#im actually very impressed with this as my first only attempt at those fucking lights

[bogbees]

screaming gently all my interests are a circle. listened to this song on repeat btw

[ithisatanytime]

i watched the video again man sneako you deserve props for that one, genuinely you looked real good out there im not saying that "due to the circumstances" you looked good you got hands and great defensive instinct.

upon rewatch i understood better what happened, ok so first of all sean NEVER tries to block a body shot from sneaky and in fact several times puts his hands on his head like hes under arrest to invite sneako to go ham, keep that in mind, sean is saying im not gonna block or dodge can you damage me at all? so you cant blame him for going hard on his punches, but when sean starts fighting back, his initial flurry sneako EXPERTLY blocks and avoids watch it again its actaully pretty special hes got more training than i gave him credit for, this frustrates the shit out of sean who launches into another combo, he penetrates sneakos defenses with some sharp uppercuts that daze him so he drops his gloves, and this is whats important, someone from sneakos camp throws a towel into the ring before but he might not have seen it, but it doesnt matter he shouldnt have had to see it its not a real fight and its over regardless, after sneako gets dazed hes dropped his gaurd competely and this is the part where sean fucks up in my view, everything up to that point i could chalk up to good fun, but he unloads with full force to the degree that if it were a professional boxing or ufc match the ref already would have stopped the fight because sneako wasnt defending himself and eating heavy shot after heavy shot, at this point one of seans friends runs into the ring and grabs sean from behind pulling him off of him.

Sean dropped his hands and only defended his head because sneako actually has hands and if the ufc champion is actively defending against body shots and fucking SNEAKO is sneaking in body shots that puts the whole UFC franchise in a bad light not to mention sean, so he stops bothering to defend as if to say look how tough i am. then he starts talking to sneako taunting him, but as hes taunting sneako hes eating jabs to the face, to his credit he keeps talking but i truly believe he didnt intend to eat the majority of those shots to the face even if they werent harming much he was actively defending his head at least at first, but sneako genuinely has hands and was still sneaking shots in. with that in mind, i am SLIGHTLY softening my stance but not entirely because of what happens at the end. basically sean felt that he would be able to embarrass sneako and impress everyone effortlessly but sneako has genuinely fast hands and accurate if a bit weak punches, so sean stops defending his body to eat the shots "on purpose" but hes still attempting to defend his head and hes getting popped almost at will by sneako in the mouth taking the wind out of his taunting quite literally. so when sean finally decides to go agro, he wants to really sell it, he wants that instant crisp knockout but not only does he not get the knock out his first sustained and very agressive combo is completely and utterly stuffed by sneakos defenses, sean is a self image oriented guy he knows how that will look, so he redoubles his attempt at knocking him out cold crossing a line you NEVER cross not even with another trained fighter. fighters know knockouts are not a laughing matter oh hahaha i got knocked out, every fighter anticipates their first knockout, they lose sleep over it, and half of all pros arent the same after their first knockout, fast tracked to retirement.

[wizkiddx]

unusable faces

i have exams hence why i needed to write something exceptionally cringe :)

PSA: this is completely inspired from one of my fave writers own blurb @blissfulparker​ --> completely recommend u go read hers its much better than anything i could ever write!!!! (and just her whole account) = link

Summary: pure exhaustion and mutual pining, Tom Holland x actress!reader

^(just thought this was cute, doesn't really fit aha but full credit to op!!)

A scheduling nightmare would be putting it lightly. Perhaps almost unavoidable but that didn’t make it any less of a hellish form a torture. Harry had very helpfully said it actually was a form of torture, that is sleep deprivation. Y/n loved her job - it was all she’d ever really wanted - yet that thought was quickly becoming not enough to get her through the day. Not when it felt like an interrogation tactic used by the CIA. 

To give a quick timeline of the past few days may give a little context:

Thursday - filming the fight scene all day plus an evening-turned-half-the-night-shoot due to some technically difficulties delaying the process.

Friday - flying to New York while doing read throughs of scenes for the next few days; followed immediately by getting glammed and filming the tonight show with Fallon; then a dash across town to the late late show with James Corden; then straight back on a flight to Atlanta that landed at stupid o’clock in the morning

Saturday - a full day of shooting in a mock grand central station set

The press trip to NY had been unplanned… to say the least. But the star of their studios other new release had taken ill - meaning they had slots booked on some of the biggest talk shows in America that would just be abandoned (angering the shows bookers too). It was a waste of perfectly good promo time and since the studio had their two other stars together doing a block of reshoots - it wasn’t a conversation. Much more a call demanding the two of them to be on the plane.

Normally this wouldn’t be such an unmanageable ask either, except the reshoot block was really rather time pressured. You see, the promo tour wasn’t far from beginning meaning they really needed the final film in the can. So really it was a bit of a mess. Just to free up that single day the two were in New York the whole schedule had had to be rejigged - in doing so they’d lost a rare day off too. It was just typical.  

The joys of success hey?

Well, that’s at least what Y/n was making herself think whilst her incredibly talented SFX artist was in the process of crafting a deep wound onto her upper arm. The reason why she would be ‘dripping with blood’ whilst at a train station was beyond Y/n to be honest - she hadn’t been allowed to read a lot of the script so even now as filming was drawing to a close, the story arc of the movie she was headlining was still a little ‘fuzzy’.

“So I watched your ‘spill your guts’ thing on YouTube” Ellie giggled whilst reaching over for more prosthetic putty- a technical term apparently

“I’m glad one of us enjoyed the experience” Y/n replied with a sigh, rolling her eyes at the mischievous smirk on her face - no doubt Ellie took great joy out of seeing her suffer through eating a thousand year old egg. Which Y/n swore the taste of was still in her mouth… and it seemed as though it’d never leave. 

“Oh don’t worry darling I did too” Nelli called over from the next chair along, where she was doing Tom’s makeup for the day of shoots. “Between that and the animals on Fallon, you made a hell of a lot of people laugh last night” Tom’s artist was referencing the fact one of Jimmys other guests was a zookeeper, so at the end of the interview he had you and Tom join in trying not to scream at the snakes and spiders.

“You mean laugh at us?” 

“Well of course darling!” Nelli exclaimed back in an overdramatic bronx accent making all three of the women burst out laughing, Ellie’s unceremonious snorts echoing through the trailer only egged them all on more.

Tom in response, who had otherwise been absent from conversation for the majority of the morning, exclaimed a curse and jumped up in his chair. While you and Ellie collected yourself, Nelli apologised to him.

“Oh sorry love, I’m interrupting your snooze with my uncontrollable comedic gift” She spoke sweetly, even if still taking the moment to flaunt to the other women, as she squeezed his shoulder compassionately.

“No no” Tom waved off her apology, attempting to rub his eye before Nelli swatted his arm away - a stern look for the risk of ruining all her hard work she’d put into making his face look half presentable. 

“I’m impressed you can sleep while they poke you with all these er instruments” Y/n added in, having only just realised Tom had been in a light sleep for god knows how long they’d been in that chair. It did seem a bit unlikely, being able to fall asleep as you were dabbed, prodded and brushed. 

“Maybe you should try though Y/n… your purple eye bags are proving a struggle even for me” Ellie quipped back, now it was Y/n’s turn to give the stern look. Tom took the explain though, shutting her off from whatever kindly meant insult she was about to throw back at her friend. 

“No normally never, I just….” He was cut off by an ear splitting yawn, appearing almost powerful enough to crack his jaw - which would be a disaster, for no one should ruin such a beautiful and sharp jaw line. “…uh-sorry. I just think I ended up taking my NyQuil and DayQuil the wrong way round in the madness of yesterday.” Only Tom, the poor kid often seemed to lacking in any form of common sense - even if those closest to him knew just how intellectual and passionate he could be about the right topic. Affectionately, Nelli scalded his idiocy by jokingly swatting his head with a little tut.

“I can’t believe your still standing then! I’m barely alive and I don’t have any sedatives in my system.” It was true, Y/n was at that stage where every part of her body felt ridiculously heavy… eyes included … eyes especially. 

“But I did sleep on the jet back while your stupid self was studying the script!” Tom replied with a pretty inarguable point - at the time he knew her actions were stupid;  when their flight took off at 11 PM he was certain that the most valuable asset to his ability to act in the reshoots today would be sleep - rather than character development. And he’d tried to convince Y/n that briefly, but gave up. She was bloody stubborn when she wanted to be. 

“Stop competing about who has it worse cos I think it’s me and Nell”Ellie announced - making Nelli agree empathically with her coworker, nodding her head as she looked first to Y/n in her chair then back at Tom.

“Yeh because we have to deal with your unusable faces!!”

After much sarcasm thrown back and fourth, the trailer slowly ebbed it’s way back into serenity and peace as both artists focused on their work. Once Nelli was done she excused herself, Tom staying in the chair in favour of studying (more like staring blankly) at the dialogue for this mornings scenes. His pretence didn’t last long though and while Ellie was busy adding the final touches of fake blood to the now almost completely believable gash that she’d crafted on Y/n’s arm - Y/n had her attention focused the opposite way.

At poor little Tom. He looked so childlike, his slightly puffy eyes looked as if they had weights tied to them - they way he was having fight against gravity to flutter his eyes open, before loosing the next second only for the process to repeat as they dragged downwards. The broad muscles of his neck occasionally seemed to occasionally let up a little, letting his head tilt slowly at first until it gathered enough momentum to throw him off balance. The then sudden movement of his head unconsciously pulling itself back in line caused his eyes to bolt open prior to the whole cycle repeating again. All Y/n wanted to do was let him lay down someone, her heart feeling a tug in her chest just seeing him like that. 

Ellie proclaimed her completion of the wound, leaning back to admire her work before looking to get an affirming nod from Y/n. Yet instead, she was too preoccupied gazing at the boy slouched across from them. “Someone seems a little distracted.” Ellie smirked, finally garnering Y/n’s attention, only feeling more and more smug watching a light tint appear on the actors cheeks. 

“I-well-no… we need to go.” Y/n ignored her words as though nothing had happened, instead rushing off the chair to get Tom out the chair and onto the awaiting set. They had places to be.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||| (bcos im lazy)

Honestly when the director, Ed, called for lunch break, it was pretty apparent to be purely as a compassionate gesture to Y/n and Tom. Both of them had tried so hard this morning to fully commit, even so they’d both been almost completely useless. Y/n kept missing cues whilst all Tom’s actions and lines where slow, dragged out and at times completely prompted from someone behind the cameras. 

So when the lunch break was called there was only one thing on Y/n’s mind and what sandwich was available in the mess tent was not it. Still standing on the set next to her fake holdall bag she looked toward Tom, who was pulling himself up to standing from the train station bench - the pace of his movement making him look more like an old man. 

“You good?” His answer was predictable. 

“I’m so fucking shattered”

Tom swore he’d never heard anything sweeter come out of Y/n’s pink lips than her next statement.

“C’mon I know somewhere we can lie down.”

Without any sort of thought Tom blindly agreed, nodding as he took her outstretched hand in his. The gesture in itself brought a fresh wave of comfort to his aching limbs and as his feet stumbled to catchup with her slight head start he leant the majority of his weight into their connected hands. 

Neither would admit it but they were ‘a thing’… whatever the hell that meant. It was clear as day to everyone and anyone that worked closely to the two but neither of them had ever broached the topic with each other. They’d worked on a few films together over the years; each time they got closer and closer to the point any job without the other simply wasn’t as good. It was scary though, especially for two actors in the prime of their careers. If they weren’t working the same film they’d likely be the opposite side of the world to each other most of the time - quality time together would be few and far between, Really their jobs didn’t suit dating at all, yet it would be perhaps easier if one half of it worked a ‘normal’ job. Something with consistency, a regular structure. A level of dependability that neither Y/n nor Tom could offer to the other. 

So it was terrifying, acknowledging the growth in their magnetic attraction to each other. Both were acutely aware that doing that, confronting their feelings, would most likely signal the beginning of the end. 

Although none of this stoped Y/n from returning the gesture, tilting her shoulder into Tom’s left side as they took slow steps through and then out the set building. She steered the two past the hair and makeup trailer and round into a store and extra equipment trailer. Tom tilted his head as she climbed the stairs whilst beckoning for him to follow - it didn’t seem like the most obvious choice. Rolling her eyes, Y/n explained.

“It’s where all the blankets and coats and kept for the raining scenes plusssss no one will disturb us in here.” Again Tom was not in a position to disagree, eyes drooping as his shoulders sagged to the floor. Right now he’d take anything. 

So he climbed up the stairs and shut the door behind him, just as Y/n flipped the light on. She was right, it was well equipped and with an almost mountainous supply of red blankets that normally the crew and extra would all be wrapped up in after the freezing rain scenes with all the ‘waterfall machines’ as Y/n called them. However it was also um…. It was cosy. “Oh I don’t think I realised how small it was” She chuckled lightly, since now the door was closed her back was pressed up against the far wall of cabinets and still her front was mere millimetres from Tom.

“I…I don’t mind… if-if you don’t?”

“I’m too tired to care” She giggled in response, and Tom , now with her seal of approval, immediately started ransacking the piled shelves for all their worth creating a floor carpeted in the pale red of the blankets, in an attempt to make it more cosy. Joining in, it was almost remarkable how quickly their bodies suddenly agreed to move, with the new promise of rest mere moments away. 

Once the trailer was fully drowned, Tom kicked off his costume shoes and threw his jacket off - it haphazardly landing by the doorway. Y/n copied him, leaving her stood up whilst he had the advantaged of already settling down on the floor, her standing and looking down at him.

The space between the two opposing shelving units was not close spacious enough for two people to lie down whilst keeping a respectable level of personal space. Suddenly feeling a wave of awkwardness, Y/n stayed standing, wringing her hands slightly - whilst fairly certain Tom could hear her heart running at 100 mph. 

“You er… gonna stay there or?” Tom, contrary to popular belief, wasn’t a complete idiot - he could see she was suddenly self conscious. He got it too - they’d never crossed this boundary of choosing to cuddle into each other. It had happened once of twice accidentally over there 2 years of knowing each other. Both of those times it was completely accidental, falling asleep watching a movie with a safe distance of space b between the two, only to find hours later their bodies almost completely intwined. Tom would be lying if he said that his heart didnt skip a beat when he had awoken to Y/n’s soft and gently breath fanning into his neck. He’d loved it, but understood that was unconsciously breaking down part of the wall they’d both been the constructors of.

For fear of getting hurt. 

So now, as Y/n awkwardly bent down and lay on her side, he thought it was imperative to make her feel comfortable. Naturally then, his arm slid round her shoulders and pulled her down toward his chest, releasing a little breath as he felt her relax, her legs slowly wrapping round one of his. 

“This okay?” He murmured, now into the crown of her head as she lay half on her side half on his chest. In reply she nodded into him and Tom couldn’t help but grin- unbeknownst to him but Y/n was doing the exact same thing. 

The peace lasted all of 3 seconds until she groaned again.

“What?” Tom enquired as she wriggled out his hold and stood up. Instead of replying though she just leant over and flicked the one harsh light bulb off making Tom chuckle as she fumbled her way back onto the padded floor in the darkness, earning a few grunts from both as she accidentally kicked Tom’s thighs or banged her head on one of the now empty shelves. Fumbling her way back into a comfortable position, occasionally cursing when she stubbed her toe- or Tom did when she accidentally elbowed him in the ribs. 

“Comfy?” Tom asked a little sarkily as he squeezed her a little more into his side.

“Mhmmmm… I’m gonna sleep for 100 years”

“Yeh me… me too”

And with that they both almost instantly and in complete unison sagged into each other and the blankets - the pent up stress and tension of the past few days ebbing away.

What the pair had neglected to remember was that sleeping for 100 years wasn’t really an option. The whole crew of 50 people, who wanted to restart filming after 45 minutes, had not been told about Y/n’s little hiding place. The pair were so completely safe in their own little cocoon of comfort they were completely oblivious to their teams calling there names more and more frantically. Completely oblivious to the game of hide and seek the situation had descended into, completely oblivious to Harrys natural annoyance as the director asked him for the whereabouts of the two stars - as though Harry was childminder to the pair of them.

It was Nelli who found them first. She’d and Ellie and Tom’s manager had all been recruited by Harry as part of the man hunt. Both girls, having seen first hand the state of the two this morning, were fairly certain they’d both crashed out somewhere. So Nelli, already with a sneaking suspicion, opened the door gently, her figure blocking the majority of the light from seeping through to the dimly lit inside. The sight she was met with had her actually pouting at the cuteness - and yes its a cringey word but also the only one appropriate.

Between bedding down and barely an hour later the two had managed to become impossibly tighter pressed to each other. Y/n’s face was pressed into the crook of Tom’s neck and his arms seemed to have pulled her on-top of him almost completely. Her left leg was hooked under his right, which was then sandwiched by his left too. They both looked so pure and innocent and god did Nelli know they both needed any extra time they could get.

Nelli cared a lot about Tom, she’d been working with him from the beginning, from the child star days to now. She cared about him like her very annoying surrogate son and she wanted to see him looked after. She also so completely wanted the two stars to stop pining after each other. Because frankly it was getting a little frustrating for everyone else. 

So she chose to tactically forget about her discovery, sneaking a photo on the sly before silently pulling the door closed and leaving them to their sleep. 

[drivingsideways]

k-drama rec list

Prior to 2020 I’d maybe watched 2 k-dramas in my entire life, but this year I got sucked in, thanks to some great recs, and y’know, *gestures * everything.  

I think I’d held off watching kdramas because my impression of them was limited to romances that I didn’t enjoy at all. But this was the year I discovered the equivalent of “gen fic” kdrama- dramas that had wonderful ensemble casts, strong story lines that weren’t entirely romance focused and also a variety in terms of themes and styles. A big plus was that I found so many of these dramas had women leading the writers’ room, and seeing the effect of that in the story telling. (Notable exceptions: a certain “star” writer who should please stop inflicting her badly written, formulaic crap on the world, yes Kim Eun-Sook, I mean you, and whoever wrote that trashfire Flower of Evil)

So here I am with my own rec list! Caveat- these are mostly not the dramas released in 2020, I’m still playing catch up! :)

Under the cut for length

My Mister/ My Ahjussi  (2018, Written by Park Hae-Young, Directed by Kim Won-Seok, starring Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Ji-eun aka IU) 

This was definitely my absolute favourite of the shows I watched this year across western/ asian media. It’s a story about the thread that binds us all and the ineffability of human connection. It’s also a story that deconstructs ideas of masculinity and honour and shame in a non-western context, but with an extremely compassionate touch.  It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of material and spiritual poverty; and how one can so easily feed into the other. It’s a love story that isn’t a romance, except that it’s a Romance. It’s about finding salvation in one another and in the kindness of strangers.  It’s about choosing life, and picking yourself up off the floor to take that one last step and then the next and then the next. The one quibble I have with the series is that it could have been better paced, it does get extremely slow after the half way mark. But god, do they land the ending. Both Lee Sun-kyun and IU turn in absolutely heartbreaking performances, and fair warning, be prepared to go through an entire box of tissues watching this series. 

Life  (2018,  written by Lee Soo-yeon  and directed by Hong Jong-chan, starring Lee Dong-wook, Cho Seung-woo, Won Jin-ah, Lee Kyu-hyung, Yoo Jae-myung and Moon So-ri.)

Medical dramas are very much not my thing, and I wouldn’t have taken a chance on it except that @michyeosseo said I should, and she was right! It’s a medical drama in the sense that it’s set in a hospital, but rather than a “case-fic” format, this is actually a sharp commentary on the corporatization of health care, and the business of mixing, well, money and what should be a fundamental human right. Writer Lee Soo-yeon was coming off the global success of Stranger/Secret Forest S1 when this aired, so I understand that expectations were probably sky-high, and people were disappointed when this show didn’t give them the adrenaline rush that they wanted. On the other hand, I thought that this outing was really much more nuanced in terms of the politics and also how the ending doesn’t allow you the luxury of easy-fixes. This show has a great ensemble cast, and while it took me a while to get used to Lee Dong-wook’s woodenness (i ended up calling him mr.cadaver after watching this and was surprised to learn that he’s very popular?), in the end I was quite sold on his version of angry angst-bucket elder-sibling Dr.Ye Jin-woo. His best scenes were with Lee Kyu-hyung who turns in a lovely, achy performance as the paraplegic Dr. Ye Seon-woo who just wants to live a normal life. The love story between the two brothers is actually the emotional backbone of the story, and I think they landed that perfectly. 

My one quibble with writer-nim is that she ended up writing in a forgettable and somewhat (for me at least) uncomfortable romance between the characters played by Won Jin-ah and Cho Seung-Woo. I think part of my uncomfortable-feeling was that I got the strong sense that the writer herself didn’t want to write this romance, it was as if she was being made to shoe-horn it in for Studio Reasons, and she basically grit her teeth and did the worst possible job of it.  I do wish we could have absolutely had the OT3 of my dreams: Moon So-ri/Cho Seung-woo/Yoo Jae-myung like, c’mon TV gods MAKE IT HAPPEN, just...look at them!!!! 

Anyway, that apart, I think this was a very engaging series, and by engaging, I also mean thirst-enabling, see below. 

 Stranger (aka Secret Forest  or Forest of Secrets) S1 & 2 : (2017-, Written by Lee Soo-yeon, directed by 

2017′s smash hit aired a much anticipated second season in 2020, and I managed to catch up just in time to watch that live, so that was thrilling :D . Writer Lee Soo-yeon  mixes up thriller/office comedy/political commentary in an ambitious series. I think S1 is more “exciting” than S2 in terms of the mystery and pacing,  but S2 is far more dense and interesting in terms of political commentary because it takes a long hard look at institutional corruption and in true writer-nim fashion doesn’t prescribe any easy solutions. Anyway, please enjoy public prosecutor Cho Seung-woo and police officer Bae Doona as partners/soulmates kicking ass and taking names in pursuit of Truth, Justice and just a goddamn peaceful meal, along with a stunningly competent ensemble cast. Also yes, Han Yeo Jin is a lesbian, sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Search: WWW  (2019, Written by Kwon Do-Eun, directed by Jung Ji-hyun & Kwon Young-il, starring  Im Soo-jung, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin)

GOD. Where do I start? +1000 for writer Kwon Do-Eun saying “fuck the patriarchy” in the most grandiose way possible, i.e. absolutely refusing to acknowledge that it exists. Yes, this is that power fantasy, and it’s also a fun, slice-of-life  tale about three women navigating their way through work, romance, national politics and everything in between. It’s true that I wasn’t entirely sold on the amount of time spent on the romance, and I really wish they’d actually had a textual wlw romance, though the subtext through the entire series is PRACTICALLY TEXT. But still, it maintains that veneer of plausible deniability and I think queer fans who are sick of that kind of treatment in media have a very valid grouse against the show. On the other hand, personally I felt that the queer-platonic vibe of the show is very wonderful and true to real life, and it was only reinforced by the ending. This is a show written by a woman for women (like me), and it shows. 

Hyena  (2020, Written by Kim Roo-Ri, directed by Jang Tae-yoo & Lee Chang Woo, starring  Kim Hye-soo and Ju Ji-hoon )

Those of you who’ve been watching hit zombie epic Kingdom are probably familiar with Ju Ji-hoon’s brand of sexiness already. I had not watched Kingdom and got hit in the face by Mr.Sexy McSexyPants’ turn as a brash, privileged-by-birth, up and coming lawyer who gets completely runover by the smoking hot and incredibly dangerous fellow lawyer/competitor from the other side of the tracks in the person of Kim Hye-Soo. When I say they set the room on fire, I mean it, ok. Every single scene between these two is an actual bonfire of sexual attraction and emotional hand grenades, and they’re both absolutely riveting to watch. “Flower of Evil” wishes they had what this show has- an actual grown up romance as opposed to a thirteen year old twilight fan’s idea of an adult romance. 

The “lawyer” shenanigans and the “cases” are hit or miss, and I think the occasional comedy fell flat for me. But that’s not why I mainlined like 6 episodes of this series overnight like a coke addict, and that’s not why you’re going to do it either. It’s so RARE, even in these enlightened days to find a female character like Jung Geum-ja: hard as nails, unapologetic about it, and not punished by the narrative for it. The best part for me is that she feels like a woman’s woman, not a man’s idea of what a Strong Female Character should be. Anyways, when I grow up I want to have what Kim Hye-soo has ok?

Other dramas that I watched this year, quickly rated:

The King: Eternal Monarch (3/10 and those 3 points are only for the combined goodness of second leads who deserved better- Jung Eun Chae, Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam. Please head over to my AO3 and read my attempts to fix this garbage fire and rescue their characters from canon)

Flower of Evil (-10/100, dont @ me)

Tale of the Nine Tailed (5/10, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, which is a light hearted, sweet fantasy-romance-melodrama, plus “second lead” Kim Beom will make you cry as the hot mess of a half human/ half fox spirit ALL TEARS character. I think if you’re into kdrama romances as a genre, this is probably a good bet?)

Signal  (7/10,  This was the first full kdrama I watched this year and would definitely recommend. It’s a police procedural with time travel shenanigans and has an engaging plot, good pacing, texture and compelling performances. My one disappointment with it was the way they wrote Kim Hye-soo’s character. As literally the only female character to survive in any way, she was given short shrift, and toward the end it really began to grate on me.)

Six Flying Dragons - (7/10, also would recommend if you’re interested in Korean historicals. It definitely already feels a bit dated in terms of styling and production values, and even scripting and acting choices. But it has a good balance of fantasy and history and political commentary. I was not a fan of Yoo In-Ah’s performance in this series, but it’s not anything that would make you want to nope out of the series. It’s GoT , if GoT was thoughtful about politics and characters and not the misogynist, racist trashfire that it became.)

My Country: The New Age - (3.5/10, and that’s 3 points to Jang Hyuk’s fan and 0.5.points to Woo Do Hwan’s heaving bosom. If you like your historical drama/fantasy with very pretty men, very gay subtext -seriously RIP to show makers who thought they could hetero it but didn’t account for Woo Do Hwan’s Tragic Face- lots of blood and tears and very nonsense plot, this is right up your alley. I probably would have enjoyed it more in other circumstances, I think? But this one just annoyed me too much at the time! 

I have a couple of more dramas to watch on my list, that’ll probably carry me over into 2021, so see ya on the other side! :D

[sanstropfremir]

kingdom episode 3 baby!!!!

listen. i’m not gonna lie i was nervous as hell for this episode. i saw that preview like everyone else and unfortunately i have ears so i was convinced the ateez stage was going to be a trainwreck. i was absolutely banking on sf9 and skz to do something even mildy interesting to save me from the ear damage and having to talk to extensively about why that disaster happened. but somehow i woke up in an alternate universe and you know what? with the exception of that high note the ateez stage fucked. i know. i don’t believe it either. i think i’m still in shock.

i’ll do individual breakdowns in order of favourites within the episode and then at the end i’ll put my personal ranking of all six. thank god i don’t have to do a stage breakdown again; if they change it again for next week i will scream.

ateez

a miracle happened. i don’t have to fight any of the staff at kq. i don’t understand either. jongho is so fucking lucky that the rest of the group pulled all that energy out of their asses because if they had been even a single iota less serious about it that stage would have flopped worse than a dead fish. i can’t believe we got this level of camp b movie schlock in the first full stage, and they stuck the landing. incredible.

fine i’ll address the elephant in the room. personally, i don’t think jongho is that good of a vocalist. he’s not bad, and he does have the potential to be a good vocalist, he just doesn’t have the training, and this is the issue with all of ateez. hanya talked about this before and i’ll say it again: he can’t switch to his head voice and he’s destroying his vocal cords by attempting to hit notes in his mid range that he should just jump to head voice for. frankly i’m surprised he got anywhere close to that note in his mid, but his technique is just not there and he’s gonna do some real damage to his voice if he doesn’t take a break and also get a good vocal coach. you can already hear the degradation in sound from their debut stage to now, and that’s in less than three years. ok i’m done talking about vocals that’s hanya’s turf, i’m pretending that that high note doesn’t exist and we’re moving on. also im in love with btob’s reaction it was fucking priceless.

costume

look, i have a one track brain and that brain can only think about seonghwa corset. seonghwa corset? seonghwa corset.

i know it’s not a real corset nor is it properly laced and i know this would never happen in a million years but a kpop mr pearl trend? i would die. just fully expire. there’s no coming back from that for me

yes i have laced boys into proper corsets before and yes it is as hot as you think it is (when it’s not work related, obviously)

ok now that i’ve got that out of my system for the moment, the costumes are actually pretty good. i’m a little obsessed with hongjoong’s coat although I know it’s stupid. fur? always, I love it, you’ll never change my mind it makes everything better. i own a lot of it and i wear it all the time. this is also a pretty good example of how to do a more modern styling within a very specific and recognizable genre.

i don’t hate the backup dancers’ costumes either, even though they would look a lot better in a not-pirate themed hiphop stage. because there is already a modern tint with the boys’ costumes, it’s not that much of a leap to the dancers, and they actually use the dancers and the camera really strategically to not put much focus on them.

the only real standout issue is the blacklight/contortionist moment, which is too gimmicky for me and doesn’t fit the rest of the theme. i do understand the purpose of them: you need a transition point from the upper deck to the more fantastical inner ship area, and blacklight paint is a really easy, cheap, and fast way to get four new costumes instantly. do i think they could have done something better though? yes.

set

this was actually a smart reuse of that pirate ship set. i know i clowned on them in the first stage that they could move on from the pirate gimmick but honestly? i’m glad they didn’t. this was fun as fuck. but also two stages was enough you can move on now.

i love how they actually used the weird double stage function that the false prosc creates for an actual architectural and narrative effect, instead of just sort of operating as though it’s just another place to travel just because you can. we are on the deck of the ship, and then we go inside the ship. it’s simple and effective. you don’t need to do a crazy amount of crossover to establish a dynamic sense of place.

i hate the ateez kingdom logo. i hate the ateez logo in general. get it out of there, at least you could have made something more fun and pirate themed.

would have loved to have seen them return to the hourglass at the end, especially if they got one that was specifically set for 4 minutes. would have been a nice bit of symmetry but i suspect it was struck before the kraken bit.

the kraken bit??? i was not at all expecting that and honestly? dope as hell. that big tentacle is just a custom inflatable santa claus that you see around christmastime and what a brilliant use of such a simple mechanic, especially to have it come through that weird little triangle arch they have upstage. smart way to use the existing architecture.

yes it is a gimmick but here’s why it works rather than just looks tacky like every other gimmick we’ve seen so far: it had a function within the narrative. this is so important. show us there’s a reason it’s there!

lighting

i didn’t love it but they did actually make some smart choices. the outer deck is warmer toned and has some good atmospheric effects, and the inner deck is cold tone and specifically lit with pin lights to imitate the light coming through portholes in an actual ship, which is so smart thank you lighting designer

also a very clear arc with the lighting, blue -> orange -> blue/red -> orange/multiple -> blue

sound

i actually kinda liked this remix? it fit theme and had a very clear dramatic arc. also i like wonderland, so sue me.

staging

WE DID IT, WE FINALLY GOT A CLEAR NARRATIVE FROM AT LEAST ONE GROUP! wonderland was actually a great choice for them because it’s a really good indicator of exactly how hungry they are. i was a bit worried that it would fall flat because it kinda rides on mingi but they actually pulled it off. i have literally no idea where they pulled all that energy from but holy shit you can practically lick the attitude off the screen. i’m also very impressed by the amount of information they managed to fit into that four minute narrative. we had a full conflict/climax/resolution, as well as a really clear understanding of the tenacity and drive of the group, as well as the desire to support one another in achieving their goals. bravo.

ok so like i said in the set section, they used that pirate ship bridge really effectively to create two different but connected spaces. this is a really smart way to make it seem like you have two spaces while having to only build one set. it was also one of the best ways to utilize this dumbass stage so it doesn’t just look like you’re running arbitrarily from area to area because you can.

also levels! levels are so important for staging but also hard to do in this context because you have to be able to move really quickly in and out of full group formation, but I think they did a really good job here.

continued point: the kraken arm worked because it was the conflict they needed to overcome in the narrative, so it had a function within the performance. also related: all the tricking and jumping also served a purpose within the narrative too. it was either used for fighting (yeosang kicking all those dancers on beat) or a demonstration of teamwork (jongho flinging yunho around on the floor). also frankly excellent use of choreographic formation with the backup dancers, each formation had a specific function and was meant to highlight ateez without being overbearing.

not a whole lot of camera choreo, but a fairly good long take at the beginning and the editing wasn’t too obnoxious which I think was more chance than intent, but i’m not gonna look a gift kraken in the beak.

sf9

i actually really liked this stage, and i really like that sf9 has established their colour as effortlessly elegant, which does set them apart from the rest of the groups. this stage was really choreographically complex and they made it seem so easy, so real props to them. however, like with ikon’s stage, there were a lot of good ideas that just weren’t followed through enough for me.

like ateez, song choice and theme were very well intertwined with this one, there was a lot of thought put into this stage. the pun with ‘jealous’ and ‘jilleosseo’ and having a fairytale/magic mirror narrative? fuckin GALAXY BRAINED. incredible. the implication that not only taeyang but the entire group is the evil queen from snow white? chef’s kiss. should have committed harder and put one of them in massive cloak à la king taemin mama 2020. instead it was subtle enough to not try to step on ateez’s schlocky camp toes but still just as serious and i love that. do i wish they pushed it farther though? also yes.

costume

not gonna lie, i had my reservations on the costumes when we saw the previews of them in the waiting room, but the thing about stage costumes is that they always look bad when not on stage. if they look good in the waiting room you’ve done something wrong. and i loved them on stage. big fan of that quilted vest/pseudo stomacher. please can we have a corset trend? y’all already adopted bondage harnesses, c’mon a little corset won’t hurt. also a good example of a modern spin on a recognizable genre.

i wish the backup dancers weren’t in all black but i am fighting single person battle against the entire entertainment industry on that one.

set

extremely simple with a few smart utilizations. had a feeling this might have been a budget thing, as it had a similar kind of vibe with ikon’s stage, but the use of the mirrors was smart and a fun device that served the purpose of the narrative.

working with mirrors on stage is really fucking hard, so kudos to them for giving it a go. for the most part it was pretty effective. especially with the combo of moving mirrors and moving lights AND moving camera, you’re kind of asking to either blind your audience or at least give them a headache. i once saw a production of the magic flute that had a rotating mirror setpiece and i swear i nearly went blind due to the constantly flashing reflections. you have to really be careful with directionality and reflection, especially with the added element of a camera. also you never use real glass mirrors on stage, it is unbelievably bad luck and theatre people are the most superstitious demographic on the fucking planet.

i kinda loved the draped gold dais. i have nothing else to say about it other than fun!

lighting

a lot of this was very weirdly lit and i’m not sure why. the quality on youtube is terrible and cameras already have trouble picking up detail in low light, and throwing a whole bunch of primary red over that (the colour with the longest wavelength and therefore disappears the easiest in the dark. also human eyes are not very good at distinguishing variations in the red spectrum) and the red costumes made it extremely difficult to tell what was happening.

i will give them props for dramatic lighting usage, especially for the two way mirror trick and for using the floor as a primary lighting source at the end, which i think groups should be using more of. how often do you have a lighting source in your floor!!! almost never!! use that opportunity!!

sound

i actually enjoyed this remix too. it was well suited to the dramatic nature of the stage. i think the sound byte at the beginning is ‘mirror mirror on the wall who’s the worthiest of them all’ but it also could be ‘who’s the worst of them all’ and that would be also fitting and kinda funny.

staging

again, not a lot of consideration for camera choreo in a meaningful way, and like the tbz stage I think the clarity in the actual choreo got hampered by the editing. because there was a lot of choreographic precision that went into making this work and it wasn’t totally obvious from the way mnet edited it.

a lot of them are actors so it works that they’re leaning more towards dramatic stages rather than the sort of performance type stages we’ve seen so far. i like this choice for them as it gives them a very obvious colour but they’re almost on the verge of making it look too easy, which does them some injustice.

next to ateez, using that long uninterrupted traverse was my favourite use of this stage. doubles as an easy way to build the atmosphere of a palace corridor/throne room with the rug, and to feed the drama of the piece.

skz

ok i have some…..things to say about this stage. so far i have not been kind to skz which makes me look like i hate them and i don’t, i promise. there were a lot of really interesting things happening in this stage and there some really successful ones, and i liked this a whole lot better than their intro stage, but their overall choreo and thematic dedication is really killing me. i’ll explain.

costume

I don’t hate them but also…….why? I got the good self vs evil self/internal struggle theme but the costumes don’t really have anything interesting to say about that. as far as modern style costuming goes i think they’re on the more interesting end, but they don’t push it far enough. there’s a few western art history visual motifs and honestly? they should have gone whole hog and whited out their faces/hair and made them look like classical sculptures. that would have been hella fun, especially with that little statue and marionette sequence, plus the shadow/leash manipulation.

this time it was actually intentional that the backup dancers were in blacks and i appreciate that.

why on EARTH did they have that ridiculous makeup that didn’t read on stage? theatre makeup and tv makeup are different, you can’t just do a light purple eyeshadow and expect to read under blue and red light. someone needs to bring an actual theatre makeup artist in and get these boys in some real crazy looks. see previous point about full-face white pancake. more extreme makeup please and thank you!

set

i liked the use of internal architecture within this massive weird stage space and they used the corridors quite well. i didn’t really like the mix of baroque scrolling and also graffiti, it wasn’t quite connected for me. this has been a common theme among this round and i think it comes from budget/props pulls rather than anything else.

also there was a distinct feeling of trying to fill the main stage space with bodies as opposed to atmosphere. this can work in some specific cases but the intent wasn’t strong enough for me. it just felt like a lot of people on stage, especially in the end choreo.

lighting

the general lighting was fine but not particularly inspired. the low light in the beginning was actually quite well done, especially combined with the fog, but in my opinion was not dramatic enough. you have a pseudo art history theme happening, pump that contrast and push the chiaroscuro!

ok stay with me, i’m gonna say something extremely controversial that might actually get me cancelled. s*per j*unior’s burn the floor did everything this stage was trying to do on a smaller scale and better. look i know ok, this is a like, a double atom bomb hot take. just forget everything you know about them and watch the performance video. tell me that’s not some of the most interesting choreo you’ve seen in kpop. if you’re going to work with practical light you need to COMMIT. not just steal the solar lanterns out of my mom’s back garden.

i have a lot of opinions on using practical light and alternate light sources in performance because it’s a huge part of my practice and this just....wasn’t interesting enough for me. push it further!

(I will wait for the subs on the full episode because there has to be a reason they chose that specific shape of lamp. if not i gotta ask jyp why he’s raiding my mom’s garden)

sound

god’s menu has such specific imagery associated within the lyrics and choreography that this stage was a bit dissonant for me. especially when seen in conjunction with two stages where the narrative was tied explicitly to the lyrics of the songs. i think maybe if it hadn’t been grouped with these other two stages i would have felt differently. the other groups chose to do songs were a little more abstract and allowed for more visual experimentation, but to go so blatantly against the food metaphor didn’t really work for me and i had a tough time divorcing the association. I found the arrangement to be a little lacking in energy for me towards the end but otherwise it was pretty interesting.

staging

Definitely a better performance overall that the intro stage. almost all of the gimmicks this time had relevance to the theme which i appreciated. the marionette bit and the shadow/mirror were probably the most interesting but i wish they were better lit.

 there was a lot of back and forth in the blocking that made the stage feel repetitive and also aimless? like there wasn’t a very clearly established directionality within the internal space, so it felt like treading over the same ground for no purposeful reason. and again, not a lot of intentional camerawork.

i really liked having the dancers under the big sheet, it fit well enough within the ‘war between internal selves’ theme, but also had a loose tie to the art imagery. again, i really wish they had stuck to a clearer visual theme. it makes them stick out especially in this grouping of stages, but also across all the groups as whole because almost everyone had a clear(ish) visual idea.

holy shit that’s a lot of backup dancers. i don’t really feel like that many were necessary and the sheer number of them took away from the emphasis of the group. with all of the other stages (except for tbz) it was very clear who the centre of attention and emphasis was, and with both skz and tbz they got swallowed by the sheer scale they were trying to operate at. bigger is not always better.

---

this is a tough round to rank because none of these stages are bad, there’s just some that are, in my opinion, more successful than others. all of these stages do very well in specific elements but fall short in others which also makes this ranking difficult. i’m evaluating these based on whether they were successful to me, as i’m pretty sure this ranking will probably not all be popular opinion, but whatever i like to live on the edge.

btob – visuals, vocals, narrative, swords? what more do you want me to say? also i watched the full episode and minhyuk did rehearsal with a real bokken and i think i am in love with him now.

ateez – honestly not sure if i would have ranked this first if that high note hadn’t been a mess. i love camp nonsense and i genuinely think this was a well designed stage. i can’t believe i keep saying that but it’s true.

sf9 – this stage was really solid, just could have been pushed farther. i think it has a really good sense of drama and it’s a pity that sf9’s colour is more subdued, because i think they’re going to be stuck around the 3rd/4th position for the rest of the show.

ikon – ikon is only ranking this high because although i am disappointed in the wasted potential of this stage, they NAILED the camerawork and actually brought in someone to block the steadicam into the choreo. also they’re incredible performers. i say this every time, but their stage presence, although maybe lower energy that they normally would be, is still not to be fucked with.

skz – i think this one is the most ‘meh’ for me. while i liked a lot of the elements here they just didn’t push it far enough and the lack of narrative and general aimless choreo led to me not having any strong feelings yea or nay.

tbz – to be quite honest the lack of costume unity is a big hit for me. all elements of design are equally as important but because of my personal practice and experience i tend to put a lot of weight on good costume and spatial design. i don’t actually like game of thrones also, so I feel mildly offended on behalf of michele clapton, who had did a fucking incredible job and doesn’t deserve to be slandered like this. also the lack of cohesive choreography and the overblown lighting made this difficult to watch, no matter how good i thought the rear projection/stretch fabric dance was.

 any questions or opinions you wanna share hit me up! see you next week!

[wastelandcrown]

logan lark’s adventures in trying to appease his parents

CHAPTER 6: don’t lose ur head (the terrifying tales of the grimm monarchy)

Summary: Logan Lark is a fairly average high school student. By all means, he should be impressing his parents on all grounds. Except...he doesn’t exactly have a social life. So after his parents give him puppy dog eyes, he decides to join the local theatre's youth production. Good grief...His life is about to get weird isn’t it?

Warnings: Potential ooc behavior, Roman is a teenager who makes bad choices EXTREME edition, Remus being Remus, Intrusive Thoughts, Minor Bad Parenting, so much swearing it’s insane (If I miss something please tell me!)

Notes: This fic is based off an idea from @under-the-blue-moonlight. If you wanna be tagged in chapters, please ask!! I love this freaking chapter SO much but I’m really scared of how it’s going to be received. All feedback is extremely welcome!! 

Pairings: Intrulogical, Eventual Rociet, One-Sided Logicality, Platonic DRLAMP

Tagslist: @under-the-blue-moonlight @why-should-i-tell-youu2 @im-actually-ok @hauntedturkeycalzonedreamer @croftersjam15 @rainbowsixth @snaketho @wasinotwantedatthisexactsecond @a-soul-among-the-stars @sweet-razz-tea @the-cactus-lord

Over the course of the next month Logan learns that despite their reputations, Roman and Remus are the opposite of what everyone thinks of them.

Logan is the smartest person he knows, there is no way in hell he’d ever miss Roman’s multiple attempts to sabotage his role as Hamilton. Smart, and yet so oblivious. Each time Roman had tried to mess with Logan after he began cultivating a friendship with Remus he was miraculously saved from the torment at the last second. Remus is a hundred percent certain that Logan has no idea that he’s fighting off his brother at each and every turn. He’s not certain of much, so it’s saying a lot. There is a beautiful dichotomy in Logan’s logs of the events and the stories Remus tells about his brother’s scourge against his brand new ‘enemy’. On a page labeled ‘Roman Incidents’ in Logan’s succinct handwriting documents every incident through the month when Roman attempted to sabotage him.

July 20th - Roman tripped near my things in the drama room while holding coffee. When I went to check on my things, someone had removed the contents of my bag and filled it with around six pounds of glitter. If this happens again, throw the bag away. Glitter makes anything unsalvageable. You will keep finding it everywhere. 

Remus knew Roman had been planning something. Of course he did. Though they didn’t share a room anymore, sneaking into it had never been exceptionally hard. Neither had eavesdropping, when it counted. It counted now more than ever because Remus had become unreasonably attached to Logan and when he heard Roman talking to himself and mentioning the name of his favourite little nerd badly he knew it was now or never. It took two excruciating hours of sitting still and listening to get the juicy stuff. He almost got caught by their mother twice. She’d only been home for three days and she’d checked on Roman twice in one night. If Remus told her about the amount of effort he was putting into something she might keel over dead from shock. 

What a funny sight that would be to him. His mother, dead from the shock of his hard work to do something good, thumping onto the floor. He laughs a little, quiet enough to keep Roman from hearing. His brain supplies the rational next step of Roman running out of his room and distraughtly cradling their mother’s head in his lap. Roman sobbing. Roman blaming him. Roman screaming about how it was his fault. And it would be, if she died like that. Remus doesn’t think it’s all that funny anymore, but once the train of thought starts it can’t be stopped. He decides that eavesdropping isn’t fun anymore and makes his way to the kitchen, trying to shake the idea of his brother cursing him out for killing their mother out of his mind. 

It doesn’t really work, but he tries anyway. The kitchen is full of distractions, good and bad. The knives in the block look so enticing to his self-proclaimed ‘shitty-dick-wad brain’, but the cookies he nabs from the cupboard are so easy to shove into his mouth that he figures it evens out. He sits at the kitchen island and doesn’t even bother to turn on the light. It takes six cookies in his mouth at once before he can direct his thoughts somewhere else momentarily. How in the hell is he going to combat Roman’s plan? He spits all the cookies onto the counter as his brother walks in, flicks on the light, and sighs deeply.

“You could at least do that onto a plate.”

Remus just shrugs, so Roman speaks again, “How’s your evening been?”

“Before like...five minutes ago I was really liking it.” Which was true, Roman slides into the seat next to him and picks a cookie from the box.

“What changed?”

“Shitty brain,” He replies, “Y’know how it gets.”

“I do indeed. Do you need anything?” His voice is surprisingly soft with him, to the point where Remus has to give him a confused look before deciding what to say next. He figures out how to fuck with Roman’s plan in that moment.

“I wanna go to Party City and terrorize the night staff.” 

Roman only chuckles, Remus watches his twin put away the cookies and grab his car keys from the bowl on the counter. 

“Come on then, we can buy some of those plastic babies you like so much.”

As Remus is falling asleep later that night, his chest feels warm. He attributes it to the upcoming scheme-ruining scheming. It’s easier than admitting that that was the first time Roman had willingly hung out with him alone since elementary school. He knows the next morning that Roman is most likely buttering up because he suspects Remus knows. Which is...fair. Even if it hurts a little. They get coffee on the way to the theatre and separate. They both have important things to do. The best part about their somewhat rocky-relationship is that they always know where the other is in order to avoid each other. Remus knows that Roman has gone to see Janus and probably make heart eyes and pine over him like a dumbass. Roman knows that Remus is off drooling over his arch nemesis. Today it is more imperative than ever. During practice Remus manages to steal Logan’s backpack while he’s busy. 

He swaps the contents out with the six pounds of glitter he bought the night before and shoves Logan’s things into his bag for safe keeping. Nobody would dare look into Remus’ bag for fear of gore or weird pornography, even if he only has one in his bag at the moment. He’s shoving a small notebook in when he catches a title. “Hamilton Performance Experiment”. It takes literally all of his self-control not to immediately snoop. He makes it through, eventually meeting up with Logan and even carrying his bag to ‘be nice’ so Logan doesn’t pick up on the bag glitter. When Roman walks by with his coffee and “trips”, spilling his coffee all over Logan’s bag, Remus smiles. 

“Oh! Logan I’m so sorry! What a terrible accident!” Roman cries, ever the actor. 

Logan looks downright frantic as he lunges for his bag and rips it open. Glitter goes everywhere. Logan’s hair, Roman’s shoes, the entire dressing room floor. The look of distress fades from Logan’s face momentarily, returning full force when he realizes his things are missing. 

Remus pulls them out of his bag in secret, walking to the corner of the room, walking back and exclaiming, “What a good prank Roman! You must be taking some tricks from my book!”

When he hands the things back to Logan, Logan smiles. He decides not to ask about the notebook. 

July 27th - One of the props from the prop room was moved in with my things. I suspect Roman because of the look on his face when Remus took the fall for me. 

Just because he didn’t ask about the notebook does not mean it left his memory. By the time he gets in the car alone with his brother he realizes that Roman is pissed off at him.

“Couldn’t you have left it alone? How did you even find out!?” 

“I have my ways. Now shut up about it before I tell mom about that time in 8th grade-”

“Okay! Okay! I’m shutting up!” 

And he did. However that included no longer voicing his plans out loud. Which meant Remus had to get creative. He was very very good at getting creative. 

Dinner with their mother was much more quiet that week. Both twins brooding and not speaking with each other, their mother only prompting Roman to talk. It was too familiar in the worst possible ways. Remus despised his mother, but he knew how much his brother loved her. She was...well she was beautiful, intelligent, a very influential fashion designer, extremely supportive. Roman would go on about how perfect she was for hours. Sure, Remus could concede that their mother was beautiful, intelligent, and a very influential fashion designer, but whenever Roman talks about her he never says she’s at all a good mother. Especially not to him. He watches her laugh breathily at one of Roman’s shitty anecdotes from practice and decides he’s had enough of family dinner. He gets up and dutifully cleans his plate and places it in the dishwasher. The chef gives him a smile, and he smiles back. 

“Remus, dear,” His mother begins in her shrill voice, “If you’re not going to eat with us, at least go and shower. Your smell is unbecoming.”

Then she turns back to her food like she didn’t just attempt to insult him. Jokes on her, it takes a lot more than that to hurt his feelings. He still ends up forcing himself into the shower for thirty-five minutes that night.

The rest of the week he’s more tired than usual, which the others notice. He makes an effort to not be, he really does. When his mom is in town, everything just sucks. He hangs out with Janus three times and Virgil once to get out of the house and away from his family. The other nights he spends sitting outside the convenience store with a monster or two. He ends up calling Logan one of those nights out of need for company. Logan chuckles when Remus makes up a silly reason for calling that he can’t even remember now, but he can remember Logan’s laugh. He listens to Logan talk about the book series he’s been reading and he feels a little lighter. He never ends up finding out what Roman has planned, but it’s so easy when it’s happening right in front of him. Despite his lethargy lately, he feels a fire lit in him when the missing prop is found with Logan’s bag. 

Virgil and Janus are the only two teenagers with keys to the prop room. If Logan stole the missing prop, he would have had to steal the key. No one but the twins even knew Janus had a key, and Virgil was dead set on not letting a soul into the prop room. The idea that Logan, precious little innocent fucking lamb Logan, committed theft not once but twice enrages Remus. When they find it with his things, Logan is utterly baffled. Then he realizes the implications and his face pales. Roman calls for Thomas, spouting off about how Logan stole the prop and he should face consequences, when Remus laughs as loudly as he can. 

“Hah! You guys are so funny! You think specs could ever!? Guess my prank worked out pretty damn good if you actually think Mr.Goody-Two-Shoes could commit such a heinous fucking crime!” 

Thomas sighs, tells Remus to just ask next time, and leaves. Roman stares at his brother for a solid minute with his mouth slightly ajar. Janus and Virgil are both looking at him like he’s insane because it’s so obvious to them that Roman did it. Patton is looking not at him, but at Logan, with so much concern. And Logan...Logan stares up at Remus with the look of a small and confused animal.

“Did you really do that?”

“Of course I did! I’m the resident rat bastard, I have to cause a little recreational chaos.”

He’s pretty sure Logan believes him until they’re leaving for the day and Logan whispers a ‘Thank you’ to him as he walks by. He would have melted into the floor if Janus hadn’t put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him down to whisper to him.

“Why the hell did you let Roman get away with that?” Virgil is on his other side now with a scowl.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about JJ! I committed a very heinous crime!”

“Then why did Roman ask to borrow Janus’ key earlier?” Virgil asks, and Remus drops his smile to replace it with an annoyed look. 

“He just fucking asked for it!? I can’t even believe I’m related to that half-witted twit.”

“Yeah,” Virgil scoffs, “Not really the sharpest sword in the armoury, is he?”

“Please, we’ve known that for years. What I’d like to know is what are we going to do about it?” This quieted Remus, but made Virgil smirk a little. 

Janus continued, “After the backpack incident, and now the stealing incident, I’m half-convinced we have a brand new chaos demon in the group.”

“At least Remus’ chaos is fun sometimes,” Virgil mutters, “Roman’s just an ass.”

Remus gets away with being quiet as they talk until they get into Janus’ beat up old van. He doesn’t call shotgun, doesn’t slap the car's ‘ass’ as a joke, he just climbs into the back and sits there. He’s so quiet that Janus and Virgil are a little shell shocked. 

“Remus?” Virgil asks quietly and pensively, it sounds just like that soft tone Roman used with him last week. 

He’s quiet, Janus starts the car and clicks his tongue, “I’m going to shove Roman down a flight of stairs.”

“Don’t.” He manages, and the boys in the front seats go quiet. Virgil passes him the aux cord. 

He plays “Call Them Brothers” by Regina Spektor and Janus and Virgil know that tonight will be a very quiet outing. 

They’re sitting at IHOP drawing dicks on their pancakes in syrup when Remus’ phone rings. Janus and Virgil know who’s calling the second Remus sees the caller ID and smiles. 

“Evening Logie-Bear, why do I get the pleasure of hearing your devilishly sexy voice in this IHOP tonight?” Remus says and Janus groans loudly.

“You’re at IHOP?” Is the first thing Logan says, which makes Remus smile even brighter.

“Yes, sir! I’m with Virge and Janny too, you wanna say hi?” 

Logan sounds a bit contemplative when he mutters, “I was hoping you’d be alone...”

Eavesdropping Janus and Virgil make surprised faces, Remus smacks Janus in the arm, “Oh you were, were you? Why? Phone sex?”

“I wanted to ask for an opinion on a predicament.” Virgil smirks and Janus nabs his phone to speak for Remus.

“Remus would love to-Remus let me talk-You should come have some pancakes with us-Ow, watch the face!-and tell us all about how your science is going.” Janus can hear Logan hiding his laughter through the phone as Remus wrestles with him in the booth. 

“It’s more of a philosophical predicament.”

Janus nearly sees red, eyes widening and making Remus cackle,“Why in the world would you ask Remus Grimm about phi-”

It’s silent for a few moments then Logan hears a familiar voice. “It’s Virgil, we’re at the IHOP on 81st and Green.”

Logan laughs brightly, “I’ll be there. Order something for me.”

They spend the evening with breakfast for dinner, and the four get into a fairly heated friendly debate about moral ethics. Janus isn’t sure he’s ever had more fun in his life. When he’s driving away from Virgil to drop Remus off at home, he can’t help but smile at Remus’ improved demeanor. 

“Remus,” He starts after they’re alone, “I thought you and Roman were doing better, did something happen?”

“He tried to sabotage Logan twice for entirely selfish reasons, I wouldn’t care if he dies!” Remus dramatically cries.

“You and I both know that’s not true.”

They’re quiet the rest of the ride, and Janus gets out to give Remus a hug before he goes in. Remus ignores Roman’s questions about his whereabouts and locks himself in his room to try and keep his mood up. It doesn’t work, but he tries. He does. 

August 3rd - Roman gave me a “peace offering” in the form of lunch. I am led to believe he was attempting to give me food poisoning, as Remus ate the lunch and has now come down with food poisoning.

His mother leaves for her office in Paris on August 1st. Roman cries and hugs her, says he’ll miss her, goes on and on about how it’s so terrible how she’s never home. He does this every time their mother and father leave, he has since they were young. Remus couldn’t give less of a shit. His plan now was finding out what Roman’s next move was. Which was hard because they were back to avoiding each other like the plague. They’d spent a few months getting better at being brothers, then one of their parents shows up and ruins it. This time it was great, Remus would never admit it, but it was. Roman made an effort when their parents weren’t around, a few months ago he started doing things like making dinner for them both and bringing it to him, offering to do a load of laundry for him while he was doing it, being mindful of his volume when practicing his singing and acting, all these little things. 

He’d even started initiating physical contact again, which Remus couldn’t get enough of. Literally. An occasional pat on the back, a grab of his hand to pull him somewhere, a light slap to his knee or arm when he said something distasteful. Giving physical affection to Remus was something that seemed to be unique to Roman. It had always been like that when they were younger, and Remus didn’t think he wanted it to stop. Any time he thinks about it he always drifts back to his head against Roman’s knee a few weeks ago when Roman had carded a hand through his hair and then a few minutes later practically tackled him to douse him in perfume The shit smelled awful, but afterwards Roman had slung an arm over his shoulder and gave him a squeeze. That and the closeness with Logan kept him buzzing for the next two days. 

Now there was nothing again. It was like Roman could turn off his affection for Remus and pretend he didn’t exist. Remus tried not to be angry about it, he really did, but he couldn’t stop the fire that he felt when the other people on stage got his praises and affection. Both of them were incredibly clingy, but Roman was so much worse at hiding it and it made Remus nearly scream. He piled all of his affectionate behavior onto Logan, and Logan never really minded. He’d place his head on Logan’s shoulder, hold his hand on stage, sit pressed up against him offstage. He loved it, he did. He loved protecting Logan, talking to Logan, existing in the same space as the dork was exhilarating. He hated having to protect Logan from his brother. There was no way in hell that Remus would let anything terrible happen to Logan, but there was no way he would ever let his brother’s stupid selfish decisions fall back on him. He knows he shouldn’t give a single shit, but he does. 

His tiredness fades with his mother, but he’s still exhausted because Roman keeps trying to fuck with Logan when he knows damn well Remus won’t let him. The selfish ass. This time, Roman has the gall to pull his entire scheme in front of Remus. 

“Logan,” He starts, his affected air is slightly dim today and his hands are hidden, “To apologize for my unkind actions, I have brought a peace offering.” 

Roman hands Logan a little bag from a restaurant Remus swears he recognizes. 

“Oh, thank you.” Logan says quietly, opening the bag and pulling out a wrapped burger. 

Logan takes it out and inspects it as Remus wracks his brain trying to remember where he knows the packaging. It hits him right before Logan takes a bite. This burger is from the restaurant that gave Roman food poisoning a few months ago. It looks like the same burger too. At this point, Remus is half-convinced Roman is taunting him. He’s in a bit of a panic and doesn’t think before he snatches the burger and shoves it in his mouth.

“Remus!” Both call out, the wrapper is still on the end of the burger so he pulls it out then chews and swallows the thing whole. 

He coughs and sputters for almost two minutes after, then shoots Roman an awful glare. 

“What just happened?” Logan asks, extremely puzzled. 

Roman is gawking at Remus again, “Why did you eat that!?” 

“Fuck you that’s why, you horsefucking shiteating egomaniac bastard.”

Roman walks off in a huff, Remus lays on the floor. 

“Are you alright?” Logan questions, handing him a water bottle.

Maneuvering onto his side, Remus takes a sip and his throat feels miles better, “I just straight up ate a burger whole like a fucking snake, how do you think I am dipshit?”

“Hm,” He pauses to think, “Bad.” 

Both boys laugh, and Logan joins Remus on the ground.

“I am beginning to believe your brother has a vendetta against me.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Logan pauses, looking at Remus who is still occasionally wheezing.

“Are you alright...emotionally?” Remus wheezes and laughs at the same time, sounding something similar to a goose. 

“‘Thought you didn’t know much about those, poindexter.”

“I do not. However, as your friend I feel like it’s important to ask.”

Remus just sighs, closes his eyes, and blows a raspberry at the ceiling.

“Me and Roman are complicated.”

“I can tell.” Remus laughs, Logan really is something else. 

It’s quiet when Remus asks, “Do you hate him?”

“No,” Logan’s response is measured and confident like he’s asked himself this question a hundred times, “I don’t hate him. I think he’s got some things to work out, and is taking out his frustration on me as of late.”

He keeps talking, Remus covers his closed eyes with his arm, “More importantly, do you hate him?”

He almost rockets to his feet when Logan says curiously, “Or, more interestingly, do you love him?”

It takes him nearly two and a half minutes sat up and sipping water, watching Logan pack his things, to muster up the will to tell the truth. 

“Of course I love him. Nobody else is gonna fucking do it.” 

He could barely comprehend Logan’s response to his admission so he shoved it out of his mind with all the force he could muster, then waved a goodbye to him when he parted and left Remus with his mind. 

He ends up going home early because his awful decision ended up actually giving him food poisoning. He takes a sick day the next day, and spends most of the time feeling like shit physically and emotionally. His brain has kept tabs on all the shitty feelings and thoughts he’s had and is now playing out a full length shitty horror movie about his life and his dumb brother and his shitty summer crush. Then there’s that conversation with Logan. The last sentence is running through him over and over again. He keeps coming back to it, though he’s sure Logan didn’t even mean anything by it. Seventeen words and his world was sent spinning. 

“Ah, I understand, it’s hard to love somebody when they don’t act like they love you back.” 

Logan doesn’t even know the half of it. 

August 20th - Roman asked me directly to leave the production. Though I admire the effort, all it achieved was a quite awful night, and an angry lecture(?) of sorts from Janus. I do not believe Roman will be trying this tactic ever again.

Roman tries to apologize multiple times, but something angry and petty in Remus doesn’t accept any of them. They’re both getting more and more frustrated by the minute. By the time the thirteenth of August rolls around they aren’t on speaking terms again and everyone can tell that it’s taking its toll on them both. Remus acts out more than usual against people he doesn’t usually target. He scared an ensemble girl one too many times, to the point where she ended up slapping him. He deserved it, but it still stung. Roman poured himself into his role more than ever, but it only ended up stressing him out even more than usual. When his voice so much as wavered on stage it shattered his confidence. 

It affected their friends as well. Roman spent more time with Patton and Emile, avoiding Remus and Janus as much as he could possibly manage. Janus rolled his eyes but just resigned himself to the tech booth with Virgil, Remus, and Logan. The only good thing that was happening lately was Janus’ newfound attachment to Logan. The pair's insane intelligence and love of debate meant one was nearly guaranteed every other time they were in the same room. It was exhilarating to watch, and probably exhilarating to take part in. Remus didn’t much care for debates, but watching Janus and Logan go at each other with an occasional snarky comment or new suggestion from Virgil was making him grow a fondness for them. At this point there was barely anybody in the theatre who didn’t adore Logan.

The staff, the cast, the tech. Everyone adored him. He was smart, diligent, and hard-working. He asked questions, didn’t undermine others, and respected the entire cast's talent at what they did. It was magical to watch everyone in the auditorium drift under Logan’s thumb. Remus was included. They were saving Say No To This until near last because of the lack of dancing involved, but it didn’t even matter. Say No To This was not needed in Remus’ seduction plan because Logan seemed to gravitate towards him with ease. He is a damn good friend and Remus is determined to make that boy his bride. 

Despite his growing lack of sleep and reliance on caffeine, Remus is skating by just fine without anything bad happening. Until his brother decides to fuck with his life again. He’s on the thin line between being shitty in secret and full-on breakdown, Roman really isn’t helping his case. Remus is lounging on the floor while Logan reads in a chair next to the makeup mirrors. He hears someone enter, but isn’t bothered enough to move. 

Ever the polite, Logan greets the newcomer “Ah, Hello Roman, how are you?”

“I need to ask you something.” His brother asks, and Remus turns his head away from the noise. 

“Alright, what is it?” Logan sounds so measured and calm.

There is a long pause, “What is it going to take for you to realize you should quit?”

The calmness in Logan’s voice wavers, and Remus can hear it wobble, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me! I mean, it’s obvious I've been trying to get you to leave, so what’s been keeping you!?” Roman raises his voice near instantly, that same childish selfishness burns from his tongue. 

“It is none of your business.” There’s a dignified fire raging under his voice now, it’s like he’s been practicing for this. 

“You’re not even a good actor! From what I can tell, you’re entirely uninteresting and way too intellectual to be here!” Roman continues, Remus feels the urge to get up but he can’t find the will to move. 

“Roman, please think before you say something you regret.” Remus knows what Roman is going to say before it happens.

“No!” His brother is so typical, “You have no idea what this role means to me, why can’t you just leave!?”

That’s typical too, Remus opens his eyes and looks at the pair. Logan looks pissed off, Roman looks pissed off, and Janus is watching from the doorway. 

“I try very hard to give you the benefit of the doubt in regards to your debilitating egomania, but it is beginning to appear as if your whole sense of stability and purpose is built upon some false reality where you need to be the star at every possible moment. Go to therapy about it, and leave me alone.” Logan spits this in Roman’s face, then turns back to his book. 

Clenching his fists and staring at the ground, Roman looks almost defeated until he catches Remus staring and his face morphs into something so bitter he has to force himself to look away. 

“No. I will not leave you alone until I get this part. None of you have any idea how much I need it.” 

“Roman-” Janus speaks up daringly from his spot by the door, his tone is enough to warn him to stand down. 

Roman’s eyes are squeezed shut, his fists are clenched, “I know we have the same face, but I’m not a failure like my brother.”

That sends Remus to his feet and out the door before anyone can say a word. As he passes Janus on the way out Janus tries to stop him but he pushes past him, past everyone, and out the front door of the theatre. 

Janus turns on Roman in an instant, walking slowly into the room and shutting the door with purpose. Roman’s eyes are sewed shut and all the guilt he tries to push down floods him when he makes eye contact with his pissed off friend. 

“Roman, we need to have a talk.” 

[angelicspaceprince]

Addiction (Alt: Smooch Me On The Goddamn Mouf Hax)

Author: Ama

Title: Addiction (Alt: Smooch Me On The Goddamn Mouf Hax)

Pairing: Scarabee/Reader, Ciarog/Reader, Escarabajo/Reader, Scarafaggio/Reader, Zhuk/Reader

Character/s: Scarabee, Ciarog, Escarabajo, Scarafaggio, Zhuk,

Word Count: 4, 107 words

Warnings: NSFW, a lot of eating out, smexy times, 18+ only please.

Tags: @imma-fucking-nerd, @im-eating-rn@im-eating-rn

Prompt: Beetlejuice thought the most beautiful sound in the universe was the sound of screaming. You are here to prove him wrong of that notion.

Notes: So, for those who don’t know, there is a discord group and we’ve come up with 5 different dons for Mafia AU Beetlejuice. Something was brought up about one of them being caught eating the reader out and being punished for it or something to that degree and I promised @realmonsterboyhours that I’d write a crackfic on it. Here it is. Enjoy. Also, thanks to @monsterlovinghours for helping me with Cia, check that blog out for more info on the boys as Linds has posted about all of them, including what they look like, personalities etc.

Buy Me a Coffee

Addiction (Alt: Smooch Me On The Goddamn Mouf Hax)

To say that Bajo had an oral fixation was, if anything, a massive understatement. The few times he licked your face, you figured that was weird. But when he finally got to your legs and spent hours marking up your thighs before even touching what laid between them? It was official. Boy has a leg kink and loved to use that blasted tongue of his.

Shortly after the two of you started banging, he developed a bit of a…. habit. You lost the need for an alarm clock because every morning when you decided to sleep in his bed or alone in yours, you’d wake up to the demon between your legs, drinking at your slick as you ride out your orgasm. Then he’d pull away, proudly tell you how many times you came in your sleep, before moving back in to finish what he claimed to be his breakfast.

At first, it only happened if you were alone or if you slept in his room. You knew it was a one-way ticket to being woken up in the best way possible. But, you had to give your other boys some loving too.

You didn’t think Bajo would actually attempt to sneak in, you figured he’d leave you alone to the others so then everyone got a share of time with you. Evidently, you were wrong.

You were confused when you woke up, your body felt hot and muscles relaxed, heat radiating from your belly as you come to realise someone was making a home between your legs. It throws you in a loop because you can still feel Bee next to you, not stirring, not yet, and yet there was a tongue lapping away at your juices as your body continues to shudder its way through its orgasm.

“3.” You hear a voice say with a snicker before the telltale sign of hands tracing nails up your thighs as his tongue slides up to start to pay more attention to your clit.

Bajo rolls out of the bed with a loud oof, hitting the floor hard as Bee’s leg seemingly comes out of nowhere and kicks him in the ribs. “Laissez la dame dormir ou je vous arracherai les membres.” Came his threat, voice still laden with sleep but commanding nonetheless as he pulls you in close.

“Oh, come on amigo, no es como si ella se estuviera quejando.” Bajo retorts as he moves to stand and make his way back to his position with your thighs wrapped around his head. Before he could even fully stand, he was tackled to the ground and pounced on by five of Bee’s shadows.

“I never said ya weren’t invited to watch, amigo. Settle d- Oi!” He tries to kick at the shadow trying to get a kick at his balls, failing when another catches his leg and manages to hold it still. “Alright, alright, get your damn shadows off me!” Bee merely hums to respond as he moves to press a small kiss at the base of your neck, keeping you press flushed against him.

“Good morning, cherie.”

“Morning. You gonna let him up?”

“No, I don’t think I will.” You look up at him, his eyes glowing with mischief.

“C’mon love. It’s too early for this. Plus I wanna sleep a lil more with you. I can’t do that with that in the background.” You point to indicate the continuous protests coming from the man on the floor, now being held on his stomach with his hands on his back as the shadows take shots at his ribs. Bee rolls his eyes and waves his hand to dismiss the shadows, anything for you.

“Ah, thanks for that!” He stands up and stretches. “Think I could have another taste, mi amor?”

“Get out Bajo!” The both of you shout, pointing to the door in sync.

~~~

You were certain that Zhuk was too intimidating a figure for Bajo to actually attempt to come in his room. But then again, Bajo was an idiot and would try anything if it meant time to have a taste of you.

This time, however, you didn’t wake up to pleasure. You woke up to pain. With a loud gasp as you feel your thigh erupt in a painful heat, you sit up just in time to see your small black cat who always slept with Zhuk no matter what anyone said dart off into the corner. You rip back the covers to see a very guilty looking Bajo staring up at you, thumb rubbing over your now slightly bleeding thigh. His back is weeping small amounts of blood, by the looks of it, your kitty wasn’t too impressed at the weird bulge that had appeared between your legs overnight and wanted to make her discontent known. “Morning maripos-ah!” He shouts out in shock as Zhuk grabs him from the back of the neck and silently pulls him off the bed and towards the door, holding him so he is a few inches from the ground as he kicks and struggles. Zhuk opens the door and very unceremoniously throws the smaller man out, causing him to hit the wall and then the floor with two very loud bangs. “Oi! I barely even got to six this ti-” Zhuk slams the door in his face before moving back to crawl up the bed and next to you.

“Does it hurt, roza?” His large hand grabs at your knee to move your thigh so he can see the small wound, already beginning to heal up as he rubs at the reddened area, moving his hand to cover every new bruise Bajo had managed to create.

“No no, it’s fine now.” You move in to rest your head on his chest, already starting to fall back asleep. “Five more minutes?”

“Of course tsarina.”

~~~~~

You knew by now that it was going to happen, regardless of who you spent the night with. Granted, he gave you time to allow your legs to heal after the last incident, mostly out of fear of what Zhuk and Bee would do to him if he didn’t. But, eventually, your legs healed up and you were able to sit properly again. Which meant Bajo felt like he had a free invitation to his favourite snack.

When you woke up, you feel warm and fuzzy, muscles relaxed with your pussy clenching. Your thighs are wet to your knees and your entire body just feels hot. You could hear the telltale sign of Gio using his cane, smacking down on someone who was clearly protesting his attack as he rants in angry Italian. “Idiota! Non puoi farmi passare una notte con la nostra ragazza, no, devi entrare e rovinarlo! Merda stupida per il cervello! Ha appena guarito! Il tuo pasto preferito, ti batterò nel giro di un centimetro della tua vita.” You turn to see a very angry Gio beating a dishevelled but clearly pleased Bajo, mouth and jaw covered in your slick as he makes a show of cleaning his mouth and fingers between each wack.

“Amigo, you’re just jealous I got our lovely little mariposa to orgasm on my tongue five times before you realised what was happening.” You roll your eyes as Gio starts his assault again.

“Gio? Baby?” You ask, purposefully making your voice small so both boys turn around instantly to look at you. “Come back to bed?”

Gio softens instantly. “Piccola, I will I’m jus-”

“Please?” You whine out. “Want cuddles with you baby.” You reach out your arms and start making a grabby motion with your hands. “Come cuddle with me, please?”

Gio seems to falter before dropping his cane and moving back to the bed, you scooting backwards so he has room to join you, his arms wrapping around you until he can trace light patterns on your back, your head resting on his chest with a small, content smile. None of them could really turn you down for anything and, in times like this, it really did work to your advantage.

“Think you can move on over there?” Bajo asks, standing at the edge of the bed, clearly keen to join in the cuddle session. You can practically feel Gio heat up with anger at this.

“Esci! Stupido, pomposo, stupido, figlio di puttana-” He shouts, causing Bajo to leave with a snicker before Gio changes his mind and continues to give him a caning.

~~~~~

By now, you knew nowhere was safe. You knew you’d wake up with the Spaniard between your legs no matter where you slept in the house. But, you figured, that if you slept with one of the others that you were protected from at least being over stimmed so early in the morning, to the point that you would rather spend the rest of the day in bed rather than leave your room.

Cia had pointed out that you had yet to share a bed with him, and he was right to a degree. The few times you fell asleep in the Irishman’s room, both of you had been drunk and he had quite literally kicked you out of bed, leading you to walk back into your room to sleep the alcohol off. Still. The two of you weren’t really drinking tonight. And perhaps Cia would be better at protecting you from your nightly visitor.

You woke up with a gasp, eyes instantly locking with a pair of mischievous hazel ones, a fire lit in them. You barely get out a grunt as you feel your thighs shake around the head of the man currently rubbing two of his fingers against your g-spot, tongue assaulting your clit as you continue to come loudly, eyes rolling in the back of your head. You feel slightly warmed metal teeth brush against your thighs as he pulls back to nibble at your flesh, damp with your slick as you pant, turning over to Cia. “You’re not going to stop him?”

Something flashes in his eyes. “And miss the show? Mo grá, you don’t know me very well, do you?” The smile he sends your way causes a shiver down your spine as you feel Bajo chuckle lightly against your skin, your head snapping down when you feel him move to bite and suck another mark onto your thigh, Cia’s hand grasping onto your chin and pulling it face him. “Ag dul chun bheith ina cailín maith dúinn, piscín?” You whimper as you feel the man beneath you slowly slide back up to run the flat of his tongue up the length of your pussy, groaning lowly at the taste.

“Ci-ah!” You grind up against Bajo’s face as his lips wrap around your clit and he starts to draw powerful sucks, causing your whole body to wrack as the already over-sensitive organ starts to take another beating. “How- How many?” You barely get out as Cia coos.

“Eight.” You hear Bajo say against your cunt, the vibrations making your eyes squeeze shut as you roll your hips. Towards him or away from him you aren’t entirely sure, but you do whine in protest when he pulls back, resting his chin on your thigh as he looks up at you with a wicked grin. “Creo que esta mañana es el día en que llegamos a los veinte. ¿Qué te parece mi amigo?” 

“20? I’m sure we can aim for more than that, can’t we?” You whimper at the number, shaking your head as Bajo moves back to push his tongue inside of you, wanting to have a taste of you straight from the source. “Hush, mo ghrá. Lig do Bajo aire a thabhairt duit anois.” Cia chastises as your head rolls towards him.

You move to protest. “Too many.” You say quietly. There is no way, on this progressively not to green earth, that you would be able to come twenty times at the hands of these two and survive. “Ple-ugh.” You gasp when you feel a sharp pinch at your nipples, Cia clearly not too impressed with your protest.

“Oh, don’t fight it now, lie back against me love.” He instructs, bringing you closer to him as you let out a small whimper, much to his amusement. “A piscín, an é go léir atá agat dúinn? Tar ar aghaidh anois, tá mé cinnte gur féidir leat a bheith níos airde ná sin.” Your cries become louder as Bajo’s thumb moves to stroke at your clit, fingers replacing his tongue as he massages at your g-spot, causing you to buck and whine.

“Oh, nuestro pequeño pájaro cantor. Cantas tan bellamente para nosotros.” You feel his metal teeth bite down on your thigh again, this time piercing your flesh as small droplets of red chase their way down to the bed, eyes squeezing shut as you try to focus on every single sensation.

“Keep those eyes open, darlin',” Cia reminds you. Your eyes snap back open obediently, “look at the way he's making your thighs tremble. Does it feel good, hm?” You turn to look down, eyes locking with Bajo’s as he just grins up at you, hand moving so his fingers pump slowly in and out as he continues to suck at the skin of your shaking thigh.

“I- uh. Feels. Hnn.” You give up on words, hips moving to roll in time with the movement of his fingers.

“It must, you can barely string two words together.” Cia comments in amusement.

“Can’t think.” You tell them, and it's true. The fog of your early morning haze has mixed with the fog of coming too many times, being brought back to that edge and Cia whispering in your ear was completely taking over all other functions. You couldn’t think, could barely string your words together, barely remember every word you hear the boys say to you, all that was left was to feel which just made you all that much foggier.

“Shh, pequeña. No pienses, solo siente.” Bajo says from beneath you.

“Falling.” You say with a gasp, hands moving to grasp at the bedsheets as your brain finally succumbed to the fog.

“Eso es, enamórate de nosotros, pequeño amor. No te preocupes Te atraparemos.” You whine as his thumb is removed from your clit, only to be replaced by his mouth, tongue flicking in between strong sucks.

You try to bite back your sounds, the last little bit of you wanting to fight back resorting to ‘you don’t deserve to hear how good you make me feel’ but you fail miserably as Cia’s hand starts to trace up and down your body, pinching at you to keep you on your toes, mind so distracted from everything you’re feeling, you almost miss what’s being said.

“-so soft, so sweet. Oh, leanbh, we might just make a meal of you yet.” Cia purrs in your ear, chuckling lowly when you whine loudly, hips bucking up into Bajo’s mouth. “Would you like that? To be feasted on?” His grin widens as you nod furiously, a strangled version of both their names passing through your lips between heavy breaths as you feel your body tense in anticipation for number nine, Bajo groaning when he realises you’re close again as he seems to start attacking your clit with more vigour, trying to bring you over the edge once more. Cia leans in closer to continue, breath hot against your ear as his hands hold your hips down to stop you from grinding up against Bajo’s tongue. “Oh, look at you, mo stór. So desperate to come again. Oh, little one, we're so hungry for you, hungry for your pleasure. Give it to us. Give in to us. Let your body surrender, sweetheart, there you go.” He coos when you shudder around Bajo with a broken moan, body twitching as Cia moves to bite at your neck, the same time Bajo moves to place yet another bruise to your thigh. “Ó, beag ardaigh, conas is breá linn go bhfaigheann tú teacht slán.”

A few seconds pass before you feel Bajo’s tongue lapping away the excess slick, only this wasn’t a cleanup. No, he was very pointedly warming up to make you come again. You protest with a whine. “One more, pequeña?” Your eyes flicker down to his. “Just one more.” You can handle one more? Surely? You nod once and that’s all he needs to delve back into your heat with a loud noise of content when he has your taste on his tongue again.

It doesn’t take long. You were nine orgasms in and your body was tuned ready for ten. Cia is instantly at your ear, murmuring lowly in a mix of Gaelic and English, slowly coaxing you to the edge. But your body doesn’t seem to want to go over, get you to the double-digit tally that both the boys insist you reach this morning. Cia, for one, is not giving up without a fight. “Come for him, darlin', he wants you to. Can't you see it in his eyes, the way he's begging you to drown him with it?” When you look down, Bajo does indeed look desperate for you to come once more, eyes bright and burning as he moans against your sex, addicted to your taste as his tongue leaves your clit to delve into your wet heat, thumb moving up to take its place. You let out a small whine, eyes not leaving his for a second. “Give in, ailleacht, come for us. Let us carry you over the edge."

That’s all it takes to tip you over the edge, words purred in your ear as your body convulses, a scream leaves your lips as you ride out a near painful orgasm being ripped from your body. You can hear dark chuckles from next to your ear and between your thighs before Cia whispers lowly in your ear, “Sin é, ceann beag, scread dúinn.”

When you come down from your high, your entire body is shaking, you can feel Bajo press gentle kisses down your thighs as he lowers them from his shoulders before he slides up your body until he is hovering over you. To your horror, his face is positively dripping with your slick, his giant shit-eating grin showing you just how pleased he is of that fact. “Buenos dias mariposa.” He greets before moving down to kiss you fully on your lips, making you taste yourself on his tongue before he not-so-gracefully falls to your other side, bringing you in close as Cia follows, the same look on his face.

“Maidin, álainn.” He purrs. You snuggle into his chest, Bajo’s forehead pressed against the base of your neck as he curls around you.

“I hate you both.”

“No you don’t.”

You let out a huff of air in annoyance when, yet again, Cia was right. But only just. “I’m never sleeping in this room again.” They both laugh because, again, they both know it's not true. “I’m sleepy.”

“Go to sleep, querida.” Bajo murmurs against your skin, pressing a kiss wherever he can place them. You can hear them both say something to you, but it’s all muffled as you slowly drift back to sleep in their arms.

~~~~~

Choosing to sleep in Bajo’s bed was always an open invitation for him to spend the entire night with his face wrapped between your thighs. You always chose your nights with Bajo carefully because of that fact.

Tonight, you felt like you just needed to be with him. You had all gone out to dinner and it was a rare case where everything was just a disaster. Orders were wrong, food was cold or just gross, wine was corked, everything that could have gone did go wrong. Bajo was a bit sour as it was his choice of restaurant and it had clearly gone downhill since the last time he went there for a meal. So, to soothe his upset self, you changed plans of sharing a bed with Bee to spend the night with Bajo.

As you expected, you barely got through the doors before you were thrown on the bed, shirt and bra having been ripped off in the hallway, and he was crawling up between your thighs, pulling down your pants and panties in one smooth, quick motion. You move your thighs to rest on his shoulders as he glides his tongue down your calf, over your knee, down your inner thigh before moving to lick a stripe up your pussy, groaning at the taste. “Finally.” He says, eyes flickering up to look at you. “Some good fucking food.”

That was it. You instantly unwrap yourself from him and move to the side, holding your sides as you laugh. “Nope. Sex is off. You did not just say that.” You can practically feel his pout as he slides up the bed to press his hands into the mattress, one either side of your head as he waits for the giggles to subside, eyes warm as he watches your amused face with a smile before moving in to kiss you deeply.

“Let me have my dinner?” He asks when he pulls back, causing you to giggle again.

“I can’t take you seriously now, Bajo.” You shake your head. “If you’re lucky, you can have me for breakfast again.” He hrumphs as he moves to lay next to you on the bed, pulling you close so his entire body is pressed up against you.

“Te amo, mi pequeña mariposa.” He says quietly against your skin.

“I love you too, you dumb fucking himbo.” You tease, laughing when he growls and bites down on your shoulder as a warning. Damn, this boy be feral and bitey.

The next morning, you weren’t surprised at all to feel him slide down your body, sending a wink your way when he notices you’re up as he positions himself, ready to absolutely devour you.

Misc Scene That Didn’t Quite Make It:

The first time Bajo went down on you, it was like a religious experience. It was a lazy Sunday with just the two of you in the smoking room when he got a glint in his eye and slowly slid out from under you and between your thighs. At first, you thought he was just going to mark you up a little again, his favourite place to be when the six of you snuggling is, after all, on top of your thighs and you never left without a minimum of six bite marks. But, it wasn’t until he was pulling away your panties with his teeth did you realise his end game.

You are certain he spent hours with his mouth glued to your pussy, as if he was trying to print the taste into his memory and sear the spots that made you cry out into his brain. He brought you to the edge over and over, pulling back when he felt you were close to watch you squirm and glare at him, nipping at your thighs whenever you protest.

When he finally let you come, you swear you saw stars. Your body arches as you scream, mostly in relief, hand having been weaved in his hair for at least an hour and a half by now pulling at his roots as it clenches, hips moving up to rock against his face as he drinks in everything you have to offer him. Your body finally laxes into the leather seat beneath you as you try to catch your breath when Bajo’s lips are suddenly against yours, hands-on your spread knees as his tongue works its way into your mouth so you can taste yourself mixed with him. When he pulls back, you can’t help it.

Slowly, you raise your hands to clap causing him to chuckle. “Wow.” 

He does a few small bows from his place on his knees between your legs. “Thank you, thank you! I’d like to think of myself as a humble man- ow!” He swats your hand away as you smack him across the back of the head with a laugh.

“You’re such a twit.”

“You love me.”

“Do I though?”

“Yes.” You roll your eyes at his cocky answer. “So…. did you enjoy yourself up there, dulce?” He asks with a grin.

“No Bajo, I had an awful time.” You sass causing him to laugh as he moves to nip at your thigh again as a playful warning. “Any chance for an encore?” You ask cheekily as his eyes flash, a giant smirk appearing on his face.

“For you? Of course, mi amor.”

[themaskedwriter]

Home

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word count: 4.6k

Warnings: Cursing

Summary: Saturdays are not for housing superheroes, and you don’t care if one of them is your army buddy and the other a cyborg who, okay, is kinda cute when he’s not clutching his twitching arm like it’s his goddamn teddybear. So of course, your tiny house becomes a tiny superhero central.

Author clues: An occasional angst queen with a sweet tooth who lives in a very fine country.

Generally, when the phone rings in the middle of the night, it’s never good news. It’s death and mayhem and all manners of misdeeds just waiting to ruin your night, your morning and possibly the entire week that follows. Your solution had been to move around a lot. If you never stay long enough in one place, then death and mayhem and all those misdeeds never get a chance to catch up with you. Unless-

“Someone better be dying,” you grunt when you answer, not bothering with greetings or pleasantries. Anyone calling at, fuck, 3.22 am can frankly go fornicate themselves.

“I need your coordinates.”

“No.”

“Come on, I promise, it’s just for the night.”

“Last time you said that, Wilson, you stayed for a week and Captain America bled all over my couch.”

At the other end of a very unstable line - is he fucking flying and calling? - Sam winces, because yeah, last time was a fucking rollercoaster of bad, and you ended up moving as soon as they were out the door and refusing to answer Sam’s texts for two weeks just to be sure you could get some actual peace and quiet.

“No one is bleeding. Much.”

“Sam…”

“I swear on my sainted nana’s grave no one will be bleeding when we get there.”

We? Jesus, did someone shoot Captain America again? You groan and roll over, pressing your face into the pillow.

“It’s just one night, I swear, we just need someplace to lay low before we can move on and haul ass back to base.”

You hate Sam Wilson. You do, you’ll put it in writing, you’ll write a goddamn op ed for the fucking New York Times listing all the reasons he is a terrible, terrible friend. All you wanted was a nice, quiet life, a little time to figure shit out after an honorable discharge from the Army, and then that idiot had to go and become a goddamn superhero with his goddamn wings and the goddamn Avengers as his goddamn squad. He owes you. He owes you so much and he’ll owe you even more- Aw, fuck.

“I’ll give you twelve hours before I kick you out on your asses.”

“You are the best, I’ve always said that, you know. The best. The goat-”

“Please, never call me that again.”

“Sourpuss.”

“I’ll bill you for anything you destroy,” you mutter, ending the call before Sam can say anything.

Rolling over on your back again, you breathe in deeply through your nose, staring at the light ceiling panelling. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You text Sam your coordinates, telling him where to find the spare key because you draw the line at getting up to act as a welcome committee at this unholy hour.

>>Thanks, I owe you one. S

>>U owe me several. Don’t expect mints on the pillows and dont. fuckin. wake me. >:(

>>You’re adorable when you’re cranky. We’ll be there in about an hour.

>>Fuk u

Sam Wilson is a terrible, terrible friend, but at least he doesn’t actually wake you. He’s even up and looking far too chirpy when you crawl down from your sleep loft four hours later. Seriously, fuck Sam Wilson. Fuck Sam Wilson, and-

“I like your digs.” He hands you a cup of coffee and thankfully does not attempt a hug.

“Yeah, well, makes running away from unbidden houseguests easy,” you grunt back, taking a sip of the glorious coffee.

Sam snorts, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “As if you could fit actual houseguests in here. You’re lucky I spent half my childhood playing Tetris, or we would’ve had a problem getting in here.”

You glance over his shoulder, at the blanket-covered lump on your couch. Granted, the damn thing is from IKEA and required at least five curse words for every step in the assembly instructions, but the covering is a nice, pale shade of beige. “So who’s bleeding all over my place this time?”

“No one’s bleeding, I patched ‘im up just to preemptively get you off my ass.”

“So he was bleeding. That why you needed to crash?”

The way Sam hesitates makes it clear that blood loss is not the culprit here. You glare at him, and Sam Awful Terrible Friend Wilson rolls his eyes at you and walks past you and up to the couch, pulling down the covers.

“That’s…” You stare. There’s no better way to put it. “Sam, he’s- Why is his arm detached? Why is it wriggling?”

“We had a minor snafu. Barnes got dosed with something and it made his arm go a little haywire. It’s wired into his nervous system, so we had to do an emergency detachment until the thing is out of his system so he won’t helicopter himself into the sky or, you know, hurt anyone.”

“So why is it still twitching like a zombie limb? Please, don’t tell me he’s turning into a zombie. I can’t deal with a zombie apocalypse. I use Zombies! Run, but that’s the closest I ever want to come to the undead because even with that I fucking jump out of my skin when I start hearing heavy breathing in my ears and-”

“He’s not turning into a zombie, jeez!” Sam tosses the covers back in place, covering up Barnes and the twitchy arm. “It’s still receiving faint signals, so it’s acting like a nervous grandma. It’s completely harmless. Ha! I gotta remember that one when he wakes up.”

Jesus H. Christ. Where is a brick wall when you need one? “Sam!”

“Stark’s coming to pick us up in two hours, we’ll be out of your hair. We’ll even take the arm with us.”

You give an indignant sniff, heading back to the little ladder that leads up to your loft. “Fuck you, Wilson, I’m going back to bed and won’t come down until you and Terminator over there are out of my house.”

“Aw, come on! We’re delightful! Look, Barnes is even more delightful because he is asleep so you won’t even have to deal with him being Mr. Personality!”

You could tell him that from your perspective, Barnes is the preferable option in this situation because he is asleep and thus not bothering you. Instead, you opt for a succinct reply in the form of your middle finger and start to ascend the ladder, coffee mug tightly gripped in one hand. Saturdays are holy, okay? Saturdays are for waking up late, having coffee and then crawling back to your bed where the covers are still warm and just wait for the sun to rise high enough in the sky that you’re tempted to go outside. Saturdays are not for housing superheroes, and you don’t care if one of them is your army buddy and the other a cyborg who, okay, is kinda cute when he’s not clutching his twitching arm like it’s his goddamn teddybear.

To be fair, Sam cuts out his little comedian act, and shuts up. There’s the odd shuffling from below, but nothing more, and you manage to doze off, wrapped like a burrito in your covers. It’s almost enough to make you forget that you have houseguests.

Until Sam pinches your toe.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” he whispers, shaking your foot and you’re surprised you don’t kick him in the face.

“Piss off.”

“Delightful. We’re rolling out in five. I told Stark to bring you some decent breakfast as thanks.”

Well. Breakfast is an acceptable offering. There better be waffles, or you might need to kick Stark. With a grunt, you start extricating yourself from your covers, rooting around until you find a cardigan to wrap yourself in. Sam’s by the couch when you get down, ripping the covers from Sleeping Barnes and shaking his shoulder.

“Hey, Princess Elsa, our ride’s almost here.”

Barnes, who seems to appreciate sleeping as much as you do, tries to turn over and away from the rude awakening, but apparently manages to tickle himself on the detached arm, because the man gives a very high-pitched yelp before he very ungracefully tumbles off the couch and lands on his ass.

“Morning, Barnes.”

“Fuck you, Wilson,” Barnes grumbles with a glare that is… impressive.

“There’s coffee if you can inhale it in the next five minutes,” Sam tells him, shrugging of his umpteenth cuss-out in the last six hours.

“Bring… coffee…”

You’re not a rude host. Unwilling, but not rude. Coffee is a glorious drink, and you would never deny anyone the elixir of Life and General Functionality. You pour a cup for the man, bringing it to him, and Barnes stares at you, then at Sam, then takes a second to look around, mouth slowly falling open.

“Wilson, I think I’m-”

“What? You still not sobered up from the funky gas?”

“Either that, or I fell through the looking glass. Am I gonna grow and have my legs sprout through the window? Because that is not good,” Barnes says, gulping down his coffee and then peering up at you. “I’m not sure if you’re real, but either way, I have very impressive thighs. Hi, I’m Bucky”

He fires off a smile that is probably meant to look charming, but only succeeds in looking loopy. Sam, finally getting a fraction of the embarrassed he should be for dragging himself and this crazy ass man into your home, groans and facepalms. It is hilarious.

“Sam, I hate to say this, but I like this guy.”

“Sam, the hallucination is talking to you.”

“I’m not a hallucination,” you tell him, leaning down to pinch his left shoulder. “It’s a tiny house, made even tinier because yikes, you are built.”

Barnes, Bucky, yelps and his coffee sloshes dangerously against the edges of his mug.

“Well, that just seems very unfair to me. And Steve. Oh, jeez, and Bruce. Do you have anything against swole?”

“First of all, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, and second of all, if you’re Bucky Barnes then I’d very much like to know who the fuck taught you the word ‘swole’.”

Bucky Barnes, the most handsome centenarian in the entire world, is a delight, all smiles and jokes, and Sam is terrible for dragging him away. A godawful wind kicks up outside, heralding the arrival of Tony Stark, and you decide this is way too many superheroes. One is acceptable. Two is pushing it. Bucky, having realized he has in fact not shrunk, takes his time looking around while they head out and ends up clipping his head and oh, how people would blush if they heard the downright filth that Sergeant James B. Barnes lets out as he stumbles down the stairs.

Stark makes a joke about custody exchanges, and you tune out more than half because he brought breakfast, and oh sweet Mary above, there are waffles. Sam and Bucky say their goodbyes, and you wave them off, too engrossed in the gorgeousness of waffles drenched in maple syrup and topped with fresh berries. For this, you could almost be okay with a superhero or two crashing for a night.

Not that you’ll ever be.

You have limits.

So of course, your tiny house becomes a tiny superhero central. First it’s Sam, again. Then it’s Stark. He almost gets his ass kicked out when he goes on and on about how you can live with the bare minimum of technology. You definitely kick him out when he wants to chip your house so people won’t have to call you at the asscrack of dawn to let you know, not ask, they are incoming. He does get back in your good graces by giving you a double serving of waffles.

Then, in quick succession, it’s Steve, Sam and Rhodey, Bucky, Barton and Bucky again. Most of them are okay house guests. Barton wins points by appearing genuinely interested in how you’ve set up your living space, quizzing you about layouts and building and the pros and cons of having your entire life confined to 240 square feet. He also loses those points when you wake up to find him sitting on the edge of the sleep loft, overlooking the house. Sam and Rhodey together is not as big of a disaster as one might think, mainly because Rhodey occasionally pulls rank on Sam and honestly? Thank god. Steve, bless him, tries to bend over backwards to not put you out, and his calls all include at least 75 permutations of an apology for calling.

Bucky.

He keeps his arm in place for the next couple of times. On the rare occasions when he’ll call in the middle of the day, he’ll always knock and wait until you open, he’ll insist on “earning his keep”, which is how you come to be the recipient of flowers, breakfast, and a very rare bathroom concerto that Bucky doesn’t know you overheard. The man has a very good singing voice, and it makes your heart skip a beat when he croons “It’s Been a Long, Long Time”. He’s the easiest to get along with, even one early morning when you wake up to his shuffling and cussing because your coffee maker refuses to cooperate. He doesn’t mind the quiet, doesn’t fret around like Stark (who insists that the laptop loaded with every streaming service imaginable and the usernames and passwords for each laid out on a sticky note that he left there is absolutely not a pity gift but a sound investment for both of your continued sanity).

“D’you like this?” Bucky asks one evening, his voice floating up from the living room area.

“I mean, it could be worse. I could be housing Stark for the night,” you quip, rolling over and making something that might be construed as a tumble to get to the edge of the bed.

“I feel like that might have been an insult wrapped in another insult. But that’s not what I meant.”

You can only see Bucky’s feet in the soft light of a lamp, peeking out from the covers. He always sleeps with his feet facing the door, always on his back. The only time he hasn’t was the first time when Sam brought him, and something in you feels bad that Bucky can’t relax even in his sleep.

“No?”

“I meant… this. Living in a small box. Moving around all the time. It’s… Doesn’t it ever get hard? After I got- When I got back, Steve almost had to fight me to move into the Tower. I wanted to go home, you know. To Brooklyn. I don’t know, it was a stupid thought, but I kept thinking if I go back, it’s all still there. The apartment we lived in, the same streets and the same shops and… my family. It felt weird to make another home, but now I don’t know if I could move again.”

His voice is soft, a far cry from the persona he’s portrayed as in the media. The Winter Soldier is hard edges and cold steel, but Bucky Barnes… Bucky Barnes is soft, a whisper in the darkness and a longing for something that’s no longer there.

“It wasn’t that hard for me, because I needed this. I was out there, in all of that big space with nothing but orders and trusting that someone else knew what we were supposed to do. I’d had a place back in Atlanta before, and I’d packed up all my stuff and rented the place to some college kids. They’d already moved out when I got back, and I thought I was gonna go nuts the first night back. That place had felt like a shoebox before I shipped out and now it was so… big. Had a friend who made these kinds of houses, so he helped me build one pretty much from scratch and my first night here I slept like a baby.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it.” God, he sounds almost a bit panicked, like he’s insulted you.

“No, I don’t mind. It’s not for everyone. I just feel I have myself better together on less than 300 square feet. I mean, I don’t go from house to house. This is still a home. It’s just a home I can move around with when I need to see new places.”

There’s a little huff. “Like the middle of nowhere, New Mexico?”

You glance back to the small window next to your bed, at the clouds tinted in burnt orange and vivid pink, the sun setting slowly into the vast horizon. “Yeah. I’ve never been here. I wanted to see it, and now I have.”

“You know, that sounds like I’m gonna wake up in the desert tomorrow morning because a bird is trying to steal my covers.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Barnes,” you tease, crawling back to roll yourself into your own covers again. “I wouldn’t leave you with that blanket. It’s my favourite.”

“Yeah.” His voice is almost a whisper, but you can still make out his next words: “Mine, too.”

When he leaves the next morning, something feels different. He’s tentative at breakfast, burns a few pancakes and once again clips his head on the doorway heading out when Nat touches down the quinjet to pick him up. Breakfast changes hands, Nat fills you in on some gossip. Bucky’s shoulders are slumped when he trudges up and into the cargo hold.

“Wait!”

You run inside, depositing the bag of breakfast on your counter, grabbing the blanket from the couch and folding it into a mess that would pass exactly zero inspections before heading back out. Nat’s joined Bucky on the quinjet landing, and she quirks and eyebrow when you all but thrust the bunched up fabric into Bucky’s arms.

“A bit of home,” you blurt out, immediately feeling heat creep up your cheeks. “Can’t hurt to have more of that.”

Bucky chuckles, “No… I guess it can’t.”

You move three days later. The New Mexico desert makes you restless, makes you itch for something else. For a couple of weeks, you drift further and further north, looking for a place that doesn’t put you on edge. You plough through the Midwest, but there’s always something. You text Sam just to become annoyed and feel something else. He calls a couple of times, facetimes you on your birthday so the whole gang can wish you happy birthday. you smile, taking a screenshot to save the memory for a rainy day. They’re all there, sitting around an obscenely big dinner table, glasses raised, mouths open mid-sentence. Stark looks magnanimous as always, sunglasses perched on top of his head, Steve’s got an expression that’s somewhere between his Captain America-smile and a genuine Steve Rogers-grin. Bucky… Bucky is not there. Or at least you can’t see him. Maybe he’s at the very end of the table, obscured by the others. Not that you care. You don’t. You absolutely don’t. You definitely don’t look for him in the picture every time you bring it up.

You move again. It’s too calm. You’ve had no superheroes visiting in two months, no late night calls inquiring about coordinates. Stark’s laptop is shoved into a drawer where you can’t see it, there’s a new blanket draped over your couch pretending it’s always been there.

>>Coordinates?

The text from the unknown number comes in late one evening when you’re gearing up to let bygones be bygones and forget the Midwest ever existed. You could cry with how happy it makes you, even though a text means one or more of them is in trouble and maybe you should be a little worried, too. The Avengers are good people, but they’re not unlike cats, dragging others with them. Like murder bots and weird aliens. You dutifully send your coordinates, biting your lip before adding:

>>Don’t wake me, and don’t make me wake up to bad guys on my porch

>>They scare the neighbours

>>I have a reputation to think of

Your only neighbours are trees, but still. No one likes bad guys.

Setting your phone down, you tuck yourself into bed. Whoever’s coming knows where to find the key to get in. Stark, again, wanted to set you up with some biometric doohickey that would make it impossible for anyone not in the system to get in, since “keys are so unreliable, look at Parker, he could probably pick it after five minutes on youtube”. He stopped talking when you pointed out your house is a glorified box on wheels, and that there are far easier ways to get in than to pick the lock or even rush the door. You’d had to tell him he was not allowed to turn your house into a tank.

When the sun rises, waking you up with a well-placed ray right in your eyes, you expect to hear… something. Sam, Nat and Steve are all early wakers, there would be the telltale sounds and scents of breakfast being prepared. Tony, much as he tries to vehemently deny it, snores. God, is it Barton? You raise your head, and let out a sigh of relief to see the loft empty save for yourself and the sparse furnishings. Could still be Barton, he’s just learned to stay out of your nest and accept that he’s not top of the pecking order here.

But when you get down from your loft, there’s no one there. Blinking, you look around, as if whoever texted you last night will jump out from some impossible corner. The couch is untouched, everything is where you left it. Was it Bruce and he couldn’t de-Hulk so he slept outside? You check your phone to see if there are any unread text or missed calls, but there’s nothing.

>>Did you leave already?

The reply comes within seconds.

>>No. Outside.

So… Bruce? Furrowing your brow, you go pull a pair of sweats from the hamper, yawning wide before you head for the door. You’re not exactly sure what to expect, but finding the clearing you’ve set up camp in empty is… anticlimactic, to say the least.

“Hello?” you call out, stepping down the stairs, a shiver running down your spine from the cool morning air.

Nothing. The wind sighs in the tops of the trees, a crack from a branch breaking the calm. Ahead of you, something catches your eye, far too colourful to be part of the wooded area.

“What the hell?”

Folded neatly on the ground is your blanket, your old blanket, the one you gave to-

“Sam told me you’d been moving around a lot. Figured maybe you could need a bit more home.”

You yelp and whirl around to find Bucky sitting on the stairs, filling up the doorway and smiling smugly at you.

“How-” You look at him, then around at the clearing and back to Bucky, pointing at him. “You- What?”

“Sorry, I… thought it would be fun. It was creepy, wasn’t it?” He scratches the back of his head, getting of the stairs, approaching you slowly. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Are you okay?” It’s second nature by now to give him a once-over, to expect bruises and scrapes and, let’s be honest, blood. Seeing nothing doesn’t necessarily mean he’s okay. These yahoos are notorious about playing off little things like internal bleedings, cracked ribs and concussions.

“What, no! I mean, yes, yes, I’m okay. I wasn’t in any scuffle. Haven’t been for a while. You can check me if you like.”

Pursing your lips, you look him up and down while you circle him, prodding at his ribs, his hands, his cheekbone. Satisfied that he’s not injured, you come to a stop in front of him.

“Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you again, but… why are you here?”

“Been travelling. Sort of like this, but without the… tiny house, was it? I thought about what you said, about home and all that, and I realized that maybe I need to reevaluate what home means. Going away to figure out what I miss and what I need.”

He raises his right hand to drag the fingertips along the soft blanket, a small smile tugging at the corners of his lips. It sounds cheesy as all hell, but your heart skips a beat, your breath catching in your throat, because he looks so content, so relaxed.

“Yeah? Did you find the answer then? What’s home?” you ask, cursing your voice for sounding breather than you ever intended it to.

“See, I packed light. Couple changes of clothes, toothbrush, the regular stuff… and this.” He takes a firm hold of the blanket with both hands, pulling it from you, shaking it out. “And I missed a lot of things in the beginning. People… things… comforts. But I learned to make do without all of those. Only thing I couldn’t get past missin’…”

You watch wide eyed as Bucky wraps the blanket over your shoulders, tugging at the ends to bring it in tightly over your chest, cocooning you in it.

“…is in this blanket,” he finishes, his gaze focused on where his hands holds it close. “I missed mornings with you. Even the first morning when I woke up feelin’ like a drunk sailor after pub crawl thinking Stark or someone had shrunk me down to the size of a bean. I missed your tiny house and your couch and your coffee and… and you.”

And you.

Maybe it’s another cliché, but you can’t help the smile, the sudden joy that bubbles up along with the sensation of right. All these days that have somehow bled into months of moving, of unease, they are drawn into this moment. They breathe a sigh of relief, settling. This is it, this is what all that drifting was about. Finding the spot where your roads would lead you to stand toe to toe, wrapped in a well-worn blanket and realize that home can grow from a warmth that accumulated over so many mornings. You push at Bucky’s hands, making the blanket part, tugging the ends from his grip to sling your arms around his neck, bringing him into it.

The kisses don’t happen until later. First, there’s the quiet, the seconds and minutes wrapped in the blanket. Then, there is breakfast and coffee strong enough to make a spoon stand up straight and slightly overscrambled eggs and Bucky’s voice drifting from the bathroom with hums breaking up the lyrics. You kiss him like you want to taste him, commit him to memory, pulling him down by his neck and drawing in a sharp breath when drops of water fall down the neckline of your t-shirt. He kisses like he’s finally at rest, safe even when his attention is diverted.

>>Coordinates? Bit banged up, wings took a hit, out of your hair before tomorrow

>>image.jpeg

>>Sorry, find another safehouse, this one’s occupied

>>TMI WAY TMI DO NOT SAY ANOTHER WORD

>>It was just a selfie!

>>IN BED

>>Get ur head out of the gutter /JBB

>>I hate you guys

You smile at the final message, setting down the phone and curling up against Bucky with a sigh. The sheets are a mess by your feet, Bucky’s body heat enough to keep you both warm.

“Occuped, huh?” he smiles, tracing your lower lip with the pad of his thumb.

You nod, pressing a kiss to the finger.

“Welcome home.”

[raikoren]

some onions bout the bnha manga since im reading it in jp nao

the more i read of bnha the more i realise. i kind of fucking hate this series. it’s got all the ingredients of the classic old big 3. brilliant art, a cool character here or there (sometimes), bursts of muddled clunky progression but a cool fight to soothe the pacing and the mostly frustrating boring uninteresting pussy story choices! the sloppy sort of toothless writing only shounen jump editors can give me. it really truly reminds me of how i felt reading bleach .. but it hasnt got the same charm to make me forgive it. the artist is really really talented though absolutely adore some layouts especially when handguy is included and we get some cool reaching illustrations. he and his team are commendable for making such polished work week in week out and its genuinely so fun to read from an art perspective and i really like the fact he leans very heavily into a much looser style that makes everything stretch in a satisfying way as if its designed for animation despite being so complex in its illustration.

its one of those series that is painfully mediocre shounen and you can immediately tell that by the fact that even in this hammy nonserious plot, somehow, the female characters still get completely fucking shafted as excpected. they literally do almost fuck all and the big three characters that get the most development and are considered in-universe ‘main characters’ all happen to be male despite the entire main cast supposedly being the absolute best of the best at the best of this top superhero school.

yaomomo is probably one of the most egregious examples. a character whos top of the class, who got in on recommendations (just like the other deuteragonist) with only three other students making the cut and her big character conflict was that she for some reason, felt inferior to todoroki shouto, whose initial character arc revolves around the fact that ‘he’s not trying his best’. it’s notable that todoroki is never considered to be some freak of nature genius in the same way other characters, he’s impressive but there are stronger. but for some reason, his superiority over yaomomo is pivotal to her character. she doubts her own decision making skills compared to his due to losing so badly at the sports festival against fumikage.

now lets see here: this fucking emotionally constipated idiot who is noted in writing to not using his full potential since he has no motivation to actually win, handicapping his own abilities for most of the time due to crippling personal issues, who ALSO completely jobbed at the festival and gave up at the last match against bakugou and suffered a humiliating defeat because he lacks shame and conviction and who ALSO got in on recommendations? todoroki is an interesting character in his own right, hes strong but his flaws are glaringly evident and interesting. but for some reason he gets elevated to this position of being yaomomo’s ‘wall’.

hes not a team player, yes hes notably perceptive but to position the realtionship between momo and him like this it feels like such a pointless angle to work in cause its so antithetical to yaomomos whole characterisation and contradicts her entire background for .. what? shes got such a strong natural-leader type personality or she is attempting to have one despite the author somehow forgetting. yes she’s nervous and panics sometimes, but i think her entire character arc is intended for her to overcome this as the main crux. there is no doubt that yaomomo is strong. she is excellent as a leader, works extremely well in a team, has a level head and every single time we see her the author always brings it back round to the fact she is an excellent strategist and everyone looks to her to make a tactical decision. almost like her entire character revolves around leadership and self-confidence.

but compared to how shes portrayed against a ‘tactician’ like midoriya for example you would literally never guess that about her unless they didnt spoonfeed it to you that yes, this character is supposed to be smart sorry we keep making her look inept despite her entire character skill and ability being completely and utterly centred around this main concept teehee.

even compared to yoarashi (who i love), who also got in on recommendations, she doesnt get the same level of merit in the fiction. shes never truly made out to be a big deal in the same way the others are which not only fucking blows but makes the story more and more of a grating power up treadmill like a classic shounen jump manga without any of the charm or love. interesting characters like yaomomo who have clear visions are easily pushed aside and their traits sidelined to put more emphasis on other characters.

plus when she does get to make a big decision the narrrative acts like ‘oh was it even the right choice?! did we even make it worse!???’ which would be an interesting introspection for the headstrong characters who jump straight into shit, a reprieve from the individual bullshittery they can pull off without consequence but even though we set this character up specifically to make the right tactical decision in a pinch were not even gonna give her that satisfaction of being a HERO in this situation in this hammy feel-good plot cause thats reserved for the cool main character. its truly fucking unbearable. in the next few panels the main big trio of strong characters are making thoughtless decisions left right and centre with no hesitation or comment from the narrative with no internal struggle but here we are .. at what should be the culmination of a character arc that just .. falls fucking flat. for one of the bigger characters in the supporting cast of the series.... man the writing is just so poor.

you could say that trying to set up some linear character development where ‘girl is strong > gets confidence shaken > confidence comes back’ struggle contrasting against her ojou-sama calm and secretly playful demeanour is meant to be interesting and give her depth but honestly its just played straight in the most truly boring way but its ok! todoroki said keep your chin up queen and shes fine now. hes gonna go save aizawa-sensei with no input, no plan and be a hero because being hero is just about being the main character! everyone else can fuck off. she really needed that validation since she most likely will not have her own achievements, being recognised by this moron is her progression as a character despite her own character arc being infinitely more interesting and nuanced.

i do not expect a lot from a shounen manga sir, i came in with middling expectations and to look at some cool art whilst i awkwardly practice my japanese and yet. here we fucking are. i keep reading this hoping we get some comeuppance or some result but man. i feel like bnha is actually one of the series i wont bother keeping up with at all. the practice was really good! dont get me wrong its a great light read but im honestly surprised at how skewed the actual story is compared to fanworks. i just wanted some easy jp practice but i became weirdly invested in this probably cause i have a huge bias with cool character designs and the anime production was so ambitious.

o yea and one other thing. with tsu, ochako and nejire being introduced as going on the hassaikai raid but then completely sidelined at the first boss, essentially being relegated to being the mob charas that fits the thematic needs of that one random villain character it was sooo fucking lame. it really felt like the midboss had more thematic weight than these three girls first big fight. they were truly only there to fit the ‘lust’ theme they couldve been replaced by anyone else with tits.

in that arc too, midoriya definitely stepped on my toes the most since he took up moments that i thought would be more meaningful and appropriate with the other dot-eye dude that fell compleltey flat with him, got to use possibly the coolest fucking villain as a beatstick meter to show idk he had even more of a god mode i guess sometimes thanks to taking eri into battle instead of ykno relying on the other UA students and also giving them time to shine rather than interspersing flashbacks and shit before every meaningful fight to show ‘hey look how much this character has grown’ in the most cop out sort of storytelling. jirou i think at least gets some life written into her with meeting her parents and the ua school festival arc showing her talents and passion but shes barely utilised too and hagakure is a literal noncharacter her gag is barely even included half the time. mina gets some characterisation but even then its in the form of through another male character, kirishima, and in both instances its like the two are fighting for the spotlight of relavance which is a shame cause theyre both cooooooooooooool aaaaaaaa. every single girl character just feels like an ‘add-on’ or an afterthought, even moreso than the already forgotten secondary cast of which the most interesting dynamics and characters libe (denki and fumikage are cool!).

plus one gripe is that literally 5 separate girl characters have the same “oho they have to take their clothes off for their quirk to work ohooohgoho! so nautghty guess it cant be helped” and that just makes me like. you fucking suck at this bro just be horny with your whole chest making them have a flimsy embarassed half-excuse to be horny is lame. if you wanna make horny characters just fucking do it! enough of this stupid preamble you have to shoehorn in to every character every fucking time. just make it slutty and move on. there’s no need to be so annoyingly coy about it. also UA is the best most prestigious hero course and the girls who are going to become the top pro heroes go to their internship and its a fkn beauty commercial and its like. if they were at least building towards some commentary that female pro heroes are treated less seriously than their male counterparts like with mt.ladys flirting and her immediate paparazzi who takes pics of her ass, or to show that to become popular it means some level of corporate gameplaying and fanservice, it could be something but theres literally zero effort to comment or build on it at all its literally just presented as is and played straight. this is what it means to be a girl hero. that’s all. no comment.

i feel like miruko was a half-hearted attempt to remedy the lack of girl heroes that are actually strong and not bg props but its like it just feels like its been written as they go along with no overarching theme, nothing being built on or anything to say and it just feels so unsatisfying to read. characters that are introduced regularly get used at beatsticks to show how strong they are and get obliterated soon after to serve to show how cool and totally serious this new villain is ykno??? its so fucking tired a really classically shit kind of pointless circling narrative, like nothing truly has any weight to it and everything is meaningless before one for alls almighty relevance and power and whatever the plot needs has suddenly always existed lol dont worry bout it bro it was totally always there heres a star wars reference!

imo outside of the mangas art, the best thing about bnha is the anime adaptation with the exception of season4. the concept of having a long running shounen but giving it ample time, and a higher ambition in terms of production value and having a just absolutely fucking solid staff really make the first three seasons of bnha anime. naturally the voice acting and sound is anime standard gold but the production cant be understated it pulls so much of the slack. the direction and pacing of the first three seasons is honestly really well done, it feels like stuff builds up with ample time and we get much more focus on the background characters even in simple ways like introducing new group shots etc that give them much needed characterisation. one of my fave episodes is s3e3 which gives us a feeling of actual life and interaction as the kids train hard and get to spend an evening together having a bbq and its honestly full of just like group shots, framing in a way that really truly makes it a believable group of good kids trying their best at summer camp and gives almost everyone some much needed screentime.

one thing i noted as well is that the anime really likes to drive home important emotional points for certain characters through some great character acting - like yaoyorozus pivotal fight with fumikage is barely a passing glance in the manga whereas the anime really captures her desperation and panic as she tries her absolute best to react to the situation, not giving up even as shes overpowered only to realise in horror shes already lost. theres so much more weight and time given to this match and tbh its annoying that something that is meant to be so pivotal is barely glossed over in the manga since its so important to her future character motivations. it feels like when these moments and the strength of the supporting characters is lacking, the main story beats become more and more blatantly repetitive. some of the best parts of the arc are the bakugo rescue plan but were always served a fresh bland helping of izuku midoriya being the main character over utilising the strengths of other characters in this pivotal situation. it’s not like theres any fear of giving other characters ‘origin’ chapters and handing over the reigns away from midoriya it just for some reason, the author chooses not to really bother fleshing out characters who dont have immediate plot relavance or not the main three which makes the whole cast weaker.

imo even the anime is suffering from the source materials holes and its own slightly shoddy choices in direction with season 4 for some reason deciding to faithfully adapt the awful pacing of the overhaul arc and faithfully make it as dry as possible and devoting a solid 6 episodes to the frankly lame school festival arc despite it clearly suffering for time in the first half. it also includes my new least favourite trope of cutting the sound design completely to a slow vocal track along with the most eye wateringly boring fight pacing it was literally like. sir i want to skip this. you are going to make me watch this stupid fight with the dude whos character motivations got explained to me three seconds ago? with a new power up for green boy? with no sound design so theres even less weight to this whole fucking fight? and youre not even going to let me listen to you say run? how fucking dare you do this to me. the anime adaptation cannot stand on its own two legs with the source material alone. it needs strong direction to patch up the holes or stellar animation to distract me since without either its truly a weak weak show.

i know i already talked about it but really wish overhaul and his whole arc was handled better since i felt like it had promise. the wild shift in tone as i was reading was actually pretty surprising and the whole premise reminds me of how fucking nutty and exciting the yorknew city arc in hxh was for that series. the possibility of building how the actual underworld functions, which is tantalisingly never truly talked about in a world of cartoony heroes and villains was interesting and i was ready to see what organised crime with fucking superpowers could bring to the table plus all the new characters really looked damn cool. but overhaul himself, despite his fucking amazing intro and his title of no.2 in the underworld after all for one was in like 12 chapters and the arc literally served to introduce a plot device then fuck off with all its characters immediately having no impact at all and not even utilising the introduced concepts of the yakuza, organised crime and drugs in the age of quirks in any fuckin way. the majority of development came from fucking flashbacks literally seconds before a fight and they were scarce with anything interesting. like SIR WHAT A WASTE I HAD FINALLY FOUND MY GRIMMJOW AGAINST THESE UNSEXY LoV LOSERS WITH NO CHARISMA AND YET everyone keeps telling me that it was just a weak arc and the others are better. but having read them i think its just emblematic of the sort of writing style which prioritises having cool ‘moments’ for its beloved main character over a a cool interesting solid story that produces amazing moments and has the insane shounen payoff that you expect.  

my closing thoughts are that its at least a solid manga to read whilst eating breakfast a solid 3/10 and probably higher if you like little broccoli boy and for some reason want him to win. which i dont. he has a terminal case of unlikable bland shounen mc syndrome and the worst thing is that he didnt used to be like that, he grew into it. his whole character is such a waste to me, turning him into the chosen special one with the greatest quirk is the most boring path possible for someone who had such a strong desire and conviction to be a hero. that we see building themselves up out of their own merit for most of the series and then suddenly giving him the power of more quirks fucking sucks. having such a ridiculous power and such a devastating payoff kept his fights interesting and i think the fight where eri allowed him to use it at full power with no drawbacks was such a fucking let down. there were better ways for him to grow other than idk more quirks cause hes special. and truly outside of attaining more power to become no.1 he has very little conflict in his character after someone else goes out of the way to instill confidence in him its also very annoying that repeatedly were shown how hard everyone works to get into ua, to become the heroes they want to be but its always dwarfed in comparison to izuku and the whole fucking scene with allmight at the end of the kamino incident being specifically for izuku, instead of a rallying cry that you are next, every one of you must struggle to become the hero that you want to be - to bear the weight of the symbol of peace is not for one persons shoulders alone like its a shame cause the series spends so much time hammering home how these kids are the best of the best, the ones who really truly want it but theyre not really treated with the same regard at all and their struggles and improvement are nowhere near on the monumental level of midoriya.

i feel like the narrative has all the makings of something interesting, but somehow fucking hilariously misses its own point. truly ripping apart the idea of becoming the greatest hero, the ‘symbol of peace’, that becoming a pillar isnt any way for a human to live and glorifying one persons sacrifice for all our sakes isnt right and that the true insiduous evil of hero society is that it makes us truly believe that people are painted in black and white rather than many shades of grey and forces people to take on things they shouldnt, allows certain powerful individuals to enforce their own wills on the world and robs everyday people, the powerless and weak of any agency of how their society works. it acts like heroism is an inherent trait only afforded by the strong and that being anything less than the ultimate hero is a failure even if it means doing awful tings, like throwing away your children giving them mental scars, leaving behind whole families in the name of heroism falling in the line of duty being seen as some great honour, leaving kids to wander the streets since doing necessary but painful things are for better equipped people, right? wash your hands of it and let a hero deal with it. honestly i just want to see a weak supporting characters heroism. that was the charm of early bnha. ive had enough of this blind thoughtless heroism thats presented as the correct one, for the chosen few. i want to see the struggle for it, insatiable longing that you cant help pushing you on, but most of all i want to see the hero you can be in ways that are meaningful but yours alone and taking back the world inch by inch from the common villainy of our society with one person at a time, reaching out to your hand no matter how scarred. to look your dreams in the face and turn your back on them. tearing down the sun, shattering it into a million pieces, but the small shards shine brighter and can be held in mortal hands. but nah izuku is going to be all might super cop 2 dont worry bout it guys. dw he’ll also choose some poor fucking kid to bear this burden after he becomes useless in battle and we can discard him as a person and simply keep him as an icon since the narrative keeps allowing the villains to have valid criticisms against society but always dismiss them since theyre villains you know and youre not meant to actually think about changing society despite your position of power, just enjoy being no.1 whilst your alive and rinse and repeat pog.

i think thats why i can easily see why bakugo and todoroki are so popular through the series as they do take a long time to get through their extremely shitty issues and they are genuinely shitty little teen psychopaths who are horrible fucking bastards. but they grow up and in really tangible gratifying ways. they seem to have as many setbacks as they do wins, constantly fucked over by their own hubris but still finding a way to power through despite it all trying to awkwardly form connections and become better people as well as better heroes and they can not do so on their own. their struggles are treated with gravity and they always acquire some kind of new strength in return but at a pace that doesnt put them miles ahead of their other classmates but definitely feels weighted and substantial to their development. todoroki gritting his teeth but slowly realising that he has a fucking ridiculous opportunity in his hands with endeavours agency and even inviting his friends is monumental in its own way, endeavour texting his son and his son texting back is like. it really does feel like something. its also interesting that as broccoli boy gets stronger he gets subsequently less and less likeable imo like ... sir you are NO shirou emiya. you do not have the range or the sheer trauma to be so dogged and blind in your ideals despite the world you occupy and everyone else around you. i was sold shirou emiya superhero manga with sexy juwabe sunichi teacher and only one of those thigns is true!!!

[galaxae]

3, 7 and 18 for as many as you can answer; btw do you still have an ocs page? like with introductions and all that

wow this took forever oops!

tysm for the ask!! i’ve been meaning to make a carrd or something with oc intros, but i have so goddamn many ocs and so little time now that i’m in college and all that. and i have the code saved from my old pages before i remade, but those are kind of outdated and incomplete

that being said i’m probably gonna end up making that carrd regardless of how busy i am cause special interest indulgence and all that, so i’ll post about it when i do

anyway! i’m putting the actual oc answers under a readmore because i’m gonna try to do all the ocs i listed and it’ll be kinda long lol

3. What does your oc’s voice sound like? (Or, if you have one, what’s their voiceclaim?) Can they sing, whistle, or roll their rs? Do they have any speech impediments or notable dialects/accents?

how does one even describe voices... ok here goes

avani: she’s my character for a ttrpg campaign, so her voice sounds basically like mine (which might not help much cause you don’t know how i talk lol), but when i’m talking as her i pitch my voice up a bit and make it a bit more nasally. she’s not much of a singer, nor can she whistle, but she can roll her r’s pretty well. also, since she’s autistic and hard of hearing, her tone of voice often comes off the "wrong” way

farhan: he’s another ttrpg character i play lol, or at least he will be next semester, so his voice is again kind of like mine. but when i talk as him i pitch my voice down and it’s a bit hoarse. ig his voice would also be more “masculine” than mine but whatever. he can sing and whistle but has a pretty small vocal range (since he’s, like, 13 right now and will be 16 when i rp him next semester)

carter: i imagine his voice as low and on the quiet and raspy end, with a tiny bit of a lisp. he’s way too insecure to try to sing or even whistle or anything like that, though if he practiced at it he’d probably get pretty good

calira: she’s mute so n/a i guess. but she talks pretty formally in her dialect of elvish sign language, which is definitely unusual

sam: they have kind of a low voice that’s also raspy, but with quite a bit of pep and variation in their tone. they can even sing pretty well and they like to whistle constantly while working. that creates some kind of whiplash cause sam comes off as a typical edgy teen a lot of the time

jizoriel: high-pitched with lots of voice cracks, peak pretentious preteen/early teen jerkass. he can’t really sing or do anything similar, nor does he want to very much

victoria: so quiet and raspy that you can barely make out that it’s low and has a soothing and pleasant tone to it. she can sing well, or at least she could once upon a time

rowan: just! the happiest and most cheerful voice you can imagine! so much love behind how she talks! her voice fills up her whole head and the whole room!! and she whistles sometimes while she walks

ace: defies any masculine or feminine labels, smooth and cool in theory but they stutter quite a bit

charity: gruff but with a hint of cheer and clarity behind it that comes out when she’s startled. she loves to sing but can’t whistle and can’t roll her r’s either

jamal: i actually have a voiceclaim for him! it’s this (the voice that sings from 1:51 to 1:58)

kimberly: her voice is a bit high and a bit... idk how to say it exactly... i guess shrill would be the word?

fabián: his voice seems higher-pitched than it actually is cause he talks higher when he’s anxious, and he’s always anxious. it’s a bit hard to describe his voice otherwise tbh. i can hear it in my head but i can’t quite put it to paper oops. oh yeah also he has a great singing voice but never uses it sooo

7. What song reminds you of this oc? Does this match up with the type of music your oc likes to listen to?

this question opens up a wormhole cause i have playlists for many of these guys but instead i’ll just provide one (1) song for each and vaguely describe their music taste, how does that sound

avani: honestly “mr. capgras encounters a secondhand vanity” by will wood is a “her” song to me. her music taste leans a lot more toward older music though (like some classics from the 70s and 80s and such)

farhan: he’s still very new so i haven’t really found a song for him yet. but i know he absolutely loves peppy and energetic pop music and also sappy gay love songs

carter: (slaps my hand away when i try to type another will wood song) “fantasy island” by the shins always launches me into daydreams about him. which kinda roughly aligns with his music taste, he listens to a lot of those “mainstream indie” artists. he’d also listen to will wood because he’s gay and mentally ill <3

calira: one of my favorite songs on her playlist is “maximillian von spee” by dirt poor robins. but the music she listens to is basically all invigorating church-loving stuff with medieval-era instruments lmao

sam: “sometimes” by nick lutsko is an absolute bop and very much a sam song. sam actually doesn’t go out of their way to listen to music though, but when they do they listen to either the most soothing and relaxing stuff or to the angriest metal emo music. no in between

jizoriel: i’ll go the less emo angle here and say a song that reminds me of him is “upside down” by jack johnson. jizoriel’s music taste is like. old choir music and shit plus incomprehensible magical music that doesn’t even sound like music. if he was from earth he’d like my chemical romance

victoria and rowan: i’m grouping these two together here because a song that reminds me very strongly of both of them/their relationship is “human” by dodie. which actually fits very well into both of their music tastes!

ace: again, going the less edgy angle here, “auntie earth” by walter mitty and his makeshift orchestra. but ace mostly listens to uh, classical flute music and flute covers

charity: absolutely “dance and cry” by mother mother, that’s pretty much her theme song. it’s among her favorite songs in canon too

jamal: “tire swing” by los elk, since his arc is about letting go of childhood and all that jazz. he’s more inclined to listen to fun. and other pop artists and rappers and such. he likes janelle monae

kimberly: “best tears” by the happy fits for sure. in terms of her music taste though, her taste is pretty similar to jamal’s. they bond over being janelle monae fans

fabián: by god does “heal” by so much light fit him. his taste is that he rotates through three (3) specific obscure indie artists lmao, so theoretically i guess that specific song is included in there

18. How does your oc see themself? How does this compare to the way other ocs see them?

i am gonna do my best to keep these short cause this is a loaded question for all of them hoo boy

avani: how she sees herself: honestly the worst person alive. unless she spends every moment of her time trying to make up for what she’s done, she’s worthless, and she doesn’t deserve to love herself in any capacity how others see her: her brother (farhan) really looks up to her! most of the time. the superhero team she’s on (other people’s ocs) all think she’s generally smart and capable enough, and her boyfriend in particular thinks she’s incredible

farhan: how he sees himself: as of right now? a misunderstood emo middle schooler who’s still kind of cool i guess how others see him: his sister (avani) thinks he’s quite an impressive and charismatic young man

carter:  how he sees himself: 1/10 awkward and annoying how others see him: carter reminds calira too much of her old self, so she love-hates him. sam thinks he’s weak and cowardly but admires his kindness. and jizoriel clings to him as a caring father figure and loves carter’s passion for natural studies

calira: how she sees herself: it goes back and forth between “i’m the greatest chosen one ever im such a strong warrior” and “wow i’m literal trash why did the gods pick me for this” how others see her: carter is a bit intimidated by her but appreciates her attempts to vibe with him, sam thinks she’s an annoying pretentious self-important bitch (but their opinion softens over time), and jizoriel sees right through her facade and feels comfortable around her because of it

sam:  how they see themself: evil and in need of redemption, kind of similar to avani ig but with 10x more confidence in their skills and also much more violent how others see them: carter knows theyre doing their best even if theyre kind of an asshole, calira is a fan of their strength and determination, and jizoriel Hates Their Guts (at first) because they baby him too much

jizoriel: how he sees himself: a fucking fraud of a prince. all he has going for him is his abilities as a mage, but even then those are shaky how others see him: carter knows he’s very insecure and wants to comfort him, calira admires his magical prowess and noble air, and sam thinks he’s a snarky little pretentious douchebag but also he reminds them of their late brother and they want to protect him at all costs

victoria: how she sees herself: basically dead. only good for interacting with ghosts. not worthy of the human world or of friendship how others see her: she reminds rowan of her old self. rowan sees a glimmer of love and hope in her and wants to bring it out

rowan: how she sees herself: a fucking mess but she’s trying her best and that’s what counts! how others see her: victoria very much appreciates her cheerful air even if she doesn’t act like it

ace: how they see themself: way too weird to be human, way too weak not to be. their self-image changes constantly. theyre very confused about everything please help how others see them: charity is literally dating them lol she thinks theyre the cutest person alive, jamal appreciates how hard they try as a friend, kimberly thinks theyre an alien invader whom she can study and use to get further in life, and fabián knows more about ace than anyone else and loves them for it

charity: how she sees herself: a Teenager who’s struggling. she desperately wants to be young without the burden of her trauma but whether she thinks of herself as emo and sad and angry or not depends a lot on her mood how others see her: ace adores everything about her, jamal loves how cool and fun and sociable she can be, kimberly is annoyed with her rebelliousness, and fabián worries very much for her well-being and can’t shake the image of her as helpless (oops that’s gonna cause some drama)

jamal: how he sees himself: just a chill guy trying to get by. unremarkable. how others see him: ace is grateful for how forgiving he can be but is still terrified of him being angry over [spoilers], charity loves how sociable and fun he is and how protective he can be of his friends, kimberly secretly envies his carefree nature, and fabián sees him as a solid acquaintance to whom he did not give a good first impression

kimberly: how she sees herself: not good! if she can’t grow up fast and do science well then she’s useless how others see her: ace wants to be friends with her but doesn’t know how to do that, charity is annoyed by her rule-bound-ness, jamal thinks she’s cool but should unwind a little, and fabián resents her at first but would still like to play chess with her sometime

fabián: how he sees himself: he has a moral responsibility to help people Or Else. way too anxious and stuck up but he doesn’t know how to change that how others see him: ace fuckin Loves this guy, charity loves him too but she gets pissed when he tries to help her with anything, jamal genuinely thinks he’s a great guy and wants to get to know him better, and kimberly is actually impressed by him and envies his apparent confidence and charisma

ok ok that’s it i promise. sorry this is so long and tysm for reading if you made it this far!! feel free to ask more oc questions literally whenever, that goes for anyone reading this <3

[theskyexists]

the amazing she-ra 5

i am LOVING this first episode. they’re TRULY the underdogs now. people are hiding with magic. they live in tents. they’ve lost their edge. they’re actually leaning into the horrors of war now

Shadowweaver says OOC stupid things but it doesn’t matter because the princesses shut it down satisfactorily. Adora is weighed down by responsibility in a cool way.

Catra is staking out the enemy and weaseling her way in. (yessss)

‘You don’t need to say it! I know. I made that choice. I’m living with the consequences.’ I LOVE THIS ADORA

I LOVE THIS WRITING. Catra and Glimmer are THE greatest pair ever. Glimmer is smart enough to poke right through Catra’s defenses - and NOW they’re in the same situation - Glimmer says so - and immediately the prison wall fades away - and they’re both invited for dinner. THAT DELICIOUS WRITING

i do love how shadowweaver has been this snarky aunt for two seasons now.

Hord Prime shows us Adora in danger and Catra is like; FUCK YOU ADORA’S MINE (TO DESTROY) !!!!

I love Hord Prime’s wonderfully manipulative dinner. And I love glimmer quietly crying and I love Catra being like HRMMMM I DONT LIKE THIS. the subtle animations are so great - the close-ups

the way Catra speaks to Hord Prime - the way she’s really fuckin scared and the way Hord Prime says ‘little sister’. The way they make him seem unbeatable. I LVOE IT.

AND I LOVE THESE VISIONS FOR ADORA

jezus but how few people really live in etheria ?

the propaganda and the tech to boost prime’s image everywhere....ugh it’s delicious. im also happy Entrapta is back and on the good side instead of helping Catra be a bitch to Adora. and im glad the princesses are wary of her.

hahahaah awww Bo came to give adora breakfast and then he panics when she’s lying on the floor. I ALSO LOVE BO AND ADORA TOGETHER BEST

goddamnit Bo YAH! finally somebody who effectively protects someone from the masses. fuck off micah!

Love the princesses acting on their own - love Scorpia mediating, love mermista stepping up, love Entrapta using her .....intelligence

I love how Hord Prime manipulating Glimmer is used to show us more about his empire.

‘i only want to bring peace’ - but also i destroyed all these worlds. how is that...how is that even surface compatible?? like no attempt is made to align those two things.

wait....the heart of etheria will destroy the universe? why??? why is that the assumption. and why...does Hord Prime want that? i....

the comedy of the princesses doing a mission alone is GREAT

IM SO HAPPY THE PRINCESSES GOT TO HIT ENTRAPTA WHERE IT HURTS. now THIS is the right level of comedy versus hurt

the way scorpia rolled to cover frosta in her bulk!

i love how adora is like - HAH sleep is great actually! wow!!

because of the underlying grievances that we EXPERIENCED as audience, this friendship moment actually LANDS

I REINSTATE MY HOORAY!!! (hahahaha god i love scorpia). oh my god Micah saying he trusts glimmer’s friends to save her - fuckin hell - heart squeeze

LOOK AT THAT SHIT. LOOK AT IT!!! Glimmer being angry at Catra - but then recanting and showing vulnerability. Catra showing vulnerability by acquiescing. GOD!!!

‘why did you do it?’ OH GOD ARRGHGHHG THATS SO FUCKING PAINFUL. why does Catra scratch Adora? Because she doesn’t understand - seems to not make the effort to understand!! because she’s never understood that everybody always hurt her - she never fucking saw when it was right in front of her. THat’s even worse in a way than being hurt.

god the fuckin scale. the planet getting bombarded from space....jezus christ.

theres a hallway with light and dark at the end - its implied she goes into the dark - BECAUSE SHE INTENDS TO HIDE FROM WHO FOLLOWS HER

wow she instantly realises he’s hordak. ha!

Catra is being so open with Glimmer. She’s REALLY REALLY! off balance

they have a talking ritual!!!! THEYRE BONDING ABOUT ADORA BEING A DORK!!!!

Catra realises that nothing she was doing on Etheria had any value to her!!!! I LOVE THIS SEASON SO MUCH

I love how Adora gets to be such a badass dork this season!!!! Bo and Adora + Glimmer and Catra are the BEST COMBINATION

godDAMN they made these clones creepy. damn i LOVE Hord Prime!!!

catra/glimmer......tho.....

she pushes her onto the bed and kneels before her, holding her hands. DUDES. MY DUDES!!!! catra is they gayest cat in existence

‘do one good thing in your life!’ - oh OUCH god, you can feel the whole weight of all the hurt and injustice she’s experienced in ‘dont talk to me like you know me!’

HAHAHAHAHAHAH BO losing his mind and Adora being a hilarious himbo is SO GOOD

I LOVE CATRA’S ABSOLUTELY HEARTBREAKING ADORABLE MEMORY AND HALLUCINATIONS

‘im alway going to be your friend’  - ‘i’ll never say sorry to anybody’ GODDD

‘all i do is hurt people, there’s no one left in the entire universe who cares about me’ - a reasonable assumption based on your behaviour except for the fact that Adora has been trying to reach you for 4 FUCKING seasons with hand outstretched

THAT WAS SO FUCKING DRAMATIC I AM IN LOVE !! IN LOVE WITH THEM!!!!

are you fucking SERIOUS - ENTRAPTA MADE AN AB WINDOW IN BO’S SPACE SUIT AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA

the animation in this goddamn season is CRAZY and INCREDIBLE

I ADORE Catra the self Martyr i ADORE that she’s going to go through the wringer still in Hord Prime’s hands.

THIS SEASON IS WORTH ALL THE REST

are YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME- i HATE THAT SHIT WHY MUST YOU MAR THIS SEASON WITH AN INTERRUPTION OF AN APOLOGY. STOP IT!!! IT’S NOT FUN IT’S NOT SATISFYING IT RUINS THE MOMENT IT WEAKENS THE EMOTION BY DRAGGING IT OUT FUCK!!!!

well i guess that was pretty good with Adora. wish they had made that a little bit longer

i love entrapta. she’s such a perfect element to throw into the mix. and her connections with AI’s are great

that scorpia and swift wind talk is so beautiful. they are also the PERFECT pair. ‘gosh have you ever noticed how many moons we have here? it’s weird.’ HAHAHAHA

they’re visiting a planet that’s been conquered by Prime...

I love how they made Entrapta flirty with her tech ahahahaha

i love how Adora is like: oh??? you’re coming to me??? for emotional advice??? uhhhhhh ok haha nice

I LOVE ADORA

i love swift wind’s drunk history retelling of what’s going on on Etheria - especially his impression of shadowweaver and his batman micah

Bo sure is very bad at forgiveness himself lol

‘well im NOT! running awayy that is. i AM smart’ AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! i love you adora

Adora spewing all her bullshit about Catra to total strangers ahahaha

this was SUCH amazing teamwork!!!

AND THAT MOMENT OF SHE-RA BEING BACK!!!!

GLIMMER ACKNOWLEDGING SHE MADE A MISTAKE AND THAT BO DESERVES TO BE MAD AND MAYBE THINGS WON’T BE THE SAME AGAIN BUT SHE WON’T STOP TRYING TO MAKE IT BETTER AND SHE’LL BE THERE IF HE’S EVER READY

FUCKING TEARS BABEY

jezus christ !! that was good!!! i take it back - it was a stupid interruption (they could have just had Bo respond ‘eh’ at an attempt at apology from glimmer....maybe) but they made the final apology INCREDIBLE

‘i can’t just leave her...’ the voice acting in this is sO GOOD

Catra made her whole plan to keep Adora away from Prime based on the assumption that if Glimmer was in Prime’s hands, then Adora would come to rescue her no matter the danger. So she saved Glimmer. But SHE FAILED TO REALISE THAT ADORA WOULD DO THE SAME FOR HER AHAHAHAHAHAHAA

the amazing thing about these highly tech advanced societies is that none of them have invented security cameras

glimmer getting some ptsd flashes

I KNEW that the heart of etheria was built by the First Ones to fight Hordak. Makes Mara’s decision a bit more ---- hMMMM not as great. Because Hordak has killed countless worlds since!

the hive mind lol. jezus Prime is so terrible.

oh my god the very concepts of Prime when behind a fictional buffer are so archtypically delicious. Catra’s glowy green eyes and full bow. hohhohhohho. that uniform also looks great

so Prime could do this to everyone but he chose to surround himself with clones. goddamn.

oh damn that lean-in, those hands on her neck. hmmmhm. gay

she FLINCHES when Prime lays a hand on her shoulder. DAMN. love it

‘you will give me she-ra’ ---- isn’t that what she’s been offering all along? lol

AND THEN HE LEAVES ADORA WITH A BRAINWASHED CONTROLLED PUPPET CATRA WHO ATTACKS HER

OH ITS SO DELICIOUS

brainwashed Catra is really sexy and disturbing hahahahahaha

this fight is so well choreographed. Catra letting herself almost fall, Adora gathering her into her arms, the scratch across the back, the damn knee into the midriff (OUCH), the dangling her in turn.

‘i always hated that guy in particular - and also all the other guys i hit on the way in.’ LOLOLOLOL

THE CHEEK TOUCH - THE TEARS AND SMILE - THE GREEN EYES AND THE BACKHAND AFJLDJFDSJFLKDSJSDFKSDFJ

‘you’re such an idiot!’

‘yeah! i know!’

I LOVE THEM AAAAAAAAAAAAA ITS SO TRUE AHAHAHAHAHAHAI LOVE THEM

‘im going to take you home’

‘promise?’

NOELLE WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO ME

Adora watches Catra probably die and fall off into a endless pit. JUMPS IN AFTER HER ONE SECOND LATER

Prime really did miscalculate lol - his ship’s been destroyed by one stab at a server.

CATRA ALMOST DYING AND ADORA TRANSFORMING WITH GLOWY EYES GODDAMN!!!! HOLDING CATRA INTO HER ARMS BRIDAL STYLE. NEW OUTFIT!! WALKING INTO THE SHIP LIKE A BOSS. AND HEALS HER. HEY ADORA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND SHE FUCKING

PURRS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

all the fucking crying is so good

‘I kNOW YOU ALL HATE ME!” ‘I NEVER HATED YOU’ ‘Then you’re dumber than I thought’ HAHAHAHAHA i love how Catra cannot accept Adora’s friendship because she cannot forgive herself. but Adora never fucking gets it because she has the emotional intelligence of a crab!!!! the problem is that Adora is the exact shape of Catra’s heart - which is one big open wound. And if she presses - all she does is cause hurt

Catra is so adorable looking god.....

SPINERELLA AND NETOSSA KISSED!!!!!!!! awwwwwww they’ve been so cute for so long and they only got more and more screentime and Awwwww

Not-Hordak and ‘dehydrated protein slaw’ AhAHAHAHA

how did they find us? UHHH THERES A CHIP IN CATRA’S SPINE????

ADORA TELLING CATRA WHAT’S UP!! YES! Catra in a corner. Catra on her damn KNEES. ADORA BLUSHING AT HOLDING HER HAND

their first impulse is to hold each other at the ship shaking.

CATRA IS BLUSHING LOOKING AT ADORA TRANSFORM

SHE-RA CAN LITERALLY FLY THROUGH SPACE - well. make matter from light, breathe in a vacuum, jumpt from one asteroid to another....

I AM GLIMMER IN THIS: YEAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

Catra is very lucky that her biggest likely hater is already on her side: glimmer

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SPINERELLAAAA. what a fuckin bait and punch goddamn! making them so cute and then foreshadowing it perfectly and then BAM

CATRA IS CONFIDENT ENOUGH TO MESS WITH ADORA BY LITERALLY JUMPING INTO ADORA’S LAP

fjadslkfasdjflkadjfsja

CATRA IS

PURRING

catra is so effortlessly cool sitting in the window sill

i am actually loving that they have a not-Hordak with them. it humanises those clones a lot

this prince has farsight but they NEVER thought to recruit him BEFORE???

FUCKIN - I LOVE how spinerella and netossa have gotten so much more screentime - relevant to the plot and also revealing their characters. i wish we’d got this from the start!

well now i ship perfuma and scorpia lolololol

HAHAHAHAHA i LOVE this Seahawk and Mermista hiding behind a bar because of ex victims skjsfajfklds

Prince Peekabloo has an AMAZING design, but also he must be a fake. IT MUST BE DOUBLE TROUBLE. double trouble has TASTE

MERMISTA LOOKS SO COOL IN THAT OUTFIT - but also especially chipped and in shadows. they do love chipping people’s love interests

SCORPIA SACRIFICING HERSELF TO SAVE PERFUMA. jezus christ so much love interest drama suddenly wow

‘happy anniversary’ that is HEARTBREAKING

what a great ending to a very silly episode. that’s the balance. a last message from the last soldier standing...

‘WHY DOES SPACE HATE ME SO MUCH!?!?!’ hahahahaah

Catra’s fingers shake......

‘take it from somebody who’s defeated you guys, like, a lot’ AAHAHAHA

FINALLY CATRA IS ON THEIR SIDE TO BE THE SMARTS IN TEH ROOM

ADORA LOOKS SO BADASS IN THAT SPACESHIP CHAIR

chipping everyboddy so they’re like zombies was a great story idea.

catra upset at her signs of upset. CUTE

why the FUCK is Adora’s hair out of her spacesuit ahahahahahahaha. IM SO GLAD THAT BO AGREES WITH ME ON THE ADORABLENESS OF CATRAS HELMET HAHAHAHAHAA

catra is happy to see adora laugh again.... : ‘)

CATRA JUST CLAWED THROUGH FIVE CENTIMETERS OF STEEL????!?!?!?!

ADORA IS BLUSHING AAHAHAHAHAHAAAA

I LOVE how Catra is like, WHAT THE FUCK at having lost to these people

Entrapta trying to deal with Wrong-Hordak in existential crisis is a hilarious premise

THE ANGRIER YOU GET THE CUTER YOU ARE!!! I LOVE BO

oh wow! a first ones colony! very cool! this whole planet works against intruders and plays tricks on them. i do like how first ones are definitely like, still imperial shitlords like subtly. i love how Wrong-Hordak has a realisation arc in the background.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS CREEPY

CATRA DISARMED THIS CAT CREATURE WITH HER CUTE SNEEZE AHAHAHAHA

CATRA IS PETTING A CAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AHAHAHAHA EVERY SINGLE THING WE COULD HAVE EVER WANTED IS COMING TRUE

catra is working on not lashing out :’) <= literally adora and also me

Melog is so ADORABLE and imprinted on Catra and LOVES ADORA and AGHGHGHG

I love how Adora can make her eyes glow on command

Castaspella was blushing at Shadowweaver being so close lolololol. wow this is the first time Castaspella has been interesting. ‘and stop me, if i take the power for myself’ i love aunty shadowweaver.

AAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAH WHAT HAHAAHHAAAAHA Catra notices she’s holding Adora’s hand and goes ARGGH and doesn’t just take her hand back but throws it away ahhaahaha. Adora doesn’t even respond. that was so hilarious for some reason.

GLIMMER KISSING CATRA’S CHEEK HELLO??? HELLO?????????

‘is what i would have said before i joined you. go team’ hahahaa

‘you’re wearing hooded cloaks. that’s highly suspicious’ AHAHAHAHAHA fucking meta

I LOVE HOW ADORA IS THE ‘oh god my fuckin friends blowing our cover great’ person here

MELOG IS ALREADY STEALING MUSHROOMS FOR CATRA TO EAT AHAHAHAHA I LOVE THEM

Spinerella and Netossa are so BADASS and i love their fight. it’s so deliciously painful and cool hehehehehe

so the only person im fighting here is!.....my own wife...

I LOVE THEM

spinerella is so op lololol - why did she barely do anything for them when they were still fighting hordak

wrong hordak is so fucking cute ahahahahaha

goddamn that reunion was touching and funny at the same time. and i can actually believe that Prime is having trouble with this slippery team of magic users

I love Netossa’s analysis of the princesses weaknesses. Adora: can’t act to save her life. also extreme hair envy with she-ra

BUT GLIMMER: crippling self-doubt mixed with overwhelming hubris AHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHA

OH MY GOD SHE SPRITZED CATRA WITH WATER JFDKLDFWDSFKSDFKJLDSJFJDSFKDSLKFSDLFJLKFLKDJFLKS AHAAHAHAAHA

PERFUMA DON”T BE A BITCH TO CATRA. (even though yeah Catra did treat Scorpia bad) she’s right you need to fuckin go for the neck (this episode is gonna show us that you need to damage the chip AND get through to scorpia and it’s going to take catra and perfuma ofc)

awwwww glimmer and bo.... bo is really worried about his dad :’( . this is the first time ive found myself shipping bo and glimmer.....the way he sighs into her arms, turns his face into her neck. Yes....

AWWW CATRA AND ADORA CHALLENGING EACH OTHER AGAIN AWWWW

BO’S DADS LEFT HIM A CLUE IN A FUCKING DAD JOKE ahahaahahahahaah

perfuma is really getting on my nerves here. ‘we dont throw tanks at our friends’ uhhhh shes trying to kill you. just let perfuma get electrocuted adora

AH THEY FINALLY GIVE AN ORIGIN STORY FOR ‘GRAYSKULL’! ha! i do love how they keep elaborating on the First Ones as tyrants as well

hmm perfuma was right i guess. i didnt really like that development. urgh god perfuma is so grating lol..

i wonder how shadowweaver and catra are gonna....deal with each other....

hah. shadowweaver tries to weasel in with Adora again. but Adora won’t stand for it again....

Melog literally acts out Catra’s emotions and jumps adora playfully. hehehehe

shadowweaver is such a fucking bitch. i wonder if we’ll ever get her to admit guilt or apologise

no adora. you have to fucking defend catra to shadowweaver. THAT is what you have to do now that you can!

SHE JUST JUMPED INTO FIRE FOR ADORA

shadowweaver preying on Adora and Catra again goddddd. let this be an episode in which they finally shuck her off. Adora fucking THINK, the only reason you could transform in the first place was BECAUSE of Catra.

YEAHHHHH CATRA!!!!!!!! GETTING ALL THE INFO BEFORE ADORA GETS MANIPULATED INTO SOMETHING SHE DIDN’T CHOOSE. naturally she still chooses to do it.

Melog lies half on top of Adora while Catra watches her.... god fuckin hell Melog being an extension of Catra’s feelings is so fucking AMAZING

holy FUCK that confrontation. (i love how every confrontation between adora and catra starts in roughhousing - their language is extremely physical). this is the softer version of catra’s and adora’s dynamic. Catra loves Adora and she wants Adora to choose HER, LIFE WITH HER. ‘what do you want?’ (WHAT ABOUT ME??) But Adora always chooses some higher hero purpose over her. and she doesn’t want to watch Adora die....

‘i dont have to watch it happen...’

god fuckin hell this season.

shadowweaver BELIEVES that she did the right things - of course. and that’s fascinating. and I love that Adora finally totally truly was like: YOU RUIN PEOPLE AND I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU. fuck yeah!

so when was the moment that Adora couldn’t become she-ra anymore? think it’s when she lost track of Catra....

I love Melog - I love how Catra cannot hide from her feelings anymore - at all.

the way glimmer asks adora ‘are you scared?’ ugh MY HEART

i love martyrs. i fucking LOVE martyrs.

oh my god hallucination Catra touching foreheads with Adora.....

EVERYTIME Glimmer just straight up shows Catra affection? that’s some good shit. i thought we were gonna have Glimmer going after Catra for her mother’s death at one point but no....not at all. and i dont mind it

GLIMMER SAID I LOVE YOU TWICE TO BO AND THEN BO SAID IT BACK AND KISSED HER DSFKSDLBJDS FOREHEAD !!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE MARA!!!

the fights this season have been SO! GOOD!

i love how they’ve set up that Glimmer is a fucking POWERHOUSE. she can turn the tide of battle in a blink!

naturally they pit Micah against Glimmer. jfc this poor family....

there is something important about Prime not remembering Mara....

SHE BEAT MICAH SHE BEAT HIM!!!! WALKING RIGHT THROUGH HIS STORM OF DARK MAGIC.

SCORPIA CRADLED BO LIKE A BABY

SHADOWWEAVER SAVING CATRA? FOR ONCE???? FOR ONCE CHOOSING CATRA OVER POWER????? FUCK THAT’S CATHARTIC EVEN IF IT WAS ONLY TO GET ADORA TO THE HEART

catra has such a soft heart really. she still, after everything, loves shadowweaver. god....

SHE SAID SHE WAS PROUD OF CATRA. SHE --- SHE - SHE SACRIFICED HERSELF. GOD THE VOICEACTING FOR CATRA WHEN SHE - ADORA FALLING TO HER KNEES. THEIR PSEUDO MOTHER... AGHLDJDWFJJDSLF

FUCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKk

EVERY SINGLE LINE IS SO GOOD, so well-acted. the ‘im ready’ the way she says ‘catra’ like she can’t take anything anymore

i couldn’t write anything for the whole rest of that i was just covering my mouth with my hands

The fuckiN KISS! the look of PURE LOVE on ADoRA”S FACE

which in the back of my head - they cannot actually cut that in any way - it’s impossible to cut

adora with those blue eyes in the blaze, the magic is beautiful adora excising prime from hordak’s mind (WOW), adora and catra touching foreheads and the slight PURR you can hear, adult bo and glimmer (lookin so nice), adult catra (LOOKING SO HANDSOME in her prom-y outfit,) Glimmer chasing Catra, just, GOD, THE UTENA FUCKING REFERENCE, the way they say they love each other, my GOD, Scorpia being like woah perfuma you look nice, MY GOD MY GOD MY GOD THEM GOING TO SPREAD MAGIC TO THE UNIVERSE GOD!!!!!!

every single thing in this season was worth 4 seasons of enjoyable, entertaining, interesting, frustrating and meh. WOAH! WOAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[slothgiirl]

forever isn’t for everyone part 10

We all head straight to the hotel, just in time for the first interviews of the day; throwing Jamie and Miles to the wolves. It's a nice place, that we won't enjoy. Having lost a day means that after using the hotel for interviews, we'll have to run to the venue. Only Lucy and the two band members get off at the hotel. 

The rest of us, unlucky as we are, have to get and attempt a soundcheck down half our crew. It's hell. 

Made worse at the thought of Alex holed up in the tour bus as we rush around. Unbothered by work as he's just Miles' plus one. Having stayed up all night with Miles, playing guitar and making my head want to explode as I'd laid in my bunk, thinking about how deft his hands on the strings were. Working myself up and worst of all-- missing him. 

Lucy had been right. I text her as much only to hear a snort above me. Unhelpful in everything except gossip. 

By the time Miles and Jamie get back, having been grilled to hell and back, Jamie looking like the worlds most uncomfortable toddler who's cheeks have been pinch way too many times by strangers, most of the set up has been done. The California sun beating down on us as we enjoy munching on the food set up for us. 

It's one of those days when I could care less if it's any good. That fucking hungry. 

Miles keeps glancing down at his phone, a bundle of nervous energy instead of the usual chaotic energy. He reminded me so of the boys in school who would talk back to the teacher and cause riots of laughter among students. He gets up, grabbing another beer and pacing around the room before collapsing into a chair once more. 

It's making me nervous. 

"You alright Miles," I venture, when he sits down by me, frowning down at his phone. 

"Yeah. Yeah," he says dismissively, not bothering to look up from his phone. "Just peachy doll."

I roll my eyes, but persevere. Part of my job is too make sure the talent's holding up. And we might not be friends outside of work, but you can't live on the road for weeks with people and just not care about them. "You're calling me doll. Now I'm really worried."

He laughs humorlessly. "It's all right Ellie. Really."

"Is it Alex?"

Miles' eyes pierce my gaze, the goblin child mirth absent in lieu of surprise. "No. No. sort of." He glances down at the ground, at the carpet the color of cat vomit, whose original color had been lost to time. "He's just got a bit of a headache. That's all."

"Right," I reply, unconvinced by his slippery gaze and the airy tone. 

" 'm sorry about whatever happened between you two," he utters bluntly. "Say the word and I'll send him away.”

"You don't really mean that," I note, fiddling with my thumbs, unable to hold his gaze now as color rises to my cheeks, "or else you'd have offered at the start of the tour. Not two weeks before it ends in south america."

"Technically," Miles counters, pointing his finger right at me, "its just a break before the festivals.  I can make do with out 'im." 

"I highly doubt that," I remark. Everything's in order in the venue. I'll give myself this one night to skip the concert. While people watching could be fun, and there was nothing like the energy of a live band filling the venue with hundreds of screaming fans, I was a bit over it tonight. Having spent the majority of yesterday in the same confined area with Alex, and being careful not to make it too obvious I was avoiding him, had drained me. 

I walk out the door and into the warm summer night. It was a nice change from Utah. The city bathed in lights as the sun set. Just like that an entire summer gone by. Tomorrow was a second show. Then Pomona. Then San Diego  Soon we'd be in South America and then onto Europe. Miles had been wrong, there was only a week before Europe. 

I let out a breathe as I wish for the first time in my life for a cigarette. All this traveling with a rock band and I'd finally picked up some bad habits. I walk down sunset strip and right into a liquor, wishing I had thought to nick some of the cigarette boxes that filled an entire bowl backstage. Thank god for riders. And next year I'd be doing it all over again with another band. The thought filled me with dread. I'd gotten used to Nick and Jamie. To Ben and Miles who often ended up ontop of tables dancing and dunk and pulling Alex up along with him. 

As soon as I take a drag, I can feel the knot inside my chest begin to ease up. More and more neon signs light up. It's not Vegas, with its kitchy over the top theatrics, but Los Angeles feels like every noir detective movie I'd seen. It's so much like the grimy and cheesy eighties action movies set in these very streets. If not for the actual stale smell of actual garbage. The cars honking every five seconds.

Streets clogged like heart arteries with cars. 

I slip into the first bar I find that's playing loud music. The strokes. God, how I used to dance around my room to their music at one in the mornings instead of finishing my assignments. 

"What can I get for you," the bartender, young, maybe only a year older than me, asks in her vocal fry Californian way. 

"rum and coke," I reply. 

"I love your accent," she replies, already pouring out the cheap rum and coke. I set down a ten-er and find a seat in a small alcove, the crushed velvet seat smelling thickly of cheap beer and cigarette smoke. I slump in my seat and watch people come in and out. 

At least I'd seen the TLC Chinese theater on the way in. Even got a picture that wasn't completely blurry at a red light. Months into the tour and my will to go sight see was dead. My feet would not, refused to even think, of walking another two miles down to the famous street. 

I was almost for sure spending my week off curled up in my bed watching random reality tv shows. 

After my rum and coke I grab a cranberry vodka, feeling like a teenager who'd taken a juice box to school. 

The door opens and a familiar face walks in, already chatting up a girl. It's Alex, with the sort of charisma that takes weeks of hacking at his reserved nature to get through. The girl, a acid blonde, is eating it up, giggling against his shoulder as they order drinks. 

It's heartbreak all over again.  

Instead of doing the rational thing, and leaving before I cry in a random bar, I sit there and watch. Watch as he wraps his arm around her, curling his fingers around her waist. She leans into him, laughing loudly like all these Americans do. Stumbling a little as they take a table by the entrance. Alex smiles evenly, even as she wipes tears of laughter from her eyes. 

Shouldn't he be at the concert with his bezzie mate? 

I swallow back bitterness. It's been three months. Plenty of time to have gotten over him if I hadn't been on the road with him for all of that time. That was all. As soon as this tour was over I'd never have to see his face again. 

Even if I wanted to. 

Even if my heart still fluttered when he smiled softly, eyes sparkling with delight as he got absorbed in the conversation. In Miles and even Matt to some extent. He was charming despite his distant nature. The very picture of having your head in the clouds. The dreaminess only made him that much more appealing. I down the rest of my drink, feeling my throat burn, before resolving to leave. This was a sign I should go to the Chinese theater. Get a photo of me among the walk of fame. Why torture myself about Alex? 

He'd been an ass. I had to remind myself of that night, of the week leading up to it when he wouldn't even give me an explanation for why meeting up for breakfast was too much for him. 

When I look up, they're gone. 

I sigh in relief. 

The night in LA is less black, then a midnight blue. The light pollution illuminating even the grimiest corner. I start to walk in the direction of the crowd. Even at eight, the street was as busy as ever. Like New York, like London, this culture capital never slept. It eased any reservations I had about wondering alone at night in a foreign city. 

I'd just get a taxi back to the venue. 

I'm almost down to the light when two figures catch my attention out of the corner of my eye. Down a badly lit alley. There's a homeless woman sleeping at the entrance.

I stop and stare. 

Alex's auburn hair obscuring his features, but I'd know him anywhere. Know the curve of his spine, the way he carried himself, curled in on himself in a way that could only be described as dainty. His lips against the blonde's neck. It's salt in the wound that's been reopened. fuck. I should've stayed behind in Utah. 

I'm about to turn tail and run when my eyes focus on the blonde. Her arms held still by Alex's hands. Back against the wall. It's a red flag ringing in the back of my mind. The flag that my mothers had impressed into my little prepubescent mind, both of them telling me what to do if I ever felt uncomfortable with a man. Both of them biting their nails with each word.

I stride forward without another thought. Jaw clenching shut. 

It doesn't take long to reach them. But my shoe makes an awful crunching sound as I step on a discarded crisps bag. 

Alerting Alex. 

Words well up in my mouth. Stop. What the fuck are you doing. Alex. But they all die on my lips as Alex looks up, his eyes meeting mine. Instead of the caramel color I'm used to, so bloody fond of. . .his eyes like a pair of rubies met mine. A look of utter devastation crosses his fine features. "I can explain," he utters in a rush, lips stained carmine with blood. 

My brain short circuits. Not wanting to make the connection. Not wanting to hear it. I wish I'd stayed. I don't want to know. I don't. Fuck. Jesus fucking christ. 

My mouth can't form words. Can only look from Alex to the hands, still clasped tightly around the blonde. Her smile dazed as she sways, all her weight on him. Alex lets her go. 

She sways like the branches of a willow tree in the wind, almost falling over before the jolt of the fall kicks her back into consciousness. Her eyes widen as she looks at both of us for a tense second. Her mouth widens comically into an O before she screams. 

Alex moves, surging forward and pressing his hand to her mouth, silencing her scream before it can make its way out of the alley and into the trafficked street. He gazes deeply into her frightened eyes. "Forget this night. You had a drink with a stranger and then went home. Now go on. Run back home and sleep the night away." He wipes the last hint of blood from her neck before he lets her go.

Her gaze slacks as he speaks, until the fear retreats. And just like that, like malleable clay, she walks out of the alley, and off into the night. I watch her disappear around the corner. Still shocked silent. 

"El," Alex whispers sadly, much too close for comfort. Having crossed the distance between us while I was distracted. A mistake on my part. A primal terror surging through my mind, telling me to run. To get as far from Alex as possible. "Why'd you have to see?" 

His eyes still unnaturally red.

I shake my head slightly. Aware of his hand reaching for my cheek, frozen in the air, as if held back by some invisible force. "No." I shake my head much more firmly. I don't. I don't want to make the connection consciously that the back of my mind already has. That my mind is insisting of as everything off about him falls into place. 

Alex closes his eyes, taking a step back. "I can let you forget this all if that's what you wish." When he opens his eyes once more, they're back to his normal color. It eases a lump in my throat I hadn't realized had built up. 

This. . .this Alex I might be able to deal with. So much more familiar. If not for the blood on those lips I had spent so many nights kissing.

I rup my temples. "No. No. What the actual fuck."

"El."

"Stay the bloody hell away from me Alex!"

"El please," he pleads, arms held up in a calming motion as though I'm freaking out over nothing. Like he's not a v. . .no. I refuse to go there despite the evidence. "Let's go somewhere to talk."

"I'm not going anywhere alone with you," I spit, stepping back. Wanting to put more distance between us. Had he done that to me? How would I ever even know?

"Of course not," Alex replies, voice wavering, choked full of emotion as he continues, "somewhere crowded-," 

"So you can brainwash me!"

Hurt flashes across his eyes, "I would never hurt you," Alex insists. 

"You already did." I state. Because it had been three months. And Alex, my first serious adult relationship had just-I was left heartbroken. 

He closes his eyes once more sighing. I could run right now. But something more complex than simple fear roots me to this spot in the alley. Alex rubs the bridge of his nose before trying once more.

"El," he sighs with centuries of built up melancholia, "please just listen to me and then you can decide whatever you wish. I'll never bother you again. But El-," his voice breaks. "El I can't refuse for this to be my last memory of you."

My heart flutters, still longing for him even now. Even with the blood drying on his lips. And I can't help but say, "okay."

[midnight-circus]

another bullshit meme

from sidebloggable

answered for logan and lucius bc i dont talk about my big dumb idiot enough

and im actually gonna answer for their original Fable timeline bc ive been feelin nostalgic recently

Their physical weak spots

Logan - depends on his age and/or stress-levels. He has a fair amount of upper body strength from swinging twin swords around all the fucking time, but it wouldn’t be ridiculously hard to overpower him if you could disarm and get hold of him - however, he’s fast, agile and extremely skilled, and it’s getting hold of him in the first place that’s the issue. In the middle of his reign, on the other hand, his body condition takes a dramatic dive - he’s pretty severely underweight and loses a lot of his muscle tone, and it really wouldn’t take much at all to best him. 

Lucius - Lucius is a big, heavy mercenary who fights with a broadsword, so it’s hard to get the best of him in a one-to-one melee fight. However, he’s missing his left eye and is deaf in his left ear - subsequently if you use a little bit of stealth and come at him hard and fast from the left, you’ve got a pretty good chance of getting the jump on him. He’s also into middle-age and despite having decent reactions, a younger man of the same build as him might just pip him to the post.

Their emotional/moral weak spots

Logan - oh god lmao. Logan’s a mess, but his primary emotional weak spot is his siblings - be they his original two (hey queenie and dorian) or Morgan. I think he feels a bond that’s closer to paternal than fraternal, and I think the only way he can really justify to himself the pain he puts them through is telling himself he’s doing it for them. ok honestly, he will do fucking anything for them. at the climax of the revolution, the primary thought running through his head is how fucking proud he is. be nice if he said it out loud every once a while - hell, itd be nice if he’d just asked for some fuckin help before causing the literal death of hundreds of people - but yknow. thats just going one step too far i guess

Lucius - he’s a bleeding heart. when Morgan and his little band of rebels rock up in the Dweller village, Lucius is already there running supplies up and down the mountain to them; he watches way too many kids starve to death, and joins up with the rebels in order to lead them through Mourningwood. then he gets a crush on morgan’s little bitch face and just like. never leaves lmao. He’s easily blinded by injustice and gets worked up really quickly when he sees wrong being done - it can lead him to act recklessly or thoughtlessly at times.

Scars or painful spots

Logan - asides from the obvious scars across his lips (fencing wounds when he was a boy), he took some nasty damage from the Crawler during the three days he was trapped in the Auroran cave - he’s got a network of scars on his back that look a little like lashmarks. they hurt when they’re touched and he Does Not talk about them. he’s also got a few other scars here and there on his arms and chest from miscellaneous scraps and scuffles, and he has a deep puncture scar on his abdomen from an assassination attempt, but the less said about those the better.

Lucius - lmao Lucius is literally missing half his face to scar-tissue. he was attacked by a dog as a boy and it left him heavily messed-up. he’s also a merc, as i said, so he’s got a lot of miscellaneous old wounds but nothing quite as obvious as the ones his face. 

Best places to kiss on their body

Logan - oh, the neck, bitch. he’s also kind of a slut for being kissed on the insides of his wrists; anywhere vulnerable, basically. if you could kill him there, kiss him there. freak-ass bitch.

Lucius - dude just likes a nice traditional french kiss man nothing crazy. but also definitely give him a blowjob. i know this question said kissing but lets be real thats kind of a kiss.

Guilty pleasures

Logan - he reads really terrible novels. like…really terrible. he pretends he’s reading something highbrow and intellectual but its actually a shitty romance recovered with something suitably acceptable and nobody can know

Lucius - he doesnt have any ‘guilty’ pleasures tbh, he just enjoys stuff unashamedly. he’s too thick to feel guilty

Their vices (physical or emotional)

Logan - lets be real, he’s probably done, like. an impressive amount of coke. i guess the terrible sleeping and eating habits are probably also a vice but like. it’s mainly the coke

Lucius - he smokes like a fuckin chimney

Their tickle spots

Logan - not only does he not have any, but you would also die for trying. Elrick disagrees.

Lucius - his ribs, but he is uncontrollably violent when he’s tickled so its a real good way to get a broken nose. he doesn’t mean to do it, he just spasms. 

Bad memories/experiences

Logan - lmao. I’ll skip the most obvious (the 3-Day Auroran Extravaganza) because i think that goes without saying - it left him with crippling PTSD and damaged his mind heavily and insidiously. he was already pretty traumatised by his childhood and i think being forced into so many responsibilities so young also messed him up a little. it’s more like….rather one one or two specific experiences, its more just a general feeling of Bad that has stuck with him throughout his life. It was worsened by his later experiences, and essentially primed him for failure.

Lucius - yknow i was thinking about how to word the answer to this question and i realised that i accidentally made Lucius into Batman. His family farm was attacked and burnt to the ground by bandits when he was about 12; his parents and siblings were killed, and he only escaped by hiding in the coal-cellar. Later, he joined up with the mercenaries to try and track down the group that targeted them. fuck hes batman. i didnt mean to batman

Humiliating memories

Logan - oh man his father was a pro at humiliation. mistakes or oversights werent just punished, they were fuckin learned from, and he figured the best way to do this was humiliation - generally through public displays of What You Did Wrong and repeated recitations of the mistake in front of the people whose opinions Logan valued. It was kind of the catalyst for his inferiority complex and intense desire to succeed without input from others. 

Lucius - again, Lucius doesn’t really experience embarrassment - he’s kind of too laid-back for it. yes, it was embarrassing the one time he fell over carrying two milk buckets and threw them all over himself in front of the handsome boy from the next farm over and the guy started laughing at him but like. you live and learn and the dude turned out to have a really ugly laugh anyway so who cares

Fears/phobias

Logan - he’s always had claustrophobia, but after the Auroran Experience this intensifies to a whole new level, and he also develops crippling nyctophobia. part of this is due to his hallucinatory psychosis - he sees things pretty much constantly, but it worsens in low lighting - but it’s also due to the fact that there may very well be actual Things in the dark and he struggles to tell reality from hallucination

Lucius - dogs. fuckin dogs. he hates dogs theyre literally so scary even the small ones bc the small ones move so quick and you never know when theyre gonna come at you

Bad or petty habits

Logan - oh, he’s just a petty bitch. he’s also outwardly arrogant, even if his internal feelings don’t match up to that. drily sarcastic, too, tho a person only really sees that when they get past the walls he throws up - Elrick is very familiar with it. 

Lucius - he’s constantly standing to the right-hand side of people and then he wonders why he cant hear them properly

Grudges and vendettas

Logan - he’d hold a grudge against his father if he wasnt dead. he also holds a pretty heavy grudge against Theresa for not just fucking telling him.

Lucius - at first, only against the bandits that killed his family, but once he deals with them hes kind of at a loss as to where to go next. fortunately Logan starts starving people shortly afterwards, so if nothing else it gives him a kickstart into the rest of his life. Subsequently, Lucius will hold a vendetta against Logan for the rest of his life, even after he has been in a relationship with Morgan for years - he will never forgive him for the shit he put the common people through, and he doesnt really give a shit about the ~pressures~ Logan was under at the time. fuckin excuses, man. 

Ingrained habits/forces of habit

Logan - his terrible sleeping/eating patterns. even before trauma and night-terrors made it almost impossible for him to sleep peacefully, he didn’t get more than 5 or 6 hours a night, if that.

Lucius - if something is smaller than him, he’ll protect it. he’ll also protect things bigger than him, if given half the chance. hes basically a golden retriever in human form, which is ironic considering his feelings about dogs.

What it takes to make them cry

Logan - would rather die than cry, quite literally.

Lucius - his heart is softer than butter, he’ll cry at anything. he’ll cry at an injured pigeon on the street. 

Dark secrets/’skeletons in the closet’

Logan - never, ever, ever talks about what happened in Aurora. The details die with him.

Lucius - he doesn’t really have any - he’s not ashamed of much in his life, and he’s never done anything terrible enough to render it a skeleton. 

People they’ve hurt or indirectly killed, and how it affected them

Logan - L M A O. yes, it affected him terribly, but tbqh however much its affected him kind of plays second fiddle to how much his actions affected other people.

Lucius - has killed a lot of people who deserved it during his mercenary years, and justifies it to himself by being absolutely certain that they did deserve it. sometimes he doubts this, though, and that doubt plays a big part in his eventually getting out of the game entirely

People who’ve influenced them greatly

Logan - Walter, tho he’ll never admit it in a million years and he still definitely kneecapped him right at the start of the game so idk what that says about him

Lucius - Morgan. it’s real gay, i know, but there it is.

[archer3-13]

Gundam Seed Destiny Watch Notes

episode 1

- strong opening sequence both in terms of tension and emotional weight. it works because it pulls the audience away from the rather nonsensical and incoherent battle of orb into shinns immediate perspective.

- to sort of summarize its emotional impact, i feel more for shinn in that 3.5 minutes then i ever felt for kira or athrun as characters during all of seed.

- that’s hyperbole, but to get more specific consider how each character is introduced to us the audience [in the original broadcasts]:

-in gundam seed destiny, were thrust into the chaos and confusion of a battle. For those familiar with seed they’ll recognize this as the battle for orb, for those not however it’s a good immersion tool to connect us with the emotions of our focus character for the flashback shinn. Things are confusing, panicked, theres an attempt at evacuation but its clearly last minute and disorganized, battles raging and orbs on the backfoot. Shinn and his family are evacuating, civilian cloths, and well shinns the most obviously important one by value of his face hes dressed in mundane enough clothing to blend in with the earflap beanie being ridiculous enough to make him look more mundane [in my opinion]. His sister loses her retro cutting edge flip phone, and childishly refuses to go forward without it. Shes scared, shes young, everyone’s scared, and shinn in the heat of the moment runs to get it. And by shear coincidence and chance, that gets him out of the blast zone, the camera cuts leaving it ambiguous as to who fired the killing shot. It's impact is clear though, shinns beanie is thrown off his head as he struggles both in physical and emotional pain to take in the sight of his dead family and its not a pretty sight lingering long enough to atleast convey the sense of the images burning themselves in shinns head and definitely long enough to leave people uncomfortable. Shinns dad is crushed by a tree, his moms been seemingly torn apart likely by debris, shinns sister likewise has been shredded, her cut off hand having lured shinn to the gruesome sight to begin with. The battling mobile suits catch his attention, sorrow turns to rage and is swallowed by grief, and shinn torn between despair and newfound hatred simply gives up and wails in agony.

- in gundam seed we are introduced to athrun and kira through the opening theme animation in a still shot. The next time we see them in that animation athruns posing in a military powerpoint following his squad, and kiras cosmic naked with lacus on some ethereal plain. Ahtrun follows up with a confrontational still with cagalli backed by fire. Kira gets a group shot at the front of the archangel crew. Kira later still gets some random ass slightly sexual shot of a mobile suit exploding with a naked holographic lacus convulsing like shes having an orgasm as he looks on stoically, and later finally ends with a shot of kira looking up stoically as the strike goes through its launch animation.

- now, I suppose the immediate counter argument to that would be “hey, asshole, isn’t comparing an anime opening animation to a full on flashback sequence an unfair comparison? We all know anime ops are notoriously style over substance”. and my own answer to that would be “no, its not an unfair comparison because ops still tell us things through visual communication and most other anime these days and shows in general [of any quality anyways] are smart enough to lay down character groundwork before smash cutting to the theme song”.

- to go for a more grounded comparison that illustrates what I mean, lets go back to the original gundam in 79. The original gundam opened right out the gate with the theme song and op animation, no canned narration no nothing just bam, title song. Gundam seed opens with an admittedly effective shot of ginns descending down to earth as the zaft pilots steel themselves for war against the earth, which smoothly transitions into seeds canned narration about the war and how its supposedly speedy conclusion has been dragged out for 11 months. Then seed hits us with the op animation. And yet I would argue 79 has the more effective first foot by smashing immediately to the opening. Why?

- Aside from the 79 theme song itself being [arguably] superior to seeds first op song in every conceivable way, id say its communication. 79’s op is uncomplicated, simple and direct. Whats the gimmick? Giant robots, whos the hero guy? This kid whos shooting a gun and giving a thumbs up in the aircraft thing man he looks brave, supporting cast we should know? These idiots and some other robots look at em go, whats the conflict? These green guys with a prominent lead red guy they look mean, whats the heroes relation to his supporting cast? The supporting light and center of things good to know, heres a closing shot of the gundam look at it go, I hope that you got that its name is gundam. Its arguably deceptively optimistic for the shows actual content, but it works in forming an immediate emotional connection to amuro as the guy were suppose to root for which is good considering how he is in early episodes [an understandably frustrated teen, but hes very intentionally written to be aggravating at times so that immediate positive connection is good at keeping the audience grounded with him]. Its only then when we have our connection to the protagonist that we move into the brief canned narration. And certainly its not essential to introduce your protagonist first, star wars a new hope gets away with introducing luke like ten minutes into the thing. But it helps that lukes suppose to be something of a dark horse, the unexpected wrench from humble origins in the empires plan.

- by comparison we open seed with narration that takes twice as long to convey the same amount of information 0079 gets out in under a minute, and the opening itself is a lot more scattered and nonsensical, trying to convey a lot more then 0079s own opening. Whats the concept? Giant robots cool, whos the main character? Maybe these two guys, one of thems closer to the front then the other so I guess him, but also these people are probably important too? Whos are supporting cast then, this gaggle of clowns I guess but aside from the jerseys who tf knows what their relation is to maybe protagonist man? Whos the enemy? The guys in the different coloured jerseys presumably, they keep trying to blow up main protagonist man atleast so probably them? Whats the protagonists relation to the supporting cast? No fucking idea outside of being the main one of them, but hey atleast we know pink haired lady and main guy are going to probably fuck. That’s not to say no information is conveyed, athrun and kira are successfully established as a pair that parallel each other, muru and raru [the antagonist of seed] are established in a similar manner or atleast connected, as are natarale and that lady who commands the archangel ship whos name I never remember. We know who correlates with which gundam of athruns crew as they pose for mens magazine, and who pilots what in general. We know flay’s sad. But again, the problem is that its seeds first foot forward and for the most part it’s a confusing if flashy mess with only some vague generalities on the setting being conveyed through canned narration and the most important info from the opening seemingly being that kira and lacus are gonna fuck considering how much time they spend hovering around it. And even that turns out to not be the case.

- which brings me back to seed destiny and why it did the overall better job with its first foot. It brings us into shinns character first and foremost and it establishes both a lot of directions shinn could go as a character well introducing us to him at a very vulnerable moment emotionally. At the very least it conveys to us that survivors guilt and anger are going to be two big things shinn grapples with as a character, all well using pretty much only visual cues, sound cues, and minimal dialogue which better sells the intimacy of the vulnerability.

- but, I might still hear you say, its not a fair comparison anyways because your comparing apples to oranges, ops to private moments of grief. And no I say, im still being fair considering kiras ‘proper’ introduction as it were is only just… okay. We get the info that hes a computer wiz of some sorts considering the speed hes typing, its reinforced through casual mention in dialogue, we get the impression that hes worried about the war in some manner, a flashback to athrun and his friendship as kids reinforcing their status as a narrative pair, and then some suggestion of being a bit socially awkward and scatterbrained as hes pulled out of the flashback by a friend. In total all we really learn is his primary skillset as it were, a connection between the war and his friendship with athrun which is suggested by his concerns over it and the previously established narrative paring of the two, and that hes easily distracted. Its not nothing, but its certainly less narrative meat and potential then what were given with shinn if nothing else, and again its not the actual first impression we get of kira. The op is even if only sublimely.

- anyways, this was suppose to be about seed destiny. Seeds first op is alright, I privately refer to it as ‘seeds first op but better’ which it basically his. Similar pacing, similar visuals, but just cut together a bit better with a better song overlaying it [if your into that kinda rock anyways]. We get pilots and their associated machines, we get connections drawn often between trios this time such as masked man number 2, the blond guy on the Minerva and durendel. What I do rather like is that instead of just giving us a still shot however they kinda approach establishing the pilot trio of the Minerva a little more gracefully by having them in essence wave/salute in succession as they launch. More importantly for my money though is the tidbits related to shinn they throw in, shinn being pushed into the background of a similar shot from seeds op starring athrun and kira looking on the two with anger/resentment. Shinn also gets his own naked spirit scene with a girl, a blond one this time whos name I also forget but it also feels more like hes trying to comfort her instead of kiras similar scene from seeds op so I like it a little bit more then the more sexualized one kira got. Kira and shinn are also firmly set up to fight at some point with a brief clash in the op so some more interesting narrative meat especially since it hovers long enough to drive that point home then seeds more frantic cuts. Some teasing of kira and lacus, some parallel shots starring athrun, cagalli, luna and more, lacus and another more provocatively dressed lacus acting in opposite to each other… all around definitely not revolutionary but serviceable and better then seeds 1stop atleast.

- this does bring up the concern however of destiny relying on seed imagery which sets a bad precedence but I feel theres at least enough intentional subversion to serve as the narrative parallel as it were. Whether to destiny’s benefit or not is a different matter.

- canned narration time! Mercifully short thankfully and voiced by the lady who commanded the archangel I think. Uneasy peace has been established and we further tease that kira will have a role in this story somehow with him and lacus ambiguously walking on a beach under a sort of duskish sunset palette, well kira continues to look like a wet cloth and lacus continues to smile kinda creepily. Through no fault of the animators im sure.

- title and episode one is called “angry eyes”. Hopefully that will be appropriate wink wing. I never got why the plants look the way they do on a related not, like surely that’s more of a waste of space then it is economical. Its unique ill give em that much. Also cagallis here and what looks to be a passenger class jumbo space jet. Riding economy class from the looks of it for some reason.

- seriously, why doesn’t she have a private craft? Peace time and orb pacifism and all that sure, but shes an important dignitary and head of government, surely something with speed if nothing else would be better to use for political expediency? Or atleast somewhere timmy wont overhear your political planning.

- cutting to a military base destiny manages to show off both some pretty decent writing and seeds continuing problems. Visually its conveyed that the military base is in a bit of disarray as people rush to organize things and messes pop up as they clean up to look presentable for whatever ceremonies scheduled to happen. Luna and her driver get some casual back and forth that establishes their friendship, the drivers a reckless ass in his driving and luna well exasperated by it doesn’t comment suggesting familiarity with his behaviour and at least tacit acceptance of risk and danger [being more so annoyed with everyone’s panicked straightening up even]. Destiny then goes out of its way to have the driver clarify through dialogue that everyone’s cleaning up for an important visit and establish through dialogue that most of everyone is green behind the ears. Something that we already know visually for the most part and something we could have established visually as well respectively. Its not the dealbreaker by a country mile, just disappointing is all and indicative of seeds tell don’t show problem. Despite its visual language often being its best part when they actually put in the effort and have the budget for it.

- space helicopter! And the visual language continues to show its strength by having… rey [that’s his name right] not outright state his relation to durendel, but imply it visually. Rey notices the space helicopter [why do they have that in the plants?] smiles very happily, rushes over to where its landing and stands at attention in the back but in a place durandel can clearly see him. Durandel pauses in his talking about state matters to offer rey a similarly warm and affectionate smile in return. Its speaks volumes of their relation without having to say anything, and its even helped by the dialogue around it being about other things.

- speaking of, the dialogue in this instance also highlights the problem of the previous car scene a bit better. This feels more naturalistic despite essentially being exposition of a similar nature. It reminds us of blue cosmos existence, that their poking their head around and causing trouble, and in a context that makes sense and flows more naturally because its durandel talking matters of state with an advisor.

- incidentally, to kinda track durandel as a means of highlighting his ‘sudden heel turn’ into an inexplicable villain at seeds end and why it makes no sense and doesn’t gell with whats previously been established [or not if im wrong], im going to be noting durandel in particular. And in this particular instance he notes blue cosmos as ‘more of an idea then a true organization’ asking for clarification on the matter from a subordinate, well noting that well they can work on stricter enforcement of ‘the treaty’ it wont ‘eliminate terrorists’ presumably like the other party making a request of him to enforce the treaty more strictly hopes. Largely this snippet of discussion seems to be in reference to an as of yet heard request from another party incidentally, but considering cagallis presence in the jumbo jet… its almost definitely her. Putting that aside, durandels words and reactions in these few snippits so far paint the picture of a ‘pleasant sceptic’. Hes willing to try the other way but he clearly holds doubts about its success in essence.

- first shot of cagalli with background athrun! She looks sad and or constipated [hopefully that wont be a trend]. Meanwhile athruns rocking quattro four vaginas sunglasses but in a dark red.

- durandels advisor notes her as ‘orb hime’ or orbs princess as its translated in the subs. Durandels response is a brief narrowing of eyes, followed by a smile and a remark about her being an ‘awfully busy person’. Its not the most flattering opinion to hold about her obviously since the remark seems to be mostly made in jest, but its ambiguous in that moment as to why he feels irritation towards her even if its just in the ‘what a hassal/shes childish’ kind of manner the tone, remark and smile would imply. Said tone, remark and smile I would also like to note do come across as somewhat fond as well though, so its arguably not ‘I dislike you because you’re a child’ irritation but more so ‘im being patient because you’re a child’ kind of irritation.

- cagalli and athrun. Athrun makes things weird remarking about cagalli needing a dress, but he does follow it up with some decent advice about ‘not being what you aren’t’ but also how its important ‘to be take seriously’ in matters which cagalli presumably is trying to attend to. Cagalli is reluctant/begrudging about it, kinda leaning into durandels earlier implication about her being childish. Like its weird to bring up and make it about a dress but its not a bad point in general really. Also its an unofficial visit, hence the passenger ship.

- careless remarks about ‘those damn naturals’, but its used to drum up how everyones still very uneasy about the political situation and tease the Minerva. Also, random hot topic crew that athrun notes with athrun specifically noting the blond girl of the bunch.

- apparently the Minerva is going to be ‘the first warship’ to launch since the peace treaty. Cagalli notes it with some obvious frustration as well as frustrated hesitation as to why durandels proposing the meeting here. Athrun points out that cagalli was the one who wanted a low profile continuing the be the more insightful of the two.

- beauty shot and the plants colonies are way bigger then I always think they are. Which just infuriates me more because that is in essence double the profile for at best the same amount of space as a regular gundam colony.

- cagalli and durandel greet. Not much to note about the dialogue itself as its pretty box standard but durandel notably sounds more flowery and enthusiastic about it then cagalli. Also some guy in a suit is with cagalli, whos he I wonder? Durandel makes note of athrun and clearly sees right through the clark kent guise but doesn’t comment yet.

- hot topic trio strut and a shadowed shinn in an alleyway tease us as cagalli and durandel begin talking. Durandel congratulates her on her success noting his ‘envy’ of her rapid success though clearly in a facetious manner. Its not mocking, just clearly said because hes expected to be polite. Also third guy in suit, who are these people? Outside of extras destined to die and clearly identical twins. Also cagalli plays down her accomplishments as needing more to be done and durandel jumps on that to question her motives for the meeting. Noting it as a complicated issue she apparently wanted to discuss.

- cagalli doesn’t think its complicated, notes that durandels been unresponsive and vague on his end, and directly insists that durandel and zaft, and im quoting here, “stop putting to military use the technology and human resources that have come your way since the war with orb.” Athrun puts on his shocked face and durandel just smiles in response clearly being ready for this.

- now, im going for a direct quote there because I wanna put a pin on this because its so… weird in the context of cagalli herself. Narratively this is obviously suppose to sound ominous on our end, and not to mention this is very obviously suppose to be an easy statement for durandel to shoot down. But when ya get down to it, what the fuck does cagalli think shes asking here? What thought process and series of events led her to ask this question, because as shes wording it the overall implication its providing is ‘I believe your holding orb citizens hostage and forcing them to build weapons with stolen orb technology’. Cause like, if that’s what she believes and is trying to get across that’s an insane accusation to just throw out there in a private under the radar meeting like this. But if its not and shes just poorly wording her apprehensions from seed about orb building weapons then it’s a weird way to word that apprehension, and it’s a weird implication to hold that orb citizens are always under orbs jurisdiction regardless of if they decide to become citizens of another nation or not which implies they’re orbs property in a way. Is it a combination of the two, and shes worried orb citizens are building weapons based on stolen orb secrets? Whatever the case, its an odd look for her, and doesn’t help with the impression of naivety on her end.

- hot topic gang, girl [stellar that’s her name right?] admires herself in the mirror and blue hair boy asks wtf shes doing to green haired leader. Leader boy responds ‘being a happy fool’ and suggests blue boy try being a fool sometimes. It’s a quick scene but good at establishing a dynamic for the group, the pecking order as it were, and some camaraderie banter between them. Quick cut to cagalli demanding an answer, and cut back to stellar twirling and giggling like a school child lost in her own world. Cue accidental bump into shinn and accidental boob grab.

- stellar storms off upset and in a hurry, and shinns black tagalong yolant comments on shinn ‘groping her’ much to shinns flustered embarrassment. Apparently they’ve been out shopping for whatever reason. Not the best scene to ‘reintroduce’ shinn on what with the groping, but I appreciate that we get to see him in a more casual setting and cloths first. Fashion choices remain as weird as ever in ce, but again I appreciate that we see shinn acting flustered and his rapport with yolant whos more cool and casual, teasing shinn because he knows shinns gonna be flustered and uptight about it. Also shinns established to still be carrying his sisters phone alluding to ‘lingering hang ups’ to say the least.

- commercial break animation cut. These are always kinda fun in shows, but honestly im more weirded out then anything. Why is lacus in a weird translucent sexy ballgown getup all in one colour? Why a haro orchestra? Why have the commercial cut be kira and lacus when they aren’t even around for the first 8 episodes? It feels desperate to reassure the audience that kira and lacus will be returning is all.

- durandel time! Nothing too specific stands out, he praises cagallis bravery and participation in battle, praises cagallis fathers refusal to buckle under pressure, and uses that as weight for his rhetorical question about how the political situation of the world is. Actual admiration? I feel so. Athrun gets to have the shocked face upon seeing zafts newest frontline suit, the zaku warrior. On the zaku warrior note, I don’t actually hate the design itself but it does kinda feel desperate on the showrunners part to copy paste with minor alterations the zakus design for their own show. It atleast was redesigned to look like an advancement on the ginn.

- more durandel talk time intercut with hot topic infiltration time. The hot topic gangs infiltration stuff is pretty standard faire as we see they both have men on the inside already, and advance combat skills to take on armed zaft personal with just the three of them and the one other guy who kind of disappears after this. More importantly durandel and cagalli talk, or more so durandel talks at cagalli. In essence well he displays sympathy towards cagallis give peace a chance stance he correctly identifies the essential problem that such a stance of not picking fights or allowing others to pick on you requires strong force of arms or some force of political power to back up otherwise you’re a sitting duck with no bite to your bark. You know the same problem/question gundam wing obsessed over and then cleverly side stepped by having relena become queen of the earth and abolish all weapons forever. Other things to note, durandel specifically uses hime when in essence talking down to cagalli after she expresses discomfort with the title. durandel also identifies that cagalli might in truth be more so worried that the north Atlantic federation is going to use zafts use of orb personnel as excuse to call foul on the peace treaty, which he then turns around as justification for why zaft needs to build and maintain military power [also, he notes that hes not forcing orb refugees to build this stuff, their simply using their own skills to make a living for themselves]. In essence durandels position is that zaft needs to maintain military power so that they aren’t caught off guard and on the backfoot by the Atlantic federation if things do go south. A bit warhawkish of a position, but honestly a fairly reasonable one considering the north Atlantic federation has consistently expressed a desire to genocide the fuck out of the coordinators/zaft in the past. Also, cagallis only response during this is “to much power will lead to more conflict”, which is a ‘pretty sentiment’ as it were but also doesn’t entirely make sense. In the sense of, the greater military build up there is the more that conflict will arise, its an understandable sentiment but also not one that entirely plays out in reality. Durandels response is ‘there will always be conflict hence why power is necessary’ fits with the sort of sceptical side hes been highlighted as having but isn’t even the only answer you can give in that situation. Like, if you look at our modern world you could arguably say that the build up of military power to the levels its currently at has actually decreased the amount of conflict around overall, atleast in regards to war [because as war becomes more and more expensive to wage the less willing people actually are to pull that trigger and commit, the same principle behind mutually assured destruction in a way]. Or hell, WWI was horrific because of the advancement and buildup of technology sure, but its causes were more so rooted in ultranationalism and imperial gamesmanship coming to a head and causing a political breakdown of alliances and deals. Point being, cagalli has a pretty sentiment, but it doesn’t necessarily hold up to reality as it were.

- anyways, gundam jacking time by hot topic crew. We get names as well, sting for green hair, auel for blue hair, they jack the gundams [love the theme here by the way, its really good faux orchestrate violin kinda stuff with well integrated techno elements] technobabble, stellar displays kira levels of computer typing so I guess shes a computer genius now as well or maybe they all are? Whatever the case, hot topics epic gundam jack is altered by the usual dying guard pushes big red alarm button routine.

- confusion, panic, athrun jumps ontop of cagalli throwing her to the ground in a matter meant to protect her but just leaves me thinking that probably hurt, well durandels guards take the opposite approach and don’t exactly grope him but it looks a little silly how their best method to protect him in that moment is a group hug? Anyways, jacked gundams step out, we get names though no specific attachments just some guy saying “chaos, abyss, gaia?” and sting formulates the combat strategy in an effective manner directing the team to target the as yet launched suits first. Also blond girl is given a name and its stella, as auel mentions it dividing up the workload between him and her, and they proceed to star blowing shit up.

- durandel! His shocked face is weirdly adorable as he reacts in fearful surprise to information that the gundams from ‘hanger six’ have been stolen. Cagalli and athrun meanwhile look on in slack jawed shock at seeing more gundams. Speaking off, during the destruction we see some gundam gimmicks in action to wet the appetite with stellas [gaia I think] transforming into a doggo which is a ma form I love and wish we saw more often in gundam as a whole, auels [abyss I think] gundam shows off some weird wing cannon things and a fuck of chest laser, and stings [chaos I think] boring and shoots a gun but also shows off some missile compartments in his own wing things.

- luna, though I don’t think weve actually gotten her name yet, and rey though I know we haven’t gotten his name yet, make a break for some uniquely coloured zaku warriors probably intent on helping but get knocked down by the force of a blast which also impedes the zaku warriors by covering them in debris. Which shocks the both of them and clearly irritates rey.

- durandel wastes no time in taking charge the situation, calling in for backup from the Minerva and getting cagalli to be escorted to a safehouse. What is weird however is that when cagalli athrun and their escort take a wrong turn and get caught up near some of the fighting athrun pulls cagalli one way well letting the poor schmuk guard wander slowly off the other way to get caught in a blast. Only to have them take another wrong turn and have to duck and cover again. Its tense sure but a bit repetitive.

- cagalli wallows about the situation, athrun reassures her in a surprisingly tender couple of seconds, and a dinn gets cut in half and coincidentally explodes… ontop of a zaku warrior in such a way that it falls down perfectly intact in front of cagalli and athrun? Whatever the case, the invisible hand of the author practically screams at them to get in the fucking robot already through this act and its legit comical in a way. Whatever the case the two take in the destruction raging about, and athrun makes the command decision to drag cagalli off presumably to the zaku warrior.

- but before that, long launch sequence of the ‘impulse’ gundam with its yet revealed pilot. Its actually a kinda fun sequence both in animation and music, and its good for highlighting the gimmick of the impulse. Which is ripping off the victory gundams gimmick of being multiple parts that can operate independently but combine into one suit. A very toylike gimmick used by a tomino who did not give a shit, but its what were stuck with I suppose.

- cagalli continues to be three steps behind everyone as shes surprised when athrun tells her to get into the zaku warrior but im willing to cut her some slack for now and given the situation. It is annoying to have athruns impulses consistently being action, ‘I cant let you die like this’ and all that, well cagallis is frequently inaction though. What is odd is how however is how the zaku warrior opens and closes here, the hatch is clearly on the abdomen area but a protrusion on the suits chest extends out for some reason and then the protrusion retracts first before the suits hatch actually closes. It doesn’t make much sense.

- the zaku warriors up and running and stella alludes to the pilot being more so the danger then the suit itself. Regardless with the zaku warrior athruns able to put up a decent struggle, apparently the shield beam resistant, but sting interferes to very briefly put pressure on athrun before shinn interferes. That’s right, shinns very obviously the impulse pilot and we get a needlessly long assembly sequence to some cheesy heroic music as everyone watches in surprise. The suit assembles and the end credits song begins playing in the background as shinn, presumably privately, questions what the hottopic trio are doing and if they ‘want another war!’ before rushing to engage them with the ‘sword impulse’ a nice red variation of the suit with a huge double bladed sword with small beam edge in the usual seed style. Seriously it looks like the sword strikers sword doubled and were scotch tapped together its kinda funny looking. Anyways durandel gets a shot of looking on pleased at the impulses presence from a command center, as his earlier words about conflict being inevitable echo again and athrun and cagalli look on in shock. Smash to credits.

- nothing to really note about the credits, it’s a long extended shot of destroyed equipment as everyone poses dramatically. Of special note though is that it transitions from night to sunrise, with kira and lacus being the last characters in the shot looking like a married couple gazing distractedly towards the sunrise. ‘oh Charles is it not beautiful? Why yes it is emily’ they seem to say as everyone else is miserable around them. Truly the worst honeymooners, but its… definitely biased as it were thematically speaking. Also destroyed freedom gundam is I think technically the last actual thing seen in the credits.

- preview, and its some random gibberish trying to sound poetic that basically boils down to ‘we did have peace but was it only temporary because of human nature?’. Title for the next episode is ‘those who call for war’ and things end with an image of a blue impulse and the words “from the new path before you, fly, impulse!”.

[blame-canada]

At The Start - Creek

Craig and Tweek are young, in love, and not at all prepared for the rest of their lives. The first Walmart trip that inevitably comes on move-in day is only the start.

This was a fic that was originally (somewhat) requested by my dear friend @creekfucker, to whom I apologize for taking so long to finish this! I hope you still like it, months later. The working title for this fic was ‘hi im tweek tweak and he's craig tucker and welcome to jackass’- just a fun fact. Enjoy!

“Okay, you got the list?” Tweek bit at his thumb, pausing a moment to let the automatic doors sense his weight and part for him to enter.

Craig didn’t look away from his phone, but he tilted it up to gesture with it. “Got the list.” He clicked out of the random email he was clearing from his inbox and switched over to the note he and Tweek had carefully written out a few hours before. A rush of air conditioning assaulted his face, and when he looked up he caught an eyeful of fluorescent, painfully unnatural lights.

They’d forgotten more than a couple essentials before they moved into their new apartment.

In their defense, neither of them had done it before. The closest Craig had ever gotten was a dorm room in college, and Tweek had only ever commuted to school. ‘New’ was a very nice way to put it too- it was, in all honesty, a sad excuse for a home, but their budget was low enough that they couldn’t quite afford to be picky. At least this one didn’t have water stains all over the ceiling or a busted up window, and Tweek didn’t feel like the protagonist of a horror movie when he walked through the neighborhood to test the waters.

Who even thought of a shower curtain when they moved out? Nobody, Craig was convinced.

He scrolled through the list quickly, scanning for which sections of the store they had to visit (most of them) before he clicked his phone off and smiled, shaking his head to himself. “It’s a shame,” he said, an open invitation, and Tweek took the bait, looking over his shoulder at him while he dislodged a shopping cart from the messy chain shoved up against the wall.

“Uh, w-what is?”

Craig’s smirk grew even wider, and he said, “That you thought this was going to be a productive shopping trip.”

With that, he hip-checked Tweek away from the cart, hijacked control of the rickety contraption, and surged forward with his hands firmly planted at the ends of the handlebar. Tweek made a strangled noise of distress but Craig had already started to pick up speed, letting his strides match the growing momentum of the cart as it barreled forward into the throes of the store.

“Craig you god dam—Craig, w-what the fu—what are you doing?” Tweek asked, stumbling around swear words so clumsily he may as well have shouted them anyway. He had to hop a little faster than Craig to keep up, and his face was turning cherry red from a combination of nerves, embarrassment, and sudden physical strain.

Craig tried his hardest to keep his straightest face when he replied, “Shopping.”

“You-! You asshole,” Tweek hissed, reaching to grab him by the arm and hook himself onto it, dragging alongside him to get the cart to slow down. “Quit it!”

“Okay,” Craig said with a shrug, and he dramatically lifted both hands from the cart to let it fly forward unmanned. Tweek gasped and jumped ahead to grab it before it careened right into a kiosk full of cheap jewelry nobody ever bought.

Tweek paused, his back to Craig, and for one fleeting moment Craig felt rather certain he was going to die. Tweek looked over his shoulder, and scathed, “Behave.”

“Nah,” Craig replied, and he pointed northwest. “The shower curtains are probably down here.” Tweek grumbled irritated nonsense to himself, but Craig saw the smile he was desperately trying to hide. That meant he wasn’t completely in the dog house yet, which boded well.

Walking through the store with Tweek had a strange feeling attached to it that he couldn’t quite define. They’d gone on trips before, of course, to grab snacks or run an errand for their parents here and there, but it felt different with a brand new key resting in his right pocket. It was a key to a place where Tweek would be beside him every day, and the thought made him so anxious and so excited that the only way that made sense to release that energy at the time was to annoy the fuck out of his boyfriend at Walmart.

“Clear or white?” Tweek asked, effectively slamming the brakes on his daydreaming, and he looked over to see him holding up two nearly identical packages.

“I mean, I don’t mind a show, but if we ever have guests I dunno how they’ll feel about the clear.” Tweek turned red and Craig internally pat himself on the back while he shrugged. Nice.

“This is the liner, Craig, not the actual curtain. No one’s gonna see this part!”

“Oh,” he said. “Who cares, then..?”

Tweek rolled his eyes and tossed the clear one into their cart, replacing the other on its hook. “You’re killing me,” he moaned, stomping his feet a little in a tantrum.

“You love it,” Craig replied, and when Tweek huffed, he accepted it as a victory.

“Can we do food next?” Tweek asked, and when he shrugged in agreement, he smiled and took hold of the end of the cart, steering it toward the food aisles. Sometimes, watching Tweek do nothing at all made Craig feel a certain kind of weird. It was the kind of feeling that made him smile involuntarily, and his hand itch with the desire to take his. He guessed it was love, probably, but like, a lot more of it all at once. It was kind of great. Watching Tweek pull the cart, his back to him, his hair swirled more erratically than most days, Craig felt an awful lot of that feeling. Maybe one day, after living together for a little while, he’d feel more comfortable talking about and expressing it. For now, though, it came out in bouts of ruthless teasing.

“Hey Craig,” Tweek snorted, giggling quietly, “Craig, h-hey—”

“What?”

“Do you think I’d fit in this?” His finger trembled from contained laughter as it pointed to the bottom shelf of a display of what appeared to be dog beds.

“Hmm”—he clicked his tongue—“not without difficulty. You’ll have to take into account the height of the shelf.”

Tweek raised his fist to his mouth, rubbing his knuckles under his nose while he thought. “Yeah, but also the bed will get smaller when I lay on it, assuming it’s as fluffy as it looks. Bet you two thingies of ice cream I can make it work.”

Craig raised his brows, the wager proving steep, but he was feeling confident that it would at least be endlessly amusing to watch him try to shove himself into a shelf. “Deal.”

Tweek rubbed his hands together and paused to let out a few more cackles. Craig looked around quickly, suddenly very aware of where they were because it was different when he was misbehaving. “Come on, go,” he urged, and Tweek rolled his eyes.

“Don’t be so nervous, I’ve seen worse. Actually, remember that video where those guys made like, a-a whole apartment in the toilet paper aisle or something? Man, I’ve always wanted to do that—”

Craig raised his hand, cutting him off. “While your enthusiasm is admirable, we do still have shit to do at the apartment. We resolve the bet, and then we get groceries.”

Tweek whined at him and scowled. “You got to be a little shit earlier,” he grumbled, and he got on his knees to crawl into the shelf. He pressed down on the bed, testing its resistance, and when it gave way easily and created a lot more space between the bed and the next shelf, he looked back at Craig with his eyebrows raised and a shit-eating grin. “I’m making you buy flavors you don’t like,” he said, snickering, and Craig crossed his arms.

“Just do it, Jesus Christ,” he muttered, now nervous about his chances of winning, and Tweek shrugged his shoulders and got into a crawling position.

“Should I like, match the shape and then try to slide in? Tetris it? I think that might work.”

“We’re in a bet. I’m not helping.”

“What if I get s-stuck!”

“Then you lose the bet and I leave here with two extra thingies of ice cream.” Tweek made an ugly snarling sound of irritation, and Craig did his best to contain laughter, though his shoulders still shook a few times. Tweek aligned himself with the bed, put both his left limbs out, and started pushing himself inside.

“I’m gonna do it. Dude, this is the easiest bet I’ve ever won,” Tweek said, and he wiggled around on his stomach to get himself deeper into the shelf and onto the dog bed. His head disappeared, then his shoulder, then his arm, and it wasn’t until he was completely hidden from view that he said, “Yes!” and cheered through the muffling caused by the fluff.

Craig took a moment to stare, note how well Tweek was hiding in the fluffy dog bed abyss, and check their list before he cleared his throat and announced, just loud enough for Tweek’s compromised ears to hear, “Goodbye, Tweek.”

He heard a distorted voice shriek, “What?!” The dog beds started to move and Craig ran around the end of the cart to grab the handle and dash away, looking over his shoulder and watching Tweek’s limbs thrash out from the shelf like some sort of eldritch horror beast. Craig stopped at the end of the aisle just so he could watch him struggle, no longer attempting to hold in his laughter, and Tweek’s flailing limbs slowly eased out of the shelf. He could only guess what sort of expletives he was spewing as he fought to escape from his own prison. As soon as his head was free, he yelled, “Craig!” and Craig ducked around the corner of the aisle, a rush of silly fear striking his chest like a cheap thrill. When he straightened his cart a mom with a drooling baby in the front basket glared at him, and he gave his best mild-mannered smile. Then his boyfriend whipped around the corner.

He was breathing unusually heavily, his hair staticky and reaching impressively well for the ceiling, and his clothes wildly askew. “What the fuck, Craig,” he said, and when the mother shot him an even nastier glare, he rolled his eyes, and said, “Calm down, it’s too young to understand human speech anyway.” She let out a disturbed gasp and hurried away from the aisle, clearly angry. Craig felt very in love with him after that. As soon as she was far enough away and the aisle was empty, Tweek punched Craig’s arm. “You left me there to fend for myself. I coulda been stuck!”

“Yeah, but you weren’t.” Craig bit back the grin he was desperately trying to contain, but it wasn’t working, and he finally just let himself chuckle as he brushed Tweek’s hair down and straightened his shirt.

Tweek swatted at his invasive arms. “You don’t have to groom me, Jesus Christ,” but he smiled anyway, and he didn’t object when Craig slipped a hand down to clasp his at their sides.

“What flavors do you want? I’m a man of my word,” Craig said, and Tweek thought about it, scratching at his chin while he held some thrilling debate in his mind.

“Wanna just get the usual?” he suggested, his smile earnest.

“Didn’t you want to get flavors I don’t like?”

“You like pretty much anything,” Tweek admitted, “a-and I’m feeling particularly generous.”

“Well then.” Craig released his hold on the shopping cart and Tweek’s hand to clap his hands together, and said, “One Cherry Garcia and one Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch it is.”

With the promise of ice cream to load into their new and empty freezer, they rolled to the grocery section of the store with enthusiasm and excitement buzzing on their nerves, because they were finally moving in together, and life was good. After a few more chases down aisles and giggle fits to earn the glares of several old people, they paid an unfortunately steep price at the register, and Craig’s stomach did flips while he thought about the simple but beautiful fact that he was driving home. Their hands met above the center console of his car. Craig twisted the steering wheel left, comforted that in time such a motion would become wonderfully second-nature.

Craig took pictures of Tweek turning the apartment key, and they ate pints of ice cream on their bare kitchen floor.

[showingthroughtome]

8: june 27th

“No.” She disagrees sternly, brow furrowed while suggesting, “Just, next time not in a place where my dad can see. You know if he catches us, he wont stop making jokes about it for the rest of our lives.”

read below - mibba (soon) - story page - word count: 1462

“You need to be quieter.” Harry whispers loudly in the dark at Jessica from across her freshly cut backyard, standing under the tree they made a log swing with three summers ago. It still hangs there as Harry suggests, “They won’t fly away so quickly if they can’t hear you from five feet away.”

“They are lightning bugs, Harry. I don’t think they rely on that sense as much as you think. It’s all about the agility.” Jessica smiles, speaking at a quieter volume just in case Harry is onto something. A tiny light that flashes in the corner of her eye causes her to attempt a capture but the loud slapping of her hands together results in nothing. So maybe she isn’t the quietest hunter, at least she isn’t  terribly uncoordinated like a certain someone else.

Harry ignores her jab and chooses to focus only on his advice, reaching for a lightning bug in complete silence but his hands flail about, aiming horribly, coming up just as empty.

“Not so good, are you Styles?” Jess laughs. She moves to an area deeper into the back of her yard where she thinks she sees more flashes. As she waits, her eyes vigilantly search through the darkness. The only light coming from her back porch is bright enough to allow her to see bigger things but tiny black bugs are practically invisible - which ironically is what makes the lightning bugs look so cool to look at.

At this point, she can’t even pay attention to Harry. She lets her focus drift from everything except catching one of the bugs before him. It takes a few minutes of this intensity, and finally, she swings an arm to where she sees the quickest of flickers and closes it into her hand. She cups her other hand around it to give it more space to breathe, peeking in to see the tiny bug sitting on her skin.

“I got one!” She beams in victory, searching around the lawn for him. He’s sitting on the tree swing, glowing kind of orange from the old bulb in her porch light. “What are you doing?”

“Swingin’.” He says with too much nonchalance, and pumps his feet to move faster than he had been before she caught him.

She shrugs, because if he wants to play around while in a serious competition then that’s on him. “You said the first person to catch a lightning bug gets treated to dinner by the other person from wherever they wanted.”

She holds up her hands, keeping them sealed so the bug won’t get out before she shows him. The bug flashes through the cracks of her fingers and she prepares to gloat, thinking of what she’ll order from her favorite mexican restaurant.

“Yeah, I know that.” Harry moves his hand from his lap to show an open palm, a black bug circling it without flying away. Jessica’s jaw drops as she parts her hand and immediately, her bug is back in the air.

She rushes to stand in front of Harry and reaches for his hand when he slows his swinging enough. “What the fuck?”

Bringing his palm closer for examination, the bug flickers, moving around his thumb to the top of his hand. Jess follows and flips Harry’s hand over into the palm of hers.

“It landed on me just a minute before you caught yours.” He squeezes her hand. He raises his eyebrows, “Told you that you were too loud.”

Jessica pulls her hand away because she hadn’t intended on holding onto Harry’s and snorts. “Whatever. I actually caught mine. I still think I win.”

“I caught him… luring him in with my graceful nature.” He smiles at her, wide and beautiful. Innocently impressed with himself and the fact that he won. It is all very cute really - how he is charming enough to have elusive bugs cling to his skin.

Jessica examines his face as he peers at her like that - to lock it away in her memory - then groans, “As if.”

Jess turns around and walks away from Harry, aggravated. It’s just that, she never wins when it comes to him. Every game they play, every bet they make, Harry wins. Even when she tries so much harder than him. Something about the universe just works in his favor and she’s thinking maybe that same force is what’s making him seem so undeniable to her right then.

He is right behind her as she heads for the picnic table sat under the other large tree in her backyard. “Don’t be mad, Jess. You know you like burgers from Five Guys too.”

“Not as much as La Rosita’s black bean burritos.” She huffs and sits on the wooden table top, arms flopping down and head hung low, avoiding eye contact. She traces the lines of her dirty white converse over and over again to keep herself preoccupied.

“I’ll teach you my charm so maybe next time you can win and I can buy you one of those.” The words come out surprisingly sweet as he lightly nudges her knee with his knuckles. “All kinds of things will be flocking to you - butterflies and all that.”

Her frustration only grows the more his words endear her heart. She’s in a constant battle for rule over her dominating emotional state. She leans back, facing him, examining him one more time because she just has to. And yeah, she feels frustration as she exhales, “You’re the most annoying boy I have ever known.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. You’re just…” Jessica stops to think of the right word, fixating on his bottom lip as he smirks. Her gaze shifts up to his nose, and then his eyes, “Frustrati-”

Harry swoops this time, into her, out of nowhere. His lips are on hers before she can finish her sentence, as her eyes widen in surprise for a moment before they drift shut.

Their second kiss happens in a completely different way than their first. The second kiss doesn’t happen in the basement as the climactic high point of minutes upon minutes of edging closer until their lips meet. It happens in the dark in Jessica’s backyard against the picnic table her family hosts barbecues on.

She’s leaning forward once she can react to the feeling, her body pressed up against his as she parts her lips and his hands circle her waist. Harry deepens the kiss with his tongue, taking his time while Jessica cautiously moves a hand up his torso to where his neck meets his jaw. They may be moving slow, but their hearts are both pounding at their chests with excitement.

Whatever friendly boundary there is around them, they have definitely crossed it. Especially when Jessica releases a humming sound on accident that prompts Harry to tighten his grasp on her, bringing her that much closer. The pace picks up and he pushes her back so he is the one leaning over her, and what was once one kiss turns into bursts of little hungry ones. His hand roams up the back of her spaghetti strap tank top and her knees part so he can move in closer, making her world blur in and out with the taste of him.

But, reality snaps back too clear and she recalls where they are. Where her parent are - in the living room, watching the new Matt Damon film.

Pushing him back quickly, she hops off the table to peer through her kitchen window. Just because she doesn’t see anyone doesn’t mean no one saw them. If someone did, neither Jessica nor Harry would hear the end of it - about how they knew it all along… whatever it is.

“Why did you do that?” She twists around, hand on her hip as her heart still races.

Harry looks even more out of sorts than her - red, puffy, just-been-kissed lips, dilated pupils, heavy breathing. He shakes his head, running his hand nervously over the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I thought you’d want to.”

“And because you wanted to?” Jess wants to clarify things this time, so that when she wants to kiss him again, she won’t have to wonder for weeks and weeks whether she should or not. She inhales deeper and steps closer, smiling shyly as Harry hesitates to answer.

“Yeah.” He finally nods, exhaling the air that seems to be filling her lungs. “Sorry if you didn’t want to and I misinterpreted things.”

“No.” She disagrees sternly, brow furrowed while suggesting, “Just, next time not in a place where my dad can see. You know if he catches us, he wont stop making jokes about it for the rest of our lives.”

authors note:

hiya! its been a while but ive been pretty busy and im back at the ol campus. so for the next three months ill be doing a lot of school with some writing on the side. but have no fear lol i have some chapters written so when i have time, ill be updating! 

please please let me know whatcha think! id love to hear after this chapter! its a big one huh???? that kiss has been brewing and we heard what happened in the basement which i think was obvious but you know you know, we have answers now :) 

thanks to @what-comes-from-within for being such a real one and editing this for me !!!! youre the best :)

okay! im off to do school ish things!

- lauren xxxx