#it was hard to think of any other reference to use for her ok

[correctproseka]

Ensekai really really fumbled the bag in Mizuki's storyline by using they/them pronouns and i can prove it

Ok so, ill start this by saying this does NOT mean that Mizuki's gender can't be "nonbinary" or that they cant use they/them. In the end it'll just mean that most of the characters would not know that at this point in the story and all views on mizuki, trans girl or nonbinary are objectively correct so far.

That ensekai fumbles translations is something we all know, the event names for example, a huge one is going on as i write this. Why the fuck is it not pandemonium like everywhere else??

Other fumbles we can't really blame ensekai for, song translations, as weird as they can seem, are chosen by the voca-p themselves

(even if they make it sound way more aggressive)

But on the stories? I complain a lot, they make the characters not look as gay, sometimes change their personality slightly and.

Sometimes. It kind of nearly ruins the story, which is Mizuki's case.

So, WHY did ensekai do that, and why is it different on jp?

Well, for starters, japanese does not have pronouns in the same way english does, they DO need to use pronouns instead of . "Mizuki said mizuki wanted this" every single time, so no pronouns, for a rhythm game is out of the question.

And they thought that they/them was a second best choice.

In japanese games and anime, people tend to see a gender funky character and immediately go for they/them, for one. But also not really the only reason.

The reason might have been the two usages of pronouns in japanese.

Introduction and character reference.

So, to introduce themselves, Japan uses a few pronouns such as atashi, watashi, ore, boku... Boku is a masculine leaning pronoun, and the one Mizuki uses. Its not the most masculine (from the ones i said, that would be ore) and in cases can be considered gender neutral, and sometimes, rarely, girls use it. Mizuki is one of these girls.

Another one is Rui, who's the only one to know Mizuki from middle school, calls them "Mizuki-kun". -Kun is ALSO male aligned but can be used gender neutrally, but there's also a difference here. Rui calls EVERYONE -kun, Shizuku, Saki, Emu. You name it. He uses -kun for everyone. So thats not a valid reason.

Another question you can have is: did ensekai ever use a different pronoun for Mizuki?

And the answer, surprisingly, is yes. Before niigo knew mizuki irl there's two times they use she/her.

Which really sucks, because that would mean Mizuki uses she/her online, but ws soon as they meet her, its now a they/them? Without any conversation about it? And if we assume there WAS a conversation about it...

Then WHY THE HELL is Mizuki scared of telling their secret, when they have already done it in this scenario?

Thats not the case, niigo clearly thinks Mizuki is a girl- a cis one at that- currently.

In a way, the only people who would make sense knowing Mizuki's pronouns is the Kamiyama people (not Ena), they're the ones that know how Mizuki is at school, they're the ones that know her secret.

And yet, if Mizuki uses they/them, even the bullies respect it. And if she doesn't use they/them, then that means An and Rui of all people misgender them. Its a mess.

So not only does it breaks the immersion, it can also mean that either the bullies are not transphobic (really, if they didnt want to LOOK like they're transphobic is it that hard to avoid pronouns?? They're paid for that come on), or that the PLAYABLE CHARACTERS are.

Mizuki being so scared of saying her secret when everyone uses they/them for her is honestly. Fucking bad story telling. If they wanted to have made Mizuki's gender a secret there's a lot more ways they could've done instead of they/theying Mizuki in the story. Such as marking the gender as "unknown" or just. Leaving the story as is, people would be dumbasses and make them think mizuki is cis? So??? Let them be wrong when the time comes. This way it pretty much ruins her events.

And thats not saying Mizuki cant use they/them, but at thid point the characters would NOT know, the point that Mizuki tells the secret is the point they should know.

And.. in the end. That makes the fandom worse.

Jp does not have fights on which gender Mizuki is, they do not care. Its Mizuki and they like Mizuki for who [Mizuki] is as a person.

Meanwhile the en fandom gets called transphobic if the headcanon is a transgirl and also if the headcanon is a nonbinary transfem. It makes no sense and is only worth to make fights happen.

[ethereal-night-fairy]

Slasher!Soap x Suicidal!Reader

After unwillingly escaping death you find that you're left to deal with the aftermath of your emotions.

Slasher Masterlist

Warnings: MDNI, Suicidal Ideation and Depression, Reader is poor and struggling, Food insecurity, Stalking, Perverted Acts, Stealing, Jerking off, Panty stealing, Dub-Con behaviour, Slight Somnophilia, Reference to Crude and Objectifying language, Harassment and Torture, Choking, Attempted murder, sorry if I missed any.

Head heavy with fatigue you struggle to raise it away from the blue glare of your college laptop. The cracked digital clock hung on your dorm room wall showed it was well past midnight. Your shoulders were stiff, your hands stained with ink from your pen. It felt like things were bursting at the seams. Like you were one stitch away from falling apart. You felt like a chewed up rag doll. Hunched over your desk like some night crawler.

But you couldn't rest. Despite the pounding in your head you continued staring at your blue screen. You had your final exam in two days and you were working a twelve hour shift tomorrow since someone decided to quit last minute. Your stomach growls anger at you for skipping dinner for the third night in a row.

Pushing your smudged notes aside for the moment you open your budget planner. With the way things were going you weren't going to be able to afford eggs or meat for a while. Probably not until next month you think. You had to move out of the dorms soon as well. And all your money had gone towards securing another place to live. Luckily you managed to get a dingy basement studio about 20 minutes away from college.

On the bright side you'll finally be able to get your steps in now. It was the cheapest private space you could find with your salary. It would have been cheaper to share a living space but you couldn't deal with another year of shitty roommates. Shitty roommates who loved stealing food and borrowing things that weren't theirs. You're pretty sure you'd die of frustration within the first month if it happened again. Your so called 'friends' were of no help either. They only ever texted you when they needed help with coursework. It seems like that was all you were good for.

After everything that's happened this year you didn't know why you were working so hard for. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for you. You were suffocating in the oppressive darkness. And no one was willing to help. Not even the blue eyed devil who had promised to end your suffering.

All you could do was keep walking ahead hoping perhaps one day you'll reach the light. Wherever it was.

But right now you were just stuck in this never ending cycle of hate and compliance. At the end of the day you knew what you were, you were a coward. Someone who couldn't stand up for herself. Someone who allowed people to walk all over her. Someone who did everything to please others in the hope of receiving an ounce of love and affection. The very same you love you chastise yourself for craving.

Plastering on a fake smile was your escape from reality. Saying everything was ok was your bread and butter. It was better than becoming a burden everyone resented. So you had no choice but to say you didn't mind being forgotten, that you didn't mind being used and discarded. What else could you do? It wasn't like you were going to voice your pain. I wasn't like you were going to ask for better treatment. No one remembered you and no one cared unless you had something to offer….

Apart from…maybe….no not even him. He was just like the rest. Much like others he dangled a carrot in front of a starving donkey just to make a fool out of it. No wonder he left as soon as he realised he wasn't going to get what he wanted from you.

Images of piercing blue eyes flood your already overwhelmed mind. The same eyes that had followed you for weeks if not months. The ones that you thought perhaps liked you at the beginning before everything got so sinister.

You used to see them everywhere, at work, on the streets, at the library, at the park. Anywhere you went you felt them following you. You felt him following you. And then the notes started appearing, short and sweet. Always signed off with a heart at the end.

You'd be lying if you said they didn't make your heart flutter at the start, that his sweet words didn't fill the longing in your heart.

His calls started not long after the notes did. That's when the sinking feeling entered your stomach. Soap, his deep voice had uttered on the first night he had called you. His breath came out in hot pants as he asked you to say it back to him.

His name was odd but you didn't particularly care at that moment. Too concerned with how he got your number. That's when you knew you fell for a lie. But even after realising that you didn't want things to end.

You later found out why he gave himself such a silly nickname. With a kill record so clean you'd wondered how no one caught on by now, but then again you suppose the answer was in the name.

His notes soon lost their sweetness and the crude language objectifying your body flooded in. It wasn't long after the calls started that you noticed things going missing. First it was small trinkets, then much bigger things were gone from where you left them. It was only when you were down to your last three pairs of panties did you realise his overly perverse obsession with wanting you scared. He left your soiled underwear for you to find often with pictures of you sleeping in your dorm. If he was in a particularly cruel mood, he'd send videos of jerking off very close to your face while he degraded you for being so unguarded. He'd taunt you over the phone, often reciting off everything you did that day, down to the underwear you were wearing. And how he'd like to soil them with his seed. Much like how he'd like to soil and taint your flesh with blood. There must have been cameras in the room. It's the only way he could have known.

Coincidentally it was always on days where you'd get home from a long shift at work. He wanted you asleep. It's not surprising he'd take advantage of that. Especially not after all the explicit notes he left for you to read.

You played along to his sick twisted game of torture. You gave him the satisfaction of being scared. Of crying big fat tears when he wanted. And he loved it. He ate the lie right out of your hands. A couple tears spilled here, a couple choked up sobs there and he was panting like a dog over the phone. Almost certainly touching his needy swollen cockhead. You enjoyed being wanted for once. Even if you were just putting on an act to keep him interested. Being desired for more than what you could do for others felt freeing. Though this was just the other side of the same coin. You were being used either way. But this felt nicer.

He could still be watching now even though you haven't heard from him after the ‘incident’. After everything fell apart in a matter of seconds.

One slip in your expression was all it took for his demeanour to change from excitement to anger and then to confusion.

With the things he has claimed to have done he was being awfully gentle with you. You always wondered why? Was it pity? If it was, why didn't he just end it the night he had his hands wrapped around your throat. That night shattered any ounce of dignity you had left. You'd never forget the look of boredom in his eyes when he said ‘There's no fun in killing the dead Dove���’

Before he was so explicit on his desire to tear you apart. To cut and slice you until you begged and pleaded for mercy. To carve a pretty necklace of blood all over the delicate skin on your neck while he ruts his hard cock inside of you. He told you about his sick fantasies often. And he loved going into detail on how he'd dress you up before ripping you apart. You would have played along too. Had he not left so abruptly you could have slipped back into the facade he wanted.

There were no goodbyes exchanged, not even a nod of acknowledgement. You suppose you weren't even worth that to him. Or anyone for that matter.

You remember crying silently into your pillow after he had left. There was something else in his eyes that night but you couldn't decipher it. That hurt you more than anything else that happened. Because you knew that's how everyone viewed you. Like you were just an afterthought. Someone not worth thinking about. Maybe if you had played the role of prey better you'd be resting in your grave right now.

A sane person would have gone to the police the second the notes and calls started. But you think sanity had left you long ago. It's the only reasonable explanation for your behaviour.

For some odd reason at that time the thought of dying at the hands of a man so obsessed with you didn't feel so bad. Being wanted for once made your heart all fuzzy. Despite knowing why he wanted you. And what he was going to do to you. You desperately wanted to keep his gaze fixated on you. He has probably moved on already. Perhaps scouting out another town over for his next victim. You could still go to the police but you were too ashamed to do that after what you've done.

Back then you were just waiting until he made sure on his promises to end you. It was weird in the way you fantasised about all your troubles ending by his hands. You would picture him kissing your lips when your last breath finally left you. Kinda like the opposite of sleeping beauty yet for some fucked up reason you found it romantic.

You couldn't fathom anyone loving you in any mundane way. You would have experienced it by now if anyone had cared enough. You suppose in your mind Soap must have really cared for you if he was willing to end your suffering. It's probably the reason why you fell so hard for him. But those feelings disappeared the same day he left the job undone.

Tears sting your eyes but you hold them back unwilling to fall apart again. Especially now. You had things to do. You couldn't afford to deviate from your schedule.

You sigh, rubbing the tiredness and unshed tears out of your eyes. With your pen back in your grasp you click it to begin your mental torture again still wishing that you'd die of a heart attack or something so you didnt have to deal with this.

You only get two sentences written before a floorboard creaking halts your movements. You freeze not from fear but rather from confusion.

It couldn't be Soap right? He hasn't contacted you in weeks…But what if it was him?

Has he come to finally finish the job? You doubt it..did someone break in? Unlikely because there was nothing of value in these dorms, the majority of students were broke.

With your nerves vibrating with uncertainty you get up to go to the kitchen. You don't bother arming yourself, it's not like you have any will to live even if it was a break in. It's better just to accept your fate. You're exhausted anyway.

Despite trying to steel yourself for what's about to happen your hands still shake opening your door. Stepping into the dark hallway you find that the kitchen light is on despite knowing you turned it off before going to your room. You strain your ears trying to hear any sound of movement in your apartment. But it's eerily silent. Uncomfortably so.

What made it worse was that all the rooms except yours were empty now. So no one was here to help. Not that you wanted help. But you didn't like the uncertainty of the situation you were put in. It made your skin crawl.

For someone who wanted to die so badly you hated that your body still felt fear on behalf of your mind. The cold sweat trickling down your spine felt like a betrayal to yourself. You shouldn't be afraid…this is what you wanted…wasn't it?

Your heart pounds in your chest as you force yourself to move. To get closer to your demise even if your body tries to fight you on it. After the incident with Soap nothing felt the same anymore. You could tell yourself all you want that you weren't afraid, that you want to die but the fact this most likely wasn't Soap had your skin prickling with terror.

Somehow you still move you don't know how but you do. You cringe as your feet cause the floorboards to creak under your weight. But before you know it you're at the kitchen counter staring at a bag of takeaway with a note taped to the side. You feel something watching you as your brain finally deciphers the lettering on the paper.

'Look behind you 🖤'

Dividers by @cafekitsune

Copyright © by ethereal-night-fairy. 2024. All Rights Reserved. Writing not permitted for reposting, transcription, translation or to use with AI technologies.

[iayos]

𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 (𝐄𝐖𝐖) !

jjk boys and their icks… because no man is perfect…

jjk boys x implied fem!reader

cw : men being gross, slight nsfw in nanami’s part, very mild misogyny if you squint in megumi’s part, this post was literally just so i could rant kinda

a / n : long time no see… not much to say other than i’ve been busy !!! anyways hope you enjoy :)

yuji itadori - bad grammar

giving him the tamest one tbh because he’s such a sweetheart </3 idk why but i feel like he just has such shitty grammar… like he’s smart ! just not when it comes to grammar. for example, he mixes up his to, too, and two’s, his there’s, and don’t get me started on your vs you’re :/ again he’s the sweetest boy ever ! it’s just the fact he probably failed his lit classes…

megumi fushiguro - “females”…

i was so close to giving this to satoru but i didn’t cause he has shoko to hold him down, megumi on the other hand… look, i don’t think he’d say it in front of girls, but to other dudes, yk ? and i definitely don’t think it’s on purpose to try and be an asshole but it just happens. quickly unlearns it when he says it around maki though.

yuta okkotsu - referring to himself in third person

you guys know how elmo is like, “elmo wants to go to the park,” yeah… yuta does this. and no, it’s not ironically. he definitely thinks it’s cute too and sometimes it is ! but it’s to an extent. like it’s cute the first couple times where he is goes, “yuta loves you,” but then it gets weird and corny when he’s like, “yuta wants to get dinner,” like ermmmm ok…

toge inumaki - fish pics.

as someone who lives in those south i see these OFTEN. for those who don’t know, fish pics are basically when dudes hold up fish they caught while fishing and post pictures of them holding it… i think the main problem with this to me is that a lot of very weird and racist men do it, so that’s why i hate it. anyways i’m 90% sure he has an official art where he’s holding a fish ( i also didn’t know what ick to give him ).

satoru gojo - his height is his whole personality

this shit irks me so bad omg. as someone who’s short ( 5’0 ) and hates seeing other short people make their whole personality their height, it’s even worst when it’s a tall person. satoru is definitely the type to be like, “omg guysss i bumped my head otw hereeee i’m so tallll,” like no you’re just stupid ! he definitely has other icks but this was the main one i could think of… ik he gets on everyone’s nerves.

suguru geto - says “my bad” instead of “im sorry”

another personal one tbh. i hate hate hate when people do this especially if it’s something serious. i remember one time someone pushed me in the mud ( i didn’t fully go on, just my foot ) and i got mud all over my white shoes and they have the audacity to go, “my bad,” like yeah it is your bad lmao. anyways, suguru def does this often especially to shoko. i feel like he’s pretty clumsy and say if shoko’s studying and he knocks over a drink onto her books he’ll say “my bad” and not even attempt to help her clean it up. like dude at least say sorry or something idk ???

nanami kento - calls his dick anything but a dick

“my member” you are grown !!! say dick !!! he does it to be ‘classy’ but like, he is pushing 30 doing this, just say dick. i also think it’s a shame thing ? idk probably hanging out with stsg for most of his teen years rotted his brain so he hates hearing really nasty stuff but he won’t even say penis half the time. like it’s really not that serious nobody wants to call your dick a phallus ( it was also really hard to give him an ick ).

choso - using 🥺 / 🥹

oh BROTHERRRR this one pisses me off. i hate both of those emojis in general but especially when men do it, it’s cornball behavior. like aren’t you supposed to be fighting in wars ? stand up. but i don’t think he has any ill intentions at all, honestly just picks emojis that represent his mood often. however he definitely uses 😂 instead of 😭… sorry choso…

song : ick - lay bankz

[ratskinsuit]

can I request a adhd!reader x any character (pls not Valentino or vox..) any gender

Hazbin Hotel Characters With An ADHD!Reader Headcannons

———————————————————————

A/N: Since I don’t get much info (I’m so sorry) I just decided to do heacanons. Now I don’t do mental disorder specific readers because I don’t wanna mess things up, but I personally have ADHD so I can do this. Although these may be self projecting a bit with my experience so I’m so sorry if it’s not okay.

———————————————————————

Charlie: Also has ADHD (Its just my personal headcanon, it may not be your personal one and that’s okay)

You two honestly can’t be together when you have something to do

Like you won’t get anything down when your together

Because the two of you just feed off each others energy and get distracted the entire time

Vaggie has to physically separate you two so you can focus

Forgetfulness

You could misplace you phone and ask her “Hey Charlie can you call my phone, I dunno where it is.”

And she will just be like “I don’t know where mine is either.” 😭

You two honestly share one single brain cell and switch it every other day (as an ADHD person I can confirm we do this with friends)

Vaggie: Keeps you focused

Okay so If you get distracted a lot she will be there yo try ti get you to focas

Mrs girl has fidgets and things to help you stay on tasks if they gel, if they don’t however,

Well she will try her best

Literally like the mother to you and Charlie so you two don’t do something stupid and he introuble

Melatonin is her best friend

If she can’t calm you down and it’s important, melatonin (unless you take medication)

She makes sure to keep track of all your stuff just incase you forget where you placed it

“Hey Vaggie, do you know where my-“

*Holds out your phone* it was on the kitchen counter

If you take medication (bcs for some people it lowers you appetite) she will remind you to eat.

Alastor: Doesn’t really understand; teases you

When you first tell him you have ADHD his old ass is just like

“Erm, my dear what’s that?”

Thinks you might be crazy till you explain

He honestly finds your energy and do-before-think attitude amusing

Does get pissed when he’s talking to you and you get distracted or forget what he was saying though

Finds it hilarious when Vaggie tries to get you to focus on things

Will finds diff ways to distract you, making it harder for Vaggie

Just enjoys the chaos of your energy

If you take medication for it he may or may not hide occasionally it just to see the chaos unfold (Before you come at me: he . Is . In . Hell . For . A . Reason)

Unless HE needs you to focas

Then you better be focused

Angel Dust: Loves hanging out with you

You two are probubly best friends fr

LOVES your energy because he finds it so fun

You two just go hang out and wander the streets, laughing and giggling together

He’s fine with the distracting and forgetfulness part, he knows it happens

Makes sure you eat. Eat or he will make you.

Honestly he’s just really understanding and knows that it’s hard for you to be able to control it

(Plz send best friend requests for him I did headcanons and I love writing best friend Angel)

While he does understand and love your energetic-ness, he also makes sure that you don’t act ok impulse TOO much

Like, stops you from making rash decisions that could hurt you in the future

Late night sleepovers

You two on the couch packing yourselves full of sugar and watching movies

Husk: Dies on the inside, also designated babysitter (Jkjk. Also I do realize that people with ADHD arnt children or stupid, this is just a reference to the energy)

Giving depressed dad energy

Like he’s just sitting at the bar cleaning up and your just talking at 50 miles per hour

He does however listen to the random things you say, he’s used to listening

Sometimes if you a bit chiller he will be able to follow along better and will input into the convo

Let’s you ramble and doesn’t mind the little quirks you have like interrupting him

He’s delt with worse

He has a alot of different stories, so if you have a lot of energy expect to be dropped off at the bar

His stories are exciting and can surprisingly keep most people’s attention for a while

He knows what it is but not the knowledgeable on it

But understands the basics on what it does and blah blah blah

Generally doesn’t mind the energy or the getting distracted, or the forgetfulness

Once again he’s delt with worse

Velvette: Somewhat gets it, gets pissy sometimes though

So she gets some of the “quirks”, like having a lot of energy, fidgeting, forgetfulness and getting distracted

If your her friend/partner she’s fine with it

She can deal with high energy and talking, she also talks very fast so she can keep up and keep a conversation

Finds different ways to keep you entertained so she can work if she can’t be in the moment

During parties she finds it hilarious

Doesn’t do the best with impulse control, she likes seeing what will happen and where it will go

Doesn’t mind the distractions unless she’s talking to you, then expects you to listen

However if you are one of her models or workers

She takes no excuses

You better pay attention and pay attention well

We all know she’s very demanding of her employees so you better hope she doesn’t notice you

Becwuse if she’s talking to you and get distracted or arnt paying attention…

My guy your fucked

———————————————————————

A/N: So this person asked for anybody but Vox or Valentino. But if anybody wants or if this does well I’ll make a pt 2 with them and more characters.

[jane-john-doe-tournament]

Jane Doe (Ride the Cyclone) Propaganda:

Great singing, also she’s literally wearing a doll‘s head bc she lost hers

do they have their soul or is it rotting somewhere with their head?

BALLAD OF JANE DOE IS SO SAD AND SHE IS GREAT AND I ONLY WATCH RTC ONCE BUT SHES NY FAVE OK

cool asf

She forgets her name after her death and has no story told in the production

She's so sweet and deserves the world. Her song (The Ballad of Jane Doe) is great.

the song goes so hard just listen to her song guys please

she literally died and her head was cut off so nobody could tell who she was PLEASE let her take one (1) W

BECAUSE SHE IS AMAZING. First she already won the tournament in the musical to regain life, as she won them over with her sad wet cat energy because she did not have a head and feared that she lost her soul. Second, she died on a roller coaster and lost her head, but stole her doll's head and thats very gender. Third, throughout the musical she is used as a vessel for religious allegory, she is an angel, she is jesus, she is a demon, she is forsaken but she is purity itself. Fourthly, she is is given the identity of Savannah with the greenest eyes after the other characters who died with her hold her a birthday party, and I think thats sweet because its probably some kind of meaning I cant see but auughfhfhh shes so cool

i mean her name isn't TECHNICALLY jane doe but we refer to her as such. she's so silly!! autism powers! i don't have a lot of propaganda tbh. i would've just been surprised had she NOT been submitted

She lost her head literally when the rollercoaster derailed. She wasn't able to be identified apart from the school uniform she was wearing.

Her name is forgotten, and so is everything about her. So she’s called Jane Doe. She’s very sweet and very creepy, but she doesn’t mean it

and im asking WHYYYYY LORRRRRDDD

I LOVE HER! she died in a roller coaster accident and was decapitated, her body not being found. in the show, her head is actually just her doll’s head. the coroners couldn’t identify her, so she was dubbed a jane doe. in the game to be alive again, she ends up being voted, her name being revealed to be penny lamb. anyways she’s a little creepy and also quite silly and she does her funny little waddle like a porcelain doll (or corpse).

She deserves it! She lost her head she shouldn't lose this too.

Not convinced you didn’t start this tournament just for her tbh

They have a great song and a true air of mystery to them. They also have arguably the best song in the musical, The Ballad of Jane Doe! I would definitely recommend listening to it >:)

—She LOST her HEAD and had it replaced with a PORCELAIN DOLL —In all seriousness her story is really poignant. No one could identify her body so she arrives in the afterlife not knowing her identity and she spends the show vacillating between depressed and angry at her situation, leading to… —“The Ballad of Jane Doe”, specifically Emily Rohm’s version, might be the most haunting solo in musical theatre history.

John Doe (Malevolent) Propaganda:

Spooky gay eldritch disaster (am I doing this right?)

Could have chosen any name for himself and picked John because a kind person called him that :)

fractured piece of an eldritch god that shares a body with a private eye after being fractured. chooses the name John Doe after said private eye goes into a coma

Because he’s an eldritch god who wants to feel human and who overcame a lot of obstacles and dangers!!! He sincerely cares about the main character!!! And he chose a name himself! Isn’t he cute??? He lost his body, he almost lost his memory, he fought for his right to exist, he loves animals, he loves his friend Arthur and I love him!

Being an ass, friendship, spooky supernatural stuff, he’s got it all

My man heard the name John Doe, realized he didn’t actually have a name, and just. Took it for himself.

I LOVE HIM. MY SON. HE’S TRYING TO CHANGE AND BE BETTER AND :(((( He’s a fragment of the soul of the King in Yellow (god of trickery and suffering iirc??) that gets trapped in a book in our realm while the rest of the King stayed in his own separate realm. When a human named Arthur Lester opens the book they get linked and John gains control of Arthur’s eyes & kills his partner (oops!). They proceed to go on a quest to find a way of separating them because neither likes the situation, and at first John (or The Entity, which is what he’s called at first) just wants to trick and use Arthur, and control his entire body (through the first season he also gets a hand & a foot) even though he doesn’t remember being The King In Yellow at the time, but Arthur makes him change and become more human. His turning point is when Arthur is shot and falls into a coma for a month. They get treated at a hospital and while John waits for Arthur to wake up so they can carry on, the body itself still gets taken care of. The time John spends alone, contemplating on humanity & everything he’s seeing and learning from Arthur, as well as the way a certain nurse speaks to him every day (specifically, she greets him good morning and good night, despite the body being unresponsive, John still hears because he is an entity linked to the body) and calls him John (they didn’t have ID on when they were found so they were classified as John Doe), changes his outlook and plans for good, and he asks Arthur to call him John; from this point on he admits he cares for Arthur, looks for his wellbeing too, and in general attempts to be a better person and to live for himself. The rest of the podcast (ongoing!!) explores Arthur & John’s relationship, struggle to survive, adventures in the eldritch… All while tackling each of their issues with themselves and each other and watching them both grow. John in specific learns to be the person he wants to be, how sometimes you’ll take a step forward and two backwards; he can be cruel and manipulative sometimes but he still tries. Personally I love his journey, it’s very realistic and you can see he is trying his best, and how he wants to be better than he was as the King In Yellow, and how much Arthur has changed him and how much he cares about him because of that; and how he’s slowly growing into being his own person :) if it ends badly ill cry so hard but!!! he’s John Doe because that’s the name he was being addressed as, and he’s made it his, and being John means he’s no longer the King and that he wants to be different, and John can fail or make mistakes but it’s part of who he is now, and that’s what matters. I am So Normal About Him

JOHN DOE (Malevolent) SWEEP

OH MY GOD JOHN DOE MY BELOVED 💛💛 (watch me just not clarify that would be so funny ahah) John doe (Malevolent) 💛💛💛 my silly He's so funny he makes Arthur bump his head into a dock because he didn't say duck in time and then laughs at him 💛💛

[lopposting]

The major question of the story that we are now asking:

Why, exactly, does Carlo never "wake up"?

[long post]

[Spoilers ahead]

Well, simply put - Because he is dead.

OK, that seems like too obvious an answer, but I'll elaborate, and bear with me here. I want to recap some elements first so you know where I'm coming from, but I'm also trying not to completely explain everything because that's way too hard and would be too long.

[Currently, we don't understand everything about the story or its meaning. Because of some of the shrouded nature of the lore and narrative, it leaves much mystery. But from viewing these questions and the story from a thematic standpoint, something unexpected and really cool happened. I found that the story and the lore opened up in reverse.]

The easiest way to explain the plot (in my opinion):

It was my impression that Geppetto never “started” the puppet frenzy. The puppets were NEVER breaking the grand covenant, interpretably they are protecting humans by stopping the spread of the petrification disease, it’s just that everyone in the city was infected by that point. 

Now with the puppets killing everybody in a city where everyone was infected (ergo being the result of the disease) Simon can go around harvesting all that ergo and Geppetto presumably plays him by letting Simon collect the Ergo first, and then sending P to kill him. [again, these details may not be completely accurate, but bear with me here]

Why create P in the first place?

He's made in Carlo's image so to speak because Geppetto hopes that Carlo's spirit will awaken. This is also why P is never bound to the covenant (it seems that not being bound to robot laws makes puppet egos awaken faster, since awakened puppets can break the grand covenant). So that is the two functions of P, to destroy puppets for ergo to harvest and so Carlo's consciousness can restore. I was just guessing that the arm of god was enough to get Carlo to revive, and Carlo's mental spirit reviving would be helpful but not entirely necessary. But for reasons we don't understand, Carlo never does regain consciousness.

Geppetto bitterly tells us that we don't seem to have inherited Carlo's memories. There is no big moment where Pinocchio or Pino or P reawakens, fully, as Carlo. He isn’t treated by the story as him. During the course of the game, P struggles to forge his own identity, to become a real boy, despite starting as a copy of the original. It’s a very fitting parable for the genre identity of a soulslike.

However, there are other successful re-incarnations of people through puppets, namely Sophia at the end of the Rise ending. We ask, for consistency's sake, why are puppet-form Romeo and puppet-form Sophia assumed to have retained their original identities, but not Pino? This is just my personal interpretation of why Carlo just couldn't or doesn't wake up. It isn't really based any lore or deduction from story details, this is from more of a philosophical point of view. And it isn't just the luck of the draw.

I had some initial thoughts about Carlo's failure. Romeo was made with intention of continuing to fight against the disease, as it's told that he "made a deal with the devil". Sophia may have been a special case, as she is a listener (Arlecchino even refers to her as the goddess in the tower), she may have had an ergo identity so strong that her essential self could retain this process. But either way, the implication is that Pino may have been able to recover her not long after that final fight. Look at the nameless puppet. The state of Carlo's body is so poor, that more than not his body seems to have been replaced with puppet parts. I think the implication was that Geppetto had been replacing parts as they rotted away. Maybe he had simply been dead for too long. But again, this isn't exactly why I think he couldn't awaken.

Simon and Geppetto

Lies has two main antagonists, although one isn't completely revealed until the last section. Both Simon and Geppetto are the perpetrators of Krat's destruction, but for what seems like different reasons. Simon is trying to be reborn, and Geppetto is trying to revive his dead son, Carlo. Interpretably, they are both trying to become Gods. Simon by grasping the supernatural, cosmic power of one, and Geppetto by raising the dead. They have destroyed Krat in their attempt to become a god, or more succinctly put, attempting to become God, singular. Geppetto's goal is, in essence, the same as Simon's goal - Because bringing back the dead would make him God.

That's why it seemed all so confusing. Haven't Geppetto and the alchemists already raised the dead, as Pino does at the end of the Rise ending with Sophia? Sophia, Romeo, and Carlo were all afflicted with the disease. Their Ergo were all made into puppets, but there's a minor but important distinction here. Sophia is still alive in her condition and actively suffering, this is the reason why she asks us to end her life. It seems as though Romeo lost his friend to the disease, and then made a "deal with the devil" to continue fighting, this implies being made into the king of puppets. We collected Sophia's ergo while she was alive, which we then used to animate the puppet. So the three of them were afflicted with the petrification disease. Sophia perished, Romeo perished, but Carlo died.

Now if we see the sand memories section of the beach, the stalker's words start to gain some clarity. If Carlo died from an incurable disease that the stalker couldn't prevent, why is she too late? Perhaps the goal was never to "save" Carlo's life. She laments; That she was too late, NOT to "save" him, but for him to be able to be restored. The stalker seemed to understand that whatever procedure needed to be done would be useless past the point of death.

I have to admit that there was something that I thought could override my theory. It seems as though the alchemists already were able to bring back both Champion Victor and The Eldest of the BRB, and from the dead no less. We read from notes in the Grand Exhibition that Victor had caught the disease, died to the despair of his adoring fans, but then miraculously made a comeback somehow stronger than ever. But maybe - he had only appeared to be brought back from the dead to the public, as Victor sought the help of the alchemists. And when it comes to the Eldest in the coffin, I'm wondering if he was actually only mortally wounded, leading the brotherhood to consult with the alchemists. [The way he was carried out by his brothers too (shouldered on either side) isn't typically the way you would expect people would handle a dead person]

Mirroring Sophia, Romeo, and Pinocchio, who were made into puppets: There is Champion Victor, The Eldest, and Nameless Puppet. We can see the former three as Geppetto's method of "cheating" God (cheating Death), and the latter three as alchemists' method. Only "Carlo" has a form in either one - The Nameless Puppet and the player, P. The Nameless puppet appears to share a similar undead quality with Victor and The Eldest of the BRB (including the tubes). We know that the collected Ergo can animate puppets, They are puppeting around their own dead bodies.

I feel like the Nameless Puppet tells us in a poetic way that Carlo is gone. My thoughts on this are more abstract. Again, this isn't from a factual analysis, but more of from viewing the Nameless Puppet itself as a metaphor. The Nameless puppet has qualities similar to the other undead bosses, yet the game doesn't describe it like it does Victor and the Eldest. It's not a body. It is a puppet [Human on the outside, mechanical on the inside - the inverse of our protagonist]. And straight in the text, we are told this is "The Nameless Puppet". But we know who Carlo was. His name was Carlo. We split open its head, and there are only cold, mechanical parts, instead of what we in the modern world now regard as the very most essential self (the brain). Because there was nothing to recover, there is no one there. Carlo's spirit had long, long since departed the world.

We are also told through one of the game's narrative devices that the Nameless puppet was the first puppet fitted with the organ. Ostensibly, Carlo's body was being prepared for whatever procedure that needed to take place, but Carlo died before that could happen (perhaps thankfully), and Geppetto pushed forward with his plans anyway, perhaps past the point of no return.

There are two forms of revival and we represent one of them, as in, there was the puppet form of Carlo and the undead form of Carlo. Presumably, the undead form was incredibly destructive, and thus stored away; We are the second try for Carlo's rebirth, this time in the puppet form, but we cannot even wake up without the aid of Sophia.

Lies, God, and the Finality of Death

But doesn't Geppetto actually succeed in one of the endings? Simon fails to become a god, (well, presumably only because we kill him in the process of doing so) and then we confront Geppetto. If we hand over our heart, Geppetto actually does revive Carlo. We see the resurrected Carlo, but with one simple smile we realize this isn't the Carlo the game has been leading us to believe existed. This ending leaves us with distrust and unease rather than a sense of peace and resolution. Simon fails to become a god, and at the bad ending - even if he "wins" - the game makes us wonder if So does Geppetto. No matter what, Carlo could NEVER be truly, and in both senses of the word, honestly, be revived.

[Simon Manus - like Simon Magus, the biblical figure who tries to buy into the supernatural power of God. And Geppetto, of course alluding to the 1883 italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio - a puppet master, a creator indeed, but of wooden imitations of life, and a poor imitation of God]

So, why I think Carlo could not wake up? Because whatever needed to happen could not be done after the actual point of death, and Sophia and Romeo's hearts were both transferred before they actually died. His spirit had long gone from this world. Krat has methods of eternal life, but these transfers happened while they were still alive. While the alchemists and Geppetto could certainly cheat death (as we maybe even would with modern day medicine), they could not defeat it. Carlo can no longer wake up, Carlo can never wake up again, because he is dead.

[powerfultenderness]

Hello there author! I know you're taking your time writing the chapter 2 but may we have Neighbor!König visiting y/n to her office, where könig drop off her things or she kinda forgot her lunch something. Thank you for the hard work you put into your fic! WE LOVE IT!

Ahh, i'm sorry! I guess I needed a little time off from writing, but I'm back! And thank you very much!

Lol idk what Reader does for a living, but it sounds nice! I hope you like it!

(Rated T+)

It wasn’t until an hour after your shift started that you realized you’d forgotten your lunch in König’s truck, and it was only because he texted you. You sighed and shot off a quick response, telling him not to worry about it. You can just walk across the street to one of the fast food joints and grab lunch there. You thought nothing more of it and got back to work. 

And you would have continued to think nothing more of it until you saw more than one security guard making their way to the front. Odd. You glanced at the clock, it was still a few minutes before your lunch break, and thus a few minutes before you could be nosy and check out what was going on. Well, at least that's what you thought just before your desk phone rang. 

“There’s a man here for you,”  the receptionist sounded a bit anxious. “I’ve got security keeping him in the lobby, but he’s insisting that he see you.” 

Oh! No! 

“Let me guess, big guy, like, absurdly big. With a scary looking mask?”

“Yea. Should I call the police?”

“Oh please don’t! He’s…harmless.” 

“Are you su-”

“I’ll be down in a sec!” 

Ok, you weren’t entirely sure he was harmless. He had told you stories of his time fighting in war zone conflicts, and though he never said it outright, you’re pretty sure he has a kill count that’s higher than one. But in this particular scenario, just visiting your office, as long as no one tried to fight him, you’re almost certain he wouldn’t do anything. (The thought never crossed your mind that the only other situation in which he’d react violently is if you were threatened in any manner). 

By the time you reached the lobby, there were three security guards standing a few feet from König. Two of them were very clearly nervous. They’re not at all in any kind of shape, one of them is on the elderly side and the other on the pudgy side. The one young man that is in any kind of fighting shape honestly looks so small compared to König. 

“Oh, you can let him through, he’s with me!” You spoke up in a loud, clear, and forcibly cheerful voice. 

You were glad for the time it took to get to the lobby, it’d given you just enough time to think of what to say to security. You weren’t entirely sure on where you stood in relation to König. What were you supposed to refer to him as? At this point he was more than just your neighbor. You could say he was your friend, but somehow that didn’t feel like enough either. Yet to call him your boyfriend or partner felt like a stretch. (He was just a really nice neighbor, who was also a good friend, who you maybe sometimes had a little bit of a crush on). So, for now, he was just “with you”. 

König was used to having his orders followed. It had been years since he had been denied access to anything and these small men that pretended like they could stop him, all while shaking in their boots, were beginning to…annoy him. Just when he was about to push past them, he heard your voice declare that he was with you. 

It was you who slipped past security as you lightly ran up to him. “König!” You smiled and, much to his surprise, pulled him into a quick hug. 

Just like that he forgot about the way dealing with these civilians that worked with you had made his anxiety flare, how he wanted something to fight, to put his physical energy into. It all melted away as his world shrunk to just you. Your body flush against his for a single moment, the soft touch of your hands on his back. He was so tempted to lift his hood and bury his face into the crook of your neck, to inhale the intoxicating aroma that haunted his dreams. He almost whined when you pulled out of the hug, one of your hands moving to the bag that he was carrying. 

"I thought I told you not to worry about it?" 

Before he could stutter out some excuse, you turned around, to the little audience in the lobby, and he had the urge to pull you behind him, to shield you from their eyes. They didn't deserve to look upon you, and certainly didn't deserve your attention. 

Perhaps you thought this too (not quite) since you turned back to him and motioned back to the entrance. "Let's go sit outside, it's nice out." 

He would follow you anywhere, especially when you looped your arms around one of his like that. You led him to a side patio, where a couple of picnic tables and benches were set up under comfortable shade. There were already other people seated in the area, but one look at him and they returned to their business, better to ignore the frightful stranger than to antagonize him. 

You chose a picnic table furthest away from others and took your bag that he had still been carrying and set it down. "Do you have to leave right away?" 

“No.” He shook his head as you sat down on the bench facing outwards.

“Good, then, want to join me for lunch?” 

He sat down next to you, glad that he didn’t have to try to squeeze his legs under the table and probably bang up his knees in the process. He realized, a soft smile pulling at his lips, as you turned to start digging through your bag that that was probably the reason you sat this way, for his comfort. 

He shook his head when you offered a share of your food. "I don't want you to get hungry later." 

"Please, you've seen me buy car snacks, you really think I don't also have desk snacks? I would be just fine even if you hadn't brought my lunch, which, thank you, by the way. This is really nice of you." When was the last time someone had been so thoughtful? 

"You're like a squirrel." He laughed as he accepted the offered food.

"Psh." You playfully rolled your eyes and softly bumped your shoulder into his arm. "If I'm a squirrel, what does that make you?" 

He was silent for a moment, head slightly tilted to the side, before he looked at you, eyes crinkled under his hood in a way that you’d come to recognize as a smile. "A dog." 

"A dog?...But dogs are always chasing squirrels!” You then gasped dramatically, "don't tell me you want to eat me!" 

König fought down the sudden surge of heat brought on by the memory of a dream. It made his responding laugh a bit too loud, a bit too awkward and forced him to attempt to cover it up. By growling and leaning down quickly to nip at your shoulder. 

"Ah!!" You half shrieked and half laughed as you leaned away from him just enough to get out of his silly attempt at biting you through the hood that covered his face. "Stop!" You finally managed through giggles. 

He pulled away with another playful growl and snapped his teeth at you twice. "One day I will catch you, Squirrel." 

"Yea? Then what?" You laughed again. 

He was quiet for just a second too long, eyes boring into you a bit too intensely. He even dropped the playful tone in his voice, now deeper and rougher than you were used to hearing. "I'll eat you." 

It’s a good thing that you weren’t eating or drinking anything at that exact moment or you would have choked at the way it sounded! He certainly couldn’t have meant it like that! You chuckled and looked away from him, hoping he could not tell that your thoughts were less than appropriate. 

Finished with the main part of your lunch, you opened the packed snack cake and portioned it in half, once again intending to share with König, but he shook his head. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t like this particular snack, not that he’d ever go out of his way to buy the like either, it’s just that he knew it was your favorite. Though, you must have sensed that, as you narrowed your eyes suspiciously at him.

You portioned an even smaller piece, “not even a little taste?” And held the piece of confection up at level where you assumed his mouth was.

König froze, if you were offering to feed him…

You reached for the edge of his hood and pulled it forward, giving you room to slip your other hand under it without revealing his face. The backs of your fingers lightly ghosted across his chin until you held the treat near enough to his mouth. Though he remained stock still, eyes never leaving yours, his lips wrapped around the offered treat and his tongue barely brushing against your fingers. 

It was hardly a bite, and his lips and tongue had hardly touched your fingers for half a second. You smiled, hot in the face, and pulled your hand back, “good?” 

He hummed and nodded. “Very good. Sweet.” 

As if your face wasn’t burning enough! 

You looked down at your portion of the sweet treat to realize there was a dab of cream on your finger still. You glanced back at him, not completely titling your head back up, casting your eyes in a coquettish shadow, and licked your finger. “Good.” 

König quietly grunted, one of his hands landing on your knee as he leaned in a little closer to you. He didn’t know why. He just needed to be closer to you, needed to feel you. 

Your breath hitched but you pretended not to be affected by his touch as you quickly finished off your lunch while his fingers fidgeted with the hem of your skirt. You then grabbed his hand, gently squeezing before you pushed it off your knee. “Unfortunately, I am not a general that can dictate my own break times.” 

“What?” 

You cleaned up what trash was left from your lunch and tossed it in a nearby bin. “My lunch is just about up.” Sure enough, an alarm on your phone sounded just as you returned to the table.

König frowned, it felt like he just arrived! How could your lunch be up already? “Oh, let me.” He stood up and grabbed the bag you had stored your lunch in. An excuse to visit you later.

“Thanks.” You started to walk back to the office, him right beside you again. “And thanks again for stopping by. Can you still pick me up after work?” “Yes. Five?” “Yep!” 

König is practically walking on air after lunch, though eager for the end of the day. He couldn’t wait to see you again. 

[Neighbor König Masterlist]

Neighbor König taglist (blurbs): Please let me know if you wish to be added or removed.

@warrior-of-justice  @cumikering @ihateuguys @rand0m--fangirl @keiva1000 @dtftheavengers @takeyour-pants-off @aeeliy @milenko115 @sodonuthideout

[gingiesworld]

Obsessions (5/?)

Wanda Maximoff x Rogers Fem Reader

Warnings: angst, longing, huge time skip. Grief. Fluff

Taglist: @sytoran @ginnsbaker @gb12d @lifespectator @natashamaximoff-69 @wizardofstories @canvascoloredin

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 6

18+ MINORS DNI

The last four years flew by, Wanda graduated from the local college as she constantly looked on Y/N's social media. Seeing she had been silent for the last two years.

"Have you heard from Y/N?" Wanda questioned her twin who sighed.

"Look Wanda, I am not going to be in the middle of this thing you have going on." He told her bluntly.

"I'm worried about her, Pietro." Wanda stated as he just shook his head.

"It's a little late now." He scoffed as he stood up from the sofa. "Also if you're wondering, Christine broke up with her and she has been in England for the past year."

"Why?" Wanda pressed as he sighed.

"Peggy is dying." He told her, tears in his eyes. "Y/N needed to be with her mom so she referred the last year of college to stay with Peggy." He watched as Wanda started up the stairs. "How you use this information is now on you Wanda. What you decide to do now will impact the two of you."

Wanda knew exactly what she needed to do. She needed to be the friend for Y/N, the friend she should have been all of those years ago. So she booked a flight to Heathrow, a one way ticket as she didn't know how long she would be there for. How long she needed to be there for.

Y/N had been staying at a hotel nearby the family home, not wanting to stay under the roof as she needed some time to herself as her Uncle and cousin would be there to help her. Y/N was shocked the moment she heard a knock on the door, opening the door unsurely to see Wanda on the other side.

"What are you doing here?" She asked her bluntly as Wanda sighed.

"I wanted to be here for you." She told her, stepping inside and dropping her bag on the floor. "Pietro told me."

"He had no right." Y/N spat as she glared at the woman before her. "I managed to get through losing my dad without you and I can sure as hell get through losing mom without you here."

"I am not going anywhere Y/N." Wanda told her softly, reaching for Y/N's hands. "I am right where I need to be." Y/N searched her eyes for any signs of regret, Y/N soon captured her lips in a hard kiss which Wanda soon pushed her away. "I am not doing this with you again Y/N." She told her sternly. "You are in a vulnerable state and I will not take advantage of you like that."

"You're not taking advantage!" Y/N yelled as Wanda watched her pace the floor before stopping and looking out of the window at the city below them. "I guess, you're right. I am not in the right mindset for that." Wanda listened as she spoke. "I guess I just, I can't lose her Wanda." For the first time in years, Wanda had seen some form of emotion in her eyes. "She is my mom, how am I supposed to go on without her. I lost my dad and that was ok I guess. I had mom and we got through it together but now, who do I have?"

"You have me." Wanda told her confidently. "I am here Y/N. I am right where I want to be. Where I need to be." Wanda stepped closer. "And I am not going anywhere." Y/N let her walls down and sobbed, Wanda opened her arms for her to hold as she cried and cried. Whispering sweet words to her and just holding her in a warm embrace as she cried.

At some point throughout the night, Wanda had moved the two towards the bed as Y/N started to lose her energy, tired from the overwhelming emotions she never wanted to feel again. She soon woke to Wanda talking lowly on the phone as she ran her hand through Y/N's hair.

"I don't think she is doing too well Piet." Wanda spoke softly, not paying too much attention to the girl in her lap looking up at her. "Yes, I am here for the long haul." Wanda scoffed at something her brother said. "No. I am not going to leave her alone. Leaving her in the first place is my biggest regret and I have to live with that."

"Hey." Y/N spoke softly as she tried to save Wanda from a conversation with her brother. "Tell him I'll call him later." She asked Wanda who relayed the message. Wanda watched as Y/N had gotten up and walked into the bathroom. Washing her face before looking at her reflection in the mirror. She looked exhausted and weak, there was barely any life left in her eyes. She didn't even recognise the girl staring back at her.

"Y/N?" Wanda knocked on the door after realising Y/N was in the bathroom for a long period of time.

"Yes?" She asked as she stepped out to see a concerned Wanda.

"I'm going to go and book another room but please just call me if you need anything." Wanda told her.

"Anything?" She asked with a raised brow.

"Anything but that." Wanda told her firmly, stepping away from her. "I already told you I am not going to do anything like that with you while everything is going on."

"You mean my mom dying and me becoming an orphan?" Y/N sneered as Wanda sighed sadly. "I'm sorry." She apologised as she went to grab a bottle of water. "I guess I am just not used to this right now." She pointed between the two of them.

"I am trying to be a friend to you again. I am trying to be the person I should have been all along. The friend I should have been regardless of my own insecurities." Wanda told her.

"Just go home Wanda." Y/N told her sadly. "I just, I don't think I can deal with this right now."

"I am not leaving you." Wanda told her firmly.

"Yes you are." Y/N spat. "You did it easily all of those years ago."

"Yes I did and I hate myself for it." Wanda told her. "Please give me this chance to show you that I am here now. I am all in with whatever this is." She pointed between the two as Y/N sighed, tears in her eyes as she saw the best friend she used to love before she turned her back on her.

"The hotel is fully booked and there isn't another one for about 45 mins away." Y/N told her softly. "You can take the bed and I'll take the sofa."

"No." Wanda shook her head as she wore a gentle smile on her face. "You take the bed and I'll take the sofa."

"You won't fit on it." Y/N stated as Wanda laughed.

"And you will? You're taller than me Y/N." She told her as Y/N nodded in agreement.

"I guess the bed is big enough for the two of us." She shrugged as Wanda agreed. The two did their nightly routines before settling on the bed, leaving a gap between the two. Wanda turned to look at Y/N who remained looking at the hands in her lap.

"I have been seeing my therapist since leaving New York." Wanda told her. "I have figured out a lot of the reasons I was the way I was. I know it's not an excuse but maybe one day we can talk about it all?"

"Maybe." Y/N told her. "I think we do need to talk about it all, but after my mom because I don't think I can deal with all of the grief alone."

"You won't be alone Y/N, I am going to be here for you. Every step." Wanda took Y/N's hand and gave her a reassuring squeeze as Y/N gazed at her.

"I missed you. This version of you." Y/N whispered as her tears started to fall. "This is the version of you I have always loved." Wanda just gave her a guilty look before lifting Y/N's hand and kissing it gently.

"Get some rest." Wanda told her softly. "You're going to need it." Y/N just nodded before bidding goodnight and turning away from Wanda.

As the days blurred together, the pain grew more and more as Peggy came closer to her last breath. Especially since the diagnosis, this was the worst thing for her family to watch. They all witnessed her start to fade away, the disease slowly taking her away. The soft words of love and affection were spoken to each of her family until it was just Y/N left with her. A smile on Peggy's face as she took her daughter's hand.

"I have always been proud of the person you have become." She told her as Y/N listened. "You have a huge heart Y/N, don't ever lose sight of the good in the world, in your relationships."

"Mom." Y/N started as Peggy hushed her.

"Wanda came back." She whispered. "She has changed, well she is more like the little girl I knew when you first introduced her to your father and I." Y/N wiped a tear that fell. "Don't push her away because of the past. Communicate with her. Become friends again and maybe in the distant future, you may become more."

"I don't think so." Y/N whispered as Peggy took a labored breath.

"You two are a match made in heaven." She told her. "You just need to work out the past and work towards the future."

"I'm going to miss you." Y/N whispered shakily as Peggy gave her a sad smile.

"I am never going to be too far." Peggy told her with a smile. "I will always be in your heart with your father." Y/N watched as Peggy started to lose consciousness, she witnessed her take her last breath before she left the room. The feeling of the warmth of Peggy's hand slowly fading as she walked through the halls. Her whole being numb as the world around her seemed to blur. Walking to the nearest pub and ordering a pint as she sat at the bar. The sound of the music melded in with the sound of the sports commentator on the football match playing on the TV.

Wanda entered the pub and took a seat beside them, ordering herself a drink and another for Y/N. She knew that drinking may not be the best thing right now but Y/N needed her more than anything.

"She's gone." Y/N whispered as Wanda sipped her pint beside her. "She's with dad now and I am here. Alone."

"You're not alone Y/N." Wanda told her comfortingly. "I am not leaving you, not again."

"How am I supposed to trust that?" Y/N asked quietly.

"I don't know." Wanda gave a tight lipped smile before talking once more. "I guess I have to earn the trust that I lost back. I have to show you that I mean every word I am saying because I mean it Y/N. I will be here with you. For everything."

"I guess we can be somewhat acquaintances." Y/N smirked as Wanda nodded with a giggle.

"To new acquaintances." Wanda clinked her glass with Y/N who just smiled. The first genuine smile she had given the brunette before her.

[anodymalion]

ok I am in fact using this as an excuse to make a long post about this thank you thank you asjksdjfaljdf

---

Interpreting Yuri as asexual is my very very favorite type of headcanon, which is one that 1. is compellingly coded in the source material (even if that wasn't the creator's intent), 2. is thematically relevant to what the piece of media is Trying To Do as a whole, and 3. just means a lot to me, personally, because I said so.

Coded in the source material

Yuri’s short program is “eros”, aka desire (you can interpret what “eros” means in various ways, but YOI itself explicitly refers to sexual love, at least in the English translations). Yuri struggles with this. Hard. He can’t come up with an answer when asked what eros means to him. His big revelatory moment about desire is that it’s how he feels about wanting to eat his favorite food (omg… boy). Even as the season goes on and the way he views the Eros program changes, the program doesn’t ever really embody the idea of eros as sexuality or romance (which was how the other characters expect him to interpret it) but rather as a desire to keep Victor in his life.

Like look. I’m obviously not going to say that the creator intended any kind of ace subtext to be there. I kind of doubt it was her intent. But goddamn is the subtext there.

2. Thematic relevance

The central theme throughout YOI is “love”, and especially loving people in a way that inspires you both to be your best selves: Yuri learning that the people in his life truly love and support him; Victor finding someone who makes him feel joy about skating again.

Like, Yuri’s whole skating theme for the Grand Prix is literally about him exploring what love looks like to him, even when it takes a form that other people don’t totally understand. Viewing all this through a lens of him being ace is really compelling. It adds depth to the idea of learning how to express the way you feel love even when it looks different than what other people expect. I think it’s a really delicious layer that adds even more nuance to what the show is getting at.

Besides, it’s an interesting way of viewing the criticism of the show that occurred for it not being 100% explicit about them being a couple (aka people getting mad because the kiss in ep 7 is blocked by Victor’s arm lmaooo). Like, ok, did you see the ending scene of ep 9? Did you see ep 10??? They definitely, definitely love each other, in whatever way that means for them. Their relationship takes a form that’s pretty different than the other way people in the show are going about romantic relationships, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real for them. That is very much in line with the main themes of the show.

3. Means a lot to me

In the final scene of the penultimate episode, Yuri tells Victor that they should end their coaching relationship after the Grand Prix ends. This is because he thinks he’s holding Victor back, that Victor would be happier being free to go back to skating on his own instead of being Yuri’s coach. When I watched this (and, I’ll be honest, this is completely me projecting here) I REALLY interpreted this as an ace thing. I think it’s pretty easy to internalize the idea when you’re asexual that you just won’t be… enough, for other people. In my case I ended up a strong impulse to self-sabotage relationships because I would rather be the one to end things than to let someone else tell me that who I am as a person is fundamentally lacking. Yuri destroying a connection he desperately wants because he thinks there’s something about him that is holding Victor back from a life he’d be truly happy with? Oh yeah. I can fucking relate to that.

Also: YOI came out in 2016, which was the absolute peak of hostility to ace people I was seeing on this site. It was bad here. At the same time Tumblr was going wild over this show. Everyone was watching it. Seeing a whole site of people absolutely adore a character I very deeply in my heart believed to be ace? Extremely vindicating.

---

In conclusion Yuri is asexual because it is fun and interesting that way, and also because of this:

[bestworstcase]

the first thing. the very first thing we see salem do besides the non-diegetic bookend monologues. is tell off watts for being mean to cinder. “watts, do you find such malignance necessary?”

and it isn’t just a passing remark, salem makes a whole thing of it. “then i see no reason for your cruelty towards young cinder,” effusive praise and then she turns back to watts and says, “so, i’m curious, to what ‘failures’ are you referring?”

well, watts says, the girl with the silver eyes. even without her new power, it should have been effortless—

—and salem shuts that down hard. “it is because of the maiden’s power.” it’s not cinder’s fault. “make no mistake, cinder: you hold the key to our victory. but your newfound strength brings with it a crippling weakness, which is why you will remain by my side as we continue your treatment.”

then, after salem gives her orders, cinder asks about ruby. watts scoffs; what about her, she’s cinder’s problem, not ours. but: “tyrian? spring can wait. find the girl that did this to cinder, and bring her to me.”

and scene. that’s our first real glimpse of who salem is, and it lays the foundations for everything that develops from this point with salem and cinder. 

before salem walks into the room it’s established that cinder is at the bottom of the pecking order. watts and tyrian gleefully pick on her; hazel doesn’t give a shit. and then salem enters and makes this deliberate, protracted point of not just “don’t be cruel to cinder” but she is at pains to demonstrate that cinder’s wellbeing is her first priority. salem is personally involved in treating her injuries. watts is taking over the haven operation so that cinder will have more time to heal. she pulls tyrian off the hunt for the spring maiden because cinder wants ruby dealt with, and salem again intends to deal with the matter herself. 

“it’s important not to lose sight of what drives us: love. justice… reverence. but the moment you put your desires before my own, they will be lost to you. this isn’t a threat; this is simply the truth. the path to your desires is only found through me.”

but for cinder fall, spring can wait.

cinder has always been the exception to every rule. salem put what cinder wanted ahead of her own agenda. salem effectively postponed haven to do cinder a favor, without a second of hesitation. salem spent all of V4-5 focused on cinder and what cinder wanted. 

her parting words before cinder leaves for haven are: “you will have the power i promised you when the time is right, but remember that it comes with a cost. if ruby rose has learned to harness her gift, you must take care to protect yours; there’s only so much i can do to aid you.”

<- “be careful.”

and then cinder is not careful. now consider this exchange:

SALEM: Emerald. I want you to tell me whose fault this was… Now. EMERALD: Ci-Cinder! We failed because of Cinder. SALEM: ……That’s right. I want you to understand that failure; I want you to understand why Cinder must be left to toil in her isolation until she redeems herself.  MERCURY: You mean… EMERALD: She’s alive!? WATTS: You’re joking. How could you know that?

ok. really think about this. 

salem is the only person in the room who knows cinder is alive. everybody else takes it as a given that she died at haven. “maybe cinder survived somehow?” is not a possibility on anybody’s radar.

emerald is on the brink of collapsing in abject grief because she believes cinder is dead. and then salem grabs her shoulder and is like “listen to me very closely, it is emotionally important to me that you understand why we will not be going to cinder’s aid. she MUST be left to TOIL ALONE. BY HERSELF. until she redeems herself. do you understand?”

and the entire inner circle is like excuse me

what do you mean cinder’s alive

how do you even know that

“NO FURTHER QUESTIONS.”

i just—hrgfjfk

“apropos of nothing, i am NOT sending you or cinder’s other little friend to her aid and i will NOT be altering my plans in any way to help her i am not going to lift a finger for her. until she redeems herself.”

the lady doth protest too much. 

for cinder fall, spring can wait. 

salem is projecting her own desire to rescue cinder from the haven mess onto emerald for the express purpose of shooting it down. watts asks how she could even know cinder survived and salem’s like >:( and changes the subject. 

“it’s important not to lose sight of what drives us. love—”

she goes through her whole little spiel about not putting what they want before what she wants and then, with her back turned to all of them, she glances out the window and the mask just crumbles. her shoulders hunch. she is acutely unhappy. “and so we must… press on.”

this song and dance is not for them. it’s for her. it is half of an argument salem is having with herself. 

“spring can wait; find the girl that did this to cinder, and bring her to me.” -> “but the moment you put your desires before my own, they will be lost to you.”

“you will have the power i promised you […] but remember that it comes with a cost. if ruby rose has learned to harness her gift, you must take care to protect yours; there is only so much i can do to aid you.” -> “the path to your desires is only found through me.”

✨salem✨ is the one who set the expectation that what cinder wanted took priority. salem told cinder to rely on herself first and salem second. she warned cinder repeatedly and explicitly that the power she promised to cinder would expose her to greater harm.

as far as salem knows, because watts certainly wouldn’t have painted a fair picture of why cinder made the choices she did, cinder didn’t heed that warning, fumbled haven, lost the lamp, and very nearly got herself killed in the process. 

and salem wants to throw her a lifeline. 

she doesn’t want to be wanting to throw cinder a lifeline but it is, obviously, a thought that crossed her mind often enough for her to feel the need to declare out loud that she is Not Going To Do It, No Matter How Much You Might Want Me To, Emerald.

“the sword under vacuo’s academy, shade—” and then hazel drops the bomb on her that ozma has the lamp and he’s taking it to atlas. watts and tyrian are rattled because oz might talk some sense into ironwood and spoil the plan. but salem?

salem isn’t thinking tactics or strategy. she is getting run over by the freight train of discovering she feels the same way about This Situation—cinder trying to get the lamp away from ozma alone—as she feels about her daughters.

and she cannot fucking do it. 

cinder must be left to toil in her isolation until she redeems herself (by recovering the lamp) -> what do you mean oz has the lamp -> never mind we’re all going to atlas right the fuck now. cinder can toil in isolation with the covert support of salem’s most formidable pair of agents while salem churns out a zillion grimm over the course of a few months ITS FINE. EVERYTHING IS FINE.

“she thinks; she wants. as if she’s done something to warrant me caring about either of those things.” i don’t care, she says, caringly.

but:

“your newfound strength brings with it a crippling weakness, which is why you will remain at my side while we continue your treatment.” -> “you will have the power i promised you when the time is right, but remember that it comes with a cost. if ruby rose has learned to harness her gift, you must take care to protect yours. there’s only so much i can do to aid you.” -> “i would like to think i’ve shown a great deal of patience during my many years walking remnant, but i do hate repeating myself. you will remain here. is that clear?”

it isn’t that she’s punishing cinder for the failure at haven.

cinder comes home from beacon maimed, salem keeps her at evernight for months and replaces the arm she lost with a grimm (<- symbolically, she gives cinder part of herself;  the arm ties them together and that goes both ways, salem knows she’s alive and cinder knows when she’s back; she makes cinder like herself). waits as long as she reasonably can before sending her to haven, with parting words that amount to be careful, i won’t be there to save you.

cinder gets clobbered at haven and barely survives, salem is at war with herself over it when hazel blindsides her with the bad news that ozma has the lamp and she panics.

salem drops everything to rush to atlas with overwhelming force and arrives to find cinder waiting for her not only in one piece but also in possession of the lamp; her eyes go fucking glossy for a second as an enormous amount of tension just melts away. and salem like? teases her? about her habit of bringing home strays. “hm! you certainly do like collecting assets,” fondly indulgent. oh you. like genuinely is is the one and only time salem has ever sounded like she’s having fun. 

…then cinder reveals that she tried for the staff, too, but the polendina girl “interfered” and became the winter maiden instead. (salem isn’t stupid she knows this is cinder-speak for “a girl who could beat me without magic is the winter maiden now.”) and cinder wants to turn right around and hunt her down? NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. YOU ARE STAYING HERE.

the hammer drops because salem is scared. she resorts to cruelty in a desperate stab at clawing herself back from the ledge of Caring About Cinder; but salem is so, so, so painfully cognizant all the time of how mortal cinder is. she sent cinder to beacon and cinder came home missing her eye and half an arm. she sent cinder to haven and cinder almost didn’t come back at all, it’s a miracle she survived. and salem brought an incomprehensible number of grimm to atlas specifically to avoid round three of feeling terrified while cinder crawls through a meat grinder for her. and now cinders like BUT I WANT TO CRAWL THROUGH THE MEAT GRINDER!

“remember that [power] comes with a cost; if ruby rose has learned to harness her gift, you must take care to protect yours. there’s only so much i can do to aid you” -> “everything is already in motion; all you need to concern yourself with is your ability to act when i tell you to.”

she doesn’t have the nerve to say it or maybe she just doesn’t know how but she is trying to pull cinder out of the line of fire. this is not your game to win (this is not your fight) and just because you’re more valuable to me than a pawn (you are not just a pawn to me) and everything is already in motion (i will take care of it this time) and all you need to concern yourself with is your ability to act when i tell you (don’t worry just let me handle it).

if she can crack down and keep cinder under control with cruelty and intimidation then she doesn’t have to confront the feelings driving her decisions, but of course she can’t because she never had control over cinder in the first place; cinder is legitimately stunned when salem shuts her down in 8.1 because Salem Does Not Treat Her Like That.

so naturally cinder goes: well fuck you i do what i want. 

and almost fucking dies. 

again.

they hit amity in the middle of the night. it’s dawn in vacuo during the broadcast, vacuo is six hours ahead of atlas (2.3). cinder does not wake up until dawn. she is unconscious for six hours. six. hours. in a world where aura can fully heal a thoracic impalement in about fifteen minutes.

think about how badly cinder had to have been hurt for emerald—who loves cinder and is terrified of salem—to bring cinder back to the whale after they did exactly what salem directly ordered cinder not to do. think about the level of desperation necessary for emerald of all people to weigh the risk of salem’s fury against the severity of cinder’s injuries and decide she had to bring cinder to salem. 

“you chose to disobey my specific instructions, just to fail again. and… i’ve realized it’s all my fault. you’ve fought your whole life unwaveringly for what you want, and here i am holding you back, instead of lifting you up. you deserve so much more than i’ve given you.”

<- that is the sound of salem falling off the ledge.

like

as a manipulative tactic to get cinder under her thumb this is, quite plainly, not going to work, and cinder sees right through it, and salem knows that. by literally ✨rewarding✨ open defiance she accomplishes nothing except proving to cinder that when the chips are down, salem will blink first.

but. 

salem is not about getting cinder under her thumb. she wants the relics and she’s also been losing her gods-damned mind for months now because every time cinder leaves her sight for an extended period of time cinder has gotten smushed like a bug and the legion of grimm did not even slightly improve the situation. and the only way salem can think of to thread the needle between having her cake and eating it too is to go REBELLION IS OKAY. LET’S TRY THE BUDDY SYSTEM. 

the minute salem reconstitutes, she beelines to where cinder is. pretends not to notice cinder’s bald-faced lies. “you did well” and “our work here is done” and not interrupting and making a point to demonstrate that she listened to what cinder told her (“you said they used the staff; i assume you rid the world of their creation.”) and asking carefully non-threatening follow up questions (“what did you create?” as opposed to, like, what happened to watts). 

salem isn’t trying to put cinder on a leash. she’s twisting herself into knots in search of a way to move forward with her actual agenda without getting cinder killed, and her increasing desperation to keep cinder alive is not primarily motivated by strategic calculation; it’s emotional. 

her establishing character moment is salem Making a Statement to her own inner circle that cinder is more important than the plan. she says she’s going to leave cinder to ~toil in isolation~ and sticks to it for all of, like, two minutes before she finds out it would mean abandoning cinder to face ozma alone and just shatters. she is visibly relieved when cinder surprises her with the lamp and proceeds to make “you will not go hunting a girl who can definitely maul you” her hill to die on until cinder tries to actually die on it, whereupon salem snaps like a stretched rubber band back to “you can do whatever the hell you want just please for the love of fuck slow down and let me bend the odds as much in your favor as i can.” this woman is immortal and cinder is still shaving years off her lifespan. 

and this is going to keep happening until she can get her act together and say outright that she Cares About Cinder, because to cinder all of this just looks like salem yanking a leash to remind cinder she’s worthless. the second beacon arc is going to be hysterical. 

[wonderingpanda]

Hey You - Pt.1

Clay x Fem!Reader

My first Trolls fic, hope I did alright. I’ll try to post part 2 as soon as I can.

The sun was setting as Rhonda hurried down a dusty path surrounded by hills. Inside sat Bruce at the drivers seat with Tiny on his stomach holding his mini steering wheel. Y/n stood to their left while Branch stood to the right with his arms crossed as Velvet and Veneers popular song, Watch Me Work, played over the radio.

“Oh my kids love these guys, we’re a total Veneer household.” Bruce happily explained.

“They’re the one’s who have Floyd!” John Dory pointed out from further behind them.

“Ah it’s gonna be hard to seperate the art from the artist.” John Dory rolled his eyes and walked off while Branch and Y/n gave Bruce looks of disbelief. As the song finished, a voice came over the radio.

“That’s Velvet and Veneer’s spicy hot new single, Watch Me Work. Catch them tomorrow night at the Rage Dome where they’ll be receiving the Lifer Award (L-Lifer Award!)” Bruce, Y/n and Branch looked at each other with worry before Bruce turned off the radio.

“Guys, will Floyd even make it through that show?” Branch walked down to where John Dory and Poppy were stood by his clue board.

“Don’t worry, we’re gonna make it. We’ve been looking for clues to find Clay.” Poppy placed a BroZone poster of Clay in his funderdraws up on the clue board.

“Oh I’m sorry, the clue board, you mean my clue board?” A quick moment of silence passed as Poppy and John Dory ignored Branch. “That I made?” Poppy and John Dory continued looking at the board, still not giving Branch any response. “We like the clue board now?”

At the mention of finding Clay, Y/n quickly turned around and headed down to the other three trolls while trying to hide her rising panic.

“Do we really need to find Clay?” Poppy, Branch and John Dory turned to face her, confused as to why she wouldn’t want to find him. “I mean, we’ve already got you three.” Y/n gestured to the present BroZone members. “And it would give us way more time to save Floyd if we just headed to Mount Rageous now.”

“Uh Y/n, are you ok?” Poppy stepped forward, concerned for her close friend.

“Wha, me? I’m fine. I’m not panicked, you’re panicked. Like why would I be so nervous to see Clay again after all these years. It’s not like there was anything terrible that happened between us after the band broke up, what makes you think that?” Poppy stepped back to talk to Branch.

“What’s going on with her?” Branch sighed and crossed his arms again, still looking over at their nervous friend.

“Before the band broke up Y/n and Clay kind of had a thing going on.”

“Oh I knew it! There were rumours those two were together!” Branch reached out his hands, signalling for Poppy to calm down.

“But the night everyone left, Clay decided to break up with Y/n on the spot and, as you know, leave forever.”

“Oh” Poppy lowered her hands as her energy dropped after hearing the sad story. “That’s horrible.”

“Exactly.” Branch confirmed Poppy’s thoughts.

“It’s a shame really” John Dory cut into the conversation. “They were such a cute couple. I even remember when Clay made us pull that whole song together just to ask her out.”

“Oh don’t act so sympathetic.” Branch turned to face John Dory. “You weren’t even there when they broke up.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t care.” John Dory tried to defend himself.

“Ok guys, maybe now isn’t the best time for an argument. Let’s all just calm down and- what is he wearing!?” Poppy cut off her previous sentence and pointed at the poster she had stuck up before. Branch noticed what she was referring to.

“Oh, those are just his…”

“Perfect, perfect, perfect.” The music to BroZone’s old song seemed to play out of nowhere as Branch quickly got an idea.

“Funderdraws!” He smashed open a glass case holding Clay’s funderdraws which unavoidably released a disgusting scent along with a bunch of green ghost that flew around yelling ‘Stinky!’. John Dory whacked them away the best he could while Poppy and Y/n held their breaths from the smell. Branch held up the funderdraws proudly.

“John Dory, I have no idea why you saved these it’s incredibly disgusting. But I’m glad you did.” Poppy stood with a dopey smile on her face while Y/n had her arms crossed, not liking where the conversation was going. Meanwhile, John Dory put his hands on his hips in defence.

“What, they’re memorabilia. But I will be good gosh darned if I know how they’re gonna help us find Clay.”

Next thing you know, Rhonda was sniffing the funderdraws dangled in her face at the end of a stick. Branch, standing on her forehead, called out to her.

“Help us Rhonda!” He turned to face Poppy who had her head stuck out the window while keeping a grip on his vest. “She’s got the scent!” The two headed back inside quickly before anything else could happen.

Inside in the background, Y/n helped Branch and Poppy settle back in safely. John Dory came up next to Tiny and Bruce, who now hand one hand on the larger steering wheel, and leaned on the armrest of Bruce’s chair.

“Hey, Tiny, you see that button?” Tiny Diamond’s gaze followed John Dory as he pointed to a button with a swirl pattern and the word hustle above it.

“Uh yeah.”

“That beautiful, shiny button?” John Dory pressed further.

“Oh you mean the button that’s taking every fibre of my being not to press? Yeah I see it.” Tiny Diamond slid off the button as quickly as he had laid atop it. John Dory stepped forward and lowered his voice to a more dramatic tone.

“Press it.”

“Oh heck yeah ooh!” Tiny Diamond jumped off the larger steering that he had a grip on and jumped onto the hustle button causing it to glow and swirl. ‘Hustle Dimension’ began to play as rainbow lights came out of Rhonda. Her eyes lit up and began to glow.

“Let’s hustle daddy!” Rhonda let out a noise before zooming off into the distance, glowing lights trailing behind. She leapt a few times as she ran and jumped into a glowing, star-shaped portal that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

In the hustle dimension, everything was different. Everyone was placed into a two-dimensional state and the gravity that existed before was now lost as Rhonda floated about.

“Woah” Branch called out as he stumbled into what was meant to be the space in Rhonda behind the drivers seat. Poppy followed after letting out a loud gasp as she took note of her appearance. Everything then melted away and while they were still within a two-dimensional space everything about it had changed, including the visual style.

Poppy and Branch now found themselves walking down a black and white road, dancing along to the ‘Hustle Dimension’ music. Bruce then bounced next to Poppy on her left with John Dory bouncing to Branch’s right and Y/n bouncing, landing in the middle. They all laughed together before John Dory, Y/n and Bruce flew off with rainbow trails. Poppy grabbed her own hand and spun away with Branch tumbling after her.

They all flew side by side down the black and white road in the rainbow coloured world. Branch and Poppy were on the right, Bruce and Y/n were on the left and John Dory flew in the middle. They all then flew through another star that once again changed the visuals of the reality they were perceiving. Each zoomed down in their respective colours. Branch was blue, Poppy was pink, John Dory was green, Y/n was f/c and Bruce was Purple. They flew next to stars and swirled together, combining to create Hustle Man who loudly called out.

“Hustle!” Hustle Man flew off into the sky before disappearing. Rhonda finally flew out of the star portal that they had first entered and settled back down to run normally on the road once more. Bruce and Tiny Diamond had been placed back where they were but John Dory, Y/n, Poppy and Branch were unfortunately thrown onto the floor, on their backs, in a heap. Poppy quickly stood up shaking her head for a second as the song ended.

“Wow! Too much hustle is a thing.”

“Huh, look at that.” Branch waved his hand around, hallucinating rainbows following it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was now dark outside. Rhonda nervously ran through a dark forest before stopping in front of a seemingly abandoned building.

“Are we sure this is where Clay lives?” Branch asked as Rhonda opened her door to let everyone step out. Bruce followed behind him with Tiny Diamond in a baby carrier. Tiny decided to reply.

“Are we sure? Our GPS is an armadillo bus sniffing used undies so no, we’re not sure.”

The group continued to walk towards the old building. Bruce spoke as they wandered through the entrance which lead into a bother part of the dark outdoors.

“Eeh. I think this is the place from every true crime podcast I’ve ever listened to.” They continued forwards through the dark, unaware of the ‘golf balls’ rolling around them. The small group of trolls stuck close together until…

“Halt!” Lights switched on revealing a giant clown face with glowing eyes and a giant tongue extending out to them. Rainbow coloured smoke puffed from either side of the clown head as it’s teeth moved while it spoke.

“Who goes there!?”

“Ahhh!” The entire group screamed in fear!

“Agh!” Tiny cried out, quickly climbing out of his carrier and into Bruce’s hair. He poked his head out once before hiding back inside.

“Who dares trespass on these sacred grounds!?” The clown demanded. Branch put on a determined face and began to walk forward strongly. John Dory tried to stop him.

“Branch, what are you doing?” But Branch continued on. He stopped when he was right near the clown head’s tongue, looking up and calling out to it.

“Listen, we don’t want any clown related trouble okay? We’re just here looking for our brother, Clay.”

The clown’s teeth moved down slightly before moving in sync with it’s voice again. “Wait a second, you’re trolls?”

“So what? You’re a clown.” Branch retorted, gesturing to the face in front of him. Unexpectedly, a yellow, golf ball looking thing popped out of the clown’s mouth and rolled towards the group.

“Woah!” Branch stepped back towards the rest of the group as the ball bounced closer to them. The ball then unfurled revealing to be a troll with crazy blonde hair and pink skin. She stood up in a menacing pose for a moment before smiling widely at everyone.

“Oh my gosh, hello! My name is Viva! It is so fantastamazing to see other trolls!” She immediately ran around squeezing John Dory, giving Bruce a big hug, hugging Y/n from the side, spinning Branch around and lifting Poppy up in her own heartfelt hug.

“Hi! Ha!” Viva smiled after quickly setting Poppy down. Poppy slouched froward, feeling slightly drained from Viva’s energetic mood, but stood up properly to hear her speak.

“So fantastamazing is my own personal word it means, um, fantastic and amazing. I used to say amastic but then I was like ‘Mmm, that’s not as good.’”

Poppy immediately tried thinking of her own word to match Viva’s. “Fantasta um awesome.”

“That’s different but that works too! Way to make it your own.” After receiving the complement, Poppy rushed over to Branch’s side.

“Is this how people feel when they meet me?”

“Yes.” Branch replied, just quickly enough to not be cut off by Viva.

“Am I being a lot? Sometimes I can be a lot.”

“Uh I’m not sure we’re in the right place.” Branch mentioned, but Viva easily dismissed his worries.

“Of course you’re in the right place. Any troll is welcome here with us.” Now stood in front of the small group of trolls, Viva clapped her hands and called out. “Okay, Putt-putt trolls, lights on for our new friends” A bunch of trolls had rolled towards Viva and popped out of their golf-ball disguises. Each one was characterised with a vibrant colour, wild hair, and some sort of sweater romper or dress. While most had their hair out, some adorned buckets on their heads while others wore green mossy hats. As Viva finished talking the lights to the putt-putt course switched on, lighting up the whole place in the dark of night. Viva began to tap her feet excitedly, seeing the expressions of wonder coming from each of the new trolls.

“Oh my gosh, are you guys hungry, are you thirsty?”

“Yes!” Tiny cheered, jumping out and back into his baby carrier.

“Fries fries, you guys want fries, I am seeing fries. Bring out the works.” Viva jumped around and gestured to a few Putt-putt trolls who excitedly left to grab the food. “Milkshakes, to celebrate!”

“Coming in hot!” A bright yellow Putt-putt troll called out. Rolling away as a hot dog, fries, banana split, drink and milkshake were placed down around the pop trolls. Viva grabbed onto the straw of the pink milkshake and drank it all in one slurp, wowing the others. She then jumped down and stretched her back.

“Woo that’s better, now I finally have some energy!” Viva ran past Poppy.

“Did you just braid my hair!?” Poppy smiled, noticing the large braid left by Viva who quickly popped back round.

“You’re welcome, it looks so good.”

“I love it!” Poppy smiled brightly as she gripped her hair. Viva then gasped and ran over to Y/n.

“Oh my gosh, your hair is so pretty. How do you get it to sparkle like that?” Y/n laughed and smiled brightly at the compliment.

“Thank you. It’s just naturally like this. The benefits of being a troll, right?”

“Totally.” Viva agreed.

“Wow, these fries are amazing.” Bruce complemented as he lifted up another fry. “They’d really go great with a burger.”

“Aaa!” A blue Putt-putt trolled screamed, leading to a chorus of panic and terror as all the Putt-putt trolls desperately tried to hide.

“What is happening?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah we try not to use that word around here. It’s just that burger sounds a little too much like ah…” Viva leaned towards Bruce and spoke in a hushed tone. “Burgens.” She winced as another chorus of screams were let out.

“We call burgers…” The group looked up to see a mysterious figure walking towards them. “Meat circles.”

“Clay?” Branch smiled.

“Oh no.” Y/n’s face dropped at his arrival.

“Clay, hey what’s up man?” Bruce cheered as he and Clay happily walked to each other.

“Hey, how you been man?” Clay smiled as they initiated their own handshake.

“Clay!” John Dory jumped forward, opening his arms for a hug.

“Hmm, John.” Clay blankly replied, giving him no more than a few seconds of attention.

“Wha?” John Dory’s face dropped at the lack of response he received.

“Spruce.” Clay gave Bruce a fist bump as they finished off hair handshake. “What do you know?”

“Actually I go by Bruce now.”

“Bruce, oh ho someone got fancy. I like it.” Bruce laughed at Clay’s response.

“Look who’s talking, is that a sweater romper?” He questioned.

“What can I say, when you co-run a place you gotta flex the drip.” Clay pulled slightly on the collar of his sweater romper before releasing it.

“Ya, I’m the fun side of the operation and Mr Clay takes care of the boring stuff!” Viva cheered as she slid into the conversation.

“Guilty.” He admitted. The two laughed together until Clay noticed branch. “Woah, baby branch!” He ran over and grabbed Branch’s face. “No way!”

“Actually it’s Big Branch now, or just Branch. Branch is fine.” Branch struggled to speak as his cheeks were squished together.”

“Come here, come here. Yeah.” Clay spoke in a babyish voice as he continued to squish Branch’s cheeks. Only stopping when Branch started to speak again.

“So Clay, this is Poppy.” Branch gestured to Poppy who appeared at his side.

“Hi Clay! So great to finally meet you.” Poppy smiled as she waved and gave Clay a quick hug. “Can you do the Rusty Robot for me?”

“Yeah no, I don’t do that anymore okay?” Clay awkwardly explained.

“Right, kidding. Ha can you imagine? I wouldn’t just ask you to do that after meeting you two seconds ago. Who would do that?” She awkwardly looked at Clay after glancing away for a second.

“Yeah, it’s just that Fun-boy Clay is dead. Serious-boy Clay only does the Well-Oiled Robot.” Clay spoke while demonstrating his new and improved Well-Oiled Robot. “And it is no friki-friki-friki fun.” He stated while ending in a pose, similar to how he would end the Rusty Robot, only with a frown and his hands in the ‘I Love You’ pose.

“I mean, that’s still pretty fun.” Poppy lightheartedly pointed out.

“Ha yeah, same old Clay.” John Dory added.

“Nah, that’s not true.” Clay tried to defend himself. “If I was still fun, would I have chosen the admin building as my bedroom?” Everyone looked over to the admin building, a small wooden shack with nothing but a window, a door, and the capacity to hold barely one troll. “Huh? Huh? Asking the tough questions guys, asking the tough questions.”

“Oh, right.” Poppy nodded.

“Wait, you still haven’t met Y/n!” Tiny smiled brightly.

“No no no.” Bruce looked down at him with worry.

“No no no no no no…” John Dory, Branch and Poppy chimed in, not noticing Clay’s shocked expression.

“Y/n?”

“Oh yeah, you’re other friend. Where did she go?” Viva looked around to try and spot her. Y/n tried to sneak away behind Bruce but was quickly noticed by Tiny.

“Here she is!” He happily exclaimed.”

“Dammit Tiny!” Y/n stomped in frustration.

“Y-Y/n, hey.” Clay awkwardly waved and stepped forward.

“Hi Clay.” The two struggled in finding a comfortable greeting backing out of a fist bump, handshake and high five. After awkwardly trying to move around their hands they tried leaning in for a hug but backed out of that too. Y/n eventually opted to just give Clay two pats on the shoulder as they exchanged awkward toothy smiles.

“Uh anyway.” Clay stepped back, Y/n doing the same. “I can’t believe you all are here. Wait, where’s Floyd?”

“That’s why we’re here. Branch stepped forward. “Floyd’s been taken prisoner in Mount Rageous by superstar singers, Velvet and Veneer.”

“And the only thing powerful enough to free him is the perfect family harmony.” The five adult trolls finished together. Tiny’s face contorted in confusion.

“Okay, either they just made that up or I have not been paying attention.”

“Well why haven’t you just called he authorities?” Clay asked but slowly came the conclusion by himself. “Oh, unless Floyd is being held in an impenetrable diamond prison.”

“Yeah, that.” John Dory confirmed.

“I’m in. I’d also like to volunteer to keep track of our expenses, just cause I think you’re gonna need somebody to be on top of that.” Clay gave the group an almost smug smile.

“Yeah I don’t think you’ll get any pushback on that front.” Bruce spoke up. Branch’s expression turned to a more serious tone.

“Great, but we need to leave for Mount Rageous like now.”

Part 2 coming soon. Have an amazing day/night where you are!✨

[too-antigonish]

Morse and drinking in the 70s...

Long....because I can't write short. And obviously, a lot of you will already know this stuff...

Just want to take a moment to talk about alcohol and alcoholism in the context of the early 1970s and remind folks of how totally and completely different it is from how we see it today.

Drunk driving had not been outlawed in most countries. Not only that, it was widely regarding as funny—funny enough to be used as a regular “gag” in movies. Problem drinking was also seen as funny. There were regular cartoon strips about it. The “drunk” was a funny stock character in all sorts of plays and movies.

Alcohol was ubiquitous. We’re not just talking liquid lunches. We’re talking drinking at work, while you work—just as you see in Endeavour. Think about that for a second.

And politely saying no wasn’t something you did without social consequences. It wasn’t just seen as a personal preference. Unless you had a specific, acceptable reason, turning down a drink was often seen as stand-offish and judgmental or as a social snub. Teetotalism was regarded as rather naive and ridiculous—not something any man or woman of the world would embrace.

In the early 1970s, there was no widespread understanding of alcoholism as a disease. It was still seen very much as the consequence of personal weakness—still a matter of “If you cared enough or tried hard enough, you wouldn’t do this so it must be a character flaw.”

Plus, most people, “normal” people don’t have problems with alcohol, so if you do then there’s something abnormal and defective about you—most likely something you brought upon yourself.

And as a “personal weakness” and a “defect,” the shame around it was profound and the secrecy matched. If someone went away for treatment, it was very much akin to an unwed mother going off to have her baby and then returning without the child. You never spoke of it. You pretended that it had never happened.

If you were a kind person, you also didn’t go out of your way to parade babies in front of her or talk constantly about children when she was with you. But refer to it directly? Never. Ask for help? Never. It was always something to be hidden. Everyone did their best to forget that it had ever happened and saw this as the "kindest" thing to do.

When Morse returns from his “cure,” it would simply be assumed that everyone would pretend that nothing unusual has happened. Why he’s  just been off on a tour of the West Country and nothing else! Hope you had a lovely time! That sort of polite fiction was exactly what he would have expected upon his return. Anything more direct—at least in a public setting—would have been shocking to him and everyone else.

Where things break down, however, is in the more personal interactions. His relationship with Thursday is such that they can at least broach the topic of drinking. When they do, my impression is that Thursday is well-aware that Morse not “cured.” However, in the context of the time, saying this would be akin to saying, "You failed," because there was no disease model of alcholism in widespread use. You went to be cured and it worked or it didn't.

However, I'd also add that Thursday is almost to the breaking point with the cumulative strain he is under. He can’t cope with the “burden” of Morse being in a precarious state and he knows it. He feels desperately guilty about that—as well as about other things like Strange and Joan or about life having moved on so much while Morse was gone—and so he just shuts down. 

Shutting down is Thursday’s go-to strategy when he’s overwhelmed. We’ve seen him do it many times before. And part of that for him, is that he pretends that the people around him are ok—even if they are anything but ok. Not surprisingly, he does it the most with the people he has the closest emotional ties with—Win, Joan, Sam, and Morse.

So the only way that Thursday can cope is by having Morse be perfectly fine. Conveniently, his preferred coping strategy fits exactly with his society's expectations about how alcoholism works. If Morse is "cured," you don’t need to worry about sparing him the constant offers of alcohol in the same way that the young unwed mother might hope to be spared babies. You certainly wouldn’t embarrass him (especially after he’s been through the humiliation of rehab) by drawing attention in any way to a possible to the idea that he still has a problem. 

And finally, a last note on time context. The scene in the pub where Morse has that first drink after finding out that Joan is marrying Jim is utterly heartbreaking for so many reasons. One of those reasons, however, is that we know it’s the first drink—and that the first drink leads to the second, and so on and so forth. Then Morse says to Thursday, “They said the, the odd beer, the odd shot, does no harm…"Everything in moderation," they said,”  and we automatically assume he’s lying.

I’m fairly sure that those scenes were meant to be interpreted through our modern viewpoint. However, it’s worth noting that again, the model of alcoholism in the 1970s was nothing like what we have today. The idea that someone with a drinking problem/addictions needs to abstain entirely was not even close to universal at that point. It’s perfectly possible that the advice Morse is quoting is the advice he received!

[cassiopeiathe1st]

so as a biology major, here's some things i've been chewing on after reading the unwanted guest. this post is brought to you by the part of my brain that saw the 7th's hereditary blood cancer and thought ok but what KIND of cancer is that.

the phrasing of "permeability of the soul" makes me think of semipermeable membranes and diffusion. diffusion is a passive process -- our molecules, when left to their own devices, want to be everywhere because entropy, but the semipermeable membranes that make up cells organelles etc make life possible by keeping things organized. this dividing & filtering process is required to keep things in place. with me so far?

to me, this concept of permeability emphasizes that souls are objects with boundaries. there's a line somewhere, however blurry (clearly very very blurry) or porous, that divides self & other, and! and!! that line only exists because it is somehow constructed, maintained, enforced. see: ianthe working so hard to convince herself/pal/the hypothetical audience of this play she's putting on that she's just ianthe with no babs mixed in. or john's ritual of retelling his story to alecto/harrow in NTN. something something being the unreliable narrator of your own identity.

palamedes calls the process that merges him and camilla to give us paul grand lysis vs. the "petty", incomplete lysis of eightfold word lyctorhood. lysis = the disintegration of a cell by rupture of the cell wall or membrane. the boundaries of their souls are sliced open so their contents can be poured out & mixed together to make someone new. but even in conventional lyctorhood, there's some kind of exchange of whatever material makes up the soul between cavalier & necromancer. as our boy tells ianthe at the end of the unwanted guest,

This is the real truth of Lyctorhood, Ianthe--it's not some bloodless swapping-out of batteries. It's grafting; transplantation. When you absorbed Naberius Tern's soul, you didn't swallow a diamond. You swallowed a piece of meat...and the longer you digest that meat, the more its proteins and lipids and molecules mix in with yours, until you can't tell them apart anymore.

idk where i'm even going with all of this, i'm just rotating it in my head, but:

tamsyn muir is so precise with her necromancy jargon & anatomical terms that i feel like there's definitely meaning to be found in the imagery here. there is poetry in biology, the universe is made of stories not of atoms, etc etc

it turns out lysis is also the title of a dialogue of plato on "the true nature of loving friendship," so if any classics enjoyers have thoughts on that connection i would love to hear them!

if lyctorhood is transplantation, is it possible for that transplant to be rejected? can the graft refuse to take?

souls are contained within their edges not unlike how a cell membrane contains its cytoplasm. or how a capri sun pouch contains its juice. and lyctors slurp that shit up and digest it baby

why choose to link the soul so closely with water? (the river, bubbles, currents & waves in the river, nona saying the water of the river "doesn't want to touch us.") contents of souls = liquid in the same way that the river is a liquid??? the river = spirit version of the primordial soup???

dulcinea refers to the river having two shores, not just a generic "shore", so it sounds like they're different in some meaningful way. but that may be conditional on what happens in alecto ("if this ends well you'll find that out")? is the point of the river the river itself, or is the point of the river to separate those two places?

[bettyshoweduptotheparty]

1989 - The story of two muses

Back to my first and forever love – Lyric analysis!

1989 is very close to my heart, and I have always found it noticeable that this album has quite a contrast between love songs about a very up and down/anxiety filled relationship on one hand, and the very raw and heartfelt romance as portrayed in ‘This Love’ and YAIL on the other.

And the 5 new vault songs we have on Taylor’s version now have added quite a bit of detail to the picture that emerges and I’m more convinced than ever that there are two distinct relationships/muses being described and I fancied doing a deep dive into how each one is described in the music and how the themes connect to other songs. (And it may even explain the beach theme 😉)

Ok, so, I have actually sorted every song from 1989 that is about a romantic relationship, including the 5 new vault tracks, into this scheme (even though I found some really hard!)

Muse 1 – “The heartbreaker” This relationship is described as very up and down, very anxiety-driven, something you can’t walk away from like an addiction, “against your better knowledge but can’t help myself” kind of way. Taylor has described this person as ‘the one that might one day interrupt your wedding, because you’re never truly over’.  Break up: ‘you left me’.

Muse 2 – “The one that came back” While this relationship is by no means described as perfect, it has a very different tone to it. It’s very much based in secure feelings, ‘us against the world’, any difficulty faced is worth it. Break up: ‘had to let it go’. And the person came back when it counted.

(Sorry about the pictures, I couldn't fit a table in any other way)

I am really impressed with how much just five new songs have furthered the story of these two relationships and I (personally) love how much this is filling in the blanks and makes everything make so much more sense. 'You can hear it in the silence' vs 'Now your silence has me screaming' almost killed me, honestly. She really found the love that needs no words. 🥰 And the direct contrast of the metaphors, one relationship as an addiction with very high highs and very low lows, and the other as the calm waves on the shore that continually come in and out with the tide, is just so masterfully done, I love it. And I think given the beach theme of the 1989 TV covers, we can guess which of the muses is being honoured in this re-branding.

Lyrical connections to later albums

Perhaps not surprisingly, these two muses and their lyrical themes show up again in Taylor’s music in later albums. The connection I’ve already seen a lot of people make is the playing cards reference from Say Don’t Go (‘I’m trying to see the cards that you won’t show’) linking to Cornelia Street (‘back when we were card sharks, playing games’). And I love how this tells the story of someone whose previous relationship impacts how they react in a new relationship. Because the person in Say Don’t Go really did lead her on and played her and then left, whereas the Cornelia Street muse didn’t but Taylor thought as much based on her previous experience (‘I THOUGHT you were leading me on…but then you called, showed your hand…’).

Another parallel to Lover songs is the ‘light in the dark’ theme that starts in This Love with “lantern burning/ flickered in my mind for only you”, which feels very similar to “chandelier still flickering here” from Death by A Thousand Cuts. This relationship/lover is the light that perseveres in the dark, even if it’s just flickering, it never goes out. It lights up the darkness (‘glowing in the dark’), whereas the other relationship is a “shot in the darkest dark”. We obviously get a whole lot more songs in later albums that reference love as light in the darkness, most prominently in Daylight, the Lover album closer. But more subtly, I also think that “Takin’ your time in the tangerine neon light” from Slut, and “hang your head low in the glow of the vending machine” from Cruel Summer follow that same pattern. Something that illuminates the darkness. And just btw, Slut and Cruel Summer give me a very similar vibe in terms of different takes on the same situation…anyone else get that? But one last, maybe more subjective, connection is the line “I’ll pay the price, you won’t”. Which everyone immediately took as a comment on double standards between men and women, but I think it could also be interpreted to mean ‘I’ll happily pay the price and take the hit, so you don’t have to’, if you interpret the song to be about dating a man in public to keep a female partner out of the public eye.  With that in mind, the line becomes very reminiscent of ‘I can never give you peace’ from folklore, both expressing that Taylor wants to shield her lover from the media scrutiny that comes with dating her.  

Suburban Legends alone has so many links to later songs that I had to give it its own paragraph. The chorus ‘I didn’t come here to make friends’ is so ‘I don’t want you like a best friend’ coded, and ‘We were born to be suburban legends’ gives me big reputation/big conversation vibes. Other people have already pointed out that ‘flushed with the currency of cool’ draws links to Gold Rush and Gorgeous (‘You’re so cool it makes me hate you so much’) and ‘so magnetic it’s almost obnoxious’ is very similar to ‘magnetic force of a man’ from Lover. All painting the picture of a person who is so cool and alluring that they feel almost unattainable. The whole premise of the song being that the narrator didn’t come to make friends, but instead is on a mission to get what they want, feels very Mastermind to me. The background music over the outro confirms that, as it’s the same production as Mastermind (I call it ‘game show music’ 😊) and the lyrics saying that the muse now doesn’t knock anymore, suggests to me that maybe the masterplan has worked. Lastly, the conclusion of the song being ‘my life is ruined/I always knew it’ is a different way of saying I’ll happily ruin myself for you, as in ‘for you I’d ruin myself a million little times’ from Illicit Affairs.

We don’t get nearly as many references to the first muse’s themes in later music, but ‘fell from the pedestal, right down the rabbit hole” from Long Story Short is a nice drawback to the wonderland theme. Bottom line though, ‘It was the wrong guy…’.

And there we have it, the story of the two muses of 1989. If anybody here is even remotely as excited by lyrical analysis as I am, this one is for you, and feel free to have a friendly chat in the comments if I’ve missed anything!

[autistic-katara]

stuff i wanna see in TSATS

its just less than 2 months until TSATS comes out and my pjo phase is coming back HARD so heres some stuff i wanna see (idc how popular or unpopular these r)

Solangelo kiss (seriously like all the other good canon couples had one)

explicit use of queer terms (i havent rlly seen anyone talk abt this but as much as i love queer characters just existing u have no idea how happy it makes me to see media, especially kids media, explicitly say the words gay, bisexual, transgender, lesbian, etc.)

Hunters of Artemis cameo

piggybacking off that, Nico’s reaction to Reyna being a hunter (ive wanted to see this since 2019 PLEASE i gotta know how he feels abt this considering yk his past w/ them)

confirmation on whether Will’s gay or bi/mspec (or just simply queer, no specific labels necessary)

a trans/nonbinary character (specifically transmasc)

a Piper cameo

during her cameo Piper explicitly saying her sexuality (which is lesbian, if u think otherwise ur wrong/hj)

Hazel cameo

more Lavinia content (idc how i just need more of my chaotic Jewish ADHD pink-haired Russian lesbian, ok?)

GAY ANGST

MORE GAY ANGST

SO MUCH GAY ANGST ITLL MAKE MY AO3 HISTORY LOOK LIKE A HAPPY HETEROSEXUAL PURE BIBLE CLUB FOR TODDLERS

canonically autistic Nico

that Lil Nas X reference we were promised

Nico making more trauma jokes (he just like me fr)

the multiple coming out scenes i heard were allegedly promised

Hades and/or Apollo cameo

Hestia cameo

Jason’s ghost cameo

dead Apollo kids cameo

explicit discussion of Nico’s religious trauma

explicit discussion of just Will’s trauma in general (seriously we all kinda ignore that our “sunshiney golden retriever uwu gay boi 😊🌸✨☀️” actually has some super serious trauma)

both of them coping badly with all this and being worried abt eachother (aka gay angst but more specific)

Maria di Angelo content

Persephone cameo w/ her either still lowkey hating Nico and being passive aggressive asf to him or having had him grow on her in the past few years and is now turning the overprotective mom mode to the max

just some cute, non-angsty moments between Nico nd Will cause goddam we need some queer joy rn ;-;

so much hurt/comfort u physically cant continue living anymore (going both ways not just Will comforting Nico)

a MCGA cameo

Fierrochase and Solangelo meeting and having the same funny interactions they have in the memes (but with the canon versions of them)

discussions of stuff like homophobia and internalized homophobia and mental illness

a relatively happy ending (but not a “2 months later and the world is perfect and neither of them had felt anything close to depression or anything since the ending and if for some reason addiction was a part of this we would we talking abt how they were magically 2 months clean and it would be physically impossible for the thought of relapse to even cross their mind” kinda happy ending cause i hate those kinda endings w/ a burning passion)

setup for another side book (preferably a Piper or Reyna one)

thats all i can think of rn off the top of my head but feel free to comment on any of these or add ur ideas cause 2 months feels like an eternity long wait + hearing other opinions is fun when we arent all in a heated argument over smthn stupid

[friendsoup]

I REALLY LOVED YOUR DIKKE FIC!!! can you write Dikke x reader where the reader admires her and the reader is too shy to talk to her?? :O

Tyvm <3

A Misunderstanding

Recipe: Romantic fluff, reader x Dikke, Dikke is a worrywart, gn!reader, reader is referred to with they/them pronouns once, reader is called M'lord WC: 1,207 Chef's Note: I hope this meets your expectations!!! I was kinda stuck while writing this, bc my muse for Dikke is all over the place, but I think I did OK! This was super fun to work on!

Love is a funny feeling. It bubbles in your chest, fogging up your brain. It squeezes at your lungs, flushes your cheeks, and pounds at the inner bars of your ribcage. It halts your ability to reason, makes every decision that much harder. Had it any other name, you’d think it was evil.

You can pinpoint the exact moment you fell in love with Dikke. You were out on the field with her, battling off some critters, when one launched itself forward at you. It’s teeth were large, dripping with black venom, and as it got closer, you could see just how sharp it’s fangs were. You closed your eyes, flinching away as you braced for impact. Prepared for the agonizing pain you knew was about to come. But then a moment passed. And you were fine. Hesitantly, you opened your eyes, to find that Dikke was standing in front of you. Her arm was caught in the critter’s jaw, you could see blood begin to pool in the bite marks. Yet she flung the creature away effortlessly, the dreaded fiend hitting the ground and running off. She turned back to you then, her red eyes narrowed in determination. “Are you hurt?” She asked, her voice still holding strong, despite the pain she had to have been in. That was the exact moment you found that words failed whenever it came to Dikke.

It was difficult. Being so utterly helpless when it came to her. You’d sneak glances, only to turn your head entirely whenever she looked your way. You’d doodle her name in your notebook, only to cover it whenever she walked by. You’d walk as close to her as you possibly could, trailing behind her like a lost puppy, only to quickly change paths whenever she slowed her stride to walk aside you. And conversation, oh conversation was the worst.

You couldn’t get more than a ‘hello’ out most days. A ‘good morning’, if you were at your best. Dikke had never been one for small talk, so you assumed she wouldn’t mind, yet it seemed as though the more you shied away, the closer she came. 

You never lasted long while talking to her. She’d make her way over to you, ask you how you’re doing, and then you’d squeal some sort of excuse, and make your escape. 

It’s not as though you didn’t want to talk to her, you really did! But every attempt made your body close in on itself. Your mouth went dry, your head would spin, you felt so unbelievably nervous, that it was hard to focus on anything except not throwing up.

Dikke was beginning to worry.

Ever since she’d saved you from that critter, you’ve been acting so strange. It was an impulsive move, and acting on a feeling isn’t something she was used to doing. Yet she couldn’t stand to see you hurt, breaking formation just so she could protect you from the attack. Had her recklessness driven you away? 

Perhaps she’d scared you somehow? The image of her standing before you, taking a blow, may have been too much for someone so gentle. Was it the blood she’d wiped off her arm? The fierce look on her face? Dikke’s stomach turned with every possibility. It was obvious that she’d upset you, she just didn’t know how. Even worse, she had no clue what she was going to do in order to fix it.

The Timekeeper was the only one she spoke to about this grand disaster. Dikke approached her, keeping her composure despite the twist in her heart. She felt faint as she recalled the events, her eyes falling to the floor when she spoke of how timid you’d become around her. Though emotions were often complicated for Vertin, she’s no fool. She’d seen the two of you in battle before; how glances would be thrown each other’s way, the nervous tension with every shout. She noticed the feelings long before either of you did. It’s why she’d put you together for almost every team. In the hopes that you’d figure it out, or die trying. “Just talk to them.” Vertin’s advice surprised Dikke. It was so simple, yet so hard to complete. Dikke swallowed every ounce of pride she had left, and promised Vertin that she’d have it dealt with by the morning.Dikke approached you that afternoon, blocking your way from the room you were exiting. She towered above you, narrowing her eyes as you shied away. You let out a meek greeting, which seemingly left her unaffected.

“Are you cross with me?” She asked finally, after a minute of staring you down.

“Wh-What?” You asked, feeling your face begin to heat with embarrassment.

“Have I done something to upset you, M’lord?” Her voice was uncharacteristically nervous, as she lowered her gaze to the floor.

“I… no! Of course not!” You argued, shaking your head wildly.

“Then why is it that you cower away from me?” She asked, looking up to meet your gaze again. “Why is it that you avoid my presence, as if I’m some plague? You glare at me from across the room, yet turn in fear each time I meet your eyes. Why is that? What have I done?” Dikke asked, her voice dripping with melancholy.

Flustered, you hid your face in your hands. You couldn’t stand to look at her and her sad, sad expression.

“It’s not like that!” You finally yelp, glancing from behind your fingers. “Dikke, I like you. I like you a lot.”

“Ah. I like you as well, m’lord, you are a reliable ally, and a ferocious fighter-”

“No, not like that! Romantically!” You cry.

Dikke’s face goes red, her mouth hanging open slightly.

“I… I see.” She mutters, coughing into her closed fist. “You wish to court me?”

“I…I guess?” You peep, keeping your head low.

“Then we shall court.” Dikke gives a stern nod, though the blush doesn’t leave her face. “I look forward to our relationship, m’lord.”

You make a soft noise, and with that, Dikke leaves the room.

The both of you are too flustered to speak for quite some time.