#i dont really need to read about children killing each other

[animentality]

Hunger games seems like an amazing book series that I will never read.

[randomwriteronline]

I wonder if the toa mata recognized themselves in their own memories from before mata nui.

I dont know, i think theres possibilities to be explored about that. Suddenly remembering yourself and what you find being a complete stranger is a common thing for amnesia plots i guess but also i think this could be even more jarring. Like a more genuine difference between killing machine and living being.

Its less a matter of nature vs nurture and more a matter of nature with a certain type of nurture. Nature dictates they are powerful and driven and well meaning, but the way they are brought up produces completely different people.

Their first taste of life was a sterile room with nobody but each other and a disembodied voice reading out their duties, establishing an arbitrary hierarchy within them, and then sending them to a glorified bootcamp where a ruthless instructor worked on making them into skilled combatants and nothing else, teaching them how to use their elements as tools and weapons without indulging in them; they got a vague sense of what and how a community feels like with the Av-Matoran - as outsiders, as its protective shield, there for them but not with them - only to get that stripped away from them too because their role as life saving tools to be preserved under glass just in case of a crisis was more important.

I wonder if the Toa Mata, the ones who were taken to the Koro of Mata Nui and listened to the Turaga's tales and reprimands and would have moved mountains for the Matoran who treated them like older siblings, return with their minds to things they said or thought or did from before the Island of Mata Nui and stop in their tracks. Whose memory is that, they think? That can't be mine. I am not like that. My siblings are not like that. Some things are perfectly right, they cant deny that; but just as many if not more are so wrong that they almost feel like a really cruel joke somebody planted into their heads.

Kopaka and Tahu got along, even if they dont want to admit it because they need to bicker like children or theyll die, but are more surprised that they werent as tentatively close with anybody else. Lewa remembers so much frustration and tedium and anger that if he stalls in his memories too much he genuinely starts feeling queasy, Pohatu has remnants of bitterness and passive aggression that still cling to him like the smell of a cigarette on someone who gave up smoking, and they both hate that because its nothing like them. Onua and Gali feel like theyre peering into some kind of imperfect clone's brain when they try to remember - its themselves, they know that, it has to be, but there are certain things they know about themelves that are just completely missing and its kind of dizzying to realize that.

Im not even sure they liked each other. They work together because its their destiny, but they don't seem to seek each other out for fun or anything else. In their training days they had to be shoved in each others direction or they would have never solved their obligatory group assignments.

I wonder if their terrors and flaws could partially come from this first life that they had too. Gali's fear of her anger and Lewa's disregard for duty stemming from Hydraxon's methods - she internalized his reprimands about feeling guilt for living enemies, but without any memory of him she believes the words resurfacing in her mind from time to time are her own, and is appalled by their cruelty; he was forbidden from enjoying himself, from indulging in any form of fun, of entertainment, of joy, and unconsciously now he rebels by shirking away from responsability to do whatever he wants.

The responses to Tahu's decision regarding the codrex haunt him, the whole situation, really; how he stripped his siblings of any say on their fate because he was the leader, not even telling them or explaining himself until they had no other choice, and if he could treat them like that once then what would stop him from doing so again and again until he doesnt even think about it? Kopaka is uneasy about it too. He knew the plan and supported Tahu only because he tagged along, but hes very, very acutely aware that he would have been left just as much in the dark as everybody else otherwise, and he would gave not even had anybody to seek any comfort from because hes fairly certain none of the others would have liked him enough to care.

Onua as @cantankerouscanuck pointed out to me mightve taken Hydraxon's teachings to heart, hence why he's so quiet: no use in expressing weakness, right? But karda nui must have been hellish on his senses, with all that light - a tangible physical discomfort that would bleed out into an emotional one as he becomes conscious of how none of his siblings go through this, thus he must be damaged in some way, faulty, out of place, and so he seeks to be alone, digging himself away. And its not hard to imagine how Pohatu (who hasnt had the chance to grow into the affable, kind toa his siblings can always lean on when they need to yet) would become convinced of his uselessness within the team and seethe about it.

They arrive on Mata Nui as broken war machines with no clue who they even are and suddenly find nature and community and love, and in a moment theyre people.

I wonder if the environment helped. Being thrown upon a beach in the open air with nothing but a whole world that is so alien and yet feels so right beckoning them to come closer. Discovering their powers and their domains freely, immediately - first thing they did was dive into their respective elements without a second thought, naturally magnetized, taking after them like it was the simplest thing in the world, because they are the first toa, the first beings capable of harnessing these powers in their whole universe, and its in their nature to be so connected to them. Maybe it helped. Maybe it made them feel connected to their own selves enough to figure themselves out in a way they couldnt have done so before.

Maybe it helped to find out their collective destiny each on their own, in their own environment, at their own pace, surrounded by younger siblings who look at them with awe and curiosity and frustration sometimes, guided by people who know how being alive works with all its good parts and messy bits and who can tell what having so much power means when youre barely aware of how to use it or what to do. And maybe it helped to find out who their siblings were in a similar way, introducing themselves as they wanted, as they felt like, without a specific order, and learning to recognize each other as siblings with all the things that make them insufferable and all the things that make them the best and what makes them happy and what makes them angry and how they sound when theyre worried and how likely they are to chase you down to the other edge of the island for doing something stupid, and like real people they grow and develop and change and stay the same, and then they meet the memory of themselves from before becoming people and its...

Idk. Its like the realization of who they used to be and the distance between themselves and those selves, and the fact that they dont like them.

[dsaf-confessions]

yeah, im sorry this is so long. its not meant against you, mod, respect ya for all that you have to put up with here... yeah.

i think a lot of the people coming on here to complain about other peoples opinions need to take a deep breath. you don't have to agree with them. but bashing people in the tags, anonymously sending in that someone's opinion on a fucking rpg maker game that, at its core, is a massive shitpost.

suicide jokes, especially when you dont know the person saying it at all, are not funny. if it isnt a joke and youre really about to kill yourself over a fun little tumblr blog, get help. seriously. i hope you get better and feel okay one day.

somebody who probably lives 12 to 24 hours away from you, by plane, saying they self-ship or ship an oc with a character you find irredeemable is not the end of the fucking world. sure, you may see it as weird, but at the end of the day a surprising amount of this fandom is around about 13, and thats what 13 year olds do. no shade to yall. those of you that i know are great.

i myself am a minor, i only got into the games, and months later, the fandom around my 15th birthday. its easier than some of you want to admit to stay away from the parts of the fandom that arent child appropriate. i dont mean the drugs. drugs arent anyone-appropriate. theyre fucking illegal. shoving an eggplant up someones urethra is also totally outlandish and sounds like it was written by a 5th grader

lets all respect each other for a bit. nobody fucking deserved to get the colossal amounts of anon hate that ive seen soley because of a harmless opinion.

to the adults here who churn out high-quality comics and fics and ask blogs, that i so joyously read, hell yeah! keep doing that, do what you want with it.

to the children, and by that i mean minors okay we are in fact legally considered children, you keep it up too. keep up your ask blogs and fics and fanart and shit that is sometimes so high-quality i assume youre fucking 30 until i check your bio.

yall, collectively, need to learn that at the end of the day people are gonna do what they want with these characters. it doesnt matter if someone draws henry miller in fucking cat ears because hes a fictional guy. have you seen what they do to steve raglan out there, man? its a fucking warzone but instead of explosives everyones firing out furry edits! it doesnt matter if someone ships something you dont like. im not a proshipper, theres lines i personally refuse to cross, but can i do anything about the people who do? no. ive come to terms with that.

ship your weird rarepair who never met in canon. draw your genderswap fanart. make your au askblog. write that fic you think wont be good enough. someone, somewhere, probably loves what youre creating.

the anons here saying shit like "oh im gonna kms over this" and "thats a fucking weird character to like", yall are the same. im sure you arent all vanilla ice-cream on a summers day level basic. youve got your unusual headcanons too.

we really have to let the minors in this fandom be. they arent going anywhere, myself included, because they dont want to. you cant force people out. so be fucking nice instead of making someone feel ashamed because they make jake a she/they or whatever.

holy fuckin shit that is. long. i am so sorry mod. if its too long you dont have to post it lmao

.

[tennessoui]

hello miss kit! loving all your responses to the asks everyone got such interesting thoughts!! I know you love all your children equally but which gffa au do you love just a bit more than the others? (excluding counselling au lol)

what a hard ask oof

good thing i have a glass of wine and a lot of time on my hands! so i just rated all my fics set in the gffa

(i had a LOT of time on my hands)

a fish hook, an open eye: 7/10 - it's hardly set in the gffa at all tbh i love earnest evil puppy anakin & conniving obi-wan who gets more than he bargained for. needed more cody, tbh a more perfect union: 10/10 - i'm biased obviously cause i just finished this fic so it's fresh on my mind but it was so fun to write! i loved trying to balance the humor and the seriousness and the council scene (both of them!) was just so great amort & amor: 6/10 - i just think anakin would probably not be that cool about obi-wan getting another padawan lol but it's fluffy and cute and i'm glad i wrote it! bed warden, bed warmer: 8/10 - obi-wan would be the worst patient in the history of the world. he's such an asshole which i love writing but he's also so clearly very smitten with anakin. he's just going to be an asshole about it building a boat with no blueprints: 7/10 - i know yall dont know how it ends but i know how it ends ;) burn every bridge but please leave me a boat: 6/10 - my first attempt at reverse master&padawan au which is a dynamic i really love. i would rate this fic higher, but i wish i had started it in a different place and relied less on mental flashbacks but a number: 9/10 - happy almost one year to this fic! i had to get someone to cheer-read this fic for me because i was worried that i was being too hard on aging/obi-wan's body falling apart and anakin feeling old and tired at age 40 but then i saw a bunch of gifs of obi-wan jumping off stuff and i was like yeah his body probably does feel like it's falling apart foolproof, foolhardy: 10/10 - i literally have not has so much fun with a cliffhanger since i last updated time & tide. no notes, just stupid oblivious padawan obi-wan trying to seduce master skywalker into his bed, unaware that master skywalker would crawl over burning coals to kiss his hand. hand in unlovable hand: 6/10 - not my favorite adaptation from tumblr fic to ao3 fic - i used too much of the original ficlet and always feels clunky to me. i do like sith vader manipulating obi-wan into falling!! yes baby, you twist and ruin that jedi master and make him yours haunt me then: 8/10 - i love non-sequential storytelling and also padmé loving anakin so much that she sacrifices a child to bring him back only for him to come back solely to live and breathe for obi-wan hold me fast or kill me quick: 3/10 - would be a higher rating but this fic haunts me. i want to finish her someday and until i do i will not rest peacefully at night. get these stupid soulmates to communicate! i pray the same, but my gods have changed: 10/10 - i love writing this fic, i love watching the polls as you guys vote for what should happen next, i love catty sith obi-wan working to seduce senator skywalker because he's hot lol but it's the voting aspect that makes this fic a 10/10 for me if you love me, let it remain unnamed: 9/10 - it surprised me how much i loved writing set as an actual character. one day i want to explore the universe that set's in, where he meets his own kenobi and falls in love with him. i really liked the outsider perspective on how absolutely wild obi-wan and anakin are - especially since the main scenario is that they're having a threesome, and obi-wan and anakin have to?? share?? each other? with someone else? unlikely! let’s get your fingers tangled in my hair: 6/10 - i wrote this in a fever state; it was fun and i enjoy a king kenobi as much as the next gal! do i actually think anakin could last that long without talking? no not the way i usually write him lol like saints, like monsters: 8/10 - i love the way the chapters are set up, with them going back and forth between the actual plot and the worst parts and darkest moments of the recovery lost to a sea of troubles: 7/10 - it will never not be funny to me that this fic is in response to the prompt "knocking on the wrong door". it could have been anythinggg. it became this instead, featuring light stockholm syndrome and an obessive, evil obi-wan

[radmalenia]

you come off as someone coping with their inability to accept themselves. you treat this website liked its a diary. like no one on earth will see the vile shit you spew. but thats wrong. you know its wrong. you know you are hurting people. you cant get over that sarcastic, nervous grinning, shit eating, shaky anger that can been mistaken for a dopamine hit if you a truly depressed enough. you get off to harassing people, you need it to stop thinking about how bad things got. about that person who hurt you. about how you were raised. you blame everyone but yourself.

why do you make your entire personality about how you failed at transitioning? that sounds really exhausting. maybe if you talked to someone about all these conflicting feelings you have, you wouldnt feel compelled to harass transgender people online all the time. its genuinely sickening to watch someone call an entire 7% of all humans, from a vastly diverse range of back grounds, all of those people; rapists and pedophiles.

you will hit a wall one day. you wont be able to sustain this hate. on that day, i hope you dont hurt yourself. i hope maybe at least after youve done your damage, maybe at least then youll be able to live happily. god. thats all i want. why cant we all just leave each other alone. be happy.

i had to ruin my fucking morning, reading the vile shit you spread. i had to type all this bullshit that you absolutely wont read. i had to do this shit because YOU, an adult, cant keep their shit together around trannys. if you wont take any of the peace and love shit ive said, at least take this;

fuck off. find a new hobby. this isnt cute. you are going to hurt someone. you are going to tip an already fragile person into killing themselves. and thats best case scenario

Not reading that schizo rant, honey. All I need to get from this is that my advocation for women and children to be safe from misogyny and gender ideology has triggered another childish, verbally violent gender ideologist.

Whatever is going on with you is not my problem. Promoting a harmful delusion and then losing your mind when people won't just roll over and let you take that fantasy and trample all over everyone else with it...seems that results in mental instability for you! And to make it worse it's something that you have entirely brought upon yourself.

Go to fucking therapy for your projections, lies, delusions, vitriol, misogyny; whatever it is you're spewing here it probably falls under several of those categories. You always have the capability to stop being such a loser if you actually try!

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth is a science fiction novella that's a retelling of Antigone. Roth's prose has improved since I read Divergent almost 10 years ago, but the way she handles the story of Antigone and its setting is... Odd.

In the story, the kingdom of Thebes is the last bastion of civilization in a post apocalyptic world. In order to prevent genetic bottlenecks in a small population, it's mandatory that citizens 1. have children and 2. do not procreate but instead use preserved sperm and/or eggs from a library of long-gone donors. They've created a faith out of this process, attributing to reincarnation. It's better to pick the genes of a long-dead hero because it means your child will grow up the same, etc.

Antigone's brother dies, and the plot kicks off because King Creon bans his genes from being added to the gene library, and Antigone wants her brother to have a chance at reincarnation. Sure, I guess this is one way to do the plot in a science fiction manner.

It's just that this is used to sidestep the incest entirely.

The crime of Antigone's-- and her siblings'-- birth is not through incest and the degradation and tragedy and horror of the family unit, but because Oedipus and Jocasta have a natural birth-- Oedipus impregnates Jocasta naturally and has 4 children. Because they're the reincarnation of nobody, the children of Oedipus are claimed to not have souls, and this is the reason why so many people believe their family line is broken beyond repair. But like... This doesn't have a real-world counterpart. There's not really any believability in a society that considers genetic relation between siblings as a degradation of the family, let alone as a metaphor of incest.

This would be a cowardly action to begin with-- this is a book for young adults and adults where they say fuck-- but the biggest offender is that they DO allude to incest, somewhere else-- Eurydike's mother recently passed away, and Eurydike wishes she could be reincarnated, but if she used her mother's DNA for a new child that'd be incestuous. So instead of one of the core pillars of conflict in the story, incest is relegated to an offhand comment about a completely speculative fiction element.

This book wants to talk about abuse, about misogyny, and lesbophobia (there's a weird tangent where Antigone observes a lesbian couple at the gene bank, and ismene is gay) about marital violence, about filial piety, but is actually really afraid to, because these topics are scary. Roth's prose may have improved since Divergent but her political literacy very much has not.

On top of that, the book gets 33 pages of preamble before Polynikes and Eteocles actually kill each other. The play of Antigone starts with those two already dead in the field. I cannot stress this enough, we have PLACES TO BE. The story should not start a THIRD of the way into the book. it's also a matter of personal distaste but i dislike the fact that chapters are written from the perspectives of different characters. i dont actually care about ismene's inner monologue, or to watch the siblings talk at a cafe. Why does Eurydike have a POV chapter before the "play" even starts??? Her entire role is one of futile passivity. She has no relevance until the point of no return. She has 4 lines of dialogue, a fact several better adaptions comment on and explore (Antigonick and Antigone Will Take The Stairs Today) and her presence this early in the area adds nothing.

Antigone's anger feels toothless and performative no matter how many f-bombs she drops. The narrative is unfocused and meandering and is overinvested in justifying its science fiction premise. Despite the attempt to characterize them in a story that doesn't need it, Polynikes and Eteocles and Ismene feel flat.

It's a bad adaption of Antigone that's fundamentally inequipped to deal with the source material and elects to disrespect the care it requires and the emotional core of the original work, and this just makes it, in general, a bad book.

[thephantomcasebook]

i feel so lucky that tonight i discovered your tumblr page by chance as i myself huge huge huge fan of asoiaf and fire&blood fan and they are powerful distraction from my upsetting daily routine i need to get through. Therefore, i spend everyday daydreaming thinking brainstorming lots of things

my recent question mark in my head is about Jahaera and aegon the third situation. So in the book it says, jahaera and aegon were very very quiet very reserved and didnt spend any time together since their 2 or 3 year long childmarriage they both endured. And i am also thinking even children werent initiative, but they were also kept apart from each other . As regents and other powerful adults wanted to have more power and bigger chance to getting closer to the crown through marriage. And if jahaera or aegon needs to be chosen to get rid of , that would be jahaera in their eyes as jahaera being declared the heir and sitting on the crown could be a potential for other female heirs being set aside question their rights. Therefore i feel jahaera was chosen for to be killed instead of aegon , just because of the gender not because of whether this is green or black case.

Anyway i should just get to my question , in the book cannon, after jahaera’s suicide(murder), aegon the third reportedly give jahaera’s own doll to myrielle peake(hand of the king’s daughter)

this is sooo weird to me, and i genuinely dont think george martin just put it out that detail for no reason. Apparently in the book myrille played with the doll as if it was a real one so thats a obvious hint to how myrielle and her father the hand of the king wants myrille as queen very much. But what i can not understand is why the hell aegon had jahaera’s doll and gave it to myrille, like why did it have to be jahaera’s own doll

i feel you are so far the best person i ever read about understanding george martin and understanding uncovering things

do you have any insight into this detail in the fire blood book? Why would aegon give jahaera’s doll to myrielle when he could just gift brand new doll to myrielle? Its not like aegon the third would be short of money to buy a simple 1 doll.

and aegon the third and jahaera were said several tomes in the book how they had no contact no closeness nothing between them, they only sat quietly next to each other in formal royal events which was again so rare.

i wonder maybe that was not the case? Maybe they just started to be friends and hand of the king got scared and thats why he insteaf of murdering jahaera later he did it before aegon the third would get attached to her better?

And also what do u think of jahaera and aegon the third pairing in general? I love daenaera so much and i dont think daenaera made aegon feel anything negative but i feel jahaera and aegon could had reached deeper feelings whereas i felt daenara was superficial beautiful positive distraction

Hey, sorry I'm answering so late ... I usually take off from the computer on Friday-Saturday and then come back on Sunday Night - though I'm writing this at 4:30AM on a Monday Morning.

And, I feel you, times are pretty lean around here too on a personal level and as a writer I tend to retreat to fictional worlds - my own or others - to get through the day. Which is why I get sucked into Downton Abbey and HOTD. So, I got you ... you're among friends on that regard.

I'm not sure I've got an inside track to GRRM's thinking, though we tend to be kindered spirits in terms of writing tact and methods. I've just been a fan for a good thirteen years and used to get into the weeds with fan theories and the like.

I'll be honest with you, Aegon III giving away Jaehaera's doll like that really, really - REALLY - bothered me. It's a personal tick of mine, probably because I've always been a pretty poor guy and didn't have a lot of toys - I've learned to be a book and imagination kinda person. So, I get super sentimental about toys - especially dolls. And it twisted me up inside when I read that.

I would be wary of believing "Fire & Blood" because it isn't a reliable source of the actual events - it is written and sourced by many unreliable narrators with their own agendas. So, the idea that Jaehaera and Aegon III had no contact or closeness can't really be taken as fact when, most likely, the conspirators who murdered Jaehaera fucked with the records.

To be honest with you, Jaehaera and her death is another casualty of "Oh shit, this is gonna be part of a TV Show ... let me change this." Because, when I first read "A Song of Ice and FIre" and "Dunk and Egg" Aegon and Jaehaera where the parents of Daeron, Baelor, Daena, and the others. Daeron "The Young Dragon" was literally named after Daeron "The Daring" because he was the uncle of Jaehaera and a hero to the common people of Westeros. It made sense.

Now, I've come back to the fandom a few years to see that GRRM has got a Velaryon hard-on and that he killed off Jaehaera and changed it so that Aegon III ended up marrying his niece or some shit. So now, naming their eldest kid Daeron makes absolutely no sense other than perhaps Aegon III admired Daeron a lot as a kid, despite the fact that Daeron was the biggest reason for Rhaenyra's death.

I'm sad to say that the doll part is something new to me that I, myself, have only read recently and I cannot grasp for the life of me the point of that little detail, beyond, Aegon III was just trying to be nice. Though, I would subscribe to your theory that Aegon and Jaehaera were probably closer than the book lets on, close enough that he would keep her favorite dolly when she was gone and think it important.

I don't know, man ... that whole retcon to the end of the war bothers me a lot. There isn't a point to it other than GRRM trying to shoehorn in the Velaryons wherever he can to make them more important so that people will care about them in the upcoming show.

Also, I still have my first edition " A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" Illustrated hardcover version that still has Jaehaera Targaryen as Daemon Blackfyre's grandmother and Aegon II and Helaena marked as his Great-Grandparents. And the post script that says that Aegon V (Egg) married his older sister, not a Blackwood.

[its-no-biggie]

hi its 3am and im brainrotting again. can we talk about the first time we see dazai and chuuya interact? the scene where dazai gets caught by the mafia and chuuya comes to taunt him while hes chained to the wall? rewatching it after knowing their full history..... like. they started working together when they were children. fought side by side for YEARS. sure, they bickered the entire time, but chuuya explicitly put his life in dazais hands on multiple occasions. they claim to hate each other, but their actions speak otherwise. they were PARTNERS. the deadly duo. soukoku. THEN dazai disappears for like a year or two? (i forget the timeline but im pretty sure its around that.) [EDIT: four years. four years???? oh my god. cant believe i was so far off. dont post things at 3am lmao. ty @azapofinspiration] just fucking drops off the face of the earth. and chuuya claims he celebrated when dazai left- in fact, he probably did! but you know he missed him. you KNOW. he just wont admit it to himself

and now, after dazai has been missing for a substantial amount of time, hes back. playing for the enemy team. can you fucking IMAGINE this from chuuyas perspective????? god, id be FURIOUS. [well. id be feeling a lot of things. but anger is easier than unpacking all of that.] and he also knows that dazai is too smart to be captured by the mafia, so he goes to give him a piece of his mind, ask him what his fucking deal is, and finally be the one picking on HIM for once. let out some of the frustration [and definitely no other feelings] from his former partner betraying him, disappearing, and then showing up again a year later. and then what actually happens? dazai reads him like a fucking book, taunts him with the opportunity to kill him, blackmails him for information, and then reveals that he could have just left at any time but he SPECIFICALLY waited to fuck with chuuya. and then humiliates him on the way out! the absolute DISRESPECT.

and like. not only is this an EXCELLENT introduction to their relationship- it establishes that they know each other very well, they used to be partners but now theyre enemies, and that the hostility between them is very familiar- but it gets SO MUCH FUNNIER with the full context. like dazai doing All That is disrespectful enough, but this is after he: left the mafia without so much as a goodbye, BLEW UP CHUUYAS CAR, disappeared for FOUR YEARS, then silently reappeared as a member of an enemy organization? the absolute AUDACITY. no wonder chuuya threatened to kill him!

and then. and THEN. chuuya STILL uses corruption the next time they meet. WHAT.

and its because no matter how much bullshit chuuya puts up with, he KNOWS that dazai has his back when it really counts. even after ALL OF THAT, he still trusts dazai with his LIFE. ohhhhh my god i need to lie down. they make me ILL

[babyblue-mind]

Hi I need to know your opinions on John Winchester

hihi ty for the ask!!

great character, awful person!

in my first watch (im planning to rewatch soon) i found him So annoying and was glad he was killed off because i just wanted him off the screen. which does dock a few points off “great character” because even if hes a bad person he can and should still be interesting to watch. i wonder if that will be different the second time around!

but i love love love his persistent presence throughout the show long after his death, getting to see the impact he’s had on sam and dean, whether thats through flashback or just their behaviour, emotions, things they say. its really interesting and adds a lot of depth to sam and dean as characters, and their relationship with each other. (big s14 fan here just because i love to see their interactions in it!)

i think that a lot of john’s actions, as a person, are unforgivable (as are many of sam and dean’s actions. but because we get to see so much of them we love them despite. which does make me wonder about john’s character!). I would be interested to see more of his past. i loved reading about him in bobby’s journal, seeing that he truly believes his actions are right. that leaving his children alone is worth it to avenge his wife. i really wanna see more of what goes on in his head!

a little off topic here but i hate that dean’s relationship with jack parallels john’s with dean. it had the potential to be a really good arc, but it didn’t make much sense when we’d seen how dean is with children in general and his own child-figures. i feel like i could look past that, though, if they actually resolved the arc! but we never see dean Truly come to terms with his own behaviour and start to heal his relationship with jack. there’s bits and pieces here and there but i dont find it satisfying at all.

[gayhenrycreel]

jesus christ it sucks to have to carefully read every post about palestine to check for american antisemitism, and check posts (note, this is only posts made by gentiles as far as ive seen) on this antisemitism for american islamophobia.

if you're wondering why i dont reblog many posts about palestine, its because they either have zero sources and are just screenshots from twitter (and yes, some twitter account you only know of from screenshots is not a reliable source), or are full of (hopefully unintended) nazi dogwhistles.

you need to learn these dogwhistles. dont just reblog posts about them. actually memorize them, study examples of them, train your brain to recognise them as efficiently as you do a swastika.

trust me, you can train your brain to immediately set off the alarms if you recognise one.

ive trained myself to recognise a lot of dogwhistles, not all of them of course, because theres so many, but thats why its a continuous effort.

this link is a wiki that contains a list of alt right dogwhistles on another page too.

okay, before you set off the fire alarm, read this post first:

this link does discuss extreme antizionism.

i will say first that antizionism AND zionism can both be antisemitic (see; christian zionism and the second coming of christ), but they are not always.

I AM NOT SAYING ANTIZIONISM IS BAD.

i consider myself antizionist. im an anarchist, how could i possibly support a state?

what i am saying is that those who are already antisemitic are using antizionism as an excuse for antisemitism. this can and does occur on the left. leftwing conspiracy theories do exist (some are actually the same as rightwing ones. you think the rich are collaborating together do you? who are those rich people? cause it certainly isnt the billionares who have no reason at all to like each other. whos controlling western media? is it the west? nah it must be that really small country thats basically owned by america, the westernest west to ever west.).

this applies to you.

every single human being carries the antisemitism we learned from society. i am not exempt. you are not exempt.

you may genuinely believe that you are not an antisemite. you hate hitler, right?

but you likely still think big noses are ugly. you think that the trope of a hook nosed greedy trader is just about elon musk dont you?

do you feel threatened by the use of hebrew? i did until just last year.

in western society, its rare for someone to have multiple native languages. you speak english. you hear someone speak words you dont understand. your immediate reaction is to wonder if they are up to something. talking shit about you? maybe even plotting terrorism?

of course you feel threatened by the use of other languages, youve been trained to think its suspicious.

train yourself to just not care when someone casually speaks hebrew, or arabic, or navajo in your proximity. if you dont care when people speak english, you shouldn't care when people speak another language. your not trying to eavesdrop right?

this subtle bigotry is why you are probably antisemitic, even if you are a perfect little leftist.

i want to talk about the blood libel being spouted by way to many leftists.

shockingly few people actually know what blood libel means.

basically, its a 1000 year old conspiracy theory claimng that jewish people steal and eat christian babies. this is all over media. did you see the new doctor who special? it was horrible.

in media this is often tied with goblins, which are historically (and often continue to be) portrayed as an antisemitic stereotype. SURELY YOU CAN RECOGNISE THAT BIG NOSED GREEDY GOBLINS CONTROLLING THE ECONOMY IS ANTISEMITIC.

okay, disclaimer, children are dying in gaza. israel is killing them.

but dont act like this is the only thing happening. they are not actively sending soldiers out to kill children specifically. this is equally affecting adults.

dont believe me that blood libel is being applied?

i saw some tumblr users joking about how the idf is kidnapping children and eating them. i went to their blogs to block them, expecting to see 88 everywhere (88 is code for hh, or hail hitler, btw), but no THEY WERE ALL "ANTIZIONIST" LEFTISTS WITH ACAB IN THEIR BIOS. those jokes are bad for everyone, its blood libel and making fun of actual victims of genocide.

sorry, im just... pissed off that my mutuals will reblog something about how using this as an excuse for antisemitism is bad, but still reblog posts full of dogwhistles.

a mutual of a mutual even reblogged a post claiming that antisemitism has not increased and that its a lie. i wont block you, ive seen your better reblogs, and it only happened once, but i urge you to properly read what you reblog.

i dont blame anyone for not knowing. ive had things to learn too. but please, stop reblogging globalist conspiracy theories.

as i write this its 4:20 sorry you may continue reading.

im not trying to be a dick. i dont blame you. i blame society. and this is not a you thing either.

its also a me thing.

its an everyone thing.

i also hate being challenged (i once punched a teacher for being wrong about the sun).

being challenged is how we learn.

ive also reblogged posts i really should not have reblogged.

i was ignorant. it will undoubtedly happen again.

unlearning bigotry is a lifelong commitment.

oh my god i just remembered how 8 year old me believed in phrenology.

i really hold nothing against you.

remember how most queer people were homophobic before The Realization?

we as a society need to go through that process of acceptance. you will never get everything right. none of us will.

what matters is trying

[gaiaxygang]

now i need to hear you talk about homeschool

i really dont like home school

it's a good thing blacklist sucks more because thats the only thing keeping home school from becoming my least favourite "this high school is fucked up" show. but ever since i found out what blacklist's source material is like (romance centric NOT mystery centric like the series tries to be) i gave up on that one. ANYWAYS

home school is bad. it's themes are all over the place, the execution is meh and i don't even like the messages themselves (this might be a personal thing). i would say 2/3 of the characters are not well developed despite there being 18 episodes.

erm. spoilers ahead (i will try to be vague if i can). also quite a bit of discussion of child abuse yknow typical home school things. phrasing not really the best but hopefully i get my point across

the themes and messages

this isn't clear from the start but home school is ultimately about healing from abuse/trauma and how things with good intent behind them can end up... bad. this is fine on it's own but the details of it within home school itself is....... erm...........

one of the key points of the ending is that violence/murder should never be the solution even to things like abuse because it turns you into a monster as well. i don't like this i think it's stupid personally but it fails at executing this well either way. you cannot tell me violence turns you into a monster and love is the solution when one of your characters is forced to kill or at least seriously injure her abusive dad in a previous episode (WHICH IS THE ENTIRE REASON SHE HASN'T FLED THE COUNTRY BY NOW).

you could say it's never confirmed he died! but he's not there in the final episodes with all the other parents and instead her (equally shitty) mom is there which seems to imply that she killed him! or put him in a coma! home school never brings this up and if i think too hard about it my head will burst open.

there's also how home school (the building that would become home school later) has always been.... abusive. i don't talk about this ever because i don't know how to phrase it well but we're shown that even before the orphanage became home school the children under it's care were mistreated. run and maki's abusive stepdad who becomes a cofounder of home school being one of them and it seems like a set up for a story about the cycles of abuse and violence, and (this is my personal reading) that very building is used as a metaphor for this.

but also it isn't. home school was founded as a place for unwanted (rich) children, meant as a safe haven but later turns into a terrible terrible one because the 2 people who run it are scummy. this is fine. until the twist that amin was actually good all along! he was just brainwashed and after the brainwashing was undone he's normal. this is... okay.... but thematically i think it's awful and comes a bit too close to abuse apologism (run saying that he knew something was wrong because the amin HE met in childhood wouldn't abuse students and lock him up in a room for years!!! and run being RIGHT? because amin was brainwashed???)

the ending is also (cringes)(disgusted) because the 2 masterminds who brainwashed amin are arrested, amin dies of old age and run becomes the new headmaster of home school and everything is fine! the kids have each other and home school is no longer a scummy institution. it's like a kids show in the absolute worst way and even then i know shows aimed at kids with more nuance and thought put into them than home school. you cannot write a story LIKE THIS and conclude it with "these 2 people were the problem the whole time" ????????????? it's like they want me to pull my hair out.

wow this is horribly disorganised. there's also the framing of home school as trying to teach good lessons to the children through tough methods. methods such as locking up and retraumatising a student they KNOW is innocent until the real culprits confess (?????), punishing students who are on time because they couldn't get the latecomers to wake up on time (????????), starving the students and pitting them against each other (????????????????) to build cooperation and teamwork and love. the end of episode quotes (like the ones in some other shows) also support this and treat it like a good thing, the masters were right for traumatising kids to get them to love one another! (i remember some speculation that this was intentional and they were going to subvert it. this did not happen).

at least they don't do go the typical thai series route of sloppy reconciliation with parents. i've had enough of that (happy birthday is directed by the same person and i felt like the reconciliation between tonmai and his family was done pretty well so! thank you p'fon).

the characters

i didn't expect every character to be given a crazy amount of depth because it's a large cast but they couldn't even hit the bare minimum for some of them so you could say i was Very Disappointed. i ended up only caring about white out of the main 4 (don't even get me started on how much i dislike that there is a Main 4 in the first place) and my favourite character ended up being jingjai.

pennueng, phleng and biu are painfully underutilised. phleng and pennueng had potential to be very interesting but got pretty much dropped after the first few episodes (i was especially disappointed with phleng lol i love myself a flawed girl who acts out and lies as a trauma response. if only she didn't immediately change after one of them talked her down). it seemed like they didn't have a full idea of what to do with biu, her and phleng's reconciliation was also pretty meh. did not care enough.

they forgot about jean. he's the one that got done the worst by the show sorry he shows up does nothing and becomes biu's love interest. nothing4nothing i guess.

the rest of the cast are fine but this show is allergic to depth and nuance. there was a lot that could've been said about children who grow up unloved and how it manifests (particularly with jingjai, hugo, fuji and phleng) then the show just does not do that. we skip right past jingjai and hugo's bullying but then again i guess they needed plot to plot so there wasn't much time.

while it was airing i saw a post comparing maki to akk from the eclipse, saying they could have similar arcs, with maki being the class president that sticks closely to the rules (waking up on time even without an alarm). she ends up being... nothing like akk! i had my own problems with the eclipse but one is obviously better than the other.

i really liked the twins though. most shows (cough the gifted cough) forget about them but mek and mork had a very interesting storyline even if they got reduced to comic relief with pennueng after. absolute Twin Misery on display.

why did every single character get into a romantic relationship? ALL of them were paired in "expected" duos (as a prsk fan this makes me cringe) and they just put fuji with the twins i guess. some of these characters had ONE conversation or notable scene and suddenly they're dating i guess (???) i liked jingjai and hugo i think about them once every few weeks, and i can kinda see why tibetmaki and naiwhite ended up together but i don't think anything else was necessary. if anything i think biuphleng should've kisse-

damn. this ended up long. thank you for reading. if i had to say anything good about home school is that most of the cast were fantastic with their roles (to be expected) and the styling is good if you overlook how unrealistic it is for everyone to just have perfect hair and makeup all the time. prigkhing's hair looks good here (low bar but many shows cannot style her hair well) and the twins looking more distinct over time (someone said it was things you couldn't do with the other's face but i'm not good with faces so i can't confirm this) is a nice touch.

this is the main thing bringing down my expectations for high school frenemy tbh. p'fon has good shows (i enjoyed happy birthday/my precious, heard 10 years ticket is good and i expect 23.5 to be simple but good) but this type of show is.... hm........ it's probably going to be delayed too i'm not expecting it before the 2nd half 2024 (unlike the gmmtv2024 pt 1 shows) seeing how her shows just do not seem to come out on time LMAO

[deafeninggardenerpanda]

yamikage x arthur? :> (or if you want to rant, m/etak/irby?)

AYO shoutout to the like two people who ship this I SEE YOU QUANBLOVK respect

i know i just said id probably write something cute and fluffy but this ship is deeply hilarious to me as a concept. its divorce the ship. theyd be so ♠️♠️♠️♠️♠️ if that makes sense to certain people. i want them to constantly fume about each other in the same way where it can be interpreted as theyre the only thing the other person ever thinks about and yet if they were to ever finally get rid of the other they would feel sort of empty in their life. detective x master thief vibes. b. batman x joker even???????? anyways they should try to kill each other and then kiss

putting the me//takir//by one under the cut HAHAH THANKS FOR THE BITEY EXCUSE EVEN THOUGH YOUVE ALREADY HEARD MY TANGENTS LOGAN ILY /P /AFF

you know i know i Also just said that i would give people a very long very angry tangent but i think this one from a fandom perspective is very fascinating. in terms of the jp fandom in which we all know its the most popular ship by Miles i personally just try to turn my head and give them more benefit of the doubt due to cultural differences regarding views on fictional content and like. while its gross if they ship something weird i think theres something to be said about westerners trying to enforce their own views regarding purity onto other cultures does that make sense. thats just their own problem they need to work out and so im not gonna Inherently think someones an awful person for shipping me//takirby (unless its anime me//takirby or some shit obviously. take this whole paragraph as me operating under the assumption that theyre using game me//takirby. if anyone ships anime me//takirby im just killing you)

in terms of the western fandom shipping me//takirby..... oh Boy

ive just been ignoring the fact that people Could see kirby as an adult but likeeee. like maybe he was an adult in the past but nowadays kumazaki has Definitely been leaning towards making him much much younger. kumazakis taken his usual very vague open to interpretation stance with insisting that kirbys "wakamono" (which for people who didnt catch that interview, just very vaguely means "young person" which opens up the interpretation that kirby could even be as old as 25ish in canon) but cmon you cant keep making his face bigger in proportion to his body making him look younger and cuter and making him super super tiny in comparison to other characters and having him explicitly not being able to read and write even though other characters can and also having him draw like shit with not even coloring inside the lines and having his best friend be bandana waddle dee and then confirming the waddle dees are all children in forgotten land and then being like "Yeah he could be an adult". like i dont mean to make the assumption that adults cant have child-like qualities but all of those in conjunction with each other are kindaaaaaaaaa hm. the fact that he cant read or write is really the most egregious to the argument that he could be an adult. but anyways

me//takirby instantly gets an L in the western fandom because of how frequently its shipped by prosh//ippers to get a rise out of people full stop. i did know some people who shipped me//takirby purely because they had spent so much time in the jp fandom spaces and thus assumed he was an adult from the get-go or could not see him as anything other than an adult so uh sorry to those people but 9/10 times im just kicking you if you ship it

[mrs-evadne-cake]

Hey i think ive sent compliments about ur stranger things fic on here before too but skdhdk i recently reread it again (at this point i think i do come back to it once a year lmao) and i just had to come back here again because i feel like its only gotten better on the reread!!! Everytime i remember what a disappointment the recent seasons of the show have become i come back to ur fic and am always astounded by the amount of care you've put into the story and the affection you have for the characters and truly fleshing them out the way you did. Especially a big fan now of the way you tackled the question of "how do we decide something or someone is a monster" on the latest reading between neil hargrove tuning into his radio, james harrington deciding who were real people and who are the monsters who needed to be contained, and ofc the little girls who knew themselves to be monsters now because of things theyve gone through but still try their best to hang onto things they love. Something i didnt pay attention to on the first reading but now i cant stop thinking about it!!! Esp with how jonathan immediately forms a rapport with the abused children instantly because he knows what its like to inherit that monstrousness from violence thats been done to you and desperately wanting to rise above it + the sympathy w which you wrote kali genuinely put this above anything the show could put out at this point. Maybe ever because i dont think the show could truly ever commit to the political stance its first season demanded. Thank u so much!!!!! I liked how now that theres smth of a positive relationship bw hopper and kali, theres potential for a kali and sara hopper team up in the future and possibly how hopper can keep in touch if sara ever decided to reach out.

Optional question for u to respond to: in the story its constantly referenced that jonathan met steves dad at some point and that was probably when steve was told that he wasnt to hang out with the byers. Im guessing that was when joyce dropped him off that halloween cause thats when steve started finding loopholes to meet up with him? I just wanted to know if that would be a correct assumption, and i was wondering how that encounter went down lmao

(btw the choice of making jonathan and steve childhood friends + steve and nancy always being jonathans first loves and them eventually falling into that same configuration the two of them promised each other even when jonathan was the only careful custodian of that memory and never brought it up???? FUCKING INSPIRED. I've never gotten over it ever. Steve admitting in his "rewritten history" bits that jonathans smile made him feel like a bullet train????? God I'll never stop being lightheaded everytime i think about that.)

Hey i think ive sent compliments about ur stranger things fic on here before too but skdhdk i recently reread it again

You're Anon, so I don't know! But if you did I am delighted you decided to reread and tell me more! Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner! Haven't been on here a lot came back and was like...is that... a message?

the affection you have for the characters and truly fleshing them out the way you did.

I'm always so glad when this is what readers take away from it- I never wrote as a hobby before writing this (and haven't written since, unfortunately had the same ultimate feeling on s3/4 as you) but I really loved the show and characters after S2 and this was just an expression of that for sure. I'm so happy it comes through!

Esp with how jonathan immediately forms a rapport with the abused children instantly because he knows what its like to inherit that monstrousness from violence thats been done to you and desperately wanting to rise above it

Thank you! I really wanted a big part of the fic to be that no one's 'hero moment' has to be killing a monster with a bat- hell, I maintain to this day that Steve's was just apologizing in S1- and that it can just as well be empathy and kindness.

Maybe ever because i dont think the show could truly ever commit to the political stance its first season demanded.

Don't get me started.

Optional question for u to respond to: in the story its constantly referenced that jonathan met steves dad at some point and that was probably when steve was told that he wasnt to hang out with the byers. Im guessing that was when joyce dropped him off that halloween cause thats when steve started finding loopholes to meet up with him?

Yeeeeagh. I don't remember if I had a thing for this? It's been a few years. The Halloween thing is from The Wolves in the Walls which was the original first chapter of this when it was still gonna be a 5 chapter character study instead of a you know, novel. I think in the fic proper it was that his dad was just around more when he was in grade school and just started to have to leave constantly when the project really ramped up around when Terry Ives/Ken/Gloria/Alice joined and 11 was born?

I'm so happy you enjoyed it - thank you so much for the excellent take and the wonderful comment!

[elliethesuperfruitlover]

mega mega fumin'

ok yall so ive been in college for a week and two days (everybody clap) its been fun, most of the ppl here are queer and ppl are very nice, my classes are going well so far :))))))))

and ive been watching tua s4 as a part of my nightly routine while i redo my hair for bed.

and um

i combed my hair for the week today while finishing the season and i have some thoughts on the matter.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY SEASON 4 UNDER THE CUT

what in the everloving fuck was that

i already want to rewrite the lorax in a very dark manner after listening to biggering but that??? THAT?????? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??????

HE NEEDS TO COUNT HIS FUCKING DAYS WHO WAS IN THE GODDAMN WRITING ROOM IM THROWING CHAIRS AND TABLES, FUCK A HAND

the romance plotline was ass and wasnt in character AT ALL, i dont see it as a part of reality that exists, both for five and also lila.

lila is not that shallow of a woman or a mother to just do that, i think we all know that she cares a hell of a lot about her marriage with diego AS WELL AS HER FUCKING CHILDREN than to do something like that. even with her entire chaos personality and potentially using people, she would NOT go that far because her love for her family does not outweigh 7 years of no dick.

and five is quite literally one of the most intelligent characters in the series (it shouldve been him and dolores). nothing could ever convince me that he would fall in love with his BROTHER'S WIFE and feel no immediate remorse towards it, once again, 7 years or 7 fucking decades, please leave your complaints in my vacuum of "i dont give a fuck".

i actually liked ben and jennifer as characters interacting. if we take out the marigold and durango wimey shit, i wouldve loved to see them be in love and interact with each other as is. i think he deserves nice things. also since its literally been two years since i watched season 3 bc i watched it one, during a really shitty ongoing OCD episode and two, because i thought it was an "ok" season. (almost said bad, but we now know our standards were much much too low). there was also a point in which i thought that ben and jennifer were connected bc she came out of a giant squid (in which wtf), and ben has tentacle powers??? idk its odd to me too, don't worry.

reggie i hope you choke asshat, as well as you and your wife. at first i thought homegirl was a bootlicker but no i cant really call her that. she was fr like "well it was my death, you chose to bring me back fuck u hubby" erm yeah that was definitely something, viktor you shouldve killed him when you had the chance honey. also i blame reginald for that shit, he was the goddamn anomaly, not the entire umbrella academy???? at first i thought five blinking into the apocalypse all those years ago was the anomaly, but nooo we're gonna blame the abuse victims. *rolls eyes*

more about him um his entire "im gonna bring her back" shit was giving gendo ikari (for those of you who don't know, gendo ikari is an antagonist and key character in the anime neon genesis evangelion, in which he was a miserable fuck and loved his wife so much he killed the entire world to see her again, then that didnt even happen). him taking the shot on the ben and jennifer amalgamation which in the end triggered the cleanse???? that was weird to me. like him being an asshole wasn't weird, that's already been established, but their death and recombination just triggering an event that severe???? wild, still kinda confused.

the only way i could see raymond walking out on allison is if she really, and i mean REALLY fucked up. but given everything that she has done in the past, i think she learned her lesson. raymond would never, i wouldve preferred him to have died off-screen than to have walked out bc???? anyway moving tf on.

i enjoyed klaus a lot this season bc hes my favorite but also because a part of me enjoyed seeing a different, more "real" anxious side of him. (that i could relate to a bit more). after reading a few opinions and watching the deleted scene where he went to an AA meeting and finally actually admitted he was an alcoholic to himself......steve blackman wtf. was this the bad ending, did we all fuck up that bad in our choices that we got HERE????? im kissing him on the forehead, i cant believe the last time i saw klaus hargreeves on tv there were actual tears coming down his face im....im so sick y'all.

whoever decided to put all that vomit in the episode please dont do that again. i know you cant put warnings for literal barf on a tv show but as someone who suffered through the roaches of season 3, then had to take breaks watching the sick episode of this season bc emetophobia......ew. (the baby shark shit was funny as hell to me oopsie)

i actually kinda enjoyed jean and gene as characters, their dynamic was entertaining to me, but i wish i got to see more of their history, i especially found it a little weird how jean was holding gene's face in the episode that five and lila were in the meeting together.....i wanna know more.

erm i think the concept of the keepers was also interesting. like a little group of people who know they see some weird shit and find other folks, kinda neat.

the casual drop that one of the fives made the commission???? we're just gonna brush past that???? like it makes a fuck ton of sense bc its a collection of fives we're talking about but i just.....that was a shock to me, one in which i felt i had little time to recover from given it was the last fucking episode and everything that happened after that....happened.

i liked luther the most in this season methinks. i think i had to realize him being shitty in season 1 specifically was partially a trauma response, and he felt he still had to act how he was expected to. once again, fuck you reginald hargreeves, please kiss the darkest part of my black ass.

yeah lets all just ignore all the shit that happened and either let season 3 be the end where they all go their separate ways or even better, season 2 bc that shit was peak highkey.

[moon3thereal]

Hiii one request! Nat meets R in a bar or something while she is trying to be far away from the problems of being an avenger,the read head tries to have a date with her and R accepts, then in the midel of the date R takes the initiative and start to be a little/much sassy 😏 and convinces Nat to leave the place to be in somewhere more private. But when they are alone R start to fight with Nat trying to knock her out but Nat pin her down and asks why she is doing that, R admitt that she is a widow and was sent to cach her and bring her back to the red room. The end can be as you wish.

Thanks!!

Title: Eyes on the prize

genre: fluff, angst-ish

warnings: guns, violence, alcohol, knives, mention of memory removal

the bottom: (dont ask why, but leah forced me to credit her at the bottom and technically i did!) credits to @midgardianweasley for practically co-writing and building the foundation for this fic, i could NOT have done this without her, thank you so much, and please go check out her fics everyone!

a/n: one of the longest fics i've written, i hope you guys enjoy! ends with fluff dw

2.7 K words

Natasha brushed a hand over her face in fatigue, she’d been to more than 3 countries within the time span of a week for missions and had done so much paperwork she thought she might pull out her hair if she laid eyes on another mission report. The cadets that S.H.I.E.L.D recruited, in her eyes, were no more than children who didn’t even know how to hold a gun properly, not to mention shoot.

What the Russian needed right now was tequila, a shit load of tequila. Fortunately, there was a bar that the redhead frequented whenever she needs to put some distance between her and the problems of the avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D

Picking up her leather jacket that was tossed carelessly on her couch and the keys to her Chevrolet, Natasha set off to a bar about 3 blocks down the Avengers compound, in fifteen minutes, she was met with a glowing neon sign, she was regular at the dim bar and was almost always seen there on a Friday night with her red hair in a braid and several locks framing her face in effortless elegance

Usually, people didn’t approach her and if they did, she never paid much attention to them. However, today when she sat down, there was a y/h/c haired woman already locating the seat next to her with a beer in her hand. You were idly swirling the beer in its bottle and staring off into space when the redhead settled down in her usual seat.

She ordered 10 tequila shots and you raised a brow at her “you sure you can handle that?” she turned to you with a smirk “I can handle twice as much as that but I have work tomorrow” you hummed in acknowledgement “I haven’t seen you around here before, you’re new?” Natasha asked downing a shot without so much as a grimace “I’m looking for a job, bartender” you said propping your foot up on the counter “well you sure don’t look like one” she remarks and you frowned “is there a specific look for a bartender?” and she downed a second shot and gestured to a woman taking orders from drunk customers “sure there is, there, like her”

You scoffed “hm maybe I’d be an exception to the standard” the corner of the redhead’s lips quirked up “good, it’d be nice to see some change around here” you stretched your arms out in front of you “it would be, if they hired me, but they didn’t, which is why I’m sitting around moping about the fact they rejected such a pretty face” Natasha downed another shot nodding in agreement. You looked at her, genuinely impressed at her alcohol tolerance. “Your mom never taught you that it’s rude to stare?” your face fell for a second at the mention of your mother, she was dead, like all the mothers of the widows who attempted to pry their daughters out of the red room’s grip. But you restored your poker face before she could catch your look of discomposure.

“If staring at you was considered rude, then the whole world would be douchebags” you quipped. Natasha only laughed and shook her head at your obvious flirting “you come here often then?” you asked after watching her down another shot “obviously not enough if I can’t remember a pretty face like yours.” The redhead said lightly. she was studying you though, she noticed how you were sitting, back straight, shoulders back, she wasn’t unfamiliar to that posture at all, in the red room, all widows were trained to be on the defense, on alert at all times, always anticipating anything and everything, nothing could go amiss that way. And she’d also noticed the way you had barely taken a sip of your drink, resorting to swishing the liquid idly in its bottle.

Against everything logical and her own unmistakable and uncannily accurate instinct, Natasha stopped her brain from analyzing and evaluating these signs and allowed them to be overlooked as a side effect of her falling into a trance simply by observing you, how your eyebrows arched perfectly, the curve of your lips, the perfect ridge of your nose and the captivating color of your eyes and how all of your facial parts are completely flawless to her, she could’ve sworn she’d seen you somewhere before. Natasha had met many interesting people in her line of work but she’d never yet met one as intriguing as you were, the quintessential mysterious girl in the bar.

If you had told her two days ago, that she would ask a stranger in a bar over to her apartment to drink with her, she’d have called you crazy. However, it didn’t seem so crazy to her now, it was unlike Natasha, but she asked you to come over to have a drink, an unofficial, casual date. You raised an eyebrow “now, now, was that an attempt to get me drunk?” you clicked your tongue in faux disapproval “simply seizing the opportunity to get to know you better” she said with a shrug. You hid a smile behind your beer bottle, taking the first sip of the night. You had tried to convince yourself that it was simply your success at scoring a date with the Russian therefore giving you a chance to lure her somewhere private to eliminate her, but something in you told you it was more than that, the way she smiled, how her lips curved and her perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifted, it was all so familiar yet you simply couldn’t retrieve the memory.

But one thought was clear, raging even, at the back of your mind. You didn’t want to hurt her, whoever she was, you didn’t want to lay a hand on her, couldn’t bear to see her in pain, you’d defy Dreykov, defy the red room, defy Russia and all of their stupid organizations if it meant you could figure out this mystery of a woman, discovering her secrets one by one, layer by layer. Not to report back to the red room but just to see Natasha as she was. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, it never worked that way, if you’d done it, Dreykov would’ve been notified and you’d be dead before the sun rises the next day. Your eyebrows knitted together momentarily at the thought that the woman before you would be dead at your hands before dawn before you arranged your features to hide the moment of doubt.

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Natasha Romanoff. She’s a problem, a threat, a danger to the future of our widows, I need her terminated, and there’s no one better than you, y/n, for the job. Don’t let me down” Dreykov’s voice flashed in your mind, his orders were clear, kill her or there will be consequences.

Natasha’s voice brought you back to the conversation “what do you do? Before you decided to look for a job at this dingy bar I mean” she asked, the shot glasses were all empty now where there had been at least 5 more before, you must’ve been too entranced by your thoughts, or how strands of her hair had escaped her braid and curly wisps of ginger hair were framing her face perfectly. You both had decided to get out of the bar, more patrons had walked in making it stuffy and crampy, you were walking out the door with Natasha, presumably to her apartment “a primary teacher, English.” You said without hesitation, you always spent hours reciting the information of your cover, sometimes you felt as if you were really the person you were pretending to be with how fluently you could deliver the lines you’d practiced in front of a mirror until they were flawless.

She laughed; a clear, melodious laugh that made your cheeks heat up “you? An English teacher? Wow.” She said “what are you gonna say I don’t look like one?” you glared at her with indignation on your face “no, you don’t, you don’t at all” she said, her expression turning into a serious one, for a second your heart dropped, thinking your cover had been blown and you’d have to resort to shooting her in the middle of the street, which wasn’t exactly ideal “you look like a zookeeper” she said biting her lip to hold back her laugh at the look on your face. you raised your eyebrows in amusement “that wasn’t funny” you said “oh but it was” the redhead laughed showing her impossibly white teeth and her cheeks were pink from walking in the cold night air, you couldn’t help but stare at her lips, her perfectly kissable- snap out of it y/l/n, you thought to yourself, that isn’t what you’re here to do.

“But seriously, I’m actually happy about how tonight is going, better than drinking alone” she voiced out, you looked to her with a smirk evident on your face, you’d just reached her apartment and she was unlocking the door letting you in behind her. “Going soft for me Romanoff?” she scoffed before her face fell into an expression of momentary confusion, in a split second you both had your guns pointed at each other “who are you? How do you know my name?” the carefree Natasha was gone now, and in her place stood the infamous black widow.

Deciding that hiding your identity from her was pointless now, you attempted to attack, kicking the gun from her hand and vaulting to get your legs around her neck to choke her. Unfortunately for you, that was textbook red room and a trick Natasha had used countless times on enemies of various sizes. Blocking you, the Russian pinned you, one hand on the small of your back and the other at the back of your neck, holding you down “I knew I should’ve spent the night alone.” Refusing to be defeated so easily, you swept her feet out from under her, but once you got up, she’d punched you in your side causing you to double over in pain. She moved to her gun but you weren’t the star student of the red room for no reason, in the blink of an eye, you had a knife to her throat.

The both of you had stood there for a few seconds, breathing heavily before you felt a familiar feeling of cool metal, the barrel of a gun, through your thin shirt. “You didn’t think I just had one, did you?” she said pressing it into your side in warning. Gritting your teeth in frustration, you released her with a shove and dropped your knife with your hands raised.

“If it was anyone else, in any other situation, I would’ve shot you and be done with it, but you’re intriguing, there’s a story behind this. I trust you won’t pull anything?” she asked watching you stare down the barrel of her Glock. You nodded once, albeit grudgingly. To your utter surprise, she placed the gun down and gestured to a chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down herself. You’d utterly demolished the rest of her kitchen with your fight. Sitting in the chair rigidly, Natasha raised an eyebrow at your silence, you noted how if you made a run for it, she had the ability to shoot you before you even stood up with the proximity of her hand and her gun. Her gun, you had the exact half to the one on the floor across the room, your gun. You furrowed your eyebrows, you had one half of the twin guns, the other half was hers. But that didn’t make sense, unless there was a reason why she’d seemed familiar to you?

Natasha seemed to think the same, her eyes flickering from the gun just inches away from her fingertips to the one across the room, hers had your initials engraved at the bottom, and yours hers. But you’ve never understood why there was two letters engraved on to your favored gun “N.R. Natasha Romanoff” you said, more to yourself than to her. She spoke two letters, your name.

“What is this, who are you?” you said struggling to even out your breathing. “y/n y/l/n” she said. “no it cant be” she said disbelief streaked over her face. “The red room is gone, I killed Dreykov” she said shaking her head and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes “I hate to break it to you, but Dreykov is very much alive” you said “I’m a widow, I was sent here to kill you, you’re a threat to them” you said staring her directly in the eyes. “Whatever you did, unsuccessful” you said. “do you even remember me?” she said a crease in her forehead and looked up at you “you seem familiar. But no, not really” all hostility had gone out from both your voices, you were both just doing your jobs

She started humming a song, the music sounded eerily familiar, the same feeling you’d felt previously looking at her painted lips flooded you. Familiar, but the memory was just out of reach. “with the lights out, it’s less dangerous, here we are now” she started singing softly “entertainers” you breathed out disbelievingly. It suddenly came rushing back to you

When you’d snuck a radio from your trainers’ office

When you’d sneak out of the cuffs on the beds at night to share hidden kisses with each other

How you’d trained side by side

How a redheaded girl had been by your side when you threw up on your first kill

Natalia. Natasha. You had loved her in secret, between the shadow and the soul. You had loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Shock was written clearly over your features. You hadn’t seen her since she’d gotten out, ten years ago. Now that you remembered, you couldn’t believe you didn’t recognize her. The same fiery red hair, same eyebrows, same emerald green eyes, same smile. Same Natalia.

Guilt rushed in like an overwhelming wave, Natasha couldn’t believe that you were still alive, she’d attempted to search for you, almost went crazy when you went completely off grid after the Budapest mission. She’d meant to defect, and then go back for you. She had it all planned out, but you seemed to vanish off the face of the earth “I’m sorry, y/n. I’m so sorry, I tried, I really did. You were just gone, I thought you were dead” You stared back at her in shock “its okay, we were separated, I was sent to Italy, remember? It wasn’t your fault.” You said still in a daze

After moments of confusion over how you didn’t remember someone that important to you, an expression of realization found its way onto your face. Memory removal, of course. The red room had the technology, attachment to anyone, anyone at all was nothing but a weakness. Love is for children, that was what the red room had burned into the widows’ minds.

Hatred shone in your eyes when you realized that Dreykov had practically had his scientists cut the part of you that had loved Natasha out of your brain. “you’re an avenger. Means Dreykov won’t hurt you” you contemplated “or your comrades” you supported your chin on your heel of your palm. Natasha nodded slowly in confusion. “They can’t afford to” she said “so if I was your comrade, they would lose any and all ability to do me harm” she nodded again “I suppose so, yes” when you both locked eyes again, you both knew what the other was thinking. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Natasha asked with a smirk “to burn the red room to the ground? Yes.” You said with a matching smirk

If love was for children, you were both toddlers. After everything the red room and the world had done to keep you apart, you had somehow found your way back to each other again. And you weren’t planning on letting her out of your sight any time soon.

[fill-me-with-your-memes-daddy]

Watching the Rise of the Titans movie and I'll be documenting all of my thoughts/reactions here. [Spoiler Warning]

So instead of reblogging every new update, I'm just going to have this post up on my phone as I watch and type my reactions in a bullet list format.

Nari's human disguise is so cute. As someone who does have a cottagecore aesthetic, I want to cosplay her so bad

Are Skrael and/or Belroc non-binary coded? Regardless, I'm also obsessed and I want to fuck Skrael and be Belroc.

STEVE CARING ABOUT JIM BEING HURT YESSSS!!! My god his redemption has probably been one of the greatest there is because he doesn't just suddenly go from being a bully to a completely good person. You can see the gradual shift in learning better throughout the shows which is awesome.

IN NEW YOOOOOOORRRRRRRK!!!!!! CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!

The mugshot montage reminded me of season 1 of trollhunters when toby and Jim were arrested at the museum.

STRICKLER PUT A RING ON IT??? HE'S THE ONLY DILF IVE EVER ACTUALLY AGREED WAS HOT WYM I CAN'T HAVE HIM??? well I'm still really happy about his arc over the series probably one of my favorite character growths.

Eli my guy got his growth spurt!!! As an 18 year old who is still 5'0", I'm happy but envious for him

So I went into this movie without watching any trailers or promo, but I doubt anything could have prepared me for the existence of mpreg. In fact, I wasn't going to document my reactions until I saw that.

NAMURA!!!!!!!!! MY BELOVED!!!!!! I CAN STILL THIRST FOR YOU WITHOUT GUILT

The coach teacher just called the kids zoomers so I have to dock one point from my final rating just because of that. Unforgivable

Those husky animation models suck lmao

Oh fuck the titans got power ranger zords!!

God why did they include the mpreg??? This movie would have been perfect without it.... After that plot point being revisited only one time I'm already beyond done with it

Like it's bringing me back to the v*ltron days where they're was a suspiciously high amount of klance omegaverse and mpreg fics and art created and it physically hurts because Steve and Keith's voice actor is the same person meaning this is especially cursed to me since I was unfortunately in the v*ltron fandom and remember all of that

But like on another note, how old are these characters again??? I haven't checked any wikis because of spoilers but is Steve an adult??? I know aja might be technically a lot older than 18 because alien but is whatever age she is equivalent to an adult as far as emotionally and physically in Akaridion development??? IS THIS A TEEN (M)PREGNANCY IN A KIDS SHOW????

Like bruh I saw a singular post on here before going into the movie that was like "rott spoilers without context" and there was a pregnant belly but I was absolutely not expecting the actual context of it. I'll find the post after I finish and edit this post to tag the creator right here: @makoden

This entire post is just gonna be me ranting about mpreg huh

Anyway I love the whole roundtable allusion to the legends of king arthur (not the toa version but the one he's based off)

THERE'S 3 TO 5 BABIES????? I need to take a break bruh this is just too much

Alright I've taken a 30 minute break got some food and did some things i love (decompressed by tactile stimming with some owl plushies and watched some videos on my favorite owl, Garu. He lives in Japan with his owner and is a domesticated eagle owl who basically just acts like a sky cat. If anyone else needs some eye bleach, here is their YouTube channel)

Blinky and ARRRGHHH!!! saying their "if one of us doesn't make it" talk my god one of them is going to die I can see it and I will be utterly crushed. Jim can't lose another father figure and Toby can't lose his wingman again I will riot if this happens

On a similar but unrelated to the movie note, can we just talk about how toa started with Jim having 0 dads and (if strickler and blinky live to the end) will end with 2 dads? Like I just really feel happy for him that he has two dads who actually figured out how to put the past behind them to not have any infighting between them so that both of them are healthy father figures. Jim has already been through literal hell and back losing his actual humanity in the process so if he loses one of them, I'm going to be really pissed because at this point, this is just Jim torture porn. Y'all know how as SpongeBob SquarePants went on, the show just became Squidward torture porn? It's starting to feel that way for toa and I really hope they cut the shit by the ending

Jlaire is such a good ship but like I feel like it's too perfect they never disagree with each other

YESSSSSSS Someone finally doesn't treat toby like a fat waste of space who messes stuff up!!! I think out of all the characters that would have been most deserving of a rewrite, it's Toby. Sometimes I just feel he's only comic relief and any heartfelt moments he's had in the series was also born of stupidity (ie his flour baby project being unharmed was seen by him as divine intervention from his parents but was actually just Eli and Steve behind the scenes).

Ohhhhh yesssssss Archie's father!!! I was hoping I'd see him again because we got so little of him last

Ooooooooooh Asian trollmarket!!!!!

Oh never mind slavery trollmarket

Bruh titanic camelot

I feel like we're not seeing enough of the villains because I completely forgot about the power ranger zord things

NAMORA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LAST CRUSHHHH

STRICKLER NO NOT YOU TOO PLEASE

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONLY TWO CHARACTERS I SIMP FOR ON THIS SHOW DIED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF EACH OTHER

THAT WHOLE ASS RANT I WROTE IS COMING TRUE FUCK THIS MOVIE THIS SERIES IS JUST JIM TORTURE PORN

WAIT JIM'S SPERM DONOR INFO?

Oh thank God I don't want to know anything about that person

For the record, I call that man Jim's sperm donor because he has no business being called a father to him. All he did was donate some swimmers to the creation of him and give him abandonment issues

Oh another blind troll elder???? This fucker is just if vendel was a bad guy

Bruh I was grieving

PACIFIC RIM WITH GUN ROBOT VEX AND THE BELROCZORD? I've never seen that movie but I know the reference

Bruh Blinky doesn't read horoscopes? Does he realize conspiracy theories are just the manly version of horoscopes?

NO DON'T KILL VEX STOP KO-ING FOUND FAMILY MEMBERS

Oh thank God he's okay

NO NOT ARCHIE AND CHARLEMAGNE OH MY GOD

oh never mind they're just gonna coup de tat I believe in them :))

But I want to see him again

But I'm glad to see vex

Yay they're in arcadia!

But yeah I wondered why the trolls and Merlin didn't keep the whole "daylight doesn't hurt trolls" feature from the eternal night but now Guillermo del Toro I see you were playing the long con in that just to kill my girl Namora :(((

Oooooh I love the animation of the Narizord over Chihuahua!! It looks very good and realistic (if only they could have put some of that into those huskies from before smh)

Bruh the character designs of the arcane order are so good I want to be them

Nari making sure the Skraelzord doesn't crush the bus

DAMN DOUBLE HOMICIDE

Bruh I'm just glad we finally have an answer on why arcadia had everything going on as opposed to literally anywhere else!! I always found that as a weird coincidence for plot convince.

BRUH WERE BACK TO THE MPREG IM SO JEALOUS I FORGOT ABOUT THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF MY LOVELIES.

Oh that's real convenient that the ninth configuration meant all of them. Way to not decide which character gets more attention. Though it probably was a smart way to not have any infighting in the fandom between each character's stan group.

Bruh I just realized where is Barbera did they just ditch her on the Camelot ship???

And where are the other trolls that migrated at the end of trollhunters s3? They said something about new jersey but obviously Jim and the other main characters got on Camelot instead.... This feels like a plot hole

And we never learned the process of how changelings are made and bonded to humans and stuff. We just know it's super painful but I'm curious ffs!!!!

THE DONT THINK BECOME HERO SPEECH ALL SAID TOGETHER!!!

BRUH THEY REALLY HAD TO SHOW HIM GIVING BIRTH??????? WAS THAT AN ABSOLUTE MUST??????

Plus the main audience for this series is little children (the rating for the movie is literally TV-Y7) so even though my adult ass is not in the target audience, I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WOULD MPREG AND ANAL BIRTH WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT THING TO 7 YEAR OLDS???? THIS IS A LITERAL FETISH HIDDEN IN KIDS CONTENT ITS ELSAGATE ALL OVER AGAIN Y'ALL 😭😭😭😭😭

Though it's probably hypocritical of me to think fetishes don't belong in kids tv when I've openly admitted to thirsting for strickler and namora

HUZZAH

NEW AMULET WAZ GOOD????

STAB THAT BITCH JIM

WAIT NO I SAID STAB NOT GET STABBED

Alright good job just missed the directions at first but you fixed it

SEVEN KIDS?????????

T O B Y ????????????

W A I T NO

N O

IS HE ACTUALLY

OH MY GOD THERE'S HOPE

NO THERE ISN'T

F U C K THIS SHIT THEY REALLY JUST HAD HIM TO BE BULLIED THEN KILLED

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING THIS NEVER HAPPENS

I NEVER ACTUALLY GET SO EMOTIONAL OVER MEDIA THAT I CRY IT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE AT THE END OF VOLTRON BUT AHHHHHHHH

W A I T

HE'S GONNA BE BROUGHT BACK?????

HOLD UP THEY'RE JUST GONNA BRING ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE BACK??????

WAIT IS HE

BLINKY CALLED HIM A SON

HOLD ON IS THIS GOING TO BE A CLIFFHANGER???????????

BRUH THEY REALLY JUST CAN'T END THE SERIES WITHOUT CLIFFHANGERS like there's always an open ending

TROLLHUNTER TOBY????? You know what forget the whole rants I had on how toby was written they just redeemed it all

And that's all! I'd rate it a 6.5/10 because it's definitely the weakest of all the sequels but still had amazing animation and some good plot points. It's just really hard to look over the bad stuff enough to rate it any higher.