d never gotten, having been banished from the Unclean Realm before the order was finished, the one he’d spent all his savings on just in putting in the deposit, the one he’d never actually finished paying off? He remembered it, of course, and sometimes it still itched under his skin that he’d never gotten what he was owed because everything that was owed to him he deserved to get in the end. But…

“Hensheng is my cat,” he said.

Nie Mingjue blinked at him. “That’s not a cat,” he said. “That’s a saber spirit.”

Jin Guangyao’s gaze dropped down to the cat.

The cat that never seemed to eat anything or drink anything, that never once fell for the poisoned meat or accepted his offers of treats, that no one in the Nightless City had ever seen with their own eyes; the cat that could consistently get into his rooms despite there being no holes for it to enter, as if it had simply passed through the walls like a ghost.

Like a spirit.

The cat, which purred whenever Jin Guangyao practiced the Nie sect forms, swinging a saber with rage in his heart.

The cat to which he had confessed all his anger, all his frustration, all his rage, all the feelings he never gave to any human being around him – the sabers of the Nie sect thrived on such emotions, those feelings that encouraged them and strengthened them, developing the saber spirits that made each one of them a spiritual weapon unlike any other, with power and rage infused into the very blade.

Saber spirits, which only those born into the Nie sect or adopted early, raised in their ways, one of them, could form.

“A saber spirit?” Jin Guangyao said weakly, and his knees suddenly didn’t seem strong enough to hold him; he swayed and Nie Mingjue stepped forward quickly, catching him by the shoulders to steady him. “I cultivated a saber spirit?”

“The saber is back in the Unclean Realm,” Nie Mingjue said, not without kindness. “It was only ever waiting for you to pick it up once you developed the spirit, so that you could introduce the two.”

“It hasn’t been – I would have thought it would have been thrown away, or repurposed –”

“It’s a Nie saber, Meng Yao. It won’t obey anyone else ever again, not in this life; it is yours, yours alone. When one day you die, it will be buried with honor in our saber halls, just like all the others.”

The cat looked up at him and purred.

No one owns me, Jin Guangyao thought – the first thing the cat had said to him, and he’d always had a good understanding of what the cat wanted from the very first. No one had owned that wild spirit then, but it had stayed by his side, at first from curiosity and later from habit, and it was his now.

His, and no one else’s.

“Will you come pick it up?” Nie Mingjue asked, hope in his eyes. “Will you come home, if only for a little while?”

“Yes,” Jin Guangyao said. “Yes, I will.”

-

Later, Jin Guangshan told his son to kill Nie Mingjue, that fool who trusted too much and didn’t know when he was being deceived, finding him in his rigidity and righteousness too much of a burden on the power he planned to wield.

Jin Guangyao bowed as deep as he could, a smile on his lips, saying nothing, and the next day, when Jin Guangshan went to the brothel as he always did, drinking tea served by his son the way he always did, he never did figure out why his heart had stopped.

(The saber Jin Guangyao began to wear openly after the funeral – a gift from his sworn brother, he said with a smile, in remembrance of his time at the Nie sect – purred in pure satisfaction.)

[anonymous0writer]

Truth Or Dare

Author: @anonymous0writer​

Requested: Yes!

“Hey I had a request for a JJ x reader fic where the pogues are playing truth or dare and John b knows that someone’s been screwing around in his van so he asks JJ who not only confirms it was him but drags the reader down under the bus with him”

Warnings: Very light mentions of sex. Underage drinking. 

Summary: You and JJ have been messing around for a long time. And tonight's a night for truth.

A/N: I’m trying something different, by writing in third person.(I only did that in the beginning. I know I switch the narrative a little bit and I’m sorry for that! I hope it made sense!) Also this is much longer that it needed to be! Thank you anon! :)

This fic is dedicated to @jayjaymaebank​! Love you Kier!! <3

I am getting through all the requests! I promise! And I’m so sorry I’m not getting them out fast! I know you’re probably mad at me and I’m sorry! 

JJ Maybank was a boy known to have any girl he wants. However, there was one that he never thought he would have. That girl was Y/N Y/L/N. 

To JJ, she was perfect. Tan skin from days surfing and swimming. Bright, happy eyes that glowed in the sunlight. A smile that would light up the room and make everyone in a two mile radius smile too. A laugh that sounded like wedding bells and was highly contagious. A sense of humor that topped his own, a vibe that was even better than his. A wild side that made JJ catch his breath every time. A personality that had everyone falling in love.

And he never thought he’d have you. 

Until two months ago. When you had stumbled into him at a Boneyard party, seemingly drunk. (You were really just laughing too hard at Pope’s comment to think straight. But in fairness, you had two drinks, but you had a good immunity to alcohol, so you weren’t fazed.) You had grinned at the blue eyed boy, making him soften. 

“JJ! There’s my favorite boy!” You laughed. “You know I’m in love with you, right?” 

You were feeling very bold that night, and upon feeling this way, you confessed your feeling. Admittedly, the presentation of them was like a joke, but still. Your heart still clenched and you still held you breath. 

“What?” JJ sputtered, caught off guard at the words he’d ached for you to say for almost a full year. 

“I’m in love with you.” You said more seriously, your eyes flickering with something JJ couldn’t place. 

JJ being JJ kissed your cheek and nodded. “Alright, Ms. Alcohol.” His blue eyes danced with amusement mixed with sadness. 

But you frowned, shaking your head. He didn’t understand. You weren’t drunk, and the bad feeling in your stomach was increasing the more time went by. You were confessing your long held feelings and the blonde boy was just passing it off as drunk thoughts. 

“I’m not drunk, J.” You protested, voice hard with seriousness.

The laughing, easy atmosphere vanished. JJ’s blue eyes bore into yours.

“You love me?”

“I’m not kidding, JJ.”

All thoughts were thrown out the window at your words. So JJ did what JJ did best. Kissing. JJ leaned forward, lips on yours in a second. The kiss was tentative and soft. Unsure if this was even real. But JJ knew it was real the second he felt you kiss back. He felt on top of the world at the pressure of your lips on his.

You pulled back, trying to catch a breath. “Wait, are-”

“Should we keep this secret?” JJ answered, knowing you far too well. 

“We aren’t allowed to mack, J.”

“I don’t care.” He breathed and pressed another kiss to your lips. “As long as I can kiss you, I’m okay.”

You grinned, but pulled back a little. So you two looked like friends. Not a couple. “We gotta keep this away from the Pogues. Kie would freak.”

“God you’re hot.” The blonde boy complimented you, while ignoring your comment. You blushed and looked at the sand, wriggling your feet in the warmth of the tiny grains.

But before you could kiss the boy again, Kie was calling your name, making you pull away from the boy you’ve been in love with for a year. You glanced back to see the surfer still staring after you. You giggled softly and winked. You were now secretly macking on JJ Maybank. The one boy you thought you could never have.

~

You sat around the fire, surrounded by your friends. Pope on was your right, sharing a log with you. His bare feet were stretched in the sand, reaching for the warmth of the fire John B. had coaxed to life. Kie sat huddled to your side. She was talking adamantly about the problems with the planet. John B. was on the other side of the fire, pretending to be working hard on the fire so he couldn’t get schooled by the girl next to you. However JJ wasn’t as lucky, and he was getting a talking to.

You caught JJ’s eyes, smirking. JJ and you had been sneaking around for months now. Macking and sneaking kisses and quickies in when you could. You loved it, but wished it wouldn’t have to be a secret. But part of you feared JJ wouldn’t want to be in a relationship anymore once it got validation.

The blue eyed boy gave you a look that screamed “Help!” but you just added to the fire, by asking Kie a question that sent her off again. You loved Kie’s rants, but right now, it was funnier to see your secret boyfriend suffer as he nodded along to the curly haired girls words. 

“Y/N.” You glanced up to see John B. extending a red solo cup to you. You smiled and grabbed the cup, pulling the sleeves of your sweatshirt over your hands. Actually, it was Pope’s sweatshirt, but you’d stolen it a while ago and Pope had given up on getting it back only for you to steal it again. You loved sweatshirts, and you had plenty, but Pope’s were special. They were always bigger than you, and you loved bigger sweatshirts. Plus, you always loved stealing things from the boys to tick them. You’d steal from John B. too, but the boy didn’t wear many sweatshirts, and if he did, he never kept track of them. And JJ- well, you couldn’t steal from him now, because it’d be a red flag. And JJ never wore sweatshirts, and stealing his shirts just for his smell would make Kie ask questions. 

You take a sip of the drink, blinking and sputtering against the strong alcohol sloshing in your gut. John B. smirks at you reaction and you shove his shoulder, making him fall back onto the log. He laughs, taking a bigger, hearty swig of his drink than you. Showing you up. You glare and take another sip, bigger than your first, but you still sputter. Your little game of showing each other up continues, until the pogues catch on. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Kie asks, eyebrows raised as she watches the two of you tip your drinks back farther.

“Maybe you should..” Pope trails, 

“Whoa there, Y/N. Slow down.” JJ’s blue eyes find yours. He’s worried for you. because when you get drunk, you get bad. You’re usually unfazed with a couple drinks, but whatever John B. concocted is strong. 

“I’m fine. We’re just playing a game.”

Pope scoffs. “Yeah whoever can get shitfaced faster.”

You roll your eyes, but Kie plucks the cup out of your hand. You gape at your best friend as she sniffs the drink, frowning. “I was winning!” You protest. 

“I don’t care how much you can drink without getting drunk, Y/N, doesn’t mean you can drink it all.”

You roll your eyes and pout as the loss of your drink. But your disappointment is cut short as the honey eyed boy across from you jumps up. The rest of you stare up at him as he runs a hand through his curly hair. 

“We’re playing truth or dare.” John B. says, but it’s more of a statement as he doesn’t leave room for debate. 

You prod Kie in the ribs, intent on annoying her into giving you your drink back since begging the girl won’t work. Kie slaps your hand away and shuts you up by tipping the rest of the contents into her throat. You give a tut of disbelief. Kie smiles and hands you the empty cup. 

“Be sure to recycle, Y/N.”

You shove her shoulder a little bit, but let your eyes flicker to John B. who’s giving JJ a wicked smirk. A smirk that tell you the boy knows something. Your heart squeezes hard as fear strikes you still. Why is he looking at JJ like he knows a secret?

“Alright, bubba.” John B. addresses his blonde friend. “You’ve you been fucking in my van?”

JJ coughs as you go still. Shit. John B. knows something. But your boyfriend laughs, shaking his head. Kie’s brows raise as she stares at JJ with her questioning dark eyes. Pope snorts because this is classic JJ. After all, they don’t know that JJ doesn’t bring a random girl from a kegger to John B.’s van to fuck. For two months, it’s been the same girl he took to heaven.

“I didn’t choose truth, John B.” JJ takes a sip, trying to aviod the question because he knows the pogues. Kie will freak. John B. will ban you two from the house and make faces when he realizes it was you two in his van. Pope would be surprised but then tease you constantly.

“Doesn’t matter, you’ve been fucking someone.” John B. shrugs, waiting.

JJ runs his hand through his hair, realizing he can’t get out of this. 

“JJ?” Kie prods.

JJ’s blue eyes flicker up to meet yours for a split second before his lips curve into a smirk. A dangerous smirk. 

“Alright. It’s Y/N.”

Kie gasps at the same time as your eyes go wide. The boys startle, and Pope’s eyes land on you. 

“Bullshit.” John B. calls, honey eyes dancing between you and JJ. 

You’re at a loss for words, shocked. After two months, JJ revealed you two to the world. And he seemed... proud. Not afraid or like he was going to bolt, like he feared.

“No dude.” JJ stands, smirking at you. “Y/N’s favorite spot is the van, isn’t baby?”

You gape, a blush rushing to your cheeks. You thought you told your boyfriend that in confidentiality, but apparently not. Your cheeks flame as the surfer winks at you.

“Oh shit!” Pope laughs. 

“What about no pogue on pogue macking?” Kie desperately tries to remind you of the rule you and JJ forgot to care about a long time ago. 

“Oh my god! Y/N? Really?!” John B. groans, making a face. “Why the van?”

You bury your face in your hand, positive this is the most embarrassed you’ll be your whole life. There is no way another moment can top what you feel right now. A warm arm is thrown over your shoulders, and a familiar voice curls in your ear. 

“What? We’re out now, aren’t you happy?” JJ asks, blue eyes crinkling with amusement as you peek at him. 

“Fuck you!” You glare and shove him. 

He tips for a second and laughs, grinning like a fool. You frown. It was a horrible way to break it to your friends, and the boy beside you is taking it in a stride. You glance up to meet Kie’s still shocked expression. 

“Alright- I get it. No one listens to me.” Her lips purse for a second. “How long has...” She gestures between you and JJ with a hand. “..this been going on?”

“Two months.” You manage to squeak out, still incredibly embarrassed about JJ’ comment about you and the van.

Pope laughs as John B. gags. “Goddamit it, JJ!” The boy shakes his head. “You probably contaminated my whole fucking house.”

“You wish you got that lucky!” The surfer shoots back, arm still tight around you. 

You’re still nervous about everyone’s reaction. Especially Kie. John B. seems to accept it and Pope seems cool, but you peek gingerly at the girl. Kie seems to be thinking. 

“Kie?” You voice, grabbing her attention, trying to drown out the boys bickering around you. “Are you mad at me?” 

“No. Well, I’m upset you didn’t tell me sooner, but no.” She gives you a smile, making you relax. 

“We kinda figure something was happening when you asked for JJ to teach you new moves.”

John B. scoffs, talking about the time when you asked JJ to help you learn new moves on the surf board. You laugh and arch a brow. 

“Why is that?”

“Why else would you ask the worst surfer to help you?” John B. grins, telling you silently he’s not made either. 

But JJ’s mad at him, because a few seconds later a empty beer can is flying at the boy. John B. bats it away with a roll of his eyes as Pope speaks it up,

“It was going to happen anyway.” The dark haired boy shrugs. He explains when you all look at him with surprise. “You’ve been crushing on each other for a year practically.”

“Wait, wait!” Kie laughs. “Who confessed feelings first?”

You smirk. “Me.”

John B. whistles. “Damn JJ.”

“Y/N got the balls in the relationship.”

JJ rolls his eyes, but his hand drops to your waist to tug you close. You snuggle into his warmth, night falling fast, and with it, the temperature. The conversation slowly eases back into truth or dare. Conversations flows easily, along with the alcohol in your veins. Laughter sparks loudly even as the fire starts to die, the night becoming darker. And eventually you are dared to go jump in the water, fully clothed. You come back sopping wet, but grinning like a fool. Not because you just won the twenty bucks your boyfriend bet that you wouldn’t do it, but for another reason. 

Because you are JJ are a couple. And finally out. And your friends are mad. And JJ didn’t run away. That’s why you are grinning like your on top of the world.

Because you are on the top of the world.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

Top 5 Reasons Doug’s Pretty Great

It’s hard to believe that it’s been nine years since the first episode of S1 was released. I can still remember be a wee little lass first discovering it on youtube and becoming obsessed. At the time, I had no where to play it myself, so I watched as many playthroughs as I could until my family got an xbox. 

While the first episode in this series has a lot of memorable moments, the one that always stands out in people’s memories is the moment where you’re trying to escape the drugstore as walkers pound away at the door and windows, and you realize that both Carley and Doug need your help or they’re going to die. 

But... you can only save one, and whoever you don’t help, they end up being eaten alive by walkers and you get to feel bad about it for the rest of the episode. 

I bring this up because it’s interesting to look back nine years ago and see that... well, not a lot of people saved Doug. Which is crazy, because now the stats are pretty 50/50 with Doug even having a bit of an edge over Carley. That definitely wasn’t the case back then because the stats were more along the line of 20/80.

Why? Well, the writer’s didn’t exactly do the best job of showing how great Doug is in ep1, especially compared to Carley who has more interactions with Lee and more screen time.... which is even funnier because they did actually think they did a good job and were surprised by the results after the episode’s release.

Even back then they had a habit of making imbalanced routes then denying the imbalance... something they never grew out of. 

I guess they were a little butthurt about it since Doug is a favorite among the team given that he’s actually based on a real person, Doug Tabacco, an IT guy they worked with. This got to the point where Telltale never missed an opportunity to tell everyone to #SaveDoug over Carley.

I also love that they use the Stranger to guilt trip everyone who saved Carley by having him be like, “Doug was in a worse position! >:( You only saved Carley because she was a pretty girl!!” just.... real subtle, guys haha

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that more often than not, I choose to save Carley over Doug for many reasons, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate Doug and enjoy having him around in the off chance I do save him. So I thought it’d be fun to talk about Doug as a character and why he was pretty great as a little tribute, y’know? 

5. Doug’s a pretty funny dude

Now, I wouldn’t exactly call twdg a comedy, y’know? It gets dark, then manages to get even darker at times, but if the game was nothing but doom and gloom, it’d get boring and become unenjoyable. 

While other characters do get a laugh out of me from time to time, I enjoy the humor that Doug brings to the group, even if it’s not intentional and just the way he is. 

Even from the beginning, Doug had me chuckling with the fact that this nerdy dude didn’t want to bring profanity to Lee’s ears when talking about Larry, so he’s just like “ He's kind of a dick... pardon my french,” like Doug.... it’s okay, you can call him an asshole, no one will judge hahaha.

Then there’s the biscuit scene that I think we all know and love. Helps break the tension of meeting these weirdo’s who own a dairy and are totally not suspicious or anything. 

But it’s not even just that Doug is funny, he’s also a character that gets you to crack a smile when he’s talking about something he’s passionate about, or when he’s proud of the alarm he rigged up, or when he’s being adorably awkward. 

One of my favorites is in ep3 when Lee goes to ask Doug if he has any chalk, and he goes into this spiel about charcoal-- “You know, a piece of charcoal is a suitable alternative, depending on your marking surface. Since we're on the subject, did you know that while chalk is traditionally known to be calcium carbonate, what's often used in classrooms is actually made of gypsum, thanks to favorable domestic mining conditions?”

And Lee’s response is just-- “Doug, I did not know that.”

“Happy to be of service.”

It’s just really funny... and it makes you feel better after all the implications about Doug’s mental health in the episode... like you gave him a moment to flex his knowledge and get excited about it. 

But yeah, what can I say? Doug makes me laugh and he brings a bit of light to the groups constant shitshow. 

4. Doug saved the group’s ass at the St John farm

And he did so with a laser pointer. 

I always hate it when Doug/Carley leave the group at the St Johns and remain absent for most of the episode, though I chalk that up to the writers trying to make the different routes easier on themselves, y’know? 

But, at least they come back to save the day. 

In Doug’s case, he’s not comfortable with guns like Carley is, so he’s gotta get creative when it comes to getting Lee’s attention and stopping Andy from hurting Duck and Lee. 

That’s where his fancy little laser pointer comes in. 

We first see him with it during the walk to the farm, but then see it in action after Lee escapes the barn and is nearly blinded by the light. Doug claims he was doing morse code before Lee tells him and Ben that these assholes cut off Mark’s legs and tried to feed them to the group. 

Now, here’s the thing... If Doug and Ben had done what they were told and stayed at the motor inn over night, things probably wouldn’t have turned out so good for the group. Doug is the one who shines the laser pointer in Andy’s eyes when he’s got ahold of Duck, giving Lee the advantage of attack. Without that, if Lee tried anything, he would’ve ended up like dingdong Kenny with a bullet in his side. 

Also there’s just a lot of bravery from Doug, y’know? Like as soon as he finds Lee and knows the situation, the first thing he asks is what can they do to help, and he sticks around to do what he can.... even if it is just to point a laser in someone’s eye. 

No one gives Doug enough credit for savin’ the day, y’know? And if you have any doubt, even Lee says, “I never thought a laser pointer would be the thing that saved our lives.”

3. Doug’s friendship with Lee

Speaking of Lee, his friendship with Doug is underrated. The two have chemistry and work off each other well in the scene’s they’re in. While it’s not as strong as Carley’s in ep1, saving Doug and having around in ep2 & ep3 lets you see it at it’s best, y’know? 

After Lee saves his life at the drugstore, Doug is shown to mourn Carley and asks Lee why he would pick him, lamenting that he wished he had picked her over him and you can tell that Doug feels that he owes Lee a lot for saving him. Hell, he even says as much when Lee tries to give him food in ep2-- “Why don't you keep my share today. I know I said it didn't matter why you saved me and not Carley, but... I owe you a lot more than half a day's rations."

Also, I love this one line from Kenny when you’re on bad terms with him and they’re talking about going separate ways where he’s basically like “We all know Doug’s gonna stay with you because you saved him that ONE time >:(” and on top of it being such a bitchy Kenny line, it also shows that every can see that Doug is a loyal friend to Lee and would want to stick with him where ever he decides to go. 

One thing that I think people tend to overlook, though, is how concerned Lee is with Doug’s mental health in ep3. There are implications that Doug might be suffering with depression due to the situation of the walkers, bandits harrassing and threatening them, and believing that he isn’t useful to the group, stating that he feel pretty worthless. Lee asks Clementine if he seems sad, and hell, he even talks to Lilly about it.

In fact, speaking of Clementine, Doug is real sweet with her, too. Of course, he gives her those batteries for her walkie, but he also asks about how she’s doing as they’re leaving the dairy. Hell, 8 years later, Clementine still remembers him by name and how sweet he was when fucking dingdong Lilly can’t remember his damn name. That says a lot. 

Y’all know how important Clementine is to Lee, so he wouldn’t have grown as close to Doug if he wasn’t a genuinely good person who treated Clementine with kindess. 

I dunno, there’s a lot of trust and care between the two and it’s a relationship that I truly love. I just wish we could’ve seen a bit more of it but y’know...#2 happened. 

2. Doug saved Ben’s life

Yeah, I think we all saw this coming...

Look, doesn’t matter what you think about Ben, okay? Not what we’re talkin’ about. We’re talkin’ about Doug saving Ben’s life, which unfortunately meant ending his own.

Still haven’t forgiven Lilly for this one. Though I’ve always found the difference between Doug and Carley’s death’s interesting. With Carley, Lilly intentionally kills her after Carley tells her off. But with Doug, Lilly was aiming for Ben and even when Doug pulled him out of the way, she still fired the gun... even though she didn’t have a clear shot and ended up hitting Doug. 

Then she tries to play it off like it was an accident which, yeah I guess it was but that doesn’t change that you were intending to murder this 6ft tall child. 

It’s just... I dunno, man, it’s sad. I always feel more sorrow for Doug’s death, but more anger for Carley’s? Even though both make me angry, it’s just different characters, different things that led to their deaths, different feelings. This is the first real “Fuck you, Lilly” moment for me and she can spend the next 8 years wandering around for all I can. 

Doug didn’t deserve this shit. 

But, the reason I put this at #2 because it really says a lot about Doug as a character. The second he saw Lilly aim that gun, he yanked Ben out of the way. He could’ve gone into shock, he could’ve just yelled “no!”, or he could’ve gone at Lilly instead.... but no, his first instinct was to grab Ben and move himself in front and it really fucking sucks that that’s what killed him. 

And y’know this isn’t the first time Doug has put himself in danger to save someone. I already talked about him saving everyone at the dairy, but can we not forget how he and Carley met? She was gonna get eaten by walkers then our big hero Doug came in and saved her?? Didn’t know her or anything, just saw her and her crew getting attacked and did what he could to save any survivors?? 

Like... no one talks about that because it’s so played off and never brought up again and I need everyone to remember this, okay? 

Doug selflessly putting himself in danger to help those around him? Fantastic. Beautiful. Love that.

1. Look, Doug himself is just #1. His personality, intelligence, everything.

Wow, Doug’s personality being the #1 reason he’s so great? Who woulda thought?

Well, ME woulda thought because obviously.

Listen... in case you haven’t gather this from the previous four entries, Doug is an intelligent, awkward, caring, selfless, funny, and brave man, okay? He’s likable, he tries his damnedest to pull his weight for the group, he shows actual loyalty and kindness unlike some people, and when he tends to avoid the constant Lilly and Kenny conflicts, he does his best to step in when things take a serious turn, hence the Ben situation. 

No to mention the dude is smart. 

I mean, he really took a random remote and was like, “Oh it’s universal, let me just program it to work on ALL the random TV’s across the street as a way to distract these walkers!” like dude.... you just know how to do that, huh? 

Or his fun little bell trap that alerts the groups of strangers and walkers? Oh, and remember when he fixed the RV by hitting it with a fucking hammer and was like “It works now, drive!” 

And have I mentioned that he bested Andy St John with a goddamn laser pointer?? 

Oh, also wanna add that I really like his voice acting, as well. He’s voiced by Sam Joan, who does a good job at selling Doug’s soft-spoken but intelligent nature, and knows how to pull off “dorky” when needed... and I mean that in a good way, when he’s talking about charcoal Doug is being a dork and I love him.

I mean... what else is there to say?

All that’s left to do is pull a Telltale and--

#SaveDoug

---

Honorable Mentions

-Doug is a pie guy, going off of that time he named all the different kinds of pie he could thing of and I feel that.  -He’s a very fashionable person. I want that weird polar bear deer thing shirt he wears in ep1.  -also, you can’t go wrong with socks and sandals, my dude.  -He had a crush on Carley and honestly, I feel that, too. 

---

There it is, there’s my whole thing about Doug. What are your thoughts? When it comes to that choice in ep1 of s1, do you save Doug or do you save Carley? Do you agree or disagree with any of my choices for this list? Or have anything to add? I’m always down to chat.

Have any suggestions for future T5F’s? Feel free to send ‘em in! :D

—

Next week’s T5F

[stuckasmain]

Buffy the vampire slayer season 2 review

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Huge! Major! Mondo! Serious spoilage here people! Keep if you haven’t seen season 2 and don’t want to be spoiled, jump off now. You’ve been warned

✨𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐥 ✨

literally no one gave them the right for half the episodes in this season and I’ll single handedly fight whoever made me feel like this. So clearly the show was picked up after the first season as it launches straight from 12 episodes to 22. Honestly I love It so far and still do- also spike. Y’all were right he’s great. Just.... just who allowed you to do that finale she’s 17 let her watch crappy movies or something.

[IMG=O3A]

seriously I like just finished and I’m still not ok

𝐒𝐭𝗼𝐫𝐲 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐬 𝐮𝐩! 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝗼𝐞𝐬𝐧𝐭!

SLIGHTLY more vampires then season one! This was my more major complaint of season one , but with more episodes they could pace out the story driven - I don’t want to say ‘main plot’ episodes. There’s a equal mix of vampire slayage and ‘living on a hellmouth’ activity’s. I kinda like how you’ll have your more goofy monster of the month episodes then WHAM. Vampires! Emotions! Death! Straight in the gut. However at the same time it feels like it sort of drags a bit. Like everyone’s stuck in this sort of loop of development just like the world. Learn a lesson or evolve as a charecter or some sort of word thing? Next episode it’s kinda ignored and that flaw is back again.

however I am completely LIVING for the Halloween episode.

𝐂𝗼𝗺𝐞𝐝𝐲

Still god tier , next. Ok but seriously I feel it got even better this season and I love it.

Nothing will EVER be funnier then beating a unstoppable demon with a god damn bazooka and a pissed off teenager

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬

Buffy summers-

Someone get this girl a hug I swear to god she’s been though it. As much as I adore her and think she’s funny and smart , though cocky , but at the same time she suffers from the development issue I said before. Like she learns a lesson then next episode jumps straight back into the same sort of thing. However this is no fault on her and mainly just proves she has a good heart. I mean if my principle was like that and my own mother was so quick to believe I GENUINELY KILLED SOMEONE/TRIED TO without listening to a single word of mine. I’d loose it sometimes too.

Xander-

Again he’s still my soul. No porn star t-shirt this time :( . Again he’s just he’s funny, he’s awkward but his hearts in the right place. He really is a human puppy dog, who’s more bark then bite too. I also love the detail of him remembering all the military stuff from Halloween but also the “I was a hyena once I can relate to the werewolf :D” I love hyena boy. Also low key self deprecating half the time.

Willow-

Baby angel. Nerd queen. Love her so much omg. I love how sweet she is but also how at the same time she’s decently tough, and then gets all excited when she acts tough. Seriously she’s so adorable I may burst.

Giles-

Also my soul. Father figure of the year. Also, I like how this season began hinting at something deeper then what meets the nerdy nerdy surface. He’s kinda like willow a sweet and awkward nerd however he WILL snap much more often then she will.

Oz-

SETH GREEN! That’s it. Seth green! I love him so much oz is such a sweetheart, though it is kinda like willow dating a male, werewolf, version of herself. Though I’m here for it.

Cordillera -

How she is both developed and the same at the same time. I love her lmao.

Angel-

How do you go from Edward Cullen to dork to evil boy to sad boy. Apparently don’t have sex because you’ll be happy and turn evil kids. Really... who put that into the curse? Ok so yeah on one hand he’s no longer suffering so why have him cursed, at the same time it opens up the chance for him to do the same thing you fucking cursed him for again! Seriously evil him is both entertaining as it is a very punchable face.

Spike-

The guy pulls up looking like that, to that music. I swear it was like Billy Hargrove like a instant “well there going to be good” (as in interesting charecter-) and it was right. I love how he just shows up and is all “ok, what do you do for fun around here” .... “you people have heard of fun here right? Jesus Christ- what do you do? Skeam all day?” Later half after the mid part of the season he sort of Meh’s. However his sarcasm is p e a k.

Dru-

I love her you don’t understand. She’s so creepy and cute , evil and yet understandable. You both feel sympathetic but also worried over what she’s going to try.

𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝗼𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬!

the show kicked off and everyone’s dating!

Buffy and angel-

Cute , until it wasn’t. Honestly I like how they got over the tragedy early in the seasons an just got to dating like good god. Honestly they’re cute, somehow Constant make outs and being overly protective works. Then he , you know... goes evil after her - god that’s. That’s one way. I felt so bad for her Jesus. Also the last few minutes when he gets his soul back and he- and she- yeah.

Xander and cordillera-

I’m acting loving their relationship. Something about non stop bickering lead me to think it’d happen. And it did exactly as I thought it would(also nothing will be funnier the Transition of them sliding down in the closet and it cuts to sex Ed class. Nothing will ever be funnier. I am a 2 year old leave me alone.)

Willow and oz-

They’re so cute I’m going to burst I swear. Sweet dorks in love I cannot Handle it I can’t . I love them so much.

Giles and ms calendar-

*Muffled sobbing*

Spike and Dru-

LIVING. I love them. Again, creepy and cute. You don’t need the whole soul thing to have feelings you know? I can’t get over the demon calling them out on loving each other and spike looking so offended.

Ps.

The flashbacks in the last two episodes were great. I demand more. (Also Angels accent and ponytail will kill me im sure of it) just yes.

[critical-thinking-is-mandatory]

Is there any way someone could rewrite Miraculous Ladybug? The show is very disturbing and predatory to be a kid's show

Sorry for taking so long anon, I had to have bit of a big think about this but I think (and this is only my opinion) but most of the issues stem from the Adrien family business and the A/M dynamic in and out of the suit so hopefully this answers some of your questions anon! :)

I think that as is, miraculous couldn’t be redeemed. To make it an actual, likable and less-predatory show it’d need a whole rebuild, like literally from the ground up, but it’s definitely doable.

So, lets start with the most obvious problem hm? Adrien and the Agreste Family Circus.

Number 1 thing: billionaires are bad and gross, there’s no need for them. Personally I’d make Gabriel a skeevy lawyer who’s like, hired in defense of cops and Mayor Bourgeoise (thus still giving the opportunity for Adrien and Chloe to be ‘bffs’. So Gabriel’s not rich, but he’s still got plenty of spare cash to say, go on a trip to Nepal and steal some magical jewelry for nefarious purposes.

Also we can replace the sad dead/comatose wife plot with a divorce because that’s infinitely funnier and can also kinda be used to change Adrien’s situation too. So we’ve got Emelie and Gabriel divorced (Emelie’s also something like an ARA housewife or smth idk instead of an actress - she’s also from a middleclass family so like her family is looking after her and Adrien or whatever i don’t really care) because Gabriel’s started acting Super Weird after his ‘business trip’ to Nepal.

Anyway, Adrien and Emelie moved across Paris so Adrien’s now going to a different school aka Francois DuPont but he spends the weekends with Gabriel (who’s acting really weird). Adrien’s role as deuteragonist is upgraded from “i’m sad all the time and everyone thinks i’m really really really really really good looking” to trying to cope with his parents’ divorce, coming to terms with his new role as a superhero, and investigating his dad’s increasingly eccentric and secretive behaviour. (we can also add in a bit about the different parental abuse he’s been suffering from both parents if we want to appeal to older teens too.)

With that sorted, we can get into Adrien’s predatory and entitled behaviour next. Him not being a rich model is going to leave him as a more normal kinda person, he’s not gonna have an overblown ego from having people mobbing him all the time (also no bodyguard lol). I’d start out with Adrien being a bit like he is in canon, bit of a self-centered prick really, and then have an Origins type scenario where instead of falling “in love” because Adrien’s meek but also really manipulative, Marinette would not take an ounce of his shite <3.

They can start out as kinda enemies via misunderstanding, but occasionally get glimpses of the other that they really do admire. Like Marinette’s creativity and quick mind, and Adrien can have some kind of admirable trait idk.

Which brings me to the next point: Ladybug and Chat Noir.

MAKE. THEM. FRIENDS. friendship should be the basis of their relationship. i want those two to have a boundless friendship that people would be happy to see become a romantic relationship. because of this, Marinette/Ladybug seeing Adrien/Chat Noir as like a kind of bro best friend or almost brother while Adrien slowly develops a crush on M/L would be peak dynamic.

Now that we’re talking romance, once M’s gotten through to A as civilians they could become friends and M slowly develops a crush on A. So we still get the lovesquare but it’s built off of friendship first and foremost. The changing dynamics would be a pretty easy way to build some character development and would show us that Adrien isn’t perfect and Marinette is right quite a lot (as opposed to canon).

So to sum up: most of the show’s predatory business comes from Adrien and his family’s wealth, no billionaires, show us Adrien recovering from a severe case of Major Asshole, Marinette gets to yell at awful people sometimes and FRIENDSHIP. I know this doesn’t even begin to cover the issues in the show but these are the main ones I think.

[yikeswtfmate]

Golden // Part 2

Summary: Y/N pays Sam a visit. He has some explaining to do.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Warnings: language; uh? sexual references? maybe???

A/N: listen. LISTEN. I am so excited about this. I’m so excited about this that I might turn this whole thing into a series. Is this how IAFAG came into being as well? Yes, it is. Am I as excited about this as I was about IAFAG? MAYHAPS! Here is the second part, I hope you like it! 

(as always, thanks to @the-chocolate-bunny​ for cheering me on and shouting OHMYGOD over and over again when she’s reading whatever it is I’m sending her, you’re a clown but I love you)

previous part // masterlist

“Samuel Thomas Wilson!” Y/N shouts and her finger is so far in his pec that he has to swipe her hand away and rub at his chest. Good.

“It’s 7 in the morning.” He groans and just follows her trampling inside his kitchen. He watches with a pout as she’s turning on the coffee machine, taking out two mugs and the sugar jar – I just want to sleep some more, what did I do to deserve this on a Wednesday?

“Well, rise and shine, buttercup, because you have some explaining to do!”

Sam yawns and sits down, practically melting over the kitchen island. She pushes a coffee right next to his nose, where the smell and heat should be enough to keep his eyes open.

“Why am I even friends with you?” Sam mumbles, but Y/N just looks at him unimpressed. “What?”

“You know Steve.” She says and good god, does she look pissed.

“Ok, honey. I’m gonna have to ask you to be a little more specific. I own a bar, I know too many Steves to count and most of them aren’t even worth you coming over here at 7 in the morning.”

Y/N looks pointedly at Sam as if by magic he could read her thoughts – which wouldn’t be surprising in normal circumstances, the man is scarily accurate, especially when she’s trying to hide her flings away from him. In his defence, she did knock at his door for 10 minutes to wake him up and then nearly tackled him to the ground, even though she has a goddamned key. But then again, he might have an inkling on who exactly she’s talking about, considering he never does anything without knowing exactly what the results might be.

“Tall, blonde hair, blue eyes, beard, built like a fucking tank, unable to buy shirts his own size, owns a stupid bike?!” Y/N is aware that her voice is turning into a brassy squeal by the end of her sentence, but at least now Sam is starting to look more alive. He’s raising one of his eyebrows, which could only mean there’s some sense of recognition at her words.

“Don’t tell me the idiot finally talked to you.” He’s chuckling in his coffee mug, as if this would explain what just happened an hour ago.

“Sam.” She presses, staring pointedly at him. “More words, less sphinx-like riddles, please.”

He rolls his eyes, but puts his mug down with a sigh. He knew this would happen, hoped this would happen if that idiot Golden Retriever would just get his shit together already but he didn’t expect Steve to be a little asshole. Bucky, sure, but Steve? Yeah, ok, fine, Steve can be an asshole too.

“Remember when you asked me to help you move a while back?”

“And you convinced me to go for a run at 5 in the fucking morning with you in exchange for that? And you stood me up because apparently you slept through your alarms? That somehow involved Clint for some goddamn reason, but if I think about it now, I have no idea how that happened considering you don’t live with Clint.” She’s literally voicing her thought process, which in turn makes Sam proud – she’ll put two and two together soon enough. “Unless you both slept at the bar that night and somehow…wait. No. Sam, you dick, you planned this?!” There it is.

Sam leans over the table and pats Y/N on the head – one, two, three and she’s batting his hand away. She’s fuming, but it’s great seeing her get so worked up. Ah yes, Sam thinks, there’s nothing funnier than meddling in Y/N’s life. To be fair, it’s not like she’s regretted any of his plotting – she’d actually let him take all her decisions for her if there wouldn’t be something called rEsPoNsiBiLitY and other disgusting adult stuff. But couldn’t he have meddled with this Steve earlier? Couldn’t he have told her there’s a hunk of man that she’d like to climb like a tree the day they met?

“Explain yourself before I either self-combust in rage or tell Clint you’re allowing him to eat all the peanuts in the bar.”

“He knows better than to obey orders that don’t come directly from me, sweets, but at least you tried.” Sam chuckles, which earns him another whine. “Fine! Goddamn, woman, sometimes I wonder what I did in a past life to deserve this. I was with Steve when you called me and your weird face came up on my phone. He kept hinting at wanting to meet you but I played dumb and wouldn’t give him anything.”

“I – what?!” Y/N screeches yet again, and Sam swears he might just buy some noise blocking headphones.

“It was his birthday present.” He shrugs.

“What was?”

“Making you two meet, you dumb clown.”

Y/N looks at Sam, a mystified frown on her face. He can practically see “Processing” right on her forehead. It’s the most fun he’s had in months and if he ever had any doubts about his mischievous plans, he now knows with certainty that it was all worth it. He takes a sip of his coffee, patiently waiting for her to talk, because she’s a talker, after all, she’ll either let out a final screech that will wake up the whole building or he’ll suffer through an endless tirade of ingenious expletives.

“Wait, hold up.” She finally says, one hand raised, as if he’d ruin her reaction by talking. Come on, Y/N, baby, you know me better than this, and she does. “Let me get this straight. You knew Steve was already interested, you knew that we kept meeting in the park every morning and knew I was also interested, yet you’ve kept quiet until now?”

“That’s exactly right, babygirl.” Sam grins.

She smacks him then – lunging over the kitchen island, right over his head, making him nearly dunk his face in his coffee. Sam tries his best to show that he’s furious at her reaction, but it’s an unfortunately common occurrence, so that wouldn’t stick.

“Why would you hurt me in this way, Samuel?” Y/N wails, throwing herself on the table – dramatics, this is why only Steve could handle you. “Have I not been a good friend to you? Have I not kept your secret that you wore braces when you were a kid? Have I not brought you coffee whenever you asked for it in college? Have I not introduced you to Bucky?”

“First of all, I did it because Steve had to be taught a lesson. And second of all, it was payback because you did tell someone I’ve worn braces in middle school. And that was Bucky!”

Y/N scoffs and crosses her arms. They’re stuck in a match of pouts and throwing around blame – a game they’ve played since childhood, but Y/N is bad at it, as always, and she’s the first to relent, as always.

“What lesson?” She mumbles.

“What?”

“What lesson did you have to teach Golden Boy?” Y/N repeats herself, enunciating each word.

“To learn to ask for what he wants.” Sam grins.

“And what’s that?”

“You.” Sam rolls his eyes, already tired of this conversation, why can’t his friends just sort this out together anyway? “He wants you, Y/N, but he was too much of a coward to ask.”

That’s the moment Sam’s phone starts pinging with what sounds like an entire waterfall of messages. He groans, standing up from his chair, because really what the fuck is up with people today and waking him up at 7 in the morning on a goddamn Wednesday?

At least Y/N stays put in her own seat, watching him like a hawk as he retrieves his phone from his bedroom. It’s lighting up like crazy and as he reads the messages, he can’t help but start laughing like a certified villain.

“Your boy is having a meltdown.” He finally supplies an explanation to Y/N’s confusion.

Before she can even open her mouth in a futile attempt to deny having “a boy” or even ask who he might be talking about, because let’s be honest, it’s not like she’s been wondering what it’d be like to tap that ass in the few minutes it took Sam to come back, he thrusts his phone right in her face.

Oh god, Sam, I talked to her today

Holy shit she’s even prettier from up close

Fuck, I think she caught me staring at her butt

What if she thinks I’m a creep?

AND I ASKED HER OUT??!?!?!?!

HOW COULD I EVER THINK SHE’D SAY YES????

BUT SHE SAID YES????

WHY DID SHE SAY YES??????????

SAM WHAT THE FUCK SHE SAID YES AND I HAVE A DATE WITH THE HOTTEST GIRL I’VE EVER MET AND NOW I HAVE TO CALL HER AND I’M EXCITED BUT HOLY SHIT WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY TO HER????????

I’VE ACTED LIKE SUCH A DOUCHE!!!!!!!!!!!

I TOLD HER I’LL PICK HER UP ON MY BIKE AND SHE SOUNDED SO CONFUSED WHAT IF SHE DOESN’T LIKE BIKERS???????????

SAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I’m in love

By the end of the last message, a huge grin is splitting Y/N’s face. Sam knows this reaction too well for comfort and oh shit, what have I started, but it’s too late now and she’s already typing.

“Really, Y/N? On my phone? I might just have to throw it in a river now.” Sam sighs as he reads over her shoulder.

She lifts a shoulder in a shrug, but the grin doesn’t leave her face. Waking up at 5 in the morning might not be so horrible in the end if she gets to send messages like this to a Golden Boy who is having the most adorable meltdown over her.

I might be impartial to bikes, but I’m definitely not impartial to you or your butt, Stevie

***

Everything Marvel Taglist:

@bonkywobble​

[cosmosrival]

there it is! kama interlude analysis by a kama fan!

WELL. LIKE IT SAYS IN THE TITLE: this is just my own thoughts!! youre free to think whatever u want !! i am just putting my own knowledge into words because i genuinely love kama, and i would like for kama’s depth to be understood by the NA fandom a little more!! i try to stay as close as possible to their character in everything i do because i believe that the more in character they are, the funnier/more interesting content ppl will produce. 

and hopefully i understood them well ???!!!! HOPEFULLY ?!

i will be screenshotting the translated reddit post under this read more and stop whenever something i find interesting to develop pops up ! or else it’ll get way too long lol if you wanna read the interlude for yourself heres the link!

with that said, let’s go!!

kama’s interlude begins with guda passing the hell out because of exhaustion and then waking up in a dream sequence where kama treats them to some relaxing adventures, stuff to take their mind off heavy things!! first dream sequence is kama roleplaying a highschool setting where they’re dating.

i like this because they openly admit that its an illusion, breaking the immersion but as long as youre okay with roleplaying, they’ll continue it LOL  at some point, caesar mentions the student council president and arjuna appears behind him 

since this is an illusion that kama made, i’ve been wondering about the fact that the way servants conduct eachother in this interlude is mostly because that’s how kama envisions they would act in a highschool setting, in an amusement park and finally with eachother (mostly for confirmed couples such as siegbryn, consort yu and her hubby etc...). suzuka and sei being gyarus is obvious, but arjuna as the student council president... is so cute???!!! i MEAN IT FITS ?! THATS A GREAT IDEA KAMA!!!! ANYWAY

this is kama’s first monologue and since they’re primarily the god of lust, all of the more vanilla stuff they mentions such as sharing a pair of headphones embarrasses them since its so tame. ITS CUTE !!! kama expects you to be horny in class !! what are you doing thinking about hand holding !!! medusa saves u from that tho with a direct reference to her relationship with kama’s vessel 

this is interesting !! and reassuring !!! i think that kama as a character has a lot of depth and just reducing them to “sakura” would be a waste and this interlude shows how different they are from her. but they’re also similar! sakura went through a lot just like medusa says and kama does have trauma related to shiva. its not the same circumstances but the same kind of suffering which explains the nuance here. and what i like about chaldea is that there’s been multiple instances where its been proven that servants can grow thanks to their relationships with guda (most common example: leveling up your bonds) BUT ALSO, saint graph evolution (alts). and as a kama fan i’d like to see them happy someday and this interlude as a whole is proof of their healing/coping because of the time they spent in chaldea and how they interact with others. more on that later ! here, they don’t recognize medusa which is normal since they’re not sakura (someone else entierly), but...

they care about her ! because of sakura’s influence being a part of the servant called Kama(assassin). the difference here is important !! but i’ll come back on this in a bit. quick mention to the greek cupid <3 kamadusa nation we were fed (i clap by myself because im the only one who has 57575757557 kama rarepairs-----)

kama is a delinquent whos horny in class but still takes a few notes, enough to do well on their tests! and thats tea<3 smart horny lazyass !! theyre a gift

SO ARJUNA WAS OUT FOR BLOOD ????? ANYWAY, this is right after the actual fight against weirdo terrorists, and im happy to know that kama DOES enjoy a good fight (as proven in their voicelines as well) but theyre not a farming unit because it’d be too much work (single target NP..)...!!!!!!! lavish god of love.... 

FINALLYYYYYYYYYYY THE REAL DEAL !!!!!!!!!!!! “it feels wonderful to be your girlfriend” christ, kamadeva was so used to being a husband and a good lover, it reflected in their servant version.... but ree what do u mean by servant version???

I MEAN THE OBVIOUS !! kama explains it very well in the screenie just above ! 

“You know very well how servants work.”

KAMA ASSASSIN (the servant in your chaldea) is neither KAMADEVA or SAKURA MATOU or MARA. they’re a MIX OF PARTS OF THE THREE. creating an entierly new person(in this case, servant) !!!! it might sound like i’m repeating myself, but this is important!!!!!!!!! i will say this multiple times so people remember it !!! and if u already had this figured out: GOOD JOB I LOVE U !!!

Kamadeva (the god) has many stories, ones where he was born from concepts (dharma and shraddha), one where his parents are brahma and sarasvati, one where his parents are vishnu and lakshmi, stories about his reincarnation after his death where his parents are krishna and rukmini, his love with Rati and so on. We all know Sakura’s backstory since this is nasuverse. And Mara is a demon, an entity that tried to corrupt Buddha and prevent him from reaching enlightenment/stray from the path. Kama assassin has parts from all of these entities which explains why they have a vague longing for Rati, why they have a soft spot for Medusa and why they have an affinity with Kiara(and also like talking about corrupting u !). 

they then mention how a japanese highschool setting is fun and all i have to say is: i’m gonna make an indo fam delinquent vs student council au out of this one folks !!!!!!!! i gotta !!! 

OK next

TIME FOR THE SECOND DREAM SEQUENCE WHICH I WAS VERY VERY VERRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYY AFRAID OF BEFORE THE TRANSLATION CAME OUT.

THE PART WHERE KAMA ACTS LIKE YOUR CHILD.

well with their stage 1 it was expected but without the translation i have to say that i was scared shitless! because people hate thinking! and even if kama clearly tells you that it’s a charade, u know a JOKE. A DREAM SEQUENCE. DONT BE A CREEP. KAMA INTENDED FOR IT TO BE WHOLESOME. i know some ppl wont use their brains. but u know its fgo and degenerates are everywhere. 

anyways. family bonding time ensues until another monologue appears!!

exactly like before, kama mentions myths that belonged to kamadeva. Meaning that the Kama in our chaldea isn’t the Kamadeva we know and is not Pradyumna either but the fact that the writers chose to have kama acknowledge it is very reassuring !!! Because it means that they’ve chosen to make it a part of their (complicated) history. Kama says that Pradyumna is the myth about themself they know the least, once again proving us that the Kama in our Chaldea (Assassin) is a different entity and that they were summoned to the throne upon their death, the moment they were burned by Shiva’s flames and became Ananga, in any case they’re still familiar with all of their own myths. it allows us to keep heroic spirits separate from their original myths. Obviously! And in the case of pseudo-servants, it allows us to keep them separate from their vessels. Cuz this is a fanservice japanese game. Andddd the fandom likes forgetting this fact quite a lot i’ve noticed. As a person who loves thinking about tons and tons of headcanons for fun, this allows us a lot of space ! Because this is fate/grand order at its base. Nasuverse. 

I’m glad that the interlude explains it so clearly, it’s very good !! Because the majority of myths from every culture are confusing, family trees are confusing, names are confusing, powers and attributes are confusing... its a mess !!!! the fgo characters we know are just cut from their own respective timelines/historial figures so the writers can organize themselves more easily. Like cutting halves from a big cake. Kama (Assassin) is the Kama that died from Shiva’s flames and became the universe ONLY. In Nasuverse, Arthur Pendragon is a woman. Anastasia Romanov NEVER had a demon familiar named Viy in real life despite the creature being part of russian folklore. u know ! im russian i can testify dude !! 

hopefully everyone got this bc i wont be explaining this any further dude, its exhausting !!!!!! bangs my hands on the table !!!!! 

ANYWAYS kama mentions “eternal pain that turns [them] into ash” being their key element. Their trauma is at the center of their heroic spirit self, what they are as a servant. This suffering is tied to everything they do, why they’re so lazy, why they’re so lax, why they’re so detached from their job.  But they’re not detached from their role. And “job” and “role” have different connotations here. They refuse to work as a cupid because of obvious reasons. BUT. They’re not detached from their role as the God of Love, as the God of Passion. The embodiment of those feelings. This whole interlude is proof ! They’re giving u free therapy because they Love you. Passion. They feel your love. Passion. They acknowledge how much fun you’re having. How passionate you are about certain things. They might seem extremely detached and hateful, but they aren’t. They’re one of the most empathetic servants there is. And their ability to love everything, even the things they hate is what makes them so miserable. Because it’s a part of them. Because the concept of Kama in hinduism is linked to them. Be it lust or simply the passion born from anything you do where you’re enjoying yourself. (quote:  “ the term also refers to any sensory enjoyment, emotional attraction and aesthetic pleasure such as from arts, dance, music, painting, sculpture and nature “. R. Prasad (2008), History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization )

... I’d like to say that this contrast with Mara is interesting. And that i’m glad the writers chose to add in Mara to the kama assassin Beast mix. 

Because the anger Mara feels can become a drivepoint for Kama. I’ve always believed that anger and sadness are two sides of the same coin, it’d explain how layered Kama is and how valid their emotions are. Constantly torn between love and hate. An eternal grudge (i don’t deserve to be hurt like this) and an eternal misery(maybe i do deserve to be hurt like this). 

i wish they were my roommate <3 oh fuck ree got emotional wait where were we.

OH YEAH

i think kama saying that they dislike being involved with other indian servants because theyre linked to shiva is a feeble attempt at trying to keep up a strong front because they still love them in the end. cuz that’s how kama is ! after a while they’ll get bored of bullying ganesha and ashwatthama. they’ll get interested in rama because their respective mythos are linked even if their servant selves have no connection. hell, at the end of the interlude they talk about parvati and how they themself changed and realized things. BUT OH WELL, THATS STUFF FOR ANOTHER POST HEHE thats just ree wanting kama to b happy yall move along !!

.....THIS ISNT A COLLEGE STUDENTS ROLEPLAY BUT ITS A CUTE JAPANESE COMPANY BOSS/UNDERLING SETTING AND ITS CUTE SO I THINK KAMA WEARING A PENCIL SKIRT AND POURING U ALCOHOL IS CUTE. CUTE.

further proof of kama’s overflowing affection and what i detailed above!! hopefully u all knew this one simply from reading this interlude/their profile page and dont need me to write it down for u. HOPEFULLY !!!!!

(I START BEATBOXING VERY RAPIDLY AND RUNNING TOWARDS YOU) KAMA IS A SADIST AT THEIR CORE AND I WILL NEVER STOP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they’re easy to fluster because theyre not used to being so vanilla, but whats underneath is how they truly are !! a beast turned servant, the sweetest sadist !! theyre very mature and this interlude is so well written (wipes my teears

this is directly linked to what i explained above, by burning you away, you’ll melt into nothingness just like they did. When they were the universe, they felt both everything and nothing. 

But was it really relief ... ?

... IT WASNT.

AND PARVATI SAVES THE DAY !!!!!!! phew!! thank u paru, it’d still like to be able to touch kama’s huge titties and i cant do that if i turn into ashes (falls down the stairs

ok she summoned lovey dovey canon couples to annoy kama since they’re exhausted of seein them!!

...............(I TAKE OUT A KNIFE) TAKE THAT BACK. DONT TALK TO THEM LIKE THAT. TAKE THAT BACK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

ohhhhhh im obsessed i love when theyre angry<3 i love when theyre fighty <3 i think they should beat the living shit out of a boxing bag DAILY to let out some of this steam. they’d be a monster on the ring... aaa kama in training boot y shorts aa a .. .uughg hg ouu... (you all shove me into a locker)

ok this is interesting !! i think that the interlude showing us that parvati feels a semblance of guilt is character dev. proof for what i mentioned before!! in ookuu parvati felt quite ..unsympathetic to me, even if kama is a beast who wants to annihilate humanity, when u think about it, at their core their grudge is because of her and shiva’s betrayal. and here, she properly apologizes for making kama so upset. this is heartwarming to me since i dislike thinking that members of the indo fam hate eachother :( same goes for arjuna and karna, at some point i’d like for them to act like bros normally and finally be comfy. but anyways !!

u wake up from the dreams and da vinci, mashu and paru are here to tell u whats going on. But its fine bc u remember everything and u have to go thank someone for helping u out!!!

CUTE !!!!!!! THEY CARE ABOUT U !!!!!! but whether it be because of their role or because theres a deeper meaning is entierly up to your own interpretation because...

of what they say here. 

and here !! 

ohhhhhhhhh this is so important !!!!!!

this is actual proof of kama’s growth as a servant and how servants evolve in chaldea !! chaldea is not the same as a grail war, its a special, cut-off place and thats what makes it even more relaxing to think about. Everytime u summon a servant in ur chaldea u give them a chance to have fun with you, to have fun with other servants, to make amends, to start from scratch, to discover things they would’ve never known in their time (movies, video games, tons of different foods etc...), u give them a chance to relax. to grow !! this is the headcanon that im most attached to and im glad to see it be confirmed in the interlude of a character i love tbqh i had to stop and talk about that.

everyone say thank u kama !! can we roleplay a college roommate coffee shop slowburn au next time <3 

ANYWAYS if you’ve read it this far: thank you !!! im sorry if you expected something very serious, im not that type of person hehe im jus here to have fun and look at things i like, and the interlude itself was quite lighthearted and refreshing. By talking about the myths and all of kamadeva’s stories, the writers basically gave lore nerds a huge thumbs up like... “its ok now !! u can go ape now !! go be insane<3 love u<3″ and all of this kama characterization GENUINELY makes me so happy because i think they really needed that. kama assassin... (i blow a kiss to the sky) is a little mess of a servant... a god, human crumbs and a demon... a total mess... im in love with them...

..............tho now the wait for a summer alt where they interact with the entire indo fam begins (im sitting in a chair unmoving)(i have a gun in case minase begins acting gross

[marybeatriceofmodena]

Ben Solo’s Story Arc - An Autopsy

This will be the second post before I publish the full TROS review, mainly because it’s yet another thing I want to get out of the way first. After which, I’ll be posting an announcement about the future of this blog, but no worries – I’ll be sticking around.

After Rey and her parentage, I’ll be talking about Ben here specifically – mainly because I have a pretty big inkling that his plotline for TROS was mutilated, and that he initially actually had an arc.

Except, somewhere in the executive meddling, for reasons I myself am not sure of (okay, I got some theories but it’s pointless to share them here), it got cut.

The Rise of Kylo Ren might be an inkling that there was something more in the works, also that when it comes to its take on Snoke, it directly contradicts things TROS sets up. The simplest explanation is that the Lucasfilm Story Group had a hand in TRoKR, and not for TROS. But even then… the comic reveals things that make me BAFFLED they didn’t put that in the films. I don’t want to be that person who thinks 30 minutes of TLJ should have been dedicated to Snoke’s origins, but stuff like how Ben didn’t even destroy Luke’s Jedi Camp? THAT’S the kind of thing you need to include in your film.

Also, I 110% believe the rumors that JJ Abrams just ignored the Story Group’s existence entirely. Wanna know why? Just the fact that Exogol is established as the Sith world… when we know thanks to The Clone Wars that it’s Moraband – which would have been super easy to use. But fuck continuity I guess.

I will say though, I am NOT surprised it’s leaking out that the movie was severely tempered with and was constantly changing during production, simply because from my first (and only) viewing… I could tell something was wrong. Namely, I could tell that Ben’s arc had been mutilated – and the more I think about it, the more glaring it gets. It’s not even that I’m mad that Adam Driver (aka Golden Globe/Academy Award nominee Adam Driver) gets relegated to playing Darth Exposition for 75% of the film (and godawful exposition at that), it’s literally that so much of what remains of his arc makes no sense, and it affects Palpatine and Rey by extension.

I explained why Rey’s character arc was butchered here, and I’ve also talked about how Palpatine’s implication in her arc didn’t work either, so I won’t talk about it too much here, nor do you need to have read it prior in order to understand this post. I will also point out that a lot of what will be my speculation – so for all I know, I could be wrong, but I’m trying to fill in the holes here.

So, for starters… somehow, Ben knows that Palpatine is still alive. Somehow, he knows how to get to him. AND SOMEHOW, THE WRITERS DECIDED NOT EXPLAINING SHIT WAS THE WAY TO GO. This is not even on the level of not explaining who the fuck Snoke is in the two previous films – while I do think there could have been a throwaway line in TLJ, it didn’t “hinder” the story.

HOWEVER, not explaining how Palpatine is still around and kicking (well, he’s on life support so kicking might be a little too flattering), why he decided to reveal himself right there, right then, and how the hell Ben knows he’s around, how he figured out how to get to Exogol using the holocrons… THAT IS A BIG PROBLEM. This is the triggering element of the rising action in your story. But before you do that, YOU. NEED. EXPOSITION. TO. SET. UP. THE. CONTEXT. OF. YOUR. STORY.

What TROS did would be like skipping Finn’s intro when he’s with his Stormtrooper squad on Jakku, removing the interrogation with Poe and Kylo entirely, and just start TFA with him escaping with Poe without any explanation given. Oh, and also cut out Rey’s introduction as well, and we first meet her when she kicks Finn’s ass in Niima Outpost. You’d just have a bunch of characters coming out of nowhere, and you’d have no frigging clue what they’re doing, and what they want. And that’s what TROS does with Ben and Palpatine.

Take the handling of Snoke, for instance. I’d be a lot more mad about the Snoke retconning if it wasn’t for… what I’m going to call the “Snoke Stew” (and I’d crack a joke about how it was probably made with the DNA of a guy called Stu, which is not funny but still funnier than most of the jokes in TROS). That’s pretty much the one thing that stops me from being mad, because of how STUPID it is.

But the explanation for Snoke’s origins just… retcons so much that has been established before, INCLUDING INFO FROM A COMIC THAT CAME OUT AFTER TROS. We knew Snoke had a past, even if we weren’t privy to it yet. We did kind of know that he was a rich guy, like all the shitty rich people we saw in Canto Bight, who happened to be a Dark Sider and was seemingly smart enough to kill his way to the top. Considering how exploitative the First Order is when it comes to resources and that a rich patron would be welcomed with open arms, it makes sense.

With the explanation given by TROS, it just provides a fuck ton of plotholes to the fact he took over the First Order while killing off old Imperial higher-ups to establish himself as Supreme Leader. Do you really think a guy in a golden bathrobe would just be able to take over out of fucking nowhere because he killed all the higher-ups? No. And even if some of the higher-ups knew that Snoke was a Palps plant (like Pryde seems to), I doubt Ben would have stayed Supreme Leader for as long as a year.

But that’s not even the biggest problem! Seriously, I don’t know if Palps is senile in this film, because we got an ENTIRE trilogy explaining how the guy is one of the worst evil masterminds to have ever lived, in the Galaxy Far Far Away and even in today’s culture. Here, you don’t even understand what the fuck he even wants! I’m “guessing” he fucked with Ben to get his revenge on Anakin, because he uses Ben as his lackey while being seemingly totally oblivious that Ben is working against him (what happened to “every voice in your head”???). He wants Ben to kill Rey… while knowing Rey is his granddaughter, and while telling her when she shows up that he wants to use her as a new host or some shit. Seriously, MAKE UP YOUR MIND ALREADY.

This said… I honestly wonder if Ben was initially meant to be the new host, and not Rey. Because not only that was an actual theory I had pre-TROS, but it would make a shit ton more sense than having Rey be the host – not to mention it’d be the ultimate revenge against Anakin (and if you want to get REAL yucky, he may have planned to have Rey be his new consort, but I’ll spare you more speculation about that aspect). But nah, I guess.

The most damning thing in all this is that there’s no difference in Ben’s overall behavior and actions AFTER Snoke has been killed, when it’s clear Snoke was the biggest influence on him. Saying that Palpatine just kept messing with him makes no sense because with Snoke dead, any voice Ben would still hear would make him go “NOPE” and do exactly the opposite of what said voice tells him to do.

Like, for real, with Snoke dead, unless he’s REALLY stupid (I mean… Ben is reckless, but not stupid), why would Ben do anything a now Random Voice would tell him to do?

The thing is, there have been hints in previous material that Ben isn’t exactly 110% on board with what the First Order does. He’s clearly against blowing up planets, he snarks about how Stormtroopers should be clones instead – which could just be a throwaway snarky line, but considering Ben’s past… I can see him not being too fuzzy about the Stormtrooper program. Like, I’m not saying he’d start a Galactic Free Donut Day, but there would be a change. It wouldn’t be Business as Usual – especially that Ben wasn’t that young (23) when he joined Snoke, and it’s a little hard to go from “My uncle tried to kill me in my sleep and I’m going towards the one figure I think can protect me” to “Blowing up planets and enslaving people is the way to go”. It would have worked if Ben had been brainwashed from his teens, but not so much as an adult – hence you need a little more nuance with Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.

Oh yeah, and the Knights of Ren? They’re just there to look cool. “But they kidnapped Chewie!” Yeah, what was the fucking point of them kidnapping Chewie apart from giving a reason for the Beautiful Friendship Gang to get on the Star Destroyer and give us fake suspense because we all know how it’s gonna end, just end my suffering already. Also, NO INTERRACTION WITH BEN? DID YA FORGET CHEWIE IS LIKE, HIS UNCLE? DID YALL FORGET BEN WAS PART OF YOUR FAMILY OR…

Seriously, that sequence on Pasaana where they’re just standing there on top of a fucking mountain? I called that part the Backdesert Boys. That tells ya how much I hated it.

Oh yeah, and they’re fighting fodder for Benny Boy in the end, because of course they were Palps’ lackeys all along, can’t think of anything else that’s more imaginative.

So what could they possibly add to Ben’s arc, that would explain so much, like how Ben finds Palpatine, or how he’s always one step ahead from the Beautiful Friendship Gang in their Wild Goose Chase no one fucking cares about?

This is where I got into speculation/conspiracy theory territory. Brace yourselves. 

*

So, the film has Lando reveal that he and Luke “knew” about Palps being around thanks to snooping around… except that makes no bloody sense. Lando was never involved in a Force plot of any kind, and he was never that close to Luke anyway. I mean, Lando’s a nice guy and all, but he’s not really besties with Luke – he’s Han’s friend.

So that research should have taken place either before Ben joined Luke at Jedi Camp, either after. Then again, before would make no sense, because why would Luke leave that critical of a search on the ice for 10 to 15 years? The only place where I can place it in time, where it would make logical sense… would be when Ben was around, and it’d make WAY more sense to have him be Luke’s sidekick in that search.

It would have totally explained why Luke freaked the fuck out reading Ben’s mind, because only Palpatine can give her that severe of a PTSD-like reaction. It would have totally explained why Ben would run to Snoke, grooming and desperation set aside, under the promise that they’d associate to defeat Palps, because if you ignore the plot hole extravaganza of TROS, you’d bet Snoke wouldn’t want Palps anywhere near his throne – mainly because Snoke is a wannabe Palpatine who targeted Ben to get his own Vader. It would have totally explained why Ben thought becoming Supreme Leader is a good idea – even if it’s morally wrong, it makes logical sense. It would have totally explained why Kylo was collecting Sith artefacts in the year gap while keeping in mind he made his distaste for the Sith clear in TLJ. It would have totally provided the audience (and Rey) a good reason to forgive Ben, because even if he had godawful methods, he wanted to do the right thing and save the galaxy from the person who came this close to destroying them, as well as his family. That would have provided for him the means to realize that he cannot defeat Palpatine using Palpatine’s means – as Rose said, he’ll win by saving what he loves, and not destroying what he hates. That would have made Rey the glitch in the matrix, who must join forces with Ben because without her, he would have been doomed despite his best efforts.

And before you tell me that would have been unnecessary… let me put it to you this way. Ben keeps saying it's too late, and if it was just that, it could be interpreted as him thinking he went too far to come back. But he also adds that he has "something to do", and I'm here waving my arms like "WHAT? WHY? FUCK, YOU DIDN'T EVEN KILL YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS!!! THEY'RE NOT EVEN BOTHERED TO SAY THAT IN THE ACTUAL FILM!!!"

Hence why my theory is the simplest way to just tie it all neatly together, without retconning anything. There.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SUPER SIMPLE TO DO. Except that, as I mentioned earlier, they mutilated Ben’s arc, and left him to play the part of Darth Exposition, until the very end, when they have Ben save what he loves… but even then, I can’t even appreciate that either, because it happens in a way that makes EVERYONE look horrible, while Ben is, from a storytelling perspective, a saint… a saint everyone ultimately forgot about.

[your-daily-dose-of-fandoms]

Howdy hey broski, headcanons for Zenitsu and Shinobu (separate) with an s/o who’s off the walls crazy and chaotic, bonkers, batshit hyper? They’re super confident and sarcastic and love teasing others and having fun even when fighting demons, like they’d be telling witty one liners and bad puns in the middle of a fight and struggling not to laugh at them and the demon they’re fighting would just be asking for the slayer to let them get killed in piece lmao

Omfg you saying broski reminds me of one of my irl friends xd But i hope you enjoy this! If not, feel free to request again!

Shinobu

🦋 She'd be so done after she had killed yet another demon who basically begged her to kill them and end their suffering after meeting you

🦋 I mean, at least the killing was easy, not like it was hard before, but with your chaotic energy it was even easier

🦋 She has never seen you angry, nor sad, you were just.. Walking tumblr shitpost

🦋 She doubted you could even get mad

🦋 Nevertheless she still loved you

🦋 At least she thinks she does

🦋 Jk, she loves you, and even though you could be a bit chaotic, you were making the missions so much funnier and the atmosphere easier

🦋 You knew how to cheer her up, and even though you could be irriating at times, she thought your company was actually kind of good to her. She didn't have to keep her fake smile on all the time, because with you that smile was real

🦋 She would become more carefree with you, maybe even try to prank someone (probably Giyuu) with you

🦋 You two would be the best at teasing Giyuu

🦋 She would always roll her eyes at your bad puns and witty one-liners, and she'd chuckle when you couldn't finish a joke because you were laughing too much at it beforehand

🦋 But she probably loved your sarcasm the most, especially when some people around you were so oblivious to it. It was so hilarious to watch to her

🦋 Of course she kept up the facade, so no one could notice, but after you and her would be left alone, you would laugh your asses off

Zenitsu

⚡ 'Oh god another Inosuke', his thoughts would be when he'd meet you for the first time

⚡ At first, he'd avoid you the best he could, but something would make him stare at you longer than he should and think about you late at night

⚡ He would admire your confidence, at first he'd maybe even be jealous of it, but later on, he'd kind of see it as an insipiration

⚡ And oh god when he sees you fight for the first time, your carefree personality still remaining no matter how many injuries you'd get

⚡ You were so strong and cool and-

⚡ This boy would somehow ignore the fact that you were literally killing the demon with your bad puns

⚡ After a bit of convincing from you, he would prank Inosuke and Tanjiro with you together

⚡ You two would have a pretty good laugh, and your laugh would be so beautiful and it'd make him feel so light and-

⚡ Oh god he's in love

⚡ Your company would seriously do good to him. You would probably make him feel better about himself, and teach him to be less scared

⚡ Though he wouldn't always get your sarcasm

⚡ But you would never make fun of the things he was insecure about, and that made his heart flutter

⚡ Before Tanjiro or Inosuke could notice, they would have to deal with a chaotic couple, as you would provoke Zenitsu to do all kinds of stupid stuff (Never anything too dangerous though)

⚡ But he had to admit

⚡ He actually had a lot of fun

[loserslibrary]

pairing: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier [Reddie] written by: Jane rating: Teen word count: 2,306  prompt: “ hello! Could i please request a domestic reddie fic! Anything with kids will make me very happy, thank you ”

Richie’s resigned himself to a lot of things in his life.

Some which are still true—he’s never going to be able to fucking ice skate, giraffe human that he is, but he’s found a workaround in being very good at letting Eddie pull him across the ice—and some which aren’t—namely some thought-to-be hopeless yearnst for Eddie when he was sixteen which culminated in two very dramatic song-writing sessions, proven unnecessary five months later when Eddie captured his lips in a kiss at the quarry.

Still, one thing he hadn’t been expecting to resign himself to was his lack of future as a PTA Dad, and yet, here he is. 35 years old and seeing his brief dream of being the cupcake god of Ms Divega’s class turn to smoke before his very eyes. 

Literal smoke, that is. 

“Daddy,” Gab says, nose scrunched up, tone solemn, “they don’t smell good.”

His daughter is highly critical. Unfortunately, she’s also correct.

Richie reaches to open the oven, before pausing halfway, glancing at the smoke he can already see, and then back at Gab. There’s a teenage Eddie in the back of his head, lecturing him and Bev on all the different types of smoke, and how they’re all bad for you, stop inhaling carcinogens, you fucking nerds—-okay, Richie can’t actually remember the entire lecture, just the way Eddie looked with his hand on his hip and brow furrowed, but he’s pretty sure that the takeaway of it is that he should probably move his daughter well out of range of any smoke that might escape when he opens the oven door.

“C’mon, Gabs,” Richie says, scooping her up in his arms. Her arms settle around his neck obligingly, and he’s overwhelmed with affection. There were legitimately days when Richie had thought he’d never have anything like this—when he thought it would be swallowing his feelings down forever, watching all his friends find something worth holding onto, staying on the sidelines because he couldn’t be brave when it counted. But look at him now: married to the love of his life, getting paid to make people laugh for a living, and baking health hazards with his daughter. He’s always had dreams he’s striven for, but none of his imagined happiness ever came close to how he feels now, burnt cupcakes and all.

He puts her down on the other end of the countertop from the oven, then hands her a tea towel. He leans in close, like he’s about to tell her something Top Secret, and she leans in eagerly. “If the oven explodes, just, like, fan it away,” he says conspiratorially. Her eyes widen, but she nods firmly, her face settling into a resolute expression. For someone with no biological relation to either of them, Richie thinks, it’s astounding how much she looks like Eddie when she does that.

He heads back to the oven and, with a quick exaggeratedly wide-eyed glance at Gab, he opens the door. Smoke immediately emerges, and Richie’s stuck fanning his hand in front of his face and coughing for a few moments until it dissipates enough for him to actually see. Grabbing a tea towel to cover his hand, he reaches in and pulls out the cupcake tray, dropping it on the stove top with a wince and slamming the oven shut.

“Mission success,” Richie says, giving Gab a thumbs up.

She surveys him and the cupcake tray dubiously. “They look bad,” she says bluntly.

“Okay, Operation Survive The Smoke was a success,” Richie relents. “Operation Cupcake God is still in progress.”

“Operation what?” Richie hears, and turns to face Eddie, who’s surveying the kitchen like he can’t decide if he should laugh or groan.

“Operation Cupcake God,” Gab repeats matter-of-factly. “Daddy’s going to take over the PTA like Darth Vader. ‘Cept I think he shouldn’t cut off Mrs Colby’s arm because she needs it to bake brownies and I love her brownies.”

Richie throws Gab a betrayed look. “How am I meant to overthrow her PTA dictatorship if she can still bake brownies to tempt you with?” he asks her.

“Not by serving these, that’s for sure,” Eddie says, prodding one of the cupcakes with a chopstick—where did he even get that?—and sporting the same dubious expression Gab was before. 

Gab clambers across the kitchen bench, peering at the carnage, and Richie swings her off, anchoring her to his hip. “Don’t get too close,” he warns, “the oven’s still hot.”

She throws him a very unimpressed look, and Eddie laughs. “He’s right, Gab,” Eddie says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “It’d hurt.”

“Is it because we acciden’ly made a volcano?” Gab asks frankly, looking at the carnage with a curious expression. She leans over to poke one, forgoing Eddie’s chopstick and simply using her finger, and lets out a distressed huff when she touches it. “It’s hard.”

“Too bad this wasn’t for science fair,” Richie says. “She’s got a point about the volcano thing.”

Eddie laughs. “What’s Operation Cupcake God for anyway?” he asks. “Casual Thursday afternoon world domination strategies?”

“It’s the class party tomorrow,” Gab informs him, “and everyone always wants to sit by El because her mom makes the best brownies and I want them to sit by me.”

Eddie’s expression doesn’t lose its amused undercurrent, but it softens into fondness, and he reaches for her. She obligingly puts her arms around his neck and Richie hands her to Eddie. “I see how it is,” he says dramatically, “I’m the favourite until he’s home, huh?”

“Yep,” Gab says cheekily, before cackling with laughter when Richie squawks in outrage and proceeds to tickle her sides. Eddie, because he’s stronger and has more control of his limbs than Richie could ever hope to, keeps hold of her even through all her wriggling, though he takes mercy after a few more seconds and moves her out of reach of Richie’s hands.

“So, Operation Cupcake God is purely about Gab’s popularity, hmm?” Eddie asks, giving Richie a knowing expression.

“There may have been some newly-discovered dreams of being her class’ Peak PTA Parent,” Richie admits.

“I thought that might be the case,” Eddie says with a grin. “Why didn’t you ask Ben for help? Or Mike? Mike’s good at directions.”

“I’m good at directions!” Richie protests.

Eddie gives him a flat look.

“Well, I’m better than Bill,” he grumbles.

“Not exactly a winning argument, Rich,” Eddie says dryly.

“Ben’s got, like, an actual job,” Richie says. “And Mike—well, I probably should have called Mike, but like, I didn’t realise we could recreate Chernobyl with a cupcake recipe.”

“I’ve learned to never underestimate you two,” Eddie says, pressing a kiss to Gab’s nose, making her giggle.

“Hilarious,” Richie says, but he can’t help but give them a fond smile. God, he’s so fucking happy. He has been for years now, but it still never fails to take his breath away.

“Yeah, Jason called, he’s giving me your next gig instead,” Eddie says.

“You joke, but he definitely thinks you’re funnier than me,” Richie grumbles, before brightening. “Though the idea of you on stage is amazing.”

Eddie visibly shudders, and Gab gives him a concerned look. “Yeah, for you, because you enjoy my suffering,” Eddie mutters. “I’d rather help you stage this PTA mutiny than that.” He notices Gab’s expression, and nudges her forehead gently with his own. “You and I are happy sticking in the garage, right? Daddy can have all the stage he wants.”

Gab giggles. “Yeah,” she allows, before adding, “‘cept when we’re dancing. We’re way better at it than he is. I wanna be on stage then!”

Richie laughs. “Yeah, okay, rugrat, if I get the call for Dancing With The Stars, I’ll send you in my place,” he tells her. “You’ll be half their height and still the best dancer there.”

“Will I get a trophy?” she asks seriously.

“Absolutely,” Richie says. “All of America will vote for you—well, actually, America and voting systems don’t really have a good track record, but I trust the public to make better decisions with pop culture than politics.”

Gab gives him a blank look, and Eddie stifles a chuckle.

“You’ll get a trophy,” Richie promises, “but first, your dad promised to help us with Operation Cupcake God—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Eddie says, “back it up—when did I agree to that?”

“You said you’d help with the mutiny!” Richie says brightly. “Didn’t he, Gabs?”

Gab nods. “You did,” she says clearly. “I heard you. PTA munity then we hang in the garage.”

“Mutiny,” Eddie corrects gently, then sighs. “All right, fine. Let’s clear all this up, then start again.”

“Why do we need to clean it up? It’s just gonna get messy again,” Richie points out, which he feels is a reasonable objection.

Eddie throws him an incredulous look. Richie’s pretty sure Gab has no idea why that’s the expression he’s choosing, but she mimics it anyway. Double trouble, those two.

“A lot of reasons, like it’s going to be harder to clean later if we leave some of this stuff too long, and hygiene reasons for clean workspaces, but mostly that we only have one cupcake tray,” Eddie says, delivering his final point like the closing remarks of some law drama. Which, Richie has to admit, is kind of apt, because it’s a pretty hard point to argue against.

“Yeah, okay,” Richie says, but he swoops down and kisses Eddie on the side of his head, and then Gab on her forehead.

“What was that for?” Eddie asks, but he’s smiling, and the look in his eyes is so soft that Richie thinks he could die of it.

“Just overwhelmed with love for you, Eds,” he says, and it sounds like a joke, but it’s not, it’s not, and it never has been. Eddie’s always been good at seeing the truth behind the laugh—except when it came to him, but they’re well past that now, thank fuck, and now Richie gets to tell Eddie he loves him every day and not only does Eddie know he means it, but he means it back—and Richie’s glad for it every fucking day.

“Sap,” Eddie teases, but his expression is so fond that Richie thinks his chest might actually split from all the love welling up inside.

“Yeah, yeah, stop trying to distract us from the cleaning,” Richie says instead, ignoring Eddie’s huff of indignant laughter. “C’mon, put down the rugrat, she and I can tackle the volcano if you want to find an actual cupcake recipe that works.”

“You managed to cause this much chaos by following a recipe?” Eddie asks incredulously, but obliges.

“I mean, loosely,” Richie says with a shrug.

“This is what I meant about directions,” Eddie says, but he’s laughing. “Show me the recipe you had, I’ll see whether it looks useful.”

Richie nods his head towards his iPad—discarded on the couch in all the chaos—and turns to Gab. “You ready to scrub like our lives depend on it?” he asks, before adding in a stage-whisper that he’s perfectly aware Eddie can hear, “because they probably do.”

Gab starts giggling uncontrollably, and Richie turns his head to see Eddie pulling the finger at him. Richie’s face stretches into a grin even as he puts his hand over Gab’s eyes.

“Why, I never!” Richie says in his best Southern Belle Voice. “The absolute scandal of it—Gabs, I don’t know if you’ll ever be allowed to look at the world again. I’m simply gobsmacked—and from a gentleman, no less!”

Gab’s full-on cackling now, and Eddie’s laughing too, and everything in Richie’s chest feels light. She laughs at his Voices just like Eddie did when they were kids—though Gab actually thinks they’re good. To be fair, they’ve improved a lot, and Eddie probably had a point when they were younger.

It takes them a few minutes after that, mostly because Eddie and Gab would finally stop laughing but then catch each other’s eyes and set each other off again, but they eventually get the kitchen cleaned and a suitable recipe identified. Fixing the cupcake tray is an absolute mission until Gab has the bright idea to pour boiling water on the charred mess—“Like when we have to get blu-tack out of Saffy’s hair in class,” Gab says sagely, to which Eddie looks absolutely horrified—and it makes the burnt cupcakes soggy enough that they can scoop them into the trash with a spoon.

Even making the cupcakes is a lot easier with Eddie. Richie thinks everything is probably easier with Eddie, though he has to admit that following the recipe properly probably has some effect.

“Okay, sweetheart, what colour icing do you want to do?” Eddie asks.

Gab sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth as she thinks.

“She looks like you when she does that,” Eddie says quietly, and Richie starts.

“I didn’t know I did that,” he admits, and Eddie laughs.

“Only when you’re thinking really hard,” he says, then pushes onto his tiptoes to press a kiss against Richie’s lips. “It’s cute.”

“Cute, cute, cute!” Gab says, and Eddie looks at her in amusement.

“Where’d you hear that one, Gab?” he asks with a grin.

“Daddy says all your photos are cute, cute, cute,” Gab informs him.

Richie shrugs. “What can I say, Gabs? He’s always been so cute.”

“You’re cuter, though,” Eddie says to Gab, and she beams.

“Okay,” she agrees happily. “Can we do pink?”

And maybe Richie’s never going to be the Peak PTA Parent of Ms Divega’s class, or even just be allowed to bake anything without supervision ever again, but that’s okay. Watching Gab squeeze the piping bag too hard and Eddie lick his fingers of all the excess she got on him, Richie thinks he’s already got everything he needs right here.

[spidercakes]

Teacher/student Parker (maybe an established relationship) with a whole lot of teasing. Pretty please?

Um, hopefully this is what you want D: Also got to this prompt very late so sorry! Has been a busy time! Its not my best, but its a something!

Warnings: underage (as implied by the prompt), light d/s dynamic

*

Tony swears Peter does this all on purpose. Well, okay, he knows he does but sometimes he does things that are less innocuous things that mostly result in him having a hard time concentrating all day. Good thing, he thinks, that he knows the subject he’s talking about so well he could recite the entire curriculum verbatim half dead under water. Science has never been hard for him and high school science is so easy its a wonder to him that students manage to fail the subject.

But still, Peter sitting in the front of the room with a god damn sucker in his mouth looking ready to stick him in his mouth doesn’t exactly make it easy to talk about balancing equations. The red sweater he’s wearing, though, that’s probably more accident than not. Though the red heels might beg to differ and he did wear those last weekend...

“Mr. Stark,” a student says, drawing his attention mostly back to the class he’s supposed to be teaching and he sighs. Peter, on the other hand, looks pleased with himself, sucker between his teeth as he grins. Tony does his best to ignore it and gets on with teaching but its difficult when Peter keeps looking at him like that. He manages though, if only barely, but he’s not a morning person and the students know it. They’ve all learned that if they want better grades in his morning classes they’ll bring him coffee in the morning, so he’s sure his distraction will be blamed on that.

By the time class ends Peter has caused him to lose his concentration like four more times but he at least doesn’t have to worry about it for the rest of the day. He can’t really decide whether or not he likes or hates that. On one hand his students aren’t pestering him every ten seconds but on the other he won’t see Peter until after school and that sucks. He likes having Peter in his class even if he does his damndest to command all his attention and mostly succeeds at it.

Peter knows it too, so he takes an extra long time gathering all his stuff together, waiting until everyone else has filed out and Tony sighs because that means Peter has plans and he’s probably not going to like them. Well, he will, but also he’s likely to get stuck waiting all day to do whatever it is Peter has planned. Once the last of the students have filed out Peter makes his way over to Tony, red heels clicking as he goes and Tony really should get rid of the Pavlovian response he has to that. Peter leans right into his space, no care for the open door and Tony huffs.

“Baby, the door is open,” he murmurs, voice low. He has the benefit of a class room that’s out of the way from the middle of the school but still.

“Shush,” Peter tells him, slipping his leg between Tony’s and using his knee to spread his legs a little. “Or you won’t get to see what I’m wearing underneath these jeans,” he murmurs, breath tickling the side of Tony’s neck.

“Baby,” he says, reaching out to Peter but he’s already pulling away. He captures his wrist before Tony can touch him.

“Mr. Stark, the door is open,” he says, grinning at him as he lets go of Tony’s wrist and walks off, grabbing his stuff on the way out.

Well, that’s a mental image he really wants even if he's stuck with it at an inopportune moment.

*

He’s eating lunch and attempting to figure out what the hell a student has written on a test when his phone buzzes. He takes the distraction happily, picking it up and finding a text from Peter. He grins, figuring he’s gotten bored on his lunch break or he’s found some absurd meme to send him like usual but instead he gets a picture. Its unmistakably Peter though his face isn’t all the way in the picture, just his smile. The camera is angled down, his back slightly arched with his sweater hiked up a little and his pants unbuttoned. His hand sits at his waist band, almost reaching into-

Tony swears, “oh you little asshole,” he mumbles, looking around for no real reason because no one is around him but still. He probably shouldn’t be caught looking at a teenager showing off his red lace panties on school grounds. Or anywhere, really. Good thing he’s smart enough to avoid any of his shit being broken into digitally because it’d be a real shame to have to digitally scrub Peter out of his online life.

And no touching yourself. I’ll know

Tony gives his screen a grumpy look and puts it back on his desk. He would know too, Tony has no idea how given that he knows he’s hard to read when he intentionally hides his reactions but he always manages to figure it out. Not that he’s not tempted and when his phone goes off again he figures maybe it’ll be best to ignore it rather than tempt himself more, especially when Peter is good at sniffing out a lie. And it’ll make the end of the day worth looking forward to so he smiles, turning back to the god awful pile of tests in front of him. He’d make them all multiple choice but students don’t seem to be any better at those either so he sits back, resigned to his fate.

*

Peter heads straight over to Tony’s after school, finding him scrolling through his phone and Peter raises an eyebrow. “Did you wait until now to look at those?” he asks even though he knows he did. Tony gives him a guilty look and he sighs, walking over and sitting in Tony’s lap, one leg on either side of his. He catches Tony’s hands before the reach him, pulling his phone out of his hand and setting it aside before he grabs his wrist again and pins his hands to the couch behind him. He leans in close, wiggling on Tony’s lap just to get a reaction and grins. “You don’t get to touch me now,” he tells Tony.

He lets out an irritated noise, “wait, what?”

He loves this part, loves getting Tony all worked up and then leaving him like that for his own amusement. Tony puts on a good show of being annoyed but he likes it too otherwise he wouldn’t put up with it. If nothing else Tony is reliable in that he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to.

“Should have looked at those pictures sooner, I don’t put effort in for nothing,” Peter tells him.

“I looked at the first one and I didn’t want to be distracted in class. I think I can be forgiven for that,” Tony says.

Peter pretends to think about it for a moment then shakes his head. “Nope, I think you can suffer. Maybe I’ll make you watch me jerk off too, just to teach you a lesson,” he murmurs, lips almost touching Tony’s.

The look on his face is so precious, the poor thing looks nearly dejected at the thought. “Baby,” he says, “come on, that’s not fair. At least let me touch you, you know I can make you feel good,” he murmurs, leaning up a little and kissing him softly.

Yeah, that’s true. Experience probably helps him out there and Peter’s happy for it because he had kind of a shitty sex life before, not that he knew the difference before Tony but now that he does he’s not about to go back. “Yeah, you do,” he murmurs, giving Tony another soft kiss. He lets Tony sink into it, nipping at his bottom lip the way Tony likes before be pulls away.

“Peter,” he all but whines.

He grins though, “nope, you get to wait until tomorrow and maybe I’ll be nice and give you something then, hmm?”

Tony pouts at him, “you’re the worst, you know that?”

“Sure, and we’ll see if I pay any attention to you at all until the weekend,” he says. The look on Tony’s face is so worth the comment considering its Tuesday.

The funnier thing about the situation is that Peter wouldn’t do that to himself, not that he’s going to let Tony know. He’ll make up and excuse about good behavior before dragging Tony off to his bedroom.

[highkey-holland]

Make A Move | Peter Parker Imagine

Pairing: Peter Parker x Stark!Reader

Prompt: “You think I won’t do it? I will. In fact, you can’t stop me.”

Summary: You two have been pining after each other for so long; one of you was bound to make a move eventually, but who would it be?

Warnings: May cause squealing from fluff overload!!

WC: 1,033

A/N: This is my super late submission for @sugarplumstark/@noshitstark’s writing challenge! It was super fun to write :)))) Enjoy!!

“Oh, please,” Nat scoffed, rolling her eyes. “You two have been pining after each other since the moment you met. Are you seriously trying to tell me you’ve suddenly gathered enough courage to make a move?” she questioned in disbelief.

You narrowed your eyes at her. “You think I won’t do it?” you challenged, a hand on your hip as you cocked it with attitude.

She simply laughed, grabbing the bowl of popcorn and heading back towards the living room where the whole team had assembled for a movie night.

“I will,” you called after her. “In fact, you can’t stop me!”

And with that you were left alone, running a hand over your face as you let out a deep sigh.

It was no secret that tension was high between you and the resident spider. It’d been a number of months since you’d first met, when he’d rushed into your father’s lab due to malfunctioning web shooters, only to be startled with the sight of a beautiful young girl instead. You’d asked him whether he required assistance, yet the need for his reply was negated as a string of web shot upward from the contraption in his hand towards his face. You couldn’t tell what was funnier - the surprised expression on his face or his uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus.

Eyebrows knitted with determination, you grabbed two cans of soft drink from the fridge and strode out to the living room with purpose, a woman on a mission. As you scoped the area, you noticed a lack of seating space, Nat smirking at you as she occupied the last available spot. You knew she expected you to take a seat on the floor like you often did, but instead, with little hesitation, you found yourself in front of Peter, handing over a can before taking in a deep breath.

“Is this seat taken?” you asked, pointing to where he was sat on the couch.

Peter expression was the epitome of puzzlement. “Uh, I mean, I can get up, i-if you wa-“

His stuttering was cut off as you plopped down in his lap, sending him a sweet smile. His eyes were as wide as saucers. “Is this alright?” you checked, never wanting to put Peter in an uncomfortable situation. He simply nodded quickly, sitting stock still, not daring to make a single movement. You rolled your eyes at his endearing shy and blushy nature, admiring the way splotches of red had taken over his cheeks as he stared at you. You settled in as the movie began, noticing the way Nat chuckled under her breath in your peripheral vision.

Ten minutes in and Peter had yet to twitch even a finger. You turned to face him, a soft smile on your lips. “Pete, calm down,” you cooed into his ear, quietly so as not to disturb the others. He shook his head slightly, as if coming out of a trance, and his posture began to soften. You took his arms, winding them around your waist as you leaned back to lay your head on his shoulder. “Comfortable?”

He tilted his head until it came in contact with yours. “With you? Always,” he muttered, punctuating his words with a gentle kiss to your temple. Peter silently congratulated himself at how smoothly he managed to carry out the move as you practically melted at the action, unable to stop the sigh of contentment escaping from between your lips.

As time went on, you found yourself losing concentration on the film and beginning to doze off. You turned slightly, draping your legs over Peter’s lap as your side nestled into his chest, head nuzzling into the crook of his neck. He lifted a hand to run through your hair soothingly, sending you to sleep almost instantly. “G’night, babe,” you managed to slur, dropping a sweet kiss to his neck in your hazy state. Peter’s eyes shot open at the pet name, his usual blush settling on his cheeks once again.

The film came to a close, the group of superheroes standing upright as they stretched. Tony’s eyes landed on his little girl, causing him to roll as his eyes as he approached the two youngest of the group. It hadn’t come as a surprise to him, of course; you were his daughter and he could read you like a book. Peter was unaware of this however, as he attempted to stutter out a response explaining why his mentor’s daughter was slated over his lap. Needless to say, he failed.

Tony reached an arm towards you, gently shaking your shoulder to coax you awake. He didn’t mind you sleeping on the couch, but knew Peter’s back would suffer from staying in the same position all night. You let out a string of incoherent grumbles in response, arms wrapping around Peter’s midsection as you held onto him tight, refusing to budge.

“If it’s okay with you, Mr. Stark, I don’t mind staying here. I don’t think she’s letting go anytime soon,” Peter reasoned with a nervous chuckle, admiring the adorable koala hanging off him.

Tony sighed, as the group crowded around him to see what was going on. Sam pulled out his wallet from his back pocket, begrudgingly slapping a more into Steve’s hand. “You couldn’t have waited two days?” Sam asked Peter, raising an eyebrow.

Peter looked down at you, moving a lock of hair away from your face. “Actually, this one was all her,” he replied.

Steve groaned this time, passing the note he’d just received from Sam to Bucky, who had a smirk on his lips. And with that, the team began to separate into their own rooms, ready for a night of rest.

Tony grabbed the blanket on the back of the couch as Peter managed to prop his legs up into a more comfortable position, without you ever leaving his grasp. Tony tucked you both in, with a quick quip of, “you know she’s still my girl, right Peter?”

“Always has been, always will be,” he promised, watching your father kiss you goodnight before he retreated to his lab. In a whisper, Peter added, “he’ll have to share you now though.”

Tagging some beauties who I think may be interested: @santahollands @hollandroos @madmadmilk @starksparker @wxntersoldiers @thothollandd

[geejaysmith]

Kat and I have amazing conversations sometimes and I felt they had to be shared. Also, alienfuckers, dad jokes, Maxwell’s alternative lifestyle and other headcanons, and Ace Attorney: Doug Eiffel edition. Full transcript under the cut.

Gill [Yesterday at 6:05 PM]: On an Unrelated topic: after the finale the crew remembers "OH YEAH, EIFFEL ACTUALLY HAD A FACE-TO-FACE CONVERSATION WITH ALIENS" and now in addition to all the other reasons to want him to Remember they're really freakin' curious to know how that went

Kat [Yesterday at 6:11 PM]: Minkowski: so what did they look like Eiffel: me (They do seem to like his body, they had a few models to choose from when talking to Cutter.)

Gill [Yesterday at 6:13 PM]: Eiffel, probably: at least the aliens think I'm cool I know what was meant by that but your phrasing made me think "In a shocking turn of events, it is the aliens who are attracted to the human." The aliens... are alienfuckers

Kat [Yesterday at 6:17 PM]: I don't think that's their jam but that WOULD be just his luck

Gill [Yesterday at 6:18 PM]: It is unlikely, but also: it would be hilarious

Kat [Yesterday at 6:21 PM]: the aliens keep sending me mental sexts and i crave death

Gill [Yesterday at 6:22 PM]: And lo another shitpost transforms into a fanfic concept, like a humble irradiated lizard becoming Godzilla: "would you fuck your clone?"

Kat [Yesterday at 6:28 PM]: leave him alone has the man not suffered enough

Gill [Yesterday at 6:28 PM]: No

Kat [Yesterday at 6:29 PM]: sigh

Gill [Yesterday at 6:29 PM]: Dance for my amusement, Douglas And also because I earnestly suspect that in the case of Eiffel and an interested alien-consciousness-in-the-form-of-a-Xerox-copy-of-him the answer would end up being "yes"

Kat [Yesterday at 6:34 PM]: idk i feel like it'd be more like "Oh what you spend two fucking years trying to drag us into the star because you can't be assed to make an appearance but you'll teleport across the galaxy for a booty call? Fuck you and I mean that figuratively" later sluts

Gill [Yesterday at 6:36 PM]: Bob is a bad datemate Is this entire train of thought brought on by the fact I still think of the person who expressed they shipped Bob/Eiffel in the tags of the "Take your double to Disneyland" post? Perhaps

Kat [Yesterday at 6:39 PM]: i don't know that you can have this at the same time as 'what if the aliens' bodies are still the people suppressed' without it getting Fucked Up but that's your perogative I guess as long as I don't have to hear about it family can't walk w me tonight so i need to hit the treadmill for a bit. ttyl

Gill [Yesterday at 6:41 PM]: See u in a bit! But ah yes, I hadn't thought of that til you brought it up Points at one explanation of Dear Listener manifestations for some ideas, points at a different explanation for ideas that would become unintentionally Pretty Fucked Up under the first explanation Although there is comedy potential to be found in Eiffel and Eiffel-2 having the "are we down with this" conversation In the /Justin McElroy voice, "someone just discovered they have ~the world's worst fetish~" sense

Kat [Yesterday at 7:33 PM]: a different terrible concept: eiffel with his pop culture references restored will likely be called upon to testify at the united nations

Gill [Yesterday at 7:37 PM]: O h  g o d Ace Attorney: Doug Eiffel edition

Kat [Yesterday at 7:46 PM]: i mean they're gonna have to tell the world SOMEHOW and i'd think the international court would want to know and he's the one with the subconscious recall implanted sidenote if the DL can do that mental transfer could they have just... asked them to reupload whatever their most recent scan of eiffel was there are so many ways around this that's why it failed to get much of an emotional rxn from me

Gill [Yesterday at 7:47 PM]: Minkowski and Lovelace trying to get him to practice his testimony bc if they hit enough subconscious recall triggers they can at LEAST get thru an explanation of the aliens without Eiffel going off into a tangent Once they're off the Dear Listeners' script though all bets are off

Kat [Yesterday at 7:48 PM]: here's a list of preplanned questions your honor we're not responsible if you ask anything else

Gill [Yesterday at 7:51 PM]: Eiffel, maybe: now Goddard didn't send up us there to bring home any xenomorphs but let me tell you, with the Decima project? They might as WELL have let a facehugger get up close and personal with me The translators rapidly swapping notes on late 70's sci-of cinema because a handful of them actually know what he's talking about

Kat [Yesterday at 7:54 PM]: Minkowski headdesking behind him Eiffel English isn't most of these people's first languages

Gill [Yesterday at 7:57 PM]: The news cameras are all dead-focused on Eiffel. He's hit his stride and is picking up steam. "And it was right around the time I was coughing up my liquefied respiratory system that I thought to myself, gee, I'd MUCH rather get a face of alien wing-wong than deal with this!" Minkowski is off to the side. She is visibly restraining herself. No poker face in the world can hide how hard she is longing for death. Whether it is hers or Eiffel's is a subject of contentious debate.

Kat [Yesterday at 7:58 PM]: someone at an elementary school: hey Garcia, is that your dad

Gill [Yesterday at 8:01 PM]: Anne, who was four the last time she saw her father in person, gets one look at the man weaving an intricate Star Wars metaphor out of crimes against humanity and recognizes him instantly, but signs back "I have never seen this guy before in my life."

Kat [Yesterday at 8:04 PM]: good call kiddo

============

Gill [Yesterday at 8:10 PM]: Honestly I love the concept that no matter how much Eiffel may drive them up the wall sometimes the rest of the crew would meet Anne and immediately be ready to kill a man for her sake

Kat [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: as far as we know he's the only crewmember with kids women in the military... it wouldn't be easy even if you wanted one, which idk if any of them did

Gill [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: Wait wait, brainwave: it is actually AMAZING that Minkowski had no idea Eiffel had a child because... does he seem like the kind of guy. Who would ever resist a Dad Joke.

Kat [Yesterday at 8:15 PM]: haha fair

Gill [Yesterday at 8:16 PM]: Eiffel: Actually, I have amazing self-restraint when I choose to exercise it. (Various noises of disbelief.) Eiffel: have you ever heard me tell a dad joke? No? I rest my case

Kat [Yesterday at 8:21 PM]: biggest plot hole of the series more like it was too painful a memory but still

Gill [Yesterday at 8:22 PM]: If he ever patches that connection it'll open the floodgates

Kat [Yesterday at 8:26 PM]: He'll become the Maes Hughes of the gang, except with fewer war crimes

Gill [Yesterday at 8:27 PM]: ...has anyone on this crew done war crimes? SI-5 excepted of course, they have obviously done war crimes

Kat [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: yeah SI5 is war crime central I'm not sure about some of the other stuff executing a prisoner? idk about Minkowski

Gill [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: Also my thought

Kat [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: she wasn't a formal pow though it was an ongoing engagement I don't know the rules

Gill [Yesterday at 8:32 PM]: Minkowski Has Done One (1) War Crime (Goddard Futuristics attempts to bring that against her in the court case only for Maxwell to stroll in like lol what's up gang)

Kat [Yesterday at 8:37 PM]: does Goddard in its current incarnation last long enough to sue anyone i mean i think you could sue them for attempted genocide

Gill [Yesterday at 8:38 PM]: Look I have had one semester of business law You were the one who almost went to law school Also re: other characters being parents, the only one I could see going kiiiinda either way on the subject is Lovelace and it wouldn't have been terribly high on her priority list prior to the Hephaestus mission I can see characters having the opinion that they could see Minkowski as a mom but she and her husband both strike me as understanding themselves and one another as being more career-oriented

Kat [Yesterday at 8:44 PM]: yeah if she wanted to rise in the ranks of the military... that would probably be a strike against her

Gill [Yesterday at 8:44 PM] And the implication she's got a Complex about her parents having both left promising careers to raise her Also, Lovelace: Well I always said I could see myself settling down someday, maybe have a family if I met the right person, but when I took the job with Goddard it was legally dubious whether I could actually do that- Eiffel: Because you're an alien? Eiffel: Eiffel: ...wait a sec

Kat [Yesterday at 8:54 PM]: ha It's ok to be gay in space

Gill [Yesterday at 8:56 PM]: Alternatively it's Hera who said that bc didn't connect those dots right away, meanwhile Eiffel saw Lovelace in a flannel shirt once and Knew Immediately Eiffel may be dumb but somehow his Bi-Fi has yet to fail him

Kat [Yesterday at 8:59 PM]: Hera doesn't grasp  human sexuality nuances

Gill [Yesterday at 9:01 PM]: Funny addition to above thought: Eiffel put together that Jacobi was gay after like three days on the Urania, was the only one on the Hephaestus crew to do so, and just never felt it was relevant to bring up Hera, my child... you have much to learn (Also, Hera, probably: I'm experimenting at the moment, I'm looking for a torrent so I can download lesbianism)

Kat [Yesterday at 9:04 PM]: I don't know which option is funnier, that Jacobi is just Really Fucking Obvious but Eiffel was the only one paying attention or that it was super subtle and everyone's like How Did You Do That lovelace's righteous fury overwhelmed her gaydar, she was too mad to go 'same hat'

Gill [Yesterday at 9:07 PM]: Eiffel: I have something to confess to all of you... Jacobi: Eiffel literally not a single person on this ship is straight Eiffel: Oh I was just going to recount a PG version of my wild younger days, let's just say I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:07 PM]: Jacobi on Earth: Just matched with myself on Grinder a-fucking-GAIN

Gill [Yesterday at 9:10 PM]: Jacobi: Oh I definitely picked up on it but who wants to go playing into stereotypes by speculating on what may or may not be a promiscuous history? Eiffel: Promiscuous? Look I've got notches in my belt but mostly I just ended up laying in somebody's bathtub at a house party while just conscious enough to nod along to someone else's relationship drama. Eiffel: to several sororities, I was the Gay Bathtub Wizard.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:11 PM]: Maxwell on day one of orientation: So if SI5 is paramilitary what's their stance on alternative lifestyles? Jacobi: I was recruited in a gay bar.

Gill [Yesterday at 9:12 PM]: Her asking the question has my brain going in several different directions

Kat [Yesterday at 9:13 PM]: I think she was recruited right after dadt was repealed... if obama exists in this universe fantasy obama

Gill [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: One part of my brain: Maxwell is also gay Another part of my brain: Maxwell is exclusively attracted to nonhuman persons Yet another part of my brain, most adjacent to number #2: Maxwell voice, who in their right mind would build a robot that can't fuck? The 4th part of my brain: Maxwell wants to know how chill they'll be with her living exclusively off energy drinks and frozen yogurt for weeks at a time

Kat [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: honestly I figured whatever it was it was MUCH weirder than just being gay

Gill [Yesterday at 9:15 PM]: Maxwell: I have plans to take over the world with my army of battle bots and rule as their robot queen.

Kat [Yesterday at 9:16 PM]: Maxwell: wait if you were recruited in a gay bar does that mean our boss frequents those or did he just go there to get you Jacobi: Believe me the question haunts me also Jacobi: sounds great i'm in

Gill [Yesterday at 9:16 PM]: Or, Maxwell: I am not joking for an instant when I say that I for one welcome our alien overlords "When I was 13 I tried to get myself abducted by aliens" except it's not a joke it's an actual minor headcanon of mine Also I almost typed "adopted" rather than "abducted" which shows you why Alana would probably want to do that

Kat [Yesterday at 9:19 PM]: she did say she's on bad terms with her family

Gill [Yesterday at 9:20 PM]: She grew up a pastor's kid in a tiny rural town in Montana, hearing that they don't get along is the furthest thing from a surprise to me. The surprise is that Maxwell has a restraining order against them

Kat [Yesterday at 9:21 PM]: tht implies the court found reasonable cause to issue one wack anyway i had a long day, i'm gonna call it a night

Gill [Yesterday at 9:21 PM]: o/ But yeah that Maxwell empathizes with nonhumans, apparently more than with most regular humans, that makes perfect sense to me I can see her frustration with the AI Ethics board in her last job Expressing Their Concerns and her suppressing flashbacks to many a Creationist rant, and trying to keep her eye from twitching visibly, and no I am not projecting I am just coloring in blank spaces in the narrative with my relevant life experience

[catsafarithewriter]

“Is now a bad time to tell you that I’ve summoned a demon in the kitchen again or should I wait until after you’re done talking on the phone?”

A/N: I’ve actually received this prompt twice, but I have two different ideas for this, so ya’ll gonna get two variations. This one should be fairly self explanatory, even if it is an AU. 

x

“No, no, no, the contract clearly states that your insurance covers damage by demons, fae, and people under possession.” Haru leant over her laptop, resisting the urge to pace as she scrolled through the minuscule small print set before her. Her leg bounced impatiently. “No, nowhere does it say that the individual being possessed must be one of the contract owners. Yes, I’m looking at paragraph f, clause 2, and it does not specify any limitation on the identity of the possessed individual...”

There was a tap at the doorway, and Haru glanced up to see her housemate and fellow witch lingering at the lounge doorway. “What?” Haru mouthed.

“Is now a bad time to tell you that I’ve summoned a demon in the kitchen again,” Hiromi whispered, “or should I wait until after you’re done talking on the phone?”

Haru stared. She missed whatever the insurance man was saying. “Hold, please,” she chimed and hung up. “What?” she demanded. 

Hiromi didn’t look as nervous as the last time there’d been a demon incident, just sheepish which was... reassurance of a kind. “Demon,” she said. “In the kitchen.”

Haru was already rising to her feet and making a beeline for the offending room. “Tell me you weren’t messing around with summoning circles again.”

“It’s not ‘messing around,’” Hiromi protested, following after her. “It’s experimentation. We’re out of teabags, and I just thought that if I updated the traditional summoning circle, I could save myself the hassle of going to the shops. My circle technique is flawless, but instead of tea, I summoned...”

Haru came to a halt in the kitchen. 

“You summoned a cat.”

“He does have tea with him though,” Hiromi offered weakly. 

The figure standing atop their kitchen table was about a foot in height and mostly resembled a ginger feline wearing a morning suit. He was, indeed, holding a cup of tea in one gloved hand, albeit about the size of a thimble’s worth. 

“Where am I?” he asked. His voice calm and proper, the kind of accent that Haru would usually find in one of Hiromi’s British period dramas. He looked down to the salt circle and markings around him and then back to the two witches. “What am I doing here?”

Haru groaned and rounded on the cupboards. “Hiromi, help me exorcise him.” 

“I’ve already got the book.”

“Exorci... Wait, I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

Haru collapsed down onto the kitchen stool, a pouch of herbs and beans in hand. “Look, just sit back and let us banish you back to whatever realm of hell you’ve originated from and then I can go back to butting heads with another kind of demon.”

“I am not a demon.”

“Sure you’re not. And Hiromi here didn’t accidentally summon you out of her own laziness.”

“Hey,” Hiromi protested. “I resent that.”

“It literally would have been quicker at this point to buy teabags from the corner store.”

Hiromi grumbled but took the seat opposite Haru. 

The demon began to look uneasy, glancing between the two witches. “I’m not a demon,” he repeated. “I’m a Creation.” He flinched as Hiromi slammed the book onto the table and started rifling through its aged pages. He began speaking quicker. “I was in my Bureau making tea when you brought me here, so your summoning spell must have made a mistake somewhere-”

“Sure, sure. Hiromi, you got the spell yet?”

“Give me a moment...”

“I’m telling you, I am not a demon.”

Haru glanced down to the creature. “Okay. If you’re not, then just step out of the salt circle.” She smirked at his bemusement and looked away. “I thought not. Hiromi, it’s in chapter 5.”

“I know, I know...” 

Something tapped her arm. She absent-mindedly brushed it away and felt a tiny hand on her skin. She dragged her gaze down and met the poised expression of the demon. “You did say-”

Haru jolted back, a yelp in her throat and her chair slipping and she clattered back in a tangle of limbs and chair legs. Her head hit the tiled floor with a resounding smack and she saw stars for an instant. Then the world swam back into place and she was still on the floor, staring up at the table and the horrified face of the not-demon. 

“Miss Witch, I am so sorry-”

Whatever had to say was brought to an abrupt halt as he was punted off the table. 

Haru yelped again. “Hiromi! It’s fine - he didn’t-” She groaned and collapsed back down, her head still spinning. “Ugh,” she finished with and closed her eyes. 

“Haru? Are you okay?”

Haru winched an eye open and squinted at her friend. “I think I hit my head pretty badly on the floor,” she grunted. “Where...? Where did you get the lacrosse stick from?”

“It was the first thing I could grab from the closet.” She had the stick raised warily in the last seen direction the not-demon had been thrown into. “Are you sure he didn’t do anything?”

“You’ve known me for how long and you're still surprised by my clumsiness?” Haru croaked. “You have not been paying attention. And I’m sure. Hiromi, I don’t think he’s a demon.”

“As I kept trying to tell you.” 

Haru rolled her head back and watched the creature rise to his feet and dust down his suit. “I am a Creation,” he said. “A figurine created with all the heart of their artisan who thus gained a soul.”

“So,” Haru said, “not a demon.”

“Not a demon.” He tilted his head. “Miss Witch, I do believe you have injured yourself in that nasty fall.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you have suffered a concussion.”

“Nonsense. Could someone with concussion do this?”

He waited a moment. “Do what?”

“Cartwheels. Am I not doing them?”

“Miss Witch, I do believe you need to see a doctor.”

Haru grimaced. “I guess you haven’t heard that joke before. Hiromi, wasn’t that joke funny?”

“Hilarious,” Hiromi deadpanned. “But it’d be a lot funnier if he didn’t have a point. Come on, can you move to the sofa?”

“I’m fine.”

“Liar.” 

The world was still gently rocking, so Haru didn’t complain too much further as she was helped to the settee, sinking into the comfort of the cushions with a groan. She dropped her head to one side and located the not-demon/Creation leaping up onto the kitchen counter. “What are you doing?”

He looked back. “You did summon me for tea, didn’t you, Miss Witch? It seems the least I can do after scaring you in such a manner.”

“Teabags, technically, and it was Hiromi who did the summoning, and you didn’t scare me, but...” She shook her head, and then immediately regretted it. The world swum some more. “And you can stop calling me ‘Miss Witch’. It’s Haru.”

The Creation nodded. “Very well, Miss Haru.” He flicked the kettle on with a swipe of his cane and glanced back to her. “You may call me Baron.”