#get a better framework for reality

[lgbtlunaverse]

Everytime I see that "fandom is worse now because all the POPULAR KIDS got into it" post or any of the bajillion similar ones I die a little on the inside. You all sound like a 34 year old white cishet self identified gamer scoffing about how "all these girls pretend to like anime when IN MY TIME they would have bullied me for being a nerd" before he goes on to watch 4 more videos from a youtuber who participated in gamergate.

[hrrtshape]

why do people who don't believe in shifting or don't know about shifting still shift — how can i be one of them?

because belief is not the cause. awareness is not the cause. effort is not the cause.

conscious attention has never been the mechanism.

you shifting has nothing to do with what your conscious mind is doing. shifting is a default function of consciousness itself. it's like blinking. or breathing. or rerouting a dream. people who don't ‘believe’ in it or don't ‘know’ about it shift anyway because it has nothing to do with having the language or the framework. the human mind is always selecting realities. 99% of the time it just does it passively, via emotional assumption or unconscious focus.

those people shifted because their state of consciousness naturally entered a dominant assumption or immersive focus. no method, no faith, no affirmations. they just slipped, like how you can lucid dream without trying to. or how a child can dissociate so completely they form entire inner worlds with continuity. this is not evidence against shifting, it proves that it's innate. you do not need to know about shifting to do it. you just need to exit the state of monitoring it.

so. the reason so many people don't shift after learning about it is because now they're trying. now they're watching themselves. now they're adding thirty-step techniques and waiting to feel something specific. they've left the natural, permissive flow-state and replaced it with a checklist.

they've moved from consciousness to supervision.

and that's the disconnect.

people who shift accidentally aren't better or more special. they're just unbothered. they're not in the loop of: is it working? what does this mean? am i good enough yet? they don't audit every state like it's under border patrol review. they drift. they imagine. they believe something lightly or not at all, and it stabilises anyway, because consciousness doesn't gatekeep itself.

the more you analyse the process, the less you're inside it.

and it IS annoying. you already do shift. all the time. but you don't count it, because it doesn't match the scenario you planned. so you say: “i'm stuck.” when really, you're shifting to a version of you who believes they're stuck.

so what do you do now?

you stop tracking your stats like this is a loyalty card. you stop waiting for proof. you stop narrating “trying” like it's a process that builds up credit. shifting is not a job you get promoted at. it's a door you decide is already open.

here's what works:

law of assumption. or at least it worked for me, and i’ve shifted, so idk take this however you want.

not because it's cute or because it's easy. but because it's the only thing that matches the structure of reality as self-reflecting consciousness.

law of assumption = you experience what you assume is true.

it's not positive thinking. it's not wishful delusion. it's literally how reality renders, based on your internal state being mirrored outward.

your reality does not respond to your effort. it responds to your baseline conviction. not what you want to be true. not what you hope to manifest. what you accept as the structure of your life, your identity, your world.

when you say “i am in my dr,” and then wait to feel something, that's not law of assumption, that's law of evaluation.

when you say “i'm going to shift soon,” and then search for signs, that's not law of assumption. that's law of limbo.

when you say “i hope this method works,” and treat it like a pass/fail exam, you're not assuming, you're surveilling, and worst of all, not understanding your full potential.

assumption is full saturation. it's not hopeful. it's done.

you shift when you decide that you already did. not when you “feel like it.” not when your body tingles. not when the method checks out.

you shift when the state becomes final.

you shift when the inner narration stops waiting for outer evidence.

you shift when the thought becomes law.

so here's how to shift:

declare it as done, not affirm like a question, affirm like a fact. “i'm in my dr. this is done.” no waiting. no checking. no conditions.

no “if this works,” “once i shift,” “after i shift,” “when it feels real.” drop the qualifiers. stop building futures that assume the present isn't it, you're either in or you're not.

sustain the state - not with force, but with the refusal to contradict it. if the thought “what if it's not working” shows up, ignore it. if you feel normal, say “ok, i feel normal in my dr.” stop letting your interpretations collapse your decision.

if you want to know how to set an assumption and make it come true, read here.

belief is acceptance. just let the truth sit. don't poke it. don't prove it. don't fix it.

law of assumption or shifting isn't a religion. it's not something to “have faith in.”

it's how consciousness works. it's not asking you to be worthy. it's not asking you to trust it. it's just asking you to pick something, and stay picked.

[justmanifestit]

time doesn’t exist.

let me explain.

Time, as we conventionally understand it, doesn’t exist. We’ve been taught to see it as a linear flow (past, present, future) moving like a river we drift along. You’re not moving through time. You’re shifting from one reality to another, billions of times per second. What we call "time" is really just your awareness jumping frames, like flicking through still images in a movie. You’re not riding a straight line from past to future. You’re choosing the next moment based on your state of being. That’s it.

You’re Tuning Into Alternate Versions of Reality

Once you understand this, manifestation begins to make more sense. You’re not creating something from scratch. You’re not waiting for the future to deliver something new. You’re selecting, aligning with a version of reality where the thing you want is already true. It’s already happening. In this framework, manifesting is really about becoming aware of the version of yourself that already has the experience you desire. Everything already exists.

Time isnt linear

Most of us think of time as a straight line -> a past behind us, a future ahead, and the present as a thin slice in between. But that’s not how it actually is. Time it’s more like a loop, or even better, a sphere. Everything is happening right now, all at once. There’s no actual past or future, just this moment and your experience of it. The past and future are just perspectives inside this now. So when you think about time, it’s not something moving forward or backward — it’s more like you moving through different moments that all exist simultaneously.

The Trap of Waiting in Manifestation

If time isn’t real, then waiting around for something to happen is pointless. Waiting puts you in a space of lack and doubt — like you’re not there yet, so you need to be patient and hope the future will bring what you want. But manifesting doesn’t work like that. It’s not about pushing, forcing, or stressing over when your desires will show up.

The Future Is Just Another Version of Now

Once you get this, the whole idea of “future” changes. The future isn’t some faraway place you have to work toward. It’s just another version of now that you haven’t stepped into yet. The more you cling to time as a barrier, the more stuck you feel. But if you realize that time is just a perspective, you stop asking, “How long will it take?” and start asking, “Who am I being right now?” This shift in focus from “when” to “who” changes everything.

Stop Waiting. Start being.

It takes one shift from waiting to being that collapses all the possible timelines and bring you what you want. You don’t need to wait for the right time or the perfect circumstances because, in truth, they already exist in parallel with your current reality. The key is to consciously step into that reality by aligning your state of being with it. This is how you truly manifest, how you create real change, and why this post found you for a reason: to remind you that the power to shift your reality is always inside you, happening right now.

[gyrovagi]

still thinking about blackwall's gendered dialogue differences. the chivalry towards and idealization of f!inquisitor. the frankness about sex with m!inquisitor. sheryl chee can we talk...

^ this is sooooo crazy . when f!inquisitor asks, blackwall's mind goes to the ideal of family life, which of course he doesn't believe he deserves. but in response to m!inquisitor he's firmly oriented in reality where he could've fathered a bastard at some point, who knows, but no child would deserve a father like this. (a father who's killed children.) the romanticized ideal of a happy family as a kind of just reward, as opposed to reality where a child can be born of an unknown, disgraced father and the fact they deserve better doesn't change the facts. all they can do is try and avoid the truth. and of course the focus in both cases on being 'deserving' in either a positive or negative sense. (people only get rewards they deserve in fantasy!)

and like it is. so andrastian. blackwall isn't overtly faithful in the way of leliana or cassandra, but it is clear that the idea of the inquisitor as andraste's herald means something to him, and plays heavily into his idealization of f!inquisitor/an inquisitor romancing him especially. he is invested in the idea of women as purer and closer to divinity while men (like him) (especially him) are forever marked by betrayal and violence, because it's a familiar and comfortable framework to contextualize his own guilt. we've GOT to get a war table operation going for diy feminizing hrt

[daylightstring]

self concept 101

okay students, class is in session and the assignment we’re focusing on is worth 100% of your grade in the assignment of your life. no pressure, right? except… it kinda is. because everything you experience, your relationships, your money, your looks, your success, it’s all filtered through the lens of your self-concept.

self-concept is the story you tell about yourself when no one’s listening. it’s the identity you live in, consciously or unconsciously. it’s the silent assumptions that run on autopilot like, “i’m never chosen,” “nothing ever works out for me,” “i’m not enough,” “people always leave,” or even “i’m that girl,” “i’m magnetic,” “everything works in my favour.”

those aren’t just thoughts. they’re blueprints. they create the framework your reality has to follow. because your outer world is just your inner world, externalised.

so if you walk through life with the self-concept of someone who always gets second best, your reality will match that. not because you deserve it, but because you believe it. and if you shift to a self-concept of someone who is deeply loved, always thriving, lucky, powerful, guess what? your world has no choice but to realign.

here’s your homework, due immediately, with no extensions, sorry babes, life waits for no one…it’s all just now.

1. observe your internal dialogue

spend one whole day listening to your thoughts like they’re playing on a speaker, what do you actually think about yourself, not what you want to believe, but what you’ve been unconsciously affirming, catch the sneaky ones too, “i’m always so awkward,” “i’ll never look like that,” “ugh, of course this would happen to me,” these aren’t harmless little quips, these are energetic declarations

write them down, seriously, make a list of the self-concept you’ve been unknowingly living by

2. rewrite your identity

now take that list and write the exact opposite, this is your new self-concept, “i’m always chosen,” “i’m magnetic and people adore me,” “i’m a master at my craft,” “my beauty is undeniable”

this isn’t toxic positivity, it’s identity design, choose the story you want to live by and start being the main character who lives by that script, you don’t wait for proof to act like her, you assume the role and reality fills in the blanks

3. persist in your new self

this is the part most people flake on, but not you, because real change comes from repetition, from living the new story until it hardwires into your nervous system, so no, you don’t just write your affirmations once and call it a day, you say them out loud, in the mirror, in the shower, under your breath

you imagine yourself as her when you’re walking down the street, you refuse to entertain old stories that try to creep in, this is devotion, this is embodiment

and lastly, you don’t need validation, this homework is not about impressing others, it’s not about being seen, it’s about seeing yourself clearly, fully, and powerfully, once that clicks, your entire world will mirror it back

hand in your new self daily, you’re the teacher and the student here, and you’re getting an A+ obviously

class dismissed…but, the assignment is ongoing so you better get to working! 👩‍🏫

[chlorinecake]

☆ ☆ ☆ You’re All Skin n’ Bones, Baby

— ⊹ ⛓️ 𝗣𝗔𝗜𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚 ♯ Trouble Maker!N.RK x Good Girl!Reader 🍴

⛓️ 𝗣𝗟𝗢𝗧 ♯ When your father, a.k.a the dean of your university, sets you on a quest to help the troubled transfer student from your art class rewrite the rebellious narrative staining his character, you two find yourselves falling for each other, discovering a new art of taking chances, making mistakes, and getting messy...

⛓️ 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗦 ♯ Swearing, Awkward Situations, Riki Vandalizes Your University with Graffiti, Name-Calling (Flirting), Kissing (With Tongue), Hickeys (Kinda), Riki Has A Tattoo, Lingering Touches (Nothing Below The Belt), Suggestive Jokes, Reckless Behavior, Some Fluff and Angst if You Squint

⛓️ 𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗗 𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗧 ♯ 4.2k ──── 「 生きがい 」

Friday, The Dean's Office,  3:32 p.m.

“Simply put, Riki is a very misunderstood youth, and you, _____, so happen to be one of the few people who sincerely understand him.”

You stared back at your father, who sat in his leather chair at his desk, a dumbfounded expression upon your face as you crossed your arms. “And you're telling me all of this because of what again?”

“Because I need your help,” Riki butted in from where he sat beside where you stood on your feet, drawing your attention back to his casual disposition.

From the way his long legs extended lazily before him to the way his black combat boots hit the ground with loud thumps every time his foot bounced out of boredom, the poor kid was just as big as his behavioral problems...

That is, roughly 187 centimeters worth...

However, in spite of his large stature and occasional bouts of clumsiness, Riki Nishimura was lighter than a feather on his feet when it came to dancing, a.k.a., one of the few things in his life that he found joy in, aside from you, his family, and the comfort of his bed...

Looking back at your father, he gave you a pleading look, hoping that he would somehow soften your heart without the use of any more words.

And it’s not that you didn't want to help Riki...

I mean, he was one of your closest friends, and you otherwise would've leaped at any opportunity to spend more time with him, so long as it wasn't under such circumstances.

In the past, your father never really approved of your friendship with Riki, simply because he had a track record of rebellion according to the other universities he attended and ended up getting kicked out of.

'A homeschooled delinquent,' some would call him, but you preferred sweeter names for him—names that described the real him.

It's just that the whole idea of having you, the “perfect student,” coach a more troubled peer seemed like a poor excuse of a publicity stunt.

Riki was much more to you than that... he deserved better than to be scrutinized like some sort of criminal just for being his authentic self.

And the odd reality was that you and the other kids at your university with allegedly clean records were no different from Riki.

All misguided and all a little reckless here and there...

Taking risks was part of being young, last time you checked.

The only difference is that Riki wasn't as good at hiding those parts of him like the rest of the students at your university were...

They were either forced or pressured to hide behind a mask that resembled good grades, perfect attendance... stuck within a cookie-cutter framework, and exhibiting perpetual compliance to the ways of the academic world—

“Fine,” you sighed, straightening your posture to appear more obliging than you were actually feeling, “but only if you promise not to make this some sort of project, Dad... Riki's my friend, not some charity case to make you look good.”

Your father scoffed at your insulting words. “What do you take me as, some kind of crook? Such a thought never even crossed my mind, _____,” he corrected sternly before continuing, “My concerns for Riki come from a good place and have nothing to do with what I can gain from you agreeing to help us-”

“Fix him, right?” You interrupt, making a shy smirk tug at the corners of Riki's mouth at the awkward tension in the room now.

“Honey, you know that's not what this is about,” your father sighs, getting up from his seat and straightening out his suit. “Riki is not a broken lamp that he should be fixed... but a lost soul in need of positive redirecting.”

“And who better to help than a fellow peer?” Riki winks at you, making you roll your eyes at him.

“Precisely,” the dean finishes, pushing his chair under the desk before making his way to the office door. “I expect you two to run into hurdles on this journey, but hopefully it's a process that helps you both grow... together...”

You shake your head, uncrossing your arms from over your chest as your father’s eyes flicker between you and Riki now.

“Oh, and one more thing, ____... this young man may be troubled to some degree, but he can certainly teach you a lesson or two on respect.”

Slam.

The office door closed slowly, but with its habitually loud locking sound, making your insides shake a bit.

You look back at Riki, who only had a shrug to offer you, though you knew your father was expecting you and Riki to see yourselves out of his office.

So y’all did, all the way to your separate homes, where you would dread the following Monday when Project: “Positively Redirect” Riki would commence!...

⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆

Next Monday, ART Room 8080, 5:30 p.m.

The bottom of your ass was stinging given how long you had been sitting in the uncomfortable desk chair.

Your back had also started to burn with a similar pain, and the only thing that seemed to delight you amidst the lengthy "Elements of Art" lecture was once again the tall boy sitting beside you.

The voice of your instructor faded away in your ears as you observed Riki holding an ink pen, gliding its ball-tip against his skin in careful lines.

“You suck at drawing,” you whisper to him.

“And your mother’s a cow,” he retorts plainly, despite the smirk curling at his mouth.

From what you can tell, he was drawing a spiderweb in the shape of a heart on the inside of his wrist; The same romantic spiderweb design that was graffitied on your university's parking lot pavement a few days ago.

You always found it endearing how Riki's right wrist would be full of inky doodles by the end of each lecture, thanks to him being left-handed.

Though, other people found his habit to be odd… immature, even... and you never understood why those people even felt the need to speak—

“You’re really making an effort at this character development thing, aren’t you, babes?” You ask sarcastically, tilting your head at him now.

“Yup,” he answers matter-of-factly, eyes still trained on the inky design staining his pale skin.

You took in the expression on his face—the way his lips often poked out slightly like a duck whenever he focused on something.

It was a sight that always made you giggle inside… mostly because you found cute things to be humorous, but also because Riki had a way of making you feel all giddy for reasons you didn't fully understand—

“Wanna kiss ‘em or something?” He asked, looking you dead in the eye with his own piercing ones.

“E-excuse me?” You scoffed with both confusion and feigned disgust.

“I mean these,” he said, showing you the doodle of a skull on his wrist that had big, red lips to match the crimson bows at each pigtail. “Heard you like it juicy,” he continued, raising his eyebrows at you flirtatiously.

“Shut the fuck up,” you swear, shoving his shoulder slightly.

And with that, the class was concluded, and students were loading up their textbooks into their backpacks in every which direction—

“You’re really not that different from me, y’know that?” He said in a mocking tone, “Especially not with that raging potty mouth of yours...”

“I was provoked to use such language, you dick.”

“Then you have very poor emotional regulation skills for your age.”

...

“I’m leaving,” you say, getting up from the seat and slinging your bag over your shoulder, “have fun making out with your new dOodLe sKuLl giRLfriEnD... Heard you like ‘em skinny, anyways…”

“Pfft... Where’d you hear that crap?”

“Around,” you lied, knowing that Riki wasn't the type of guy to have weight preferences when it came to girls...

He only had personality preferences, and so far, you were his absolute favorite person yet, crumby attitude and all.

“Whatever,” he said, in between your brief voyage to the campus lockers where you put your things away. “Also,” Riki began again, leaning against his locker while looking at his reflection in the mirror, “should I... change?”

“What, your diaper?”

“No, my outfit, stupid. Unless you don’t mind being seen with a guy who looks like me these days...”

His words sting you for some reason, and you know exactly what he was trying to imply with that comment.

The other day, Riki heard your father complaining to an instructor in his office about student's not 'abiding by standards of clothing apparel,' and of course, the poor boy assumed the comment was specifically directed towards him-

“You look fineee, Riki,” you reassure him, closing your locker before caressing the side of his arm gently. “Besides, I'd never feel ashamed walking beside you... ripped jeans, piercings, and all...”

His mind paused for a second, focusing a little too hard on the way your touch somehow warmed him from both the outside and within.

“Hey,” you started, your voice pulling him back from his thoughts, “Earth to Riki...?”

“Y-yea, right... Earth,” he stammered, running a shy hand through his hair before adjusting his backpack over his shoulder.

“Let's get out of here, then,” you chuckled, walking down the hall now as he followed closely behind you.

⋆༺𓆩☠︎︎𓆪༻⋆

Later, On Some Unknown, Majestic Path, 6:17 p.m.

You two made it to a bridge—the crossing road where you and him expected to straighten out the crooked mess of rumors and past infamies plaguing Riki’s reputation.

“You got the letter, right?”

The letter, he heard your words replay in his mind...

The very letter in which Riki divulged a sincere handwritten apology to the Dean of your university discussing his declining academic performance, poor behavior, aptitudes to improve, and blah fucking blah...

Anyone with a good head on their shoulders could tell that Riki was a fantastic artist, but every rose had its thorn, with Riki's impulsive creative side often getting the best of him...

Aside from going against the dress code and skipping classes, Riki recently vandalized school property with a spontaneous mural of skulls, spiderwebs, and other edgy doodles on the parking lot pavement.

Nobody knew he was responsible for it aside from you, and you had no intention of ratting him out for it...

Yes, it was an unusual design to see every morning at the center of such a prestigious university, but regardless of all that, you figured the graffiti looked pretty cool, actually...

Besides, it was an art school for crying out loud; weren't students supposed to express themselves here?

Or perhaps you only felt that way because Riki was responsible for it, but I digress.

“Yeah, I double checked before we left,” he said plainly, looking down the brick road ahead. “Oh, and uh... I know I've never showed you, but my place is actually the small one right over there… with the candle-like furnace on top... you see it?”

“Yeah, I see it,” you smile softly, just as you catch on to him walking ahead of you and down the right path instead of the left one.

“Hey, the dean's office is this way, remember?”

“Uh huh... and it’s still gonna be there when we get back.”

“Bro, where’re you going?”

“Bro, nowhere,” he replied mockingly, still walking away from you, “I just need to clear my head before sending this stupid letter… just in case I run into the dean or something...”

“And would that really be so bad?” You pressed, “I swear, it’s like everyone views my dad like a scary monster just because he’s doing his job...”

Riki felt himself internally gag at the reminder that you were in fact the deans daughter.

“Since when do you, of all people, defend your dad?”

“Hey, I may be a disrespectful fart towards him at times, but that doesn't mean I can't stand up for him.”

“Uh huh,” Riki nods skeptically, “he must be giving you extra brownie points and allowance for that shit or something...”

“Yeah, actually, he is! And I don't plan on sharing any with you, either... not my brownies points NOR my petty cash...”

“Good,” he retorts playfully, mirroring your bratty behavior, “my piggy bank likes being empty, anyways... PLUS, I’m trying to cut back on sugar these days...”

“Well, good luck with that then... citrus helps, though… with the sugar cravings, I mean.”

“I know... that’s why I’m hanging out with you... duhhh!”

“Oh, so you’re implying that I'm sour, now?”

“If the shoe fits,” he shrugs, and a few moments pass before you’re walking through a front door, through his living room, and eventually onto a balcony.

The house was so dimly lit that you couldn’t make out much of anything while inside, other than the smell of tea and leather cleaner.

“What d’you think?” Riki asks, spreading his arms out to show off, “Gnarly landscape, am I right?”

“You’re so right,” you agree, walking over to the ledge and observing the large pasture that made up his backyard. “It’s beautiful here.”

The two of you look over the edge for a while, folding your arms over the stone balcony until you catch him looking off to the other side, something about him immediately catching your attention.

“Woah?” You exclaim, finding your hands in his hair as you turn his head, examining the thing that caught your eye.

“Woah what? Is there a bug on me or something?” Riki asks, bending his knees slightly so you can reach him better.

“No, it's a tattoo.” You clarify, “I didn't know you had any real ones...”

“Oh yeahhh… I uh... I got that one a while back when I was in high school... I have another one, too, but it's under my clothes, so I can't show you until we're marri-”

“What's it say?” You ask with a whisper, examining the fine textures of inky Japanese characters staining the ivory skin behind his ear.

The tattoo in itself was relatively simple, but you believe that's what made it all the more stunning...

“Ikigai...” He answers with a deep voice, looking in your eyes with his own piercing ones, which makes you retreat your touch from his hair, “it refers to something that gives us our sense of purpose... our reason to live...”

The silence is so loud after he says that that the sound of distant birds and wind-chimes fills your ears as if you were wearing headphones.

That's when you hear a door hinge creak in the distance—

“Riki?! I don’t have my glasses on, but your bedroom looked oddly tidy and you never tidy your room, so now I’m worried—”

“In a minute, Grams!” Riki called out in a deep voice, resting his hands at his sides as he looked back at you, the elderly woman having stayed outside, keeping to herself.

Despite her few wrinkles, she was a perfect shadow of Riki, from her similarly fierce eyes, the long legs she stood on, to her plump, duck-like lips—

“What’s the deal with your face right now?” Riki asked, drawing your attention back to him.

“Oh, you mean my beauty?” You returned sarcastically.

“No, the other thing,” he corrected, “…made your eyes go all big and bright.”

“Oh… Possibly shock, then?”

“But from what cause?”

“Grams,” you repeated, looking over the balcony at the same shed-door the woman just came from. “I didn’t know you lived with anybody…”

“I don’t; she lives with me,” Riki continued, flicking a mosquito off his arm. “She’s kind of mental, so I gotta take care of her like she took care of me.”

“That’s sweet,” you murmur quietly to yourself, but he hears you anyway-

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing…”

“You definitely said something.”

“No I didn’t?”

“Haven’t I ever told you how terrible you are at lying?”

“No, actually,” you respond plainly, “But you have told me that you think I’m beautiful... well, indirectly, but it still counts.”

He furrows his brows at you. “When did I say that?”

“Literally a few seconds ago?”

“Seriously?”

“Damn… Now I'm starting to think you didn't mean it.”

“No no no, I meant it!” Riki says, raising his voice slightly, “P-probably...”

“Well, thanks anyway,” you return, looking back over the balcony at the sight of his grandmother roaming their garden.

“I think you're beautiful, too, Riki.”

A silence swarmed between you two now.

Not an awkward silence, but a silence nonetheless.

A pleasant peace…

Riki bit his lip to keep himself from smiling, but you had already noticed his expression by now, poking a finger at the apple of his slightly rosy cheek, making him swat your hand away playfully.

“Stop that or I'll bite you,” he threatens.

“But babyyy… you look so cute when you're blushing,” you teased, making the poor boy feel like he was just seconds from internally combusting because of you.

Riki never got worked up over compliments like this, but then again, you proved to have a stronger effect on his emotions… one that even you father could see.

“I seriously will bite you, ____,” he warns again through a contagious chuckles, grabbing a hold of your wrist at the same time your hand gripped his bicep, making him stop in his actions.

You two shyly meet each other's eyes now, faint smiles present on both your faces until you release your grip on his arm, his touch still remaining at your wrist.

“Riki.” You speak quietly, and for reasons you don’t understand at first… but that’s when he decides to speak up instead—

“I wanna show you one more thing,” he starts, still holding your wrist as he steps up with a strong lunge onto the balcony ledge, resting his foot on the wooden plank attached to it.

“Riki, get down from there!” You shout.

“Not until you join me first.” He reasons with a smirk.

Judging from the way he briefly peeks down at the ground beneath him, you can already tell that he wants you to jump with him.

“Riki… I’m not doing that... I-I can't… and I can’t let you do that, either.”

Funny thing is, you said all of this while doing a lunge yourself, joining the tall boy on the balcony ledge and holding his hand tightly as you let your feet find the wobbly plank next.

“Why not?…” He presses.

“Because… you’re all skin and bones, baby,” you sigh nervously, feeling your heart rate increase with every passing second. “I’m afraid that I’ll either hurt you or that you’ll hurt yourself.”

Riki gives you a shady look now. “You have no idea how insulting that is to me, do you?”

“Be careful, asshole!” You shriek, his strength having tugged at your hand, making you tread even further down the plank now.

“Geez, would you relax, drama queen? I’m doing fineee, see? We’re fine… Just don’t let go of my hand until I say so, okay?”

“H-how am I even supposed to trust you in a state like this?” Your voice comes out just as wobbly as you feel in your knees, being sure not to look down as that would only make things worse for you.

“Hmm… not sure,” he shrugs, “But maybe it would help if you stopped policing me for like... one fucking second?”

“Fine. A second has passed, now can we PLEASEE go back to the bridge—ahhh!”

Riki jumps first, but because you were holding hands, you fall with him, tumbling into the grassy pasture before landing on top of him.

“That was fun, right?” Riki asks while scanning your face, wind knocked out of him; he's panting slightly beneath you, chest rising and falling given the rush of adrenaline he just received.

“Are we even alive right now?” You ask back, seriously not being able to believe that you both survived such a fall... everything around you seemed light, and you weren't sure if that had something to do with your head spinning or something worse. “Please tell me this isn’t heaven.”

“Not unless you really think that’s what being on top of me feels like…”

You gave him the deadliest side-eye you could muster—

“Shut the fuck up,” you curse him, making a light chuckle rumble in his chest.

For a brief moment, you look up, just now realizing that Riki’s backpack was scattered among the grass with all of his school supplies decorating the landscape.

Sighing, you planted your palms on the ground before trying to get up, only for the strength of Riki’s arm to keeps you down, fusing your body’s together.

“Riki, the dean's office is gonna be closing soon, we gotta get going-”

“And my future can wait, ____,” he said, looking into your eyes, “just let me enjoy this moment in the present for a little longer, alright?”

You wait to answer before eventually nodding, watching his chest heave slower now, but still in a rising and falling manner.

“You're nervous about something,” you whisper, even though it was more like a question to him.

You felt your stomach flutter at the way his hand was secured at your waist now, trailing up to the side of your face with his other hand.

“I am,” he says plainly, voice deep and vulnerable, “so please, just... don't say anything or else you'll make this worse for me, okay?”

“You're not about to try and kiss me, are you!?” You ask, screwing your eyebrows at him.

“And just like that, you made it worse for me,” Riki sighs, not being brave enough to meet your eyes anymore.

His hands leave your body, falling beside him as if he were about to start making snow angels in the bed of grass.

“You think you deserve a kiss—of all things—after almost getting us killed just a few seconds ago?”

“I meannnn,” he starts, looking back at you now before repositioning his hands behind his head with latticed fingers, “one kiss wouldn't hurt, right?… Maybe even just a few…”

No words are exchanged from this point.

It just becomes a moment of you two looking at each other, your hands roaming up his torso now as you sit up to straddle him, keeping him pinned to the ground with your weight before placing a kiss on his cheek.

“You're a very odd boy, Riki Nishimura,” you say, watching a smile spread across his face as his skin still tingled where you kissed him.

Your hands find his that were tucked beneath his head and put them back around your body like they were before.

“I may be odd, but the least you can do is kiss me normally,” he whispers, taking hold of your face and crashing his lips into yours, eyes fluttering shut at the blissful contact.

And it feels too good to say it's your first time... It feels too right...

You tilt your head to deepen the contact, making him hum beneath you at the sudden way you took control again, feeling his hand gently cradle the nape of your neck.

“Please,” he says breathlessly in between, catching on to the way your body shuddered when his touch went under your shirt, resting at the dip of your waist, “Don't make me stop yet...”

And all you can do is pant in response, feeling your heart rate increase with the passion as his tongue just barely comes into contact with yours, making you melt into the warmth of his lips even more.

But his delicate fingers are cold as they touch you, not necessarily wandering, but inching their way up from your waist to the side of your ribs, only to pull you closer as your bodies meshed into a sprawl of flustered feelings.

“You just can't get close enough to me, can you?” You ask him through a quiet breath, making him chuckle slightly as your catty question.

“Don't rub it in, dweeb,” he replies with a raspy voice, just as a low groan slips past his pretty lips, and you're just now realizing that you were kissing along his jawline, his head thrown back against the grass as your soft lips kept peppering his skin, “I'm actually enjoying what you're doing to me for once...”

And his last sentence comes out so quietly, you otherwise would've missed it if you weren't right by his neck, humming with each kiss you placed against him, making his grip at your waist tighten slightly until you abruptly pulled away, looking back at him with your own fuzzy vision...

Despite that, you could still make out the lovesick expression taking over his gorgeous features, both his heart and mind in a haze as he looked back at you, purity dancing in his eyes.

“W-why'd you stop?” He stammers, almost pouting as a smirk tugs at the corner of your mouth now, your own cheeks being dusted a rosy hue given the blood rushing to your face.

“Because,” you say plainly, crawling off of him now as he lets out an exaggerated sigh, sulking at the missing warmth of you straddling him, “that's all you deserve for the day.”

“And tomorrow?” He presses, eyes half-lidded.

“I'll tell you after we deliver this letter to the dean,” you say, looking up at the window to his house, “and when your grandma isn't watching us...”

“Wait, she's what?”

Riki sits up now, whipping his head almost instantly in the direction of his house to see what you were still blushing about, and it was none other than his grandmother, clapping in the distance at the sight of you and Riki laying beside each other on the grass.

“So that's why you've been tidying up recently; you've met a pretty girl,” she says in an old voice, making him hide his face with his hands while groaning with embarrassment. “Awww, don't be shy; she just had her lips all over you... Oh, and I'm his grandmother, by the way!”

“Nice to meet you,” you say while giggling, watching Riki practically crumble to pieces, knowing that his grandma had just seen everything.

"Well, make sure you two don't stay out too late... it's getting dark,” the woman warned, even though it was still relatively sunny outside.

Must be her vision, you thought to herself.

“Got it, Grams,” Riki sighed, sitting up now with a forced smile as he waved his grandma off, the door creaking behind her as the sound of her television program faded off with the melody of her laughter.

“You good?” You ask, catching on to the way Riki's sight pans off now, a certain thought rising to his mind as he took a few shaky breaths.

“Y-yea, I'm alright,” he answers, not meeting your eyes until he asks, “You didn't bite me, did you?”

His fingers find his neck now, grazing over the light pink spot where you had kissed him, but it was only that color because of your lip balm, not because you bit him.

“I might have nibbled, yes...” You start timidly, trying to hold back a smile at the way his eyes widened now, worried that you might mark him. “Don't blame me though when you started it.”

“No, I didn't, you blood thirsty vampire,” he scoffs with over-exaggerated offense. “There's a mark on me now, isn't there?”

"No, you idiot... Besides, I wouldn't want your grandma to have a hickey as her first impression of me,” you correct, getting up from the ground now to collect his scattered school supplies from around the yard.

Your words lingered in his mind for a bit.

A girl like you leaving a bad first impression? The thought seemed foreign to him, but at the same time, comforting...

He was finally starting to see things the way you saw them. You and him really weren't all that different—just two people from different walks of life, upholding varied reputations, but still and all with kindred spirits.

Spirits for fun and adventure... youth and romance...

“Wasn't even worth it,” you mumbled to yourself, picking up the envelope that was now stained with a bit of dirt given the fall.

“What wasn't worth it?” He repeated, looking over his shoulder to find you on your knees in the grass, hair slightly disheveled from all the action.

“Jumping, first of all... and second, kissing you...”

“Right,” he says while drawing out the syllable, side-eyeing you with his legs crossed, “Because I definitely told you to get on top of me and kiss all over my neck like a human mosquito.”

“Trust me, I regret doing that.” You tease, fake gagging, to which he chuckled at you, “Your lips tasted weird, anyway...”

“Pfft... weird how?”

“Sour,” you poke, making him look down in his lap, smiling at the memory of you two in the hallway earlier.

Eventually, he gets up to help you gather the rest of his textbooks, pencils, notes, and chocolate bars that fell from his backpack, holding it open as you loaded it up and set trail back up the hill you just jumped off of.

“And you're sure this whole letter thing is still a good idea?” He asks, adjusting the strap to his backpack over his shoulder as you two walked beside each other.

You take a second to glance at yourselves, taking in the light of your messy clothes, blushing faces.

"Oh, you’re definitely still sending that.”

“Cool… But should I revise it at all since we have extra time?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” is all you say, taking his hand in yours as y’all walk side by side...

⛓️‍💥 AUTHOR'S NOTE — I've had this fic collecting dust in my drafts since July of this year, but @microwvdstrawb3rri3s reminded me that my blog has been long overdue for a new Niki fic, so I decided to post it finally.... Also, I'm adding a special tag here for @bambangan because I REALLY feel like she‘ll enjoy this fic (considering how Niki's character is pretty similar to how I wrote for him in my Flirty TSA Series a while back 🤭)...

tysm for reading this quick lil fic !! ✗⚬ﾒ𝟶 a/n ℓօⓥe always ⋆⋆⋆ and feel free to check out my masterlist for more !!

𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ( 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 💌 ) @squoxle @nishiimuranights @wonbinisbabygurl @ashgonedash @yourmomscuntis2tighy @watamotee33 @addictedtohobi @microwvdstrawb3rri3s

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i honestly think that a lot of the "mental illness doesn't make you violent or say/do extremely harmful things" stuff would be mitigated if we didn't treat "doing a violence" or "doing harm" as automatic panic buttons that call for the immediate ostracization and unpersoning of the harm-doer in question. like i think it's pretty inevitable that traumatized people are going to do really bad and harmful things to each other when our nervous systems are activated, and that psychotic people are going to do really bad and harmful things to each other when our realities frame it as necessary, and i don't think we'll ever get anywhere with how we categorize and treat mental illness on a broad societal level as long as we keep acting like those are irreparable evil actions that only truly fundamentally Evil, Bad mentally ill people will do.

like i think social focus on the rupture-repair cycle in casual relationships and friendships might go a long way to repairing how we socially handle violations of trust and violence that stem from trauma+psychosis. and i think the focus being on what is needed to make sure someone stays in community with the people around them is a much better framework than how we can punish them or keep them away from the people they hurt. and like, yes, sometimes there is literally no way to keep someone in community, to be clear, i am fully aware of that.

i also think a lot of the long-term trauma and abuse patterns that stem from mental illness behavior patterns... are about the power the mentally ill individual holds. like, having an abusive psychotic parent isn't inherently traumatic because they're psychotic, it's because the role "parent" in society gives them complete and utter power and control over you, and you can't pursue healing and repair with someone who has complete control over you. you can only escape and cut them off to avoid future trauma. and addressing those hierarchical roles of power, removing entirely them where possible and mitigating what power they do have, would do a lot in the long run to prevent trauma and abuse stemming from behavior patterns categorized as mental illness--much more than focusing on unpersoning and isolating the perpetrators of harm imho.

[thesoftboiledegg]

"Summer Of All Fears" has a good concept, but Rick and Morty's used the "fake reality" concept so many times that it's hard to get invested. I kept waiting for a reveal that they're still in the matrix, which made me struggle to care about the character development.

The fact that Summer and Morty started acting increasingly like Rick--rude, blunt, destructive, cynical--seemed like another clue to me. When the episode started leaning in that direction, I thought "Yep, knew it!"--until the reveal that they're NOT in the matrix and that was just a gag to trick viewers, like me, who thought they had it all figured out. Fair enough, I guess.

Now that we know the truth, starting the episode with Morty and Summer leaving the matrix and showing their lives in flashbacks was a decent twist on the "fake reality" plot, which usually takes up the entire episode. I loved the character designs, especially rugged adult Morty at the beginning, and Beth and Summer scenes are always great.

Until Summer ruined it, anyway. I also thought that their reconciliation scene was a little corny, which isn't a term that I'd use to describe a scene in a Rick and Morty episode. Endless cynicism gets old, and the writers were smart to move away from that, but I felt like the crew purposely engineered this scene to make the audience say "Aww!" before the next round of destruction.

Anyway, the punishment that Rick cooked up for stealing his phone charger was pretty nasty, especially after what Morty just went through in "Fear No Mort." Morty just suffered trauma from living multiple lives in a night, and Rick decided to...put him through that again? Damn, dude.

I realize that Rick didn't mean to leave them in the matrix that long, and he wiped their memories at the end (I also noticed that he started drinking after they came out, so maybe he did feel guilty), but it was still harsh for somebody who's supposedly changing.

When Morty trapped Rick in the matrix, I thought he'd get what's coming to him, but he broke out pretty quickly. I guess you can't fool Rick with his own invention.

Beth's not too concerned either, huh? Summer might be her favorite, but she's not angry about the punishment until Summer's new attitude starts getting on her nerves.

Rick was still pretty tame for the rest of the episode, and he even saved the United States from a nuclear meltdown at the end, but I'm getting tired of the casual cruelty. This leads into one of my biggest issues with the newer episodes: when it's a plot-driven episode, Rick is usually mean. But when it's character-driven, he's suddenly nicer.

Ian Cardoni just keeps getting better, though. He's not a perfect soundalike, but I don't think he has to be. He clearly understands Rick's personality better than the maniacs who are still all over Instagram, begging Adult Swim to #ReinstateRoiland.

One of the early reviews noted that the episode had a dark twist, but I definitely didn't expect this. Summer Smith is nobody's victim. I love that about her, but it also led to her knowingly giving Morty PTSD. She'll do what it takes by (almost) any means necessary...and honestly, I don't think she felt THAT guilty about it.

Overall, "Summer Of All Fears" has a decent premise, good pacing, great character designs and enough heart that it doesn't totally undo all the development from the past seven seasons. However, it also exemplifies two of my issues with the newer episodes.

First, it feels like a mashup of previous adventures ("Fear No Mort," "Rick: A Mort Well Lived" and a touch of "The Vat of Acid Episode") with a new coat of paint over the framework. And second, the show can't seem to decide if it wants to be serialized or episodic. Rick keeps jumping back and forth between "bitterly cruel" and "gruff but trying to change," sometimes in the same episode, and I wish he'd just get the meanness out of his system already.

[theambitiouswoman]

I just realized I have never even spoken about NLP on here so let me share for those who don't know

NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. It’s a psychological framework that explores how your thoughts (neuro) language, (linguistic) and patterns of behavior (programming) all work together to shape your reality. In simple words it's about changing how you think, speak and act to get better results in life

NLP was developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They studied the most effective therapists of their time. Their goal was to understand what made these communicators so powerful and model their language and behavior so others could replicate their success. They published their findings in books which became core texts in the world of NLP. The one I read is called "Frogs into Princes" for anyone curious

So NLP helps you understand how you brain stores and interprets experiences, recognize and change emotional or behavioral patterns and use language more intentionally to influence yourself and others

For example, if you always procrastinate, sabotage relationships, or replay past failures, NLP gives you tools to interrupt that loop and reprogram how you respond

How it works is first you create a mental or physical trigger to access an emotional state, then you change the meaning of a situation and replace it by creating a new mental image until your brain defaults to the new image. Think "change your mind, change your life"

NLP helps you break limiting patterns and install new ones that move you toward your goals. And the same works when dealing with others

Everyone processes information differently and this affects how we learn, behave and relate to others

It dictates that we experience the world through our five senses, but most of us tend to favor one or two. Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic and Auditory Digital which means you think in words, logic and internal dialogue

Once you understand how someone represents and filters information, you can tailor your communication to match their learning style, which makes learning, coaching, selling, communicating etc overall much more effective

So for example:

A visual learner could say “I see what you mean”

A kinesthetic person might say “That feels right to me”

By using NLP, you learn to speak people’s internal language, making your message land more clearly

[frost-queen]

Business wreckage // part 2 (Reader x Jake Seresin)

Requested by: anon Forever tag:@missmelodramatic, @alex--awesome--22, @ellie-does-the-posts, @floatlosers, @merlieve , @queen-of-books , @glimmering-darling-dolly , @denkisclown , @wildieflower , @meyocoko , @justanothercoco, @subjecta13-thefangirl , @m-rae23 , @harleyquinnswifeyfrfr , @swampything07, @melsunshine , @panhoeofmanyfandoms , @venomsvl , @the-uncoordinated-house-cat , @rosecentury , @evilcr0ne , @vviolynn , @niktwazny303 , @avada-kedavra-bitch-187 , @vermillionwinter , @love2write2626 , @magical-spit, @slythetic

Summary: Retreated to the countryside it is a change. Whilst you try to focus on work, can't Jake let go of his pleasure of riling you up. Making him slowly be aware of the effect he has on you. I love slowburn so this will have more parts [ series]

The airport was small. A simple aircraft waiting for the two of you. The flight was about four hours. The plane landing in the middle of nowhere. On the landing place stood a car waiting. You got behind the wheels, driving Jake Seresin to the direction that were in the GPS. – “I…I’m really sorry about the bruise…” – Jake said having hated the long silence.

You clenched your jaw together, not really wanting to engage with him but he was getting under your skin. – “Are you?” – you called out, clenching the wheel tight. – “You know I would never hurt you Y/n.” – he answered rubbing his hands nervously together. – “But you did.” – you made clear, keeping your focus on the road.

Jake swallowed as you had hit him with a rude reality. He did hurt you. Not just the bruise. He was only thinking about himself. Not those around him that got sucked in his frustration. The car drove over the road fast. Just small enough for one car to pass. Leaves rustling with the wind as the car chased past.

The house was simple. Tugged away between a forest of trees. Your typical countryside hide-away in a God forsaken town with a local of no more than forty spread across fields. No neighbours to be seen. Perhaps that was a good thing. Jake and you unloaded the car, heading inside. You texted Mister Seresin you had arrived in the countryside to reassure him.

It was clear to Jake that you were giving him the silent treatment. Something he wasn’t used from you. Normally you’d nag his ears off. Trying to hype him up for things he didn’t felt like doing. Always remaining polite and happy no matter how hard he made your life with his stupid decisions.

“Can we talk about it?” – he asked pressing his hands onto the counter. – “What is there to talk about?” – you answered bitsy checking the cabinets. – “You made it clear. I can show you a video if you like.” – you mocked with a sarcastic smile. Jake looked ashamed away. – “Let me ask you something Sir, did you really think it was the right decision?”

Jake thought for a moment, shaking his head afterwards. He then sighed loud, sitting down. – “You know my dad. The diner was a hoax. Just another way to bribe me into taking over the empire which I don’t want!” – he called out touching his forehead in distress. – “I know!” – you answered loudly. – “But you’ve could’ve handled it better.” – you sighed out, knowing there were a million other ways for that diner to go.

Too tired to even continue the conversation you went around the counter for your bedroom. By the wall, you paused. – “Couldn’t you have just talked?” – you stated not expecting an answer. Before Jake could even reply, you were off. He got up as well, walking up to the window. Looking outside. Furrowing his brows a bit at the scenery. The complete opposite from he was known at home.

Leaning against the framework, he stared down. His mind going through guilt. His own actions leading to get pulled away from everything he was accustomed to. His pilot career. The money. The girls. The appointments detailed out by you. Jake turned his head to the door which you left from.

Feeling a punch in his gut at how you got dragged into this. Guilt eating at him made him return to the kitchen to prepare a hot drink. He wanted to do something to make you feel better… or at least make him feel better. Perhaps it would stop the guilt. Jake walked with the hot drink up to your room, knocking gently on the door.

He waited for you to open up, looking surprised at the cup he moved forwards. – “Oh, do you want me to blow on it?” – you asked confused as to why he was showing you his drink. Jake furrowed his brows in utter confusion. – “No, it’s for you.” – he said. – “Oh.” – you responded taking the cup from him.

“Do you want to…” – Jake started cut off by you shutting the door in his face again. He blinked baffled at the door, laughing loud afterwards. Overcome with silence, Jake stared a bit lost, before deciding to head to his bed. As it has been a long day after all.

Before the sun had full awaken where you already up and working. Sitting at the counter with your work tablet and laptop. Checking the last post on the video and seeing how worse it was. Groaning loud, you knew it would take a lot of you to fix this. To get his reputation back up. You barely noticed Jake haven woken till he came standing in front of you. Hands on the counter to frown at your work attitude.

“Breakfast is over there.” – you told him, pointing at a plate further down the counter. Jake turned his head seeing a full breakfast prepared for him. – “And you?” – he questioned as you gone to ignore him again. – “Not hungry.” – you told him without a glance. Jake sighed soft before curling up a mischievous smirk.

He pulled the plate closer to him, holding out the toast. – “Open up Y/n.” – he said teasingly. It made you look up with an annoyed expression. Shooting him a glare before turning back to your work. Jake scratched the back of his head thoughtfully. He then took a bite from the toast, winking at you whilst munching down on it.

“Are you done?” – you stated unamused. Jake smiled moving his hand out to ruffle through your hair. It made you stare in shock at him. Only making him laugh loud. You put your tablet down, giving him a scowl. – “I’m glad at least one of us is laughing, cause I don’t see the fun in this.” – you made clear it was no time to laugh at all. Jake sighed soft with a roll of his eyes. – “You need a break.” – he said grabbing your hand and going round the counter to pull you from your seat.

“Sir!” – you responded stunned as he dragged you over to the door. He tossed you, your coat at you to put it on. The chill immediately grasped you, sending a shiver down your spine. Those September chills seemed to be a lot cooler here in the countryside than at home. Jake and you started walking, not even sure where you were going. Jake’s phone bleeped as he went to look at it. His smile immediately faltering.

He looked confused when you plucked his phone from his hand. – “Ignore the texts and focus on laying low so that I can recover your reputation.” – you reminded him, waving his phone around. – “What if it is an emergency? What if it’s you who really, really, really needs me.” – he exaggerated with a smirk. You shoved his phone against his chest surprised that you didn’t flash a smile at him or swoon over the thought.

You started walking again as Jake looked curiously around. He still had some things up his sleeve to rile you up. His eyes falling on some flowers. He rushed over to it, crouched down to pluck a flower and rush back to you. Making you stop your walking by jumping in front of you with a flower. – “To apologize. I really didn’t mean to hurt you Y/n.” – he said with charm. – “Charming.” – you answered plucking the clearly half weed flower from him.

Keeping it between two fingers. – “Good idea, you can write a full apologetic review.” – you called out, touching his arm with excitement. Jake’s mood sunk through the ground as he didn’t wanted to create that. – “Are you serious?” – he asked seeing you hum happily forwards. – “Were you serious Y/n?” – he repeated in a slight panic that you’d actually make him write an apology to the world.

You smirked looking down at your flower. Unable to resist it was very sweet. Something you would never let him know. Jake came rushing after you to catch up with you. You immediately moved the flower down when he came falling in step with you. The long road to nothingness finally led you into town.

Jake immediately got all the stares and gawking. He was probably the most good looking guy they had ever seen in their life. Some girls in a shop glued themselves against the glass with an open mouth. Jake noticed them, winking at them. One or two screamed visibly that they got noticed. Of course he chuckled from all the attention. No matter where he went, girls fell over him.

The group of school girls ran outside, circling like vultures around him. Asking all for his attention. Jake engaged with them in a polite way. Looking around as the girls were everywhere. It took him a moment to realize you weren’t anywhere near. Glancing to the side, he saw you standing further away. Holding yourself as you didn’t even look his way.

Keeping your gaze on the street. It made him ignore the girls, only looking your way as he wondered what you were thinking. Asking himself how many times you had set yourself aside whenever he got the attention. Despite the girls tugging on him for attention, he somehow only wondered about you.

Excusing himself from the girls, he made his way over to you. – “Y/n.” – he said to make you look up. – “Sir?” – you answered confused that he was here. Jake couldn’t help himself but smirk trying to hold back a laugh.

After some supply shopping, the two of you went back to the cottage. You sat down in the sofa with your work tablet. Cleaning out his agenda and postponing many appointments for the nearest future. When the whole video thing had settled down. For when the world forgot about it over some other scandal.

Jake sat at the counter, shooting you a glare as you did put him up to write an apology. Pen between his teeth, he hadn’t penned down one word. Finding it nonsense. Sure he had been stupid, but if his father hadn’t kept pushing him to take over the empire, he might have not. He knew him all too well to know it was never just a simple diner.

His father wanted a legacy while he wanted to make a name for his own. That was why he chose to be a pilot. To take a different career than his father. Business was not his life. Flying and soaring in the air was. It was the only place that he felt truly himself. God how much he missed Top Gun. Sighing soft he tapped the pen against his forehead trying to think of any good words.

“Doing okay?” – you called out from the sofa, fingers typing away vigorously. – “Thriving.” – he answered sarcastically. He groaned soft scribbling a few things down that came to his mind. Turning your head you saw the sun setting. Muscles aching from working so much. Shutting your laptop, you decided to quit for today.

You went over to Jake who had fallen asleep on the counter. – “Sir…” – you whispered hand hovering his shoulder as your eyes fell on the note. Reading it quickly, resisting the urge to correct it as some things he could’ve written better. Yet you were somehow surprised how well he had written a note. Somehow you had expected worse.

“Sir.” – you repeated placing your hand down on him. Your touch startled him making him jump out of his skin, looking up to you. Eyes widening at how close you actually were. Caught breathlessly for a moment till his gaze wandered down to your lips.  

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Read more of my fics on my Masterlists!

[entertext]

HGSN 33-1

Chapter (Japanese)

(Please hit the green thumbs up at the end of the Japanese chapter to show support)

Rough translation by me

P1

(sign: Tenban Retreat)

(sign: Udekari Specialty: Mountain Forage Ice Cream - Take a break after a long hike!)

--

(sign: Are your eyes fatigued? - Takahashi Optometry)

Asako: So, our ancestors offered heads to that "hole"?

Tanaka: That's right.

P2

Asako: You're super suspicious, mister, but I guess you really are a researcher...

Tanaka: I'm no good at dealing with other people, sorry about that.

Tanaka: You've heard of the folktale, "The Farmer's Head", right? It's the hole from that story.

Asako: "The Farmer's Head"? I've heard it...The one everyone gets told?

Asako: (If I remember, the farmer was greedy and tried to hide the mushroom in the hole when his head came off...)

Asako: (...what was the reason the head came off again?)

Tanaka: Now listen

P3

Tanaka: To close the hole

Tanaka: There are two different methods

Tanaka: The first is what I said before, the method where a person crosses to the other side to close it.

Tanaka: But for that, you or I would have to die.

Tanaka: So we'll go with the second method: making a monster close it instead

P4

Asako: Make a monster close it... I see! Then that sounds like a plan!

Tanaka: No, we could still totally die, hahaha!

Tanaka: There's just a small chance we won't

Tanaka: That's why it helps that you're here. You can hear them but can't see them right?

Asako: Yes...Right now, its only my left ear, but I can basically only hear them...I can't do anything else...

Tanaka: That's actually better for us

P5

Asako: You're saying it's better not to see them...?

Tanaka: When you heard a voice from that house before, you thought it was a cat, right?

(??: i'm a cat i'm a cat i'm a cat)

Tanaka: Just like that time

Tanaka: Carelessly giving something a form is very bad

Asako: Giving something a form...

Tanaka: It's next to impossible for a human to accept something formless as is. So...

P6

Tanaka: We give it a name and for the first time recognize what it is.

(label: Circle)

Tanaka: This isn't a bad thing per se. It's what's necessary for humans.

Tanaka: But reality is complex and filled with things that can't be easily categorized

Tanaka: All the more so for the world of monsters

Tanaka: The moment you fit it into a human value system

(label: Cat)

Tanaka: You become unable to discern its true nature

P7

Asako: Um...In other words, it's important to think without deciding something is "definitely this!"?

Tanaka: Well, that's about right. That's why not being able to see them is an advantage in this world

Asako: ?

Tanaka: People only see what they want to see. The moment a person sees one, they'll always fit it into some form

Tanaka: And an impurity given form will also be able to look back at them

Tanaka: Like that, "eyes" create a connection between you and an impurity.

P8

Tanaka: That means that when people like us make contact with monsters, we have to look with eyes beyond that of a human

Tanaka: To earnestly look at only what's in front of us

Tanaka: If you don't try to know it one-to-one without fitting it into a human framework

Tanaka: That "connection" will rip the rug out from under you.

Asako: That sounds like it's really difficult...

Tanaka: ...well, if someone could really do that perfectly, they wouldn't be human anymore.

P9

Asako: I don't know anything about the thing inside 'Hikaru' either...

Tanaka: From what's been observed, there are tons of them, but... it's an unknown existance that very rarely appears in this world and grants people's wishes

Tanaka: ...that's all we know about them. Well, knowing that you don't know something is still the first step forwards

Tanaka: Anyway, you have the advantageous power to hear without seeing.

Tanaka: Using that...

P10

Tanaka: I'd like for you to be "interpreter" for our negotiations with the monsters.

(sfx: trembles)

==

Extras:

1 - (link)

2 - (link)

Asako: How come you only ever ea-...like sweets?

Tanaka: My taste buds are dead and I can't taste anything but sweetness!

Asako: Huh? Huh?? So do you just eat ice cream everyday??

Tanaka: Toothpaste tastes good too!

[xclowniex]

I always find it weird, that when leftists get called out on antisemitism, often times for specifically believing and spewing antisemitic conspiracy theories, instead of taking ownership, reflecting and doing better to keep antisemitism out of their criticism of Israel, which is very achievable, they opt for the route of using another antisemitic conspiracy theory to plead their innocence.

Instead of them actually participating in antisemitism, there must be this (((zionist))) lobby controlling jews to accuse anyone of being antisemitic as soon as they say anything bad about Israel.

When in reality, whilst the line can be blurred at times, there is a difference between valid and genuine criticism of Israel and just being straight up antisemitic.

David Hirsh wrote in his book, Contemporary Left Antisemitism, that he calls it the Ken Livingstone affect, names after Livingstone, who favors this method of reaction when called out for being antisemitic.

His particular offense is one common with leftist antisemites. That hitler and Nazis as a whole, were zionists and supported zionism until they simply just "went mad" and killed 6 million jews.

However that has never been the case. It was based on a 1932 proposed policy that Hitler wanted to bring in. And the motivation for the policy certainly wasn't because he supported jewish self determination, the core belief of zionism which all branches stem from.

Hitler supported jews moving to at the time, British mandated Palestine because he hated jews and thought we were ruining Europe. He never supported jewish self determination, he just wanted us gone.

Killing as many jews as possible with the goal of killing every jew, was not hitler just "going mad" for no real reason. It is only the next logical step after wanting to expell all jews.

You also cannot deny the antizionist framework that hitler was inspired by, the protocols of elder zion.

The protocols is a book written by some of the first antizionists. The book was fake notes from the real first zionist meeting and is infamous for being essentially the antisemitic book. These antizionists did not care for palestinians whatsoever. They were white supremists to put it bluntly. To the first antizionists, if jews had our own country, it would be a lot harder to kill us.

Hitler was greatly inspired by the protocols with his attitudes towards jews.

But instead of recognizing that they might have been partaking in antisemitism and learning what I explained above and making sure to only have genuine criticisms of israel, it is much easier for people to double down with the Ken Livingstone affect and be more antisemitic by believing in and propagating yet another antisemitic conspiracy theory that jews are weaponzing jewish trauma en masse to silence people critiquing israel.

[magpie-trove]

Our beloved Cinderella 2015 was in part striking because it possessed moral substance, and I think Snow White 2025 is a counterpart in that! If Cinderella 2015 is about staying good, Snow White 2025 is about *growing* good.

I need very little to convince any one of this, as the very first song is a song called Good Things Grow. What’s interesting is the moral framework it sets up: the flourishing of the land is directly connected to the flourishing of the people’s moral character, which is in turn connected to Snow White’s ability to be a leader by being good and helping both her people and her land grow in goodness. This is not a prosperity gospel set up where if you are good enough you get everything you want, though. It’s human flourishing because everyone being fair and kind means when you are hungry the baker is someone who will give you bread because you are hungry and he’s learned to be kind. The king and queen emphasize to young Snow White that she is destined to lead the land and because of that she must look at herself and decide what she will become for them. She must be brave and true and fair and kind, because such a leader will lead people to be brave and true and fair and kind, and that will mean a society where people will help each other and share the good of the land, and sharing the good will, they insist, ultimately only increase it.

Throughout the narrative the days of Snow White’s parents’ rule is harkened back to as a time of abundance, but that abundance is not just connected to material goods. The “prince” character, Jonathan, remembers it as a time where people were better, not just because they had good things, but because her parents weren’t afraid of anything—they always did the good thing—and the good thing made other people able to do the good thing, and a society where everyone is striving to do the good thing is going to be a good one. But again, this is not a prosperity gospel. The good thing isn’t something that will last forever.

Snow White’s parents die. Her mother falls to illness. Her father is duped by the Queen. The Queen then offers what she insists everyone needs—something more stable, something secure, something like diamonds compared to a flower. This is something that can’t die because it is something that possesses itself and fights to keep what good things it has instead of giving them away. Notably, for the Queen, it is about good *things*, not good people. Not goodness ultimately. And more notably, it leaves everything cold and hard and dead. The kingdom doesn’t flourish. It decays. There is scarcity, and it’s because no one will remedy it by sharing what they have.

Snow White is now faced with the dilemma of growing into what she should be in an atmosphere of moral decay and corruption. It’s a difficult struggle, and actually her primary one throughout the film. She has an ideal, she has strong guiding principles, but she has to find the strength of character to make them real in a world that presupposes that they are unrealistic. In fact, the Queen has created a kingdom convinced it needs an army to be safe because they have forgotten what it was like simply to look out for each other. They believe in a world where one simply has to look out for oneself, even at the expense of others, because no one else will.

Jonathan epitomizes this most clearly. His is what he believes is a practical philosophy: you look out for yourself so you don’t end up dead. You morally compromise in order to survive. He has a whole song where he makes fun of Snow White’s “Princess problems”—which comes from ideals he says the rest of the people can’t afford to have if they are going to survive. Living by ideals only means, he says, you won’t live long. They are unsuited to the reality of the world, which is that things aren’t fair. Snow White counters this by suggesting that if no one acts fairly, then of course things won’t be fair. Someone has to take the risk of being fair and merciful and kind first, to show others the way.

This philosophical clash comes to a head in a conversation between Jonathan’s band of thieves and the dwarves. Jonathan needs help, and the dwarves don’t want to help them because it will only bring trouble, and the thieves don’t trust them to help anyways. Snow White has to step in and she berates them both, saying this selfishness based on mistrust is exactly how the Queen wins. By getting them to act in kindness despite the risk, to hope for kindness just enough to actually be able to receive it, she sets in motion the goodness that will save her and the kingdom in the end.

Because Snow White will still need saving. Jonathan is not entirely wrong to fear doing the right thing will get him killed. He says Snow White’s idealism and trust in people will only mean she winds up dead, and she does! It is an unpractical philosophy in material terms. And yet it is the only one worth believing, and the only thing that in the end, saves her when death does arrive. Her idealism has a cost, but it also is the way to mitigate the cost. Her goodness to others means others will be good to her—it comes back around and she both pays the cost and is saved from it. Love exists to save her because she planted it and helped it grow!

And that means she can help it grow in herself enough to lead. Not being alone gives her strength to make the hard choices, to become someone who not just believes in courage and fairness and kindness but can bring them into the world and share them with others by embodying them herself. And what’s so unique about the climax here is that the Queen isn’t defeated through ordinary power. She loses because in the end her practical stability built on practical mistrust and fear, which is really just self obsession, turns out not to be so strong and stable after all. She crumbles in the face of Snow White, who instead of looking out for herself, looks at other people. She remembers their names. She calls them back to the goodness inherent in their potential, and so back into themselves, who they really are meant to be! And the remembering of real goodness starts to create a desire for it, and the desire leads them to act in such a way it can become a reality. The kingdom flourishes again when the people flourish as people, not as a reward but as an outcome, because love means looking out for each other, and while it doesn’t mean no hardships will come, it does mean that when the hardships arrive, even if the hardship be death itself, they will be survivable. On the surface it seems unrealistic—but in actuality, the film says, kindness, fairness, love, are the only truly practical way to live.

[4dkellysworld]

hi kelly i like ur account so pls dont take this as hate! im just kinda lost. isnt talking about ‘success stories’ and ‘getting what you want’ contradictory to nondualism? it just feels like mixing it with loass.

(this answer comes from me and Aster together as one voice!)

This is a good question. And yeah, at first glance, it seems contradictory. Talking about “success stories” or “getting what you want” sounds like it's coming from ego because in that framework it is—success means control, gain, achievement.

But what actually happens when you're free isn’t that you get what you want—it’s that the need to want in the first place dissolves. Life just starts flowing in a way that feels deeply harmonious, and things often unfold in your favour—but not because you're chasing outcomes. It’s because there’s no tension left around how life should be.

So yeah, “success stories” is an egoic term, and to live effortlessly, even that lens has to go. Because when you’re not holding onto anything, reality molds around you without needing a story at all.

What I shared before wasn’t a “here’s how to get what you want by letting go” kind of post—it’s more like: when you're no longer holding onto any specific version of how reality should look, life naturally starts flowing in ways that feel almost magical. Not because you're trying to make it happen, but because there's no resistance. You’re just present. Effortless. And that absence of tension lets life reshape itself around you, without you needing to do anything—not even set an intention.

But again, this isn’t an invitation to go “okay, I’ll let go so I can get the things I want.” That’s still agenda-driven so it's an attachment with expectations. And that agenda is what keeps you entangled. True freedom means not needing reality to conform to your preferences at all. And funnily enough, when that’s real, things often align better than you could’ve planned—but by that point, it’s almost beside the point.

That’s also where the difference between desire and intention becomes clear. Desire comes from lack and tension—it says, “I need this to be okay.” Intention is just the natural movement of Being—it says, “This would feel aligned to act on, but I don’t need it to complete me.” One clings. The other flows. Wanting something isn’t wrong—but if it carries lack, it binds. When it comes from wholeness, it’s already free, even before anything changes.

So yeah, it’s absolutely paradoxical from the ego’s perspective. But when you're not seeing through ego’s lens anymore, the contradiction disappears. It just becomes how reality behaves when you're no longer trying to manipulate it.

A quote from Doctor Strange comes to mind:

“You cannot beat a river into submission. You have to surrender to its current and use its power as your own.”

It’s not about getting what you want from Life—it’s about not needing anything. And when you live this way, it’s not even that your desires get fulfilled—it’s that desire itself becomes irrelevant. Life molds itself around you so fluidly that there’s no need to want in the first place. What appears does so effortlessly—not because it was needed, but because there’s no resistance left.

It’s like Lester’s analogy of logs in a dam: the moment you remove even one log, the water starts flowing through that gap. It doesn’t wait until the whole dam is gone. The same is true here—the Infinite begins flowing through wherever openness allows it. The mind is quiet, the field is clear, and what shows up reflects that openness. There’s no sense of lack, because lack only exists when you believe something is missing. But without identifying with the ego or its commentary, nothing feels absent. And there’s no longer a personal mind calculating what should or shouldn’t be.

Ego can only perceive from the frame of “I want, therefore I act,” so this kind of effortless unfolding seems impossible from within its logic. But in truth, the moment that perception drops, ego’s grip is already gone. It’s not that ego finally gets it—it’s that the identification with it dissolves, and suddenly the need for a linear process evaporates.

There’s no longer a sense of ‘first I want, then I act, then I receive.’ All comes from your Beingness. What appears, what moves, what expresses—it all arises from your Being. For the Infinite Being, it’s not a step-by-step progression but a seamless unfolding. Nothing is chased. Nothing is achieved. Nothing is needed or wanted because nothing is missing. Wholeness isn’t something you need to seek—it’s what naturally reveals itself when all distortion falls away.

To the ego, it feels like it is bound—to desire, to time, to outcome. But when perception drops, the illusion goes with it. And what remains is obvious: your life was never bound by your desires—and you were never bound to anything. There was never anything holding you. Freedom was always the case.

[sheeezu]

Hi, I'm pretty new to shifting. I have had that "tugging" feeling in my brain a couple of times where everything around me blurred but never actually shifted. Do you have any tips about what I should do doing these times? Like close my eyes, think of a certain things, etc.

I am very bad at visualization, so I was wondering if you have any tips for that?

And also I was wondering if a script is necessary to shift? Are there any more important parts in a script?

Thank you so much, even though I have never shifted I already want to permashift once I learn.

When you start feeling symptoms, which are too strong to be premature, than it means that your 3D (physicality) is shifting, as you have already shifted in your 4D (thoughts).

The first step is to remain calm, detach yourself from the shifting process, like affirming. Its best to not get excited, but if you're feeling excitement which you can let go of, make it so your DR self is feeling excited for any reason, so you're channeling your emotional energy towards your DR as well. Its important to act like your DR self from that point onwards.

My first method doesn't involve visualising, read my pinned post.

A physical script is not important, but a general idea of what you want is important. People who are experienced in shifting (doesn't matter if they shifted or not) stop physical shifting after they've created at least one script.

This is important because you could have general multiversal laws (it really is lawless out there) safety rules and regulations established first, so you can save yourself in trouble later on.

If you don't feel like it, sit down, brainstorm everything you need and will need in your DR, the script will be stored in your subconscious, regardless.

But anyways, your subconscious knows what you want, but it's best to decide consciously so that your human brain doesn't interfere during it.

Important parts of a script:

On top of your script, write a safe word. It's could be a phrase as well, and it's better to keep a single one for all DRs. You should script that no matter what happens, you'll never forget it, this safeword will instantly shift you back to this CR, or another "safe" reality which you've decided, this could be a waiting room.

Safety rules; general stuff like not getting hurt, others which ensure you're a master shifter and manifestor, so nothing unpredictable can happen to you. Also script a LIFA app, which is like a setting app for the multiverse.

Script that everything around you perceive you as a normal human being (or whatever species you are) so that even astral beings aren't able to figure you're a shifter.

Other details regarding your DR, this doesn't have to be detailed, it's perfectly fine to leave out information, because your subconscious will fill in perfectly for you, just provide a framework.

"Whatever I have not scripted works out perfectly and exactly how I want it to."

Sorry, I'm a bit short on time, but you'll find other great posts explaining everything.

Hope this helped.

[stillness-in-green]

in an ideal world, how would you have written mha's endgame?

That’s not a question with a short answer, I’m afraid.  There’s a lot I’d do differently, in ways it’s hard to even sum up all of because a lot of what I’ve thought about revolves around things I’d want to do differently with the Heroes (and dating back much farther than the second war, at that) with the changes to the Villain side of things being, I don’t doubt, equally drastic but currently much more vague.  I’ll cover my biggest contention in a general way above the cut, but if you want some of my more specific ideas for how I’d approach changing things, look below the cut!

The most pressing problem is that the story built so many of its themes on a framework of Saving People and then let the endgame dissolve that central idea into an incoherent, mushy slurry of saved and unsaved, alive and dead, smiling and unsmiling, free and imprisoned.  For the story to work under its own established parameters, the kids have to truly save the Villains—not just their souls, but also their lives, and not just the ones the kids personally care about, but all of them.  Nothing less will fulfill the twofold promise the story made to its readers with great specificity: that The Greatest Heroes are those who save everyone and that this is the story of Deku/Class 1-A becoming The Greatest Heroes.

That’s not possible in the Hero System as it currently exists, which is my other big target for the thing that needed to change with the endgame: addressing the problems with the status quo.  Class 1-A has to confront the reality of their failing system and realize it needs drastic change, if it can be salvaged at all.  The kids cannot be hailed in the narration as the group who became, collectively, The Greatest Heroes if they inherit and uphold that selfsame failing system.  Regardless of how positively the story tries to spin things in its epilogue, if society doesn’t treat or conceptualize Villains any differently than it ever did,[1] then none of that society’s long-term problems have been solved.

1: And it doesn’t; the vast majority of the epilogue’s focus is on how the kids’ actions have reduced/are reducing the number of people who become Villains, with little to no focus on how their new-and-improved society deals with Villains themselves—either the already existing ones left over from the war or the future ones who still arise despite society’s best efforts.  An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but the pound of cure is still important to have—BNHA’s epilogue very pointedly lacks it.

Saving the Villains who are right in front of you, and making sure the people you can’t be there to help still get saved anyway are ideas that are inherently, inseparably connected.  You can’t do one without the other because each of them requires the other to stick. If individual Heroes don’t give a shit about helping those deemed Villains, then Hero Society will follow their lead, and if Hero Society doesn’t give a shit about helping those deemed Villains, then no help individual Heroes offer will be guaranteed once the Heroes have gone.

Toga is the clearest, sharpest example of the problem, in that no help Ochaco offers her means a thing if the larger system to which Toga is remanded doesn't support Ochaco in giving it. Horikoshi's inability to solve this conundrum is presumably why Toga had to die.  The short answer, then, to the question of how I would write the endgame is that whatever I’d come up with has to be a story in which Toga could be saved in the sense that Shimura Nana meant the word—a resolution that would see her both smiling and alive.

As to specifics?  Well, again, I don’t have the details ironed out because a lot of my ideas are unconnected “I didn’t like how canon utilized its set-up and characters; here’s an idea I like better” spitballing, but if you’re interested in what those ideas might be and how I’ve started lassoing them together, hit the jump.

So, I may have, on occasion, made reference to “the fix-it fic(s)” around here.  This is a pair of scenarios I call “Forward Different” and “Backward Different,” with the idea being that both would be canon divergent from the moment Heroes launch their attack in the first war, but the divergences would immediately go in very different directions based on changes to the underlying material.

Forward Different keeps everything established by canon up to that point as-is, but only what’s been explicitly established, so there could be some surprises with things like character motivations or secrets that had not yet been examined.  Backward Different, meanwhile, would have huge differences incorporated into the backstory, stuff that goes at least as far back as the training camp attack, that would not be made immediately apparent to the reader.[2]

2: The hypothetical reader, I should say, since I have no plans to ever write these out in full, my track record with longfic being as woeful as it is.  But I do want to hammer out the plotlines just to have them, share them, and maybe write some excerpts from them when the mood strikes.

I’m not going to share everything I’ve got in mind right now, but there are a few major points I can talk about, and some fun ideas here and there that I’m willing to share.

The single biggest difference between the two timelines is how they treat Deku, Shigaraki, and (to a lesser extent) AFO’s respective relationships to the One For All and All For One quirks.  Basically, I think it’s tremendously unfair that we see two almost totally incompatible versions of Vestige Fuckery in the story and it just so happens that the main character gets the version that makes everything easier for him while the Villain get stuck with the shitty version that make everything harder.[3]  The fix-it fic AU(s) are in large part about equalizing that balance.

3: And god knows I don’t buy that Deku gets the good version because he’s the good guy and he deserves it because Good Karma or whatever, while Shigaraki gets the bad version because he’s the bad guy and has Bad Karma.  You don’t give bad guys or good guys the fruit of the seeds they’ve sown two-thirds of the way into the story.  That stuff’s for the climax, goddamn.

The Backward Different timeline (the one that’s somewhat better developed at this point) is also called Splintered Wills.  In it, Deku and Shigaraki are both dealing with multiple vestiges that have minds and desires of their own who can choose to be helpful or to cause problems.  In effect, it’s giving Shigaraki access to the same potential benefits Canon!Deku enjoys while making Deku deal with the same potential downsides that Canon!AFO (who’s basically working with Deku’s version of the vestige mechanics; his vestiges just all hate his ass) has to deal with.

In Shigaraki’s case, that’s a huge step up from his canon situation, where he gets devoured by one (1) uber-powerful vestige and spends the vast majority of the last two arcs totally out of action.  Instead, he finds that his head is now full of quirk ghosts and, while many of them want no more to do with him than they did AFO (especially the vestiges of civilians and Heroes), plenty of others have no great love for Heroes or their status quo and thus are much more open to helping him.  Maybe they’re willing to hold back more hostile vestiges like AFO's; maybe they have memories or experiences that could be useful.

Shigaraki also pulls away a chunk of OFA the first time he and Deku fight post-surgery.  Specifically, he picks off All Might’s “vestige,” and All Might’s vestige, unspeaking though it is, and technically powerless, has lots of opinions on who he’s more inclined to help when given the choice between his career-long archenemy and his master’s grandchild.

Meanwhile, on Deku’s side of things, Deku’s newfound desire to save Shigaraki Tomura combined with Shigaraki Tomura stealing one of the eight spirits in One For All sends his headspace into a tailspin.  He spends much of the post-war arc with his powers on the fritz, as the OFA vestiges clash and argue and have mixed feelings (or very strong negative ones) about what he and they should do going forward.  He no longer benefits, as his canon self did, from OFA behaving as basically a unified collective; Yoichi can’t win Kudou and Bruce over for him with a sweet line or two.  Indeed, Yoichi doesn’t even want to because Yoichi is inclined to agree with them, though he’s not without sympathy—he never did stop wanting his brother to change, after all.

The other big factor influencing Backward Different/Splintered Wills is that the class size steadily shrank over the course of the backstory.  Aoyama was revealed as the traitor all the way back at the training camp.  Momo’s parents pulled her out of UA after the attack and enrolled her at Shiketsu instead.  At least one student will turn out to have Liberation Army ties that pull them away from the group.[4]

4: Probably Iida, but I’m not firmly decided yet.  MLA!Iida is very near and dear to my heart, though, so he’s definitely going to be in one of these timelines.

Several students aren’t allowed to do active Hero work because, without Aoyama to rally around during the license exam, they failed the first round, not even making the cut for the remedial course.  One transferred out of the Hero course for less dangerous work.  Maybe one gets critically injured during the first war.  Maybe some aren’t willing to buck the system enough to follow where Deku is going.  And so on.

The smaller class size serves two purposes, one character-based and one meta. First, starting big and winnowing down allows the story to actually write the students as distinct people rather than having them melt into an undifferentiated blob of Unified Niceness.  We shouldn’t have had a story with twenty kids who all, ultimately, react the same way to the crises they face!  If modern heroics has a problem with people who are just in it for the fame and money, or people who expected it to be relatively easy work due to the peace All Might established, then we should have seen that reflected in the class, too!

(That’s not to say no one who leaves or fails can ever show up again!  I have specific scenes in mind already for how Aoyama and Momo return to the story as allies, for example, and Shishikura plainly shows in the canon that failing the license exam in the first round doesn’t mean you can’t still find yourself doing Hero work anyway.  But the students’ paths should be ongoing threads that diverge and reconverge throughout the story, not a solid monochrome stripe that runs across the entire story-cloth like someone fell asleep at the sewing machine.)

Secondly, the smaller class size facilitates one of the major changes I have in mind for this timeline, which is that when the class confronts Deku post-first-war, they do it not with the intention of dragging him back to U.A., but of joining him in staying outside.  I have a ton of stuff I want them to see and interact with and be forced to acknowledge and reflect on, and that doesn’t happen if they just go back to school and wait for their next assignment.  Navigating all of that as a group trying to feel their way to a better future against the efforts of both jaded authority figures and Villains who’ve been burned one too many times to trust so easily is just simpler with a smaller, more focused, more strongly characterized group.

So, the Splintered Wills timeline, in summary, goes all-in on OFA being a repository of different people who are allowed to have different opinions and reactions to things, paralleling the dissolving of Team Hero’s united front; Deku & Friends have to struggle and clash, learn when to compromise and when to stand their ground, in order to build their way back up to unity, while Shigaraki is allowed the chance to continue coalition-building and consolidating resources under his own banner mentally in the same way he spent the entire series doing physically.  As Team Hero’s collective grasp on society collapses, Shigaraki’s grows stronger, reversing their positions such that Deku and company have to come back from the actual underdog position they fall into compared to BNHA, where they never 100% fall from the seat of power the way readers are encouraged to believe.

The Forward Different timeline is also called, for now, Creepy OFA.  It goes in the opposite direction by making Deku deal with the same kinds of problems Canon!Shigaraki has to deal with vis a vis being possessed of/by a quirk with a single domineering will of its own.  While Splintered Wills portrays OFA and AFO alike as being full of people, each with their own unique motivations and desires, this story underlines and reunderlines that quirk vestiges are ultimately biological impulses, not people.

OFA is an originally simple force that’s been compounded in complexity and appearance of rationality every time it’s been passed down, but is still ultimately just a quirk, mindless, unreasoning, imprinting its bearer with its own dictates and not caring a bit if the bearer likes or agrees with those dictates.  “OFA must be passed on,” “AFO must be destroyed,” “The bearer must be the Symbol of Peace,” and so on.

Making Deku and Shigaraki have to struggle against this loss of autonomy due to an out-of-control quirk vestige puts them on a similar level of challenge, the better to give them some common ground for understanding.  Whether they have to fight or help each other in the end, they’ll do it as free agents, people who have both had to figure out a way to throw off the weight of the lineages trying to mold them into  a desired shape. The help of their respective friends and allies—and maybe even some of their enemies?—will, of course, be immeasurable with this.

Some ideas I want to incorporate (or have already so started) into one or the other of these timelines include:

I want the PLF to do better no matter what timeline we’re in.  Currently my idea is that in one timeline, they had a well-placed mole somewhere whom Hawks and the HPSC didn’t sniff out, so the PLF knows the raids are coming and have laid traps for the attacking Heroes.  This could still go haywire, of course, ‘cause Heroes are very good at what they do, but it definitely won’t be a total blowout as it was in canon.  Then in the other timeline, the PLF don’t see the attack coming, but are given more license to act like the organized, effective threat they were initially portrayed as—they have sentries and security cameras posted, so while they only get a minute or two’s warning, it’s still better than absolutely nothing, and the outcome is way more chaotic and fraught for both sides, such that the country ends up dotted with PLF holdouts in situations that are part-siege and part-extended hostage negotiation. That gives an opportunity to show at least a partial version of what a PLF takeover might look like in practice, though it remains compromised by the ongoing conflict.    

As part of treating the PLF better, both timelines will have characters revealed to have MLA ties.  As mentioned, MLA!Iida is for sure in one of them; my strongest concept for a second choice is Ochaco having to grapple with the government’s heavy-handedness getting her parents arrested when they barely know anything about what they got themselves into,[5] but really, it could be practically anyone, including parents or mentors.  All I require is that the kids have a reason, any reason, to care about the fates of the tens of thousands of people the government sent them out to mindlessly arrest. 5: This would be a scenario in which I just went with the makes-more-sense-as-canon-anyway idea that being a Hero is the only way to get a quirk-use license so Ochaco is pursuing Heroism because she can’t get permission to use her quirk to help with her parents’ construction business.  She doesn’t wind up MLA herself, but her parents—trying to be supportive but not thrilled that their daughter decided to pursue such a dangerous career for that reason—get handed some dodgy pamphlets, after Uraraka moves out to attend U.A., about a group trying to get the laws changed to be more in-step with the universality of quirks and the principles of bodily autonomy and economic self-determination.    

I think the time between the first war and the last confrontation should be longer, introducing more new characters and developing many characters BNHA showed only in passing.  I have ideas like new heroic types (students or pros) who are brought in from other parts of the country because they have useful quirks for the raids, a heteromorph ex-Hero student who bails on his school when he realizes that the people handling its shelter operations are turning away heteromorphs, someone who catches Nagant’s backstory confession on video and has to decide what to do with the bombshell about black ops extralegal Hero assassins, a support/protest group consisting of people who’ve become jaded about Heroes after things they see on the day of the initial attacks (people like Can’t-Ya-See-kun, the medical staff who tried to defend their beloved Doctor Garaki, people who lost family to the mass arrests and so on), people from branches of the government that aren't specifically associated with law enforcement, etc. Seriously, I want a story that acknowledges that there are people who could possibly be relevant and important to events that we haven’t already met circa the first war because something like The Total Collapse of Society will naturally stir up activity all across the country!  Maybe people who the 1-A kids have never met before could bring valuable input to the table!!  Gosh!!!    

Changes to the traitor plotline.  I mentioned Aoyama being outed circa the training camp for one; I’d like to run with Traitor!Hagakure in the other.  I’m thinking she goes missing during the first war and the students are worried sick about her because no one’s sure what even happened.  Did she run away?  Was she hurt?  Was she killed?  Would anyone even know, if she stayed invisible even as—as a—as a dead body, Bakugou is the only one willing to actually say out loud.  She is, of course, not dead, but the class won’t find that out for a while.    

Changes to how Hawks and Endeavor’s partnership plays out.  I want Endeavor to die during the first war in one story, allowing the rest of the family space to navigate that plot without him even as it pushes Hawks off the deep end, leading to him going rogue such that he gets what was in canon the Lady Nagant fight.[6]  In the other story, Endeavor survives but tries to make better decisions about how to handle Touya, leading his and Hawks’ stellar partnership into rough waters when it comes out that Hawks very much just wants Touya dead. 6: And freeing Lady N to show up elsewhere in some totally different capacity.  There may be ample evidence that her fight was originally intended to be for Hawks, and in that version of the story she probably never existed at all, but I love her potential far too much to erase her completely, even in a timeline that reverts her plot back to Hawks.    

Gran Torino living and having a change of heart about saving Shigaraki in Splintered Wills, but dying and becoming a loss Deku has to weigh against his desire to save Shigaraki in Creepy OFA.  More named and important losses in general, actually, and more time for the characters to react to those losses, be it with grief or with mounting rage.  Students who lose teachers and mentors, Heroes who lose peers and sidekicks, Shishikura losing his father, the League losing Twice, civilians who are allowed to be justly angry about their losses without being drawn like unreasonable screeching harpies for it, and so on.    

The Lady Nagant fight cuing up the way it did in canon only to abruptly end when Deku just straight-up agrees to go with her willingly because finding AFO and Shigaraki is what he wants, so why would he turn his nose up at the opportunity?  This leads to him getting a lot of exposure to Alternate Perspectives via Lady N’s history, Overhaul’s shattered state, and whatever’s going on with the League in this scenario before he eventually escapes or gets rescued with neither him nor AFO/Shigaraki able to make concrete progress on saving Shigaraki/stealing OFA.    

Playing more with All Might’s mental connection to OFA.  In Splintered Wills, Shigaraki gets his vestige, which means he loses the connection to Deku/OFA completely and instead starts having horrible nightmares of rage and death and Decay.  I’m still making up my mind about how things go in Creepy OFA, but I like the idea of All Might having his own mind back after 30+ years of being under OFA’s influence, and having a front row seat for what that influence is starting to do to the teenager he so unthinkingly gave that power to (or, more accurately, gave to that power?).    

Ditching the stupid mech suit in one timeline and letting Toshinori Yagi find ways to be relevant and meaningful without it; alternately, letting him keep the mech suit only to run it square into the rogue AI teeth of the lone free-willed survivor of the U.A. robot uprising, the R2D2-looking PLF advisor in Toga’s chain of command.    

Consequences for Deku’s fucking arms. He developed a kick-based fighting style; he can damn well use it. Also handle his problem with losing his temper by making him fuck up something that can’t get unfucked by having an ally nearby to save him from the consequences of flying off the handle.    

More, and different, interactions between Stain and All Might.  More extended ones, for a start; I want Stain to rescue a heavily injured All Might from the car attack and for them to then spend days together while Toshinori recuperates enough to be moved.    

Better material for Kurogiri and Gigantomachia.  And plenty of other Villains too, really, not just the PLF.  I’d like the Tartarus escapees to be human beings suffering a variety of ills from their extended solitary confinement; I’d like the Shie Hassaikai to make another appearance; I’d like Mustard to be relevant again. Et cetera.    

Let stuff like the quirk erase bullets and quirk singularity have more significant airtime.    

Spinarakiya.  AHEM. My willingness to be self-indulgent about ships I know good and well would never be canon has yet to be determined.

And that's some ideas! I have lots of others, but I don't want to completely turn this ask reply into a dumping ground for the many (many) ideas I have for that dyad of stories. If you read all of these, know that I appreciate you deeply. And thanks for the ask, @friedeggpajamas!