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ryker-writes · 1 year

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TWST characters taking care of a furby (part 2)

This is part 2 to this post with Heartlabyul, Savanaclaw, and Octavinelle. I loved writing the first one so much and received encouragement from you guys to write a second so here we are!

Request rules and Masterlists

warning: furby death

Setup: Crowley has decided that students should have to go through a lesson to test their skills as future parents. But we know Crowley, he isn't going to spend a lot of money on fake baby dolls that scream. Instead, he decided to purchase furbys, and have the students babysit them for a week...

Kalim:

he has nothing but love for his dear furby

Kalim wants his furby to have the best time while it's with him, so he spoils it

his furby gets all the best food, a super comfortable bed, and even fancy clothing

but Kalim doesn't understand that furbys don't know how to talk at first

so when the furby goes "WAH" he doesn't understand

he thinks the furby is crying because it's sad

Kalim is now desperately searching for some way to make the furby happy again

eventually he settles on the idea that doing something fun could cheer it up

what's more fun than a carpet ride?

the furby has no hands to hold onto the carpet and Kalim needs both hands to steer...

furby fell off and did not survive the landing

Jamil:

well it's easier to take care of then Kalim

the furby actually listens

he actually appreciates his little furby

but Jamil is a busy guy so he has to carry his furby with him everywhere he goes

to classes, around Scarabia, in the kitchen, and even basketball practice

it's pretty adorable

when he's playing basketball you can see his little furby sitting on the bench watching him and making noises that sound like cheers

Jamil was doing good and threw the ball to the net

but it bounced off the backboard and went straight for the bench where poor furby was cheering

the ball hit furby straight in the face and broke him

Vil:

why do furbys have to be so...ugly

since Vil has to look after it, it has to look good

he can't be seen carrying something so ugly after all

it could affect his image

so Vil tries to make the furby look better

but he soon found out that no matter what you do, a furby cannot look beautiful

therefore, he can't be seen with it

the furby stays in his room or in his bag

Vil had the furby with him while he was working on some potions

his bag with the furby in it was on the table next to the cauldron

furby, wanting entertainment and attention, crawled out of the bag

...and fell straight in the cauldron

furby did not survive, but the potion turned out well

Rook:

Rook is a pretty good furby dad

he has loads of fun with his furby and teaches him as much as possible

his little furby has learned french and how to appreciate beauty just like Rook

furby has even started learning some of Rook's hunting skills

it's such a special relationship the two have

at the end of the week when Crowley comes to collect the furby, it's nowhere to be found

when Rook was asked about the furbys whereabouts, he simply said

"A good hunter knows how to conceal themselves during the hunt."

Epel:

he really likes his furby and is determined to take care of it

but he doesn't understand much about how to teach it things

to be fair, he was the youngest where he grew up and never had to look after little kids

so after hours of trying to teach it words, he gets a little frustrated and starts yelling in his accent

the furby really doesn't understand now

this only adds more to Epel's frustration

he starts cursing at the furby with his accent

and furby starts crying sensing anger

not wanting to make things worse, Epel takes a break and leaves the room

when he comes back, the furby was gone

Furby just couldn't take it, and ran away

Idia:

he thinks it's going to be easy peasy

furbys are old tech and pretty simple to take care of

he could easily give furby an upgrade

and he does

after some tinkering, furby has learned many things and his AI has been upgraded

it can now learn faster, connect to internet, play advanced games

it's basically a walking computer

at the end of the week, furby refuses to go back with Crowley

furby threatened to hack into all the tech in the school and release all the information of Crowley's wrongdoings as headmage

even after Crowley let the furby stay, it continued to hack into the schools system to look at sensitive information and use it against him

in the end, the furby had to be destroyed

Ortho:

just two robots being friends

dear Ortho has studied how to properly care for a furby, and plans to do his best

he takes his furby everywhere with him and tried to involve it in just about everything he did

he even showed the little guy video games

both of them were really happy

the furby started to pick up and learn all sorts of things around him

it even started to understand the bond between Ortho and Idia

and it wanted to be a part of that

the furby started to get Ortho's attention by yelling "Brother!"

but the Shroud family had one special trait about them that furby didn't have; the flaming hair

so furby decided to try and get that hair...by setting itself on fire

Ortho was devastated when he found the burned mechanical remains of Furby Shroud

Malleus:

we all know Malleus isn't good with technology

but furby is supposed to behave and be cared for like a child

Malleus hasn't had much experience with children either (most run away from him) but furby was different

furby wasn't scared of him and even appreciated spending time with Malleus

so of course Malleus grew to love furby

he started to care for it much like he would for his roaring drago

furby was even taken on walks and learned about gargoyles

Malleus truly loved the little furby

nothing can hurt it while the great Malleus Draconia was protecting it

at the end of the week Crowley came to collect the furby, but Malleus had refused to give it up

he'd gotten to attached to it and treasured it

Crowley wasn't going to try and force the future king to give it up

Lilia:

he's raised Silver and Malleus, a furby is no problem for him

he's the only one with parenting experience

it's much easier to take care of than they were

he provides it with food three times a day like any normal child

thankfully, the furby doesn't need real food and doesn't have to suffer from Lilia's cooking

the furby has everything it needs

and Lilia is thrilled to have another child to raise, even if it's only for a little bit

he takes it everywhere with him

nothing can hurt the little furby with papa Lilia around

at the end of the week, he sadly hands it back to Crowley

his furby survived

Silver:

raising a furby is like raising a child right?

he totally asks Lilia for help on how to take care of his

and Silver takes pretty good care of it thanks to Lilia's guidance

the furby has the most comfortable bed like Silver has so many blankets and pillows that the furby will be swimming in them

Silver sometimes falls asleep while feeding it, but there aren't many problems with his care apart from that

in order to properly care for his furby, he brings it with him throughout the day

this includes to his classes and the Equestrian club

Riddle and Sebek don't mind much that the furby is there, as long as it doesn't interfere with club activities

the horses however, are a bit unsure of the furby

because of this, Silver did not attempt to ride take the furby on the horse with him

instead, it sat on the ground near the stables

the furby watched on in joy as Silver tended to his horse

and then it laughed and it's ears moved

the movement and sound must've freaked the horse out, because it started freaking out and even kicked it's feet a litte

yeah, it hit furby and messed it up pretty good

Sebek:

he's really going to try

and he struggles with his

aside from feeding it and providing it with a place to sleep, he doesn't know what to do with it

also asks Lilia for help

Lilia tells him that he has to raise it and try to teach it things, keep it entertained, etc.

so Sebek starts trying to teach it the important words

like Malleus' name

next thing you know there's a furby chanting "Malleus! Malleus! Malleus!"

and the furby learns to praise Malleus just like Sebek

once Malleus shows some annoyance at two Sebeks, Sebek decides it has to stop

but the furby keeps going

so Sebek challenges the furby to a deal to see who shall remain by Malleus' side

obviously Sebek won and the furby didn't know what surrendering meant

furby was murdered by the person who was supposed to take care of it

Totals:

Furbys handed out - 11

Furbys returned - 1

Bonus:

Ryker:

hehehe

I'm going to take care of my furby that's for sure

but

I'm going to teach it to say the creepiest things around people

once furby has learned the creepy lines, I'm going to ask someone to hold onto it for me and walk away for a few minutes

after I come back, they might try to tell me what creepy thing furby said

and I'm just not going to believe them :)

once Crowley takes the furby back then he has to deal with the creepy sayings

but also I never seem to have spare batteries around so once the furby dies, it's staying dead

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living400lbs · 1 year

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"Congressional salaries are $174,000. That pay has not increased since 2009; in real dollars, salaries are the lowest they’ve been since 1955. Our health insurance is purchased on the Affordable Care Act exchange. We pay 30% of the premium; the House of Representatives pays 70%, similar to most workplace insurance plans. ... Mandatory pensions take up 4.4% of the salary.... two residences are required; votes keep House members in Washington, D.C., about a hundred days each year. No housing allowance or per diem is paid, and no tax deduction for business housing is permitted. ...

Juxtapose these facts against the misconception that people become rich by serving in Congress. ... Congress is full of multimillionaires for the same reason that the NBA is full of tall people. It’s easier to get recruited and win with such advantages. Serving in Congress does not pad your bank account any more than playing basketball adds inches to your height. While we might accept physical attributes in athletes as natural or desirable, wealth does not give a better perspective for politics. It undercuts the purpose of representative democracy.

Americans rightfully fume that congressmembers trade stocks, convinced that insider information is misused, but we refuse to squarely address the harm that comes from representatives having such wealth in the first place. From 2019 to 2022, over 130 members of the House of Representatives each traded over $100,000 of stock. To trade that dollar volume in a year, these folks are either addicted day traders who cannot manage their money (much less our economy), or—and this is the reality—they own stocks worth many multiples of what they traded.

Representatives who are my peers in age and years of political service—like Cindy Axne, Mike Garcia, Ashley Hinson, Ro Khanna, Tom Malinowski, Blake Moore, Kim Schrier, and Mikie Sherrill—have each traded over $1 million while in office. In my life before Congress, I knew that people with net worths in the tens of millions were not my peers. Pretending they are in Congress is an indignity."

From I Swear: Politics Is Messier Than My Minivan by US Rep Katie Porter

#katie porter #us politics #worker housing #government #who can afford to have a residence in DC and California #us house of representatives

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the-physicality · 16 days

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here in the phoenix mercury if there's one thing we don't do it's stat pad

remember when we blew seattle out by 20 all game [when we beat them last] and their starters were playing until the end? [and then someone got a tech? bc they were upset in another game that the opponent didn't pull their starters?]

nate...... these rotations....does he know we don't play until Friday?

i didn't realize until now how much i hated this announcer

what is the point of pulling someone who is banking 3s bc of foul trouble if you aren't going to play them the rest of the game?

i guess we decided not to try and draw fouls in the second half?

i've said it before and i will say it again, you need to start celeste

i understand that we're trying to make a playoff push and solidify this team as a unit but not everybody is a celeste taylor

maybe the game wasn't "winnable" but it didn't need to be a 24 point deficit

if the zone isn't working you have to take them out of the zone....

celeste had a stunning assist [highlight reel dt type assist] at either the end of the first or the start of the second [she had 2 in this time frame and nothing on the wnba website will load so i don't know which one it is *upside down smiley face*

the first game celeste played i said "oh she cannot leave the floor" that still holds true

i don't know what's going on but it seems like many people not longer know how to make the right basketball plays? like so many times they would be inside and want to kick it out instead of forcing the foul? and that caused so many turnovers [which we actually had fewer of this game]

and like sophie was getting forced out on a drive to the net which caused an out of bounds turn over when she could have just done the dt and bounced it off a storm body

and then there was another time it was in the 3rd i think after that very fast paced portion when no one was moving off ball. and there was a look that was like "fucking move!?" cause you can't play static basketball. and it's stuff like that that make me think they have lost their offensive identity. and i don't want them to wait for bec to get it back

can they all go see the sports psych pls? i feel like there is so much happening mentally rn that needs to be cleared away

so time to dissect here: if you look at the 1st quarter, it was fine that we weren't defending well because we were returning each shot with another shot [and drawing fouls]

in the second: we were 3/13 plus 2 trips to the line and 1 technical shot [6/7]. storm were 12/24 plus one trip to the line [0/1]. that's what we call not taking care of the ball

3rd q: we're 8/17.. in our little 9 point [it wasn't even a run] back to back to back successful possessions, DT was involved in all 3 plays- either scoring or assisting

[i'm bored with this now... my point i think is that i need dt and celeste on the floor together and i don't understand why you would give up halfway through the 3rd @ nate

#i make the headline comment bc dt has had so many 18 or 19 point games and then sits for like the last 5 #like i want the 20 pt games in the books #i'll take the 18 today as it is better than it's been #basically 15 5 5 give or take a little each way

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ajentmm · 7 months

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March 2024 FEH Refine Theorycraft

Yeah Yeah Yeah Let's go! Quick!

Seiros: Saint of Legend

Lvl. 40 5 ☆ 40/42/18/37/40 Max Invest: 49/51/26/45/49

Aurora Breath: Grants Atk+3. If unit initiates combat, grants Atk+6 to unit during combat and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. If foe initiates combat, grants Def/Res+6 during combat and foe cannot make a follow-up attack. If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res.

Glacies - Mirror Impact / Atk/Res Scowl 4 - Dragon Wall 3 - Wings of Light+

Wings of Light+ If the number of Mythic Hero allies on team ≤ 3 (including unit), grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+X (X = turn number + 3; max 8) and "reduces damage from attacks (excluding area-of-effect Specials) by 30%" to Mythic Hero allies (excluding unit) during their combat. Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 and Special cooldown charge +1 (only highest value applied; does not stack) per attack to allies within 3 rows or 3 columns centered on unit during their combat. If there is a Mythic Hero ally on your team (excluding unit), or if there is an ally within 3 rows or 3 columns centered on unit, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+5 to unit, reduces damage from attacks during combat by 30% (excluding area-of-effect Specials), and grants Special cooldown charge +1 to unit per attack during combat (only highest value applied; does not stack).

Saint Seiros is getting her remix and refine this month. What was just a combat Mythic that buffed only other Mythic now has more utility by granting Special cooldown charge+1 in a box aura around herself to her allies, regardless of status. Atk/Res Scowl and Dragon Wall make great use of her Res. Now it’s just the breath. It does have nifty gimmick of granting her offensive in player phase and defense in enemy phase. I could double down and give her more offensive effects in player phase and more defensive effects in enemy phase but instead, I’m just leveling the effects out to make her mix phase.

Aurora Breath: Grants Atk+3. If unit initiates combat or is within 2 spaces of an ally, grants Atk+6 to unit during combat and unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack. At the start of combat, if foe initiates combat or foe's HP ≥ 75%, grants Def/Res+6 during combat and foe cannot make a follow-up attack. If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res.

At the start of combat, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, grant Atk/Def/Res+5 to unit, deal damage = 20% of foe’s Res, reduce damage by 20% of unit’s Res, and restores 7 HP to unit after combat.

Seiros is getting the 3 recurring conditions, granting her Atk/Def/Res+9, omni breaker, true damage that breaks through Res (like her Fallen form), reduced damage based on her Res (like her regular form, albeit on both of foes hits rather than just the follow-up), and self-healing (like in True Dragon Wall).

Dagr: Sun's Radiance

Lvl. 40 5 ☆ 41/39/41/30/25 Max Invest: 50/48/50/38/33

Skinfaxi: Grants Spd+3 and [Pathfinder]. At start of combat, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+5 and bonus to Atk/Spd/Def/Res during combat = current penalty on each of those stats × 2. (Example: if unit has -7 penalty to Atk, grants Atk+19, for a net bonus of Atk+12.) Calculates each stat bonus independently.

Dragon Fang - Atk/Spd Push 4 / A/S Hexblade - Sun-Twin Wing+ - Even Tempest 3

Sun-Twin Wing+: At start of combat, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, inflicts Atk/Spd/Def-5 on foe, neutralizes effects that guarantee foe's follow-up attacks and prevent unit's follow-up attacks, deals damage = 20% of unit's Spd (excluding area-of-effect Specials), and reduces the percentage of foe's non-Special "reduce damage by X%" skills by 50% during combat (excluding area-of-effect Specials).

Dagr is the tom boy princess of Jötunheimr, with big muscle and a pet hawk. Jötunheimr are just basketball player big, and not two stories tall or something the chibi artist can’t handle. It’s sort of like how the Niðavellir aren’t that Dwarfish, and just normal-size short. I feel the pet hawk is there to compensate for that.

Anyway, it is funny that Sun-Twin Wing was just NFU with extra stats, and then got powercrepted by Phys. NFU. She now got that fixed and got more true damage out of it.

Skinfaxi: Grants Spd+3 and [Pathfinder]. At start of combat, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+X to unit during combat (X = 5 + highest penalty on each stat between unit and allies within 2 spaces of unit; x 2; Example: if unit has -7 penalty to Atk, grants Atk+19, for a net bonus of Atk+12; calculates each stat bonus independently) and reduces damage from foe's first attack during combat by 40% ("first attack" normally means only the first strike; for effects that grant "unit attacks twice," it means the first and second strikes).

At the start of turn, if unit's HP ≥ 25%, grant Atk/Spd+5 and “Special cooldown charge +1 to unit per attack (only highest value applied; does not stack)” to unit and allies within a 2-tile radius, and grant [Pathfinder] to allies within 2 tile radius of unit, for 1 turn. If unit initiates combat or is within 2 spaces of an ally, grant Atk/Spd/Def/Res+5 to unit during combat, neutralizes effects that inflict "Special cooldown charge-X" on unit, and restores 7 HP to unit after combat.

Pathfinder is pretty cool. It would be cooler if she could Galeforce around. It would be even cooler if she provided Pathfinder to her allies make a super Galeforce team. Her new years version provides this. So, I did that. She and her allies can now Special Charge and Pathfinder, with extra Atk/Spd to go with it. I also thrown in 40% DR, Null Gaurd, and 7 healing after combat.

Micaiah: Dawn Wind's Duo

Lvl. 40 5 ☆ 39/39/20/19/38 Max Invest: 49/49/29/28/48

Joyful Vows: Effective against armored and cavalry foes. Grants Atk+3. If [Bonus] is active on unit, grants Atk/Res+6 during combat, and if unit initiates combat, foe cannot make a follow-up attack.

Sacrifice - Atk/Res Push 4 - Mystic Boost 3 - Atk/Res Oath 3

Sacrifice: Converts penalties on target into bonuses. Restores HP to target = unit's current HP-1. Reduces unit's HP by amount restored.

Duo Skill: Grants [Dominance] to unit and allies within 3 columns centered on unit. Inflicts Def/Res-7 on foes within 3 columns centered on unit through their next actions.

[Dominance] Unit deals additional damage = total penalties on foe for 1 turn.

If these two found family siblings shouldn’t get Dou alt with them dressed as bride and groom, while not getting married themselves, speak now, or forever hold your piece. Just kidding, I don’t wanna hear it. It happened, let’s move on.

Micaiah and Sothe are armored and cavalry effective unit’s with a high Atk/Res nuke playstyle, with Sacrifice assist and a Duo button action that “Asserts their dominants” on to foe’s, letting all her allies benefit from the Broadleaf that Summer!Lilian had, dealing extra damage based on the total amount of penalties on foe. [Dominance] is also required for her weapons to get the conditions required, but she has the Oath skill as well. Anyway, what is she going to do with her refine?

Joyful Vows: Effective against armored and cavalry foes. Grants Atk+3. If a [Bonus] is active on unit or a [Penalty] is active on foe, grants Atk/Res+6, foe cannot make a follow-up attack, and inflict Special Cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack during combat.

So, I just gave her Guard, and increased the condition to include penalties on foe. It’s easy to do with her Duo button, but what if she could get both?

At start of turn, inflicts Atk/Spd-6, and [Panic] on foes within 3 rows or 3 columns centered on unit with Res < unit's Res through their next actions, and grant “If unit initiates combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack” to unit and allies within 2 tile radius for 1 turn. If unit initiate combat or is within 2 spaces of an ally, grants Atk/Res+6 to unit during combat, and reduces damage from foe's first attack by X% (X = 2 × total penalties on the foe within 2 spaces of target, including target, who has the highest total penalties)

Borrowing from Yune now, Micaiah now inflicts Atk/Spd-6 and [Panic] to get even more penalties on the foe, just to get [Guaranteed follow-up] added on, to further push the damage that Dominance + Effective damage will give her. And to add insult to injury, she has the Damage Reduction that Yune got in her refine, with it being equal to the total penalties on foe, or foe’s in 2 spaces, whoever has the higher total. Normally, it’s 6 x 4 = 24 total penalties, with [Dominance], that’s made into more damage. But with Panic, if the foe has 6 bonuses in all stats, that another 24, or 48 extra damage per attack. With the DR, it’s 96%, but the Dou button inflicts Def/Res-7, so add 2 to 48 for 50 True damage, and x 2 for 100% DR. I can only make this much DR work on the first hit, so brave attacks can hurt her, unless her Res is too high, or the foe’s Atk is lowered too low. Also, Damage Reduction Piercing is a thing. So, this will be a really helpful support unit.

Annette: Overachiever

Crusher: Grants Atk+3. Calculates damage using the lower of foe’s Def or Res. If a Rally Assist skill is used by unit, grant target “if unit initiate combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack”, “Special Cooldown Charge +1 per attack,” and unit can move 1 extra space (That turn only. Does not stack.) At start of combat, if unit’s HP ≥ 25%, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 to unit during combat.

If unit is within 3 spaces of an ally, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res +X to unit (X = 4 + highest bonus on each stat between unit and allies within 3 spaces of unit; calculates each stat bonus independently), reduces damage from foe’s first attack by 30%, and grant damage equal to X% of foe’s Atk (if foe uses breath or beast, X = 20; otherwise, X = 10; including when dealing damage with a Special triggered before combat), and after combat, inflict inflicts Def/Res-5 and [Guard] on target and nearest foes within a 3 tile radius.

Man, I was cooking something with this one. Giving "Guaranteed follow-up" and Special Charge on a +1 mov unit is incredible, but don't know if it's nessesary when there are so many more source of those effect. Even I suggested the special charge for Dagr. The ture damage based on foe's Atk could be made a normal 10% rather than the fun reference to the combat art Ash. The rest makes her desent for a combat unit, when she could have rallied instead. Just give her another action after rallying.

Corrin: Bloodbound Beast

Brutal Breath: Grants Spd+3. Grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+X during combat. (Calculates X based on number of allies within 2 spaces of unit: 0 allies grants +7; 1 grants +5; 2 grants +3; 3 grants +1; ≥4 allies grants +0.) If the number of allies within 2 spaces is ≤ 1, grants Special cooldown charge +1 to unit and inflicts Special cooldown charge -1 on foe per attack (only highest value applied; does not stack) If foe’s Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe’s Def or Res.

At start of combat, if unit’s HP ≥ 25%, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 to unit during combat and reduces damage from foe’s first attack by X% (X = 30 - number of allies within 2 spaces of unit × 10; min 0%). At start of combat, if unit’s HP ≥ 25% and unit’s Atk > foe’s Res, unit’s first attack deals damage = X% of difference between stats (X = 30 - number of allies within 2 spaces of unit × 10; min 0%).

Eh, it's Corrin. They could anything but this was a safe bet.

Midori: Reliable Chemist

Lucky Apothecary Bow: Effective against flying foes. At the start of turn, if unit is within 2 spaces of unit, restore 7 HP to unit and allies within 2 spaces, and also, if unit’s HP > 25%, grant [Golden Bar] to unit and allies within 2 spaces for 1 turn. At the start of combat, if unit’s HP > 25%, grant Atk +7 to unit and inflict Atk-7 on foe during combat. [Golden Bar] Unit deals damage +10 and takes damage -10, but after combat, this bonus is removed.

At the start of combat, if unit’s HP > 50% or if [Bonus] is active on unit, grant Def/Res+5 to unit and inflict Def/Res-5 on foe during combat, grant unit guaranteed follow-up attack, prevent foe’s follow-up attack, and inflict Special cooldown charge-1 on foe per attack.

Well, since this will be the Lucky Bow rather then the Apothecary bow, the odds that my Golden Bar gimmick will be out the window, but I had fun making it. She might get Miracle or something now.

Gangrel: Plegia's Mad King

Levin Dagger: Grants Res+3. If unit initiates combat or [Penalty] is active on foe, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 to unit and deals damage = 20% of unit's Res during combat. Effect: [Dagger 7]

At start of turn, if unit is within 2 spaces of an ally, grants Atk/Res+6 and "if unit initiates combat, reduces damage from foe's first attack during combat by 40%" to unit and allies within 2 spaces for 1 turn, and also, if one of those allies is a magic user, grant [Hexblade] additionally. If unit’s HP ≥ 25% or [Bonus] is active on unit, grants Atk/Spd/Def/Res+4 to unit and reduces damage from foe's attacks by 20% of unit's Res (excluding area-of-effect Specials) during combat.

We just got another GHB that hads out Hexblade like candy, so I would remove the "If you got a magic user" from the condition.

And there you go . . . bye.

#fire emblem heroes #fire emblem #game design #theorycrafting #refines #monthly refines

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nlvhunter · 2 years

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The Mascot is named Tuffy.

It’s 1st Period, and I am writing on today’s Formative assessment, titled Concepts of Physical Education. The kids have a half hour to get it done. They are working quietly, which is a bonus. It is untaught information, a pre-test. It is perfect for the last day before Christmas Break. We have an assembly today, which is sweet, right after this class. Then comes my Prep, followed by another class taking this same exam (they play basketball when they are finished). After that comes Lunch, followed by the last class of the day, Block schedule. This is some easy subbing, Jack. I need to make 30-40 copies of the exam during Prep, but that is what Prep period is for, right?

Coach Parsons: Hunter, do you hoop?

Me: Not anymore.

I was gonna explain how I’m 61 and never run or even burst and cannot even hit against the wall anymore, but Not Anymore seems like plenty; explains it all.

Short Answer

6. A thirty-two-year-old accountant spends much of the day working at the computer. The accountant’s body fat percentage is approaching the healthy level for their age. They take a twenty-minute walk, three days a week, but are not training in their target heart-rate zone. (3 pts.)

There are answer prompts after this question, but this is not important right now. What I wanna know concerns the use of “their” in the second sentence, and the words “They,” “are” and “their” in the third sentence. Are we using these terms to describe one person, the 32-year-old accountant? What are we doing? Are we sparing the feelings of the paper exam? Grammar has to count for something, especially since we are at school and all.

Two girls ask to go to the bathroom together. “She has to give me something,” one says. “She can give it to you here,” I say. Only one kid is allowed to go at a time. They huddle up; check their phones; muster their strength; and walk out of class at 12:09, during 1st Lunch. This feels like classic ditch because we have a sub behavior; I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. It is the last school day before Christmas Break, so I will include the Ditch in my notes to the teacher, let her deal with it in January. Another girl walked out of class at 12:12, returning at 12:31. At least she had the decency to ditch class honestly. Four girls are smacking a volleyball around without a net. All other students are in the bleachers, playing on their phones. The trash can in the corner is filled with colored butcher paper, remnants of a most excellent Christmas Assembly this morning. High school does assemblies much better than middle schools.

In regards to Lunch, the pizza bagel was exceptional! Burnt cheese with tiny pepperoni cubes underneath. The bagel itself was sturdy. The whole operation was chewy and delicious. I also got some sort of Uncrustables, peanut butter and jelly; and an apple, which I am eating now. The free lunch reigns supreme! As for subbing, the only thing easier than subbing P.E. is subbing Adaptive P.E. The kids are sunny, bereft of the personality quirks which illicit clouds and doubt. They’re beautiful, and you cannot help being swept along.

It’s 2:07, the last hour of the Friday before Christmas, which is a week from tomorrow. The Staff wore Christmas sweaters today, supposedly Ugly Sweater Day. But there’s nothing ugly about a Christmas sweater, that’s for sure. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, just like the song says.

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mymainwastoocluttered · 2 years

Text

Anything You Can Do (Jamil)

Jamil is incredibly dedicated to his charade of mediocrity, but Reader can snap him out of it faster than he can scramble for his usual level-head

AKA: (almost) anything Jamil does, Reader can do better and it drives him crazy

— (°ω°╬)

Years of perfecting himself, building skill upon skill to be the best retainer for the spoiled brat Kalim, while also perfecting the facade of just average so said brat boy wouldn't be outshined

ALL GONE IN A BLINK

FUCK

Jamil isn't one for raging. He gets annoyed, he sasses and maybe even snaps sometimes, but lately, he's gotten so worked up that he can't help it

His many pillows have met the walls of his room too many times

All because he just. Can't. Win.

Jamil can cook? (Y/N)'s food is apparently tastier and better looking, according to everyone (but Kalim). Jamil can clean? (Y/N) renovated the entire Ramshackle building practically by herself. Jamil can dance? (Y/N) also dances and he will admit himself that she's absolutely mesmerizing. Jamil can play basketball? (Y/N) used to be in her previous world's school team... As the captain.

The only two things he does that she can't do are tending to Kalim and using magic, both which he can't pride himself for being superior

He promised himself years ago that he'd never feel proud that he is Kalim's slave servant. That, and the mere thought of her tending to Kalim makes Jamil feel a bit too murder happy, independent of how well she might do it

And magic is just something he was born with, it's hard to feel superior when she can literally do everything he can without the safety net of magic. And it would've been unfair to say he's better in a competition she can't even participate

He feels the need to prove to (Y/N) that he is capable. Of what exactly, he doesn't know, but he feels the need to prove himself and it makes his self control slip and next thing he knows, he's getting above 90 in all tests, outshining Kalim's ~80 for the first time since they were children

And. He. Still. Lost.

Because (Y/N) just had to go the extra mile and get even higher scores than him

He feels like slapping his cheeks in the hopes of waking up from this nightmare

And maybe forget the warmth that pooled inside him when she—his rival—congratulated him with a sunny smile and told him she was proud of him for showing his intelligence

Again. FUCK.

— (°ω°╬)

Jamil is not one for running away, specially not like a sinner running in shame from the temple, but this time he barely processes who talked to thin before turning to walk the opposite side. Of all days for Kalim to be sick and leave Jamil alone. Were he a bit more paranoid, he's wonder if they were working behind his back, but, then again, Kalim would never be able to hide a plot from Jamil.

So he runs.

Until he doesn't.

Because Jamil is a failure, he's figuring, a weak man who cannot help but yearn for his tormentor.

It's her voice. It's his name in her voice. That's what stops him on his tracks and makes him turn to her.

She approaches with a sheepish smile—beautiful like every other expression she has ever and will ever make, more beautiful than Jamil might ever be able understand—, clutching her folder to her chest. He wishes he had his folder to hide behind.

"Yes?"

"Can you... Can you braid my hair? I keep messing it up, and you have some really nice braids..."

"Uh..." He answers eloquently.

Next thing he knows, he is sitting behind her on a random bench, gently braiding her hairin a simple but charming hairstyle, while she praises him for his tender handling and confides that braids are her weakness.

"No matter how many times I try, the braid never comes out good," (Y/N) says, turning her head just enough so he can see her smile, "You're so good at it, though, I'm glad I asked you! Thank you so much for helping me, Jamil!"

And oh. He now understands what he wanted to prove so badly.

"You can come to me for anything, I'll gladly help you"

Someone who can do everything by herself does not need him, after all.

#jamil viper x reader #jamil viper #twst imagines #twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland #x fem reader #female reader

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 3 years

Note

raven-san, can we please have a wedding crashing where jade needs to marry this girl from another crime family to consolidate power and become the next head of the leech mob :)) but floyd's like I'M BORED and annoyed that his brother's being snatched up by a random chick, so he asks basketball bros, and azul, to help save jade?

This one is super long, so I added some extra sections and placed the rest of the wedding crashing below the cut!

***Spoilers for Jamil and Floyd’s Unique Magic!!***

"I object to this wedding...!"

Pre-Wedding Jitters

A call comes for the twins in the dead of night, without warning. It’s their parents with exciting news: they’re naming Jade as the next Don Leech. The catch? The Leech mob’s in the middle of a merger with the Worm mob, and he’ll have to marry Don Worm’s daughter to secure the deal.

Jade, ever the dutiful son, is honored by his future title and calmly agrees to the arrangement. On the other hand, Floyd’s annoyed by the idea, and can’t keep quiet about his irritation. He calls out to his twin in the darkness.

“... Ne, Jade.”

“Ee, Floyd?”

“Are you really okay with going through with this? You’re just gonna do what they said? Even though you don’t know the Worms at all? Even if you’ve never met that girl before?”

“It is a request coming directly from father and mother. How could I refuse them? And, furthermore... If I do not undertake this task, then it would fall to you, the next choice to inherit the title of Don Leech. I cannot allow that to come to pass--fufu. You do so enjoy your freedom, yes?”

“... Jade, you’re so dumb sometimes. What’ll happen to your freedom, then? Will you get so busy with being the big boss and being married... that you won’t have time to play anymore?”

“... Perhaps. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”

That thought doesn’t sit well with Floyd--not at all.

“I trust that you will make your own fun of the situation,” Jade reassures him. “You always do.”

As the weeks pass, Floyd sees less and less of Jade around, since he has to prepare for the wedding. Jade reassures him that he’s doing just fine, but Floyd can see right through his lies. He can tell that Jade’s more frazzled than usual--there’s a lingering to his words, and a longing in his eyes, savoring every last bit of autonomy he has before his fate is forever sealed.

Floyd hates it. He hates being lied to by his own brother, and he hates feeling powerless to stop the wedding. Floyd’s so angry that he develops this murderous aura in the weeks leading up to the wedding, which makes everyone around him shy away.

One day, he gets sick of being in the water--it’s a reminder of the wedding to come--so Floyd plays basketball on land to vent. He ends up chomping down so hard that he deflates a ball, then dunks another basketball so hard, he breaks the net.

He sprawls out on the ground and angrily shouts at the sky. His basketball bonks him on the head... and that’s when an idea hits him: maybe he can’t stop the wedding alone, but no one said he couldn’t phone some friends.

Assembling the Dream Team

Floyd first dials up Azul, who agrees to help after some whining and signing a contract agreeing to pay Azul handsomely for his services (... although truthfully, the octopus does want to help Jade, but doesn't immediately agree to do it because of his pride as a businessman).

Floyd also calls his old basketball buddies for help! Jamil and Ace are much more adamant than Azul, but Floyd strongarms them into pitching in. ("Umihebi-kun, Kani-chan, if you don't help me rescue Jade, I'll get suuuper mad, you know? I don't think you'll like me when I get mad. Moray eels are strong hunters, so I don’t think it’ll be a problem for me to track you guys down and give you a good squeeze~" "OKAY, OKAY, WE'LL DO IT!!")

Together, the four boys meet up to scheme of a way to disrupt the wedding without jeopardizing the Leech mob's future. Floyd actively leads the discussion, allowing his hidden genius to come to the surface.

Ace doesn’t contribute much to the strategy (laid out by Azul), but he does keep the spirit up with some jokes. Meanwhile, Jamil provides snacks for them when they work late into the night (though he keeps passing semi-glares to Azul whenever the octopus compliments him or tries to be friendly).

In preparation for the crashing, Azul brews some potions to give Jamil and Ace so they can take on temporary merforms. After all, the wedding will be underwater, in the Coral Sea, and they’ll need tail fins.

The date of destiny draws ever closer... and Floyd's never been so excited to cause chaos in his whole life.

The Crashing - Team Azul & Jamil

They split into two pairs on the day of the wedding—Azul and Jamil, and Floyd and Ace. Floyd uses his position as the future son-in-law to Don Worm to arrange a meeting between himself and the don... except Azul and Jamil will show up instead.

Don Worm shows up to the meeting in his finest clothes (which is very little, given that he’s a merman), sounding a bit annoyed the sudden summoning. “Make this quick, I’ve got to go see my baby girl’s big day... Wait. You fellas aren’t the F. Leech boy.”

“No, we aren’t, sir. We are his representatives... Proxies, if you will,” Azul insists, giving his warmest and most welcoming smile. He uses a tentacle to tug on Jamil’s tail, forcing him to smile too. “You see, there is an important business matter we needed to discuss with you on behalf of Floyd.”

“Hoh? And what would that be?”

“I believe my business associate would be better off explaining the matter than myself.” Azul gestures to Jamil, who has his head down.

“Oi, what’s with you? Don’t you know who I am, boy? It’s rude to not look your elders in the eye when they are speaking to you!! Show me the respect I deserve, from one professional to another!!”

“My apologies, sir.” Jamil looks up, locking eyes with the mob boss. “... Is this better?”

“Yes, that’s...”

“Snake Whisper.”

Don Worm suddenly goes glassy-eyed and slack-jawed. Azul claps at the sight, showering his partner with compliments. “As expected of the talented Jamil-san! Even one look from you can bring a mafia lord to his downfall. Truly, your Unique Magic is most impressive!”

“Save your flattery for later.”

Azul’s lips curl into a smirk as he whips out a golden contract from his briefcase and offers it to the don. “Now then, if you wouldn’t mind, sir... sign on the dotted line.”

The Crashing - Team Floyd & Ace

Ace and Floyd rush to the wedding venue, their tails cutting through the water like knives as they swim at a breakneck pace. Ace can barely keep up with Floyd, who surges far ahead.

“H-Hey, should we really be barging in like this?! Don’t mob families have weapons and other dangerous stuff? Is there a backdoor we can take instead? Hello?! Floyd-senpai, are you listening to me?!” (He isn’t.)

The open, underwater comes into view, and Floyd barrels in without any hesitation, tearing right through some decorations and knocking over the wedding cake with his tail. A loud CRASH! echoes through the waters, drawing eyes to him.

Jade stares at his brother from the altar—wide eyed, but a mirthful smile on his lips. Floyd waves to him, and then to his mom and dad in the crowd of guests. “Hiii, Jade! I’m here to pick you up now.”

The Worm girl starts sobbing, wailing something about how her special day’s been ruined, and where is her papa to put an end to this? At her signal, security guards, and some of the rougher looking guests—Worm family associates—lunge at Floyd, claws and teeth out. A few of them have produced wands, and what seem to be guns—loaded with harpoons.

“Bind the Heart!” Objects and stray magic go flying in all directions, hitting both people and wedding decorations. Cloth tears, columns crumble—but it’s one man against many, and he can only bind so many hearts before the blot starts to stack.

Ace makes it just in time, sending their foes and their weapons hurtling through the water with a blast of wind. “This is why I said to be careful, dammit! Your Unique Magic’s such a crapshoot—don’t just use it whenever, or you’ll be sushi!!!”

“Ahahahah! Kani-chan’s being all heroic today! That’s so cute. Don’t worry, I can play my part, too...!!”

Using his tail, Floyd hooks around a drifting merman and chucks him straight into another. They collide with a CRACK!—but Floyd barely registers it. He’s already bolting off, grabbing heads and smashing them together, slicing through others like a knife through butter.

There’s a crazed, frenzied look to him, gleeful laughter cutting through the waters and mixing with the Worm bride’s screeching. I forgot how scary Floyd-senpai can be, Ace realizes. (Jade and Floyd’s parents are cheering for him from their seats.)

Jade looks quite proud of his brother, even laughing along to the brutal slaughterfest. His bride stares at him incredulously. “Stop that brute! He’s ruining MY special day!!”

“No,” Jade replies calmly. “I don’t think I will. This is far too amusing to let it end so soon.”

She lets out a frustrated scream and launches herself at her groom, hands going for his throat. The Worm girl is slammed back with a strong hit to her gut, courtesy of Jade’s tail.

She flies back, slamming into a column—and feels a tail wrapping around her and squeezing tight. Constricting her to the point where it was difficult to breathe. A livid mermaid glares down at her, teeth bared in a snarl.

“No one lays a hand on my children,” Mama Leech declares. “No one.”

From the corner of her eye, the Worm girl can see that Jade has cast off his bow tie and flitted over to Floyd, embracing happily in a battlefield adorned with red ribbons trailing through the water. Her vision is abruptly blocked off by a broad-shouldered merman wearing a grimace.

“Now then, what shall we do with this one?” Papa Leech wonders aloud—though from his tone of voice, he has nothing good in store.

The Aftermath

“You’re all fish bait when daddy hears about this...!” the Worm girl warns, her words raspy. “Th-The merger won’t go through...! There’ll be war between the Leeches and the Worms...!”

A loud throat clearing comes from behind. “Fortunately, that won’t be happening.”

Azul and Jamil make their appearance, the octopus merman smugly showcasing a contract. “Ashengrotto—Azul Ashengrotto, legal and business extraordinaire at your service, Don Leech and Lady Leech.”

Papa Leech grunts. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“This?” Azul’s smirk widens. “Why, it’s a prenuptial stating that, in the case that an act of violence is enacted by the bride toward the groom, the marriage is considered null and void... and the bride’s family assets are to be claimed by the groom. Signed by Don Worm himself.”

“Wh-What?! Impossible!! How did you get daddy to sign such a stupid deal?!”

“Oh,” Jamil says nonchalantly, “we have our ways.”

“So... Uh, Jade-senpai’s still gonna be the next Don Leech?! And he’s gonna be in charge of an even bigger and richer family... How is that any better than the situation before?! You’re just giving him more resources for committing crimes!”

At that moment, two hands come down on Ace’s shoulders, causing him to freeze up.

“Kani-chaaaaan! Everyone!! Thanks so much for your help~”

“Yes, you have my sincerest thanks, Ace-san, Jamil-san... Azul.”

“It is my pleasure to assist such VIP clients. Ah, but there remains the matter of my promised payment—” (Jamil and Ace internally groan at Azul’s words.)

“Payment?” Don Leech scoffs. “After the ballsy operation you boys pulled off today... I’m more inclined to give you job offers instead of a one time sum. How do you lads feel about being hired as the Leech family’s personal lawyer, interrogator, and... well, whatever the heart one is good at.”

“My, my! Such a generous and lucrative offer—“

“There is no way I’m accepting that, especially if that means working with Azul.”

“Oi, I’ll have you know I’m good at lots of stuff!! I’m the one that saved Floyd’s tail fins, is no one gonna acknowledge that?!”

“You did amazing, sweetie!!” Mama Leech chirps—her tail grip tightening until the Worm girl passes out. Ace leaps back in fright. “As a reward, why don’t you let me give you a hug?”

“S-STAY BACK!!”

“Ahahahah! Everyone’s getting along so well, Jade. Isn’t this fun? You wouldn’t be able to enjoy this if you had gone to get hitched.”

“Fufufu. You are correct, Floyd. How sad it would have been if I were to miss out on touching moments such as this. From the bottom of my heart... I thank you for thinking of me, and for rushing to my aid. I could not have asked for a better brother.”

... What Floyd doesn’t know is that this was all according to keikaku Jade’s own machinations. He would never take the order to marry lying down—but he couldn’t outright defy it without immediate consequences, either.

Thank the Great Seven Jade has reliable puppets friends to help him out of a pinch. I’ll be certain to put the additional funds we have gained to good use... Perhaps to start a little mushroom farm.

#Floyd Leech #Jade Leech #Azul Ashengrotto #Ace Trappola #Jamil Viper #twst #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #wedding crashing #spoilers

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neonkoii · 2 years

Note

+ jane n jonathan borrow wills art supplies by sayin "hey can i use this for a bit ^-^" n then never give it back

+ jonathan n argyle drive down to la one night n stay for a week . joyce files a missin persons report . the two end up gettin arrested for shopliftin n thats how joyce finds out where they r

+ their neighbors dont like them much

+ will spends time at the skatepark . he cant skate . he jus goes there to sketch the other people skatin to practice anatomy

+ jonathan gave up photography after he left hawkins

+ joyce likes to teach jane different things to cook

+ they all share clothes . they dont have enough money to afford a lot more clothes, so they jus share . jonathan n joyce share shirts, jonathan n joyce n jane share skirts, will lets jane borrow some of his shorts, ect ect

+ everyone in the party has an older brother/older brother figure . mike has eddie, lucas has jason, dustin has steve, will + jane have jonathan, n max had billy

+ mike cannot draw for the life of them . he tries todraw a portrait of will n it looks really bad n max makes fun of him n hes all :[ but then will sees it n hes so !!!!!!!!!!!! bc its him !!!! mike tried to draw HIM !!!!!!

+ jane LOVES stuffed animals . she has a collection in like this net hung up in the corner of her room, n her bed is COVERED w stuffies . most of them r from hopper (he had them left after sarah)

+ dustin eats paper . its a horrible habit but he does . sometimes he eats plastic too . the party used to give him their trash after lunch bc he would straight up jus eat it .

+ lucas has an obsession w scented candles

+ lucas jus likes scented things in general . he will only use scented glue stricks but like the shitty kind . it drives max insane .

+ suzie n jane would b besties im not even jokin . suzie would probably b besties w the entire byers-hopper family . autistic to autistic communication

+ lucas n jonathan hold will hold grudges until their death days . lucas still hasnt forgiven mike fully for that one fight in s1 . jonathan has also not fully forgiven steve for 'nancy the slut' + the insults afterwards .

+ holly n erica get along some how ?? they bond over their hatred of their brothers /j

+ eddie doesnt know who jane is but he knows who will is bc mike wont shut the fuck up ab him . eddie looks at him like I Know What You Are

+ the wheelers tan vv easily, as do the hargrove-mayfields .

+ the byers dont tan but they get sunburned !! its really annoyin too bc joyce always forgets sunscreen n ofc the other three dont remember either

+ jason used to host sleepovers for the basketball team every night before a big game

+ mike picks up eddies music taste n it drives his family insane bc ted doesnt like music, karen only like pop, nancy mostly listens to classical music n gets annoyed by rock, n holly thinks its too loud

+ dustin had a hamster named mr figglebottom in the fifth grade . mike accidentally killed it n lucas panicked n flushed it down the toilet . dustin thought mr figglebottom ran away until will accidentally spilled the beans in seventh grade

+ eddie is gay n he is out . like it is public knowledge that this man is gay which is why everyone jus kinda avoids him . mike n dustin n lucas didnt know that before joinin hellfire . i dont think mike or lucas wouldve joined if they knew tbhh

+ mikes fave color is yellow . lucas's is dark blue . dustin didnt know the concept of a favorite color was a real thing

+ steve n mike r strangely besties ?? like steve goes to mike w relationship issues n mikes like "cool ??? i dont care"

+ mike had a small crush on eddie (like a celebrity crush . eddie thought it was cute but obvi didnt feel the same) until he watched eddie shove a tater tot up his nose

+ max doesnt like her hair color but lucas LOVES IT

+ been toyin around w the idea of ftm max ?? but anyway i think at some point max cuts her hair really short

+ joyce cuts all her kids' hair

+ jane was really excited when joyce offered to cut her hair bc !!!! shes part of the family now !!!!!

+ jason was actually really nice before everythin happened w chrissy . he would go out shoppin w lucas n the rest of the basketball team n he would pay for movie tickets + meals n he always made sure to get to know the team

+ mike n chrissy were friends (dustin n chrissy shared a class n had to partner up for somethin, but dustin was busy the only times chrissy was free, so he roped mike into doin the project for him)

+ nancy offers to rent movies from family video for mike jus so she can talk to steve n robin

SORRY THIS IS A LOT . AM CURRENTLY THINKIN OF MORE SO WILL SEND SOME LATER SOON AHSDJFKLDS

THIS this THIS THIS THIS!!!! you are always so real and true and correct but these are THE MOST correct dude

#I HAV A NET OF STUFFIES ABOVE MY DESK IN MY ROOM!!!!!!! i know exactly what u mean #rowe responses #shawn tag #save #fave

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love-amihan · 3 years

Text

| ʜᴏᴍᴇ | ᴊᴊᴋ | ᴀᴏᴛ | ʜǫ | ꜰɪʟᴏ | ᴛᴀɢʟɪsᴛs | ᴍɪᴍɪ |

BASKETBALL PLAYER // MAKI, NOBARA, MIWA, SUKUNA, MEGUMI

amihan's note: ngl, this only started in my mind as sukuna pointing at you while shooting a three point but here we are expanding to others. hope you will enjoy this, happy reading!

side note: some might be inaccurate, i'm sorry in advance. i don't really play basketball T^T

-zenin maki

three-pointer

good at sidestepping the opponent, the crowd definitely fills with 'oooh's' whenever she does

opponents are wary of her since they can't read what her next move will be

sometimes got two players guarding her

mvp of her team

trains with sukuna, always ended up competing with one another

the captain, of course

the crowd loves her, always anticipates her moves

as maki dribbles the ball, she scans the court pointing directions for her teammates.

the crowd silent, tension getting thicker as maki prepares them for a great set-up to point three once again.

she nods to herself seeing the moment playing perfectly in her head. she passes the ball to her teammate as they run to the other side of the court.

an opponent runs in front of her prepared to guard her, maki's teammate immediately passes the ball back to her after she sign for it.

she look her opponent in the eyes before smirking, maki did her infamous side-step as she made it to the three-point line perfectly.

the crowd full-on went with a lot of 'oooh's' as she gave the ball once last bounce aiming at the ring before making a shot.

"three points from zenin!" the announcer exclaimed with excitement as maki jogs to the opposite side smiling at the crowd. her teammates' by the bench going wild while holding up three fingers giving loud 'whoop'.

-nobara kugisaki

queen of faking a shot then passing it to her teammate

intimidating to opponents

can easily pass opponent's guard

the one who always gets the ball during jump ball

oh i just know she's an aggressive player, never hurts anyone though!

talkative during the game;

"you have pretty eyes" she then bounces the ball through the opponent's legs "eyes on the ball sweetheart!" she cheekily said before taking off

definitely cannot complete a game without getting the most violation

the ball was passed to kugisaki while running in the middle of the court, she dribbles it while slowing her speed a little.

she gave her teammate a look defending the ball from the opponent giving them a small push.

"hey, wanna see something cool?" she mutters to the opponent, she gave the ball a hard bounce pushing her opponent then aims at the hoop.

the opponent instinctively jumps up trying to block her shot but kugisaki made a quick pass for her teammate who soon aimed for the hoop gaining two points for the team, making them take the lead.

her teammates on the side cheering on them, "i can't believe you fell for that" she giggles at her opponent while waving her hand in the air running to the other side.

-kasumi miwa

good at guarding!

she definitely do layups

the player for jump ball

have a little fanclub, crowd lowkey watches to see her cute face

good at dribbling, mindlessly shows off her dribbling skills during the game

always getting shoved because she's guarding them real good

lots of free throws

she's a chucker, always shooting her shot

it's a hit or miss with her shots though

miwa takes a deep breath passing the ball to her opponent as she does the same.

she enters the court ball in her hand dribbling it as she scans the room, she gave her opponent a glance as she did her dribbling combo moves gracefully passing the opponent's guard.

she passes the ball to her teammate running close to the board, as she made her way to her destination.

miwa waited for her teammate to have a glance at her who was busy dribbling the ball looking for an opening, her teammate finally noticed her as she signs for the ball.

miwa jogs around as the opponent guards her closely, the ball made it to her safely.

she gave the ball a few dribbles before closing in the ring crouching a little before jumping up throwing the ball inside the ring, miwa hangs from the ring for a moment before jumping down smiling to herself satisfied with the successful shot.

-ryomen sukuna

like maki, he's a three-pointer

have a fanclub supporting in the bench

he's the type of guy who will point at you before making the shot

i gotta add this stop-

sukuna looks at the crowd looking for you jogging in court, his teammates trying to get the ball from the opponent.

once he finally found you in the crowd, he mentally reminds himself where you are as he refocuses on the game.

moments later, getting the ball from his teammate he runs for the opponent's side. while making his way in the three-point line, he tries to remember where he found you.

as he successfully find you, he gave you a little smirk locking eyes with you before pointing at you and turning back to look at the ring making a quick shot, the ball making a clean pass through the net.

always the mvp of his team

kind of a friend to maki since they always ended up being their respective team's mvp

crowd always goes wild whenever the ball is passed to him

when the opponent sends him flying he definitely goes straight to them chest to chest while staring down at them, his teammates immediately stopping him before he can do anything more

-fushiguro megumi

agility, you see him in front of the opponent the next thing you know he's already going for a shot

he gets pushed around a lot though

he's definitely never missed a free throw

best for clutch games

buzzer beater

silent player, instructs his teammate to change position before giving a quick pass

megumi groans as he made contact with the floor for the nth time today, whistle filled the court as the players clear the area moving to their respective spots.

his teammate giving him a hand, he holds the hand standing up, his teammate giving his backside little pats.

"it's a free throw, you got this" he noted megumi before jogging to his spot.

megumi made his way to the free-throw line, the referee standing in front of him passing him the ball. he catches the ball looking up at the ring, he rolls the ball in his hands before giving it a few dribble taking a deep breath he aims for the hoop making the shot.

one point was all it take for megumi's team to make equal with the opponent's score.

he mentally gave himself a pat in the back cheering that he still got it, the opponent takes the ball as it falls from the net. tension starts building up as the game comes to a climax.

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #jujutsu kaisen headcanon #zenin maki #kugisaki nobara #kasumi miwa #ryomen sukuna #fushiguro megumi #jjk maki #jjk nobara #jjk miwa #jjk megumi #jjk sukuna #fandom;jjk #jjk;maki #jjk;nobara #jjk;sukuna #jjk;megumi #jjk;miwa

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aloysiavirgata · 4 years

Text

In The Gale

Title: In The Gale

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Author's Notes: For @perplexistan, who asked and helped me make it better. This is shortly after settling into the Unremarkable House. I tried making sense of their legal status, but it’s simply impossible and I gave up.

Our heroes quote from Melville, Shakespeare, Sagan, Baudrillard, and (Emily) Dickens.

***

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

***

She recites The Raven to herself on the drive in, lists all the state capitals in alphabetical order, and goes through the periodic table. Her body fizzes like a shaken soda, tiny anxious bubbles rising through her blood. They’ve done so much for this, called in so many favors. Mulder put his book on hold for a month, quizzing her with dog-eared notecards.

“Immediate treatment of myocardial infarction,” he’d call, and she’d say “MONA TASS.”

She feels a pang for the simplicity of the other life, the hiding one, where she just had to ring up cigarettes and herbal Viagra at gas stations.

***

She’s the new girl at the cafeteria table, awkward and alone. Mulder had prepared her a lunch like it’s the first day of school, and she stares at it, wishing for an appetite.

From the corner of her eye she sees two colleagues - an MRI tech and an obstetrician, she thinks - talking softly and glancing over. Scully thinks she hears “FBI,” and she looks up and smiles, uncertain.

They blink at her, look away.

***

Ybarra comes around the corner, gliding in his cassock like a disapproving ghost. “Dr. Scully,” he says, in his pinched voice.

She smiles thinly. “Father Ybarra.”

“Nurse Mossing was looking for the chart for Mrs. Sullivan. Imagine my surprise when I found it in Room 314 instead of Room 413. That’s a potential HIPAA violation, Dr. Scully. That’s a federal law.”

Scully curls her hand so that her nails dig into her skin. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Father Ybarra, please forg-”

He holds up his palm. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and glides onward.

Scully closes her eyes and leans against the wall. She breathes through her nose until the ringing in her ears stops.

***

She wants to collapse into his arms and cry when she gets home, but that would be giving in. It would be letting them down.

“How’d it go?” he asks. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Knicks shirt, a five o’clock shadow.

She smiles brightly. “It was good. Learning curve, but good. I think Father Ybarra might be a tough nut to crack, is all.”

Mulder rubs his cowlicked hair. “Put your feet up, Scully, since you won’t wear sensible shoes.”

She does, and accepts the glass of wine he holds out. “Thanks. I’ll sleep well tonight, anyway. There are miles of hallways.”

He sits next to her on the couch. “I wrote a few pages,” he says. “I deleted a bunch, but I think there was a multi-paragraph net gain.”

“I’m glad you’re able to stop focusing on my stuff now,” she says. “Both back in the saddle.”

“Go team.”

She clinks her glass against his. She drinks her wine too fast.

***

Ybarra had come in during her rounds that morning and startled her into knocking a metal bedpan onto the floor. Scully thinks the reverberations of that sound will follow her to the grave.

She’s now in the chapel, tucked into a back pew. She’s been staring at the small altar, at the stained glass windows flanking the crucifix. The Blessed Virgin smiles beatifically down at her, a wretched sinner.

Scully laces her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her and bows her head against them. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

***

Mulder wakes her with tea and eggs. “You haven’t been eating,” he says, brow furrowed.

She rubs her eyes, yawning. “What?”

He sits next to her on the bed, sets the plate and mug on her night table. “You just push your food around your plate, you hardly talk when you get home. What’s going on, Scully?”

She sits up, looking at his worried face. He’s sun-browned and tousled, beautiful, with a mouth that still makes her weak in the knees. “Nothing. It’s just a lot to jump back into.”

“I’m sure it is. And I still want to help you with it.” He pulls the flash cards from his pocket, touches her wrist with his other hand. “Let’s see - causes of upper zone pulmonary fibrosis?”

She looks at the ceiling, back at him. “I don’t need help.”

Mulder blinks, stung.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You just don’t need to hover over me. You have your own things to work on. Work on your book, patch up your henhouse. ” Her voice sounds snappish to her own ears.

His changeable eyes, now mossy green, darken. He chews his bottom lip, nodding slowly. “I thought you were one of my ‘things.’ Sorry to bother you.” He rises, walks downstairs.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

The tea goes down fine. Scully tries to eat the eggs but feels bile rise in her throat. She flushes them down the toilet instead of leaving them behind, because that is love.

***

She arrives at the nurses’ station on the second floor with three dozen donuts and two cardboard boxes of coffee. She deposits them on the desk. “Good morning, Annabel,” she says.

“Anneliese,” the woman says.

Scully nods, walks away.

***

He slides his hand up her pajama top, tracing circles on her ribs, sliding his fingers around to her breasts. He kisses the back of her neck. “Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm and ticklish in her ear.

She wants to pretend to wake up, to turn towards him and lose herself in his body. She wants to tell him everything, to be held and loved and petted and reassured. She wants him to remind her that she once stared down Congress, that some backwater priest and his prickly staff should be a joke to her. She wants them to laugh together at these silly, petty people.

But she can’t, she can’t disappoint him. He’s been so proud of her.

Scully stays still, breathes evenly until his hands move away and she’s alone again.

***

Her car rattles over the driveway, through shimmering waves of heat that rise from the crisping grass. It is the kind of late July afternoon where the sun is a hazy white ball in the west, and clouds of gnats are a permanent feature of the landscape.

Scully parks, avoiding a puddle in which a peacock is standing. Mulder has recently become enamored of yard fowl. She narrows her eyes at it while opening the car door.

“Good boy, Kevin,” she calls to it, wary.

Scully picks her way over the gravel in her thin heels. The peacock mews an alarm as she approaches, but doesn’t charge. She lets herself inside, shuts the heat and sun and wildlife outside. The house smells of coffee and microwave popcorn.

She walks into Mulder’s office and finds him hunched at his desk, typing. “Hey,” she says, and drops a kiss on his head. There’s a sketch of Baphomet taped to his monitor, her worn flash cards atop a tome about Raëlism.

He turns in his chair. He puts his arms around her hips. “Hey.”

“Kevin behaved himself,” she offers.

“You two will be friends yet, you’ll see.”

She peers at the computer. “You get a lot done today?”

Mulder shrugs. “Eh, a bit. Waiting on a few emails, and I had to run that tubing to drain the sump down into the woods. Ate up most of the afternoon.”

Scully shakes her head in admiration. “I don’t know how you manage all the multitasking.”

“Well, the book helps me avoid the house, and the house helps me avoid the book. It’s a perfect system. That Ybarra guy still riding your ass?”

She chews her lip. “No,” she lies. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to have to beat up a priest.”

***

Scully gazes at herself in the empty locker room. She looks thin and tired, and her hair is frizzing up, even pulled back like this. All her makeup has sweated off except for smudged crescents of mascara. Her bra is the color of a Band-Aid, her underwear white and sensible. Between the two is the hard white rose of her gunshot scar, like a second navel, an artifact of a second birth. It is numb when she touches it, indifferent. There are no stretch marks from William, a tale missing from the anthology of her skin. She unhooks her bra, lets it slide down to the damp floor. Scully turns to observe her body in profile. The scar is gone this way, the tattoo hidden as well, and she smooths her hands along her ribs. Her breasts seem out of place to her when they are unbound, frivolous somehow. Vestigial.

She looks away.

***

The hospital is labyrinthine, having been constructed of various additions when funds allowed. There are dead ends, pointless staircases, and a mysterious storage closet filled with old televisions. She makes little maps on notepaper.

“So where did you work before this?” an orthopedic surgeon asks her.

A diner in Wyoming.

“I was out West for a while,” she says.

***

A week in, and Mulder has made a cake to celebrate. A bouquet of Kevin’s shed tail feathers ornaments the table.

An offering, Mulder calls it, tickling her chin with one.

A week down, she thinks, and blows out the candle. She wonders when she’ll stop counting the time.

***

Shy, he gives her a chapter to read. It’s good, and she tells him so. It’s very good. She hears his voice in her head when she reads it, his passion. She loves the esoterica tucked into his gyri and sulci.

“Your prose was never this clear in your reports,” she remarks.

“Hey if you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Scully laughs. “You want to read a few medical reports?”

He looks at her, suddenly serious. “Yeah,” he says. “I would. It would be nice to hear about your day for once.”

She wonders if love is the weapon that lets them wound so casually.

***

“You’re late,” Ybarra says softly.

She doesn’t explain that she’d somehow ended up at the TV closet again, that the room numbering system in this hospital had been designed by nihilists, that the nursing student had Dermabonded her glove to a patient’s forehead.

She lowers her eyes like she did at Catholic school. She promises to do better.

***

“What’s going on?” Mulder asks her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Talk to me, Scully.”

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, drops them to her sides. “Nothing,” she says again, frustrating them both. “I’m tired. It’s a hard schedule.”

He places a throw pillow on his lap and pats it. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

She acquiesces, curling on her side with her back to him. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces the Fibonacci spirals of her ear. She wants to relax, to melt into his touch. She indulges in a Mulderesque conspiracy theory that the hospital microdoses the water with tetanus toxin to keep everyone rigid and tense.

Scully gazes at the windows, at the hard white light of summer streaming in. The curtains are blue with an arabesque pattern, and they looked very chic in the store. She wonders now if they seem desperate in this odd little house. She thinks of Meg March, dressed up in borrowed finery at the Moffats’ ball.

***

Scully clomps up the steps to the porch and kicks her rain boots off next to the umbrella stand. It contains four umbrellas and a gnarled hickory limb that Mulder claims is going to be polished into a fine walking stick one of these days. She goes into the house and is dismayed to find it stale and stifling and dark. Dust motes waft in Brownian motion through shafts of sunlight, undirected by fans or air conditioning.

“Mulder,” she calls, and there is silence.

She twists her hair into a bun as she pads upstairs, old wood satiny under her bare feet. She pushes open the bedroom door, and the air is hot and still.

“Mulder?” She needs his help with her zipper, but there is no reply.

She wrestles herself out of her silk sheath, sticky and irritating, and lets it puddle on the floor. Her bra follows. She feels guilty, as Mulder has turned out to be a surprisingly diligent housekeeper. His office is filled with perilous stacks of home improvement books and arcane journals about lake monsters, the walls papered with clippings and blurry photographs, but he seems able to quarantine his own entropy.

She is trying to do the same.

Scully pulls on soft cotton pajama shorts, a gray tank top imbued with the compressive powers of Lycra. She uses lotion to rub away the mascara beneath her eyes. She goes downstairs and out the back door, shielding her eyes against the piercing sunlight. A mosquito whines at her ear and she pinches it out of the air.

“Still got those reflexes, kid,” Mulder says from somewhere off to her left.

She turns and sees him crouched next to the hulking green block of the transformer. “All the lights are off, and the house feels like a rainforest. I take it you’ve had an eventful day?”

He sighs. “Not really. Well, not the event I was hoping for, which is the power coming back on. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm around one and that’s when the electricity blew.”

She sits on the bottom step, knees drawn up. She likes to watch him working, a side of him they’re both still learning about. There was never much call for home maintenance at Hegal Place, or living out of cash-only motels. “You call the power company?”

He huffs. “Yeah, they told me they had no reported outages and the power should be fine. I explained that I was trying to report an outage and that it definitely was not fine and she promised someone would be here between tomorrow and eventually.”

Scully smiles. “And that’s why you’re out here toying with death?”

“Not much else to do, really. Can’t write with the power out.” Mulder sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You, uh, have a good day?”

She hadn’t. “Yep. Starting to feel like part of the team.”

“Good. You need to get your career standards as high as your standards for men,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Oh, well, that’s an obviously unattainable bar.”

“Obviously.” He sits next to her on the step. “You wear that to work? You know I think bras are a tool of the patriarchy and you shouldn’t bother, but I’m just surprised Our Lady of Perpetual Shame takes such a liberal view.”

She laughs a little. “I figured as long as I tossed a lab coat over it, I’d look like a real doctor. It worked when I was a kid.”

“Hey, that’s what I did with my badge half the time. Listen, Scully. The house is pretty tropical. You want to bunk up in a hotel until they get the power sorted out?”

Scully thinks about the convenience it would afford. Maids and room service and maybe a pool, depending. But she is tired of hotels, even nice ones. She is tired of polite signs that remind her that the pillows and towels and hairdryers aren’t hers, the tiny toiletries an indicator of her temporary status. She is tired of living out of suitcases and dressers that made her clothes smell strange, tired of running from her own life. She wants to be home.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll manage.”

Mulder looks surprised, but doesn’t question it. “I’ll call Lowe’s about getting a generator delivered tomorrow. We ought to have one anyway out here.”

She’d always had a vague idea that Mulder had money - it was the only explanation for his complete disinterest in it. But when they’d come back, when they’d talked to his lawyers, she'd been staggered. The Vineyard house alone explained his casual international jaunts. They can have things now, endless things, and there is something frantic in her that wants to spend the money. Bingeing chocolate bunnies after Lent.

Mulder peels his shirt off, wadding it into a limp ball. He tosses it so that it hooks over the doorknob. “Still got it,” he says. He preens.

“Does the NBA realize the tremendous talent they’re missing out on?” she asks. “Do they even know that, at this very moment, a six foot tall middle aged white man is out here flinging his clothing a distance of several feet?”

He snuggles up to her, wrapping his sweaty arms around her shoulders.

“Ugh,” she says, and pushes at him. “Mulder, you’re disgusting and it’s a thousand degrees out here.”

“Hoping that cold, cold heart of yours might cool me off.” She sniffs disdainfully, and he releases her. “Scully, how do you feel about bees?”

“We have a history, bees and I,” she observes, tapping the back of her neck.

Mulder curls his hand over the scar, kneads the muscles there. “Well, these wouldn’t be fancy bees.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’m not inherently opposed. Why do you want bees, Mulder?”

He shrugs. “I’m getting older, and I’ve got to consider funeral plans. The last one didn’t really go as expected, so I thought maybe I’d mellify myself this time.”

She nods. “Makes sense. I mean, of course, there’s no actual proof that mellification actually occurred, but that’s never stopped you.”

“I also like honey,” he adds. “And bees are good for the planet.”

“Honey often contains botulism spores,” she remarks. “Botulinum toxin is the most lethal toxin known, and it’s estimated that as little as 40 grams of it would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” She doesn’t say you shouldn’t give it to babies, that she sweetened her smoothies with dates and maple syrup so that -

“Well, nobody better piss off my bee army and me,” he says darkly.

“Everybody eventually pisses you off. Mulder, is that old tent in the shed still? We could sleep in that tonight.”

He shakes his head. “Heavy mildew and dry rot, so I threw it out. We could sleep out here if you want, though. We’ve got that big air mattress.”

“Let’s do that,” she says. “We can put it on the porch. Tell you what - you get stuff together, and I’ll even make dinner.” Scully doesn’t like cooking, but she wants to create order, to complete a finite task. She can be domesticated again, like a lost house cat finally returned to a hearth.

“We having eggs or peanut butter?” he asks, smirky.

“I’d hate to spoil the surprise,” she snips, and goes back into their sauna of a house.

In the kitchen, she stands in front of the open fridge, letting the delicious leftover cold soak into her skin. She’ll deal with the spoiled food later. Eggs had, actually, been her plan but it’s just too hot. The stove doesn’t work, and she doesn’t have the fortitude to turn the grill on. She finds some leftover shrimp pasta that Mulder has made, some vegetables, and assembles it all into a passable salad.

There, she thinks, pleased. I’d pay twelve bucks for that somewhere. She uses her foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf.

Her skin is clammy, hair stringy and damp from sweat. Maybe they should just go to a hotel after all. Perhaps she should stop ascribing symbolism to every damn thing and enjoy herself once in a while. But she thinks of packing, of driving, of unpacking and somehow it’s all too much and her eyes start to fill and her sinuses sting.

Scully pinches her wrist until it passes, feeling weak and hating the weakness in herself. It’s the heat, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the heavy mental load. She considers going outside for a dip in the pond, but suspects the water will be unpleasantly warm. Instead, she drags herself back upstairs for a cold shower.

She sits on the edge of the bed, weary, and stares at a framed picture of a sea turtle on the far wall. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, it looks like it’s swimming. She tips her head back for a better angle, watches it float across her vision. It slips away then, into the black of the deep waters.

***

She startles awake when he touches her shoulder, gasps.

“Jesus,” Mulder says, and sits next to her. “Bad dream?”

Scully sits up, dazed. “What? No, was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out cold for over an hour, but I wanted to make sure you got some food. Water at least, it’s too hot up here.”

She blinks, confused. “I don’t remember,” she says. Peering to her right reveals night outside.

Mulder holds a hand out and she grasps it, letting him pull her to her feet. She wavers and he steadies her, arm about her shoulders.

“I just need some water,” she says, defensive.

He guides her down the stairs and out the front door onto the porch. The air outside is substantially cooler, a light breeze kissing her face. She settles into a chair, stares deep into the felty dark. She still can’t remember falling asleep.

Mulder hands her a water bottle from the little table and she rolls it between her palms, the plastic crinkling. “Hey, I thought you were setting up the air mattress out here,” she says.

“No air flow behind the wall,” he replies. “Drink that up like a good girl and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scully obeys and feels better. The water tastes stale, but it’s cool and wet. “Maybe you should have my job,” she says, looking up. “Caring for live people is so much work.”

“Everybody eventually pisses me off,” he reminds her. “Come on, Doc.”

She follows him down the steps and around the side of the house. Their property is vast and feral, pocked with mole burrows and rabbit nests. The floodlights are out with the power, and the house is nearly swallowed up by the vast night. Scully glances up at the Milky Way, at the waxing moon, and marvels again at the sky they have out here. We are star stuff, she thinks.

“Moonstruck?” Mulder asks.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

“As long as you can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” he says, and tugs her along.

She follows him to the back of the house and then stops, smiling. Mulder has hammered some old two-by-fours into a frame, draped the structure in white bedsheets. Inside, the air mattress is piled with sofa pillows. Outside, camping lanterns, candles, and two strands of solar lights make it into a kind of fairy circle.

“Mulder,” she says, delighted. “This is ridiculous.”

“Indian Guide saves the day,” he says.

“Your architecture badge is definitely more impressive than your fire badge,” she says, walking over to the little tent. He’s brought her salad inside, and there is a cooler packed with ice and water bottles. Cans of bug spray sit at the flap. She crawls inside, suddenly ravenous.

Mulder joins her on the mattress, which bounces in response. “Remember my water bed?”

She laughs, piling food on a plate for each of them. “What a swinging bachelor you were.”

She remembers the water bed fondly, the leather couch and the fish and the postage-stamp bathroom in his apartment. It shouldn’t hurt still, but it does. She knew herself there, her place on the map. She eats her salad, wistful for Chinese food and beer at that battered coffee table.

“Scully,” he says.

“What?”

“Scully.”

“Just middle-aged nostalgia, I suppose,” she murmurs.

He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re scarcely middle aged.”

She smiles, squeezes his fingers. “If you go by life experience, we’re both about two hundred years old.”

“Like those Galapagos tortoises. But you need to tell me what’s going on at work. You won’t disappoint me.”

It can be very disagreeable to live with a profiler.

Scully drops his hand. She bites at the fleshy part of her thumb. This is real, she thinks. This place. It is not down in any map; true places never are. She can only deflect for so long, and her armor is rusting away. “I’m afraid,” she whispers, then chances a look at his face.

His eyes are soft, searching. “Why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, I don’t…” Her sinuses sting again and she presses her palms hard into her eyes. “Please.”

Mulder’s hand on her back, in endless, gentle figure eights. He pulls the elastic from her hair and lets it tumble down to her shoulders. He shifts so that her back is to him, his long legs on either side of her body.

“Mulder, what -”

“Shhhh,” he says, and gathers the hair at the crown of her head. “It’s not a real sleepover if you don’t get your hair French braided.”

Scully blinks. “Since when do you know how to braid hair?”

“Little sister, absent parents. Now stop moving and talk.”

She keeps her head very steady, thinking of her own sister’s deft fingers when their mother was too busy for anything but ponytails. Mulder tugs at another little section of hair. Scully thinks she might be okay if she isn’t looking at him, if she can’t read herself in his eyes.

Moth shadows dance across the white sheet wall, drawn to the flickering candles outside. It fascinates her that they never figure out that fire burns. “I don’t know how to do this,” she says, and her voice is thick.

“To talk, or to be still?” he says in his Oxford psychologist voice.

She isn’t sure of what she means either. “Yes,” she says, with a hiccupy laugh. “Both.”

“Me too,” he says, slipping his thumb through the strands behind her ear. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She swallows hard. “I just...I’ve always had something to consume me. I had the FBI, we traveled all the time, and then we were running and I thought it was hard but it was so easy to just survive. There were no decisions. I didn’t care about, I don’t know...plates.”

He pauses in his work. “Plates?”

Scully chews at a hangnail, frustrated. “Just things, the things you buy for a house. Long term things. I did with William and then…” she trails off, her chest tight. “I feel like I’m playing a game sometimes, like improv theater. Fox and Dana Build A Home.”

“Fox and Dana?” he repeats. “Surely not.”

“Well, we’re hardly Mulder and Scully anymore, are we?” Her stomach clenches and that’s it, she sees. That’s the fear.

He finishes the braid and fastens the elastic at the end of it. “Of course we are,” he says. “We are who we are.”

She turns to him then, the whispering anxiety back with a roar. “And who is that, Mulder? I was plain old Dana Scully until I met you. And we had this life, this strange and wonderful and terrible life where I was Scully because I was your partner and now that’s over. It’s all nothing.” She’s crying openly now, quietly, and it feels cleansing.

“You’re still my partner,” he says, and his eyes are shining too.

She wipes her nose with a paper napkin. “Am I? At what? I go to work and see patients but I forgot there’s no closure with the living. People get sick and get better and get sick again. It doesn’t end. And this house, the power is always going to go out and the chickens will always be hungry and -“ she stops, feeling hysterical.

“You don’t have to work,” he says softly. “The settlement from the FBI, my inheritance…”

She shakes her head. “You know I have to work.”

He sighs, rubs her knee. “I know you do. But it doesn’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to drain you.”

He’s right, of course he’s right, but he’s also so terribly wrong that she wonders if he knows her at all. She has to be a doctor for her father, for William. For him. She has to see something through. Scully smooths her hand over the back of her head, feeling the even ridges of the braid. Mulder is so competent with everything he does, so easy with himself. He’ll get his damned bees and become some kind of honey magnate in no time.

“People at the hospital, they ask me what I did before. And I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly answer that question? I just say I was with the government, but that isn’t really the answer, is it?”

Mulder shrugs. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to people. “It’s true.”

Scully stretches out on her stomach across the mattress, chin on the pillows, watching the moths again. They tumble like acrobats, untethered in the thick air. “There’s this number called Graham’s number, used in Ramsey Theory, which is, well, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was in the Guinness Book for being the largest specific number used in a proof at the time. And Mulder, this number is so big that writing out all the digits would exceed the bounds of the known universe.”

“Nobody likes a math nerd, Scully.”

She rolls onto her back to glare at him. “Yes they do, they give them Nobel prizes. Anyway. A whole new notation system, Knuth Notation, had to be developed to express these massive numbers. Graham’s Number, Tree(3), et cetera. And I feel like that at times. That there’s this endless amount of vital, inexpressible information inside of me that is so essential but that I have no way to share.”

She blinks a few times, spent by this unburdening.

Mulder stretches out next to her, propped on his side. “You can express it to me,” he says, massaging her temple with his thumb.

Scully closes her eyes. “I feel like a ghost sometimes. How do you do it, Mulder? How do you just keep moving forward without getting lost?”

He sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have a tendency to compile people into perfect specimens, then measure yourself against that imaginary standard. It’s the precession of simulacra.”

She looks at him, indignant, then realizes he could be right. “Well,” she says. “It’s possible. But Mulder, is that such a bad thing, to want to hold myself to the highest goals?”

He tugs her onto her side so that she’s facing him, nearly nose to nose. Her lips feel tingly. “Yes,” he says, stroking her hair. “When the goal isn’t attainable. And when it puts everyone else on pedestals where we’re ill equipped to balance. And when it puts you in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. No one is perfect. Not even you.”

“I don’t want to be perfect,” she lies. “And I don’t need you to be either.” That part is true, at least.

He laughs in reply. “Apropos of being Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin once said ‘I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’”

“He rode the tortoises,” Scully says, calming. “I can’t defend his methodology.”

“See? You’re better than Charles Darwin.” He kisses her forehead.

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

“Scully, look. You’re not alone here, feeling at sea. I went to the feed store and some guy picked a fight, shoved me pretty hard with his shoulder. And this reflexive part of my brain wanted to grab my badge, stick it in his face, and put him against the wall for assaulting a federal agent. But I ignored it and bought the chicken feed and just headed out. And I felt like, is this who I am now? Some pushover with yard birds and home improvement books?”

“You made a little fast and loose with your authority sometimes,” she says, thinking of Roche. She curves her palm against his cheek, thumbs the fine ridge of his zygomatic bone.

He bumps her nose with his. “You broke into a secret morgue.”

“You made me.” She sniffles, laughs a little. “The good old days.”

“These can be the good days too,” he says. “They can, if we work at it.” He traces her mouth with his finger.

“Okay,” she says. Hope stirs in her, a thing with feathers. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

He kisses her, in their small tent, in their ring of light.

#xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #my fic #iwtb

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doyelikehaggis · 4 years

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I'm obsessed with lacrosse player Malia. Do you have more headcanons aboyt it?

I love that you asked! I don't actually so I'm going to make them up as I write this!

• She got on the team when Coach witnessed her throwing the ball back at Liam. He had accidentally her with it, and she had just been intending to give it back to him. Werecoyote strength did not agree -- it went through his net. Coach decided that could be handy.

• She actually caught onto the basics quite quickly because she's been watching all of the games and studying Scott and Stiles to get the general gist of it

• Like, she knew to use the stick to pick up the ball, and the goal was to get it into the other net

• It didn't fully occur to her, however, that passing was a necessity. She gets shouted at by Coach a handful of times for just throwing the ball straight across the field and into the opposing net... without leaving the other end of the field

• And on that note: she was not aware that you weren't allowed to score when you're in goal. And after being shouted at for not moving enough initially, she didn't realize that that rule does not apply to the goalie. (Imagine: repeat of Scott just running out of goal and Coach wanting to murder him.)

• It takes a minute to learn how to control her strength and her anger. Too many ripped nets was starting to become a problem, and they really couldn't have her taking someone else's stick when they stole the ball from her

• When asked what surname she wants on her jersey and hoodie (because Scott and Kira are in charge of that as the captains), she firmly sticks with Tate. It's a bonus how much it pisses Peter and Derek off because their name is all over the school for sports trophies and awards and she comes in and decides to not carry on the success of their name. (Derek's actually kind of proud but warns her not to join the basketball team.)

• She looks Good in a jersey. This is just a fact. Every pack member on the team looks attractive in their jerseys

• Just never listens to Coach, really, and constantly argues with everyone else about whether she cheated or not (she did but shut up, she has fangs, who cares if she shoved that player out of the way or if she threw the ball so hard into the goal that she broke that guys nose somehow)

• Has 6% patience and 94% rage combined with the speed and reflexes of a coyote. Winning is easy. No one is going to tell her not to use her abilities. They gave her an actual weapon when they gave her that stick, and they'd like to graduate, thank you very much

• She never wears her own lacrosse team hoodie because Stiles took it, which is fine, because she took Kira's one night during a sleepover and never gave it back. Not a single one of them wears their own hoodie. She's getting used to responding to every surname but her own by Coach, who genuinely cannot tell anyone apart if they don't have a name on their clothing half the time

#oh look a wild anonymoose #ask away earthlings!#teen wolf #malia tate #hope this was okay anon!!#I just love athletic malia #now I want basketball player malia...

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centrally-unplanned · 4 years

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Medium & Marketing for 90′s Anime Dubs

Today is Hayao Miyazaki’s 80th birthday, which made sure my dash was filled with Ghibli tidbits. A discussion of my personal favourite, Kiki’s Delivery Service, brought up its ill-fated original dub by Disney in 1998. Ghibli still didn’t have the courage yet to put their foot down on changes for international releases, and so there are a lot of alterations - the theme songs are changed to be anglicized, almost any “dead space” or quiet moments in the film have someone (normally animal sidekick Jiji the cat) improv lines over the scenes to liven them up, and in particular the ending is changed to be less bittersweet as Jiji, who in the original Kiki permanently loses the ability to talk to as a sign of growing up, regains his voice.

These changes slot neatly into the zeitgeist of all 90′s anime changes - a disregard for the property’s core appeal as they were bowdlerized for a western audience. Sailor Moon is an infamous victim of a similar process - at least Kiki took place in fantasy Europe, the Sailor Moon dub’s attempts to pretend that the show doesn’t take place in Japan were simply insane as they cut out or blurred every appearance of Japanese writing in the show, leaving reams of animation frames on the floor in the process.

(Tangent time: the greatest scene ever is one where, upon reading a note by Usagi, to prove it was her Minako/Sailor Venus comments “it must be from her, its written entirely in hiragana”, the simpler form of written Japanese compared to kanji, which Usagi as a running gag cannot write. So in the dub they just...blur out the text of the note, and have Minako comment “I had to read it with my imagination. It's all written in funny symbols!". I distinctly remember watching the episode live when I was 12 years old and going “wait what the fuck does that even mean?” and suddenly realizing that the show was changing its own script, it was a trip of a moment)

Like most people I do malign these changes, but I am actually here to partially defend them via contextualization. The idea that American audiences would have cared that the show was Japanese is pretty dumb, but what you often hear are statements like “kids in Japan appreciated Sailor Moon/Kiki’s Delivery Service just fine, they didn’t need to change it”. That is possible, but it mistakes why changes are being made to begin with - its not the “culture of children in the US vs Japan”, its intended market via the medium of distribution.

Kiki’s Delivery Service was released in Japanese theatres in 1989, and it was the highest grossing film of the year in Japan (about ~US$18 million, man do things change). Kiki’s Delivery Service the Disney dub, was....released on VHS in 1998. VHS releases and movie theatre releases aren’t really intended accomplish the same thing. Remember all those direct-to-video Disney sequels? Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride? Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time? Remember how they were all just garbage? Anyone looking back at them today cringes, with a few exceptions. But none of us cringed when we were 8! My partner is a huge Disney fangirl, and when she was young she didn’t even distinguish between the theatre release and the VHS sequels - it was all Disney, you just lined them up and played them in a row as the complete canon. Yes, these movies sucked partially because they were low budget, but they weren’t actually *that* low budget - and not the throwaways your memory probably tells you they were. Lion King 2? Made ~$300 million in net sales, almost as much as the original Lion King’s theatrical run.

What those Disney VHS sequels and Kiki share is the fact that their intended market was *only* children. That is the point of VHS - you put it on for your kids and then go make dinner. Its the virtual babysitter, the kids can loop it while reenacting every scene with their stuffed animals. Movies released in theatres don’t serve that role at all - the parents are paying $15 a head and they are trapped in their seats for the whole runtime. It has to entertain everyone, or you aren’t going to go, or at least not as often. VHS releases sucked because kids don’t care, they actually do enjoy the constant quippy lines and dumb jokes. That is equally true for Japanese kids - its just that Kiki’s intended audience wasn’t Japanese kids, it was “all ages” - a very different category.

The same is true for Sailor Moon, by the way. The idea that kids in Japan could “handle more mature themes like death” unlike American audiences doesn’t hold up quite as much when you look at Disney theatrical releases like the Lion King - Mufasa’s death pulls no punches, but kids didn’t mind. And Japan does have shows like Doraemon that are just as childish as the 90′s western cartoons you remember. Its that Sailor Moon’s audience wasn’t just kids.

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon aired in March of 1992 on TV Asahi. Asahi was not a kids network, and Sailor Moon did not air in a kid’s block - instead in its “Anime Block”. It aired on Saturdays, at 7:00 PM. For most of its runtime, the 7:30 slot after was held by Slam Dunk, a hyper-serious basketball anime adapted from a manga in Weekly Shonen Jump. You think director Kunihiko Ikuhara was throwing in queer relationships and even trans characters, and every other villian was a half-naked seductress, because it was gonna really resonate with 8 year olds? Sailor Moon was for 8 year olds, yes...and for otaku. So, 15 year olds, lets not exaggerate here. But still, its hype, its success, came just as much from its teen and adult fans as much as its young devotees. Which was intentional - it was *marketed* that way. That's why it aired at 7:00 PM on a Saturday.

Sailor Moon’s original dub, on the other hand, aired on UPN at, yeesh, 6:30 AM?? Then on USA’s Cartoon Express at the much more reasonable 8:30 AM, and later on Toonami at 4:00 PM. All of these are kids slots, to watch over cereal or snacks before/after school while the parents are busy. You do not expect the adult in the room to be watching alongside the kid, or for teens to really be paying attention.

And to cut off the logical objection, a show like Sailor Moon was just not going to get a 7:00 PM Saturday slot in the US in the 90′s. Nor was Kiki going to get a movie theatre release in 1998 of any scale. Movie releases are expensive, Saturday slots are precious, the funding just wasn’t there for something so untested as Japanese anime. There was no demand in the west for it - that demand would only be created later, by a generation who grew up on, well, shitty Sailor Moon dubs and Kiki VHS releases. And what success in the media slots these shows and movies did have are shaped by those market niches.

I don’t want to be over-deterministic on this - at some point Cartoon Network rolled the dice on Cowboy Bebop and Full Metal Alchemist and it worked - maybe they could have done that in 1995 with like Neon Genesis Evangelion, who knows! And of course US children’s cartoons are, beyond market forces, burdened with regulatory moralizing that Japanese media does not have. But I do think these 90′s dub efforts should get the proper context for the constraints they were operating under, and why they existed at all, as they are criticized.

#kiki's delivery service #sailor moon #90's dub discourse never dies

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jenifersohowe · 3 years

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We are standing at Basketball League central stadium in Austin where is capital , also be the heart of Texas state . There is much of Pro- Basketball players concentrate in Worldwide Texas , in the mong of them , there is also including Foreign pro- basketball players in annual years ' contract rental playing for Texas League .It seems to be the most famous of season Championship in one year will come to mind again with us right here today's game , with Worldwide standard from 6.6 feet ~ 6.7 feet up to 7 feet for Pro- basketball players , they are becoming the big giants in Pro- sport champion League even amateurs cannot catch up with this the number first condition , besides of getting well with four season here in Texas , pro- foreign players having to update their record on annual pro troupe to make their skill completely arcording to their long term coaching even hard , especially to be get well with their Team members in the great realationship as well as One Team One Heart .

We believe in Future recuiting of the more Texas Pro -basketball players will be like an predictable when four demensional worldview who once joked that the earth was flat , as a Legend that people talked about NBA Pro- Basketball players before , or instead of " Last dance " of Golden time with Jordan's , We will be looking forward to the "New perfect dance" for Texas Professional basketball players in Worldwide someday soon as well.

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

Our Team is consisted of The News Headquarters, Compilation journalists , Broadcast Reporters, or another journal magazine with their weekly sport report newspaper on Media. Press. Net together in this Pro- Basketball champion League today .

I am as Guest Reporter with my husband @tannerpatrickhowe as Guest journalist , we are greeting this Halloween 🎃 week to All from the same Halloween party at Central stadium today too.

#texasbasketball

#texasbasketballassociation

#texaschampion

#probasketball

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#probasketballplayer

#worldwide

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#texascoaching

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#worldwide news #texas news #austin texas #hi media #network #associated press #texasevents #champions league #pro league #stadium #Instagram

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tenacityreturns · 3 years

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in response to @peachmuses ‘s recent nijihimu drabble

“are you gonna tell me what’s inside the duffel bag yet?” daiki asks in a whisper, as if he’s a spy escaping a dangerous situation.

“you’ll see,” taiga grins, eyes darting over his shoulder to ensure no one followed them. but no one would follow newly weds when they’re sneaking out of their own party, would they? surely everyone there knew exactly where they were going. everyone but daiki, apparently. it’s not annoying, though. it’ll just turn what should be the obvious course of events into a surprise.

they slip out the open fire exit, down a flight of stairs, hand in hand. the full moon is beautiful tonight. stars twinkle, cicadas sing or-- whatever it is cicadas do so loudly. taiga’s ears a ringing from the music, but he can’t tell whether his spinning head is because he got married today, or because he just downed a beer a little quicker than he probably should have. they duck a little lower to hide themselves behind bushes, and daiki squeezes his hand. it’s the first option. beer has nothing to do with it ( or, maybe a little, but it’s his wedding night! ).

and finally, they make it to the parking lot. it isn’t the answer daiki had been thinking of, but taiga really has no idea what that could have been. to him, it’s obvious. daiki doesn’t have to say anything. his confusion is also obvious.

“don’t you remember?” taiga releases his husband’s hand in order to unzip the bag hanging at his hip. inside were two bottles of water, and a basketball. he drops the bag, and starts tossing the ball between his hands. daiki only seems to notice it now, but taiga moves to stand beneath a portable hoop and it all fits into place. “i told you i was gonna play basketball at my wedding.”

daiki, who had been rendered speechless, cracks into a smile. he rubs his forehead with the back of his hand. “are you serious?”

“dead serious, dai.”

“of course you are,” he laughs. he ditches his suit jacket on-top of the duffle bag like it isn’t custom and didn’t cost $600. he comes to stand between taiga and the hoop with a smug smirk. this has all happened before.

for some reason, watching daiki lower from standing upright, to ready to intercept a move transports taiga way back. they’re seventeen. they’ve had maji’s. his legs don’t hurt all the time. the future is uncertain but, my god, is it bright. they’ll be together through it all, of course. ha-- that doesn’t go as planned. but it ends well. they’re married. it was worth all the pain to get to this moment, when they’re twenty-eight, playing basketball on their wedding night. it all makes perfect sense. daiki starts to stand straight again, but taiga lowers, and starts bouncing the basketball around his feet. it’s like he never quit.

“go easy, baby,”

“i was injured the first time we met,” taiga takes no notice of the caution, “remember that?”

“yeah, i was a dickhead.”

“well,” taiga shrugs, “some things never change.”

and there he goes, taiga kagami, back in the game like he’d never left! and what a natural, weaving around his opponent like water against a rock. he’s there, he jumps to dunk, and for a second, the magic is wavering. daiki didn’t intercept, he didn’t put up a fight. why? it’s annoying. it’s--- fine. quicker than his eyes can catch, a dark hand swipes the ball away from the net and has vanished again to retrieve it. good. as careful as they will be, daiki won’t just hand him the game.

but his legs last five minutes before they’re hurting again, and daiki can pick it up like a sixth sense. they alter the game to allow for stationary three-pointers. that almost doesn’t hurt at all, and now they can actually get some points in. another five points and they have to call it quits. maybe jumping hadn’t been the best idea, but he’s glad he got to do it. six months ago, he wasn’t sure, and he would regret it if he didn’t. after a kiss for the winner ( daiki ), the two head back upstairs to the party. this time, they use the main staircase which leads up to the balcony area. it’s a big, staggered staircase, with a wall to conveniently hide behind. not that this had been much of a point of interest until this very second.

taiga hears nijimura’s voice from just above as they were rounding the last steps. he has in mind to go and check in on him when he hears a very distinct

“i cannot stress this enough, tatsu, but what the fuck.”

he stops in his tracks. daiki stops in his tracks, holding onto taiga’s wrist as anger flares up. actually, tatsu, you can fuck off from bothering nijimura tonight! you can go mope somewhere else, and not cause a drama because you’re drunk or you’re bored or you’re lonely. taiga stares imploringly, urgently, at daiki to just let him go so he can go unleash hell, but daiki’s not looking at him. he’s listening. his ears even move. taiga clocks back into the conversation on the balcony, pulling his wrist free. it’s an argument.

he hears the word kiss. more than that, he understands that tatsu just fucking kissed nijimura--- and now nijimura’s reminding him that this is not the right situation for something like that, thanks very much. it does embarrass the redhead to have heard it, though. but he’s so proud to hear nijimura defend himself. he feels bad for tatsuya, cursed with the worst sense of timing a man could ever have. the talking stops. the door opens. taiga’s moving to catch up with them -- he’s aiming for nijimura -- when he realises daiki isn’t behind him. he turns at the last minute.

“i’ll go find tatsuya,” he explains, heading back downstairs. ah, yes, maybe it would be less mortifying for nijimura to think that only one of them had heard what had happened.

taiga’s too close to nijimura not to admit that he’d heard what happened. technically speaking, they are ex-husbands. they’re ex-teammates, ex-flatmates, ex-husbands. best friends. his expression says as much when he calls out “hey, niji,” just before his friend makes it inside the door. i heard what happened, he’ll say quietly, facing away from the party. i don’t know if it’s the right thing to say, but as mad as i was a second ago for tatsu kissing you right now, i don’t think you should leave without telling him how you feel.

who is izuki, after all, but a poor replacement for tatsuya? who was hideaki? who were the countless lovers and not-lovers nijimura had entertained over the years but a reminder that tatsuya didn’t know how to love properly? taiga couldn’t get in the middle of that. not tonight, not ever. he knows how nijimura feels. even now.

there, see? a one-on-one against daiki, followed by tentatively picking up the sharp pieces nijimura and tatsuya’s collective hearts made on the floor. just like old times.

#drabbles.#aonon.#future verse.#peachmuses #i was gonna put this under a read more then i didnt #thinking about go easy baby #i hope tihs makes sense its gone 1am and i havent proofread........... classic robyn behaviour all round #ive said it before and i will say it again....................... referring to them by taiga/daiki hits DIFFERENT im telling you

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