#in the most unsubtle way possible

[vanweezer]

dallon's old social media bios were right. "ex: panic at the disco"

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 WANNA GET HIM BACK!

FEATURING: nakahara chuuya

SUMMARY: after an argument with your boyfriend and two weeks of no contact, you finally decide to make your first move by stirring up trouble at one of his bars. it can't possibly be that bad of an idea, right? you just want him back, and maybe get a little revenge while you're at it.

(wordcount: 3.6k; ņsfw; fem!reader; m!receiving oral; chuuya gets a bit violent but not with reader; jealous!chuuya; pet names "doll", "baby"; reader is a shit stirrer!!; maybe some implications of toxicity but up to interpretation. lmk if anything is missing!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: eheheh

You knew the moment you stepped into the bar that you were going to be playing with fire tonight. The lights are dim and the music is low, setting a type of intimate ambience that has your head dangerously dizzy even without alcohol. It’s been weeks since you last set foot in the establishment, but all of the regulars still recognize you, giving you a wide berth and casting you suspicious looks as they whisper amongst each other. You know that by now, Chuuya would know you’re here, informed by one of his many subordinates currently keeping an eye on you from the corners of his bar—it’s only a matter of time before he finally shows up. 

Most of the patrons know better than to entertain you, so you’re forced to seek out the outsiders who are blissfully unaware of your connection to the infamous Port Mafia executive who owns the bar. Your options are limited—two men that are twice your age who seem to be foreigners, a man closer to your age but with such a twisted and uptight expression that you think you might prefer one of the older men, and another man who’s also around your age, his eyes are a bit too sharp and calculating for your liking and he’s playing with something in his pocket, but you eventually decide on him, if only because all of the other options are subpar in comparison. 

You rest your chin on your hand, elbow propped on the bar as you look up at the man through your lashes, lips curled up in a sultry smile as you listen to him drone on about his business back in Tokyo. You watch him stammer over his words every time he glances down and his eyes meet yours, unable to stop himself as his eyes dip down to trace your collarbones and then further. 

Each time his gaze dips down, you feel even more riddled with anticipation, and you'd feel sorry for the unlucky man, knowing you're just using him to piss off your boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, currently, you remind yourself—but you think maybe he shouldn't be so unsubtle about being a lecher. Your thoughts drift off to Chuuya as you mildly entertain the man's conversation. It's been two weeks since the argument that led to your break up. You're not even really sure how the argument began, and you don't even remember who broke up with who, all you know is that violent words were exchanged by the both of you until Chuuya ended up storming out. You've been staying with one of your friends since then, and he has tried to get in contact with you since the argument, but it took him nearly a week to call and text you, and you think he deserves to wait just as long to hear from you as you had to wait to hear from him. And it's been a week now, and you miss him, so you think it's about time to get him back—but who are you to ever make anything easy for him?

Poor guy, you think to yourself, watching absently as he babbles on about some thing or another. For this to happen the first time he sees you in almost a month? Chuuya's temper is going to be volcanic, and the oblivious man is front of you is going to be caught right in the crossfire of it. You hate the way it lights up your nerves, you know you shouldn’t be giddy over making him mad, but you can just picture his expression already, you can feel the way his blunt nails dig into your skin. 

You see the bartender step away to pour a familiar glass of wine without request, and your smile widens just a bit, knowing that Chuuya is almost here. The man you’re talking to—you can’t even recall his name –takes your smile as a sign that you’re enjoying his company, and you keep up the charade, absently giggling at whatever he said and letting your hand fall on top of the bar, brushing his. 

You don’t even really know what he’s saying, you don’t care to know, honestly, but he doesn’t seem to notice your lack of interest—or maybe he also doesn’t care, just hoping to get a quick fuck out of the night. Your eyes keep flickering behind him to the door, waiting for the imminent arrival of Nakahara Chuuya, and you’re pleased because you don’t have to wait long before the door is opened roughly and said executive is standing in the doorframe, presence commanding the attention of almost every single person in the establishment. 

Almost. The exception being the man sitting in front of you.

Chuuya is taking a drag from a cigarette as he steps into the bar and you know that his reaction is going to be even worse than you initially thought because he only ever smokes when he’s already aggravated. Your tongue scrapes against your teeth as his eyes meet yours, dark and promising as he takes in the scene in front of him, realizing what’s going on. 

You smile distantly before returning your attention back to your dark-haired companion, catching the tail end of his sentence, “... resort in Kyoto.” 

“Oh? Kyoto? I’ve always wanted to visit—never got the chance,” you say, but it’s hard to focus on him as Chuuya purposefully sits a few seats behind him, making sure to stay in your field of vision as he watches the two of you, waiting to see how far you would take this. 

“I’ll bring you,” the man promises. 

You can’t help but notice as he shifts, his hand reaches out to try to brush your thigh. You’re able to move subtly enough for him to miss, and you hope that he takes the hint, but you withhold a grimace when he goes for a second attempt—this time you’re unable to get out of the way in time, feeling the pads of his fingers brush your outer thigh before resting firmly on your knee, sliding up just a bit.

Chuuya’s eyes zero in on where the man has made contact with you, but you only give the man another lazy smile, watching as his pupils dilate and his gaze tracks down your chest once more. 

The end of your game is approaching—the man has evidently tired of small talk and wants to take this somewhere private, and you aren’t going to take it any further, of course. But more than that, you know that Chuuya isn’t going to let this last much longer, as irritated as he already is on top of having to watch the man feel up your thigh, you can see the way his body is tense and how his gaze promises violence as it pierces into the back of your unsuspecting companion’s head.

Chuuya looks down at the bar and idly picks up a corkscrew laying on the wood where the bartender had left it next to his favorite bottle of wine. You watch curiously as he lazily twirls it around his gloved fingers, your eyes dragging along each of the lithe digits almost longingly because it’s been far too long since you’ve felt them against your skin and you miss his touch desperately. 

Your eyes widen just a bit when a familiar red aura coats the corkscrew and in a split second, it’s flying from his grasp and driving through the hand of the man, who had lifted his other hand to reach out to cup your cheek. The bar goes silent and you swallow thickly as you feel a few splatters of the warm, red liquid against your face; the man stares at his hand in abject horror, shock preventing the pain from taking hold. 

Your gaze darts back to Chuuya, who still hasn’t moved from where he’s lounging on the barstool, expression eerily empty as he tilts his head back and exhales a long stream of smoke before putting out the cigarette on the bartop and sitting up straight. That, evidently, is a signal because almost instantly one of Chuuya’s subordinates rips the man from his seat and manhandles him to his knees in front of him, ignoring his loud protests.

The man quiets down as he looks up at an unimpressed Chuuya, trying to figure out what’s going on. “What-”

“You’re lucky I didn’t take your whole hand for touching what’s mine, you fuckin’ mutt,” Chuuya says lazily, eyes dragging back up to you as if to ask: is this what you wanted? 

You forget, sometimes, that through all of the gentle touches and adoring words that Nakahara Chuuya casts your way, that he’s still a mafioso with a list of crimes so long that if the feds ever got their hands on him, he’d never see the light of day again. Heat pools in your lower stomach, lips parting; you don't know what Chuuya sees in your expression but it has the corner of his lip curling up into a slow smirk.

“What?” the man gasps, looking between you and Chuuya, fury and incredulity painted on his face. “That bitch came up to me, you can’t possibly-”

Chuuya’s eyes cut back to the man, leg shooting out so quickly that it’s nearly a blur to your eyes as the tip of his boot cracks against the underside of the man’s jaw. He would’ve gone sprawling were it not for the grip his subordinate had on him, holding him still as his head hangs and blood spills from his lips.

“What’d you just call her?” he asks, voice low and dangerous, and you think that the was your thighs instinctively press together is kind of fucked up, but how are you not supposed to be turned on by Chuuya calling you his and defending your name even when you know he’s pissed at you? “Say it again.”

He doesn’t—he can’t, actually, because you think he’s unconscious, and Chuuya clearly realizes it too because he lets out a noise that’s nothing short of disgusted as he looks up to the door and nods his head. 

Immediately, a familiar black tendril shoots out to wrap around the man’s waist and drag him out of the bar. You follow it to where Akutagawa is standing, expression stiff as ever as he turns to leave with the man. 

Well, you think to yourself, that's a painful death on your hands. 

You watch as all of the other occupants of the bar begin to funnel out after Akutagawa and dread pools in your stomach as you realize that they’re going to leave you with Chuuya. You’re half tempted to make your escape with them, but one glance at Chuuya’s face and you know if you do that, it’ll be a mistake. 

“C’mere,” Chuuya says to you as soon as the last person leaves the bar, leaving the two of you alone. His voice is deceptively soft, but his eyes are burning. You don’t move at first, so he says again: “C’mon, doll, I don’t bite.” 

You let out a breath, rising to your feet and numbly making your way over to him until you’re standing directly in front of him, between his spread legs. He doesn’t speak at first, eyes studying your face, and you can barely stand to look him in the eye but you force yourself to, no matter how fast your heart was racing in your chest. 

Chuuya’s touch is gentle as he reaches out, gloved knuckles grazing your cheek to wipe off the droplets of blood before his thumb presses against your bottom lip. Instinctively, you lean into his touch, lips parting for him—he pushes the tip of his thumb into your mouth, the earthy taste of the leather seeping onto your tongue, lashes fluttering. “You’re gonna come into my bar, to get my attention, while you drape yourself all over another man? I knew you were up to no good when I heard you were here, but this was bold even for you, baby.”

“I-” you begin, but Chuuya clicks his tongue, cutting you off and pointedly glancing down to the floor. You know what he wants, and you hate the way your body heats up as you lower yourself to your knees in front of him, eye-level with his crotch. You look up at him through your lashes. “I was just playing, you know I wasn’t gonna actually do anything-” 

“Yeah?” Chuuya asks, eyes mirthful as he looks down at you. “Why do you gotta make things so difficult for me, doll? Couldn’t have just answered my texts? Had to make a scene about it, make me lose my temper in front of my subordinates?”

You nuzzle your face into his expensive black slacks, hiding the smile that starts to tug at your lips. “I’m sorry?” you offer, not really sorry at all and he knows it.

You feel Chuuya’s gloved fingers grab your chin, tilting your face up, eyes flashing in amusement when he sees the very much unapologetic expression on your face. 

“Prove it.”

You don’t even waste a second, hands darting up to fumble with his belt. He doesn’t help you, a rare glimmer of cruelty in his bicolored eyes as he watches you struggle. He only tilts his hips up when you finally manage to undo his belt so you can yank down his pants, freeing his cock from its confines. You press your lips to his inner thigh, teeth grazing his skin, listening as Chuuya lets out a soft sigh when you lift your hand to wrap around his half-hard cock. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs when you slowly glide your hand over his cock, thumb pressing down lightly on his slit, just the way he likes it. You can feel his cock hardening in your hand, the weight familiar and comforting as you suck bruises into the pale skin of his inner thigh. “Just like that, doll.”

You hum against him, lashes fluttering when you feel his lithe fingers intertwining with your hair, blunt nails scraping your scalp. His thighs tense when you squeeze the base of his cock gently, smiling before kissing back up his thigh to press your lips to his tip. His breath hitches as your tongue darts out to swipe his slit, lapping up the beading precum.

“Missed the way you taste,” you breathe out against him, tilting your head to the side to lay messy, open mouthed kisses against his length, sucking gently at the vein on the underside of his cock. 

“Could’ve been doing this for a week.” Chuuya has the nerve to sound disappointed with you, so you make sure he can feel the way you pout against his cock. “Don’t go making that face, doll. This didn’t have to be drawn out so long, you know it.”

“I’m stubborn.” You sulk as you look up at him, but before he can respond, you make sure to finally wrap your lips firmly around the tip of his cock, swirling your tongue around it. 

He chokes over a low groan, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. You watch as his throat bobs as he tries to steady his breathing, grip on your hair tightening. You wonder if he’s going to push you down so that your lips are flush to his pelvis but he refrains. 

“Yeah, you are,” he exhales softly. “Too stubborn, baby. Love you for it, though.”

You let out a pleased hum around him, sliding your lips down the length of his cock until his tip is pushing against the back of your throat. It’s a bit uncomfortable, it takes all of your willpower to not gag around him as tears begin to pool in your eyes. 

“Been thinking about you all week.” His breathy voice grounds you as your lashes become wet and heavy, teardrops hanging off them as you swallow around him just so you can hear the way his voice falters. You force yourself to take him deeper, ignoring the burn of the stretch as your throat spasms around him. “Been dying to feel you cum on my tongue again, craving the taste of you. Tried to fuck my fist but it’s not as good as you, could barely make myself cum. You spoil me too much, doll, makin’ me dependent on you like this.” 

You brace your hands on his thighs as you push yourself up a bit more to take him at a better angle, mind a bit fuzzy as he slides down your throat all the way. Chuuya lets out a moan of your name, pitched and shaky as it always gets whenever you take him all the way, the base of his cock sensitive to the way you purposely graze your teeth against the skin. You think you could suffocate right now, and you’d die happy with the sound of him moaning like that ringing through your head—you don’t think he’d be so happy about that though, so you make sure to breathe as best as you can through your nose. 

“Called you last night, y’know,” Chuuya says, voice wavering over another moan as your lips glide up and down his cock. You suck hard on his tip, reveling in the way his hips jerk and thighs tremble. “Was tryna get myself off. Couldn’t. Just needed to hear your voice once, should’ve picked up for me.”

Oh, you think to yourself—you remember the call, you’d let it go to voicemail because you figured he’d been out drinking and you wanted him to leave you another message in your inbox. Your nails dig crescents into his thighs when you realize what you’d missed out on, picturing him laying back in his massive bed—too big and too lonely for just one person—fisting his cock with one hand and twisting the silk black sheets with his other, hair matted to his forehead, sweat beading at his skin, lips bitten raw in frustration and phone resting on his chest as he fucks his hand, praying that you pick up.

You curse yourself, wishing that you hadn’t been so damn obstinate, bobbing your head a bit faster as an apology. Chuuya lets out a sharp hiss, head falling forward so he can watch you raptly as your tongue teases his slit again before swirling around his cock. 

“You’re so beautiful,” he gasps, and his words shoot right to your core, heat spreading through you like a wildfire. “So damn beautiful, could look at you forever. Make me so fucking mad at you sometimes, but how am I supposed to stay mad when you look like this, huh?”

You let out a soft keen at the praise, and he must feel it, considering how his breath hitches and his thighs tighten again beneath your fingers. You think you can get drunk off of the taste of him, high off of the sound of his voice; you think that Nakahara Chuuya is like a drug that you’ll never be able to get clean of, and you don’t know why you tortured yourself by depriving yourself of him for an extra week.

“Y’take me so well, doll,” he continues, panting as his fingers twist in your hair and his hips jerk upward again, pushing himself impossibly deeper down your throat. Only sheer determination stops you from gagging again, fat tears rolling down your cheeks that he promptly wipes away, his touch gentle as always even when he’s nearly fucking your face. “It’s like you’re made for me, yeah? You made for me, baby?” 

You try to hum in agreement around him but you’re not sure if it translates.

It does, evidently, if the obscene moan that escapes his lips has anything to say about it. “Yeah, you are,” he agrees breathlessly. “Shit, I’m so close, just like that, keep-”

His voice cracks over another groan, lashes fluttering as a positively wrecked expression crosses over his face when you flatten your tongue along the underside of his cock, right up against the sensitive vein. His grip on your hair tightens, holding you in place, and the only warning you get is a borderline incoherent babble before his hips rock up and your nose is pressed against his pelvis. 

You can’t breathe, you can hardly think, all you can focus on is making sure you don’t choke on the cum spilling into your mouth, warm and sticky and so much of it that it’s dribbling out of the corner of your lip and over your chin. Your lungs burn so badly that you think you might die, and your head feels fuzzy and faint. 

You wonder if you’re about to pass out.

But you don’t pass out. Right when your vision begins to go spotty and you really think you’re done for, he loosens his grip so that you can pull off of him. Chuuya hardly wastes a second before he’s hauling you to your feet and pressing his lips to yours. The kiss is hot and messy—you’d barely even swallowed all of his cum before he was pulling you up and you still don’t have enough air in your lungs, but his hand caresses your face so softly that you can’t even bring yourself to care. You’re not sure how long the two of you stay like that, lips moving slowly against one another as his tongue gently traces the inside of your mouth, tasting himself on you, but when you finally break apart from one another, your breath is nearly as shaky as your fingers, instinctively chasing after his lips to steal one last chaste kiss.

“Did I prove it?” you finally ask with a teasing smile, tongue darting out to lap up the remaining mixture of cum and saliva pooling at the corner of your lip as you look up at him through your lashes, leaning your cheek into his touch.

“Undecided,” Chuuya finally tells you, hand sliding from your cheek so he can reach out to trace his index finger on your bottom lip. You capture the gloved digit between your lips, sucking on it gently. “Guess I’ll just have to take you home so you can try again, doll.” 

[theemporium]

witch!reader being drained from using too much of her powers and she just slumps over onto the back patio couch and passes out and wakes up to find two wolves nosing at her with worried whines and she’s like “hi Charles, Max” and then falls back asleep while the boys are sharing a look and going WHAT THE FUCK

thank you for requesting!🫶🏽

.

You found it oddly endearing that the boys thought you were clueless to their secret.

You had known what they were the second you met them. You felt the shift in their auras, felt the rush of their true selves when you touched them for the first time. You knew. And you knew how protective wolves could get when it came to their kind, to their pack and the bonds they formed. You respected the fact they wouldn’t want to tell you instantly, but you knew. 

The relationship grew stronger when you came clean about yourself (though you hadn’t done much to hide it), and both boys had accepted you instantly. There was no fear or hesitation or concern about the powers you harboured. If anything, it made them love you more but it wasn’t enough for them to come clean. And once again, you respected that. 

But it was sweet how unbelievably unsubtle they were with their attempts to hide their secret. You don’t think they realised how bad they were, but it amused you nonetheless. It became pretty obvious to you who the two wolves at the bottom of your garden were, or the reason they were following you when you would head into the woods to collect some ingredients. 

Yet, it still warmed your heart every time you saw the two large wolves—one dark brown and the other blond—always checking up on you.

And truthfully, you hadn’t meant to reveal your knowledge of their secret in such a way. 

It had been a long week. With the moon in the perfect position, aligned with the planets and stronger than it ever could be on a full moon, you had been overworking yourself. Most other witches had covens, they had someone else to supply them and take off the stress of the magic. But that wasn’t the case for you, and it meant that every spell was quickly dwindling your reservoir to the point of exhaustion. 

You tried to pace yourself, to give yourself enough time between spells to rest and rejuvenate. But the planets were shifting and you were losing time and you pushed yourself over the edge for one last spell. 

You didn’t remember making it back to your house, not a second of the walk back from the woods in your memory. You didn’t remember crawling up the steps of the patio. And you certainly didn’t remember passing out on the couch outside, your body falling into some makeshift comatose state to try and reserve what little energy you had left. 

Everything was bleary when you felt someone nudging your arm. 

You waited for it to stop but it never did. The nudges became more insistent, and then you felt someone nudging your leg too. You made a noise of discontentment but your eyes remained shut, which didn’t seem to please whatever was nudging you. 

You felt a little more awake when you heard a low whine. It sounded scared, like a plea for help rather than anything else. It sounded concerned. You tried your best to force your eyes open, to blink them open to see whatever was nudging you.

It took a few seconds for coloured splodges to become actual shapes but once your eyes focused on the two wolves in front of you, you couldn’t help but let a smile take over your face.

“My boys,” you murmured happily as you let out a deep sigh. “Just such caring puppies, hm?”

If it was possible for wolves to look comically confused, you would have thought you were seeing said expression right then.

You let out a small snort. “Of course I know it’s you.”

Both wolves stayed frozen in their spot as you reached out towards them, your fingers brushing against their fur before your hand fell limp at your side again. You blinked, a little slower and your eyes stayed closed for much longer intervals too. You could practically feel the concern radiating off them.

“M’fine,” you murmured as you nuzzled your face into the couch cushion with a sleepy smile. “Just a lil’ tired. Just…need a nap.”

Everything felt far too fuzzy and it didn’t take long before the exhaustion won over your body, pulling you back into a deep sleep before you could even realise the boys were shifting back into their human forms.

“Mon amour,” Charles whispered in a worried voice, kneeling beside the couch as he gently stroked his thumb over the apple of your cheek. “She’s out cold.”

“She needs to rest so she doesn’t burn herself out completely,” Max said with a frown on his face, shaking his head. “She was reckless. She could have hurt herself if she wasn’t careful.”

Charles hummed, nodding his head in agreement. “And she knows.”

“We were stupid for thinking we could hide it from her,” Max replied honestly before he grabbed a blanket, placing it over your body before you got too cold. “Let’s take her inside, help warm her up.”

Charles turned to the other boy, eyes wide and a little glossy. “Will she be okay?”

“We’ll take care of her,” Max reassured him, running a hand through the boy’s hair until he melted under the touch. “C’mon, I’ll make us some dinner for her to wake up to too.”

.

[castielstwigandberries]

dean was confirmed canonically bisexual in 'free to be you and me' btw. my man did not only make not one but two!!! queer references but also used his 'best line (to get laid)' on cas and spelled out 'gay sex with me' in the most unsubtle way possible!

on a completely unrelated note: JEREMY CARVER I AM IN YOUR FUCKING WALLS!

[rose-tea-and-strawberries]

Do you possibly see this happening with Idia and Hades when he tries to give love advice to Idia but mid way Yuu walks by lol?

Yep, lol 😂

But to be honest, no matter how unsubtle Idia is, Pain and Panic are the most obvious out of the bunch.

Like Hercules would just *casually* slide up to Idia and Yuu and just be his sweet golden retriever himbo self but he's always like that so Yuu doesn't notice (also Pegasus is a sweetheart so she's kind of distracted by him)

But Pain and Panic would just straight up tell Yuu that Idia's looking at her because he likes her (thankfully Yuu takes that as platonically so she just smiles as Idia's hair erupts into magenta and says she considers him a dear friend too)

You got Ortho, Hades and Meg just facepalming in the background like 'why'

Scar's just like 'now you know how it feels'

[ghostmyuu]

If I ever start feeling hopeless about byler happening THIS is the one thing that always brings me back because genuinely what the fuck else could this mean??

The Duffers specifically arranged the canon romantic couples into pairs in the most unsubtle way possible but instead of the “main ship” being side by side they had it be Mike and Will just because? They could’ve just had everyone grouped together with El in front why even pair them off like that in the first place?

[eldritch-spouse]

would it be possible to have a (somewhat) platonic/almost familial if possible relationship with any of the Lust demons?

like i feel any and all of them would have a sexual aspect to almost any relationship with them, but especially knowing Santi is a lil different than other lust demons (grumbly and his whole wanting kids down the line dream) i wonder if any of them would be like ‘yeah they’re hot but that’s my homegirl’

Yes, this is possible, albeit rare.

The reason Santi is more familial towards Grimbly is because, initially, Grimbly reminded him of a fragile and wounded version of Santi, when the incubus was still just a teen/young adult trying to survive in a world that clearly thought very little of him. The drive to protect Grimbly rose asexually, because Santi recognized that sex had been used to harm Grimbly before. A familial-like bond forms very quickly between them, wherein Grimbly isn't quite like a son but not quite like a brother either, somewhere in that middleterm. And as filthy as concubi can be, they don't target their family for their feeding (there will always be the unfortunate exception, no society is perfect).

Can Santi create this type of connection with someone else? Yes. But it will require strong sentiments being ignited again, like the ones he felt when he cornered Grimbly. If you can't trigger those, then it's not happening. You can still have a platonic connection with Santi, but sex is always available and even encouraged by him as a form of bonding and feeding option.

Lemoana is a succubus that has a bit more consideration for other customs besides her own. Like Santi, she too would prefer to pleasure all her friends and eat from them as well, but she can drop the idea of fucking a particular someone a lot faster.

Nena is also notable for being more subtle. Initially, it seems as if she's looking for something platonic and non-sexual, but she'll constantly try to put herself in "vulnerable" positions, hoping that you'll cave to your own needs. This effectively superficially rids her of blame when she gets her friends to have sex with her. Familial bonds are not easily created for her.

Lacai also doesn't let many people be considered family in his eyes. He's unsubtle and will openly kind of squint everytime you deny wanting sex with him. You're friends with an incubus, make the most out of it.

Vesper has no familial ties and will likely never create any. Platonic, romantic, hatred or indifference- You'll get fucked.

The basic gist of it is- Creating a familial bond is not the way to go with concubi. It's very difficult and most will reject seeing you that way no matter how much affection they hold for you. To get that sort of dynamic, you need to see them as something incapable of sex, something that would sexually repulse them. What Santi saw in Grimbly was a younger version of himself, and that made a lasting impression that causes strong repulsion everytime the idea of sex with the bat hybrid crosses his mind.

[oneatlatime]

The Earth King

As always, commentary off.

No. Sokka. No. Stop. This is your stupidest idea yet. I want to LEAVE Ba Sing Se.

Sokka. Listen to your sister. And your other sister.

Toph embodying my will manifested on screen.

What makes you think the Earth King is going to listen to four teens and their fluffy dog? When I put it that way, this is Scooby Doo. Scooby Doo plus Momo. Does that make Momo Scrappy Doo?

We're going back to Ba Sing Se. Great. Yay. I'm so excited.

It is rapidly becoming apparent that Sokka has lost his mind.

Surface to air rocks is funny. I'll give it to them, that's good.

This fight scene music is fantastic.

Aang took a level in badass at some point without my noticing.

I know these hats are inspired by real historical hats, and so I really shouldn't make fun, but these look like the lovechild of a toilet brush and a feather duster.

This fight is majority Toph and Katara. RIP the egos of these several hundred Earth Kingdom soldiers.

Please ensure your fluffy little butt is securely stored in the overhead bins before takeoff.

There's no way these guys are still alive. This is what was done to Jet, doubled. They dead.

The girl who doesn't even want to be here is doing all the work. Typical.

My congratulations to Toph, Katara, and Aang for demolishing an army without breaking a sweat. If only season 1 Katara could see you guys now.

I said in my previous write up that Zuko doing something good always comes back to bite him. I didn't mean it this literally. Did he have to take the jug out with him, or was that for the drama?

Good job guys!

Soka steals my job and points out the fulfillment of the Beat Up Sokka quota.

His earthiness has an interesting set of priorities.

So... is this episode just going to be talking?

He brainwashed your friend? Did you miss that he killed him too?

I said in my last write up that Long Feng was Avatar's first competent villain, but the tone he takes with the Earth King is so unsubtle that I'm thinking of rescinding that claim. Unless the King is so dumb that subtlety isn't required?

Toothprints. Sokka the idea guy coming in clutch. Too bad his brain wasn't engaged at the start of the episode.

Appa is a herbivore. Confirmed. Although he should have fangs for aesthetic reasons. Fanged Appa would be metal.

This king is a confusing mixture of endearing and infuriating.

No mere fever will prevent me from doing mundane actions in the most dramatic way possible!

Way back in the 90s there was a print ad for Chevy trucks that I remember seeing in magazines. It had a shirtless guy in jeans sitting on the bed of his truck in a field, pouring a bucket of water over himself. It was kind of at sunset and had a very late summer vibe. I had completely forgotten about it until I saw Zuko's bucket shenanigans in this scene, at which point I was abruptly -ABRUPTLY- reminded of how much time little me spent staring at that ad.

OH MY GOD. The King doesn't know about trains!!! BLASPHEMY.

Huh. So the King isn't stupid, he's just horrifically naive.

Positive attitude Sokka is kind of frightening. I do not like.

If I told this King that I had a bunch of puppies in my windowless van, he would totally fall for it. So much about the Earth Kingdom suddenly makes sense.

That one guard is having a doozy of a day.

Did the King just show a smidge of self-awareness? Wasn't expecting that.

Who is this? I have no idea who this is. I didn't realise how integral the scar was to the character's design. Give it back.

Yikes. A bunch of shmymbolism. I suck epically at decoding shmymbolism unless it's really spoon fed to me, so I'm not even going to try to understand this dream beyond 'poor guy has a really bad fever.'

Has anyone seen the Spencer Tracy movie Father of the Bride? There's a bit where he has a dream that the floor on the way to the altar does pretty much exactly this. Hungry floors must be a common dream experience.

Pretty.

If the King is really this completely ignorant of the war, who's been directing the army?

It's pretty neat that Sokka is the spokesperson of Team Avatar, and that no one disputes that.

Aang says "there's a comet coming this summer," but I heard "comic" and I know they made tie in comics for the show, so I was like "ooh a crossover episode!"

"You're already vulnerable. The Fire Nation won't stop until the Southern Water Tribe falls. You can either sit back and wait for that to happen, or take the offensive, and give yourself a fighting chance." -Sokka's dad speaking to the men of the Southern Water Tribe, while his son listens perhaps a bit too closely.

If the King really was completely in the dark about the war, how does he even know who the General is? Did Long Feng have the power to keep the General from mentioning the war?

"Your majesty I'm General How, head of the Council of Five." "What's that?" "It's in charge of your army." "Right. And what's the army up to these days?" ... " ...I planted a lovely tomato garden this year."

I love that earthbenders don't wear shoes, and that it's culturally normal. Makes an intriguing visual contrast to their fancy duds.

I have GOT to know what Mushi the teamaker's secret file says.

Toph can't read guys.

Sokka, Katara, I get it. You miss home too. But how would anyone at all from your tribe know to send a message for you to Ba Sing Se? Last time you all touched base, you were headed to the Northern Water Tribe. And those guys sent you off to Omashu, not Ba Sing Se.

Nitpick time! Katara starts reading the text of this letter out loud before she unrolls it.

Katara's voice acting while she's reading the letter is sweet. She's so excited.

Iroh. Priorities. Tea can wait.

"Huh? What's happening?" "You huffed a bit too much cave slime under Lake Laogai. Just ride it out."

This vase is lit like a main character.

"You're going through a metamorphosis my nephew." Iroh, he's a bit too old for that talk. Hang on I just realised that Zuko went through puberty on that ship. I bet that was rough.

I don't trust this. This news is all too good.

Aang referring to them all as "the family" hurts a little bit.

It is unbearably sweet to let Sokka go see their dad while Katara helps the Earth Kingdom plan, but Katara sucks at planning. Then again, the Earth Kingdom sucks in general, so maybe having a sucky planner will be a net improvement?

Either way it's good little sister content.

But there are six Kyoshi warriors. I counted in Appa's Lost Days.

Oh they didn't

Attack hug!

Airbender Zuko is a very effective jumpscare. Don't blame him for freaking out.

You know it's bad when finding the scar intact comes as a relief.

Nope. Don't trust it.

Fuck this guy.

Long Feng even eats rocks maliciously.

Fuck these guys.

Oh they did. Fuck these guys.

Final Thoughts

And just like that, it all went to shit. Or it will.

I was braced to be annoyed by how conveniently quickly the Earth King got with the program, but it actually fits well into the rest of the episode. Instead of a thing that goes improbably well, it's the one thing that goes right in episode filled with set up for everything falling apart. That bothers me less.

This episode was actually fun. At least until the end. It was mostly talking and Zuko on a bad trip. But it was win after win for everyone but my Ba Sing Se hating self, and it's always good to see your favourites having a good day. But! I have a glimmer of hope! So long as Sokka and Aang aren't completely written out until they return to Ba Sing Se, at some point I'll get some episodes outside of the city. And I have Appa back, so things aren't too bad in the grand scheme of things. I wonder that Appa wasn't upset at having all his people back for five minutes then having them split up again.

I do not like positive thinking Sokka, and I especially don't like that I have no idea where he came from. That point wasn't set up at all. I want my baby cynic back.

If letting Appa go was enough to trigger Zuko's morality crisis to the point of physical illness, why didn't letting Aang go in The Blue Spirit, or choosing to chase after Iroh rather than the Gaang in The Winter Solstice Part 1, cause a similar illness? What is different about this time?

Toph was once again the voice of reason in this episode, or rather my personal audience insert. Although it did surprise me how excited she was to see her mom. I thought that sending bounty hunters after their own daughter was kind of unforgivable, but either Toph doesn't know, or she's a more forgiving person than I am.

I realise now that this should have occurred to me when I watched Appa's Lost Days, but what idiot didn't take the Danger Ladies into custody when the Drill was stopped? btw I keep calling them the PowerPuff Girls in my head.

This episode was simultaneously a finale to a lot of threads and an introduction to a lot more. It was a chance to breathe between crossing the finish line of the 'find Appa' quest and starting the 'season finale' quest. It was also structured backwards. The big fight was like six minutes in. The 'what are we doing this episode?' was one of the last scenes. But it still works. I'll be interested to see what I think of this one when I rewatch it. It was such an info dump that I wonder if my opinion of it will be different once I watch it with all of the relevant facts known to me already. Either I'll appreciate the episode's other parts like the comedy, or I'll be bored. We'll see.

Two episodes left this season! I don't think I'll be getting to those before next year. See you all in 2024! (time needs to slow way down)

[mllemaenad]

Why so anti-Brotherhood?

At their best (Roger Maxon, Elder Lyons, Paladin Danse) they're massively effective humanitarians; even at their worst (Father Elijah, Paladin Casdin) they posess admirable traits (valour and determination); and most of the tine they are somewhere in the middle (Arthur Maxon, Knight Maximus): flawed but ultimately well-intentioned men and women trying to stop humanity from repeating its biggest mistakes.

They helped out in the early days of California, and when the NCR began to start following in the doomed footsteps of the old world, the Brotherhood tried (unsuccessfully to stop them). On the East Coast, they helped to save the Capital Wasteland from drought, and they stood up to the reckless experimentation of the Institute. In Filly, Lucy Maclean would probably have died without Maximus's intervention.

They can be unsubtle, and heavy-handed, and sometimes almost arrogant, but they ARE good people.

Hi, Anonymous person.

It feels like ... maybe you have the wrong end of the stick here? It sounds like you think I've got some kind of specific grudge against every individual member of the Brotherhood. And I ... don't. That would be silly and unfair. The Brotherhood has existed for a couple of centuries now. People are born into it, or indoctrinated as children. That's ... sort of the point Fallout: New Vegas is making with Arcade and Veronica – the forward-thinking children who have to contend with the mistakes of their very backward parents.

My issue is with the institution, not some random guy in power armour.

I'm not going to go through that whole list, because that's a lot. But – well, Maximus, since the TV show is going to be the hot topic.

Maximus is a refugee from a recently fallen civilisation who joined up with the Brotherhood of Steel because he was briefly impressed by the image of a knight in very literal shining armour, whom he saw breezing safely through the destruction of his home.

Then he found out that they are a group of militant cultists who use brutal beatings and ritual humiliation to "condition" their recruits (and possibly force them to take on new identities, as Maximus seems to be a name they "gave" him). His friend Dane is so frightened of going out on a mission with one of these knights that they actively injure themselves to avoid it, and Thaddeus's experience confirms that Maximus's treatment is completely normal.

When he is assigned to a knight, he quickly discovers that literally all of Titus's dignity comes from wearing a helmet that makes his voice sound deep and commanding, and underneath all that armour he is a bully and a coward. Not just a bully and a coward, but the kind of bully and coward who can't figure out that specifically bullying the only guy who might be able to save his life is a really fucking stupid move.

Nothing in that series made me think "Wow! The Brotherhood are good guys!" It made me think ... "Get out now, kid. Run as far and as fast as you can."

It is true that Maximus steps in to protect Lucy. It is equally true that Maximus would have very much died of dead-battery-in-soldier-suit had Lucy not intervened to help him. I'm not sitting here wishing ill on Maximus. But this ain't a story about how the Brotherhood are worthy saviours of the wasteland; it's the story about two lost kids (and one embittered pre-war Ghoul) finding their way together through hard won trust and understanding, which are pretty much always presented as the hopeful counterpoint to Fallout's grim "war never changes" theme.

I mean ... Maximus also falls uncritically in love with Vault 4 because they give him oysters and slippers. This is his standard for joining up with anywhere. He is a starving refugee whom the Brotherhood exploited.

I have no patience for The Brotherhood of Steel because they are violent, bigoted, technology hoarding isolationists whose defining trait is their extreme arrogance. They treat every problem as a nail and themselves as the hammer, and even when individuals in the organisation are actively trying to do good it's astonishing how ineffectual they are. I'm not sure they've had a relationship with another organisation they haven't poisoned.

They are actively genocidal towards Ghouls, Super Mutants and Synths. Owyn Lyons is undoubtedly one of the more open minded members, but a) one of the reasons they are able to appear as "the good guys" in Fallout 3 is because the particular nature of the FEV disaster going on in the Capital Wasteland means that there are virtually no non-hostile Super Mutants b) even Lyons' people still just shoot indiscriminately at Ghouls, an attitude that is simultaneously so morally bankrupt and tactically stupid that it makes me tear my hair out every time I think about it.

Also: The Brotherhood of Steel kills Danse. I don't think you can reasonably put Danse on your list of reasons why they're worthwhile without also noting that they, you know, send you out to murder him because he's a Synth.

And ohhhhhh they are so very bad at everything. It's actually quite difficult for me to think of things they've done that don't piss me off.

In the original Fallout they're sending aspirants off to die in The Glow because they think it's funny.

Lyons may be the (relatively) benevolent protector of the wasteland in Fallout 3, but he's also responsible for The Scourge: the wanton slaughter of half the population of the Pitt, the looting of their technology, and the kidnapping of their children. Undeniably conditions in the Pitt were awful, but this was no mercy mission: it was more of their mutants-aren't-people-and-all-your-stuff-is-ours bullshit. And they leave a guy behind who starts a raider gang and is basically the reason slavery exists in any large scale form in the Capital Wasteland. I'm not sure it's possible to fuck up worse than that.

Even in Fallout 3 ... they are not what you'd call an inspiration. Half of Lyons' forces threw a hissy fit and went off to sulk in Fort Independence because apparently obsessively hoarding laser riles is infinitely more important than helping people. By 2277 no one's even looking at the water purifier. That situation gets resolved because James finally decides to get off his arse and finish the project (I respect the man's commitment to procrastination). They don't manage to deal with the source of the Super Mutants. They basically spend a couple of decades mostly adequately guarding GNR – while places like Big Town get overrun – and tinkering with their stupid robot. They don't even fix the stupid robot. You know what the answer to fixing the stupid robot was? "Hey, did anybody think to ask Madison how the power supply works?" Useless.

In Fallout 4 they roll in and start extorting the settlers, like those people don't have enough to deal with, and the things they say if you bring Nick or Hancock with you to visit them are appalling.

I've recently been reminded of them threatening their allies at gunpoint in Fallout 76 because they think they have the right to steal everyone's research.

Okay. Enough ranting.

What's my problem with The Brotherhood of Steel? They are the walking definition of "following the doomed footsteps of the old world". They are just about Vault-Tec: military edition.

So we have to grab every schematic, every holotape, every book, and every goddamned note that holds the building blocks of the Old World before it's too late. Our Scribes will hold onto them, preserve them, perhaps even progress beyond them. And the Knights will protect them. Like a hard shell around a precious seed. One day, when the time is right, that seed will grow. And a new civilization will be born. – Fallout 76: Preservation of Technology

They think that somehow they are the true last bastion of civilisation, and that they have the right to decide when the world will begin anew. They can't even deal with the idea that there are different kinds of people in the world these days that your standard homo sapiens. They hoard, and they look backwards, and for all their self-righteous we-are-protecting-the-world propaganda, in practice all that means is that they get to keep all the big guns and threaten everyone else with them.

But civilisation has always just been people choosing to collaborate and help each other. And they have zero right to interfere with that.

Also: I think power armour is stupid and no fun at all to play in, and I am sitting here judging the Brotherhood for their obsession with the stuff. :)

[cebwrites]

Hellloooòooo! Hope you have been doing well!

If it's okay I am here to request an headcanon🥺👉👈 of course of the dorky Barto,because we need more content of him please, Katakuri and Zoro if it's okay? If it's too many then only Barto!

The prompt would be: their s/o suprises them with a more daring outfit that comes with a choker and/or a leash for them to wear....what wpuld be their reactions?

i've been so-so, my brain feels like jelly these days tho someone send helpppp (Ｔ▽Ｔ)

disclaimer that cev is NOT fashionable whatsoever if these fits make absolutely no sense even though they’re supposed to be ‘sexy’ i do apologize to all parties involved JDSKEGDNFJSDFGF

surprising them with a new fit (Bartolomeo, Katakuri)

gn reader (there is a mention of heeled boots in kata’s one but they’re the chunky unisex kinds i promise!!)

slight nsfw under the cut word count: 0.7k

Bartolomeo

Bartolomeo’s brain? Left the building - for all we know, it’s melted out of his ears, if he could he’d do the cartoon heart eyes and awooga at first sight he would

This is the most unsubtle man in the WORLD trying not to make it obvious that he’s staring at his partner, and he’s failing, but it’s the thought that counts

Barto wants nothing more than to get you around back and put his hands all over ya, admire how stunning y’are in something a little different than normal but look no less gorgeous in - and, god-willing, maybe even yank on your leash if you’d let him

You’re the one with the collar but he follows you throughout most of the the day like a lost puppy if he can help it - captain’s duties be damned, Gambia can figure it out - though he plays it off, you can feel his eyes on you like a hungry wolf

You wear your new fit loudly and proudly; knee-high boots and some god awful, brightly-colored print pants with an opened fur-lined coat that shows your chest off to match with him; how could Bartolomeo just sit idly by?

He’s just always conveniently close by, sizing you up in the most conspicuous way possible, it’d be embarrassing if you didn’t find his feeble attempts to hide it earlier in the day before ultimately giving up to shamelessly stare at his own partner to be endearing

When you finally give him an in, Barto all but pounces on you the moment you step into the captain’s quarters, wrestling on the floor a bit and laughing before the both of you finally manage to unceremoniously crawl onto the bed, disheveled but giggling like schoolgirls

He covers you in kisses, your hands make themselves at home by roughly tugging into his hair, he returns this with a harsh tug on your leash, smirking at your gasp

You lean in close, grazing your nails across his chest when you tell him that this might be your turn now, but the next time that they dock at an island with a shopping center you’ll be looking for a collar for him too

If Bartolomeo had a tail he’d sprain it from wagging, but he doesn’t - so this dick will have to do

Katakuri

Kata is also short circuiting, not like he’d overtly or outwardly show it, but if you get close enough to his face you’ll see his pupils darting around a bit, up and down your figure; if you put a hand on his face he’d probably swallow audibly, too

Kat isn’t ever one to police what someone else is wearing, given his own wardrobe that’d be hypocritical, and - provided that the two of you remained within prior agreed upon boundaries for public interaction - it should be fine, right?

Heavy, heeled boots clicked ever so pleasantly with every step you took, leather pants that hugged your legs snuggly, a bomber jacket with lots of fluff around the collar - all in all, it wasn’t that outrageous of an ensemble 

Upon close inspection, however, the fur around your neckline would reveal a matte spiked choker and... a leash, that you hid beneath your jacket, going under your shirt, into the pocket where you held it

You revealed this bit of information to Kata during the brief interval in that week’s family meeting when no one in particular was looking - sure that he probably noticed a little earlier before, but wanted to have the satisfaction of a ‘proper’ reveal anyway

The meeting went smoothly, nothing else of worth to note with everyone muttering mundanities and the usual complaints as they filed out at the end, 

As you stood to leave and casually ask your husband about his lunch preferences were today so you could tip off the chefs, you see him statue-ing in his seat, arms cross and face sunken into his scarf to hide treacherous shades of red threatening to expose him from behind it

You realized that he’d been absolutely frozen in that position ever since the reveal when the leash brushed against your side - he looked like a purple mushroom about to pop - and since there were only a few people left across the large meeting room, you allowed a quiet laugh for his ears alone while Kata feigned annoyance at your antics

[sapphosewrites]

top 10 ds9 fan fics you've written, ranked?

Oooh, tough question, friend! I don't even know what the criteria for this would be, because the most AO3 popular ones are not always my favorites... Okay, you know what, here we go. I'm just going to go for it and make some decisions. I'm giving myself a rule, though, that I can only chose one from a series, so I'm not just listing everything in the Terok Nor AU. I'll also try to hit different kinds of fics I've written.

10.) After the End of the World: A Survey of Seminal Works of Cardassian Post-Apocalyptic Literature from cross-posted to tumblr. 533 words, "An examination of the Cardassian post-apocalyptic literary genre before and after the Dominion War." This isn't my most popular or my best written but it's one of my favorites; I like in-world diegetic texts and worldbuilding and I'm obsessed with the idea of post-canon Cardassia as post-apocalypse.

9.) Never Have I Ever from The Game Is Afoot, 1,294 words, T, "Julian introduces Garak to the human game never have I ever." This was fun to write and is fun to reread every time! I often spend a lot of fic space on angst and identity and all the reasons why it's a bad idea for Julian and Garak to get together, but in this one we just get to spend time seeing them be clever and enjoy each other's company.

8.) Tribbles, Togetherness, and the Great River, 1,742 words, G, "In their shared quarters, Nog and Jake discuss tribbles, pets, and telling their families about their relationship." This is my only full standalone Jake/Nog fic, and it's another that was a pleasure to write and still makes me smile. It's fun to spend a sweet moment with two young people figuring out how they fit together.

7.) Del Floria's Tailor Shop, 336 words, also known as the space tumblr one. I think this is possibly the funniest thing I've ever written.

6.) Push Me Til I Break, 4,653 words, M, also known as the one where Garak interrogates Julian, and the role play goes wrong. Maybe the most tense thing I've ever written, and really leans into the ways in which two deeply hurting people can choose to hurt or hold.

5.) Growth, 45,843 words, T, "Julian and Garak grapple with their pasts and their feelings for each other at the end of the series." My super long post-canon Cardassia fic, back when I had no idea how to string a multi-chapter idea together. There's a lot I would change if I wrote this now (I've grown as a writer in many ways, including my ability to have scene transitions), but some of the conversations and moments in here are still absolute favorites of mine, particularly around ideas of self-forgiveness, the clash between values and actions, and the importance of choice.

4.) Predetermination, 22,200 words, T, Mirror Bashir arrives at the station and suddenly the nature/nurture debate has never had higher stakes. This is one of the places I think I've been most successful in using sci fi to ask big questions that hopefully resonate in the modern day, about who we are and how we become. Also, the ending takes inspiration from one of my favorite TNG episodes, and that was cool too.

3.) Especially the Lies, 13,019 words, T, "Something is going on with Garak, and no one knows what, except for possibly Julian Bashir." This is my only archive-warning-applied fic and it was really important to me to tell a story about care, for a character who I think doesn't believe he's allowed to have any, in a real world circumstance that too often people have to go through alone.

2.) Necessary Storms, 15,149 words, T, Julian and Starfleet Spouse Garak get entangled in Trill politics. I feel like this is one of the things I've written that most feels like it could be an episode of Star Trek, and is also a fairly unsubtle (though initially unintentional) way to explore populism, demagoguery, resource distribution, and revolt at a very particular moment in national politics with the aesthetic distance that sci fi offers.

1.) Old Friends: An Enigma Tale from Terok Nor AU. I'm exceedingly proud of this whole series, which started as just "what can I do with the idea of dabo boy Julian" and has turned into a sweeping journey covering how Terok Nor becomes Deep Space 9. This most recent installment is perhaps not indicative of the series as a whole, but it was a lot of fun to write and is also a dip into my other favorite genre aside from sci fi (murder mystery).

[hxhhasmysoul]

the blatant didactic nature of the gojou's racist comment scene

the way people talk about the racist comment gojou made is baffling to me. completely baffling.

gege seems to have lefty leanings and jjk is pretty lefty too. it's not super lefty, it's not fully enlightened on all possible fronts, not even close to as left as most tumblr fandom would want to be or imagine themselves to be. most of you fail miserably because you are averse to self-awareness and interrogating your own internalised bigotry and it plays a huge part in the outrage about chapter 255.

jjk can be easily criticised from the left. very fucking easily, but most of the fandom just doesn't know how and any criticisms they make on how jjk handles lefty issues usually fall so fucking flat and honestly often veer into into criticising jjk from a right wing and fundie religious pov. that's just the truth, i've personally dissected some of such takes, mostly about the performative feminism in the fandom that is aggressively terf flavoured.

so i will do some more mild lefty critique in the context of the recent gojou flashback. by explaining to the loud functionally illiterate part of the fandom what gege likes to do in the story. like what very basic, unsubtle things gege does in the story to push their lefty leanings. so this is as much a critique of the text of jjk as it is of the fandom.

______

jjk's target audience are japanese teenagers. idk if gege thinks they are writing mostly for boys but i wouldn't be surprised by that, that is the stereotype, even though i think a lot of teens who aren't boys passionately read shounen titles too. especially something like jjk that aggressively panders to the not straight male gaze.

what gege did with gojou making the racist comment, they'd done before with toudou and megumi. and with yuuji and ozawa. i mean the very unsubtle rhetorical didactic technique they used. gege took their presumed teenage male reader by the hand and led him through a basic lefty concept.

(they also tried to do it with momo and nobara and mai but that one is such a mess and honestly a failure because gege mushes in too many topics and really doesn't stick the landing on some, that it fails to be a simplistic didactic moment like the other ones. it'd be too much of a tangent to go into it)

megs & toudou aka gege explaining to teen boys how not to end up someone akin to an incel

when toudou asked megumi his type, as readers are very clearly led to understand that megumi's point of view is the correct one.

megumi's answer about character being what matters gets clear approval from the two girls present. gege points to the teenage boy reader, look, if you want girls to think you’re okay, think like megumi.

and toudou is very clearly written as cringe, as a guy who tries to be edgy but simps for an idol. there is a stigma in japan against men who obsess about idols because they are considered immature, unable to handle having interactions with other humans and forming parasocial relationships instead. so toudou's rejection of megumi's thinking is put into context. his behaviour puts women off, and shouldn't be taken seriously because he's likely a virgin, too afraid to talk to a real woman.

the attempt is good, but not perfect. because the social ridicule men like toudou get is really annoying, because it's just trying to shame them into being "normal", and it doesn't address the underlying societal and cultural issues that lead to men turning to parasocial relationships for emotional fulfilment. so i'd say 8/10. pretty high because toudou at least was like: don't be homophobic.

ozawa & yuuji aka gege explaining to teen boys how to be a borderline decent human being, and to people with low self esteem due to cultural shunning that they deserve more than basic human decency

gege does the same thing with yuuji and ozawa. ozawa has deeply internalised her fatfobia and turned it into self hatred. she develops a crush on yuuji because he considered her attractive. yes, i think yuuji is generally great and would make a partner happy, but ozawa's primary motivation is that he's normal about her. this teaches the reader: yuuji is the best one among the boys because he's not shallow and fatphobic. but also with ozawa not pursuing yuuji when she got slim, it shows people like her not to settle for the bare minimum of being treated with basic decency. it would've been better if ozawa didn't turn slim because i've seen cis male fans really gloss over everything else, but it's not a completely meaningless attempt. it's just like 5/10.

gojou & miguel aka gege explaining to teen boys how certain widespread stereotypes are actually bigoted

gege has gojou say an openly bigoted thing, get instant push back for it from the affected party and apologise to the person he hurt. it literally teaches the reader, we all have biases, we all are ignorant about things, even the people who the society elevates and puts on a pedestal. and when that happens, when our ignorance is pointed out to us, when it hurts someone, we should not argue, we shouldn’t treat their push back as a personal attack, we should just simply apologise. there's no attempt at gojou apologetics in the text. 10/10, the best of gege's attempts.

_

racism and colourism and cultural chauvinism are prominent cultural and societal issues in japan. japan also has huge issues with abelism, misogyny, queerphobia, fatphobia to name the biggest ones i can think of. but also these issues are pervasive in all other countries around the world, just to varying degrees. there's no country that is perfect on any of these, some are objectively better on some, but never all, than others and some market themselves as better but are actually fucking awful.

one of the most globalised things is bigotry, it spreads like wildfire. but it also spreads in ways that most people don't understand. you need to be taught critical thinking and reading comprehension and actually taught that they can exist in the first place to pick up on these things, no one is born with these skills and knowledge. if people never encounter stereotypes like "black people are naturally stronger" challenged or discussed, they will not know that 1. they are not true, 2. that they are actually harmful. because on the surface it kinda looks like praise, and people will propagate it thinking that it's praise. gojou isn't trying to insult miguel, his apology makes it clear. he lived in a culture where this opinion was widespread and never thought about it, it vaguely sounded like praise to his ignorance. it doesn't mean that what he said wasn't racist because his intentions were good. i've written before what i think about using intentions to excuse shitty behaviour, i've actually written about it specifically in the context of how the fandom treats gojou's shitty behaviour.

we all have these internalised bigoted opinions in ourselves, not because we're all bad people but because we're surrounded by them. as children we initially trust adults until we learn better that not everyone should be trusted. or that some people can be trusted about some stuff but not everything. so we take what we hear from them at face value. same with the media that we’re all bombarded with. someone has to teach us to notice these things. (if you think you're morally pure and only have good opinions it means that you've not worked through much. there are so many complex issues in our cultures and societies that it's impossible not to have blind spots. but also it means that you're closed to evolving your opinions. many views that used to be progressive 20, 10 years ago are not seen as such anymore. certain interpretations are proposed, seem good but get challenged, and usually turn out to be reductive. believing that there’s some finite and established set of morally good opinions means that you just want a cheat sheet to perform moral purity to get societal brownie points, you’re not really interested in reality)

we need to first learn that we have the biases we do and then also be open to interrogating our preconceived notions, to be actually capable of shedding them. we need to not take personally being called out on it.

but that's hard. the morality policing that is so pervasive online leads many people to never wanting to be wrong. because others will be horrid about it and will never forget. there's no incentive to get better on issues, or grapple with one's own biases when many people online will never accept the idea that someone can make a mistake, be corrected and take that correction to heart and do better from there on. you have one chance to get it right and then well, morally impure brand forever.

and this is one crux of the issue with fandom's reaction to the scene in 255. gojou is shown to have a racist blind spot and happily regurgitates a racist comment. and what happens next doesn't matter. the fandom has decided that gojou is forever tainted because he wasn't fully enlightened to begin with.

what gege did is one of the best ways a story can be aggressively didactic about something like this. show a person doing a bad thing and then show how to sincerely apologise. no apologetics, no relativism, very short, to the point.

but in this day and age, with how people perform leftism through media consumption and fandom, this is met with vitriol. and that's fucking scary because it will make it toxic for others to attempt stuff like this. all of you misinterpreting this so aggressively is actually harmful. idk how much of this will get to gege and other mangaka but it might make some of them believe that it's better to never touch any societal issues because it's not worth the backlash, most of which stems out of either actual lack of reading comprehension or malicious misinterpretation. because gege did it correctly and the fandom just will not accept that.

to the rabid and loud parts of the fandom, gojou having this flaw is either:

the author is just being a dick to their character, therefore the true gojou that lives in his fans' heads is not racist.

or what gojou did actually wasn't racist uwu, or his intentions were pure uwu, it's not that important and you're overreacting.

or gege is racist for even mentioning racism... some of you really think you are leftists and then parrot this tired far right tactic: i'm not bigoted, you're bigoted for mentioning bigotry...

and all of these, all of these completely miss the point of that scene.

_

this is one of the 3 recent gojou scenes that i think are meant to be redeeming for his major flaws selfishness and insensitivity, and the only one that in my opinion actually works.

the one that is completely garbage and confusing is the one with gakuganji, gojou seemingly is trying to appoint someone to provide structure to the rebuilding after the whole sukuna debacle. like i think it's meant to show gojou actually taking responsibility for his failures (the whole mention of yaga) and show practical concern over futures of the people in his care. previously he kinda showed responsibility over what happened to riko and getou but it was all kinda mired with him getting a power up, and him really still being an irresponsible and selfish guy later on. and all he had to offer the teens he recruited as child soldiers was some "better jujutsu society" that very pointedly lacked on any fucking details as to what it could've been. and him ceding responsibility onto gakuganji, one of the pillars of the previous system really kinda shows hoe vacuous gojou's ideals were. -10/10 on the redemption attempt.

the one that feels very tone deaf is gojou telling ijichi that he trusts him the most. ijichi literally thought that gojou could hit him a few months before that. ijichi a lower ranking person in a hierarchy, believed that a higher ranking person could hit him. the kind of bullying and disrespect that leads someone to believe that is serious, honestly gojou and ijichi kinda remind me of an abusive family dynamic, where the abuser sporadically and irregularly drops some kindness to confuse the victim and make them not leave. and the last act of kindness just doesn't feel that meaningful. 0/10 on the redemption scale.

but this with miguel? a 10/10 redemption moment. gojou isn't prideful when his racism is called out, isn't trying to diminish what he did, isn't avoidant. he apologises. that's it. this is why it actually is a very simple argument against the "gege hates gojou" bs.

that "gege hates gojou" is stupid in general, because it's basically based on the belief that giving a character flaws means the author hates them. and this stems from far right moral purity ideologies that a lot of people have never challenged in themselves. that's why there's so much harassment and vitriol over finding out people put on a pedestal have flaws.

gojou is flawed. each and every one of us is flawed. we all have biases and blind spots and internalised bigoted views, many of which we don't realise we have because we usually don't think about those topics. that point is what we do with that, how we react to realising that a thing we had as some background belief is actually a harmful stereotype. if it's just in our heads then interrogate it, where did it come from, maybe there's more shit like that in our minds that we need to tackle. if we say it, then acting like gojou is actually the way to go. apologise, if necessary do more remediation, and then interrogate where it came from.

having bad opinions doesn't make anyone an intrinsically immoral and impure person. what they do when those opinions are challenged and how they act / what they say next time is the mark of their character.

so many of you moral purity fuckers, who deem themselves leftists, want media to be morality plays. want media to take you by the hand and show you right from wrong. and when an author actually does that, the exact thing you claim you want them to, it literally flies over your fucking heads.

[olreid]

moments i HAD to screenshot because like. oh to be beyond fathers!! but of course this man is saying this as part of his unsubtle attempt to groom ellie into joining his cult, and we are supposed to clock what a blatant lie it is. we're primed to see ellie as someone who is beyond this type of father, this controlling man who vents his violence on the children in his care, precisely because she has upgraded to something better. joel haunts this scene as the obvious foil to david when weighing modes of fatherhood, and he looks better for the comparison.

what joel offers is a fatherhood without the entrapment (to be taken from him is to be locked in a cage), without the moral superiority and mandatory curriculum. david says you need to learn from me; "i am going to keep you, and teach you." and we see how he "teaches" the children under his care: by backhanding them when they speak out of turn. joel teaches ellie survival skills, but it's clear that he doesn't think he has much to teach her about life writ large; he is a very wounded person who doesn't think highly of himself, and thus isn't trying to mold ellie in his image or convince her that the way he is is the right or best way to be. there is no sinister molding of her behavior, no desperate attempt to get her to follow in his footsteps in order to retroactively invest his way of life with moral superiority.

the other factor that differentiates david and joel is their deployment of violence. david's role as a father means that his anger flows downward onto the children around him. what joel offers as a father is that he redirects his anger out away from his child, venting his rage instead on those who would hurt or threaten her. ellie knows this; she likes to see his violence visited on others because it proves that he cares about her. the first thing he protects her from is himself.

david does not present initially as a threat; he is soft-spoken and unassuming until he ultimately reveals himself to have, in his words, a violent heart. this is one of the most terrifying things about fathers, about people in general; their capacity to hide their true natures, the ability to put a loving face on abject cruelty until you're drawn all the way in and it's too late to escape unscathed. joel, on the other hand, does not hide what he is; from the beginning, he is honest with ellie about the kinds of things he has done to survive post-pandemic. of course, because we're talking about fathers, the bar is in hell, but certainly there is something refreshing about a person who wears his deadliness on his sleeve rather someone who sells you an idyllic domestic fantasy only for you to find out later just how cruel he really is.

finally, joel's brand of fatherhood is opt-in. ellie chooses it; she is the driver of their dynamic, because joel is constantly trying to escape having another daughter. the progression of joel and ellie's relationship depicts the fantasy of having to convince someone to father you, of a father/daughter relationship that resembles nothing so much as taming a skittish animal. joel is a father so wounded by connection that he will never smother or stifle you because he's scared to touch you, and how can he possibly hurt you if he always keeps his distance? while you can never escape the abusive and controlling father, you get to set the pace with joel; you decide how close to get to him, how much to reveal to him. joel has been so traumatized by fatherhood that on some level the typical power structure of the father/daughter relationship is reversed; ellie holds the power to either confirm or deny his fear that he is a failure of a father, which causes him to fear and revere her.

with joel/ellie, the site of the father/daughter relationship is excavated and reworked; the reparative fantasy is that even someone as violent and traumatized as joel is tamed completely by ellie. she is the perfect object; she has transformed him into the protector she always wanted; everyone wins. the father has someone to give his life form and his violence meaning; the daughter has a loyal protector who will only hurt others, not her. now he can burn down as much of the world as he wants; it will all be absolved under the sign of her survival. she can get as close to the blaze as she wants; she'll never catch fire.

[lynne-monstr]

i continue to watch the spirealm show and wow, my man ruan nanzhu is so over-the-top determined to snag his man, he has left subtlety for dead 2 seconds after appearing onscreen. this is a dude who, in the get a boyfriend department, is in it to win it. case in point: in 12 viki length episode he has

watched bae sleep, because that's what prospective boyfriends do obvs

don't get me started on the whole ring gift thing

inquired, in the most unsubtle way humanly possible, if his crush has a girlfriend

two episodes later: "I've never had a girlfriend." in case literally anything else he's said so far hasn't been clear enough

in a move right out of sci mystery, goes for the gold with "if you can't get a girlfriend, how about something else."

and for all his bullshit, i can't even blame rnz for his shenanigans because his crush is the single most oblivious man in the entire world

"if you can't get a girlfriend, how about something else." "like a cat?"

um no ling jiushi. the hot man who's been blatantly hitting on you for 12 viki-length episodes is NOT talking about pussy. there is zero pussy on ruan nanzhu's mind at any given moment, read the room my dude

[prettysymbiosis]

I’ve been trying to get these thoughts out for days but basically I feel like the unifying theory of s16 (as I see it) is a conscious exploration of the dichotomy between sunny as a classically bold and brash pee pee poo poo comedy and sunny as a thoughtful, nuanced and subtle show about flawed people and also about itself, at times (by that I mean the meta isn’t always about macdennis or the other characters but about sunny itself - win an award, clip show, big mo, etc). the trailer actually captures this dichotomy well through the dialogue clips and animations, as well as the pinned comment which said “get ready for a whole lot of subtlety.” it’s still so baffling to me that sunny can simultaneously read as one of the most loud, obnoxious, unsubtle shows ever on television, OR it can be so subtle and allegorical in the writing of later seasons that most viewers would think people like us are crazy for reading so much into it even though we’re really not. this kind of self-reflective flavor is another product of the rewatch/podcast project which has been almost universally agreed to have had a very positive effect on the writing.

anyway having said that, I want to just share my notes on the first two episodes without trying to edit them too much. I’m bolding the points that I personally haven’t seen anyone else mention yet and putting a 😎 next to ones that evoke a Classic Sunny VibeTM because that’s important to the experiment of this season.

the gang inflates

macden fun/domestic/DUMB again 😎

something something never committing to the couch when it was absurd not to and it ended up costing them so much macdennis blah blah

dennis hanging up on dee was so funny to me oops 😎

and the WHOLE dee (as a character and specifically the female character) thing about being minimized to an absurd degree. I like to think the bog was a turning point for dee and the show is gonna do better by her now hopefully by recognizing her plight in a more serious way, like the way the guys have been doing?

are mac and dennis…… you know…… like for real??? as many have said, it could totally be revealed kind of retroactively to undercut the shock and be like “honestly we’re surprised you didn’t notice sooner” I feel like that is something rcg would do. suggestive clues:

“I don’t wanna talk to you about–” “a TON”

or is dennis like well that’s news to me jealous vibes??

“I figured you were man” ??

“I’m getting a little concerned about our nut”

“you truly have no reason to be sleeping with frank”

they specifically put a lil reaction shot of dennis after mac says “that’s a lotta blowin” a la the lil grin in gets romantic and, well, I just think that’s a choice that was made

“it’s not homophobic” is that so?????

when mac is like “you think we got rid of our furniture too soon/that the business plan won’t work” it’s kinda like no it’s not the committing to what they have, it’s that mac still has big denial problems and dennis can’t work with that… maybe? but so does dennis tbh

in a show-meta sense it’s like, we should be less worried about whether the gay gay-ass love story will alienate people and more worried about how these characters are too ridiculous to even let the love story play out effectively. they need mental health days if we are ever to have nice things

it’s possible mac denying his reaction to the allergy has to do with his body dysmorphia?

also it occurred to me that maybe part of why rob is clean-shaven this season is so they could do those prosthetics more easily?

those handprints though…. I hate everything

oh also just the bed scene. its existence

the zoomed in neck touch of course

“I’m not going to do it!” “..okay” dennis keepin his cool :)

mac’s shirt! COOLER HEADS PREVAIL

just the sheer silliness of inflatable furniture - is there some metaphor here lol?

in a general sense could inflates be taken to mean flanderizes? also maybe it’s just implied but I noticed I hadn’t actually seen anyone mention inflation as a sexual kink and like, that was part of the intention right? if so, 😎

charlie “uhhhhhhhh… yep.” poor charlie :( he doesn’t want to live in a maze (like a rat)

“well then you’re just like being a predator” :( so here for charlie calling out bullshit with frank and mrs. mac and even his own mom so far in these first two eps

charlie just giving up and yelling in frustration which is kinda what bonnie does in ep2 (and ep3 based on trailer)

the gross horny male objectifying thing 😎

rob put his whole pussy into this episode

charlie saying “I don’t get why he doesn’t take me seriously” and dee saying “that’s gotta be maddening” 🙃

cats in the alley my loves 😎

gluing dee a pillow on the wall <3

“consider it an offering” “of war??” this says so much. must everything be a conflict?

charlie’s hair looks so crazy and good in the sleepover scene and also he’s so smart

charlie asks frank to “return everything to the status quo” by the end of the episode, sitcom style. full reset, no progression. except charlie is asking that frank not endlessly take advantage of the fact that mac and den can’t figure their shit out, not totally push dee out just because it’s easy, not make light of the trauma charlie has from what happened to him. all that stuff IS the status quo! so what is he really asking for? this is one of the bits of writing that I think is also about the show as a show, and how they’ve approached these dynamics forever. 

it’s funny that people are saying this season is such a return to form because it is, but it’s also so much more self-aware of what that form is/was and how deeper elements can coexist within it. they’re really walking with a foot in both worlds here and they’re doing it well. love this for them and for us, the people who know what it’s always sunny in philadelphia is REALLY about

“we’ll take you to the hospital, and they’ll have nuts. and you can– you can die there.” hahahah

[parkitaco]

hey if you're still doing the kiss prompts -> #11? maybe? it would be super sweet and your writing is so cool (no pressure tho!!!!)

Will is asleep when Mike gets home.

Mike discovers this almost immediately, when he opens the door to a darkened hallway and bangs his shin on the shoe rack. Almost all the lights are off, with the exception of the soft glow coming from the fairy lights in their bedroom, the ones they leave on at night because even after nearly a decade since the days of, as Will likes to call it, “the horrors”, neither of them are very fond of the dark. 

Mike hisses out a quiet curse, rubbing at his leg where it smacked into the metal rack as he fumbles for the light switch, turning on the hallway light long enough to shrug off his jacket and set his keys on the table. He’s a little tipsy, courtesy of some assorted booze he’d confiscated from his students, who are generally very sweet people but tend to be a bit stupid and unsubtle where alcohol is involved - not that he hadn't been the same way, but then again, he'd been stupid and unsubtle about most things as a teenager.

Prom, he thinks bitterly, huffing out a breath as he kicks off his shoes and nudges them aggressively in the direction of the offending shoe rack. He and Will had skipped out on their own, back in the day, under the excuse of the fact that school dances were “lame and unnecessary”, which isn't untrue, but had served as a somewhat weak cover for the real reason. They hadn’t been able to dance together like they wanted, then.

They can now, though, Mike thinks triumphantly, as he heads toward their bedroom and the promise of his sleeping boyfriend. Suck it, Hawkins bigots.

Just as Mike suspected, Will is asleep, his form visible from where Mike stands in the doorway, the door thoughtfully left ajar for him. He leans against the wall, smiling a little to himself as he watches Will’s chest rise and fall softly against the pillows. His back is to him, hair spilling softly over the pillows, and he’s a beautiful sight, bathed in the golden glow of the lights strung across the ceiling. Mike loves him.

He shifts, carefully slipping into the room and shutting the door softly behind him. He casts another fond glance at Will, still dead to the world on his side of the bed, as he slips off his jeans and dress shirt and exchanges them for his sweats. Will’s usually a fairly light sleeper, but Mike supposes that these days he’s well enough accustomed to Mike’s presence, routine and constant in the apartment they’ve shared since college, that it doesn’t disturb him. Either that, or he’s faking sleep just to annoy Mike, which is entirely possible.

Mike flops onto the bed beside Will, propping himself up on one arm as he snakes the other around Will’s midsection, leaning over to press a kiss to the side of his jaw, just below his ear. “Will,” he prods in a soft, teasing lilt, lips still pressed to his skin, and Will shifts a little under him. “Are you awake?”

“No,” Will huffs, wriggling in Mike’s arms and shoving his face into his pillow. “Go away.”

Mike laughs softly, entirely ignoring this request in favor of rolling further on top of Will, hooking one leg over his waist and pressing a series of overexaggerated kisses to his cheek. “Didn’t you miss me, though?” he asks, as Will whines in protest under his unrelenting embrace.

“I saw you this morning, asshole,” he grunts, shoving uselessly at Mike’s arms and trying in vain to roll out from under him. “Go to sleep.”

Mike rolls his eyes and again refuses to meet this request, resting his chin on Will’s shoulder instead and staring imploringly down at him even as Will refuses to open his eyes. Sleepy Will usually goes one of two ways - either Will is soft and sweet and pliant when Mike drags him off the couch after a movie night and guides him to bed, or he’s grumpy and scowling and his eyebrows knit together in disapproval whenever he’s asked to do something. Mike finds both of these options endlessly adorable. 

"This morning was, like, seventeen hours ago, though," he points out, reaching up with one hand to poke Will's cheek, right over the freckle under his eye. "That's, like, forever."

Will's nose wrinkles in fake annoyance, and Mike moves his finger away in favor of kissing the same spot on Will's face. Then again, and again, until Will huffs out breath and bats at him, placing his entire palm over Mike's entire face and giving it a gentle shove. "You're so dramatic," he says, but the protest is blurred around the edges, softened by sleep and Mike's kisses.

Mike grins. “So mean to me,” he murmurs, and Will opens one eye to glare at him even as his mouth twitches, like he’s fighting a smile. Mike leans down to kiss it, lips glancing lightly over the corner of Will’s mouth, and for all of Will’s griping, he doesn’t pull away. “You don’t want to hear about prom?”

“Not unless it’s to tell me that I was right about chaperoning being a dumb idea,” Will says flatly.

“It was not!” Mike protests, and as retaliation squirms closer, face centimeters from Will’s even as Will stubbornly closes his eyes again. “It was- nice.”

Will’s mouth twitches again. “I bet it was,” he says dubiously, shifting and pulling the blankets further over them both, “You smell like cheap vodka, by the way.”

Mike squawks indignantly, releasing his grip on Will just long enough to flick his forehead. “It was only a little. Those kids are idiots, bringing that stuff in.”

“They take after you,” Will mumbles, giving up on trying to wriggle his way out of Mike’s grasp and instead lifting a gentle hand to rest against his arms where they’re wrapped across his chest.

“What, because of the booze?” Mike asks absently, smiling to himself as Will’s thumb brushes gently back and forth over his skin. 

“No, because of the idiocy,” Will replies, and Mike laughs, dropping his head into the crook of Will’s neck. “I still love you, though," he adds, as an afterthought, his other hand coming up to brush through Mike's hair.

Mike smiles against Will's skin, and Will rolls onto his back, hand pressing into Mike's spine and pulling him in closer. "You just told me to go away."

"Yeah, well," Will hums, tapping a fingertip against Mike's nose, "I'm also an idiot, so."

He wraps a hand in the front of Mike's shirt, drawing him down closer, and Mike smiles into it when their lips meet in a proper kiss. Will is warm, soft and hazy with interrupted sleep, and Mike can feel him smiling back as he wraps his arms around Mike's waist. Mike loves him like this, the traces of Will's feigned irritation fading away entirely as he lazily traces his tongue over Mike's lip. Mike shivers, humming happily as he wriggles closer to Will, as close as he can physically get as he presses him gently into the pillows.

"Knew you missed me," Mike mumbles against Will's lips, and Will laughs, breaking the kiss as he presses his forehead against Mike's.

"Maybe a little," he admits, voice laced with amusement as his lips brush Mike's another time. "Dork."

"Knew it," Mike says, grinning triumphantly and finally deeming it appropriate to free Will from his crushing embrace as he flops over onto his back, head lolling to the side to smile lazily at his boyfriend. Will rolls his eyes but stays close anyway, scooting under Mike's outstretched arm and resting his head on his shoulder. He hums softly, reaching up to card a hand through Will's hair and pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.

"So how was prom, anyway?" Will asks quietly, fingers tracing a gentle pattern over Mike's chest. "Besides it being boring and lame and full of drunk teenagers?"

Mike laughs. "I didn't say it was boring. Or lame."

"I know," Will hums, "I'm saying it. Boring and lame and definitely not worth missing precious hours with your boyfriend."

"For sure," Mike agrees, which is entirely true, because as much as he had enjoyed watching the kids dance together and definitely not feeling at all bitter about never going to his own, he'd mostly spent the whole time thinking about Will. Which was maybe a given, considering the specifically engineered romantic environment, and Mike thinks about Will all the time even in normal environments, but still. "It was sweet," he says thoughtfully, staring up at the ceiling and feeling the soft motion of Will's breathing against him. "The kids were happy."

Will grunts noncommittally. "It's all fake."

"I know, but they're- it's just nice," Mike huffs, and Will tucks a smirk away against his neck, "I know you agree with me."

"No," Will huffs immediately, and then, almost immediately, "Well. Maybe."

As much fun as goading Will is, Mike knows where the resistance comes from, and a bittersweet sort of feeling settles in his gut as he presses another kiss to Will's forehead. "Hey, are you free tomorrow night?" he asks, nudging Will's chest with his shoulder.

Will tilts his head back to look at him, frowning. "Um. Thought we were watching Star Wars again?"

Mike laughs. "Sure, we can still do that. But I was wondering if you wanted to have- a make-up prom."

Will stares at him for a solid thirty seconds. Then he coughs, blushes, and looks away. "You're an idiot," he says, which means I love you more than life itself, and Mike grins, tucking his face in beside Will's. "Go to sleep already."

"Oh-kay," Mike hums teasingly, kissing his temple gently, "The offer stands, though. Eight PM. Living room. Whatever dumb music you want."

"Sleep, Michael," Will repeats, voice muffled as he talks into Mike's t-shirt. Then, quieter, low enough to give the impression that he thinks Mike can't hear even though they both know he can, "I'll be there."

Mike smiles.