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#i know i wanted to do multiple and i'm insane so i did 4
fattylime · 10 months
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screencap redraws <33
5x09 | 3x05 | 2x03 | 5x06
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blue-grama · 2 months
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The Sign finale probably should have disappointed me, but... didn't?
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It's been a heck of a run lately with Thai BLs that haven't quite stuck the landing, and it's got me pondering why The Sign worked for me despite sometimes feeling like a storyboard for a longer, better show.
I don't think they pulled off the emotional payoff they needed, despite that last reunion scene being so pretty and well-acted, simply because too much happened offscreen, from Khem's recovery from a gunshot wound to the entire multlifetime Tharn/Chalothon dynamic getting resolved without us seeing any of it. But somehow I wasn't that mad about it? And ultimately I think it's because this show did so many things well and so many things I'd love to see more of that I'm just like, yep, I enjoyed that ride sirs, please show me something this gorgeous again. In that sense it's joining something like Manner of Death or Kinnporsche where it's like, plot holes? Yes. Bizarre tonal shifts? Absolutely. Occasionally insane writing choices? Uh-huh. Love it anyway? You betcha. So here's what really, really worked for me:
Premise
I am always going to be onboard with QL that isn't solely coming-of-age or coming out. I'm not against those stories, of course, but give me gay romance with adult characters who know themselves and are doing adult things. I'm also a partisan for romances with high external stakes, so the mixture of crime and reincarnation was catnip to me.
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Do I care that none of this training makes any sense? No.
2. Setting
Listen. Is The Sign the reason I have a document on my laptop titled "Imaginary trip to Thailand without ever seeing a beach?" Not exactly. But it's also not not the reason.
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I am being willingly manipulated by the Thai Tourism Authority.
Kidding, kidding, but I do love when my Thai shows feel Thai or my Korean shows feel Korean, etc etc. I want to be driven to Wikipedia to learn more! Half the fun of watching stuff from not your own country.
3. Chemistry
I think @biochemjess covered what was underwritten about the romance in The Sign. Billy and Babe carried it on their backs and it was hard to dislike their romance, even when the series skipped over key beats.
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Any time the pink lighting came out, you were gonna be in for a good time.
4. The camerawork
I don't know enough about film to speak intelligently about this, but the camerawork and aesthetics of this show were just so lovely to watch. It was really doing a lot. @chaos0pikachu wrote about it better than I ever could.
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LOVED THIS. LOVED IT. So good.
We had some really lovely storytelling and visual parallels, too, like the first episode and finale both having a big action warehouse scene, or the multiple times that Phaya and Tharn ended up overlooking the Mekong river.
5. It was always kinda off the rails
I know some people felt this show started out with a strong premise and didn't live up to it, but I gotta say, I didn't have that experience. It was always kinda a bonkers watch for me. There were long training montages, random bodies in the shallows, missing genitals, extended performance art, that comedy flashback to Khem and Thongthai's college years... I never knew what I was going to get each Saturday. And I kind of loved that? I'm into unhinged. I was comparing this in my head to Last Twilight, which did disappoint me in the end, and I think it's because Last Twilight was NOT always bonkers and DID set itself up to tell a straighforward story, then dropped the ideas it had been juggling in the last episode. The Sign always felt chaotic to me, so a chaotic ending was par for the course. This is where I'd compare it to KinnPorsche, which had the weirdest fucking ending, but like, okay??? Why not!
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End result? I see the flaws, but I'm giving this show tender forehead kisses anyway. Here's hoping for more like it.
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zanarkandskylines · 10 days
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𝔥𝔬𝔩𝔩𝔬𝔴 𝔥𝔢𝔞𝔯𝔱
( chapter 4 - the grey )
『 ♡ pro-hero fem!reader x pro-hero bakugo; pro-heroes au | friends to lovers 』
status: on-going rating: mature (16+) #✩.hollowheart
꒰ summary ꒱ A glimpse of hope appears out of nowhere, giving Bakugo and Midoriya the lead they needed to pursue your location. It proves to be much more difficult than they imagine, so they call upon some friends for a search party.
꒰ tags & warnings ꒱ mentions of blood/violence, eventual & mild smut, kidnapping/abduction, experimentation, physical & psychological torture, PTSD, implied/referenced self harm, cursing, talks of trauma | angst with happy ending, emotional hurt/comfort, regret, mutual pining, friends to lovers, insomnia, eventual romance
꒰ Ao3 version | word count; ~20.6k as of ch.4 ꒱ Master List Chapter 1 | Hurricane [5,092k] Chapter 2 | The Ghost of You [4,799k] Chapter 3| Choke [3,995k] Chapter 4 | The Grey [6,756k] Chapter 5 | The Good Left Undone Chapter 6 | Tourniquet Chapter 7 | There is Fear in Letting Go 『♡』 this fic has a playlist! ✩
"So...let me get this straight," Uraraka ponders, finger on her chin while staring up into her metaphorical thinking space. "She's underground?"
"Yeah, I know, it sounds fuckin' insane." Bakugo shakes his head as he crosses his arms defensively. "But we gotta try. She needs m- our help."
Midoriya nods in agreement and turns to the group. "Sorry to ask on such short notice, but thank you all for -"
"Like you have to ask!" Jiro interrupts, hands on her hips. "She's important to us, too ya know." 
Bakugo and Midoriya had called all of their friends the following morning of your text, gathering an emergency rescue group. Uraraka, Kirishima, Jiro, Mina and Todoroki dropped everything they were doing and met up at Bakugo's apartment the following night. They needed a plan, one that the agency won't catch wind of before they can execute it. It wasn't going to be easy, that much the boys knew, but the consequences did not outweigh the reward - getting you home, safe and sound, was their number one priority. 
"The agency doesn't give two shits about this, so we're takin' it into our own hands. I'm done sittin' around waitin' for a miracle." Bakugo's words are flat as he motions for the group to follow him over to the kitchen table to analyze the diagram that him and Midoriya drafted. He points to the left side to start explaining their plan.
"Ears, we'll need ya to figure out where the compound is located, see if you can hear vibrations or some shit. It's gotta be somewhere in this field. Pinky'll burn a hole to make an entry point for us. They'll keep guard while the rest of us go inside. I'm guessin' it'll have multiple floors, so we'll split into teams to cover it all. I'll take the first floor, Deku and Icyhot take the second while Cheeks and Red take the third. Get in, search for her and other hostages, get 'em out and fuck up anyone in our way." He stands back, shifting his gaze to everyone's faces. "Got it?"
"You sure you wanna go alone, Kat?" Kirishima asks, quirking his head to the side. "Not sayin' you can't handle it, but I wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
Bakugo grunts, casting his eyes to the floor. "It'll be fine. We'll have our comms and stay in contact."
Midoriya knew the reason why he wanted to go alone and didn't dare vocalize it to the group. He trusted Bakugo knew what he was doing, even if it meant going head first into danger by himself. They're top heroes - intuition is one of their strongest feats and he trusts his childhood friend with his life.
"Do we know anything about the drug they're making?" Todoroki asks, directing his question at Midoriya. 
He frowns in response. "Not much, unfortunately. I tried to analyze it in the agency lab and couldn't crack anything about it, didn't have enough of a sample to properly break it down. The only thing we know is that one dosage lasts about an hour."
"Deku, come with me for a sec," Bakugo demands, stomping past Midoriya and into his bedroom away from the rest of the group. Midoriya obeys and follows him down the hall, stopping in the doorframe.
"What is it, Kacchan?" he asks, unsure of what he needed him for. Bakugo droops his shoulders in defeat, palming his face in embarrassment. 
"Izuku, I need a favor." His voice is hushed.
Midoriya walks up to him, placing a hand on his shoulder to gather his attention. 
"Anything, what is it?"
"Don't make me say it," Bakugo grumbles, shaking his head in disbelief that he was asking him for support a second time.
Midoriya knew exactly what that meant. He silently wraps his arms around Bakugo, enclosing him in a soft hug.
"We'll find her, Kacchan, I promise."
Bakugo loosely returns the embrace with one arm. 
"What if I'm not strong enough to save her again?"
Midoriya pulls back to look him in the eyes. "That's not going to happen, we have your back - all of us."
Bakugo knows his friends would support him through thick and thin, but that's not what he's questioning. The possibility of letting you slip away a second time is slowly eating away at him, afraid he'll have to experience you disappearing all over again. A quiet 'yeah' is all he can muster before composing himself.
Bakugo pats Midoriya on the head as he leaves the room.
"Let's get goin'." 
~ TIME: 8:39PM
An hour goes by as the group makes their way to Sector 42, enough time for the sunset to fade into a starry sky and help hide their presence in the night. The seven of them re-group in the same area that you'd previously disappeared in - the barren field. 
"Where did you say the portal opened?" Jiro questions.
Bakugo walks over to a set of rocks, pointing at the area. "Right there. Deku marked it a few days after it happened."
Jiro nods and kneels to the ground. She plants both her headphone jacks to the dirt and focuses for a few moments, listening for any frequencies below them. She hears it straight away, the sounds of metal clanging faintly in her ears. 
"Found it!" she exclaims, unplugging herself from the soil. "About 20 feet deep, and it's a huge facility. I can't quite tell how many floors, but it's big." 
"Knew I could count on ya. Pinky, you're up. Make a big enough hole for us to fit through," Bakugo orders, standing back with the others. 
"Roger that!" Mina gathers a coating of acid around her hands, forming makeshift armored gloves. She began to dig while oozing acid into the ground, carving out a tunnel for the group. The others stood nearby, keeping lookout for any potential sneak attacks. Bakugo can’t help but repeatedly thump his foot like an angry rabbit, his patience wearing thin as he’s forced to wait, not able to direct his anger at anything in the moment. He wanted nothing more than to blow the whole place to smithereens, scoop you up, and take you home. Uraraka notices his fidgeting and pulls him to the side.
"You wanna talk?"
"About what?" Bakugo grumbles, scrunching his brows at her in annoyance. Obviously, he didn't wanna talk about anything at all, let alone his feelings.
"Fair enough. How about I make you a promise?" she says, extending her pinky to him. "When we find her in there, you'll be the first one we call."
Bakugo stares at her, blinking a few times before sighing contently. He wraps his pinky around hers. 
"Thanks, Cheeks. I...really miss her." He lets his hand fall away from hers as she gives his shoulder a light squeeze. 
"Me too. You better make a move once she's back!" Uraraka bats at his arm playfully before skipping back to the others. Bakugo's got his arms crossed and nose to the sky, failing awfully at hiding his flustered expression. Meanwhile, Mina crawls out of the hole she's dug, covered head to toe in dirt. 
"Hah...okay," she pants, out of breath and wiping the sweat off her brows with the back of her hand. "It's wide enough for two people. It takes you to a hallway...that's all I could see. Bit of a drop, so just be careful."And with that, the plan was in motion. The five infiltrators shimmy down the hole one at a time, dropping into the hallway as quietly as possible. Bakugo and Midoriya exchange quiet glances, noting how off-putting the silence is to their entrance. 
"Eyes up, keep a low profile, and call immediately if something happens," Bakugo whispers. "And try not 'ta get hurt."
The four of them nod in agreement at him, partnering up according to plan and going their separate ways.
~ TIME: 9:18PM
Things are quiet in the compound tonight - eerily quiet. It's been days since your distress text was sent to Bakugo, leaving you yearning for escape to the outside world. Did he have a plan? Are him and Midoriya on their way? The lady who helped you steal your phone hasn't returned since that night, not since she took your phone back to the contamination room. Something felt wrong about this setup, that same gut feeling invading your body like the night of your abduction. You can't help but feel guilty about pulling the boys into potential danger, but what choice did you have? There was no possibility of you being able to escape yourself, much to your dismay. It was physically impossible without your quirk. Being helpless has been humbling, but a fucking aggravating experience.
You roll over on the cot, tracing imaginary drawings on the metallic wall as a distraction. The annoying 'beep!' of a keycard sounds from the cell door, but no footsteps follow. You're expecting a barrage of harsh commands, but they never come. Even though that's peculiar, you don't turn over to investigate - you couldn't give two shits about anything in the place any longer.
~ TIME: 9:43PM
Once they've successfully navigated their way through the compound, Uraraka rounds the corner of the steel corridor on the third floor with Kirishima at her side. She stalks slowly down the hall, taking time to examine all their surroundings. 
“Hey, up there! Looks like another cell,” Kirishima mutters, pointing over her shoulder. She silently nods in response.
The two of them approach the glass wall of the cell and carefully peer inside. Uraraka audibly gasps and she scrambles to the door, anxiously fidgeting with the electronic lock. She kicks the door as a last resort and is shocked when the cell door pops open, loosely swinging inward on its hinges. She pushes her way inside, a soft smile crosses her lips when she spots your form on the small cot. You don’t move out of habit, assuming it’s a pissed off guard coming to grab you for another round of testing.
“Found ya,” Uraraka sighs, desperately trying to hide the tears pooling in her doe eyes.
Is that…?
You flip over at the sound of her voice, bewildered at her physically standing before you. 
She’s not an illusion...right?
“Ochaco?” You compose yourself as you sit upright. “Is that…really you?”
Uraraka doesn’t hesitate any longer as she’s rushing toward you, wrapping herself around your frail form. One of her hands makes its way to hold the back of your head, trembling fingers clutching a handful of your messy locks. Her warmth engulfs you and coaxes the emotions to the surface that you previously submerged, soft hiccups bubbling in your throat. You return the hug, squeezing her tightly and shrinking in her arms. 
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m really here,” she assures, quietly stroking your hair. Kirishima comes into focus over Uraraka's shoulder.
"Hope we didn't scare ya!" he says while wiping a tear from his cheek. He strolls over to the cot and takes a seat next to you, gently patting your back. "Good to see ya!"
Uraraka pulls back and moves her hands to your shoulders. Her eyes are glassy as her lips curl into another smile, her signature dimples adorning her cheeks. You haven’t seen the sun in a months time, but seeing her euphoric gleam more than made up for it in the moment. 
“Before we talk about anything, I promised someone a small favor,” she says, nodding her head. She clicks the earpiece that adorned her helmet with one hand while thumbing away a stray tear off your chin with the other.
Promise?
“Hey, Dynamight,” she says over the intercom. The mere mention of his hero name from Uraraka is enough to make the butterflies in your stomach flutter ferociously. You can barely make out his voice through the device, but hear Bakugo’s signature twang when he replies. It makes your cheeks flush strawberry. 
She grins at you as she replies to Bakugo, "I've got a message for ya."
Your heart stops as Uraraka releases her hold on you and reaches for her helmet. Her hair ruffles from underneath when she tugs it away and shifts to place it over your head. She runs her fingers over your hand delicately, urging you to talk to him. 
She mouths ‘go ahead’ while holding the intercom button for you. Kirishima pats you twice on the shoulder for encouragement. 
How does she know?
You swallow, hard. Every nerve in your body is firing on all cylinders. There’s an endless amount of things you want to say to him, but that moment isn’t here yet. You choose to settle on a greeting, praying you don’t start bawling your eyes out. 
“Hey Katsuki,” your voice quivers as his name leaves your lips. 
You hear Bakugo suck air through his teeth over the radio communication, knowing he’s probably cycling through a million emotions over the sound of your voice, too. 
He clears his throat briefly before responding. “Hey…y’doin’ okay, Lite-Brite?” 
You can tell by the way his voice trembles that he’s doing his damndest to keep his shit together. Uraraka continues to hold the button on the helmet, motioning for you to continue talking. 
“Never better,” you joke, huffing out a laugh. “Food sucks here, though. I had to trick myself into thinking it was your cooking to even stomach it.” 
He exhales a quiet laugh. “I’ll make ya whatever you want when we get home. Now get your ass movin’ so we can get the hell outta here.” 
The signal turns off with a click. Uraraka takes the helmet from your head carefully and places it back on her own. 
“You’re gonna have to tell me everything about you two when we get home!” she exclaims, pinching your pink cheeks lovingly. “I’ve missed you - we all have.”
“It’ll be a relief to have you home,” Kirishima chimes in. “C’mon, lets get a move on.” 
He stands from the cot and extends his hand for you to take. Him and Uraraka help you to your feet as you brush yourself off and fluff your hair over your shoulders.
“Are you hurt at all?” Kirishima asks, removing his arm from your back. He takes a look at your arms - they're covered in bruises of varying sizes and colors.
“Not on the surface, no. It’s a long story,” you explain. “The condensed version is they’re formulating a quirk suppressing drug. The experiments they’re running down here are fucking horrific.”
His face morphs into shock and slowly fades into sympathy. Flashbacks of the Overhaul situation from high school come flooding back to him, wincing at the thought of another anti-quirk uprising.
“But you’re okay?” Uraraka asks a second time as she takes your hand in hers, one pinky lifted to prevent her quirk from activating.
You decide to spare her the mental agony you've been through, saving it for later. “...yeah, I think so. Just exhausted. My quirk isn't fully restored, either.”
Kirishima’s earpiece beeps twice when a muffled voice comes through. He turns his head while clicking the button to respond.
“Yeah, we’ve got her. How’s it goin’ up there?” he asks. The voice that responds faintly resembles Midoriya's. He responds once more before clicking off the communicator. "Alright, we'll head up now. Hang tight!"
“There’s one stop I’d like to make before heading upstairs,” you say, knowing you do not want to leave the prison in your current hand-me-down clothes. “It’s around the corner.”
~ TIME: 9:54PM
Once you've successfully retrieved and changed into your hero suit, along with collecting your cellphone, the three of you proceeded to the second floor to meet up with Midoriya and Todoroki. You can't help but notice how the material hangs from your frame and no longer hugs you comfortably. It's to be expected, all things considered. Even though they fed you, the stress was more than enough to cause you to lose weight and muscle strength over the course of the month. If anything, it pissed you off to know you'd have to work hard to build back your prior stamina. 
They didn't bother to wash the damn suit, either. It thankfully didn't smell, per se, but was covered in aged splatters of dirt and grime. Your phone screen was also cracked, hinting that the lady who helped you dropped it "for effect," or some other stupid excuse to inconvenience you.
Your ears perk up at the sound of voices around the corner as Uraraka, Kirishima and yourself are approaching the second floor corridor. 
"There's only 10 hostages here, that's strange," Midoriya explains aloud, presumably to Todoroki. "I thought the reports noted more than 10. Maybe I'm misremembering..." his voice tapers off as he begins mumbling to himself. Oh how you've missed the sound of his rambling, something so minuscule but endearing about him. 
The three of you come into view, catching both of the boys' attention. Midoriya's eyes whip up toward you, emeralds glistening when they widen under the pale hallway lights. He’s charges down the hall to you, tripping over his own steps from the pure adrenaline pumping through his veins. 
"Izuku!" you cry out when his body engulfs yours, gripping onto the back of his costume and squeezing the material as you buried your face into his shoulder. You can't help the tears reforming in your eyes as he spins you around, overwhelmed with joy to see you safe and sound. Before you can stop the tears, you're sobbing into the crook of his neck - a combination of relief and dread. 
"Hey...it's alright, Y/N. You're safe," he soothes. "It's okay."
Midoriya places your feet back on the floor, pulling back and cradling your face tenderly. Not surprising, he's got tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, too. He wipes some of the tears from your eyes with his gloved hand.
"Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?" he asks, dropping your face from his hands while assessing your body for any visible harm. 
"N-no. Couple bruises, but that's about it," you stutter, a sudden tremble taking over your body. "Quirk's not..." you trail off while your vision dilates out of focus for a second. Midoriya doesn't skip a beat and catches you by the shoulders.
"Save your energy, Y/N. I'll carry you upstairs, okay?" his smile is genuine, but you can tell it's laced with anxiety. "We'll get you back to the entrance with Ashido and Jiro, they're keeping watch outside. We'll get the hostages out of here, too."
You nod, the vitality within you draining at a brutal pace. Could it be withdraw symptoms of the quirk suppressant? Is it possible to get addicted to such a drug? You're not sure what in the hell they mixed with the drug itself, it seemed to be different concoctions with each test. You're praying to any deity that would listen to be free of this hell.
Midoriya gives you a quick peck to your forehead before turning around, arms out and ready to lift you onto his back. Uraraka places a hand on your back to help you into his hold, securing your arms around his neck and legs tucked at his sides. 
"Uraraka, Kirishima, come help me gather the hostages," Todoroki notions, waving a hand to the cells at the end of the corridor. 
"Go ahead, I'll regroup with Kacchan upstairs and get her to safety," Midoriya vows with determination. The others hum in acknowledgement as the party separates.
~ TIME: 10:02PM Bakugo's stalking the area of the first floor, seeing a bunch of empty laboratories and rooms with no one in them. No one has reported any sightings of scientists, workers, or anything since they broke into the compound.
What the hell? Ears said this place was rattling with vibrations. Somethin's not right.
He's habitually calm during patrol missions, but now? His nerves are on fire, shoulders tensed from the stress in his heart. Bakugo couldn't shake his intuition, guts churning with unease at the silence of the facility. A faint scraping sound catches his attention, spinning on his heel with an arm raised. Taking careful steps, he makes his way back toward the entrance and into, what he presumed, the large concourse.
"It's about time one of you shows up," a woman's voice calls out, reverberating off the walls. Bakugo jumps back a few feet, gauntlets raised and hands prepared to fire explosions at any second.
"Who the fuck are you?" he seethes, biting the inside of his cheek to prevent his anger from overflowing. 
He hates that his gut feeling was right. ~ TIME: 10:12PM Midoriya is taking his time with you on his back, vigilantly navigating the two of you to the first floor. He's attempting to keep you as steady as possible, even though you've told him multiple times you're unharmed. Your head is tucked against the back of his shoulder.
"You holding up okay?" he asks, tilting his head back toward you.
"Yeah, thank you. I feel like if I let you go, I'll float away," you mutter, bitting your lip to prevent more tears from spilling out of your eyes. You're so fed up with crying, not wanting to be perceived as weak - a damsel in distress. Midoriya would never think you're anything less than strong, and you knew that in your heart, but still can't help feeling powerless in the moment.
He gives a reassuring squeeze to the back of your thighs. "Don't worry, no one will take you away from us ever again."
BOOM!
Midoriya halts in surprise, looking upward as the floor shook. The sound shakes you out of your self-deprecating chain of thought.
"Kacchan?! What's going on?" he asks frantically into his earpiece. There's static on the other line - no response. A few more explosions ring out above you two, increasing in succession.
"Dammit! Hang on tight," Midoriya warns, rocketing down the hallway while green energy begins crackling around his legs.  ~ TIME: 10:14PM "Talk about jumping the gun," the woman taunts Bakugo, sneering in his direction from across the lobby. "Afraid of the presence of a strong woman?"
Bakugo stood his ground, eyes fixated on the woman in the lab coat before him. Was he scared of her? Fuck no, not in the slightest. The thing that frightened him was she was alone - no one else showing their face in the facility thus far. Where was the man that took you away into the portal? Or any of the "henchmen" from that night?
"What an honor to have a top ten hero visit our lovely establishment, especially number four himself."
"Don't flatter yourself, especially 'cause you're alone," Bakugo yells back at her. He's trying to weed out the possibility of a sneak attack and rile up the woman to reveal her hidden defense. He knows she's got backup here, but where the fuck are they be hiding?
"Am I, though? I thought heroes were trained to have keener senses." 
Shadows appear on each side of her as her words hang in the room, revealing two more white cloaked men armed with dart guns. They simultaneously aim at Bakugo, the canisters reflecting the dark liquid in the chambers under the dim lighting.
Shit...! ~ TIME: 10:15PM Midoriya is approaching the open lobby with Bakugo in his sights in the main concourse. You can see over his shoulder that he's standing defensively, presuming that the enemy finally played their ace. 
"Izuku, I need you to launch me in front of Katsuki," you instruct, pointing a finger to his location.
"What?! No! I need to get you out of here," he retorts, shaking his head.
"Izuku. Please." 
Midoriya huffs, knowing you will not take no for an answer. Your heart is in the right place - he's right. You're in a weakened state, you should be rushing to the exit.
But that's not what heroes do. ~ TIME: 10:16PM "It was nice of that naïve little bitch to drag more heroes into our testing ring! Want a sample, darling?" She boasts, one hand on her hip as she points toward Bakugo with the other. "I think he'd benefit from it."
Bakugo hears a dart gun fire, but is distracted by a burst of energy shot out of a nearby corridor, blinding him momentarily with its radiance. He covers his eyes with his gauntlets, bracing himself for a surprise attack from the front as he takes a knee to the ground. He could hear the sounds of feet scuffing in front of him, along with glass hitting the ground, as if someone slid in from the sidelines. 
It wasn't an attack - no, it was a defensive shot. He squinted to sharpen the image of the shadow of whoever rushed to his defense, assuming it was Midoriya.
Time ceases its natural flow as Bakugo realizes who’s standing in front of him. He was speechless, mouth agape as he couldn't help the few stray tears fall from his awestricken eyes and roll over the leather of his mask. 
A glimmering energy shield danced in front of the two of you as you peer over your shoulder, shooting him wink and a smile.
"It's fine now, Dynamight. Why? Because I am here!"
Bakugo snorts, laughing hysterically at the absurd comment. His laugh is contagious and gets you giggling - your heart soars into the heavens hearing his laughter again, his joy curing the darkness swirling in your head temporarily. You never thought a moment like this would return to you anytime soon, and yet here you are, cackling at a dumb joke with your best friend on the damn battlefield. 
"Get up already, idiot," you chuckle, turning toward and extending a hand for him to take. His signature shit-eating grin spreads over his lips as he takes your hand with no hesitation.
"You came," you whisper, his hand lingering in your grasp.
Bakugo smiles, his eyes the gentlest you've ever seen them. "You called."
He tugs you into a hug, careful not to crush you too much with his gauntlets. He wants to melt into a puddle with the way you're clutching onto him like you can't get close enough, burrowing your face into his chest. You breathe him in, the faint scent of burnt sugar filling your senses while clawing at the back of his hero suit, not able to contain the heartache of being apart for so long - how it could have been your final days in this wretched hell.
Finally - you're reunited. You've found him, and he's found you. 
Everything's going to be...okay.
"Y/N, Kacchan - watch out!" Midoriya calls from hall, black whip vines reaching for the two of you. 
But it's too late. 
Again.
The energy barrier crackles behind you as it evaporates into the air. Everything begins to fade into a haze, that all too familiar filtered vision returning to you. Soon enough, you're slumping into Bakugo, your feet failing to keep you upright. 
"H-hey! What's wrong?!" he panics, clutching you tighter as your arms go limp, letting go of his back. "Talk to me, Y/N! What's happening?!"
That's when Bakugo peers over your shoulder and sees one of the dart capsules stuck in the back of your thigh, the injection mechanism switched on with an empty vial. There's a set of broken glass nearby, but that was only one of the darts. The second broke through the forcefield, your quirk not strong enough to parry both shots.
You can take it - you've endured it for a month. 
What's one more dose?
"Fuck! Lite-brite, hang on, I got ya," he reassures while taking a knee, lying you down as daintily as he can before ripping the dart from your thigh. You don't react - shit, you can't even feel the needle being pulled from your skin. He watches your eyes glaze over, their usual shine lightless under whatever chemicals are working their way through your system. 
"K-Ka-Kat-suki...," you whimper through broken syllables, unable to form a coherent sentence. 
Bakugo strokes your shoulders. “I’m here, I’m not leavin' ya.”
"Aww, what a lovely reunion!" the woman chimes in mockingly, regaining Bakugo's attention. The guards next to her have sheathed their guns and stand with their arms crossed.
"Color me surprised that she not only has connections to top ranked heroes, but close relationships with them? Talk about luck."
"What did you do to her?!" Bakugo's chest tightens, fury brewing hotter within himself. Midoriya makes his way over and slides to the ground beside Bakugo in a defensive stance.
"Little miss hero has been such an obedient subject, our best results thus far. Her quirk factors are strong - exactly what we were looking for."
"What did you give her?!" Midoriya repeats, eyes narrowing in her direction. 
The lady cackles to herself, proud of her accomplishments in breaking you from the inside out for her own benefit. 
"She was gullible enough to believe I was an undercover hero! I let her reach out so it would be easier to round up more test subjects - especially heroes. These civilian quirks were getting tiresome and boring to study." 
You were so fucking stupid for believing her. How could you be so naïve? The torture of this place was getting to be too much...you needed a miracle, no matter how narrow the possibility of escape looked. The desperation to be free was stronger than the ability to see through her lies. 
"She fell into our laps at the perfect time. Her psionic energy quirk has been groundbreaking for our serums, especially the hallucination and forced quirk exertion compounds. Speaking of, that one should be kicking in any minute now."
On queue, your body begins to twitch on its own, a surge of energy zapping you back to life. It's as if you're being puppeteered by an invisible handler, rising from the ground and to your feet. 
Both boys rocket to their feet, taking a guarded step back from you. Your head hangs low while your fingers flex, a glow emanating from your palms. Before they can ask any questions, your head snaps up at them, a spellbound look in your now flickering irises. 
"-the fuck?" Bakugo mutters, a horrified expression on his face. The pain is excruciating as the pressure of the energy is begging to be released in any way possible. You can't vocalize the pain through your quivering lips, the only hint at the anguish being the lone tear streaming down your face. 
"Now, subject 57 - begin sequence 23," the lady dictates, clapping her hands.
The instinct to fight becomes impossible to ignore, drowning out all of your attempts to regain control of your body. Instead, you're on auto-pilot, launching an attack toward Bakugo and Midoriya. They dodge out of your range, but you pivot lightning quick toward Midoriya, gunning to attack him.
"Hey, it's me! Izuku!" he yells as he weaves through your strikes, thinking it could wake you up from the mind control of the drug. "You know me!"
You successfully land an energetically charged punch to the right side of Midoriya's jaw, knocking him backward before kicking him in the chest and sending him skidding across the concrete. 
Bakugo approaches you from behind while you're distracted, gripping your shoulders firmly. 
"Calm down! We can work-"
You silence him by placing a hand on both his gauntlets, not bothering to turn and face him. Shockwaves of energy come bursting from your hands - his gauntlets shatter into pieces instantly, leaving his arms and face cut open from the shards. Next thing he knows, your fist is connecting to the underside of his jaw.
Bakugo grunts from the impact, gritting his teeth as he's trying to hold onto you a second time. 
"Hey! I know you're in there!"
Should we answer the door, or slam it in his face? 
…who the fuck is in my head?!
The devilish grin settling on your lips is enough to send shivers down his spine - that's not you. Something’s gotta be fucking with you in your head from the drugs. He swallows nervously, not knowing what to do to help you. You shove him away from you with an energy blast to the chest, sending him careening to the concrete like Midoriya. 
Your chest is heaving, huffing and puffing as the drug surges through every avenue of your body. You can barely form a cohesive thought, let alone understand what's happening around you. It's as if you are seeing yourself through a kaleidoscope lens - this unknown version of you  in the drivers seat. 
“What a marvelous display of success!” The woman cheers, hands clasped in front of her happily. “The ‘Overdrive’ serum is exceptional in true combat.”
Something whips at you from behind and wraps around your arms and torso. 
“Stay…still!” Midoriya shouts, pulling the black whip vines taut to keep you in place. You wiggle in its grasp, grunting and thrashing around like a caged animal. 
“Ah, fuck that hurt…Deku! Let her go,” Bakugo calls out as he’s picking himself up off the ground, wincing at the pain in his jaw. “I got her. Take care of that bitch in the coat!”
“But Kacchan, the drug-”
“Trust me, dammit! Let her go before I make you!”
Midoriya retracts black whip as it releases its hold on you. He’s about to leap toward the group of scientists when the rest of the rescue team appears with the hostages in tow, scurrying down the far hallway. He motions for them to keep going to their exit as planned. Uraraka shoots him a nod and thumbs up. 
“Huh? Who opened the cell locks?!” The lady yells, pointing to the rescue team as they disappear down the corridor to freedom. She’s about to charge after them when Midoriya stomps in her path, fists raised in preparation to fight. 
“Your fight’s with me, lady. No matter what, you’re under arrest according to the laws of hero society. You can surrender, or I can make you surrender.”
“It’s gonna take a lot more than a threat to bring us in, hero. We’re making world changing progress that's far beyond your jurisdiction.”
Midoriya winds back and jumps into action against the scientists. Meanwhile, Bakugo’s got his eyes locked on you on the far side of the room, gesturing for you to come over to him. 
“I’m not gonna hurt ya, I don’t wanna fight,” he starts, taking cautious steps in your direction to close the gap between you two. “I wanna help, Lite-brite. I know you're in there.” 
You can't trust him, he's a monster and you're his prey. He's only here to hurt you, to keep you down. Don't let him near us...don't let him near us!
He stops in his tracks when you visibly recoil, clutching your head in your hands with a blood curdling scream. Midoriya whips his head around to the sound, catching him off guard and causing him to take a hit from one of the men. He shakes it off, trusting Bakugo with your well being instead of rushing to your side. 
Bakugo sprints to you, wrapping his blood stained arms around you with no hesitation. You flail, smacking at his arms with open palms, weakened energy pouring out of you with each hit.
Hurt...kill him. Take the monster down.
"Let go of me, Katsuki!" you shriek out of nowhere, hopelessly trying to shove him away from you. 
"No! I'm never letting you go again!" he shouts back, squeezing you tighter. The bursts of energy from your palms are kicking up in strength again as you continue to swat at his body, red marks forming on his exposed skin. 
"I'm not fuckin' losing you a second goddamn time!" 
He can tell that you're spiraling, that this serum is driving you mad inside your head. If only he could go into your mind and pluck out those vicious thoughts, free you of the agony and take some of that weight onto his shoulders.
If you don't take care of him, I'll make you.
"I don't want to hurt you, I can't control this!" You're sobbing, the looming thoughts forcing you to wallow in the pain. "Please...!"
Bakugo grapples the back of your suit, the neoprene material bunched in his shaky hands, locking in his decision to stay put. "I can take it...don't you dare let me go!"
Something in his declaration to stay by your side snaps you back to reality, enough to control the output of your quirk for a split second, stopping the outbursts of energy. The clouds in your eyes start to disperse, clearing the fog from your sight.
You can fight me all you want. I'll always be part of you, waiting in the shadows for you to break again. 
No words leave you as tears gush from your swollen eyes, bawling against Bakugo's chest in defeat. He loosens his grip to pull you away from him, forcibly making eye contact with you. His heart sinks at the sight of your bloodshot stare, but he can see that you're eyes are not as nebulous as before, energy no longer dancing around your pupils. Maybe the drug is wearing off? It's hasn't been an hour, but it's possible this version has a shorter fuse than the normal quirk suppressant.
"No need to cry," he comforts, thumbing away the tears dribbling off your chin. "Everythin's fine. See? Just a few scratches." He points to his biceps and cheek, tiny cuts from the shards of his gauntlets explosively bursting apart. 
That well-known lightheadedness from past experiments returns tenfold, your body's energy depleted to nothing. Bakugo must see the exhaustion in your body language as he helps you settle onto the ground. He takes the mask off his face, untying the back of it. 
"Sit back for a sec."
Bakugo pushes the hair out of your face and runs his hand into your hairline, brushing it back as he stretches the leather of the mask over your forehead. He ties a small knot at the back and tucks it under the remainder of your hair, creating a makeshift headband. Once he's satisfied with it, he taps the earpiece to call into the rescue team.
"Need someone to call the agency, get the cops here an' round up these assholes."
Kirishima responds instantly. "You wanna call the agency? I thought-"
Bakugo cuts him off. "Change'a plans. Get on it, Red! And have Cheeks come back down, need her to lift Lite-brite outta here." He huffs before tapping the earpiece a second time to disconnect the line and casts his eyes toward Midoriya. Two of the scientists are knocked unconscious, the only person left being the witch that started it all.
Bakugo's attention is drawn back to you at the sound of your sniffling. Your tears have dried on your cheeks, faint stains reflecting in the light. He knows you're safe now, no longer lashing out uncontrollably from the fucked up substance in your system. You look like you could collapse and pass out at any moment, but are fighting the urge to let yourself rest.
"Hey," he mumbles, almost too quiet to hear. You turn, head tilted to the side like it's too heavy for your neck to hold, blinking lazily at him.
Even in this disheveled state, Bakugo is aching to kiss you. He knows it's not the right time, not even close to the perfect moment, but the desire burning a hole in his chest is difficult to ignore. Fuck - he didn't even know if he was ever going to see you again outside of his dreams, and here you are.  ~ TIME: 10:38PM "You think you have me cornered, don't you?" the lady jeers at Midoriya. "A revolution is upon us - my revolution. My masterpiece is ready."
Without warning, she pulls a dart gun out of her lab coat, positioning it against her jugular vein. The sounds of her wicked snickering fill the concourse as the dart gun fires, injecting an unknown toxic into her bloodstream.
"Kacchan!" Midoriya cries out, catching Bakugo's attention. "We've got a problem!"
The dart gun clatters to the ground as the scientist convulses, her limbs spasming unnaturally as she wails in pain. She composes herself after a moment, raising her gaze from the floor to Midoriya, her eyes aflame with energy pulsing out of them.
Holy shit. 
She's got your quirk.
"Not so tough now, boys! Now come on, let's dance!"
⋆ ˚ʚɞ — i'm so, sooooo sorry for the delay on this chapter! hopefully it being the longest in the series makes up for it! i honestly just kept writing, deleting, writing, deleting for over a month. but i'm content with this. enjoy the ride! ⇢  tag list! @bakugouswaif @k1tk4tkatsuki @bells2319 @st0nedbitch @deftonianfr @musicbecky @bakubae-by @slayfics @maddietries
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agent-cakeshroom · 3 months
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Having complicated thoughts on Brozone leaving. Half of me is like "HOW COULD THEY LEAVE BRANCH he was a babyyy and he suffered so much"
On the other hand, pretty sure they were kids too. Teens at most. And they left him with an adult they trust, their Grandma. And they clearly didn't know about her getting eaten. Yeah, Branch absolutely doesn't have to forgive them, but they didn't technically do anything wrong either. The only one who promised to come back was Floyd.
I really wish the movie had addressed their parent(s) at least a little, just a smidgen. Cause, like... I understand JD wanting to run away from the responsibility of 4 brothers. I'm a middle child, but my mom moved multiple states away to take care of her siblings and left me with my dad and younger brother. Both of whom are autistic, and my dad has an insane host of health problems. So I've become mom 2.0 because I love them both and want to take care of them. But it can be VERY overwhelming, and if my dad couldn't help at all I might've caved and ran too. And I'm in my twenties. JD had to be like. 16???
That turned into a rant, and I lost my train of thought. Moving on, none of the brothers are really at fault. If anyone is at fault, it's the missing parent(s) or even Grandma. We don't know if she was the primary caretaker, or if she was too old to wrangle them all, or what. So she might not even be really at fault either. Would it have been nice for the brothers to come back and visit? YES! But JD did, and the tree was empty and he had no reason to believe anyone survived. He probably grieved Branch, and with how his colors have dulled a bit, JD may have even gone gray. It could be from age tho, we dunno. But then he got a postcard from Bruce, and probably heard rumors of Floyd's solo career. So he knew he at least had 2 brothers alive and well, so he kept living his life.
I've 100% lost the track, uh. No more thoughts lol
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etirabys · 11 months
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on jogging
I took up jogging 2.5 months ago. I'm going off the c25k schedule, which slowly ramps you up from couch potato fitness to being able to run a 5k. This was much more effective than just trying to get into jogging by mimicking other, fitter, joggers, which was what I did every previous time I briefly tried to get into jogging. I feel embarrassed for never having thought of this before – it's clear that 'my brain was off' in those times when I went mimicry-running.
One issue that made me get into jogging so ineffectively: I didn't realize how terrible my starting physical fitness was. I used to think I was… like… normal? No athlete, for sure, but I'm a "normal amount of miserable" on hikes (and can complete most of them), I'm an intermediate boulderer, I rarely notice activities I'm gated from because of fitness. But when I started c25k with three partners, none of whom regularly jogged, they were all significantly less winded than I was.
And for the first dang time in my life I explicitly had a thought that went, "I can run 1 minute before my body forces me to stop. My partners can run 3-4 minutes. Some people can run 30 minutes."
Once I actually had any sense of "jogging levels" it was so clear how close to the bottom I was when I started out. That gives me some hope that being much fitter will solve my fatigue problems?
I used to be able to run 1 minute, and now I can run 2. By one (terrible but also kind of reasonable?) metric, I'm twice as fit as I used to be. But a nontrivial fraction of the population can jog 30 consecutive minutes! It seems worth getting to that point to see what that does to my energy levels / cognition.
Also: I haven't been sticking to the c25k schedule. I go 1.5 times a week where it expects 3, and I stuck a level between week 2 and week 3 because the 1.5m->3m jump looked insane to me. I've been on that custom level 2.5 for a month. I had a mindblowing conversation with the giant and 81k yesterday where I went, yeah, I've been stuck at week 2.5 because I've felt unready for week 3. And they said, that's probably because you're not going enough.
What do you mean? I asked. I've run about a full session and a half session every week for four weeks. Isn't that the same as 3 full sessions every week for two weeks?
No, they said, surprised I didn't know this. There's an optimal timing. If you'd probably stuck literally to the c25k schedule you probably could have gone from level 2 to 3 in a week.
GYARJRGH? I said. FUSBARIJIJJLK?
(I still disbelieve the literal claim that I can go to level 3 after doing level 2 properly, but I believe them that I would be leveling up a lot faster if I stuck to the schedule)
Anyway, some things I'd like to say to my past self, who felt obligated to work out for fatigue issues and then proceeded to exercise very badly because there was such a big ugh field around the topic of exercise:
You do not realize how big the gap between you and even moderately athletic people is. This is good, actually. It means that the correct place to start is easier than you think.
You should try to do it like 3 times a week. Date a jock. There are some on tumblr
Consider starting this when you have positive pressure rather than negative pressure. When you're buckling under multiple joy-sparking projects and want to rise to the challenge, it will be much easier to start & stick to it than when you're an anhedonic lump who has nothing to look forward to, but knows that exercise will in theory make life better in some vague way.
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romanarose · 5 months
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If You Wanna Be Wild: Chapter 5
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Co-written with @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction my beloved Fen, who I could not do this without. Thank you for being my emotional sounding board, my dear friend, my wonderful cowriter and helpful beta reader. I adore you.
Javier Peña x Latina!sex worker!informant!Reader x Santiago Garcia
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Summary: Javier, Candy, and Santi kiss and make up. Except Javi and Santi don't kiss. Yet.
Content and warnings for whole fic, not chapter by chapter unless something is added: Sex work, drug trade, some drug use/pressured used, sex workers and the mistreatment/stigma surrounding them specifically in the 70’s (my blog is sex worker positive) but ima put potential dub con depending how you look at it as a sex worker who works with dangerous men, some action surrounding reader and the guys and the drug trade, SMUT HEAVY, corruption kink (were corrupting santi here, he’s young, 25), no loss of virginity tho, threesomes, some slight m/m smut but that’s not the focus here, but as you know this blog is an lgbt blog so I’m always open to gay shit. Talk of war and some PTSD but I won't be going a whole lot into it. Covert/emotional incest in the past, Santi's mommy issues, m/m dynamics, internalized bi/homophobia
For the record, this is a fic that takes place in the drug trade and deals with the darker side of humanity, so anything from Narco's and Triple Frontier is liable to be discussed or mentioned here. This is your warning. This is not a dark fic nor is it centered around dark themes like Leather and Lace or Sunshine Starlight Sweetheart Brightside, but they are open to be talked about.
Reader has a nick name: Candy. Not her real name just what she goes by on her profession. Much of the inspo for this and for the title came from the Bruce Springsteen song “Candy’s room” so check it out for the vibes.
Reader speaks Spanish and has hair. I've decided Candy is just latina bc she's a sex worker in Colombia so this is what I'm doing. Reader also has curly hair and dark skin.
ADDITIONAL WARNINGS!: Santi's panicy trauma response. Nothing crazy he just needs Javi to like him so so bad. Food and eating. SMUT! Fingering, reach around hand job, multiple orgasms, edging, praising, talking you through it, talking HIM through it, more hints at homoerotic subtext.
Thank you as always to my beloved Fen <3 I couldn't do this without your encouragement.
2.5 words
A/N Since I am apparently an incomprehensible writer, please know that the lst smut scene here is not a threesome, it's Javi fingering Candy and Candy flashing back to her giving Santi a reach around handjob. I wanted to compare and contrast the way the two pairs care for and pleasure each other. but it came across as a threesome :(
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******************************
Santi and Javier had been working in total silence for 4 hours.
As soon as Javi had walked in, Santiago looked up from his paperwork with his large eyes attempting to catch Javier’s but to no avail. Javi ignored him, and continued to ignore him most of the day. He felt bad, he really did, and he missed his friend. It was hard sitting across two desks pushed together, and seeing Santiago right there looking so sad was difficult. Santi was fidgety, unfocused, obviously not paying attention to his work. He’d stare at a page for ages, knee bouncing almost in time to his tapping finger. The boy was going to drive him insane.
Noon hit, and Javi went to lunch, walking down the street to a cart to grab a empañanda. Fuck it, some churros too. His doctor said he needed to start watching his sweets, but it’d been a week. He’d burn off some calories with someone tonight. Not wanting to go back to the office during his lunch hour, Javier walked a few blocks to a small park and parked himself under a tree for some shade as he stuffed his face.
Javier tried to pinpoint exactly what had made him so angry at his young coworker. Maybe part of it is the betrayal. Santi went through his things, his contact information and found one of his girls. His. Candy was his. Javier Peña took pride in protecting his girls, whether or not they were his informants. Helena’s attack had scarred him, the image of her beaten and naked body was something that kept him awake at night. He couldn’t let that happen to Candy. Javi had tried to check in on Helena, knowing the DEA had gotten her a visa to the US, but she wanted no contact with him. Maybe it was the fact: if Santi found his contact information for his girls, and that meant that anyone could. What if it had been a drug lord? Lorea knew the DEA was after him next, what if they had found Candy and brutally raped her like Helena, or killed her?
Javier flicked an ant off his arm.
Maybe it was the fact it felt like he didn’t really know Santi. He called him Pope as a nickname, a call to his church going, the way he was nearly a blushing virgin, he always avoided his eye with topics of sex. The young, naive kid he knew was soliciting prostitutes? It was hard to justify the two pictures in his head. 
Maybe it was the fact it was Candy. Candy of all people. Candy was special to him, a favorite and someone he enjoyed seeing even outside of sex. 
Or maybe it was that fact it was Santi. His partner, his friend, someone he trusted with his very life and liked working with.
He knew both of them, he knew they would connect. He knew they would enjoy each other's company, he knew they’d treat each other well… How could Candy not want someone like Pope? Some as good as Santiago, as kind, as attractive…
Shaking the thoughts away, Peña gathered up his trash, shoved the rest of his churro in his mouth and returned to the pulpit to sit in silence for another 4 hours. Then he saw Santi.
For the first time that day, Javier got a good look at him when he stepped under the arch of the open doorway and watched the boy as he acted, thinking he wasn’t watched.
Santiago was a fucking mess. He had bags under his eyes, his normally well dressed and ironed shirt was wrinkled and it was evident Santi had not shaved since the start of the weekend a few days ago. Santi’s face was always well groomed, a trim, neat mustache surrounded by freshly shaven cheeks and neck showing off his youthful skin; now he looked older. Tired. Worn out. He hadn’t even worn a tie. Nervous ticks were all over him, but what got Javier was that Santi hadn’t moved. 
He hadn’t eaten yet.
All his anger at Santiago melted away, and Javier felt sorry for him.
*
“Haven't you had enough calories today, Peña?” The lady at the food cart said. 
Javier rolled his eyes as he paid the money. “It’s not for me.”
She glanced at his stomach; it was not as flat as it used to be, that’s for sure. “Sure.”
As Javier approached the open door of their shared office again, he made sure to squeak his shoes so Santi knew he was coming before he rounded the corner. 
Without looking up, Santi muttered his first words of the day. “You’re late. Your lunch is only an hour, you know that right?”
“I took part of yours, since you didn’t go.”
Santi muttered something about actually doing his work, but Javi knew today had been Santi’s least productive day since starting. He tossed the brown paper on Santi's desk, and at first Santi begins to complain about the grease on his paperwork, but then he opens the bag.
“What’s this?”
“Your lunch.”
Santi looked up to him, his endearing youth still evident despite the disheveled appearance. “You brought me lunch?”
Javi tried to wave him off as he sat down. “Don’t worry about it.”
The younger man stared up at him, mouth hesitating as if he wanted to say something, but then stopping, then starting, then stopping, then- “I’m sorry!” The words begin spilling out of him. “I’m sorry I went through your things, I really really am! I just didn’t want someone random and-
He raised a hand to stop him. “Garcia, stop. Listen…” He shook his hand and leaned against his desk. Santi looked up at him, desperate and wide-eyed, mouth parted. “She was right. I can’t control her… or you. It’s none of my business who you see…” Javi clears his throat. “And you are still seeing her?”
Santiago stood up, frantic still. Javier wasn’t into weed, but he thought Santi needed to have a smoke. “I’ll stop! Just say the word and I’ll stop!”
“No, Garcia, I get it. I know how it is with her, she’s special. Candy’s important.”
“Not as important as you!”
Santiago’s sudden admission shocked Javier. What did he mean by that? Did he mean… no, Santi wasn't like that, right? “What are you talking about?”
“I mean…” His excited edge gave way to anxiety. “I just mean, we’re friends, right? Partners. We have a good thing going right now and I don’t wanna ruin it.”
Oh. “I see.” He couldn’t help feel a little disappointed. “Yeah, we do have a good thing going. Let’s just drop it, alright? I doubt Candy will schedule us on the same day again. We can just pretend it didn’t happen.”
Javier was already moving to sit at his desk as Santi eagerly agreed. “Yes! I- uh, I mean, yeah, perfect.”
Javi snickered a bit. They sat in silence for a moment before Javier decided to bring it up just one more time… “Just… be careful, alright? And treat her good?”
“I do.” Santi was quick to assure. “And I’ll be careful.”
*
The knock on your door made you immediately nervous. No one just showed up, except Señora Perez bringing leftovers for you… when you peaked through the peephole and saw a nervous looking Javi, you sigh. Dumbass. Annoying dumbass. Annoying dumb who fucked really well and was actually super sweet and you enjoyed his company most days… 
“I know you’re home, Candy.” Of course he did. 
You open the door, immediately crossing your arms and leaning against the door frame. “What do you want? Santi isn’t here.”
“I know.” He assured you, then held out a rolled up, large poster. “I wanted to…” Apologize? Javi didn’t say he was sorry. Wasn’t the type. “I brought you this.” He held out the rolled up paper.
Tentatively, Javier held out his gift, which you took suspiciously. It was the Audrey Heffburn poster he promised you. “Javi… I thought you’d throw it away after how I yelled at you…” You were touched at how he thought of you, bringing you posters of artists he knew you loved to liven up your apartment.
“Never, querida.” He promised. “And I’m sorry for making a scene in your home, in front of your neighbors.”
You smile softly, relaxing a bit. He was so kind, so handsome… “I forgive you, just mind your business next time, comprende?”
“Comprendo, Candy.”
Your body language eased. “You and Santi kiss and make up?”
Javier couldn’t help but smile a bit at that. “Si, minus the kissing.”
“You’ll get there.” You wink, and make enough room in the doorway. “You wanna come in?”
Of course he did. He always did. And you always wanted him to. 
*
Javi spread you open. After he sat you on his lap, you wrapped your legs around him and as he spread his legs, yours went with it. It was tender, the way he touched you, calloused fingers running the length of your body and taking you apart on his fingers. Whiskers tickled your neck as he nudged, fingers entering you. Filling you. Taking you. You were his.
And Santi was yours.
You played with Santi’s body, controlled it the way Javi controlled you. From behind. He liked it between your legs, that much was obvious. His hands, his cock, his face. He belongs there. Earlier today he had sat there, his ass between your naked legs with your back to your bed frame, Santi’s back to yours. He felt so good like this, his body firm and young and supple in your grasp and god, you loved having him. It’s no wonder Javi loved taking you like this, on his lap.
Javi liked you on his lap, liked you open for him. Your whole body. He loved to feel you clench around him, himself fully dressed and while you were completely naked.
It was different with Santi. Both of you lay bare as you jerked him off. It was vulnerable this way, both of you naked and open to each other. Santi was so vulnerable… you wanted to protect his sweet little heart, to take care of him, hear him whimper and whine just as he did now as you tease him.
You wanted Javier to devour you, to take you fully and leave nothing left, you needed to be consumed by him… and consume you he did. Javi’s mouth left nowhere untraced, your shoulders, your back, your neck, it was all sopping wet with his sloppy kisses, long fingers pumping into you.
Your fingers wrapped around Santi’s cock, swiping over the slit dripping with pre-cum in his excitement for you… That excitement excited you in turn, his enthusiasm to be explored and used… and you were grateful for him. You let him know it.
“Pretty boy, being so fucking good for me.”
“Pretty girl, being so fucking good for me.” Javier praised when you don’t cry out at the little nibble he took at your throat as he applied pressure to your clit. He knew just how to tease you, to build you up so high that your crash would be blinding. “Not yet, baby,” He coaxes you.
“Not yet baby,” You coo at Santi, tightening the base of his cock to stop his orgasm. “Can you wait just a little longer please? I want you to cum so hard, Santiago, want you to fucking explode on my hand.”
“Y-yes,” he agrees, breathy and desperate but so, so good. He was your good boy. “I can do it, Candy, I can.”
You felt up his chest, his pecs, his tight and perfect body as you jerk him. “I know you can, Santi.”
“I know you can, Candy.” Javi growls in your ear, stubble scratching at your face. “Give me one more.”
You whine, over sensitive from two orgasms on his mouth, but no less hungry for another, no less desperate for the sweet release on Javier’s fingers.
“S’too much!” Santi’s hips thrust into yours, his body beginning to writhe just as you had in Javi’s. 
“It’s okay, baby, you can do it.” You coo at Santi just as Javi coos at you. Then, you both give your command. “Come for me.”
Your orgasm was blinding, clenching down on Javi so hard you weren’t sure how he could move his fingers, cum dripping out of you and onto your shitty plywood floor.
“Oh, good girl,” Javi praises. “Just feeling that pussy cum, I know it must feel so good, doesn’t it?”
“Feel’s so good, doesn’t it?” After half an hour of edging, Santi cums so hard he choked a sob out and you have to keep one arm wrapped around his slim body to keep him steady. Rops of warm cum spill out of him, covering your hand.
Javier licked his fingers clean of your um. Without so much as a care to his own erection in his jeans, he picks you up and carries you to your bed. You’re sleepy… Why were you so sleepy? Javi didn’t need to ask, finding a night dress and pulling in over you on the bed.
“Javi, let me take care of you.” You ask, tiredly. He simply gets a warm cloth to clean you up.
Sliding out from behind Santi, you make sure to place plenty of pillows under him as he relaxes back. You wash off his cock, then get in the blankets with him. 
“What about you?” He asks, soft and sweet and so, so sleepy, his fingers going to the band of your pants, but you stop him.
“Sleep, precious boy.”
“Sleep, baby.” Javi kissed your forehead.
“But you didn’t even get off! C’mon, I’ll just hang my head off the bed-” You’re mostly teasing, smiling up at Javier and giggling, but he stops you.
“Rest.” It’s firmer now. “Consider this an apology.”
“Well can my apology also include you cuddling me.”
Javier smiled at that. “If you insist.”
You laid with Santi as he took a short siesta, finishing his time napping in your bed with you around him, your fingers trailing his perfect body, taking inventory  of every scar. He sure had a lot of burns on his arms for a career military boy. Maybe he was a cook in high school. Good boy like him would get a part time job… so responsible. You hoped you were able to help him let go of that responsibility, if only for a little. He deserved to be wild sometimes, even if he had a lot to learn.
Javi held you until you fell asleep, remaining fully clothed and fully closed off to you. When you woke, he was gone and to your relief, he didn’t try to pay you, outside of the poster he hung up for you. 
It was the first time you two had done anything that wasn’t transactional.
**************************
Thank you all for your patience, I was, WOW I WAS GOING THROUGH IT LMFAO IT WAS BAD. So I appreciate your patience as I get this out. You probably will not see anything from my as far as fics for like 2 weeks until finals are over since I am writing a fuck ton of essays. HMU in two weeks if you wanna learn about Aimee Semple McPherson or the satanic panic bc i gotta write a min 12 pages on EACH.
Anyway, until then, happy holidays! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe season celebrating any of the variety out there, or just enjoying time off, seeing family, or winter activities!
If you are in any of the horrifically dangerous areas in the world right now, know I am praying for you, and I hope you are safe.
Thank you to Fen, to Mona, to Clem, and all the people in the Oscars House Of Whores discord and the Pedro Pals discord for encouraging my insanity with these three!!! I really love the dynamics before Santi Javi and Candy and love writing this story, even if it takes me forever.
Since I like doing polls....
@runa-falls@lunar-ghoulie @campingwiththecharmings @whatthefishh @persephone-girl @criticalarchitecture @not-a-unique-snowflake-blog @beelzebeth87 @pimosworld @millerscoffee @heareball @thatwonderouswoman @poolbo @meveispunk @lovable-liar @millllenniawrites @read-and-wip @missdictatorme @the-fox-den @milkymoon2483 @k-ra @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @rosellacwrites @legendary-pink-dot @dreamingofbucky @axshadows @englandsgray @starsthatwatch @fairlyang @alwaysmicado @theywhowriteandknowthings @casa-boiardi @lostfleurs @ninebluehearts @puglover12 @sub-aro @laiisleitte @itspdameronthings @heareball @comfortlessjoy @csarab615 @calaveramangonda @bit-dodgy-innit @stevngrant @nanfafnan @kirsteng42 @mrsjavierp @nanfafnan @lovable-liar @axshadows @cookielovesbook-akie
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slayerkitty · 7 months
Text
Visual Effects in Only Friends MV part 2
The second song on the Only Friends OST dropped today; So What? by the amazing Ford Arun. Much like the first MV for Only Friends, this one is also has visual frameworks that made me stop and stare.
youtube
Just like my first post on this subject, where I talked about the late 90s/early 00s aesthetic of the show as well as controlled voyeurism (aka we only see what they want us to see), these themes show up again here, but a little differently. Unlike the Let's Try MV and the BTS vids which use multiple different effects and transitions as well as framing a lot of the scenes to look like (possibly) 90s camcorder footage, So What? has two visual effects (I think technically three, and I'll point out why I say it this way in a minute).
The first one is the camcorder footage effect. Except that it's even different from the Let's Try MV. While the Let's Try MV has the "play" prompt onscreen and time stamps, it now, to me, feels more like CCTV video than camcorder video. The video effect on So What? is definitely camcorder footage because it is time and date stamped.
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Now, the time and date stamp is February 1st, 2020 at 6:06pm for every screen it appears on, which to me cannot be an accurate date/time for any of the scenes. Several of these scenes were from episodes 4, 5, 6, or potentially yet to air. Chuem drops info about Covid in episode one and in February of 2020, we were so early into the pandemic during that time that I'm not sure she would have referred to it so casually, plus with no Covid precautions being taken onscreen it does feel the show is set currently (aka 2023).
Why this date? Why 6:06pm? WHAT IS JOJO TRYING TO SAY HERE? Is this a specific reference to something upcoming on the show? Is this date famous in Thailand for something? Did he just pull a date and time out of a hat?
Onto the second effect: the yellow text on the screen is back! It was heavily used as a visual effect in episode one, and after a discussion with @ignoranaxed I did add it to my Narrative Frameworks post where I'm tracking visual effects on the show. We discussed whether or not this was an homage or reference to SKAM Norway, an extremely popular coming of age teen drama that had an amazingly done queer season (Season three. If nothing else, stop what you're doing and go watch SKAM Norway season three. You can thank me later). The show was so popular it has been remade in Spain, Italy, France, Germany (named Druck), Belgium (named WtFock), the United States and has even been announced as a Korean (BL?) drama for next year.
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Is this an actual homage? I came down on the side of maybe. I can't swear it is, but I can't say it isn't. That yellow text on the screen is iconic due to SKAM Norway, and it is used in every single remake of the show (if Korea doesn't use it, I will cry. Also, if Korea doesn't release/air it in the same way, I will cry). Leaving that aside, the yellow text is in Thai, and as yet, I have no idea what it says because my subs only translated the song lyrics, not the onscreen words. If anyone who knows Thai can help me with this, I would love you forever because there's one other thing that shows up in yellow on the screen, and it's this:
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WHY AN ELLIPSES, JOJO? WHAT DID IT SAY BEFORE THIS? I NEED TO KNOW WHY IT'S TRAILING OFF. IS IT TO BE CONTINUED? THE NOT KNOWING WILL DRIVE ME INSANE.
Onto the third , but maybe not really an effect: Is Ford photoshopped in here?
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I ask this because if he is (and I can't quite tell but I think maybe?) then does that mean this is future footage coming up on the show? Or, like Let's Try MV did with it's extra SandRay footage in the car, was this just shot for the MV? I'm curious to see what people think on this.
Now for the rest of the MV where I just melt down because WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS DRAMA BETWEEN YO AND PLUG, JOJO? YOU CAN'T DO THIS. Also, is this Sand hugging Yo?
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You can't do this to my girl. This will hurt.
Do we think this is Boston and Nick potentially going ice skating or roller skating? Because if it's roller skating, JOJO I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER.
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In summary, the visual frameworks are back in play once again and what they're choosing to show and how feel important.
Tagging the ephemerality squad: @waitmyturtles, @wen-kexing-apologist, @ranchthoughts, @chickenstrangers, @lurkingshan, @twig-tea, @clara-maybe-ontheroad, @distant-screaming
Apologies to anyone I missed. If you would liked to be tagged in my OF posts/meta, please let me know and I will add you.
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carefulfears · 1 year
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top five annoying mulder moments <3
okay, i have two lists for you: annoying moments that i find endearing, and annoying moments that make me want to beat him over the head with a chair
annoying moments that i find endearing:
(as of today, these could all be different tomorrow)
1/ "you mean i might get my 29.95 worth after all?" (731)
insane thing to say with 6 minutes to live about the mail-order VHS tape that might save your life. the way he casually cracked jokes in front of that bomb haunts me. unfortunately, this joke made me laugh so hard when i first watched this episode, that it became a core memory of the show to me, and it's still one of my favorite lines
related: putting on a comedy show for the nazis in the pine bluff variant
"ooh, is this the pepsi challenge? how 'bout some fresh air, boys" "you can just call me a cab, that'd be fine" sir they are about to execute you in a field
2/ his general behavior with the neighbors in arcadia
not his behavior towards scully, that's a different thing. i'm talking about mulder showing up in a neighborhood that deeply values regulations and appearances, and dragging out his basketball hoop at 10:30 at night. kicking mailboxes. putting that plastic flamingo in the lawn.
he went undercover in this subdivision to investigate the disappearances of multiple missing families, and his entire investigative strategy, is to fuck around and find out.
the fact that the neighbors start off concerned for him, worried that the monster is going to kill him for violating the HOA rules, and trying to warn him and help him, but eventually are so irritated that they decide to just leave him to die
is without a doubt my favorite thing about this episode.
3/ running in front of a car (colony)
literally made eye contact with the driver and kept running into traffic....busted up that guy's whole windshield.....like he went THROUGH that guy's windshield.....once again, i say, do you have ANY IDEA HOW PISSED I WOULD BE to just be minding my own business driving home from work, and end up with a MULDER-SHAPED HOLE in my windshield.....and then he just mumbled something about getting the wind knocked out of him?? and got up and kept running?? you KNOW he didn't pay for that guy's car. used "i got hit by a car" as an excuse for not filing his report on time??? i love him but he is not serious people
4/ reading the articles in a porno mag at the office (the jersey devil)
the jersey devil my most beloved most watched episode ever....cannot even express to you how funny i find it that when scully got into work, he's just sitting there staring intently at porn and starts telling her about the articles. he turns the magazine so that she can see. kinda the funniest thing that he ever did.
+ scully's lil "workin hard, mulder?" and "sorry to interrupt your serious investigation" ...they're best friends
5/ "why don't you take that gun and shoot yourself in the head like you shot my father" (piper maru)
girl WHAAAAAATTTTT??
BONUS: all of his comments about religion (various episodes)
i put this one on the list and took it back off so many times but i have to speak my truth. every last one of them. i know they're mean and judgmental. i like it.
honorable mention: the mulder ditch™ (too many episodes in too many circumstances to make one of the lists but the way he constantly just leaves scully places deserves to be included. he literally has the object permanence of a 3-month old)
annoying moments that make me contemplate violence:
(only came up with 4 for now...but they're serious to me)
1/ "when he's old enough, tell the kid i went down swinging." (vienen)
me when i'm two weeks out of the grave and have purposefully endangered my ass on a boat full of killer alien goo and my idea of a funny sarcastic joke is to goad my partner into saving me by JOKING!!!! about her having to tell my baby that i'm DEAD!!!
what compelled him to say this. this is my "WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS" infographic mulder moment.
my favorite part is how scully doesn't even address it she just gives that kind of "jesus fucking christ" sigh and tells him to put doggett on the phone lol
2/ “all this because i didn’t get you a desk?” (never again)
literally god forbid a girl have an existential crisis in some FUCKING PEACEEEEE
3/ "diana saw it too. and no matter what you think, she's certainly not going to go around saying that just because science can't prove it, it isn't true." (the beginning)
lolololololol
listen, i defend him for the diana stuff, and i get it. i could write you a dissertation on the complications and emotions of it and why he says things like this or whatever. but it still annoys the ever-loving fucking hell out of me.
this one bothers me more than "scully, you're making this personal" because it's such a direct blow to the core of their dynamic and to what she tries to do for him. this comes so soon after he looked at her in the hallway and told her that her rationalism and science saved him.
which is a moment that meant so much to her and that she references in this same episode. she grabs his hand and she says "you told me that my science kept you honest. that it made you question your assumptions. that by it, i'd made you a whole person."
she has memorized everything that he's ever said and she heard him so deeply in that hallway. she stays so dedicated to offering that science and rationalism that she knows he needs, that she heard him say was best for him.
that moment in that hallway changed them for the rest of their lives, and this is when skepticism and belief start to morph from genuine ideology into roles that they play for each other.
she's doing her part, she's offering him her side, she's playing her role. and he throws it back in her face, says he'll just go play with diana then, because diana would never counter him with science.
LOLLLL okay then spooky, we'll fucking see if it's diana that comes to save your ass in the bermuda triangle
4/ "you act like you're surprised" (three words)
debated putting this one on here because everyone knows i loveeee three words and i loveeee s8 mulder and i'm obsessed with this scene, i've written multiple pieces about the fish in it, i wouldn't change a word of it
but i just have to because this is the other one that grates at me in the back of my head from time to time...because it's not that he doesn't think resurrection is surprising. it's not that he thinks it's a given that he'll always be around.
he just cannot hear and acknowledge how painful and difficult losing him was for her. because it would mean hearing and acknowledging that what he does matters, not because of what he can do or find, but because it matters that he's there. because it matters whether he lives or dies.
this episode is so heartbreakingly cruel in a way that they just aren't to each other, and that's what i love about it and what makes it stand out to me.
she's pregnant with his baby and she buried him. she was ripped off of his corpse screaming and she planned a funeral and decorated a nursery at the same time, alone. she sat in a hospital chair and held his hand for days when she knew he couldn't feel it.
for six months, he was gone. for three months, he wasn't ever coming back. that first day that they were looking for him, she teared up and whispered, "i just can't take the chance that i'm never gonna see him again," to skinner, and then she lived in a reality where she was never going to see him again. for three months.
she prayed and she prayed and she prayed and then she got to cry and laugh and hold onto him and take him home. and she tried to tell him, quietly, about the last six months. about how she doesn't think he could ever understand what it was like. about how she prayed, and about how her prayers "have been answered."
she told him how hard it was to learn he was missing, to search, to find him dead. "and now to have you back...," she smiled and said through tears.
"well, you act like you're surprised."
in less than 24 hours he is going to run towards death again and she is going to be left again with nothing to do but pray, and he cannot hear that it matters.
(y’all, remind me to do a post about mulder + humor in s8)
BONUS: referring to his mother's house as "the vineyard" (various episodes)
this one isn't that deep to me but "scully, i'm at the vineyard" just IRKS me like it gets on my NERVES. just an obnoxious ass thing to say
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hot-take-tournament · 9 months
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ngl kind of breaks my heart to see you used one of those ai bot things after the entire vocaloid debate. i really don't like that you did that and i'm a little disappointed. can you please not do that again?
I know - I do need to address this before anything else, because I fucked up
Please read the whole thing
If any of you don't know the context of this ask;
Basically, a while back I used the program AI Dungeon to generate a hot take for fun;
That's the program they use for those chaotic AI videos you find on youtube, like the ai ace attorney clown case and the sonic destruction scripts, which has some absolutely wild moments like these
I just put in a couple one-sentence questions to see what it would give me, not really expecting anything. But the take it did finally give me was not only completely depraved, but also felt like such a weirdly personal attack on me specifically that it left me genuinely speechless.
So, even though I didn't originally intend to do this, I decided to secretly make a poll for it claiming it was a submission, because I thought it might be fun to see if you guys could guess which one of the polls was the fake one, Blade Runner style.
I generated the take on the same day that submissions originally closed, but I only came clean about it last night because I started to feel super guilty about it after reading the vocaloid discourse - but the way I did it was vague, shitty and insincere.
I know it was 4 in the morning and I said I was going to get some sleep when I made the post last night, but after I saw the asks I immediately got about that post - like this one - I instead deleted it after like 2 minutes and spent the next 4-5 hours scouring the internet for as much information about this as I could find so I could get the full picture. This isn't the first time I fucked up on this blog because I didn't do my research, so I think I massively overcompensated - I really didn't want a repeat of that time the master post accidentally triggered multiple people's OCD; I still feel awful about that.
And as a result, I ended up passing out on my bathroom floor, which is why you haven't heard from me in a while.
I did genuinely read all the vocaloid discourse (asks, replies, notes, all of it) - but since I pulled this stunt ages ago, and the secret poll is already up, it was already too late. And it was because of that vocaloid discourse that I felt like it would just make me a hypocrite if I just swept it under the rug and kept quiet while everyone else was talking about the exact same subject, so I decided to just tell you guys as soon as possible because I'd feel shitty if I didn't - but I still phrased that post in a more light-hearted way because that was what I originally intended this whole thing to be, which was definitely a mistake, and I can't apologise enough for that.
And I know I didn't clarify this in that original post, but like I said, the program I used was AI Dungeon, which was something I remembered having fun with back in 2019/2020, spending hours generating unhinged Ace Attorney cases; and I remembered I still had an account from back then when it was still free to play, even though I hadn't touched it in 4 years - and I realised I would still be able to bypass the paywall using it.
I'd also just watched those snapcube Sonic Destruction videos that I linked above and it reminded me of that. And I dug up those old AI Dungeon Ace Attorney cases that I had generated and then recreated in objection i.o. back when I was 17/18, and had been sitting on my old computer's hard drive for ever since - and they still made me smile a little. So that's how I got the impulse to do this.
And that's also why, even though I knew about the writer's strike and do fully support it, it just didn't occur to me that the AI that gave us that same insane Sonic Destruction script that I'd just watched would be one of the programs the writers were striking over - I just assumed that it was only programs like ChatGPT, that can produce coherent scripts based on the accumulated information users feed into it; because those are programs that could definitely potentially be used to replace human writers. That's something AI Dungeon can't do, because it doesn't retain user input after you shut it down.
So I just saw AI Dungeon as that goofy ass confused AI that I loved as a kid, the one that provides insanely weird responses out of the blue as it desperately tries to cobble together a narrative, and it was used in videos that I still really like. And I thought it would be fine.
That was how I justified it at the time - but in hindsight, given how much I hate other GPT programs like ChatGPT, as well as AI art and all other generated content overall, it just makes me even more of a stupid hypocrite for making an exception for this one simply because I was blinded by nostalgia, and not bothering to look it up back then like I should've done. Because at the end of the day, a GPT program is a GPT program.
SO - Here's what I found online while reading up on it last night:
Because of the outdated GPT model AI Dungeon runs on, it isn't possible from a technical standpoint for it to learn like ChatGPT does. Even though it still uses a dataset, as far as I can tell it genuinely can't add to that dataset from user input except for when it explicitly asks for feedback (rarely, it will generate two responses instead of one, and ask you to pick the best one so it can learn - but you can turn that feature off.) And while it does try to learn while you're using it, it can't carry that information over between sessions. So even if you reload the same page again, it won't retain what it learned last time.
(Here's some information I found while combing ancient reddit threads that explains this better than I can)
But even if all of that is true, it doesn't matter.
Latitude, the developers of AI Dungeon, are super fucking scummy, and you shouldn't support them.
If you want to look up all of the many, many controversies surrounding AI Dungeon, you can - but I won't link them here, because serious content warnings apply.
Do not use this program.
I really hope the anon who sent this ask - and everyone else who called me out on this - stuck around, because I am so, so grateful that you all sent these, otherwise I probably would never have known.
I deleted the post almost instantly (because like I said, it was too light-hearted), and I'm really glad I did. And I swear I won't pull this shit again.
I know a lot of you hate the fact that I did this - that original post genuinely got me blocked by more of you guys than every single one of the polls combined - which is totally fair, and I wouldn't blame any of you for doing the same now.
I really just want to move on from this - but I can't just pretend that it didn't happen.
Support the writer's strike, don't use any AI programs.
I'm really sorry about this, and the fact that I didn't take it seriously enough - like I said, I promise it won't happen again.
</3
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deludedfantasy · 8 months
Text
Trimax Vol 10 Ch 1-4
Hey guys, how are we doing with volume 10? I had to go lie down on my bed face down multiple times while reading this so....that's how we're doing over here. A good chunk of this is me screaming incoherently. Apologies for the overuse of exclamation points and all caps. I'm deeply unwell about all of this.
Ch 1
Wolfwood's never ending belief in Vash just!!! Wolfwood is a man without faith. But not anymore; now he has faith in Vash.
As he reaffirms his beliefs, he remembers Vash telling him that he gives up hope too easily. Suddenly, now that I know a whole lot more about Wolfwood, that line hits differently. People have said it before but until now I didn’t get how cruel of a thing that was for Vash to say to Wolfwood. He couldn’t know the thing Wolfwood did out of a desperate hope to protect the orphanage. And look at him now, not sure if Vash can defeat Knives, but he has enough hope that he might be able to that he won’t stop fighting. 
Wolfwood won’t give up because Vash has never given up!!! He’s taken on so many of Vash’s ideals, I can’t deal with this. 
Razlo tries to stop Chapel from killing Wolfwood because of how Livio cares about him and I think it’s an interesting moment. It shows us that for all of Razlo’s insatiable bloodlust, he’s concerned with what Livio thinks. He’s certainly not eager to kill Wolfwood and that’s an interesting chink in his armor, since he’s never hesitated to kill anyone before, even if it’s just because he’s suggesting they drag out Wolfwood’s final moments longer. 
Sidenote: oh my fucking god, I’m an idiot. I’ve been making jokes about Wolfwood’s magically appearing handguns for volumes. He’s not pulling them out of his tits, he just has a shoulder holster, like a proper gunman. 
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I wanna kill Chapel with my bare hands!!! He’s taking way too much pleasure from shooting Wolfwood over and over again. 
So, Wolfwood hasn’t used his vials because he doesn’t think he’s going to die yet. That’s…yeah, that’s making me feel some things alright. First of all, I’ll say it again, Wolfwood is an incredibly smart fighter. He knows how to fight even while injured and in immense amounts of pain. He couldn’t stand up against Razlo at first, but he took it as an opportunity to learn how Razlo fights and find his weakness, so he could use it against him later. Chapel tells Razlo to stop underestimating him, but I think up until now, Chapel has been doing the same damn thing. 
Second of all, I know where this is going and I :) don’t :) like :) it :) 
Ch 2
Sworn friend? I sure hope that’s Vash because that cover image is going to kill me. Wolfwood’s been STABBED. By a GUN. 
Oh, cool, so Razlo confirms that Chapel is unhealthily obsessed with his students and making them into the perfect weapons for the Eye—morally and physically. He’s truly the abusive father figure of this story.
Well, that explains why Razlo’s been kicked out of the Eye. Killing nine other members in a murder spree will do that.
You know what? Chapel begging for Razlo’s life to be spared might honestly be the kindest thing anyone has ever done for him. It’s no wonder he’s so devoted to Chapel. When everyone else treats you like shit, the guy who shoots himself and begs the council to take mercy on you becomes someone incredibly special, even if he is absolutely insane otherwise.
Huh? When did Ms. Melanie and the kids get outside? I thought they were locked in a cellar. Did some of the other mercenaries bring them up on Chapel’s signal so he could torment Wolfwood more.
Awww, the kids don’t want to leave Ms. Melanie by herself! They care about her and each other so much. This is where Wolfwood gets all his love and caring from. 
Chapel is an evil, evil motherfucker. We know that already, but this moment? Oh, the rage I’m experiencing. He’s playing on Wolfwood's worst nightmare, going all the way back to that dream he had where he tried to hold the kids but couldn’t because there was so much blood on his hands. Chapel went and made that real. He shows Wolfwood’s face to Ms. Melanie, while he’s covered in blood, and lets them know all the terrible things he’s done. Ms. Melanie doesn’t need to say anything. The guilt Wolfwood carries will be enough to bring him low. Chapel knows his student and his weakness so well, and he twists until it hurts. 
ARGH MS. MELANIE DON’T MAKE ME CRY. 
This is Wolfwood’s worst nightmare, but she’s not reacting with disgust or hatred! She isn’t looking away from him! The way she says, “You foolish boy, you tried doing everything on your own again.” It’s so sad, but it’s so fond. She still loves him! She wishes he’d come home earlier! It’s still a painful realization for Wolfwood to have, that he would’ve been welcomed back, but it’s also, maybe, a shock and a relief. 
Also, “You’ve always had so many stubborn ideals and were never one to compromise.” NICHOLAS D. WOLFWOOD THESIS STATEMENT RIGHT HERE. It’s what got him into this mess after all! 
Oh my god Wolfwood! No!!!! Don’t look down on yourself now!!! Ms. Melanie’s right! You  came when you were needed!
AND HE’S THINKING ABOUT VASH AGAIN.
When he’s losing hope, he always thinks of Vash. And he realizes that maybe he should’ve asked him here. Because they work so well together, they could’ve taken out Chapel and Livio and saved everyone! IF ONLY HE HADN’T INSISTED ON DOING EVERYTHING ON HIS OWN. 
“I made a friend. He ain’t as dumb as I am.” Wolfwood, I appreciate your whole-hearted belief in Vash but that man is just as stupid as you are and probably would’ve also run straight into danger without asking for help. You two are just peas in a pod. 
“We could’ve done this as a team.” Yes!!!! Because everything’s different when you’re back to back with him!!! Vash and Wolfwood are a battle couple and when they are together, they’re unstoppable. Wish you’d realized this sooner!!!!
Hey, did Wolfwood just grab all of Chapel’s vials with his mouth? Wolfwood is the king of making batshit insane moves in the span of like three seconds because that was a small opening he had before Chapel shot him or the kids.
A mysterious shuttle appears at the eleventh hour?
IT’S VASH!!! VASH CAME TO HELP HIM!!!
And look at Vash, using his powers to protect people! Not only that, to protect the people Wolfwood cares about!
Ch 3
Wolfwood, come on. You were just thinking about how you and Vash could’ve easily handled this as a team. 
Wolfwood’s self-hatred is blinding him so much he can’t even figure out why Vash would come. Just as Wolfwood considers Vash his friend, Vash thinks the same of him. He’s shown time and time again that he’ll help people in a tough spot. Why not you, Wolfwood? Why don’t you deserve that same kind of care? 
This battle is important to Wolfwood and that’s why it matters to Vash. But of course, the tragedy of it all is that Wolfwood can’t see how much Vash cares about him and admires him because he hates himself too much to even allow love in from someone else. 
And with that thought, it’s time to break out the tissues. 
Razlo’s like, “Ooooh, a worthy opponent? Time to absolutely lose my shit!” 
So, on my first read, I somehow didn’t catch that Wolfwood drank two vials at once when he stole Chapel’s pouch and I was VERY confused for the rest of this volume. Now, however, I’m rolling on the floor sobbing. 
He knows how dangerous this is and how it’ll probably end. But he does it because he thinks he’s going to die anyway. He’s come to the point where he’s not scared of death, and he’d rather go down protecting what he loves than live to see it ruined. 
“If we survive this, drinks are on me.” This line is some horrible foreshadowing, okay. I’m just…I think I need to go take some deep breaths. 
Did Wolfwood just toss Chapel like a log? That’s WILD. Razlo actually gets distracted by it! Then again, he’s so devoted to Chapel that the idea of him dying or being defeated must be pretty tough to deal with.
Wolfwood grabs Punisher again but also, he stops just long enough in the middle of battle to put his glasses back on. He’s hiding. From himself, from everyone at the orphanage, maybe even a little from Vash. He doesn’t want anyone to see what he’s about to become, what he’s about to do. 
There’s been a couple times where I’ve wondered if Vash could read Wolfwood’s mind a little with his telepathic Plant powers and this is another moment. But I actually like to read this as Vash knows him so well that he realizes this himself, because that just hits harder. 
OH. I missed that. Wolfwood killed Chapel. Snapped him like a twig even. 
Razlo is actually so…lonely. The only person who’s ever been kind to him was an equally unhinged cult leader and now he’s dead. And all Razlo knows is violence, so that’s how he responds. As always, Nightow makes me feel so much sympathy for what should be the most villainous of characters. (Except Chapel, that’s the exception that proves the rule here)
Vash and Wolfwood executing insane maneuvers when they fight together because they’re so synced up!!! Certified battle couple. 
Wolfwood lighting a cigarette in the middle of a fight after performing some insane moves is so on brand for him. 
This last interaction is so funny and so them. They don’t know how to use their words! They slap at each other like five year olds and Vash can’t even tell Wolfwood he’s here because he cares about him and wants to help. WHY ARE THEY SO STUPID.
Ch 4
Wolfwood is starting to talk like Vash. The reminiscing about times past, pushing away the help people are offering him—it reminds me of Vash right before he got on the Ark. 
It’s so not like him that it even scares Vash, who tries to remind him that has to live. He’s always wanted to live, right?
Well, except, Wolfwood has finally found what he’s willing to die for. He’s already made the decision. Vash just doesn’t know that yet, and that makes what would usually be a light, bantery scene between them incredibly heavy and so hard to read. 
And Vash, goddammit, he still thinks this is Wolfwood giving up! It’s not, at least not in the way he thinks. Wolfwood is more determined than ever. He hasn’t given up hope. He’s taken all his hope and placed it on Vash, and left none of it for himself. 
“What is important? What are you willing to do to protect it?” → Trigun thesis statement. That’s what the story is all about! The worst part is Vash realizing too late what he would do to protect Wolfwood. 
When Vash really, truly fears that he might lose Wolfwood, that’s the first time he realizes how much he needs and wants him. How badly he wants to survive and see a tomorrow with him. Except, it’s heart-wrenching, because it’s already too late by the time he finally realizes this. Vash has finally found something worth living for and Wolfwood has finally found something worth dying for. How ironic that it’s each other. They’re like ships passing in the night, their lives and wants intersecting for only the briefest of moments before being torn apart.
Just as Vash thinks all of this, he catches Wolfwood. Look how tightly he holds on to him, his fingers pressing into Wolfwood’s skin. He uses his body to shield him, barely noticing the blades in his shoulder. He’s so overcome by what he’s realized, but also that he’s about to lose it all.
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Look at the reluctance when he lets go of him. He doesn’t want to, he wants to hold on to him. But Vash would never disrespect Wolfwood’s choices. He knows how much it means to him to be able to do this on his own terms. So no matter how much it hurts him, he lets go. But there is rage in his eyes, an expression that is so alien on Vash, who has always been so in control of his anger. He hates that he has to do this and he hates that it’s this that’s causing it, and he won’t hold back anymore. 
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Not the bird symbolism. Because Wolfwood has finally found his freedom in his willingness to accept death.
And Vash beneath it, with his face obscured looking up into the sky, but hunched over beneath the weight of his grief and anguish as he walks away from Wolfwood. God, this image is so powerful. 
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expecto-kedavra · 10 months
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Hey buddyyyy I was wondering if you could write about Slytherin male MC discovering their healing powers and healing Ominis of his blindness and Anne of her curse. I’ve read fics of those individually but never together
Keep up the good work 👍🏼
Hey! I love this idea. Fun fact, the first ask I ever sent on Tumblr was to the ever talented @hogwartslegacyreactions and it was how the HL characters would react to Ominis being cured of his blindness. Be sure to check her out! Scarlet is a lovely writer and I adore her blog. I owe much of my inspiration to her This was originally a bit long all together, so I'm going to split it into multiple parts. ONWARD!
Pt. 2
Pt. 3
Pt. 4
The Healer, pt 1
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Ominis was definitely frustrated. He was having a lovely night's sleep when the Margaret the Diricawl landed on his chest. I was going to send a Niffler, but I didn't trust any of them to deliver a message swiftly and efficiently. Especially Ricky. I rescued him from a particularly grouchy vendor in Irondale, said he "pilfered the town and should be sent away to Azkaban." The last thing I needed was detention for the little stinker stealing Professor Ronan's hat, or Weasley's glasses. So I sent Margaret with a note tied to her- "Come to the Room please. I have something to show you." She was the sweetest of my Diricawls, one who wouldn't peck my dear friend's eyes out. They were very important to my plan. Anyways, the grumpy Gaunt stumbled into the Room of Requirement, muttering and cursing. "What? This could not possibly be more important than my rest." I laughed. I wasn't sure if it was really early or really late. I had been working for hours. "Oh trust me my friend. It is." I stared at the small vial that was the reason behind all this. A clear liquid glowed inside, occasionally flashing a brilliant blue. "Go sit on the couch." I ordered, and Ominis agreed. I had definitely piqued his interest.
"You told me that your childhood healers tried Phoenix tears and it didn't work." My heart was in my throat. This had to work. For him, for Anne..for everyone. "Right." He replied. "They thought that if that couldn't give me sight, nothing could." He was very stoic, I knew he had long accepted his condition and made it work. "Well. They didn't try everything. Mainly because this didn't exist until now." I brandished the small vial. He blinked slowly. "Wow. How incredible. I am in awe." He said flatly. Oops. "Oh right. Sorry. I call it Miracle Tears." I was tired. Naming stuff is hard, why do you think two of my pets are named Margaret and Ricky? Being creative was hard enough while not sleep deprived, Miracle Tears was going to have to cut it. "And who's tears might they be?" Ominis laughed. It was good to hear his tone shift from sleepy grouch to his usual sarcastic drawl. "Mine. Helios shared some. So did Diana." I replied. Ominis had met my phoenix, and my herd of Unicorns, so he recognized the names. "What? They cried for you?" He sounded shocked. "Yes, they are my bestest friends and they were much nicer when I woke them up." I shot back. "I thought of every healing substance I could think of. Phoenix tears, of course. Then Unicorn blood, but I knew that was out of the question. I consulted with Poppy, and we theorized that the tears could be used to a similar effect. We tested our theory, and we were correct." I didn't mention that our method involved jumping off of the balcony in the Room. "However, it wasn't as powerful, only healing partially." I said sheepishly. "Wait. Was that why Poppy was in the Hospital Wing for three days?!" Ominis more so sounded disappointed in me rather than upset. "You're getting off topic." I was glad he couldn't see my face reddening. "The last healing power I could think of was my own. Isidora went insane by removing pain and absorbing it. I did not want to risk that, so I thought up another way to bottle this power." He was quiet, I could tell he was thinking. "Listen. MC. I know you want to help me and Anne. But we've both made peace with our lives. As hard as it may be to hear, I don't need this." He was right. I knew he didn't. "I know. Sebastian does." I said softly. He was silent. Since the end of last year, Sebastian had fallen into a funk. His punishment of losing his twin sister was wearing too hard on him. He rarely spoke, and ate even less. I worried for him, and I knew Ominis did as well. "If it doesn't work, you can say you told me so and I will forget about it. But he's our friend, and he's slipping. We are losing him." That was enough for Ominis. "Alright. For Sebastian." I handed him the vial and he drank.
Ominis fell to the floor, writhing in pain and clutching his face. Shit. I didn't know what to do, or what to say. "My eyes! They burn!" He screamed. I ran into my potion room, frantically looking for something...anything. Dittany maybe, I can brew a Wiggenweld...I tried to focus, but my friends pained screams were throwing me off. As soon as I was about to scream for Deek, he stopped. He picked himself up off the floor, blinking. "I...can see." Ominis looked up at me. His normally pale eyes had turned into a deeper shade of blue. It worked. "Sorry my ragged mug is the first thing you saw." I laughed. He tackled me with a hug. "This is the world...the real world!" It was quite adorable seeing him staring at everything, his smile lit up the room. "We need to find Sebastian."
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nothing-but-paisley · 11 days
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20 Questions for Fic Writers! ✨
tagged by @monstersinthecosmos and @hekateinhell thank you! 🖤
1. How many works do you have on A03? 28, all public
2. What’s your total A03 word count? 70,744
3. What fandoms do you write for? Vampire Chronicles & AMC IWTV. I also write Hannibal fic and dabble in Star Trek (need to get into some ds9 fic one of these days.) I also have a twitter account (@murdertherapy) where I give advice as Hannibal Lecter, but I've back burnered it for the time being due to The Horrors. Might make a tumblr for it one day.
4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Touching and Touched, Only a Name, That Essence Rare, Amnesiac, By Any Other Name
5. Do you respond to comments? Absolutely, they make me so happy! But I get a little self-conscious about how to respond to them since I don't know how to take compliments, so I'm always just like, thanks 🙂
But I really do cherish all of them 😭
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Gotta be Gethsemane, the fic where I did what Anne maybe ultimately wished she did and killed Daniel. This is one of my favorite pieces I've written in fandom or otherwise and it really helped me process some things.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I'm sure it's my spirk fic Touching and Touched, they are so fuckin sappy I love them.
8. Do you get hate on fics? I've been pretty lucky in that I've never gotten a mean comment on ao3 or any shade about any of my fics (that I've seen lol).
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Listen, I think that horniness is the engine of all drama. All fiction is inherently erotic. What is a Greek tragedy but a super drawn out communal orgasm?
But yes, I write smut almost exclusively lol. People are (usually) at their most vulnerable and raw during sex, and this is an incredibly powerful way to explore character dynamics as well as their inner lives, traumas, and hidden drives. I'm especially drawn to BDSM/kink in general.
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Yes! I just wrote a VC/X-Files crossover called Amanuensis in which Mulder and Scully investigate the Night Island that was tons of fun, but it's not something I make a habit of for whatever reason.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I know of.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but it's something I would definitely be open to!
14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Devil's Minion, Hannigram, Garashir, Spirk, Mulder/Scully. They all make me insane in unique ways! I'm also partial to Armand/Marius/Daniel--any Armand ship really! Super normal about him :)
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I WANT to finish my Knight of Swords series one day, but I'll try keep plugging away at it.
16. What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, 100%. I want everything to be a screenplay lmao. I have written multiple fics that are just text conversations, transcripts, etc.
17. What are your writing weaknesses? I can be impatient when it comes to writing descriptions/actions, so a lot of that stuff is as bare bones as possible. I would like to become better at creating a sense of depth and scale and grandeur rather than just sketching things out (and writing longer fics instead of just oneshots all the time).
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Neutral, I think it can work when used sparingly (but then I've dropped a few caro mios in my time).
19. First fandom you wrote for? Doctor Who in the ancient pre-ao3 times.
20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Apart from Gethsemane, I was really happy with how By Any Other Name turned out (the fic where Armand roleplays that Daniel is Marius without his knowledge). Basically anything that's a combination of heavy angst and smut with an optional lil sliver of comfort--that's the good stuff.
tagging: @fofoqueirah and @butchybats and @desertfangs (feel free to ignore if you've done this already lol)
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bunny-hoodlum · 21 days
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👩‍🏭 🌈 ( what usually inspires you to write all your fics?) 🧠🖊 👀 📥
Fanfic Ask Game Answers!
👩‍🏭 If one of your fics was going to get you arrested, which one and why?
Omigosh, huhhhhhh... My Genin!Hinata/Jonin-sensei!Naruto dubcon WIP, I guess? 😅 50-50 either stuff happens when she's 12yo or 14yo, but the part of me that's a coward and doesn't want to invite drama gonna shoot for when she's 14. 😅 12-13yos gonna be emotional manipulation stuff. 🤔
🌈 What inspired you to write all your fics?
The age regression sequence in The Last is solely at fault for my Age Difference obsession. Sometimes it's something I see, for example, "be the end of me" is only because I saw an Asian female customer with super long hair but most of it was bleached blonde. Or "Handsy" is because I saw yoga equipment. My brain just handles the rest. I get hit with a semitruck of narrative and it's a WIP! Soaking up online discussion or other people's fics help too. Sometimes I'll jinx myself in reverse and tell someone "I'm stuck, I don't know how to handle this part, it's sooo boring", and then something hits me after and it's kind of embarrassing because I have to tell them "Nevermind" and ugh. 😅 Songs, too ofc! So many songs! I have playlists and everything.
🧠 What’s an idea you have that you can’t quite call a WIP yet?
I answered this one with Wicker-Mayne's ask, but let me see if I don't have another. 🤔 Maybe my Shibari AU? I still have to read the rest of the book and taking notes will help me remember the material, so I really got to find the time and do that. But it shouldn't be a hard one to write. I have an old post with the 3 or 4 variations that I thought of before, but all-in-all, it's just hentai doujin material. Hinata and her Shibari Instructor or sShibari Partner, whichever one I choose to do.
🖊 Post a snippet from a current WIP.
From Work Friends Chapter 3
She thought porn stars were supposed actors. Her previous co-star certainly was. The penetration was real. His hands on her body were real. But the angles weren’t for her benefit and his thrusts had been too shallow. Even with his decently sized cock, she felt like very little sex had ever occurred. She thought she wouldn’t mind if the next five years of this went on like that. Even though the world would doubt her purity and consider her used goods, someone out there would know better. Someone out there wouldn’t find her disgusting. Because it was all just acting. But this man. This man… She squeezed her thighs tighter together and nibbled on the hard lip of her water bottle. God, were they done yet? Menma was busy going over details with the director as they watched the playback together multiple times, sitting where she had been earlier, right behind the front passenger seat. He sat with one leg bent, his thick, muscled arm perched atop his knee, the other leg laying straight out. He took up twice the space she did, had to hunch beneath the ceiling when he stood up earlier, giving her a tantalizing show that made her mouth water. She tipped her bottle back, taking a furtive sip of chilled water to clear the unrestrained insanity plaguing her imagination. His commanding voice in her ear was going to haunt her dreams later, she was certain of it. That hungry aggression telling her to grab his cock. And he stained his sweats when she touched him. Was he really that aroused by her? Or was it something he was on? He’s old enough to need to pop blue little pills, but she doesn’t know much about them and how they work otherwise.
👀 Do you have any WIPs that you would never let see the light of day? If yes, what are they about?
Only the WIPs inside my mind, lol. 🤭 I honestly don't have anything I've written that I'm too scared to post. If I'm writing it, I'm usually planning on posting it. 🙈 Any WIPs that are ancient or incomplete count, I suppose. And so far, I still haven't properly shared the entirety of "Kotatsu" something-something. It was a flash in the pan kind of thing and I just lost all motivation to clean it up. 😅
📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?
All of them! 💖 But especially anything that's new, haha. I need that first chapter reception to feel like I'm good to move forward. 😁
Thank you so much for all the questions!
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First thoughts from just one watch under shitty circumstances with bad internet and worse sound:
RAMBLING FRANK vs RUSSIA THOUGHTS
I was very worried about this episode with how sacred the S5 DENNIS System episode is to us all. Didn't want a Thunder Gun 4 situation on our hands and thankfully they avoided it so hard! I think having the plot with Charlie, Frank, the mums, Uncle Jack and chess really helped out to make it feel more than a direct sequel.
SINNED -> DENNIS -> SINNED -> DENNIS — I'm so impressed with this. How did I, a wholeass Sunny fan, miss this for so long?! Three cheers to whoever came up with that inversion, really! Definitely something that happened in the writer's room and made everyone lose their shit for sure. I wonder who it was, could be Meg or another writer too, given how collaborative they all are!
And can I just say, Dennis the Restaurant Manager... oh how I love you so much! The Waitress is Getting Married is a personal favourite of mine and I wasn't expecting a bit of a redux of that whole situation.
I was so worried about all the "Mac getting a boyfriend and it being Ryan Reynolds" theories and I absolutely wanted none of that. Everyone had speculated it to death and it wouldn't have been fun anymore (not to mention I do not care for RR in my Sunny, I'm sure he's fine, but I don't need his and Rob's PR relationship filtering through into my dickandball show no I don't "find them cute" and I won't elaborate here anymore).
I know we'd guessed that Johnny could've been Dennis catfishing Mac, but it definitely felt like we were doing an Insane Fan Speculation more than anything — and for it to turn out to be correct! And in the best way, because we never could've seen the vibrating anal beads coming!! That's the best kind of "called it but it's still unpredictable".
It really broke my mind, this episode did. And don't even get me started on the Macdennis and queer Dennis of it all! As a longtime believer in Bisexual Dennis, I won so hard! All of us Queer Dennis Truthers won so fucking hard!
[Unpopular Take incoming] This is the first Sunny episode credited to Meg for writing that has felt so wholly "Classic Sunny" and super fuckin hilarious to me. I always appreciated her understanding of the characters and she's always a very solid writer, but this is the first time where I felt myself thinking ok, you she write RCG/Hornsby/Marder-Rosell/Chernins-level of an insane chaotic Sunny episode with multiple belly laughs and not just slightly Community-fied versions of the gang.
The closest her writing has felt like true Sunny to me before this was Dee Day, so I'm glad to see her grow and improve too, and I wonder if the podcast rewatch has helped in that regard! Must also help to have a classic S5 structure to play off in The D.E.N.N.I.S. System! (And ofc writing is collaborative, so well done to RCG and all the writers who pitched ideas and rewrites that ended up shaping this episode!)
I knew Heath Cullens directing meant a good chance of some interesting camerawork (and I've gotta say that even The Gang Inflates had some more dynamic shots than we've been getting in some of the later years and it's got to be the Cullens directing), but I wasn't expecting a whole visual callback to Being Frank! Loved it.
And the editing! The DENNIS System has always been great for cutaway gags and fun little inserts, so I loved seeing that carried out here with the cuts to Mac and Dee fucking up their dates and then finally pulling out the Magic Tissue of Mummy Issues (oh the potential for meta especially with the twins!). The pacing was so good!
Sunny pacing needs to feel like Mac crashing Dee's car into a wall while we are all Charlie watching it in real time and screaming when it's over.
Random strings of words because I'm too excited to be coherent:
Glenn's acting. His faces. His eyes. His range in this episode. Glacting. Juilliard. All the hits. All the big ones.
Mac and Dennis have canonically had sex in two different ways now, and yes, I'm including their sex tape/porn viewing sessions where they both masturbate together
Did Dennis pull out Mac's anal beads when he was asleep?
Vibrating fucking anal beads what the ACTUAL FUCK!
How many people did the gang drug again?
Danny DeVito with a vibrating asshole comedy acting 12/10 he's an international treasure for a reason
Dee stealing people's phones she's so stupid and bad at men. Never change Dee.
Uncle Jack though, pls change plz, I'm an IASIP loving degenerate so I laughed in horror at his creepiness ofc as I have since 1x7 but fucking hell man, can he be in his jail era already! Poor Charlie!
Hey, Charlie's got new America's just as we were promised on the pod
Oh I should make a post about everything we saw in this episode and that episode of the pod where they gave us all those hints, especially Meg talking about struggling with this cold open — added to the never-ending list of drafts and posts that will hopefully one day make it onto the blog yeah I'm lying to myself now
Parental issues everywhere this season, especially with the mums. Reynolds kids, I can't wait to lovingly put you under my microscope. Once I've rewatched this episode with good sound.
Also just in general, the SINNED system just says SO much about our babygirl's psychology, does it not? Why did so much of it sound like self-insert speeches, like he's been doing this to Mac or smt? Don't even talk to me about The Gang Chokes!
What does r/iasip have to say about— no, I'm in my happy place, I'm not even gonna go there.
Mrs Mac and Mrs Kelly watching TV together like that, they really are lesbian life partners.
Dennis blue shirt with top-stick between those buttons, my beloved. I am looking, respectfully.
And can we talk about the "opening the ketchup bottle" scene? We have to take about that scene! Dennis... he's ruining me... need to gnaw on him and suck on his fingers wait I'm browning out...
Sidenote: I love whenever the show references news stories which were super fucking big at a very specific time in a very specific niche, especially with my whole family being so chess-obsessed. The cheating scandals and anal bead… never thought I'd see a Sunny crossover but can't say I'm not loving the shit out of it!
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this flopped on reddit so i hope y'all like it more
So, hi. It's been a very long while since I've talked about my OC Vault Hunters here, and, well... things have changed. And I'm better at wording things.
Here's my... well, I wouldn't say propositions, more like full blown concepts for the entire BL4 VH team.
Basics
First thing: there's 8 classes, and not 4. The Watcher did say we'd need as many as we can get.
In my head, 6 of them are base-game, and the last two are DLC. Coincidentally, the last two are mechanically unusual classes compared to the rest of the team (and even to the rest of the Vault Hunters across games), and happen to essentially be multiple people in one playable character - to keep the gender balance, you see: the team already consisted of two dudes, two dudettes and two buddies before I realized I wanted to add more, so the last two are "multiples".
Second thing: I am a lore guy, so I know barely anything about game balance... but I do know some things about game design, and I do in fact have played these games (wow!), so I'd like to think I know what I want to see in these games... BUT I can't escape bias, and I love the way TPS skilltrees were designed, so if you don't like skilltrees encouraging you HEAVILY to use a very specific weapon type, this is probably not the post for you.
Third thing: This is going to be long, but I tried to make it as readable as possible.
Fourth thing: I will be using the BL3 multiple action skill/augment system here, since I like it a lot.
With that out of the way, let's actually get into it.
Lazarus as the Prodigy
Once an urchin scrambling for zir life in the alleyways, now adopted child and protege of the most notorious powercouple in the galaxy (Alistair Hammerlock and Wainwright Jakobs, if it wasn't obvious by zir Jakobs-style attire). Also, ze likes bugs.
Key Words: Sniper, "Soft" Melee, Non-Elemental, Bleed/Stun
Action Skill: Sheer Focus - essentially, an activated gun boosting ability similar to Fade Away, but instead of automatic criticals, it grants Laz the ability to focus shots for a duration. Focusing - or rather, charging - takes a bit of time, but when focused to the maximum, it can do insane damage. The catch is that the "Focus Bonus", even when charged to the max, will be divided by both the pellet count of the weapon and the burst-fire count if it has one, meaning you are heavily encouraged to use those good ol' semi-autos.
And let's not even talk about what happens when you use a fully automatic...
Gimmick: Swappable melee overrides. Each tree has one "starter" override, and additional ones are unlocked the further you go down the tree.
Sheer Focus has a long cooldown and pretty much just exists to boost damage - the overrides are where the real utility is, and are usually available more often. It's sort of like a secondary action skill that you don't really sacrifice a button for.
Do you want to reflect enemy fire with a single stroke of a rapier? Do you want to throw gunpowder in their face and watch them explode when you shoot them? Or maybe take out a banjo and smack them on the head? Lazarus can do all of that.
Additionally, Laz has two other somewhat unique things that aren't unique to specific skill trees:
something called Deadeye Skills, which trigger on crit (or crit-kill, if it's a Deadeye Kill Skill) and are grouped up in a manner similar to Fl4k's Hunter Skills.
great usage of bleed and stun status. Bleed is the same as it was in TPS, a non-elemental damage over time effect. Stun disables the enemy, preventing them from moving or attacking - for obvious reasons, badasses and bosses cannot be stunned and will simply take a bit more damage if they would be stunned by an attack.
Skill Trees: You're in luck here, because I actually made a full detailed skill tree for the Prodigy already. Read it here if you like walls of text.
If you don't, here's a summary:
Green Tree: Legacy - Critical hits. Loads of Deadeye Skills. Major bonuses to Sheer Focus. Not much to say here.
Red Tree: Tradition - Gun damage, heavily favoring non-elemental weapons. Get those FAT one-shots, as the slogan says.
Blue Tree: The New Path - Melee focus. Staying on the move, weaving melee strikes between gunshots, and the bleed/stun status effects I mentioned above. Maybe it's not fair, but who really cares when you can make your enemies into but a fine red mist.
Bartholomew as the Butler
An old model of Jakobs brand butlerbot, deactivated many years ago and only recently turned back on by an unknown variable. Took up vault hunting as a means of... venting his frustrations, so to speak.
Key Words: Berserker, "Hard" Melee, Support, Health Management
Gimmick: Everyone else has a skill-related gimmick, so Bartholomew's gimmick is not having one. Let me know if you can think of one for him.
Action Skills:
Gearshift - fully heals the player and reloads all weapons. Grants a movement and weapon swap speed buff for a short time afterwards
All Out Attack - a large dash with a punch at the end. Has multiple charges. Can be cast multiple times on the same enemy or chained to others.
Overclock - large damage and fire rate buff at the cost of constantly taking damage.
Skill Trees:
Green Tree: Servitude (Gearshift) - A very strange twist on a support tree. Servitude has an entire swathe of team support skills, all of which activate on (mostly) controllable actions such as reloading a gun or reviving an ally. The thing is, upon these buffs activating, Bart takes health damage.
Red Tree: Rage (All Out Attack) - Melee damage, with a focus on increasing melee speed, taking/healing/ignoring damage, not having a shield and mashing that V button into oblivion.
Blue Tree: Restraint (Overclock) - Remember Nisha's Order? This is basically that, to 11. Upon losing a percentage of health, Bartholomew will gain a Restraint stack. Stacks give a variety of buffs, and can even be spent for certain triggered abilities.
Scylla as the Siren
A member of Junpai-7's pirate royalty, disgraced from her home when she became a Phasesight siren. For many decades, she's been wandering the galaxy as a hermit wizard of sorts, and now in her old age she returns to find the Vault, in hopes of preventing some sort of war that she foresaw.
Key Words: Siren, Shock Damage, Crowd Control, Mobility~~, Discount Spellshot~~
Gimmick: Can equip two action skills at once at the cost of sacrificing her grenade slot. Unlike Zane, she has no real way to use grenades, because who needs them when you can electrocute your enemies to death with your bare hands?
Her skill trees also contain (sometimes radically different) variants of the tree's main skill just like Amara, so you can really customize your setup.
Action Skills:
Phasemancy - mind controls an enemy, making them fight for you for a reasonably long duration. Also makes them invincible, though they die instantly when the effect ends. Badasses and bosses can't be mancied, for obvious reasons.
Phasestasis - spawns a large dimensional field, slowing down everything in its radius for a medium duration and causing shock status. Can be re-cast in a different place as long as it's active, but you can't spam-move it.
Phasebolt - a simple shock damage projectile that is precise and deals high damage. Multiple charges.
Skill Trees:
Green Tree: Clairvoyance (Phasemancy) - Mind and some battlefield control, with a bit of sniping for brainy flavor - but rather than using sniping for damage, you'll be using it for utility. Tons of status effect bonuses. Stealing enemy shields and staying ahead of the battle's speed by manipulating it.
Red Tree: Storm Terror (Phasestasis) - Mobility, with a little twist. Rewards not just moving fast, but also staying airborne, jumping, sliding and whatnot. Double jump. Sprinting and shooting. Amp shots for free.
Blue Tree: Wizardry (Phasebolt) - Action skill damage spam, and rewards for doing so. The main deal of this tree is Flow stacks, gained upon using action skills. At base, they don't do much aside from bonus Shock damage - the deal is, you can spend them for other things. Electromagnetic flight, ignoring FFYL and various techniques too strong for those not versed in the arcane arts.
Samuel as the ~~Problem~~ Primordial
Before the incident, he was just a normal Tediore employee working in R&D. Now, he is a vessel of the Vault Monster Uyrru, a locust-like ancient horror. He seeks the Vault both for his "other self", and to figure out what the f/ck is going on.
Key Words: Wildcard, Radiation Damage & Status, Survivability/DR, Ammo Economy, Armor
Gimmick: In a manner similar to Moze, Sam has only one Action Skill, which at base does almost nothing aside from disabling all means of attack. But when you equip Mutations onto it, that's when it gets interesting.
Action Skills: Transform - turns Samuel into his Vault Monster-ish form. As said above, at base it only gives some damage reduction. But when considering Mutations, one can turn Samuel into a:
pestilent master of disease, spawning hordes of bugs from his body.
miniature black hole, hovering over the battlefield and emitting huge waves of radiation.
feral creature, slashing at the enemy with humongous claws.
variety of other things.
Transform does have augments too, but they are not specific to a certain Mutation.
Skill Trees: I have a full skill tree for him as well... but it's still a heavy work in progress, so I won't be sharing it here just yet. Here's the summary:
Green Tree: Resourcefulness - Ammo/grenade stuff. Unlike Moze's tree, this one actually somewhat encourages reloading. Instead of gaining ammo in your mag, Samuel simply picks up more ammo from pickups or even gains back a bit of a weapon's mag when he reloads. Sometimes you need to make most of what you get instead of summoning it out of thin air.
Red Tree: Eldritch Potential - Radiation damage and utility tree, with a bit of splash. Curiously enough it encourages Samuel to get statused, and keep rad status on enemies. Power at a price. But you do get immunity to Radiation!
Blue Tree: Perseverance - Survivability tree. Not that special, aside from the fact it tends to give DR instead of the usual health/shield capacity like most survivability trees. Tends to be more effective the closer to death you are. Also, allows you to gain armor, because it'd be funny to have a VH with three health bars.
Val as the Fanatic
Former member of the CoV, Valor was given the role of Saint of Sparks and Honor. Even after the Calypsos fell, they try to find spiritual guidance and enlightenment in the Vaults. Half blind, has taken a vow of silence and speaks through a floating drone which follows nearby and relays messages through neural uplink.
Key Words: Splash Damage, Support, Healing~~, BIG DAMAGE ALL THE TIME FOREVER~~
Gimmick: Has the option to equip two grenades at once, which synergizes extremely well with their skills, as many of them activate on grenade thrown.
Action Skills:
Battle Prayer - somewhat minor team gun stat buff, but lingers for a reasonably long time.
Dodge Roll - exactly what it sounds like, gives i-frames. Does not trigger "action skill start" effects, not that Val has any of those in their skill tree.
Deep Pockets - forsakes an Action Skill entirely for the ability to equip two grenade mods.
Skill Trees:
Green Tree: Spirit (Battle Prayer) - A variety of team-wide support skills that reward the team for actually sticking together and helping one another. Buffs Val themselves too, of course. Has a few health restoring abilities as well.
Red Tree: Faith (Dodge Roll) - Insane fire rate! Mag sizes that would make Moze weep! Melee damage! All for the low low price of your enemies' lives and all of your accuracy! Vault-Gods, take the wheel!
Blue Tree: Piety (Deep Pockets) - Splash damage, especially grenades. Mostly focused on radius and spamming rather than the splash damage itself being big. Insert Holy Hand Grenade reference here.
Alkimia as the Trooper
A mysterious, brooding woman who defected from an elite, secretive cyborg division of the Maliwan army upon being ordered to kill civillians. Is a poet-philosopher with an unusually calm demeanor for her line of work.
Key Words: Corporate Soldier, Elemental Damage, Status Effects and Interactions, Versatility, Gadgets/Utility, Mild RNG
Gimmick: May swap the element of her Action Skill, similar to Amara. Defaults to Corrosive, but can be changed to Cryo or Incendiary with enough skill point investment.
Action Skills:
Asclepios - a hovering drone shaped a bit like a snake which flies at enemies and attacks them with its elemental beam.
Reaction Globule - Alkimia throws a big ball of elemental sludge that bounces around and deals damage.
Traversal - dashes/teleports Alkimia forward like a Maliwan Flash trooper, dealing action skill damage to anything in her path. May ragdoll weaker enemies at the endpoint.
Skill Trees: I am also working on Alkimia's skill tree. Trying to figure out something really neat. Here's what I got so far.
Green Tree: Catalyst (Asclepios) - Elemental damage and status effects, with a small twist. Instead of just applying status, you want to combine status effects and react them with one another. Burn them with corrosive damage, electrolyze their skin, or abuse the laws of thermodynamics to combine Cryo and Incendiary.
Red Tree: Evolution (Reaction Globule) - General damage, with some Claptrap-esque randomness. The joke is that evolution is an organism trying to gain advantage in an unfavorable environment, and in this case the organism is the player. You better own a variety of guns. That's the price of experimental tech.
Blue Tree: Adaptability (Traversal) - Utility and some survivability (mostly elemental focused). Almost all of the passive bonuses in this tree change either with Alkimia's Action Skill Element, or with the conditions present on the battlefield.
Kat & Dawg as the Partners in Crime
A one-for-two Vault Hunter deal, Katherine and her tink wife Desmond have been sharpening their teeth (and blades) on heists big and small for ages, with Kat being the brawn and Dawg the mastermind of their operation. However, when they caught wind of the Vault, they immediately embarked on their biggest heist ever, the one that might just set them up for life.
Key Words: Pet Class, Inventory Management, Incendiary Damage, Stuns, Mild RNG
Gimmick: As said above, these two are a package deal, do not separate. While the player controls Kat, Dawg just piggybacks on top of her, occasionally commenting on combat or story beats.
The real deal is when these two enter combat. Kat may deploy Dawg with the action skill button, and the latter will stay deployed until she dies or is picked up. If she dies, she respawns back on Kat's back ready to be deployed again, somewhat similar to Fl4k's pets.
While Dawg is on the field, Kat can use her own action skill. (If Dawg dies, she can't, until Dawg is redeployed anew!) She has three, just like most others, but which one she equips also determines what kind of weapon Dawg will be wielding in combat.
Action Skills:
Trust Throw - summons Dawg back to Kat, then she immediately throws her back into the battlefield with a damage boost for a short time. Enemies hit ~~by THE TINK CANNONBALL~~ are stunned. Also heals Dawg back to full, because.... the power of love, or something.
Whirl 'Em - Kat gets out her trusty scrap-axe and spins it in a manner similar to the Brrzerker from Wonderlands, but with incendiary damage instead.
Mystery Bag - Kat takes out Dawg and her's bag of loot, and checks it for anything useful. The pool of what she can find is around 20ish different items with various small beneficial effects: free grenades that are thrown immediately, health hypos or even ancient Eridian doohickeys.
Skill Trees:
Green Tree: Battle Bond - Buffs the living daylights out of Dawg, and makes it more rewarding + easier to coordinate your movements with her. Pretend you're playing co-op in solo!
Red Tree: Destruction of Property - General damage, mostly in incendiary form. Rewards hard hitting weapons and attacks, maybe with a melee strike in there or two. A few kill skills for good measure.
Blue Tree: Larceny - Damage buffs and other benefits... dependent on picking up loot, eridium and cash. Gives a new meaning to the word "shloot". Additionally, a few "underhanded tactics" such as lowering vendor prices and increasing backpack space (to fuel a damage buff scaling off the fullness of your backpack). Think Timothy's Free Enterprise, but even weirder.
The Triad
Actually a trinity of Guardians inhabiting a nanobot swarm body, a corporate experiment at controlling these ancient constructs gone wrong. It tries its best to get along, and find itself in this strange world.
Key Words: Stances, Jack-of-All-Trades
Gimmick: In lieu of an action skill, the Triad switches between its three constituents - Supplicant (highly loyal to the Eridians, to the point of fanaticism), Seeker (neutral, but also the most sapient) and Sorcerer (Vault Monster cultist, corrupted by their influence eons ago) - in a way similar to stances in other games.
The switch itself does nothing, unless a certain skill is specced into that provides a short burst of beneficial effect when it occurs. However, a lot of the Triad's skills have different effects, elements or drawbacks depending on its current stance.
Action Skills: Spirit Switch - see above for details.
Skill Trees:
Green Tree: Supplicant - Focuses on team support, usually at the cost of damage. Can still reliably solo, however, thanks to having crowd control options.
Red Tree: Sorcerer - Focuses on pure damage, usually at the cost of survivability. Has elements of health management, as no price is too great for dark power.
Blue Tree: Seeker - Focuses on survivability and utility. Fairly scrappy, can manage ammo and identify enemy weaknesses.
Closing Words
I hope you all enjoyed this little creation of mine. I'm not... really sure what else to say here besides I love this series, and I love making things for it even more.
If you're curious what these Vault Hunters might look like, I drew all of them a while back.
Thank you for reading, and if you have any feedback regarding these concepts, or maybe your own fanmade Vault Hunters, feel free to comment.
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captainsolocide · 6 months
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solo talks about cbs elementary part 1
okay so yesterday I made post wondering if anyone would be interesting in hearing my cbs elementary thoughts. in the tags of that post I threatened said that one note was all it took to make this (a fleshed out series? of posts detailing pretty much everything I've ever thought about this show) happen, and for better or worse, I got that note, so instead of studying for one of my two midterms I have next week, I started this!
I am currently in the first half of season 4 but I started recording my thoughts from the very beginning. unfortunately they are very disorganized, so at least until I get to where I am currently watching I think I'm going to group these by multiple episodes. This section covers about the first half of season one
Since I've watched past the episodes I'll be talking about at first, I thought I would also add commentary if I have any hindsight to add to any of them. Any future knowledge commentary will prefaced as such.
Enjoy! and don't be afraid to leave your own thoughts if you feel so inclined, even if you completely disagree. I am insane about them so I am always ready to discuss :)
the good:
Holmes getting weird with his investigating (i.e. sniffing the walls, crawling around on the floor, licking things, etc.). It is very important to me that Holmes is, at the end of the day, a weird little guy
bitchy Holmes! Also very important to me! This also ties in with Holmes having emotions, but basically I just want Holmes to be written like the drama queen he is. (future solo thought: Elementary and JLM consistently do a good job of portraying him as such)
Avoidance of both teh stupid Watson and angry Watson trope. At this point, that's perfection
Holmes hates rich people! (future solo thought: I did not realize just how much copaganda there is in this how. it's very difficult to portray some of his more left-leaning ideals in shows like this, so I'm honestly glad for whatever scraps we can get)
I think Holmes having tattoos is a good call for a modernized version of him
crediting Watson with helping even when she hasn't done anything — this is something ACD!Holmes does as well and I think it's really funny (of course we know that Watson actually does help, just not always in obvious ways — sometimes even she's confused when Holmes thanks her, it's just funny the way he does this because he very rarely elaborates)
Encouraging Watson to make her own deductions (future solo thought: at this point in my watching this I didn't realize they were going to make Watson a detective in her own right, so this goes double now)
Telling Watson that she's necessary to his process fairly early into their relationship — we love codependent besties <3
Watson as a puzzle — not everyone likes this read of their relationship, but personally I love it
"WATSON!!!" — when Holmes yells her name like this I cannot help but be reminded of Jeremy Brett which can only do good things for my opinion of JLM's version
Holmes having daddy issues is always fun to explore, not mad at all if they decide to do more with this (future solo thought: I was very correct in this lmao)
Holmes just 🧍‍♂️-ing next to Watson's bed to wake her up occasionally. Again, reminds me of Brett, and it's objectively funny
"My dear Watson," I love this sentiment in the books when Holmes was saying this every other sentence, so seeing him say that at a time where it's not as common. It means a lot. To me.
Holmes' reaction to Watson calling herself his friend 🥹🥹
CIGARETTE ASH MONOGRAPH YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FAMOUS
Okay. This one needs some explaining. Holmes starts out misogynistic does go in the good BECAUSE I think his growth through that can be a really interesting and important thing to watch — it shows that even the smartest of us can hold unconscious biases that we need to do work to undo
the bad
The reworking of Watson's backstory — not all of this is bad, in fact some of it was necessary to distinguish Joan as her own character, but I do resent how Watson's tragic backstory in this meant that her doctor title is not used, and I feel like taking away Watson's injuries was missed opportunity as well
no live-in Mrs. Hudson = Watson getting relegated to house keeper duties, something that character does not do in the books. wonder what the difference is here? (future solo thought: this was a bigger issue in season one, I think. as far as I can tell, there seems to be a more even sharing of household chores as their relationship develops more, but my point for early season one stands)
Copaganda. It's lame and not in line with Holmes' characterization if you think about it for more than two seconds. I understand he works with them sometimes, but the amount of respect they have Holmes have for the police is disgusting. there have been several episodes I could barely finish because it was just so so bad
Holmes called Freud a genius in season one. girl.
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