#but it does make up a little for him being a figure with zero variety in facial expressions

[izar-tarazed]

A headcanon I think I didn't elaborate on much until now: Izar can sense Ensha's emotions—at least within a limited range, and provided they’re intense enough. That means she’ll perceive sudden bursts of anger or fear, but at times also more persistent sentiments like concern or wariness.

She isn’t exactly sure why this is, but it seems to be connected to the grace in some way. Ensha can’t see it, but during their first mission together—stranded at the Academy of Raya Lucaria—, Izar wanted to test whether he might be able to feel it, so she pointed him to a site of grace, carefully directing his hand right to the golden light.

While it didn’t change anything for him (from his perspective, he was merely reaching out towards a random spot in a dimly lit chamber; the shadows there didn’t feel any different from those everywhere else), Izar found herself with that new ability that proved rather helpful when it came to gauging Ensha’s reactions to pretty much everything. (Intense skeletal stare? Well yes, but I can tell you’re actually pretty terrified of ...something?)

It’s useful, but still has its limits—she won’t know the reasoning behind any of the emotions, or what they’re directed at.

Also, Ensha wasn’t exactly pleased when she first told him about her new capability (yes, she could sense that anger), considering it overstepping and intrusive (not wrong), but he has since come to terms with it.

That's partially due to the fact that by now Izar knows him well enough to see his other tells, however subtle they may be.

He might be able to take a somewhat guarded stance and basically block her out (I'm not yet sure about that).

He also acknowledges that it can be a useful part of their communication process—if they meet someone he’s deeply suspicious of, Izar will know. (However, whether she’ll believe his wariness to be justified is another story.)

[hypermania]

Omg Court you have to watch The Newsreader. It's like The Newsroom but with disaster bisexuals.

so i actually just blew through both seasons based on a rec by @pynkhues and i had a lot of fun watching but i was also really frustrated the entire time and i couldn't quite put my finger on why. i kept restructuring and rewriting the episodes in my head as i was watching them. at first i thought the problem was that the news station itself wasn't really a character in the show and that made it feel like something was missing, but after watching season two i think i've figured out the real issue: there are no stakes. well, that's not entirely true. there are stakes. i just don't know what they are. i have a vague idea of what some of the characters' goals are but i have no idea why.

i know dale watched the news every night when he was a kid and now wants to be a newsreader but i have literally no idea why. does he want to be famous? does he want to make his family proud in a public way after what happened in high school? does he just want to be rich? does he actually care about the news? did watching the news as a child give him a sense of comfort he wants to give other people? no idea.

i know helen wants to do more hard-hitting news but, again, i have literally no idea why. was journalism always important to her? doesn't really seem like it based on the comments about her being a game show host prior to this. is it not actually about the news itself but her wanting to be taken seriously because she's a woman and believing that's the only way it can happen? is it about her actual politics?

and on that same note, is she actually a nightmare to work with? has she actually had trouble doing her job in the past? is it just garden variety misogyny? i have literally no idea. lindsay makes comments constantly but nothing is actually substantiated. there's never a moment where someone is like "remember that time in '85 when she broke down and we had to cut to dead air?" nobody ever says anything that clarifies whether or not she is actually a problem outside of what we see (and what we see, in my opinion, is her being 10x more professional than almost everybody else, just with a side of tears because she's a mess in her personal life lol).

what about noelene? has it always been her dream to be a big shot producer or is this just a job to her? does she actually care about her career? she says she does but i don't really get that feeling. and how does she feel about rob's casual racism? she makes a comment about him not staying in contact with any of his aboriginal teammates but there is zero follow through on it. is being with him more important to her than her job? if he hadn't apologized and supported her, would she have gone to america? i don't know! and i have no idea why her father doesn't like rob. is it because he's white? because he's older? because he's not good enough for her? is it because he wants more for his daughter? would he feel that way about any guy? or is it rob specifically? no idea!

and those are just the character stakes. there's also a lack of situational stakes that's a problem. i think the best example of this is the episode where they do the election coverage. towards the end, there's a moment that's supposed to be tense while they're waiting to hear about the ratings, but it doesn't feel tense because until that moment, i had no idea that was a concern for them. i mean, i know ratings are a concern because i understand how television programming works, but it wasn't a stake that was set up at all in the episode. the characters should've all been making little comments about the ratings and how important it was to them that they beat geoff throughout the entire episode so that when lindsay finally got that call and everyone was quietly holding their breath, the audience would also be holding their breath along with them to see if they pulled it off. but instead it was just like "oh yeah i guess ratings are probably important? are they trying to be number one? are they trying to get a certain number? oh they just wanted to beat geoff. well that makes sense." it all just fell flat.

anyway, you didn't ask for this critique or my complaints but i needed to get it off my chest. i still greatly enjoyed the show. i love having unapologetic disaster women on my screen. i love seeing what the big news stories were in australia in the eighties. i love how atrocious the fashion is. etc. i had a lot of fun. i'm excited for more episodes.

[srkizer]

i can easily imagine boom sonic enjoying a vacation on aosth mobius.

he's taller than most of people, and he likes to be tall.

not everyone is passive aggressive to him; near zero people, even. for once he might even get appreciated right away.

they got more than one place that offer food. much higher number of variety for chili dogs too.

robotnik would not show him actions with conflicting emotions inside like eggman; it always would be consistent direct attacks. less caring he has to do, the better.

he would be consistently entertained by having to foil robotnik's plan often enough, without having to deal with same shit over and over again. trash pulls in a game gets annoying, and it's easy to imagine that dealing with motobugs and beebots and crap would get uninteresting quick.

he does like flirting, and there simply are much more chances to do that.

he usually avoided attacking talking robots though because they simply weren't engaging in a fight against to begin with, and that would make sonic conflicted on first encounter against scratch and grounder. they are the fully sentient talking robots that actively attack sonic. even though he does have an experience of taking hypnobot down, it was an indirect way of making hypnobot fall from a height.

maybe sonic would figure out that s&g would end up damaging themselves enough to have to stop going for sonic (for the day.) aosth sonic knows this and often skips giving them near direct finishing blows. boom sonic on the other hand, it's difficult to imagine him caring more than enough to be let alone from them.

he probably wouldn't be surprised by someone else being as fast as him too, since he had to deal with shadow once, and that probably was a good enough of an experience to not get surprised anymore. he might even manage to not crash headfirst across the other sonic running towards. aosth sonic crashed with boosted tails because he wasnt expecting anyone else to be as fast as him; boom sonic would be a little bit more aware than him.

[antique-lamplight]

ok so like! fate has a bunch of historical blorbos that can range anywhere from meticulously researched to kind of throwing things at the wall, so I figure I'll start with one that's a remarkably accurate historical portrayal and probably relevant to your interests -

Vlad the Impaler!

In case you're coming in with zero context - most fate franchises revolve around a Holy Grail War, where mages summon historical figures are summoned in a variety of classes (saber, archer, lancer, rider, caster, assassin, berserker are the classics) for a chance to win the Holy Grail, which will grant the mage and/or their summoned guy one wish.

Vlad's interesting because two different entries in the franchise did different takes on him around the same time. This kind of thing usually gets justified by "historical figures getting summoned in different class types manifest different personality traits," but this is one of the rare times it happened because two people went all in on a Vlad rather than working it out beforehand.

Vlad the Berserker was originally summoned in Fate/Apocrypha, where the Grail War takes place in Romania. As a Romanian national hero, Vlad shows up with a huge power boost and in his aspect as a king; noble, immensely proud of his country's progress, acts as a leader in the grail war, and is open about how he decided to walk a brutal and bloody path to gain Romania's independance from the Ottomons. The only thing that can snap him out of his regal manner is the book Dracula; he wants to use the Holy Grail's wish to yeet it out of existance. He can bear his own sins just fine, stop conflating him with that creep in the vampire book!!

Unfortunately, due to the Plot, he's forced to take on more vampiric traits. When he returns in Fate Grand Order, he's... dealing with it. Vlad (berserker) tends to hang out with others who have been hit with the "Vampire" stick despite not being a vampire, like Elizabeth Bathory (age 14, trying desperately not to grow up into the scary murder lady), and Carmilla (Elizabeth's scary murder lady form), trying to support them also getting away from the yay murder life.

(He does needlework as a hobby, giving FGO's lead a plushie goat/good luck charm as a Valentine's gift and helping make costumes when people get fancy.)

Vlad the Lancer, on the other hand, is the manifestation of Vlad Tepes as a warrior. He's a little too excited to fight evil or...anyone, really; some historical figures are affected by their historical reputations, and the whole Impaler-Dracula combo really jacked up the homicide and Death To The Unjust thing to eleven. However, he's also exceedingly loyal and even more stubborn than the other Vlad.

He's first summoned in Fate Extra by a woman who's significant (normal) war trauma means she can only express love by attempting cannibalism (as you do??). Vlad Stands With His Problematic Wife, of course he'll help her get her Grail wish of makng everyone Be Like That! what's he supposed to do, let her starve?

In his later appearances in Fate Grand Order, he's mellowed out some, and his extreme loyalty is now with FGO's lead. He's the Bad Uncle to Vlad-Berserker's Good Uncle, scolding Elizabeth when she's going off the rails. He Misses His Wife Tails.

(For Valentines, he gives FGO's lead a homemade steak sandwich, harhar. He also gardens in his spare time.)

oh my god this is actually SO cool??? if you dont mind i am ABSOLUTELY using this because frankly the amount of detail helps a lot

i also like it when the Public Perception of a guy influences who that guy comes back as. its poetic in a way

[redhairedhobbit]

So, back a few months ago for Inktober, I did a Magnus-themed prompt list and one of the very early prompts was to create a -sona. I drew this, had fun, didn’t think much else of it at the time.

Separately, sometime over the genuinely unpleasant and not sleep conducive mess that the winter holidays tend to be, I realized that hanging out with favorite Magnus characters in my imagination as I was trying to turn my brain off and fall asleep was surprisingly effective. I mean, it makes sense: I wasn’t making up a story I wanted to remember, it wasn’t trying to solve a real world problem, it was just… mentally hanging out with comfort characters who I knew pretty well and felt safe and happy around.

Since getting sick this month, I’ve once again been having a bit of trouble falling asleep. (Not fair at all, because I also feel dead tired the vast majority of the time, also thanks to having been sick.) But I thought back to this little character, who is just simply me thrown into a fictional world, and my “hanging out with Magnus friends tactic,” and figured, why not invite this character into this little imaginary comfort world for reals and just let her hang out with my favorites?

It’s been far too much fun, and seems to be helping a bit with falling asleep 😂 So far I’ve established:

* Her name is Allie.

* She used to live with roommates in kind of a crappy basement apartment, but they moved out a while back. She works way too hard anyway and stays late at her job, so she figures the extra hours help cover the rent, and then she doesn’t have to worry about bothering them. Turns out the extra hours don’t quite, and she’s always working too hard because she needs the money but also because she doesn’t really look forward to going home and being alone.

* She genuinely loves her job. Still going back and forth on whether that involves organizing/ filing statements or whether she works in the library, or whether she just started in the library, but she dearly loves organizing information stored at the institute and has a pretty sharp memory for it. She also believes the supernatural stuff and has all kinds of theories about how it all connects (most of them are wrong but at least she guesses that something’s up.)

* She came on staff about the same time Gerry did or a bit before, and she knows Martin from his days of working in the library. She’s very good friends with both of them, but the friendships have completely different dynamics. She disliked Gertrude and didn’t trust her, but has been convinced all along that there was something shady about her death.

* She didn’t meet Gerry at the institute; she met Gerry at a used book store near the institute. She likes strange old books and was about to purchase a beautiful Leitner, not knowing what it was, and Gerry rather rudely spared her the trouble. She was angry at him but also thought he was an interesting person, and they got into a big loud argument that somehow turned into a friendship. She worries about him a lot because she doesn’t trust Gertrude and also doesn’t trust Gerry to take care of himself. She does enjoy catching up with him when he’s back in the office, though; they like a lot of the same music and tend to share new musical finds, and have gone to a couple of concerts.

* Martin has figured out that she’s a pretty good listener and doesn’t judge him for getting crushes on coworkers, so they often take lunch and tea breaks together while he talks her ears off about his current crush. She likes how much he trusts her and often encourages him to make the first move or be a little bolder. She also has introduced him to different artisanal tea varieties, some of which he’s liked and some of which he hasn’t. She’s still trying to figure out the pattern in his likes/ dislikes. But she thinks of him as warm and safe and enjoys his confidence.

To be potentially updated if anyone is interested 😂 I have zero intention of writing any of this down properly; goodness knows I have too many projects going already. Buuut I might make some more art eventually? And possibly update on interesting things going on with the character?

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight: [REDACTED] “Oh Goddamnit. DANNY!”

Prompt Creator: @mr-lancers-english-class

Even Danny’s school projects cause ghostly issues and Lancer really should have seen this coming.

Alright fine, Lancer knew this was a bad idea. He knew it. And yet... here they all are, with each of his students doing their self-chosen presentations. And as he should have expected, Every. Single. One. has been on Phantom. Sure at least there’s been some variety. Star’s piece on his fashion and how that reflects on his personality and the era he died was actually fairly interesting (if it wasn’t for the fact that Phantom spiced up his jumpsuit with t-shirts and whatnot sometimes then this would have been a very boring one). Kwan also surprised him some, apparently he’s spent the past year or so sneaking photos of Phantom eating and did a piece on Phantom’s rather peculiar food tastes (who dips their pickles in milkshakes???) as well as effectively providing proof for the existence of ectoplasmic food (there’s no way any earth apples are neon green on the inside). Dash’s wasn’t even correctly calculated, trying to figure out how far Phantom could throw footballs based on his known strength and if he could kill someone by tackling them (disturbingly the answer -regardless of Dash’s bad math- was decidedly yes. Daniel seemed particularly disturbed). And Paulina’s was quite literally a badly written self-insert ship fan fic; the added drawings of what their child would look like only made it worse (Daniel left, not that Lancer could blame him. Lancer’s also glad for the ghost fight interrupting the presentation). Emilie’s was... disturbingly about ghost hunger and purposed the thesis that Phantom, for the good of the town, should eat the aggressor ghosts (he actually had to cut her off for getting too graphic).

But the single most interesting thing was that a ghost apparently caught wind of this and literally Every. Single. Presentation so far had words that were permanently replaced with [REDACTED], which, needless to say, caused some chaos when Samantha gave the very first presentation.

-

Lancer clicked his pen, crossing his legs and resting the evaluation sheet on his thigh, “alright, Samantha. Feel free to start whenever you please, though soon would be preferred”, by ‘preferred’ he had meant required, but no need to be mean. He chooses to ignore the goth teen's eyeroll.

Predictably the projected screen doesn’t work when she opens her file so Lancer has to spend ten minutes fiddling with the outdated tech that they wouldn’t give the school funding to replace. Eventually, he does get it up and running showing Ms. Manson’s title screen reading ‘Phantom And Hate Crimes Against Blood Blossoms’. Lancer’s positive ‘blood blossoms’ are a type of flower, figures she would do something nature-focused. She’d make for a great herbalist or botanist someday. He does catch Daniel and Tucker giving her ‘death glares’, as the kids call it, though; Samatha doesn’t look any less smug. The second page has what he thinks was supposed to be a detailed drawing of a flower but it’s severely pixilated, almost as if it been blurred; Samantha looks visibly upset so he’s going to assume something when wrong with the file or pasting format. He’s not marking on artistic capabilities though, so effort is effort there.

She quickly clicks to the next page, where the actual writing of the assignment is and looks decidedly pissed; Lancer even quirks an eyebrow since at least two-thirds of the words are a very bold noticeable [REDACTED]. Lancer watches her yank out her physical copy while glaring with murderous intent at Daniel -Lancer will have to dock him marks if he messed with another student's project- before looking at the physical copy in bafflement for a few seconds. Half the class shrieking when she drops the papers and basically launches herself over the desks at Daniel, “OH YOU LITTLE FUCKER!!!! HOW THE FUCK!”.

Lancer’s sighs and stands, “language, Ms. Manson”, moving to pick up the papers and quirking an eyebrow over them looking the same. Sighing again and eyeing Daniel, who’s being choked -or throttled perhaps?- by Samantha yet is grinning innocently. “Daniel, messing with other students' work is against student policy”, sighing yet again, “and I’ll let Star go while Samantha fixes her document”, summoning up the blonde while glaring at Daniel. Some days that boy was more trouble than he was worth but he was also insanely bright and had a heart of gold. Lancer knows he’ll do good things someday, and that’s why he still tries with him.

Half the class is snickering or laughing now and Star is very clearly trying not to laugh as she sets up.

However, as soon as it opens up the class is met with a very familiar sight. [REDACTED] litters every single page; he checked. And Star’s physical copy was in the same state.

Kwan blinks, “okay seriously, what is going on”, before scrambling to grab out his own physical copy; the rest of the class going wide-eyed and following suit. Lancer just puts his head in his hands and sighs very audibly while shaking his head. Why could nothing go right? Sighing again as the class erupts into noise.

“Mines all weird too!”.

“Same here!”.

“Okay there is no way Fenturd messed up everyone’s work”.

“And I actually tried on mine! It was about the merits of Phantom getting armour!”.

“Oh damn do we just get auto hundreds now? Please please please say yes”.

“Oh damn, Phantom would actually look awesome in armour”.

“I know right”.

“Can we just skip class entirely now?”.

“Oh my Zone a ghost messed with or work”.

“Holy Shit”.

“Wait! Wait! Wait! You don’t think Phantom did do you?”.

“Why the heck would he do that? How would he even know??????”.

“Oh I hope Phantom was inside my computer. That would be so hot”.

“Oh I don’t know, maybe someone told him or he overheard shit. He’s a ghost, he can be invisible. Heck, he could be here, right now, invisible”.

“Invisible and laughing at us”.

“No! No! Hold up! What if he doesn’t want us writing about him or maybe someone wrote some sus shit and he just nerfed us all for good measure”.

“That would mean Phantom totally read my stuff, aw Hell yeah man. That was some boss shit”,

Lancer sighs and stands up, “alright that’s enough”, sighing again because why did this have to happen to him, “and I apologies for blaming you earlier, Daniel”.

Samantha snaps, “oh no, I still blame him”, and continues glaring at the teen. Lancer suspects Samantha would continue blaming the boy even if it was firmly proven he wasn’t at fault.

Addressing the class again, “here’s what we’re going to do, you’re going to read off what of your projects you actually can and allude to the rest. Please reframe from repeating what you know was there beforehand as I’d rather not have whatever ghost responsible -Phantom or otherwise- come here pissed off”, glaring at few students who look slightly encouraged rather than discouraged by that prospect, “anyone who does will receive automatic zeroes”, ah and the encouraged looks have deflated. Good. Gesturing at Star, “you’re already up here, so do continue”. Better to not bring the clearly infuriated Samantha back to the front until she’s had some time to calm down.

Star nods and clears her throat, thankfully everyone quiets down. “O-okay, well, um”, gesturing at the screen, “I did my piece on Phantom’s sense of fashion and the cover image was one with him dressed in one of the Spook Sense stores meme shirts....”.

-

Lancer shakes away the memory, he honestly slightly regrets giving this project. But regardless right now is Daniel’s turn and Lancer is honestly slightly fearful of what his file is going to look like. Thankfully all their files were saved to his computer before the [REDACTED] debacle, so no one could go back in and edit theirs to add [REDACTED]’s for an easy grade. Lancer’s still not exactly sure how he’s supposed to mark assignments that were anywhere from one-fifth to one-third [REDACTED]. That word will be burned into his head after this grading period.

Lancer moves to find the boys file, but stares when clicking it crashes the computer. Not once. Not twice. But thrice. The fourth time rebooting the computer he inspects the file and is a bit dumbfounded, “Daniel, your entire file’s corrupted. The file type has even been changed to redacted, which I’m fairly sure, isn’t actually any possible file designation”. Everyone’s silent for a bit before bursting out into laughter.

“Just what the Zone did you write, Danny!”.

“Oh we so have to know what this is now”.

“Danny has the forbidden knowledge! We haft found him! The keeper of things forbidden and Ghostly! Haza!”.

“Ha! It was probably so lame that Phantom wanted to save him the embarrassment”.

Lancer sighs, but Daniel gestures Tucker up, “hey Tuck, feel like trying to fix the file”. Tucker chuckles and walks up, though apparently glaring at the boy. Based on Daniel’s smirk he finds this quite amusing.

Tucker does manage to make the file viewable at least. Lancer nods and leans back in his seat, “thank you, Mr. Foley”, while the file loads on screen.

Tucker sits back down with a head shake while Daniel stands at the front and gestures to the screen, “aight, as you can see from my not redacted title-”, that earns a couple laughs, “I did mine on Phantom’s portfolio of crime. Every single time our dear Phantom broke ghost law. Including such wonderful things as, that time he caused not one, not two, not even three, but five, prison breaks in one day. Or that time he invalidated a Observant spectator duel by bringing an inflatable sword”. Samantha slams a hand on her desk, “IT IS YOUR FAULT YOU DICK!”.

Lancer has some serious questions as Daniel clicks for the next page, the entire class going dead silent as a screen comprising of almost nothing but the word [REDACTED] shows. Lancer sighs very audibly. Eventually the class starts up again.

“Fenton... actually has forbidden knowledge”.

“If it wasn’t for the teacher computer saved thing I’d think he was fucking with us”.

“I mean... he is a Fenton, right?”.

“Okay the fact that this entire presentation is on ghost crimes is concerning alone. But they’re forbidden ghost crimes at that”.

“Shit I wanted the tea. Damnit”.

“Better question, how does Danny know?”.

Daniel clicking the button to go forward is very audible. And, Chicken Soup For The Soul, every single page is [REDACTED] to the point of being completely and utterly unintelligible. There are occasional lines pointing out how Phantom apparently ate confetti at a ghosts third wedding (which is apparently illegal for some reason) or that time he beat someone up with a violin that had a pie inside it (Lancer can see this one, Lancer himself has smacked a ghost with stranger).  Literally the only photo that isn’t blurred beyond recognition is one of Phantom in a prison uniform (Paulina was very vocal about liking men in uniform here). Lancer is absolutely positive the end of his conclusion ‘[REDACTED] are a bunch of [REDACTED]’ is an insult.

Samantha chucks a boot at his smirking face, “YOU IDIOT. Of course they were going to block you from talking about them. Ancients, I can’t believe you”. Tucker’s busy laughing into his hand.

“Oh my Zone, they know too”.

“They’re really earning that weirdo trio title, huh”.

Daniel snickers as he sits back down, “they broke into my room and wrecked that epic puzzle I was working on. They shoulda seen this shit coming. Literally”. Tucker snorts, “they probably did but couldn’t do anything else about it. They can’t stop you and your endless bullshit”.

“Damn fucking straight”.

Lancer isn’t going to claim to know what exactly they’re talking about but apparently Daniel effectively orchestrated this entire fiasco just to annoy some ghost. Lancer is honestly more impressed than disturbed. A for effort but an A- for making everyone's work nigh unusable.

End.

Prompt: For the last project of their senior year in high school, Mr. Lancer is letting his class do presentations on literally whatever topic they want. He is very, /very/ sure that this is going to go poorly, but that's a problem for later...

[punderfulowl]

Top 10 Anime (That I've Seen) in 2020

Well now, it has certainly been awhile. I'm currently sitting at eight months too late for posting this, but, y'know, something something life happens. More accurately, I already made this list, but wanted to try out what response I'd get from Reddit. Turns out, they're not as cool as you guys!

Anyways, as the title states, this is not a list of my favorite anime that came out during 2020, but instead my favorite anime that I just so happen to see during that year. While it's fun to have an end of the year retrospective, I find that having a list in this format not only adds variety, but also helps bring attention to anime that might have been lost in the shuffle in previous years (I also don't have enough time to stay caught up in seasonal releases).

Honorable mentions:

Aggretsuko S3, My Hero Academia S4, Today's Menu For the Emiya Family, Interspecies Reviewers (yes, really), and I Couldn't Become a Hero So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job

10. Maid-Sama (2010)

In hindsight, I find it a bit funny that I wanted to watch something wholesome to kick off 2020. Anyway, Maid-Sama is about a high school girl that is also a no nonsense Class President and she kind of has to be at a school where, until recently, was an all boys school. While she kills it in academics and is good at shutting down any shenanigans from the male student body, her financial situation isn't the greatest and has to balance a job at a maid cafe along with her school-related responsibilities. She does her best to hide her employment there to keep up appearances, but is one day found out by one of the boys who happens to be a big flirt and, yeah, hijinks ensue. While this anime doesn't have too many surprises, our main leads bounce off each other well enough to keep me entertained. Nothing I haven't seen already in other anime Rom-Coms, but I think it has more than earned its place at the start of this list.

9. Haganai NEXT (2013)

It's a personal rule of mine when making these lists that I don't include sequels of shows that were in previous lists. While I DID see the first season of Haganai a couple of years ago, it didn't quite make it into the top ten at that time. Because of that, it meets the criteria for this year's list. While I found the characters were just as charming here as I did during the first season, the development of their relationships really took off. It's a shame that it will most likely not get a third season, but I'm happy with what ride this show gave me. But hey! At least I can read the light novels/manga to continue the story! Wait, nevermind, the Haganai fans on Reddit are saying that's a bad idea.

8. Engaged to the Unidentified (2014)

Based off of a Four Panel joke manga, Engaged to the Unidentified tells the story of a girl in high school suddenly getting some life changing news. As it turns out, her grandfather made an arranged engagement with her and the son of a family he knew. Next thing she knows, the boy in question, as well as his little sister, moves into her family's house! While the boy is unassuming at first, there may be more to him and his family than he lets on. Plain and simple, this anime has charmed me. There's a decent amount of drama and mystery despite the source material and I applaud it! Even though this also doesn't have much new to offer, even to the point where I would compare this to Maid-Sama, what made me pick this at the 8th spot were the color choices and animation quality. Give this a shot if you can!

7. Grimoire of Zero (2017)

It's a fantasy/adventure story starring a loli sorcerer and a huge, anthropomorphic white tiger man. I honestly can't say anything else. I won't be able to do it justice. That first sentence should intrigue you a lease a little bit. Read it, again. Please check it out. It's an underrated gem that no one is talking about.

6. ID: Invaded (2020)

Hey, here's something recent! Unfortunately, this is also not something I can say much about. There may not be too many deep characters and the secret bad guy isn't hard to figure out, but BOY is this anime cool! The best way to describe this series is that it's like the movie Inception, but instead of brain heists, it's brain murder mysteries.

5. Carole and Tuesday (2019)

A runaway rich girl has a fated meeting with an orphan and they decide to make music together...oh, this also takes place Mars. Joking aside, this show was something special with its music (a new song almost every episode no less), interesting setting (freaking Mars, dude), and endearing main cast. Shoot, the music itself would be top 3, maybe number 1, but what bogs it down is the show's second half. I can easily see myself watching this again someday, and maybe my opinion will lighten up, but for now, 5 is a dang good spot.

4. Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front - Babylonia (2019)

Part of me hesitates placing this high up on list due to this show being animated, fan service spectacle for Fate fans. However, that hesitation is overshadowed by the fact that I am a Fate fan myself and I can do whatever I want with this list. Even if you're not a Fate fan or play FGO, if you enjoy some solid fight animation, this is worth a look.

3. K-On S1 (2009)

I'll admit it, I might regret not watching the second season then putting the series on the list as a whole, but this how I've been doing these lists and I'm such a creature of habit. There's not much I can say about K-On that hasn't already been said. By itself it's an anime classic and one of Kyo-ani's biggest properties. It's a sweet and wholesome watch, but be sure to have some insulin within reach.

2. Princess Principal (2017)

Imagine you're working with a team of programmers trying to make a mobile game then all of a sudden someone asks to make a show out of it. You know, a show with different character motivations, plot, twist and turns and all that? Most might say that's just a shameless, shallow cash grab, but it turns out okay for Princess Principal. Sure, most might summarize this anime as, "cute girls doing espionage things," but with its cast, visuals, and interesting alternative timeline, it works! Apparently there's a new season or movie in the works and I am all for it!

1. Beastars (2019)

I was not expecting this to be number one, but with much deliberation (with myself obviously) this feels right. It tells a pretty unique story while showing itself to be the exception to the rule when it comes to 3D anime.....it being that it's actually good. While I acknowledge that shows like K-On are classics and deserves to be number one on many different lists, it didn't line up with my personal criteria like Beastars did. My biggest deciding factor is: Now that I've watched this, do I want more? It's true that while I'm excited to start K-On S2, Beastars intrigues me more and ever since season two was announced, I'm looking forward to that more.

Sorry again for this list being so late, but at least the silver lining is that the next end of the year list is about four months away (in theory)!

[farmerlan]

A guide to commonly used honorifics in 魔道祖师/The Untamed

OK - so, I’ve actually seen some confusion floating around on specific honorifics commonly used in 魔道祖师 and I figured I will put a post up to address some of this - especially the situations when they get used. Hopefully it’ll be helpful for fic writers or whoever else out there that’s getting turned around by the various translations.

As with most of Chinese vernacular, there’s a TON of similar, but different situations in which it may be permissible to use certain titles/honorifics, so bear in mind this is not an exhaustive guide. Also, I don’t have a PhD in Chinese honorifics or anything, I’m just a Chinese person that watches/reads a fair amount of historical dramas. So if I missed anything/if there was anything that was kind of unclear in the novel or drama, feel free to let me know!

公子 / gongzi/ master

Let’s start with the hardest so I can get this out of the way. You will see this translated in a variety of different ways - master, young master, sir...and they are all correct! Congratulations, you’ve hit the jackpot - depending on the situation, gongzi can be a whole hodgepodge of things.

Master: The most commonly used version in MDZS. This is a separate meaning of master from some of the honorifics discussed below - it is specifically used to address either:

Your literal master if you are a servant in the household

A somebody from a distinguished household in a polite way

General honorific: Gongzi can also be used between strangers/acquaintances as a respectful term. Gongzi is, in some ways, an indicator of respect of the other person’s status. So oftentimes you’ll find two young masters from different sects referring to each other as gongzi politely, but you wouldn’t find two beggars on the street calling each other that. and it’s usually used to address someone younger or a similar age as you. If you‘re talking to someone who is clearly your senior, use 前辈 or 先生.

Because it has the connotation of youth and aristocracy associated with it, oftentimes innkeepers/sellers may use gongzi to address male customers  (particularly youthful men) because it’s a bit more flattering. Kind of like how the modern day shopkeeper calls you ‘美女’ (beauty) or even ‘亲爱的’（my dear - IDK when this started becoming a thing but if you do any online shopping on Taobao you know what I’m talking about) in China. They don’t actually think you’re beautiful/feel affection for you, it’s just a way of addressing the customer to make you feel good about yourself HA. It’s nice to be called gongzi even if you’re not actually a noble.

There’s variants of this - 小公子/ xiaogongzi is typically young master, although I think some translations just directly use the young master for gongzi. It can also mean the younger master if there is an older sibling in question here (e.g. Wen Chao was referred to as 温小公子 as he was the younger son), although you can also use 二公子 （second master), as many do when referring to Lan Wangji. It sounds a little less juvenile.

This term is used for guys - I would say the female equivalent could be 千金/ qianjin or 小姐 /xiaojie.

宗主 / zongzhu/ sect leader

This can only refer to the sect leader - it is a title, and it is passed down. There is typically only one sect leader at any one time, and his eldest male heir will be the successive leader of the sect. I’m going to take this chance to clear up some misconceptions:

Unless Lan Xichen bears no male heirs before his death, Lan Wangji will not succeed him. Lan Sizhui, given that he is not a Lan by birth, will likely never be the Lan sect leader. Yes yes, we all know he’s the adoptive son, but adoptive means literally nothing in the progenical world of Chinese history. Plus, he’s not even the adoptive son of Lan Xichen, so he is a long, long way down from ever being sect leader unless he forms his own, which he would likely never because that’s kind of like betraying your family.

On that same topic, Nie Huaisang succeeded Nie Mingjue because Nie Mingjue died without an heir and Nie Huaisang was the closest blood relative.

For the Jin sect, the succession would have been Jin Guangshan -> Jin Zixuan -> Jin Ling. (y’all I wrote here that it was Jin Zixun first in line but I totally blanked that he was actually a cousin and NOT the son of JGS so ignore that LOL) Since Jin Zixuan died, it became Jin Guangyao - Jin Ling is next in line as he is of the next generation and too young at that time to rule. Honestly, if Jin Ling was older at the time of Jin Zixuan’s death and if this was a Chinese historical palace drama, there would probably be some serious internal political intrigue going on as Jin Guangyao’s claim over the seat would arguably be weaker than Jin Ling’s since he is illegitimate.

For the Jiang sect, Jiang Cheng is the heir even though Jiang Yanli is older because he is male. The question of who will inherit his seat (a very valid question given his luck with dating, although I am sure someone somewhere will eventually warm the prickly cockles of his heart) remains open. IMO there is a less than zero chance that Jin Ling succeeds him unless Jiang Cheng specifically demands for it, but he likely wouldn’t because he is all about decorum and also it would put Jin Ling in an incredibly difficult situation, which is the last thing he would want for his nephew. If he doesn’t end up producing heirs, the seat will likely go to whomever he names as successor, even if non-blood related - maybe the current head disciple.

With that said, although there were generally established rules for succession, actual Chinese history (like all of history) often played out very differently (e.g. Emperor Kangxi stripped crown prince Yinreng of his right to succeed and appointed Yinzhen (Yongzheng), who was the fourth surviving prince, as his successor) so really, even if you were to base sect succession off imperial succession traditions, you could still make the argument that anything goes as long as you have the right people in your corner. HA.

老祖/ laozu/ grandmaster/forefather

I mean, I think grandmaster is probably a fair translation of laozu, which, to be honest, is a harder honorific to translate. It’s definitely influenced by Taoism and not very common at all, but it’s likely derived from Hongjun Laozu (鸿钧老祖), who was a deity and teacher. It does NOT only stand for a senior teacher/master however, because 祖 itself has ancestral connotations, so I think I would personally translate this as forefather. IMO, it’s really only fair to use this on Wei Wuxian and/or originators of a certain branch of study in the MDZS universe - I would consider laozu as the term of respect afforded to people who were pioneers in their fields/sects.

In that sense, Lan Qiren is NOT the grandmaster of the Lan sect. He is an elder - a very respected elder that was basically interim sect leader, but in terms of official title, technically, Lan Xichen could pull rank on him, but he likely wouldn’t unless pressed to because he is also Lan Xichen’s elder.

前辈 / qianbei/ senior/elder

This is kind of an in-between term to politely refer to someone who is your senior, but with whom you really have no formal affiliation with. Unlike 先生, it’s also unisex. A related term is 长辈 /zhangbei, but that is used for people whom you have familial/closer ties with - like an uncle, or someone within your own sect.

师父/师尊/ shifu/shizun / master

Your teacher/master, but not in the servant-master context. Someone who mentors you for years - in the xianxia/wuxia culture, this is a pretty special term because most disciples will only ever belong to one sect and will only ever have one master, and everyone else is a qianbei. The disciple has to ‘拜师’ (to formally request this relationship) and the master also has to ‘收徒’ (to formally accept disciples). So a lot of people went to Yiling in an attempt to 拜师, but Wei Wuxian never did 收徒.

In the wuxia/xianxia context, shifu is technically unisex even though 父 in itself is a male-centric term, although female masters might be more commonly referred to by the gender-neutral shizun instead.

Now that I think about it, shifu doesn’t actually appear in MDZS. Lan Wangji calls Lan Qiren 叔父 /shufu, which is completely different. It means uncle (father’s younger brother, to be exact lol), since that is their relationship.

老头/ laotou/ old man

Wei Wuxian uses this to address Lan Qiren behind his back. It literally just means old man, haha. It’s informal but not a term you would use to refer to someone who is close to you/whom you like, but not exactly a term that is insulting or derogatory, although in Lan Qiren’s case, it is irreverent because it is ill-fitting for the relationship that Wei Wuxian and Lan Qiren have. Meant to be used on men, usually for women it would be 老婆婆/ laopopo (NOT THE SAME as 老婆/ laopo, which means wife. Welcome to the weird wonderful world of the Chinese language!)

师弟/哥/兄/姐/妹/ shi di/ge/xiong/jie/mei/ younger brother/ older brother/ another variant of older brother/ older sister/ younger sister

NOT TO BE USED FOR YOUR ACTUAL FAMILY. This is in the context of the sect only. Your fellow disciples, but with varying levels of seniority. Familial honorifics are a whole different thing.

In the context of the sect, who you call your shidi/ge etc. is usually NOT based on age - it is based on someone’s seniority within the sect. If you have been in the sect/under your master’s tutelage for longer, you are the senior, even if you are younger in age.

With that, I think the novel states that both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are similar in age, so it is actually incredibly hard to determine if the author deliberately went against this convention and Wei Wuxian calls Jiang Cheng shidi because he is genuinely younger than Wei Wuxian, or if it is simply because Wei Wuxian is the head disciple of the sect (and therefore, technically, everyone is his shidi). I actually think it might be the former because he refers to Jiang Yanli as shijie, although now that I think about it, it might be the latter...as a reflection of the level of admiration Wei Wuxian has for Jiang Yanli WOAH.

(Fun fact: there’s a scene in the novel in Yi city where Wei Wuxian was silently weirded out that Xiao Xingchen referred to him as ‘qianbei’ - because Xiao Xingchen is his mother’s shidi, which makes him Wei Wuxian’s senior, but then he quickly realizes it’s because he’s talking to Xue Yang and not Xiao Xingchen.)

先生 /xiansheng/ mister/sir/teacher

In present day, this is literally the most vanilla term you can use to politely address a guy. Can be a stranger, or an acquaintance you want to politely address. Usually older than you, although if you’re both similar in age and you’re not really familiar with each other, you might still use it just to err on the side of caution. In xianxia/ancient China, this is usually used more like ‘teacher/sir’ to address an elder. It’s more scholastic in its implication and less generic than qianbei.

In the Lan sect, by crowd definition, 先生 refers to Lan Qiren unless otherwise stated, which makes sense and shows the amount of respect he is afforded in the sect.

夫人 / furen/ wife/madam

A term of respect for typically older women, or can also be used to refer to one’s wife.

Lastly, let me just add that this is just something that’s meant to be helpful for people as they work through the series - at the end of the day, it’s all fictional/xianxia itself as a genre is fantasy so if you need to subvert any one of the generally held succession traditions or whatnot in order to make your fic work, go!!! Do it!!!

[cienie-isengardu]

Not only do I not regret asking you to "RELEASE THE RAMBLES!", I'm sending you requests for more. Below is a list of questions that I asked @bihansthot , and enjoyed their answers, but because you are so thorough, and answer in such depth, I'm re-asking them to you.

Brace yourself, it's a list. I didnt have time to sort thru them, I just copied and pasted, so if any are questions you already answered before, please feel free to include the links.

"LET US BEGIN!"

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In the spirit of potential future writing,  I'm trying to find a building that  would make a good substitution for Lin Kuei temple.

I've tried looking up ancient Chinese military barracks/forts, and have found some stuff,  but is all exterior.  Anyone know of any locations (or several I can cobble together) that would make good inspiration fodder?

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So, uhm, religion? What's the Lin Kuei's take on that one? I know they are aware of Gods, they team up with/ encounter Raiden all the time,  and have literally worked for/against Shinook, so I know they recognize higher powers... but I  guess the question is,  do they care?

Do they have a religion,  or spiritual practice that resembles religion? Or do they have a more practical approach "gods exist,  but we just consider them very strong people"?

Which segues into... do they recognize and participate in holidays, or things like birthdays? Or are all their celebrations work related (I.E. successful missions or levels of combat mastery)?

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Food.  What foods do they normally eat? What foods do they like?  What foods don't they like? What foods do they absolutely love so much they'll stop what they're doing to get it?

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If you had to match the Lin Kuei with a dynasty,  what one would it be? (I know the 2021 movie has the opening in the Ming dynasty, so the Lin Kuei is at least that old,  but given that movie Bi Han hasn't aged in 400 years, and was taken is a child,  its probably much older) (and also know the game probably cherry picked random Chinese things it liked).

What do you think the Lin Kuei's view on artistic culture (probably not the right word) is? I know they are heavily militaristic,  but in the game,  Kuai Liang offers Hanzo tea and he properly prepares it the Japanese way, that says they have something of an education other than just related to fighting?

Lastly,  in the movie,  everything Bi Han does is "for the Lin Kuei", but the Lin Kuei is on Earth (assumedly),  and he is working for a guy who wants to enslave Earth, so what do you think the deal is?

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Question about the Cryomancers. I know the game lore says that they are supposed to be rare, but I also know that the Lin Kuei have had at least 5 (grandpa, papa, older, and younger Sub Zero,  and Frost). 4 of which are part of 3 generations that inherited it even with mixed blood (I'm assuming Mama Sub Zero wasn't Cryomancer since they left her alone).

That's a lot of generations in a row for a rare trait... So do you think the Cryomancers as a group have figured out they're being hunted and have chosen to live in hiding?

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Lin Kuei society question? I like writing so I also like world building and I think about these things.

Is Lin Kuei society ever covered? I know there is a Grandmaster, a handful master assassins (Sub Zero's, Sektor, Cyrax, etc) and the  movies always have a bunch canon fodder lesser assassins.

And they live in the very isolated Lin Kuei Palace/Temple in Arktika (or wherever it used to be)

But is Lin Kuei (we'll call it "village") ever covered?   Do they have willing servants, kidnapped slaves, or a mix of both? Are there women (non fighter women,  I know there's Frost) or do they employ strictly male help? If there are women, what's their role, and are there children born there? What about Elderly? What about resources,  is everything (from food, clothes, weapons, and the raw materials to create them) grown or manufactured on sight by skilled laborers or do they import/interact with the outside world? How vicious or civil is this society, could you be killed for looking at Sektor wrong or do they value your services to a degree? What's the degree? This is obviously a combat culture,  but is everyone expected to know martial arts of some variety, is it optional, or do they prohibit it among the servants/slaves? How strict are they on things like clothing, food, alcohol,  drugs, "luxuries", or pleasures? Money? If they interact with the world do they recognize and use $$ currency, commodity currency, or a mixture? Internally are the Lin Kuei payed or just provided for? What about illness or injury,  if you're not a master and it a serious injury/illness are you taken care of or do they just give you a quick death?

Etc. That's all the questions I can think of,  but please feel free to answer questions I didn't ask,  if you think of anything else.

Thank you for this wonderful list to talk about! I’m gonna split the answer into smaller parts, for better focusing on each aspect but also so I don’t feel bad for keeping you waiting for ages, lol. For now let’s focus on asks about the religion!

So good questions! I do think they have some spiritual practice(s) because in martial arts the state of a mind is as important as the physical body and religion is one of many ways to shape someone’s mindset from a young age. I do, however, think that Lin Kuei does not worship the gods. They are aware that the gods exist (with Raiden as the thorn in the side) and may even respect their supernatural powers and battle skills but it never has stopped Lin Kuei from desecrating holy places, murdering people and stealing stuff for the best price. So, it seems to me that whatever religion the members of the clan follow, by nature it is rooted in nontheism.

Of course, there is also a chance that Lin Kuei worships some forgotten deity or deities (as a remnant of their ancient connections with Outworld / realms conquered and destroyed by Shao Kahn?) or may even practice ancestor worship which seems like a good way to uphold a widely understood tradition that plays an important role in the discussed community.

The closest thing to religious practice was seen in Mortal Kombat X, when Sub-Zero and his warriors seemed to pray together before statue of god / deity / ancestor / legendary warrior / personalized thing they value the most (sadly, my knowledge about Asian religious practices or faiths is very limited so I don’t have idea if the statue is supposed to represent any real god/religious symbol).

At the same time, it could be just a bluff since Grandmaster was aware of Cage’s team infiltrating the Lin Kuei territory and used this moment to lure them into a trap. Additionally, Mortal Kombat X comics presented once Kuai Liang sitting before the same statue albeit in a completely different (devoid of reverence?) position.

Of course, if we take into account Mortal Kombat Armageddon, the game states that Lin Kuei Temple placed in Arctika was actually once the Temple of Delia (the great sorceress & wife of god Argus) that at some point get abandoned and re-used by Sub-Zero’s clan.

(In the background, we can see a statue of Delia that Lin Kuei does not worship but did not remove for whatever reason. Mixing both old and new games, we can only wonder if MKX!statue is also the remnant of someone else's faith/religion?)

Beside that, Kuai Liang was pretty vocal about Lin Kuei not worshipping the Elder Gods, what was seen in MK11’s intro dialogue with Cetrion

Sub-Zero: The Lin Kuei do not worship the Elder Gods.

Cetrion: We seek gratitude, not worship.

Sub-Zero: I see no distinction.

and personally did not have any reason to pray to the goddess:

Sub-Zero: Why should I pray to you?

Cetrion: Why does a bird flap its wings?

Sub-Zero: I asked a simple question.

In all fairness, in MK11 Kuai Liang seems the most passive-aggressive toward the Elder God while Frost is focused on her ambitions and Noob!Bi-Han just wants to be left alone when bothered by Cetrion. Similar thing happens toward Raiden. Despite gratitude for saving him, Kuai Liang does not spare the god criticism (can’t serve both Elder Gods and Earthrealm, isn’t fit for his role of protector) and in MKX outright says he does not fear divine beings:

Raiden: Sub-Zero...

Sub-Zero: I fear no gods, Raiden.

Raiden': That's why you shall lose.

Surprisingly, Kuai Liang’s interaction with MK11!Fujin sounds less accusing than with Raiden and Cetrion and it is connected closely to their ties with Bi-Han. And maybe Kuai Liang did seek in the past Fujin and other elements to make a peace with them, like he planned to do so in Mortal Kombat 4 Limited comics?

"I came here to make peace with the gods of the elements that you fought [...]"

Anyway, the accusingly behaviour toward Raiden and Cetrion could be just Kuai Liang’s personal dislike for gods and serious authority issues, which makes sense considering how much he suffered because of their meddling and conflicts.

But honestly?

The available examples of Lin Kuei attitude toward gods, demigods and supernatural beings suggest how little the warriors - especially cryomancers - care for them.

Like, we have Bi-Han in Mythologies, who asked Quan Chi about details of mission:

Sub-Zero: If it's so precious, why don't you get it yourself?

Quan Chi: I cannot enter the temple until the four elements within its walls have been defeated. And I am not on the best of terms with the gods of your realm... especially your god of thunder.

Sub-Zero: Tell me about these elements.

Quan Chi outright said he and earthrealm gods weren’t friends and Bi-Han, reading between the lines, could get the idea that he may end on bad terms with Thunder God. Yet he was interested only in elements (lesser gods than protector of realm?) guarding the temple.

Then Bi-Han beat down four demigods and met a displeased Raiden after Quan Chi got the Shinnok Amulet. His reaction? No fear, like meeting an angry god was a normal occurrence.

Rayden: Do you realize what you've done??

Sub-Zero: I was just earning my living.

Rayden: Your clan's ignorance and greed will cost this entire realm. You must now set things straight.

Sub-Zero: Quan Chi could simply be a lunatic sorcerer. I've never heard of an elder god named Shinnok or of a place called the Netherrealm.

Rayden: Well, you'd better start believing in both, because you're going to the Netherrealm and you're going to bring the amulet back. We must act quickly. I have no dominion in the Netherrealm... You are reality's only hope.

Sub-Zero: I'll do it, Thunder God... but only because I have no choice.

And once he came back from Netherrealm, where he was fixing what he messed up in the first place on Raiden’s order, his abrasive attitude did not change much:

Sub-Zero: Here... the amulet.

Rayden: Impressive, Sub-Zero. Perhaps you will reconcile your reckless past after all.

Sub-Zero: That's it? Not even a thank you?

Of course, to some degree Raiden’s words did have an impact on Bi-Han but even the god’s warning about his soul tainted with evil did not stop him from coming back to Lin Kuei. Bi-Han’s attitude and/or approach to gods seems to change somehow once he was reborn as Noob, but that is a different matter for different times.

Anyway, Mythologies!Bi-Han and MK11!Noob act less aggressive toward gods than Kuai Liang. But then we have Sub-Zero from from the MK novel by Jeff Rovin, who not only is not afraid of gods but outright insult them:

“Wait! Be warned, Shang Tsung. He is cursed!”

“Cursed? By whom?”

Ruthay wailed, “By the immortal Yu.”

Shang Tsung felt cold spiders crawl up his spine. “The demigod Yu?”

“Yes… he who is said to dwell in the underground caverns of Horse Ear Mountain… which is sacred to the goddess Kuan Lin. He who protects the canals… and the tunnels… and looks after all who use them, human and animal.”

“What did our brash friend do to Yu?”

“He… killed a man,” said Ruthay.

“What man?”

“A toll-taker… one who had given up a life of crime… one who had been a partner of the man… you… seek.”

“And how did that crime come to the attention of the spirit of Yu?” Shang Tsung asked.

“The man was killed… slowly disemboweled with a sword… while accomplices forced his wife and his son to look on! After his murder… the man’s remains… were dumped into a canal!”

Shang Tsung raised an eyebrow. “Is that all? I was expecting something truly terrible!”

“It was!” Ruthay shrieked. “When he disposed of the body… in that way … he profaned one of the sacred waterways… of Yu!”

Shang Tsung smiled now. “Then he is definitely the man I want,” he said. “Anyone who is impudent enough to insult a demigod won’t be afraid to attack a member of the White Lotus Society, or the gods who watch after them. I will send Hamachi, Ruthay. When he nears his goal, see through his eyes and guide him!”

Book!Sub-Zero was impudent enough to insult a demigod which is why he was one of Shang Tsung’s favorites. And to be clear - book!Sub-Zero did not regret insulting the demigod at all. Even more! He found humor in it!:

He dwelt in a cave two hundred feet up the face of a cliff by the sea. The mouth of his home was barely wide enough to accommodate a slender adult, and was accessible only by climbing the sheer wall of rock, a feat that was impossible for most adults and daunting even to the few arachnids and marsupials that tried it.

Maybe some of them were even sent by Yu, he thought with a smirk, little assassins who would chastise me for having spilled blood in his precious canal.

The less abrasive attitude toward gods was shown by Cyrax, who talked a bit with Raiden over Bi-Han’s remains. He wasn’t outright antagonistic but wasn’t overall respectful either. He talked with Thunder God like he would talk with any other human being that wasn’t actually Scorpion. Frankly, from the named Lin Kuei only MK9!Smoke actually addressed Raiden in respectful manner, with proper bow and the name of lord

albeit did he do so because he respects the divine beings or just out of gratitude for saving him, hard to tell for sure.

So yeah, it seems like no matter what kind of timeline or age or medium of the story, Lin Kuei does not fear gods nor pray to them. And the clan has a long history of dealing with Raiden, so the Lin Kuei had first-hand experiences with supernatural beings. Somehow, cryomancers are the most impudent warriors when it comes to dealing with or criticizing the gods.

Interestingly, as much as Lin Kuei warriors don’t care for gods, most of the known to us named characters believe to have - and to care - for their own souls. Sektor and MK11!Frost embraced the Cyber Lin Kuei idea but Kuai Liang, Cyrax and Smoke were opposed to C.I. project out for concern for their souls among other things. Even Bi-Han, to some degree became concerned about his soul after trip to Netherrealm.

Believing in souls is usually a sign of belief in the afterlife, albeit after all of them went through (the change into cyborgs, death and change into Revenants) this is less a matter of faith (religion) and more first-hand experiences. And let's not forget that regularly dealing over the centuries with Shang Tsung who steals people's souls on a daily basis makes it really hard to not believe spirits are real.

Also, an interesting matter of Lin Kuei practices that could have a religious/spiritual ground and/or be an example of ancestor worship is the clan’s funeral rites. I don’t think we actually saw any Lin Kuei to bury their own (especially after warrior’s failure?) and for sure MK9!Cyrax and Sektor did not bother to take care of Bi-Han’s remains. However the sources provide examples of Lin Kuei keeping corpses, most likely of their own leaders or warriors.

And so, we could see human remains:

put in two coffins on each side of statue

hidden / kept in a block of ice(?) in chamber of Fallen Lin Kuei in which Frost’s frozen body was also laid, but on the altar

Cyrax’s cyber body was kept and guarded by Sub-Zero (and this is like the only thing that Kuai Liang and Cyber Sektor so far agreed on)

and even Cyber Sektor’s remains, even if just for pragmatic reasons, are kept in what seems to be respectful manner:

It could be just Kuai Liang’s good nature to honor fallen of his clan (I’m still not sure if Lin Kuei Palace is the new place for Sub-Zero’s clan or the ancient hideout) but even in MK Conquest TV series, after Grandmaster was killed by then-currently-Sub-Zero, there was the farewell ceremony with clothes on display (cause there was not much left of body after freezing and shattering) while new leader gave the speech promising to punish the guilty.

Which makes me think that Lin Kuei did honor their fallen warriors (especially those exceptional, deserving). Such custom and apparently common belief in soul could also support the ancestor worship - both as some ancient, mythical ancestor(s) connecting warriors into one clan (family) and tradition to follow in the footsteps of forefathers (Bi-Han taking place of his father [old timeline] or grandfather [current timeline] or Kuai Liang taking Bi-Han’s place as Sub-Zero).

My general conclusion about Lin Kuei is that its members believe in souls, have respect and use of spiritual matters (meditation?) and maybe ancestor worship. Whatever the religious / spiritual practices they have over the centuries, it is not something they will share, as the Lin Kuei by nature are secretive people who keep personal things mostly for themselves. The people that joined the clan (Cyrax and Smoke) maybe kept their old, eventual religious beliefs but overall, Lin Kuei warriors did not fear, care for nor pray to gods. They may respect god (Raiden, Fujin) as a person but not because of their divine nature. And even that would not stop them from criticizing said god. Which is pretty much how Kuai Liang and Raiden’s relationship looks like. Grandmaster is grateful to Thunder God for saving him but he won’t blindly follow his authority.

(Kuai Liang has serious authority issues, hasn't he?)

As for holidays, I can’t really see Lin Kuei to follow any specific religious (theistic) special day cause they don’t care much for gods in the first place. Unless they worked undercover and needed to act as normal human beings, religious holidays would mean nothing to them. The warriors may however celebrate their mission success, combat mastery or promotion between themselves or in secret, I think. Like, Lin Kuei did forbid friendship because it was considered warrior’s flaw yet we know some members either were blood-related (Kuai Liang, Bi-Han, previous Sub-Zero - father or grandfather, depending on which timeline is correct) or considered each other a family (Kuai Liang and Tomas Vrbada) and most named characters worked in duos so they have both opportunity and knowledge about each other to celebrate important matters. If they managed to remember anything from previous life, that is. Because from ancient to at least Great Kung Lao’s times most(?) adepts were kidnapped from biological families at a really young age (something around 6 years old). And Mythologies: Sub-Zero takes that even further:

Its warriors are chosen at birth to be raised apart from the workings of day to day civilization and are stripped of their former lives. Only the clan knows their existence. Each of them posses certain skills and abilities that set them apart from normal men. These abilities are passed on from generation to generation and honed throughout the experiences of life.

So, celebrating birthdays doesn’t sound like happening much, unless those with family around could allow themselves such luxury. The clan may however celebrate the day of becoming a fully trained and sworn warrior? Or the fallen warriors? Who knows.

Also, something worth thinking about: in Mortal Kombat Conquest TV series, when the Grandmaster presented newly appointed Sub-Zero to the rest of the clan, he “celebrated” the cryomancer's first official performance as the execution of two men who failed their mission. So, yeah, celebration of something special in (old) Lin Kuei does not necessarily mean anything nice.

(The next part of answer most likely will be focused either on food or architecture / origin of Lin Kuei. Let's hope I will get it written sooner than later)

<><> EDIT <><>

RELIGION <> ORIGINS / ARCHITECTURE <> FOOD <> FOR THE LIN KUEI <> ART <> CRYOMANCERS <> LIN KUEI SOCIETY <> MONEY & MATERIAL GOODS

[acris-kerd]

For the @sidlinkgiftexchange !! My giftee was @the-puny-pichu !

“Link, that looks revolting.”

Sidon leaned away from the dubious concoction his companion had pulled from his shiekah slate, meeting the Hylian’s doe eyed stare with barely concealed nausea.

Link looked down at the bowl of teeth soup in his hands. Teeth soup.

“…Yeah. It tastes about as good as it looks.”

He stared at it for a moment more and then shrugged, tossing the foul dish into the fire before them. Sidon flinched as the flames cracked and glowed a sickly green before consuming the foul fuel. Link had already moved on to the next entree of stored food in his slate, this time pulling out a cake.

“The variety of dishes in your possession is both amusing and alarming.” Sidon observed, squinting at the slice Link shared with him as though looking for hidden molars or perhaps a bit of moblin guts.

He’d seen the offensive concoctions Link cooked up now. Nothing was safe.

Link shrugged again, inhaling the food.

“I usually cook with what I have. Sometimes I have a lot, sometimes I don’t.”

“I see…and what happens to be the status of your inventory tonight, then?”

Sidon tried to hide the nervousness in his voice. Link pulled out another dish of food, the delectable smell of braised fish paring well with his broad grin.

“A lot.”

The odd pair settled into a warm, summer night. They did this now and again, when Link decided the strange slate on his hip was stuffed with as much as it could carry.. Sidon had long assumed whatever hoarding tendencies Link possessed had been grossly enabled by the sheikah technology, but he wasn’t one to complain. Especially when it meant spending time with Link.

“Here. I found a bunch of silverscale spears and some Zora swords.”

He proceeded to unload a small armory on the ground beside Sidon, who started waving his hands frantically.

“Link! Good gracious, my friend, thank you, but I can’t carry all of this back to the domain myself!”

“Oh,” The little Hylian looked at the half-materialized hilt in his hand, shoving it back into the nether regions of whatever void was contained on his hip. “Good point. I’ll just drop it off with Bazz before I head out.”

Sidon smiled weakly, shaking his head.

“I don’t know how or where you find all of these weapons…I think it’s fair to say half our army is supplied by you alone.”

“Nah,” Link laughed bashfully, throwing another dubious concoction into the fire. The flames turned purple this time. “I just collect a lot of things. No sense in keeping it if I don’t use it.”

“Oh? Are Zora weapons not up to your standards then?” Sidon raised a brow, privately enjoying the fluster that washed over Link’s expression.

“Wha-No! No, it’s not that! I mean—I just have a lot of weapons and—“

Sidon laughed, absently resting an assuaging hand at Link’s back. The champion was so small he could nearly wrap his clawed fingers around him. The thought did something strange to Sidon’s stomach, but many strange feelings tended to permeate his sensibilities around Link, so he tried to ignore it.

He also ignored the way it seemed Link was leaning into his hand.

“I’m merely giving you a hard time, my friend. I know you travel far and wide, and there are undoubtedly more suitable weapons for your cause.”

He eyed the legendary blue hilt that rested close to Link, the previously lightened sensation in his chest taking a turn. Link had been openly carrying the Master Sword much more frequently as of late. Sidon wasn’t sure what it meant, but it left him nervous. Afraid, even.

Link seemed to sense what he was looking at, not meeting his eyes. They were equally quiet for a long time.

“…I’m going to face him soon. Very soon.” Link finally spoke, his voice weighted and somber.

A cold feeling began to spread through Sidon’s chest. It wasn’t a mystery who—or rather what—Link was talking about. Very suddenly, Sidon wanted to pull Link closer. The temptation was so strong he had to remove his hand from where it rested against his back. Link looked somehow smaller without it there.

“…I suppose you won’t be needing a silverscale spear then.” Sidon attempted to lighten the mood, a weak smile playing at his lips.

Link didn’t react for a moment, staring hard into the fire before relenting with a snort, resuming the task of cleaning out his slate.

“Probably not.”

An owl hooted somewhere overhead. The river nearby rushed quietly in the darkness. Sidon let himself stare at Link, at the lean muscles that had been honed around an abused frame, hardened from experience and trauma. His fingers twitched in his lap, claws ticking together mutely. Link was quite fierce when he wanted to be, determined and resolute in a way that bordered on obsessed. Very little seemed to phase his most treasured friend. Even the prospect of facing Calamity Ganon didn’t seem to shake him, not like it did Sidon.

Every time he thought about his small, wild Hylian facing up against such an ancient evil, he wanted to pull him close and protect him from his own destiny. Sidon was a shamefully selfish Prince, it seemed. At least where Link was concerned.

The larger Zora shifted uneasily on the grass, appreciating the way Link spread the fuel of the fire so the flames stayed low and less stressful to his scales.

“Are you comfortable?” He asked, eyeing Sidon with undue concern. That feeling in his chest swelled full once again.

“Of course, my friend. No need to worry. I can easily take a quick dip in the river if necessary.”

“Want to right now?” Link very confidently stood up.

“What—now?” Sidon looked at the surrounding darkness, a little taken aback by Link’s sudden enthusiasm.

“Sure.” Link looked like he’d already decided for the both of them, packing his shield, bow, and the sword that seals the darkness into his slate before pulling off his tunic.

Sidon felt a blush flood his face, trying very hard not to appreciate how the firelight cast the musculature of Link’s body into sharp relief and failing miserably. Without inhibition, Link kicked off his boots and pants, driving home how very serious he was.

“Wait, Link, are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Why not? You just said you could take quick dip.”

“Yes, but I’m a Zora. That river is hardly calm and there’s no light out.”

“The moon is out.” Link argued, a cheeky twinkle in his eye.

“That’s hardly sufficient for avoiding underwater currents!” Sidon quickly stood and chased after his stubborn companion, who was already heading for the river.

Link turned around, walking backwards towards the water and wearing an expression that left Sidon gaping like a newly hatched guppy.

“Guess you’ll have to make sure I don’t find any. You wouldn’t let me drown, would you Sidon?”

Thank goodness the depth of night concealed how deeply Sidon was blushing. Link was being especially disarming tonight.

“O-of course not!”

“Then it’s fine. Come on.”

Link waved him closer. The pearly light of the moon cast a gentle glow over his features, brightening his eyes. Against the deep blue surroundings, he stood out like a candle, confident as ever and heedless to any apparent danger. Sidon eyed the swift moving water nervously, looking back to Link’s comparatively tiny body.

This was a bad idea.

Without an ounce of fear, Link walked into the closest current, stumbling slightly and quickly regaining his footing. Sidon splashed in after him, throwing any reservations to the wind and bracing a hand at his back.

“Honestly Link, there are other places—safer places—to swim.” He muttered, eyes scanning the dark waters and zeroing in on a plethora of dangers.

“Then take us there.”

He spoke so simply, as if it was the most logical and reasonable choice in the world, which it was. Sidon couldn’t figure out why he was so flustered with it all. Maybe it was the suddenness of the late night swim. Maybe it was the strange position of having to protect this small, ferocious servant of the Goddess from a mundane death. Maybe it was the fact that it was Link, who’d always had an uncanny knack for throwing off his princely confidence, asking to share a relatively normal experience that for some reason felt anything but normal to Sidon.

“Of course!” He agreed gallantly, hoping he succeeded in hiding the wild swirl of thoughts running rampant in his head.

Link smiled at him, and he felt like a floundering guppy all over again.

Sidon carefully maneuvered them into deeper waters. Link was quickly picked up by the current, holding tight to Sidon’s arm and then sliding himself against his back. It was almost reminiscent of when they took on Vah Ruta together, but without the pressure of a cataclysmic flood weighing them down. The closeness this time seemed much more…intimate.

Perhaps Sidon was just over thinking things. Muzu often said he tended to over think things.

“Ready when you are.” Link spoke into his ear, his voice perfectly calm.

Sidon worked really hard to hide the electric shiver that raced to the farthest end of his dorsal fin, rapidly making himself think of the nearest and safest destination.

“Ah, right! Hold tight then!”

Link most certainly did hold tight, which was good, because Sidon knew the Hylian wasn’t exactly the strongest swimmer. He carefully kept them away from more dangerous rapids, following the river downstream to a small backwater pool he used to visit as a child. It wasn’t particularly deep, by his own standards, but had served as an excellent retreat during his lonely adolescence. It was a place he knew Link would be perfectly safe, no matter how unpredictable he apparently aimed to be.

“Almost there!” Sidon called, feeling Link give him a firm squeeze in response.

The water was already noticeably calmer as he took a nearly hidden channel that branched off the main river. It led to a wide pool with a thick bank of overgrowth. There was hardly anywhere comfortable for a Hylian to sit, but it couldn’t be helped. At least there wasn’t a deadly current.

“This is nice.” Link observed, craning his neck to take in all the details.

The moon shone directly above, highlighting a heavy knot work of local grapevines that had rooted in the silt. They draped across most of the surrounding trees, thick with age. A few boulders broke up the tree growth, heavy with moss and various mushrooms. Sidon caught Link eyeing them with keen interest, though he made no move to collect them.

“I used to come here in my younger days.” Sidon revealed, feeling a touch nostalgic now that he was in the once familiar pool. “It was a good place to escape Muzu…or anything else that happened to be upsetting me.”

Neither of them needed to voice what it was that likely pushed Sidon to seek such solitude. With Link’s help, the grief of his dear sister had been laid to rest, and Sidon reflected, as he observed new chains of vine growth and unfamiliar carpets of moss, that he’d outgrown the solitude of this place as well. It was a strange feeling, to feel the ache of both nostalgia and loss and still be okay.

Link silently slipped off his back, using Sidon’s larger body as an anchoring point to pull himself around front. He had a careful expression on his face, one that turned into a soft smile as he observed Sidon’s comforted ease.

“Thanks for bringing me here.” He said quietly, and he was close, much closer than Sidon realized.

A breath of space was held between them for an impossibly long moment. Link’s gentle face took up Sidon’s field of vision,lips quirked into a small smile and eyes full of a chaotic mixture. There was the firmness of resolve and a shadow of something more harrowing, but above all, tender warmth emanated from twin blue pools. It was like staring at a midsummer sky.

“Sidon.” Link spoke his name quietly, and with an uncommon reverence.

The sound of it put a blush back on the Zora Prince’s face. It must have been dark enough for Link to see it, even in the poor light, because his smile broadened slightly. He stared directly into Sidon’s wide eyes, holding his shoulders with such small, powerful hands, his knees bumping lightly against his chest under the water.

Then Link kissed him.

He kissed him selfishly, indulgently, taking advantage of Sidon’s frozen state and even placing those small, powerful hands against his face. It was a touch that felt like desperation. Through the shock of it all and with a horrible flip in his gut, Sidon realized Link was kissing him like it was goodbye.

When the Hero pulled away, he wasted no time to speak, the previous tenderness in his expression extinguished as if he’d given all of his warmth to Sidon.

“I’m going to face the calamity tomorrow.” He spoke softly, too softly for such devastating news, and the flip in Sidon’s gut turned into a punch. “I probably wont survive. I barely survived the first time. …So I guess there’s no need to worry about this making things awkward between us.”

A hundred years worth of emotions were blowing through Sidon with the force of a hurricane. For once, he had so much to say, so many different feelings that wanted to pour forth, that he had no idea how to formulate any of them. They all demanded near equal attention.

Except for one.

“Please come back.” He whispered, eyes wide with fear, heartbreak, and something entirely too close to love. “Link, please come back.”

Link stared with a slow blooming shock, the previously dead expression washing away with each passing second that made clear the seriousness of Sidon’s request. His eyes progressively opened wide, betraying a rare vulnerability, and his mouth hung slightly agape. Sidon soon realized he was clutching at Link’s hips with the same ferocity that Link held his face.

“You have to come back.” He whispered again, feeling like an idiot who couldn’t string together the words to say much else.

“…You…you want me to come back?” Link breathed out, looking like he hardly dared believe it.

Sidon felt his brain short circuit again.

“Do I want you to-?! Yes! Yes, I want you to come back! I always want you to come back!”

“Always?” Link quirked his lips into an adorable half-smile. Sidon could decide if he wanted to kiss him again or smack him.

“Do you realize the highlight of my life right now is waiting for you to walk through the Ne’ez Yohma shrine so I can watch you throw dubious food into a fire?”

Link’s smile widened with every word, all of the shadows leaving even the darkest corners of his face.

“That’s the highlight, huh?”

Sidon was going to say something about Link being a smart ass, but then his brain caught up with all that was happening. Link had kissed him. And he was going to fight Calamity Ganon in a matter of hours. For the life of him, Sidon couldn’t decide which event shocked him more.

“Come here.” Sidon whispered, and he pulled Link into a second, much less fatalistic kiss.

It was Link’s turn to startle with surprise. Sidon held nothing back, moved by Link’s brazen selfishness to take some of his own. He pulled Link closer, tracing a hand up the smooth expanse of his back and feeling him tremble. Link gasped, opening his mouth and allowing them to explore each other more deeply. This kiss did not feel like a goodbye. This kiss was quite clearly the start of something with absolute longevity, Calamity be damned.

“Please say you’ll come back.” Sidon whispered against Link’s mouth.

Link didn’t speak, but he nodded all the same, pulling Sidon back in for a kiss that felt like hope and a promise all wrapped into one.

[blu-eh]

after school summons

[AO3] 

or: Danny gets summoned. He doesn’t like it.

It starts with a tugging feeling in his very core.

Danny Fenton pauses. If there’s one thing he’s learned in the last year, it is not to ignore random things that are definitely ghostly in origin. He has just enough time to place his pencil on the desk from where he had dutifully been doing his homework—for the first time in two weeks, mind you—before his vision goes white, he hears a snap, and suddenly he’s not in his room anymore.

For a moment he’s weightless, lost in the feeling of falling. Then, his body jerks and he has just enough time to think, oh fuck—before he’s slammed to the ground hard.  His knees buckle under the unexpected weight and he goes down, clumsily, and trying not to throw up what little he’d managed to eat between homework packets.

“Ow,” Danny says.

He lies there, just for a moment, taking in the cool concrete underneath him. He tries to steady his breathing just enough so his mind can process what the hell just happened in the last thirty seconds. He’s still blinking stars from his eyes when he hears the hushed whispers echo around him and a heavy pair of footsteps approaching him. All in all, very bad signs when mysterious (and somewhat painful) things happen to you suddenly.

A gruff, questioning voice asks, “A child?”

“Oh, man,” Danny says, because that definitely does not sound good. Then he forces himself to his knees and looks up.

The first and foremost thing Danny notices is that he’s not alone. He’s on some sort of altar or platform, elevated a foot or so above the ground. A couple feet away, a group of no more than a dozen people surround him in a semi-circle, faces all covered by tattered cloaks. Another cloaked figure, dressed in much more formal robes with gold trimming, stands on the platform a mere couple feet from where Danny is. They all seem to be staring at him, waiting.

Danny hastily gets to his feet. He shifts a little into a sloppy fighting stance, just in case things were to get messy.

The dimly-lit warehouse room and the head covers don’t give him much to work with in the facial feature department, but he’s pretty confident that none of them are ghosts. Mostly from the fact that none of them are glowing and/or ranting about how much of a pain in the ass he is, but it still pays to be wary. Especially when Danny’s situations tend to quickly dissolve from bad to oh my god there are ghosts lose in Amity Park and also he maybe-sort of-possibly died in the process.  

Which brings him back to his next brilliant deduction; he’s definitely in ghost form. He definitely was not in ghost form before this. His ghost form is rather obvious considering he sticks out like a glow stick in darkness of the warehouse. He doesn’t even feel the need to check his hair color, this time, but that’s more due to the fact that he doesn’t want to take his eyes off the weird people who managed to summon him from his bedroom and forced him to change into his ghost form.

(He desperately hopes that they hadn’t seen him change—weird warehouse people are not people that Danny generally associates with secret keeping.)

“Is this a cult thing?” Danny asks before any of them can speak. He takes in white line that surrounds him, and the red liquid (which he very much hopes is not blood) used to paint runes and symbols that circle him, and their weird cloak-like robes, and says, “This is definitely a cult thing. Oh my god, did you summon me? Seriously—”

Before this, he hadn't even known he could be summoned. It's just the little ghostly things learned via accident, sometimes, that truly take the icing on the cake.

There’s a tiny spark of anxiety in his gut, but honestly there’s a large difference between humans threatening him and ghosts threatening him. On one hand, he’d take weird cultist over Skulker’s lair any day. On the other hand, pure white walls and experimentation tables aren’t super high on his to visit list either. Worst comes to worst—before they sacrifice him to some ancient gods, more likely—he puts on his scary face (and maybe adds a couple of explosions) and slips out before they even notice he’s missing.

“Silence, creature,” the robed man snaps. Danny zeros in on him and immediately deduces him to be leader from vibes alone. Also the gold trimming on his robe, which very much screams leader of weird cult that summons ghost kids.

“I—okay, you know what? That was just rude,” Danny says. He points to the white line that surrounds him, “Is that cocaine?”

Danny has a feeling he doesn’t want to know the answer to the mysterious red liquid and painted symbols, so he doesn’t ask.

“It’s salt,” one of the other cloaked figures answers, like it should be obvious.

(It’s not actually obvious, and actually leaves Danny with more questions than he started with. Mostly in the realm of how did a group of cultists summon him with salt. He knows salt is supposedly an anti-ghost measure, but Danny is pretty convinced it has little to no effect on him considering the amount of Nasty Burger fries he’s consumed haven’t taken him out yet.)

“Salt,” Danny repeats. He pauses, then awkwardly tags on, “That’s good, I guess, because drugs are bad. Uh, don’t do drugs.”

A cultist quietly, and a little slowly, answers back, “We, uh, don’t.”

“Right,” Danny says. His eyes catch another section of weird in this already weird, cultist warehouse. At the base of the platform sits a variety of bones, so fresh that some of the muscle still clings to them. “Are those bones? Oh my god, did you sacrifice someone? That’s not cool! Murder isn’t cool!”

“Those are goat bones,” another follower says.

“Oh,” Danny says. “Well, I mean, that’s still fucked up on a variety of levels, but I guess that’s better than murder. Unless it's considered goat murder? Uh.”

For a second, there’s silence. The nature of the interaction is so awkward and oppressing that he almost goes invisible just to save himself the scrutiny of these random people and get the hell out of dodge. His curiosity is the only thing that holds him back—that, and the fact that he’s not quite sure if any of these people are secretly hiding ecto-weapons.

Danny very much does not want to be shot tonight.

He looks around the room, eyes taking in every inch of the sparsely decorated warehouse. There’s nothing that immediately grabs his attention, nor anything that really screams danger but it pays to be suspicious of his surroundings in his line of work. A few of the cultists notice this, and start shifting awkwardly as Danny looks over them as well.

Then, Danny’s eyes flicks back to the lead cultist and he says, “I’m going to be real honest here and say that I have no idea what the heck is going on.”

The leader makes no inclination that he acknowledges any word that comes from Danny’s mouth. Instead, he brings an old, wrinkled hand up to his face, like he’s thinking about some complex problem. The leader circles Danny once, then again, and Danny feels something inside him defensively coil like a spring.

He tries not to be bothered when people treat him as something lesser—it’s not, exactly, uncommon for him to encounter. He dealt with being shoved into lockers long before he died, anyways. It doesn’t stop his shoulders from tensing just the barest amount.

Instead of showing this, he brings his feet up to his chest and crosses them mid-air, and fakes a yawn for good measure. A few of the other cultists gasp in wonder and fear. The leader simply stops his prowling and turns to face Danny.

“So this is the fabled Ghost King,” the man says, like he expected better.

Danny feels he should almost be offended if it isn’t for the tiny detail that these cultists—who summoned him by using salt and goat bones—assume he is the ghost king. “…Did you seriously confuse me with Pariah Dark?”

The man pauses, and asks, “Pariah Dark?”

“Yes! He’s like fifteen feet tall, has a huge sword, is a pain in the ass, and has, like, an entire ghost army. I have, I dunno, pre-calc homework in my bag. We are not the same.”

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. Danny bares his teeth in their direction, just to see them squirm. A couple take worried steps back and Danny fights off a satisfied grin.

Hey, poke a bull and get the horns. In this case, summon a ghost-teenager and get the ecto-powers.

(He’s slowly becoming more and more aware that these people have no idea what they’re doing.)

“I see,” the leader says. From his tone, he definitely does not see. “It doesn’t matter. Our book summoned the King of Ghosts and that is you, so you will do as we tell you and your pain will be lessened.”

“I am still not the Ghost King,” Danny tells him. “And no thanks. I’ve already used my yearly cult sign up and I can’t say I’m thrilled to join another. If you’re going to hold an initiation ceremony, at least decorate a bit first. Uh, not counting the goat bones and salt, of course.”

“You have no choice,” the leader snaps and steps a bit closer to him. Danny merely raises an eyebrow. “We are the Followers of Infernal. We have summoned you to serve us. You are bound to our will and bound to our grace, as the book foretold. Now bow, demon, for we are your new masters.”

There’s a very large portion of Danny Fenton that is convinced any good karma he held in life did not pass with him during his death a mere year ago. An even larger portion of him is convinced that these guys are no more serious than the GIW is. Danny does not tell the cultists this.

Instead, he squints and says, “Alright. I definitely failed US Government, but I’m pretty sure that’s not legal. Don’t you guys need like, a permit to summon undead beings of mass power?”

“It thinks it’s funny.” The leader’s face is mostly hidden by his robe, but Danny can imagine the sneer there from his tone alone.

“Trust me, I’m not the one who’s a joke right now,” Danny says. He looks back over at the dozen or so followers and grins at them. They don’t seem too keen that he’s not following their master’s orders and bending to their will. He turns back to the leader. “What’s in it for me?”

“What?”

“If I follow you and stuff, what’s in it for me?”

The leader pauses, then says, “You will be spared of punishment.”

“Hmm, that’s not good enough,” Danny says. He angles his body so he's once again looking at the followers and points at one in the middle. “Hey, you! With the cloak. No, not you, the other dude. To the left. Yeah! You. What do you have to offer me?”

The follower looks so startled that he cowers for a second. Then, seeing as he hadn’t been reduced to a pile of ashes from Danny’s gaze alone, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something small and silver. “Uh, I have a paper clip, your ghostliness.”

“A paper clip,” Danny repeats. “Yeah, sure, fine. Whatever. That sounds neat.”

“You’ll submit to us?” the man sounds so hopeful that Danny almost feels bad for being a jerk. Then, he remembers that they summoned him out of his nice, warm bedroom at ass-o’clock in the night and feels significantly less amounts of pity.

“No, dude, I’m not being your sack of potatoes for a paper clip. Man, you guys are stupid.” Danny rolls his eyes and floats just a bit higher. The other followers shuffle around again, uncomfortable. In front of him, the leader remains impassive as ever. “Where even am I?”

“The lair which you will spend the rest of your afterlife,” the leader says.

“Okay, this is definitely a warehouse, firstly. And secondly, dude, I meant what state.”

“…Wisconsin,” the man allows because of course everything terrible happens in Wisconsin.

“You chose the worst state to have your crappy lair,” Danny tells them. Now he has to fly a couple hundred miles home and hope he gets there by morning, all the while avoiding his creepy, obsessed arch-nemesis. He wonders if Vlad is even aware there’s a ghost-obsessed cult in his home state. Probably not. “Nothing good ever comes from Wisconsin. You can take that as, like, ghostly wisdom or something.”

“Hey,” one of the cultists says, offended. “The Packers are in Wisconsin.”

“Nothing good,” Danny repeats, firmly.

“Enough of this nonsense,” the leader says. “It’s trying to distract you because it fears control. Briar, bring me the orb.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them says.

The followers mutter to themselves and teeter around in their positions. The woman who spoke, on the end, bows and scurries off. Danny watches as she runs through the darkness of the warehouse, footsteps echoing around them, until he can no longer see her among the darkness.  

“Hey, if they already listen to you then why do you need me?” Danny asks. The leader doesn’t answer, so Danny floats a bit on his side and puts his arms behind his head. “What kind of orb are we talking about, anyways? Like one of those Spirit Halloween ones? Or is it more like orbeeze? I can’t saw I’m super excited from your ominous it fears control statement, but—"

“Silence, beast,” the leader says.

Danny huffs. “I’m just asking. No need to be so snippy.”  

The man ignores him which, rude. Danny’s just about to see how far he can test this guy’s patience when Briar comes back, just as quickly as she had disappeared. She jogs through the warehouse and up the steps of the platform. Danny can’t see her face, but from the way her hood moves to glace at him every so often, he figures that she’s probably nervous. Specifically about him lounging around in a circle full of salt.

“Father Johnathan,” Briar says and bows. In her hands is a glowing, silver orb. It really did look like a generic orb one would find in a Spirit Halloween. “The orb.”

“Your name is Father Johnathan?” Danny asks. He eyes the orb for a second, but doesn’t feel the tingle of ghostly energy from it, so he ignores it. He turns right back to the leader, not able to keep the grin off his face. “Your name is really Father Johnathan?”

Father Johnathan gently takes the orb in his hands as Briar scurries off towards the rest of the followers. Then, he sighs and says, “Yes, creature, my name is Father Johnathan and I shall be your new master.”

“Oh my god,” Danny says, positively gleeful. “I meet real life Papa John and he summons me with salt and threatens me with a Spirit Halloween orb.”

“Laugh all you want,” Papa John says. The nervous air shifts into something a bit more predatory. “You will not be laughing much longer.”

The cultists break into applause and talk amongst themselves loudly. They shift forward, eagerly, as if they want to watch the spectacle up close. They’re only a foot or so away from the platform when Papa John waves at them to halt.

Papa John holds up the orb. It swirls, the silver fog inside consolidating and then dissipating. Something inside it starts to glow the barest amount.

Danny pauses, just for a second, and watches it. There's still no tingle of ghostly energy coming from it. If he hadn’t already thought these guys are a joke, he definitely would’ve been a tad more nervous. As it stands, he thinks nothing of it—no ghostly energy means no control over ghosts.

(Unfortunately, he knows the feeling of ghost-controlling objects quite well. It’s not an experience he’s eager to repeat.)

The orb glows brighter, and brighter, swirling more furiously. The chatter of the cultists picks up to the point where they’re almost shouting, jeering at him. Papa John draws closer and closer, orb outstretched. He holds it through the salt line and touches it to Danny’s chest. The shouting from his followers almost becomes unbearable.

And then….nothing. The orb stops glowing. The fog inside stops swirling. It simply dies in Papa John’s hand.

“Was that supposed to do something?” Danny asks.

Papa John touches him with the orb again, a tad more forceful, so Danny assumes it was supposed to do something. From the panicked whispers around him, it definitely was supposed to do something to him. Danny’s honestly not sure if the outcome is due to him being a halfa or these guys being a joke.

(He’s willing to bet it’s the latter.)

“I think your LED batteries died,” Danny tells him. “Or maybe you mixed up your Spirit Halloween orbs. Better luck next time.”

Papa John stops furiously pressing the orb to his chest and if Danny could see his face, he has no doubts that Papa John’s expression would be livid.

“You will obey us,” Papa John says.

“No,” Danny says. “I won’t.”

“You will—”

Danny swings his feet down so hard that he cracks the very ground he now stands on. Dust kicks up around him as he stands tall, even though Danny’s at least two feet shorter than the leader in front of him. His eyes burn a brilliant green and he crosses his hands over his chest in an effort to look intimidating. The cult thing is interesting and all, but it's late, he still has homework to do, and Jazz has definitely noticed him missing by now so it's probably better to end this before they can get another object from a Spirit Halloween and try that instead.

It works, if the half-step back from Papa John is anything to go by.

“Listen,” Danny says, flatly. “Get a hobby and leave me alone or else you won’t like what I’m going to do.”

He makes his form flicker and the temperature drop in the room, just for dramatic effect.

Some of the followers in the background shift uneasily. A couple take panicked steps back. More than a few look ready to bolt for the door and leave this cult business behind forever.

Danny takes notice and stares at them, smiling wide enough that they could see his slightly-toothy grin. He makes sure his eyes flare, just a touch, and says loudly, “Boo.”

To say the cultists are startled would be an understatement. More than a few stumble back, a couple falling onto their asses. One trips on their robe and is sent tumbling. Another one yells and cowers. Papa John has no time to reign in the situation before two scatter completely.

“Peace!” Papa John shouts over the chaos of a dozen panicking followers. Those that remain do settle down enough to hear his words. “Stand down, there is nothing to fear. It is only trying to scare you into letting it free. It is trapped whilst it remains in the circle.”

Danny snorts. “I can leave any time I want.”

“You cannot leave here, demon—”

Danny raises one single eyebrow and dutifully steps out of the summoning circle.

The warehouse erupts into chaos.

The cultists are yelling now, but this time there’s only because of fear. They scatter over each other, running and tripping over their obnoxiously long cloaks. A couple trample the goat bones to the point where several loud snaps are heard over the pandemonium. It only adds more fuel to the fire as less than a dozen people scramble to get as far away from the platform—and subsequently the ghost-kid—as possible.

“Do better than a paperclip, next time!” Danny calls out to them. They only seem to run faster at the sound of his voice.

Papa John is the only one who doesn’t run. He had stumbled off the platform and away from Danny the second that Danny made it over the salt line. However, in the disarray, he had been knocked to the ground, his orb lay broken at his feet, and his robe’s hood had been yanked off and left on the ground beside him. He sits, frozen, but Danny doesn’t know if it’s from shock or from fear.

Danny takes a step closer to him.

“How…?” Papa John whispers. He’s not looking at Danny—only his old, wrinkled hands. He’s bald, with brown eyes. He looks like nothing more than any generic old man that Danny would see at a grocery store on Sunday afternoon. “We followed the book. We…we took every precaution the book said. We were supposed to have the perfect slave, bound to our every word. We…”

“That didn’t work out too well for you, huh?” Danny says and crosses his arms over his chest. “It’s ‘cause you forgot the dunce cap when you decided to be the class clown.”

“Please,” Papa John says. “Spare me.”

There’s something wrong about this—seeing a human beg for his life at Danny’s feet. Danny doesn’t want to be feared. He never has wanted to be feared.

He presses his lips together and takes a single step back. Some part of him, though, knows that he desperately needs to make his point clear to avoid another situation like this (likely with more weapons, next time).

“I warned you,” Danny says softly. His voice echoes around the warehouse. The man below him shivers in terror. “Do not summon me again, or I won’t be so nice next time.” He pauses, just for a second and can't help but tag on, "Papa John."

He lets his threat linger and hopes the man takes it seriously enough that he won’t get summoned again. Then, the cool strings of invisibility wrap around his body and he disappears from sight. Danny takes one look at the man left on the floor before he shakes his head and shoots up into the Wisconsin night sky. He doesn't hear the shouted response of it's Father Johnathan from several hundred feet below him on the warehouse floor.

Danny waits about all of thirty seconds before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone.

"Jazz? Hey, yeah, I'm fine. Yes, seriously, I'm fine but you are not going to believe what I just went through—"

[forgottenpasta]

Somnolent

Summary: After spending one night in bed with you, Jeongguk finds out he is unable to sleep unless you’re sleeping with him.

Pairing: Jeongguk x Reader

Genre: Fluff, roommate!au

Warnings: Swearing, some talk of nipples and whipped cream, a very emotional realisation 

Word count: 3.5k

Jeongguk threw the pillow across the darkened room, a crash sounded as all his deodorants and sunscreens came tumbling down from his dresser onto the floor, plastic pings and clatters accompanying his soft cursing. 

This was the third night in a row. 

Third night of no sleep whatsoever, no matter how many cups of camomile tea he drank before bed, or how much he danced and worked out to tire himself out, or how much asmr he listened to, nothing was working. Tonight, he had even popped a sleeping pill. He was absolutely against using these kind of drugs unless absolutely necessary, but he was desperate. Everytime he was at the edge of blissful oblivion, something would snap him back to consciousness. Whether it was house noises, or the hum of the fan, an annoying itch or a wayward thought or just... the image of your heavenly arms wrapped around him as you cradled him to sleep. 

He knew what he ought to do. He’d known you’d ruined good sleep for him for posterity the moment he’d woken up beside you three mornings prior. You’d been the little spoon, him the big. That’s not how Jeongguk liked his cuddles usually (he didn’t like cuddles period) but you had come to him seeking protection as part of the unsaid roommate loyalty and trust agreement and he had to oblige you. 

***

Three days ago

“Kookie?”

Your voice was lowered and whiny, purposefully so. You appeared the picture of innocence. Jeongguk bolted up in his bed, immediately on alert. You never acted cute or small, hated the very concept. You would even scoff and smack him on the head whenever he tried his doe-eyed trick on you.

You really really wanted something. 

“What is it?”, he asked slowly, eyeing your oversized shirt clad form cautiously. It didn’t appear like you were wearing anything beneath. 

“Kookie, I saw the movie you suggested.” You stepped inside the room, kicking the door shut behind you. “The one you really wanted me to watch.”

He swallowed at your approaching self, very much distracted. “Wha-which movie?”

“Mirrors?”, you whispered questioningly, as if you weren’t sure what movie you’d watched. You planted a knee beside him on the bed, not climbing in yet, just looking pitifully helpless as you booped the tip of your index fingers together and looked at him from underneath your lashes. 

It took a second for Jeongguk to realise what you’d said. 

“Oh fuck no! I didn’t suggest shit. You were shit talking about me being a scaredy cat, so I told you I had watched mirrors alone in my room when I was in middle school.” He sat up properly, scowling at you. “Don’t tell me what I’m thinking, Y/n.”

You scowled back, all semblances of naïveté gone. “Shut up. You were acting all macho, trying to one up me. You were challenging me, don’t you try to deny it.”

“I was just stating facts, moron. Who told you to go watch it by yourself?”, Jeongguk barked, folding his arms across his chest, drawing your eyes to the flex of his biceps and his veiny forearms. 

You huffed an annoyed breath, looking away as you replied in a snarky voice. “Your mom.”

“Very mature. What the fuck do you want now?”

“Sheesh. Way to be rude to your roommate.”

“Y/n.”

“I just wanna sleep in your room tonight. That’s it. No big deal.” You threw up your hands, looking at him as if he was making a mountain out of a molehill. 

He smirked. “You scared? Did you piss your pants watching the movie?”

You rolled your eyes. “Now who’s being immature? It’s just that...there are a lot of...mirrors in my room.”

Jeongguk burst out laughing, doubling over on his bed. 

“Fuck off!”, you bitched, shoving him so he rolled over onto his back, his body shaking with mirth. “Did I make fun of you when you told me you wet your bed till you were seven?”

“Y-you...d-did.”, he wheezed, tears escaping his eyes. 

You straightened indignantly. “No I did not.”

Jeongguk caught his breath, still snickering a little. “Y/n you told the girl I was interested in that I wet my bed till I was ten. You even exaggerated the age, you little shit.”

You frowned, then shrugged, recalling the memory. “You should thank me, you dodged a bullet with that one, I can sniff out the bad apples.”

Jeongguk calmed down finally. “You’re not sleeping in my room.”

“Why not?!”, you whined. 

“I can’t sleep with someone beside me. You know that. I send all my hook ups home after sex or I leave their place.”

You wrinkled your nose. “Except I’m not really sleeping with you, figuratively. I just wanna shut my eyes while I’m a few feet away from you, on the same bed. You got a king sized one, there can be an ocean of bed between us and even if I starfish we won’t touch.”

“Still. Just the idea of someone beside me while I sleep,”, he shuddered dramatically. “Is enough to give me the creeps.”

“It’s just one night, weirdo.” You climbed over him, ignoring his grumbles. “I’m sure you’ll live. Besides you made your bed when you suggested me that movie and now you have to lie in it.”

“I did not—”

“Shhh.”, you shushed him as you settled on his bed, draping his amazing comforter over yourself. “Switch off the light, will you?”

Jeongguk called you a surprising variety of colourful names while you smiled and snuggled in. 

***

The next morning, he’d woken up with his head on your pillowy chest, one of his hands up your shirt and a leg over your thighs as you held him close. 

And it had been one of the best nights of sleep he’d ever had. He woke up refreshed, well rested and with a literal goofy smile on his face (and an erection in his pants), ready to tackle a mountain. He’d never suffered from insomnia before, but after sleeping with you it felt like he’d never had a good night’s sleep in his life before and you’d shown him the literal gates of REM heaven. 

And now he was suffering. You had shown him heaven, now his cold lonely bed was akin to sleeping on a grave, he felt an invisible force keeping him up all night. 

With one last expletive, he forced himself up from the bed, switching the light on as he trudged up to stand before his mirror, ignoring the clutter and the pillow on the floor. 

He rubbed his eyes, the dark circles underneath now easily discernible. He’d been working on zero sleep for three days and he wouldn’t be surprised if he started seeing hallucinations anytime now. He couldn’t go on like this. This morning, his contract law professor had almost thrown him out of his class because he was so tired and he had rested his head on the table. Ironically, even with the professor’s voice monotonously buzzing in the background he hadn’t been able to sleep. 

What kind of a student is unable to sleep in class?! This was getting embarrassing.

“Fuck it.”

Jeongguk threw open his door, marching to your room with conviction in his step. You owed him. He’ll just say he saw a scary movie too and needed you like you had needed him. Or he could just crash on your bed, making an excuse that his was suddenly infested with bed bugs or something. He didn’t know, he just needed you in his arms, spooning him, even if he had to sleep on the cold hard floor. As long as he could snuggle in the crook of your neck, like he’d done that fateful morning, he’d be alright. 

He pushed open your door rather forcefully. And found you sleeping peacefully atop your queen-sized bed, not a care in the world. 

Was it too much to expect that you’d be suffering like he was? That you’d be just as needful. 

Hell, it didn’t matter. 

He got to work. 

Making a beeline to the side of your bed, he looked down upon your sprawled form, like a sleep paralysis demon. 

Ascertaining the best angle for what he had in mind, he bent down and in one fell swoop, scooped you up in his arms, turned and headed for his final destination. 

Your blanket fell away as he clutched your body close to his chest, hurriedly leaving your room for his. He didn’t want to take any chances, he wanted a good night’s sleep in his own bed dammit. 

With his loot in his arms, he dashed for the cover of his home turf.

You arose with a snort. “Whuft the fufk?”, you mumbled through sleep-intoxicated lips, still high on melatonin as you came to, slowly realising your position. Suspended in the air, in Jeongguk’s arms (with one of his hands almost palming your ass) with your face smushed against his hard pecs. 

“What is happen—”

“Shh.”, he hushed you, much like you’d done three nights ago. Karma. “I’m just borrowing you for the night. Go back to sleep.”

“Wha?”, you mumbled, squirming as Jeongguk entered his bedroom, one lone lamp barely illuminating the surroundings. “Why?”

You were still half asleep, almost convincing yourself this was a dream, but then you felt Jeongguk’s very real, hard bulge against your hip as he settled you on the downy surface of his bed, making you startle with a yip, like a surprised small puppy. 

“Jeongguk, what is wrong with you?”, you asked, making to sit up but he grabbed your shoulders and easily made you horizontal once again. “What the hell are you doing?”

Your eyes widened when he got in beside you, pulling the comforter over you both, not answering your question.

But the dam broke when he reached for you, hooking his arm around your middle, making you yelp, as he pressed himself flush against you. Then he threw a leg over both of yours, effectively pining you down as his head came to rest beside yours on the pillow, his mouth at your ear. 

“I need you, okay!”, he mewled finally. Goosebumps broke out on your skin at the neediness in his voice. “I haven’t been able to get even a wink of sleep since that night you slept in my bed. I don’t know what the fuck kinda witchcraft you did, but I can’t sleep at all.”

You turned your head to look at him, your lips now a hairs breadth away, your eyes almost going cross trying to look at his. “And you thought having me back in your bed would solve that?”

“You were the catalyst for the last three harrowing nights, it has to be you. Besides, I’m at my wits end, I’m fucking tired and I want some goddamn sleep already. You have to be it.”

You swallowed at the desperation in his voice, but you couldn’t pass up the chance to tease. “One night in bed with me and look at you. Already coming back for more. Couldn’t resist, could you?”

He growled, squeezing you closer and hiding his face in your neck. “Shut up! It’s not about that. We didn’t even do anything. I just want some sleep.”

“Then why are you so hard?”

He froze. Slowly, his head poked out from his neck burrowing and he lifted himself up onto his elbow to look down at you. “My dick can’t differentiate between fuckable and out-of-bounds right now. Cut me some slack, my brain is fried from lack of sleep.”

You scowled. “Did you just call me unfuckable right now?”

“Ugh.” He went back to his burrowing, making your neck feel ticklish as he snuggled you up. “I didn’t say shit. Please let me sleep. We can do this in the morning when I’m not about to keel over any second.”

You blew a tired raspberry at his ceiling. “Knock yourself out.”

And he did. 

Just ten seconds later, his soft, cute snores reached your ears. He was out like a light while hugging you like you were his favourite stuffed animal. You looked down at his face. His pouty pink lips were almost touching your skin, making you shiver. The movement made him stir a little and he closed the remaining gap, now kissing the side of your neck. 

You almost groaned in frustration. He had no clue what he was doing to you. What he always did to you. It wasn’t his fault though, you hid your feelings for him under a mask of sarcasm and humour all the time, never having the courage to face them head on because you were deathly afraid.

Afraid of his rejection. You were cool because you were the no nonsense roommate who always had a quip on her tongue and never asked him for more than friendship. You were cool because you never went down the feelings route with him, unlike every other girl he met. 

And you were aware how those girls ended up. Tossed to the curb after a night of sex because really, that was all he’d ever promised and how they could even entertain the notion of him changing his mind after being in bed with them once, as if they had a golden pussy, you didn’t know. 

He never changed his mind or slept with the same girl twice. You would know. You’d heard female moans of every possible pitch and frequency possible. But you’d also seen the same scene of them running out of his room, with mascara tinged tears running down their cheeks and hickies covering their chest, as they screamed about him being the biggest asshole on the planet too many times to count. One too many times to ever end up as one among the line of them leaving his bed in tears even before it was morning. Because usually he told them to leave after they were done with their marathon sex, something about not being able to sleep beside someone. A few fleeting hours of bliss and a glimpse of what it feels like to have him in your arms before he shattered all those dreams with a, “Do you wanna take the guest room or can I call you a cab?”

Oh but what you wouldn’t give to always be in his bed like this. Night after night. Being close to him, in any way, shape or form, made your body sing with giddiness and your soul float with euphoria. It was the best kind of high. 

He was a drug to you and maybe that’s why you had made up the story of watching a horror movie and being scared to sleep alone three nights ago. You had in fact watched the movie but you were far from scared. 

You had just been craving him, your Jeongguk addiction rooting the idea of the movie as an excuse to be close to him for one night and not leave his room in tears shortly after. 

One night of sleeping close to him was all you’d imagined you’d get. You never thought he’d come back and ask for more. 

And hold you like a drowning man holds a buoy thrown to him. 

Turning your face to gaze at him, you slowly brought your hand to card through his thick, long hair. His lashes fanned his cheeks adorably but you could also see the bags under his eyes. Apart from his steady breathing, he slept like the dead, his heavy weight on you comforting rather than suffocating. 

A small smile graced your lips. You were hopelessly in love with this boy and he didn’t have a clue. Caressing the hair off his forehead, you leaned forward to press a kiss to his forehead. A tender, loving gesture you wouldn’t be caught dead doing if he was awake. 

Replete with such thoughts, you didn’t realise when you slipped into a peaceful sleep. 

~•~•~

Jeongguk woke up before you as usual, you were never one to wake up on your own if there wasn’t an alarm blaring in your ear or him snatching away your blankets. 

But this time he didn’t want to get up either. The clock on his wall showed it was 7 am. It was a Saturday. There’s something about waking up early on an off day and realising you can sleep in, that satisfies you to the core. Especially when you have your very own human-shaped body pillow beside you. 

He chuckled, nuzzling into the skin at your clavicle, sometime during the night he’d decided your chest was the best place to rest his head again. He’d slept so soundly, he felt so well rested after so long that the there was no other conclusion but that he was right, you had ruined him for solo sleep forever. Whatever. He could get used to cozy mornings like these. 

He opened his eyes and immediately went still, his heart starting to hammer in his chest. 

What seemed like perfectly decent sleep attire on you last night, was anything but now. Your tank was barely covering your chest and you were not wearing a bra. Your boobs almost spilling out from the top in what was the sexiest display of cleavage he’d ever seen. Or maybe the morning wood in his pants was steering his brain. 

He clenched his eyes closed. He wasn’t supposed to see you this way. You were strictly out of limits. As his roommate and friend, he couldn’t afford to club you in with all the other girls he had dalliances with. Because that’s all they were, one and done. And you deserved so much more. 

Right. He needed to get control of himself and stop thinking with his dick. Your friendship was too important to fuck up. 

When he opened his eyes again, it was to raise his head and peer down at you. 

Far from being perfect, you looked like a squished dumpling in sleep. Your hair all over your face, lips slightly parted and puffy cheeks. And was that drool? 

Yes, far from perfect.

But so fucking beautiful to him, he almost forgot to breathe for a moment. 

Was anything more blissful in life than this? Waking up well rested and with you in his arms looking so damn cute he could eat you. 

And he wanted to eat you. Both literally and figuratively, he imagined you’d taste almost divine between your legs but he was also feeling some type of way. The feeling that no matter how much you try, you want to get so close to a person that you forget where you end and they begin. It’s an all encompassing feeling of wanting to be in them and them being in you. 

His chest constricted when you stirred a little, scrunching your nose, irritated with the hair on your face. With one hand he rubbed at the place where his heart was having trouble beating and with the other he softly brushed the errant strands behind your ear. 

Was it so bad to want you as more than a friend? He wanted to fuck you, yes, but he also wanted to hold you so tight and listen to you complain about him not showering that day. He wanted to make some banana pancakes and have them in bed with you. With maybe a little whipped cream on your nipples for him to taste. He wanted to watch horror movies with you, then tease you about not letting you sleep with him. 

But that would never happen. He never wanted to go back to sleeping in an empty bed again.

Slowly but surely his thoughts were leading him towards an epiphany. 

When a ray of light fell over your face as he moved a little, he immediately moved his body to block it again. Carefully getting up so as not to wake you, he sealed his curtains closed, returning to sprawl beside you once more. 

He had his head rested on his palm, his elbow propping him up as he stroked your soft cheek with the other. 

It was a fact of the matter, he had long since realised, that he would not be able to sleep if you weren’t by his side anymore. And if the kind of way a night of sleep beside you left him feeling, he didn’t want to go back to the way things were before. Inevitably, his mind led him to how a night of love making would be with you. Love making because right at this moment, that’s what his body was buzzing to do to you. Slow, leisurely, sleepy morning sex. 

The fact that he was imagining having any kind of morning sex was monumental for him, because usually his hook-ups consisted of fucking through the night and ducking away from wherever he was in the wee hours of the morning or offering his fuck-buddies the guest bed. Which, nine times out of ten, they took none too kindly. 

What were you doing to him? 

He didn’t know. But he had no choice but to find out. 

That is why when you opened your eyes, you found him gazing down at you with the softest expression on his face. 

And a question for you. 

“Will you go out with me, Y/n?”

a/n: let me know what you thought!

[sariahsue]

I just saw your take one Lilo&Stitch's approach to child protection and I was wondering if you could give some advice on how to write realistic stuff in this matter? I've been meaning to write a foster care/adoption fic and I do know the system in France must be at least a little different - and I will get down the research hole once I have a bit more time - but do you have any advice on how to write the kids reactions, the way parents deal with everything, the bonding part... things like this, so I can avoid clichés.

You don't have to answer though, feel free to ignore all this akdjwja I just figured there's no harm in asking XD

Yeah, sure! (To anyone else reading this who has a fic, feel free to send me a message if you have questions!) I’m definitely not the most knowledgeable person, but I know quite a bit. And I’m sure things are a bit different in France (hopefully their court system is better - yikes!) but I think the human element would be pretty similar, so here we go. 

First off, know that everyone is foster care is having a rough time constantly. Foster kids, workers, parents, foster parents, foster siblings. And no one knows what’s going on long term. There’s always a lot of uncertainty. Will the kids go home soon? Are parental rights going to be terminated at the next court date? Who knows???

The birth parents, at best, are going through a really tough time in their life, made worse because their kids were taken away from them. Some care about their kids, but they’re extremely self-centered and have zero parents skills. Some are manipulative and see foster care as free babysitting, and as long as they get to see their kid for an hour or so a week, this arrangement is fantastic for them! At worst, they’re just horrible human beings who abuse children. In general, most parents are clueless and selfish and pretty manipulative. They say they’re good parents and have no clue why their kids were taken away, even though their kid has cigarette burn marks on their back, or had to eat out of the garbage to survive because the were left alone for hours at a time when they were four, or worse. They have no clue at all what their behavior does to their kids, and they refuse to listen to anyone who tries to explain it to them.

No matter what type of parents they were, their kids ALWAYS love them and want to go home. Every single one of them. No matter the age. No matter what their home life put them through. Some of them aren’t old enough to understand why they can’t go home. Some have been in foster care for years and hardly remember living at home but still want to go home.  

It makes for complicated foster relationships sometimes because the kid will be attached to both birth and foster parents and feel guilty or conflicted or disloyal, or they’ll try really hard not to be attached to the foster parents in the first place. (I can think of only one exception to this. Two sisters who had been put into another home and liked the foster family and decided that they were going to be adopted by this family and were very excited about it... except the foster family had no plans to adopt them. I never learned what happened there.) 

And this is before accounting for the mental health struggles that often accompany the trauma most of them have been through. Some kids come in with anxiety that makes it difficult to trust new people. Some kids’ behavior is so extreme that it’s difficult for foster parents to take care of them, and so the kid moves around constantly. (If their behavior is too bad, they can sometimes be put into either a group home or residential, either temporarily or permanently.)

Parents are also entitled to visits, usually either weekly or every other week, at least while the goal is reunification (which is always starts out as). Before the pandemic, these usually took place in the DCF (Department of Children and Families is what it’s called in my state) office or in a visitation center. Sometimes the court orders that the visits be supervised so they don’t start promising their kids that they’re coming to get them next week. Often the workers think that sitting down the hallway not listening counts as supervision. 🙄 

With the pandemic, kids have been meeting over Zoom. That’s being phased out pretty soon here. Kids are almost always triggered by these visits. I mean, they look forward to them usually. Some kids are mad at their parents and don’t want to talk to them, but almost always, they want to see their parents. And almost always whatever behavior problems they had before is extremely worse for the next 2-5 days. (Which is terrible if you get a visit every week.) Some parents bail on these visits regularly. Some consistently bail on only birthdays and Christmas. We’ve learned not to tell the kid that they have a visit coming up until we know it’s definitely happening, or sometimes only right before we’re planning on leaving to go, because the anticipation of a visit is triggering or because getting stood up by your own mother is traumatizing. Sometimes you can get the kid’s therapist to write a note asking for the visits to be less frequent for the kid’s sake, but often that just means every other week instead of every week.

For foster families welcoming kids into their home, it’s a little different. They’re often more stable, and their whole life isn’t shifting around them. They’re just getting one or two kids into the family. The home dynamic is going to be a little different. Nothing huge, compared to what the foster kids are going through. It often depends on the kid how fast you get attached. Sometimes you know kids are only going to be there for a month because their normal foster family had to deal with an emergency, but the plan is to take them back soon. Sometimes they’re adorable babies and you get super attached really, really fast. Sometimes they’re so unhappy and scared that they make your home life completely miserable. Sometimes you’ve seen so many kids come and go over the years, and they’ve all left eventually, and your heart becomes guarded to protect you from that pain. But you get attached eventually anyway. 

And sometimes your parents are given a newborn whose goal is reunification and it’s love at first sight even though you don’t know if you can keep him, and then he’s put up for adoption when he’s two and you adopt him SO HARD. And then you make future foster kids upset because you can’t adopt them too. :( And even though they get adopted by friends of yours, they still feel conflicted over it four years later. 

You would think that a kid raised completely in their adoptive home from birth would have no problems, and sometimes that’s the case. Sometimes they still get upset about the adoption when they’re older because the foundational belief they have about themselves is that their mother didn’t want them, even though it’s not true. 

(This is the real-life story of my brother. We are the only family he’s ever known, and he’s 13 now, but he still has issues over being adopted. The other boy is 16 and is doing much better with his new family now, though he still has some issues. We had him for a very long time, and we were all happy that we know his adoptive family well because we stayed it contact with him, which almost never happens when a foster kid leaves.)

Oh, I forgot one thing. Usually when kids first get to your house, they are perfect little angels for a while. Depending on the kid, it’s either a couple days or maybe even three months. It’s called the “honeymoon period.” Once their subconscious realizes that this is a safe place to work on their issues and they aren’t in physical danger, they start to process what they’ve been through. It comes out in a variety of ways. Behavioral issues, bedwetting, explosive anger, nightmares, etc.

A note about social workers: All the workers (at least in my state) constantly have too many cases. Like, double what they’re legally supposed to have. Most of them try hard to keep up. Some DO NOT CARE. Some are fantastic and put extra time in to go to the kid’s end-of-the-school-year recitals and build a relationship with them. They’re in charge of organizing visits and making sure the kids have everything set up and are generally important in the kid’s life. They’re required to visit once a month and make sure foster parents have all the right paperwork and arrange dentist visits and bring them to all their therapy appointments. (FYI, You get a piece of paper that says you’re the legal guardian. You have to show it to schools and doctors when you make arrangements for the kids. My mom also keeps a copy in her purse, just in case a kid starts screaming “HELP! SHE’S NOT MY MOM” in the middle of the store or something. It’s never happened, but you know, just in case.)

Also, you would think that they’re the constant in the kid’s life, but if the birth parents move, the case gets transferred to another office in the state, and so the social workers switch. I sincerely hope that’s not how things are done in France because it’s garbage for a lot of reasons.

Okay, I’ve written you an essay, but I hope it was a useful essay! Let me know if you have any more questions!

[msgrumpygills]

Social Media Anon Here!

Firstly, never change Grumpy ;) you are probably the only person on Tumblr to LISTEN to another view and let it change a prejudice.

Secondly, the Padagram/Social Media change bus continues. Don't be fooled people will be looking at positive and negative reactions to that change on social media.

So here goes!

1. They are starting to market season 2 of Walker in Hiatus. That really doesn't happen. That means they know they need to target new viewers. They are acknowledging they have a problem. The main problem is Jared either didn't learn enough about production quality on SPN (Jensen/Misha were both more interested in behind the camera's) or that he thought he could stick a Stetson on and we all had such sh1t for brains we'd watch anything. So they need a viewer boost DESPARATELY and are going all out to (a) persuade Walkers remaining viewer(s) that it's worth sticking around and (b) get back old viewers or convert 1m+ viewers to season 2. So now we see all the cast (and Keegan has more followers than Jared and Lindsay has a VERY engaged following) trying to persuade their followers how fabulous Walker is. Expect this scrabbling to continue if they want their COVID paychecks.

2. Connected to 1, Jared has started trying to break out of the fandom bubble. I don't think he's trying for power couple (the clue in a power couple is that two FAMOUS people get together and create a super brand, here we have one niche C famous guy and a hanger on wife), I think we are in Jared profile raising and trying to raise his recognition score, which is probably a little low having half assed it in the last year and a half. He's doing it by scatter-gunning so I'm not sure it's going to stick.

3. Connected to 2,

(i) if I run my algorithm clean laptop with a "Jared Padalecki" news search, I get (a) a daily mail article on Jared "clarifying the rift" (b) a "hello" magazine saying he's been "inundated with support after death of "family member"" (c) the new york times article on Walker and Supernatural. It then goes into a variety of articles about Jared raising money for Holly's family (fucking atrocious in my view to use her death for publicity) and a series of derivative articles on his mantrum and later explanation. ONLY THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE MENTIONS WALKER other than as a throw away, all of the others link to Supernatural only. Walker isn't on the main radar of anyone as a show. It's not mainstream enough to mention. it has ZERO buzz.

(ii) if I run the same search on my compromised tablet, I get a SEA of fluff articles "jared padalecki goes to venice", "jared padalecki's wife wishes him a happy birthday" "jared padalecki goes to watch soccer" "jared padalecki goes to the wrestling". I'm expecting "Jared Padalecki defecates regularly" tomorrow.

At the end of that I get the same articles as in (i) but the majority of his publicity is still going through the fandom and the, not very viewed, endless zine type websites that update on every episode of every geek show every day.

So we are seeing, and I expect it to continue, a break out Padalecki, (who knows he and his forehead may wish to have a final crack at films), and a fluff Padalecki, trying to stay relevant a year after SPN relevance ended, because he hasn't got the same push for season 2 of Walker as he had for season 1 and Walker has zero presence. No one, not even the fans are talking about Walker.

Will it work? I don't think so. Keegan has 7m followers on Insta and that's because he's a photographer and writer and it's interesting. I would follow his account (I don't), but certainly it isn't a Walker instagram.

Jared is a clever guy, but he's boring on social media. He has a limited appeal. He does family snaps, hunk snaps, flogs orange pee and flogs his show. He says "family" and "mantra" a lot but that's really it. The clue is, if you didn't know who he was and came across his instagram you wouldn't follow him. Why would you? For a video of a guy running up steps? A smug picture of two middle aged men trying to flog you something?... (oh and lots of "brother" comments on Keegan's social media, which is irritating. It's like he thinks that is his repeatable formula and it isn't).

His media approach won't work because advertising and exposure pushes a product. In TV's case, it's not a one off product and there is a lot of competition. Product Jared needs to be more interesting (his mantrum's are the only exciting thing about him - and that is tragic) and his TV show just needs to be BETTER, well, a LOT BETTER.

Soooo, expect the Padapush to continue, but it's not about a couple, it's about individual marketing and for Jared breaking out of SPN bubble. For Gen, it's her tag along profile that she'll never break out of. She'll have to be satisfied with her superpower of being able to persuade people to buy toothbrush's and dog food (if she can).

Expect though the couple's bit to die off a little. Jared is getting over exposed. His engagement rating is plummeting (nearly 3% is a plummet) because of the repetitive photo content. He'll have to back off or people will switch off (I have already). What makes me laugh is.... from the dawn of time when cavemen took their wives 2 miles away for a new cave weekend.... NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN INTERESTED IN SOMEONE ELSE'S HOLIDAY SNAPS.... Gen and Jared apparently need to learn that lesson...

I might stop these posts now because, well, it's gotta be a bit boring for you and I write LONG. :)

Stay safe and wear your masks ;) xxx

I don’t want you to ever ever change, lovely! Also, I’m NEVER bored by your messages! You put so much effort into the research you do and the messages you send and it’s appreciated! <3 

I started following Lindsey on IG because she seems pretty genuine, and her cat is way too cute! Plus, I like her attitude. I haven’t followed her for the whole Walker season, but even she doesn’t post a lot about it. She posts interviews and then posts about that night’s episode, but other than that, nothing.  Can’t speak for Keegan, but how are fans and non-fans supposed to be excited about a show when the people STARRING in the show can’t be bothered? Maybe they’re all aware of how shitty it is or maybe they’re lazy, but it doesn’t make sense. 

I’m always interested to see the difference in an “algorithm-free” setting and one that has an algorithm. I always figured Google was the same for everyone, but seeing the difference in articles you’ve outlined is insane. It really just goes to show that Jared isn’t the star that his stans think he is. He’s not as important as they think he is, he’s just an actor.  It’s even more jarring to see just how little Walker is talked about at all. All of my devices probably have been “contaminated” when it comes to algorithm so I can’t really speak personally about the public and fans talking about Walker or not talking about it. I can say that on the posts about Walker from the Supernatural Facebook page, a good chunk of the comments are people saying they stopped watching, never got into it, or thought it was trash. There are only a handful of comments talking about how they enjoy the show. 

I think it was disgusting for him to use a fan’s passing for publicity. And no, I don’t think it was anything other than a PR stunt. Her family had a GFM going that was promoted by plenty of the case INCLUDING GEN, so you know he knew about it. But for him to make his own special one and then have articles posted everywhere about how charitable he is? That’s gross PR bullshit and I hope it backfires. 

I still follow a few Supernatural fans, Jared fans, Jensen fans, etc. on Tumblr and even they aren’t mentioning it. I think maybe the hardcore Jared stans post gifsets or whatever, but I don’t see much praise for the show itself, just Jared’s looks. Even the fans aren’t biting and that would make me reevaluate everything if I was Jared. 

I'm expecting "Jared Padalecki defecates regularly" tomorrow. This made me laugh way too hard!

who knows he and his forehead may wish to have a final crack at films You are on a ROLL!  Maybe I’ve become biased, but I can’t see Jared doing films. I mean, I could see him doing like a side character role or something small, but I can’t see him having a big part of a movie. Like I said, maybe that’s me being biased but I see him staying in TV. I could be proven wrong, but I don’t know. 

I agree about Jared being boring on SM. I used to get some giggles from his Twitter posts and even some of his early IG posts because they were goofy, clever, and candid. It showed his humor and was more personable. Now it’s just all fake and comes off as someone whose only motivation to engage with fans is money and that’s a big turn off. 

For me personally, I think that if instead of the “couple goals” bullshit that they try to push for their lavish trips, if they just posted cool pictures they took of different locations, activities, food or whatever, that would be more palatable than all the “Look at my hubster and I! We’re in Italy! Look at how in love we are!” But maybe that’s because I’ve become a bit of a photography nerd? 

I guess time will tell whether or not Jared will make positive changes and if Walker can be saved, but I’m not really optimistic about it. 

I AM optimistic about your takes on things so keep them coming! Long posts or not, I love them! <3

[selene-tempest]

How to care for your John Tracy

So, you want to get a John?

Before deciding that a John Tracy is the one for you, you must first realise that they take a lot of specialist care, time and attention that you must be willing to put in if you wish to get the best out of your John.

When taking on a John Tracy one must approach as you would a feral cat, making no sudden movements, do not attempt to touch or grab on first meeting. Allow him to size you up, get used to your presence and approach in his own time and at his own pace.

This could take minutes, hours, days, weeks or longer, there is no set time frame in getting a John to trust you, it varies from person to person. You must be prepared for setbacks and times when it might seem like an impossible task. They require regular reinforcement of their socialising, lots of praise and quiet support.

If you do not have the time, patience or love to devote to your John then we suggest you consider adopting a different breed of Tracy, they are many and varied. For a readily sociable one we suggest you try a Scott or a Gordon, both of which are friendly from the offset and easily tamed with the offer of food.

If a quieter Tracy is still needed but one that is less skittish than the John breed then maybe a Virgil is better suited to your situation. Or if you want one you can play with a lot, then an Alan would be perfect for you. A Tracy is a lifetime commitment so take your time in choosing the right one for you.

Personality traits:

If you do decided that the John is still for you then you will find that all the time and effort you put in is incredibly rewarding. Once you have proved yourself to a John you will find that it will go from a hissing, trembling, retreating ball of anxiety to a purring, snuggling pussy cat that is happy to cuddle for as long as you wish and is, in general, a pretty laid back, chilled addition to your life and household.

Contrary to popular belief a John Tracy is not an antisocial being, this is misinformation that has been circulated due to their quiet nature and contentment in their own company. A John Tracy is by nature actually an asocial introvert (see below pictures).

Once your John Tracy is used to you and has adapted to your ways he will be the most loving, wonderful, affectionate, caring, engaging, sweet, adorable, funny and friendly creature in the world. When he is allowed to do so on his terms in a way that makes him feel safe and secure, of course.

A John Tracy does not hate people or dislike interacting with them, he simply does not do well in crowds and social situations in which he is not prepared or comfortable. Then he may feel overwhelmed and react in a way that society sees as negatively, although for a John social anxiety is perfectly normal and acceptable and should be treated as such. A John is perfect as he is.

Your John Tracy requires a safe and secure place that he can retreat to when feeling overwhelmed or over stimulated, but on the whole, if allowed to come out of his shell and interact without being pushed, forced or tricked he will be perfectly content. John's need positive reinforcement, kind words and to be made to feel secure and loved from the start, this is the only way to bond with one.

A John Tracy is a devoted, loyal and loving creature that is known to mate for life, as do most other breeds of Tracy. A Tracy is a delightful companion that you will not be able to live without once you have one.

Unfortunately, many people will just not work out with a John Tracy, the very reason that so many varieties of this breed are left abandoned in space stations around earth's orbit.

Many see them as hard to socialise and grow impatient with their John, wanting him to act a certain way in a certain length of time, none of which is conducive to a happy and healthy John.

This is often seen as a fatal flaw in the John breed of Tracy, but many John enthusiasts insist that that is part of their attraction. The introverted tendencies of the John is in no way a flaw, it is part of what makes this particular breed of Tracy so special and so desirable to the right person.

John's make very good companions and they are well worth the additional effort that you will have to put in.

Feeding:

John's are not demanding in the food department and you will have to be prepared to offer food at regular intervals as they hardly ever seek it out for themselves.

Your John will try to exist on a diet of bagels and cheeseburgers but this is not good for them and, as much as they may protest or go on hunger strikes, you must continue to offer them a variety of options in your quest to ensure they eat enough to survive.

The same rules apply to keeping them hydrated, they will naturally gravitate towards coffee and occasionally water but they need to include fruit juices, herbal teas and the occasional meal replacement if they have been in a particularly stubborn mood, which they are regularly inclined to slip into.

Nothing is more stubborn than a Tracy breed and the John is one of the worst.

Exercising:

Your John will take care of itself in the exercise department although, once bonded to their person, a John will often try to entice you, or can be easily tempted itself, into playtime and physical activity.

When left to its own devices a John Tracy will spend many hours running, either outside in nature or indoors on an exercise ring. This helps to keep them healthy and fit for their jobs, for all Tracys are working creatures, all highly trained in their fields.

A John will also enjoy playing in water, such as swimming or diving and some extreme sports if it sparks his interest as John's are very athletic and flexible.

John's not only require physical exercise but mental agility training too. They have a very active, inquisitive and engaging brain and enjoy problem solving, organisation and stimulating intellectual conversations.

John's like to work with their hands and are very good with computers and AI's but be warned, they are also very good at hacking and you will have very little privacy with a John in your life.

Housing needs:

You John will require extensive housing to stay happy and content. He will require not only the run of your house with the ability to explore every single inch of your property but also his own specialist housing.

John's require a lot of space, both in the social way, the physical way and the outer space way. Do not deprive him of these essentials.

He will require access to both indoor and outdoor housing of the tropical island variety as well as his own space station.

Now this might seem excessive but it is a necessary part of having a John. John Tracys require extended periods of time in Zero-Gravity in order to both thrive but also stay calm and in control. John's like to feel weightless and to indulge whenever the urge takes them so you will have to be prepared to spend large amounts of time without your John in attendance.

John's prefer quieter surroundings to noise and will often take themselves off to hide if they are over stimulated and surrounded by other noisy Tracy breeds. You cannot stop this, it is part of the John's nature and you have to accept this if you wish to have one of your own. Attempting to force a John into socialising when he does not wish to is an unpleasant, cruel and unfair action and should never be undertaken if there is any other option.

John's also require a number of soft surfaces on which to stretch out, relax and be quiet. John's seem to require very little sleep and are very active both in body and mind for long periods before they crash out completely and need time to re energise themselves.

Appearance:

John's come in a variety of Ginger and Blond colours and are on the taller end of the Tracy spectrum. Long, lean and sleekly muscled the John is a beautiful specimen of Tracy breeding and very pleasing to look at.

Their hair is of the softest quality and, when a John is relaxed and content in your presence, they often enjoy it being stroked and petted, this pleases them and helps them to stay calm and sleepy.

John's have arguably the prettiest eyes of any Tracy breed, although lovers of the Scott, Virgil, Gordon or Alan breeds will beg to differ saying that blues and browns are nicer.

John's sometimes have a questionable dress sense when allowed to please themselves but their standard blue is figure forming and pleasing to behold.

Petting and affection:

John's can be extremely affectionate when they feel comfortable with someone. It just takes them a long time to get there.

John's do not like sudden movements or to be grabbed or forced into affection by someone they do not know well and are not already comfortable with. Unexpected affection from someone that is not one of their chosen people will cause them to freeze like a fainting goat and adopt the tactic of play dead until the threat goes away.

But when a John is comfortable it very much enjoys attention, affection and love.

As mentioned above, John's are an introverted breed of Tracy and allowances have to be made for them. They do not respond well to being forced out of their comfort zones or into interacting when they do not want to.

When a John wishes to interact they will be friendly, approachable and funny. They will happily join in with family activities and events but be aware that they may require additional quiet time after to recharge. This is just the way of the John.

Additional tips and information :

-Respect your John's boundaries. They will make it clear with body language if they are comfortable or not even if they do not verbalise it.

-John's are sensitive and they will respond with sarcasm when they feel threatened or attacked.

-John's cannot be forced into anything they don't want to do. They cannot be moved if they don't want to move. They cannot be tricked or cajoled, they are too smart, give up now.

-John's love their family more than anything and are fiercely protective of them. Never get in between a John and another Tracy breed. You will come off worse.

-John's have a death stare that might actually kill you. You have been warned.

-John's are generally very sensible, until it comes to a challenge between other Tracys, they are extremely competitive creatures and nothing will stop them.

-John's are logical and organised.

-John's do not respond well to blackmail, trickery, deception or engineered situations.

-A John is perfect as it is, never try to change it or force it to be something that it isn't.

-Being socially avoidant is only one part of his personality and it's only when you take the time to get to know him that you will see the rest.

All in all, we can highly recommend bringing a Tracy into your life, they are wonderful creatures and well worth your time and energy. Just think carefully before you choose a John as they require the most love, patience and attention.

(John pic curtesy of @misssquidtracy)

[stark-tony]

tododeku fic recs

* = incomplete

meet you again someday (after we take the long way ’round) by theroyalsavage

summary: Midoriya Izuku's life is saved by a boy with the strongest Quirk he has ever seen. 

Eventually - inevitably - he falls in love.(An AU in which Todoroki never attends UA, they never clash at the sports festival, but they come together all the same.)

pairings: tododeku

tags: hurt/comfort

warnings: none

that is just the way by celestialfics

summary:  Shouto has his first sleepover.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff

warnings: none

what is right and what is easy by theroyalsavage

summary: Midoriya Izuku is not chosen to represent Hogwarts in the Triwizard Tournament. He does not slay a dragon, or rescue innocents, or brave a maze of dark magic. He does not win accolades, or fame, or glory.

Instead, Izuku meets the son of the greatest dark wizard of the age, a Durmstrang student with hair like a sunrise and eyes like a war. And maybe, he just might win something else.

pairings: tododeku, kiribaku, tsuchako

tags: fluff, angst

warnings: none

First Time For Everything by kazzarole

summary: Midoriya is the catalyst of many of the 'firsts' in Shouto's life--it just makes sense that Shouto should share his first kiss with him, too.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff

warnings: none

alone together by celestialfics

summary:  Five times when other Class 1-A kids notice Todoroki and Midoriya in their own world.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff

warnings: none

A Simple Warmth by patster223

summary: “I’m trying to make Todoroki a sweater for his birthday, but…” Izuku pokes at the tangle of yarn. “It’s more complicated than I thought it would be.”

In which Izuku sucks at knitting, his classmates are eager to help out, Todoroki finally gets to be cozy, and knitting is a vector for romance.

pairings: tododeku

tags: 

warnings: none

Conventional Taste by WowBoring

summary: He didn’t think it would matter if Midoriya were taking him to a sewer convention; it was probably still going to be the highlight of his Golden Week.

In order to avoid a visit from his unpleasant grandparents Todoroki attends a hero convention with Midoriya, and learns a few things along the way.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff

warnings: abuse

pls respond by Esselle

summary: 'Midoriya: UR SO CUTE

Shouto chokes on nothing. How is he supposed to respond to that? Is he supposed to respond at all?

Midoriya: Look at your big head aaaaaaaaaaaaah Midoriya: *Image Attached*

Oh, Shouto thinks. He was talking about Shouto's Nitotan, which is now smashed to one of Izuku's cheeks in the image Izuku just sent, as Izuku squeezes it joyfully. Even if Izuku wasn't talking to him directly, the butterflies in Shouto's stomach feel a bit joyful, too.

He types out: I wish I were that Nitotan right now. Then he snorts, and erases it.'

--

Izuku has a wide variety of special moves, but his Key Smash might be the most powerful of all.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff, humor

warnings: none

i can keep a secret, could you? by handcrusher (ameliafromafairytale)

summary: The last thing Todoroki wants is for his father to figure out that 1) he's gay and 2) he's dating the boy he's supposed to overcome as a hero. So, he and Midoriya devise a plan.

Just how long can they keep it up?

pairings: tododeku, tsuchako, momojirou

tags: 

warnings: 

hold on tight by lunalou

summary: "What are you doing?" Shouto asks.

"Hugging you." Midoriya returns in a patient voice. His arms tighten around Shouto's waist and he presses his forehead more firmly against his back. "You know it's a hug, Shouto-kun. Don't play dumb."

or, five times somebody from 1-a hugs todoroki and the one time he hugs them first

pairings: tododeku

tags: 

warnings: 

If I'm Being Honest.... by I_dont_know_man

summary: Midoriya scrunched up his nose in confusion. “Uh, Shouto, why are you glaring at me like that?”

“I-” Todoroki began to lie, until nausea slammed him like a door to any room that Bakugou entered. “I--” Todoroki grit his teeth, and glared daggers into the wall behind Midoriya. Goodbye, friendship. It had been absolutely divine while it lasted. “Because you’re very attractive.”

They say honesty is the best policy, but it sure as hell had a knack for Todoroki making a complete and utter fool of himself. 

  In which Todoroki is placed under a mysterious truth-telling quirk and suffers, Uraraka laughs at him, Midoriya is confused but smitten nonetheless, and Twitter is the thirstiest site on the planet.

pairings: tododeku, kiribaku

tags: humor, fluff

warnings: 

Guiding Light by furihatachlookie

summary:  It was his mother's idea to enroll him at the local elementary school. His father believed a private tutor was better, but nobody can argue with a mother who's made up her mind, and a balanced exposure to kids his own age sways his father's judgement enough to agree and sign the papers.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff, angst

warnings: 

Todoroki and Yaoyorozu's Elite Study Club by hanwritesstuff (hannahkannao)

summary: “Well, as I see it, we have two options.” Shouto holds up two fingers. “We can either ignore this and pretend it never happened or... not.” He doesn't know which one he wants. “What does not entail, exactly?” Yaoyorozu asks. “...I don't know.”

In which Todoroki accidentally learns something about Yaoyorozu, Yaoyorozu accidentally learns something about Todoroki, and they spend a considerable portion of their study sessions... not studying.s

pairings: tododeku, momojirou

tags: fluff, humor

warnings:

Do What You Will, If That's What You Want by stanzas

summary: “What do you mean you’re retiring?” Bakugou asks nicely, or at least as nicely as someone like Bakugou can ask. The question is phrased more like a demand.“

Call it a mid-life crisis,” Shouto answers, like Bakugou asked him what the weather would be tomorrow, and takes a deep sip from his coffee. “I’m thinking of changing careers.”

The world of heroes is quick to adapt to surprises, but Pro Hero Entropy’s (very premature) retirement announcement throws almost everyone for a pretty impressive loop.

pairings: tododeku

tags: hurt/comfort, angst, humor

warnings:

extra, extra! by rythyme (pugglemuggle)

summary: Shouto & Creati: ACTUALLY Dating?! by Hitachi Hitomi at September 18, 2047 3:42 pm."Ever since heartthrob 

Todoroki Shouto and the Everything Hero "Creati" made their official debuts, the two 22-year-old heroes have been nothing but professional towards each other. But was this all a sham to cover up the truth?" 

Or: The media thinks Shouto and Creati are dating. Hint: they aren't. A multimedia TodoDeku & MomoJirou fanfic told through news articles, gossip columns, twitter, tumblr, text messages, and more.

pairings: tododeku, momojirou

tags: fluff, humor

warnings:

you broke the dark and my whole earth shook by aloneintherain

summary:  Shouto had imagined himself as the country’s top hero for decades. Endeavour had put those images in his head when he was a child, and they had stayed there, growing like a fungus, until Shouto had reached adulthood. Even now, he was only just beginning to realise he didn’t have to live his life according to almost thirty-year-old decisions made by his abuser. He could do more. Be more. Outside of the hero community.

Izuku gets a job offer in America. Somehow, this brings Shouto and Izuku closer than ever before.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff, hurt/comfort

warnings:

count your blessings, not your flaws by PitViperOfDoom

summary:  Midoriya Izuku has never been asked out, confessed to, or flirted with, except as a joke.

pairings: tododeku

tags: angst, hurt/comfort

warnings: bullying

call the fire department (i'm burning up with love) by Edgedancer

summary:  An (abridged) list of things Todoroki Shouto did not have before U.A.: Loud neighbors. Fire alarms. Friends. Midoriya Izuku.

pairings: tododeku

tags:

warnings:

long nights and daydreams by dreamtowns

summary: According to the public, Pro Heroes Deku and Entropy are an amazing Hero Duo, best friends, and the most eligible bachelors in the world. According to their fans, they’re head over heels in love with one another yet oblivious to the others’ feelings. According to their friends and family, they’ve been in love with one another since high school, but, for reasons unknown to them, refuse to act upon said feelings.

According to said heroes, they have been (secretly) married for six years.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff, hurt/comfort

warnings: 

extra-salty/twitter-verse series by SportsAnimeRuinedMyLife (KnightOfRage)

summary:  In his third year at UA, Todoroki Shouto works in a burger place, catches on fire and falls in love. Only two of those things are on purpose.

Or...Todoroki Shouto's exciting adventures in customer service.

part one of the extra salty/twitter-verse

pairings: tododeku, kiribaku

tags: fluff, humor

warnings: none

More Than Skin-Deep by Emmeri

summary: It was a fact, really. That he was ugly. Having a scar which takes up half his face kind of does that, in Todoroki's eyes. So why does he overhear the girls call him the class pretty boy?

He'll just have to ask Midoriya about it; he has too little filter to tell anything but the truth.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff, angst

warnings: 

Your Biggest Fan by Latios

summary: He opens the bag on the floor to see what could have been left in there-- and promptly freezes, staring at the contents inside.

“Midoriya.” He calls.

“Hm?”

“You bought our hero merch?”

~

Aka, Class 1-A starts to see themselves appear on merchandise in their local stores. Todoroki tries not to buy things, and fails.

pairings: tododeku

tags: fluff, humor

warnings: 

Marry The Mole by Haurvatat

summary: “You're going to break up with him before he can propose.”

The hands went down and the steel wall of Midoriya's entire being went up. “...Excuse me?”

“And in return-” Enji gritted his teeth, “-I will deposit 20 million yen in your checking account.”

-

The gay drama fic based on a tumblr post absolutely zero people wanted to see but YOU'RE GETTING ANYWAY

pairings: tododeku

tags: humor

warnings: 

ascended fanboy by aloneintherain

summary: “I want to honour them,” Izuku said softly. “When I cosplay, I just want people to see how amazing these heroes are.”

Shouto brushed a thumb over his cheek, careful not to smudge his makeup. “They do. I promise.”

Or: Izuku and Shouto attend HeroCon, five years post-graduation.

pairings: tododeku

tags: 

warnings: