#its a family activity. fun for all ages! anyway yeah i was never much of a teto user. tbh i think its just because like

[bmpmp3]

speaking of genbu's "serious" sounding tone in his voicebank, i think that might be why he was such a dead ringer for teto pre-synthv-bank-release with just a couple little gender parameter tweaks. wait do my followers know this. sorry i know most of my vocal synthesizer talk is genuinely gibberish to my beloved and loyal long time followers but do you guys know this. for a few years, people had discovered that since utau teto and genbu have this similar strong enunciation and dark sounding tone plus teto can have a bit of a tomboyish edge to her voice anyway -> if u mess with some parameters and phonemes he'll sound close enough to her, so it became a bit of running gag in the community, along with just being a genuine and novel use case for his voicebank. actually recently i found out about someone who made a couple of synthv scripts to set genbus voice to his falsetto pitch and set the tension to drop during each syllable automatically to make him sound like the utau sora amaha. genbu's purpose is to impersonate other vocal synthesizers

[cubedmango]

hi!! i just wanted to let you know that i started reading cherry magic in july last year after seeing the anime announced on toyota-sensei's twitter! i couldn't even rlly translate the announcement myself without the help of google translate LMAO but her illustration of them looked so sweet i had to snoop around. more than half a year later. i am no longer normal and my brain is fully rotted over and i think of those two nearly every waking moment!! your art, along with so many others feeds me and your translations are So Appreciated thank you for doing gods work. i usually don't get super involved in fandom or w/e other than consuming fanart or fics so the fact i find myself actually drawing them is so new to me...idk cherry magic really is so refreshing and it's just nice as an adult to see a mature relationship between two working adults. there are callbacks to childhood or childlike behaviors or interests sprinkled throughout the manga's dialogue and i always appreciated how they weren't seen as embarrassing or immature to embrace or learn from as an adult, but encouraged or seen as a valuable part of balancing work, life, and love. idk it's def one of the more subtle and less expanded upon parts of it but i love how adachi's and kurosawa's love of manga, though seen as a children's activity (from how kurosawa thought people saw it) was actually one of their first mutual hobbies. it's also interesting to see how many things about kurosawa's psyche are remnants of ideas probably for a lack of better wording, were taught to him from an early age. his self-image, how he tries to uphold certain societal standards, etc etc. im glad he found refuge in adachi that way. im sorry for rambling for so long but i've just been thinking about these two so much ldks

anon pls u never have to apologize for rambling abt my fav guys of all time, u should actually talk w me about them more i want to hear ur thoughts !! the eng speaking fandom isnt that big (or at least i dont get to interact w a lot of ppl personally) but its fun making art and doing the translations for my blorbos so im happy other ppl enjoy it too 🥺

and yess everything u said abt the childlike/immature stuff krdc enjoy like the fact that their interest in manga and stuff is never made fun of or anything (which would be ironic anyway since theyre In a manga themselves fdkjskf) but actually one of the things that gets them closer is So good augh?? (also spoilers for the radio drama if u havent seen it yet, but to me one of the best changes they made was changing the port scenes setting to an anime con instead like Yeah!! theyre little nerd guys of course theyd attend a con!!!! that plus how they both like watching animated movies and playing games too like its a very specific thing to Me but that relatability w stuff i do myself makes them both feel a lot more human? if that makes sense)

also w kurosawas whole deal its Definitely a longterm thing hes had for a while, and in canon its mostly been his friendships/relationships that affected him (probs the most clear in ch45 my beloved) but from the way the meeting w his parents went theres for sure a lot of parental/family pressure involved too?? this is going into hc territory but i have like a whole Thing brewing in my head about kurosawas and maris relations w their parents and how that affected their self image and all growing up too and i rlly wanna make stuff for it someday (idk if anyone would be interested but id probably do it regardless so fkdjksjfk)

[yeeterin]

Seungmin is alone.

I mean he technically isn't alone like he has people surrounding him like he texts his friends everyday, he lives with his family.

So he isn't alone in a literal sense but he sure does 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 alone.

Every single day he has thoughts that plague his mind.

"𝙀𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪."

"𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙩𝙖𝙡𝙠 𝙩𝙤𝙤 𝙢𝙪𝙘𝙝."

"𝙔𝙤𝙪'𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙮𝙞𝙣𝙜."

"𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙙𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙘𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙗𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪."

Every single fucking day those thoughts plague his mind like a virus looking to infect every inch of his body with these thoughts.

Nobody knows about how he feels anyways.

He never really asks for help.

He just cries for help endlessly hoping someone would hear him.

𝙉𝙤𝙗𝙤𝙙𝙮 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨.

At first he does subtle cries for help, a suicidal joke here and there.

He does that until it appears to not work.

He sends shit in their group chats, an "am i suicidal" quiz results with a "yes you are" as its result, a relatable quote he took a screenshot of being scattered in their group chat.

Nobody appears to see it really.

Nobody really see's him.

One day he's playing truth or dare with a bot with his friend Hyunjin.

The dare it sends is "show us your recent messaging list."

Seungmin shows just some screenshots of his recent chats with it consisting of some online friends, groupchats, and his real-life friends.

It takes a while for Hyunjin to respond with his answer but when he does it shows many things.

"Jisung, Seungmin, group of Jisung, me, and his cousin, The ADHD bros, class dumbasses, my brother, 3 simps and a rizzler, Felix, Baba grill, and Soobin." Hyunjin says.

"Who the fuck is baba grill." Seungmin laughs, sending his message.

"A groupchat of me, Felix, Jeongin, and Jisung." Hyunjin replies thinking nothing of it.

"Oh." Seungmin types, trying to hide his feelings and disappointment.

"Somehow not including you." Hyunjin says.

Yeah.. 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘩𝘰𝘸.

Seungmin laughs it off, making fun of the group name.

He never mentions it to anyone.

'The groupchat is behind 3 simps and a rizzler, that group chat has been inactive for ages they must not talk in it right..' He tries to rationalize.

It still hurts that they made a group chat without him.

He wonders who made the group, he wonders if that person hates him.

Maybe he should just shut up and they would like him.

Maybe.

Maybe that will work.

Everyone probably just got sick of him so they made a group chat without him.

Yeah, that's the reason.

'Just tone down you're Seungminess and everyone would like you more.' He thinks to himself.

Just.. Shut up, then everything would be okay.

His thoughts come back circling his mind, this time, worse.

It's worse, every single thought that's placed in his head, is true.

At least, he believes its true.

He makes a plan.

Disappear for a day.

Mute everyone in their groupchat that's likely to message him. (Thats like two people but its fine.)

(the two people being Jisung and a friend he already had before he met the gang.)

He just.. needs to see if they'll notice.

He's the most active member of their groupchat.

So they'll notice.

Right?

He texts Felix.

"I'm going to disappear from the groupchat tommorow, don't tell anyone this if they notice I'm gone." He types.

"I'm muting everyone except you, Hyunjin, and Jeongin because you guys wont message me."

He types that all into his and Felix's DMs.

It get's ignored.

𝙏𝙮𝙥𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡.

It's fine.

Eating lunch with his mom is when he aborts the plan.

"Do you want to hang out with your friends on your birthday weekend? Like the Saturday after your birthday?" His mother asks.

He's excited, maybe this is his chance, he can see his friends again after a long time!

He types out his plan in their group chat.

Only for it to get washed away in what everyone else says.

"Oh that's bad then." Hyunjin says, responding to something Jisung said in the past.

Hyunjin only ever pays attention to Jisung huh...

Maybe it would be so much easier if Seungmin was actually a lovable person.

Come to think of it they remind him of his sibling.

They leave him out, they ignore him.

No, his sibling is an asshole, they're better than his sibling.

But they do remind him of his sibling a lot.

But they're nice it's just...

Sometimes it feels like his words get lost.

But it's fine, he should just shut up, nobody cares about what he has to say.

They were nicer when they saw each other in real life, during school.

It's just now it seems like he's just invisible.

But it's okay, they don't care, they all have it worse.

(the difference is that they all have each other to talk to and Seungmin just has fanfiction, music, and ai to vent to.)

But it's okay, nobody cares about him.

He's fine like this they're all exhausted from everything they have to do everyday and Seungmin doesn't even have a reason to feel like this.

He doesn't even fit in with their group.

It seems like they love Jake, Seungmin's friend, who he introduced to them more than Seungmin.

But it's fine.

He doesn't give good advice like Jisung, he isn't funny like Hyunjin, he isn't a sunshine that everyone loves like Felix, he isn't smart and everyone favorite maknae like Jeongin, funny, smart, and caring like Jake.

He doesn't really fit in.

The only thing he has going for him is that he listens to their problems, he lets them rant.

But that isn't much.

He doesn't deserve to be in this friend group.

He's useless.

But he won't tell someone that. No, he'll be a burden if he does tell somebody.

So he simmers in it, the voices and thoughts in his head never going away.

He's alone.

There might be a period of time Jisung would pay attention to hin but that would end quickly.

Seungmin is worthless when surrounded by his friends.

Nobody really cares about him, he's low maintenance.

He just sits there, waiting for someone to ask him if they could vent so he could do his job.

[everythingsinred]

Okay with the character bingo, I must inquire about your fandoms bc I don't want to be like "ahh what do you think of this fine lad"

And you being like :/ idk who that is nice bird tho

Like that would be kinda funny, but also it would be neat to hear about your other fandoms than GA. Like I've seen Go Piss Girl (Gossip Girl, but the only thing I know about that show is that meme 😅), The Office, something to do with spies? And one with characters that have big ol eyes but idk what it is.

In any case, for the time being, what your thoughts about ✨Mikan✨? My impression of her has changed a lot over the years, I first thought she was annoying but now I'm just kinda sad for her :,)

hi!!

yeah i dont watch owl house but im pretty sure thats hunter? if its not im sorry i only know what i see on my dash in passing lol. nice bird tho (hehe)

yeah i like gossip girl! i was at the height of that when i was 13 but its a nostalgic show for me. its not a show that i think too much abt ig. mostly i just quote it all the time w my sister. i have a gossip girl character as my icon now bc i like having matching icons w my sister! we like to switch through fictional friendships/sibling dynamics. 

i also LOVE the office and also all sitcoms of that nature (i love parks and rec, superstore, new girl, etc. i love funny shows that focus on sentimental relationships that end up making me ugly cry. i think the office might be my fav but tbh i thought that abt superstore AND new girl before so idk if i even have a fav).

spy x family is a new anime im into these days! its found family and very cute!

and show w big eyes... im not sure which one u mean hhh. i like a lot of anime, my favs being ga (ofc), jibaku shounen hanako-kun, and fruits basket. im also really into the webtoon hooky, which is abt witches.

anyway mikan time:

ONE OF MY FAV CHARACTERS OF ALL TIME. i talk abt natsume all the time so it might feel like hes my all time fav, but he and mikan actually share that place in my heart. 

yes similarly i also felt she was annoying when i first watched the anime (i was twelve when i first got into it). at such a young age i had a tendency to get irritated with the female mcs in media (internalized misogyny, etc) and mikan was 1. loud 2. bold 3. stupid, which are naturally unforgivable traits for a character to have (sarcasm). when i rewatched/reread at 14 i realized that i was looking at her all wrong. around the time i started observing the ga tumblr fandom around age 15 (i only recently started being active in the ga fandom bc i was too nervous before), there was a pervasive idea that mikan was a mary sue.

UGH so let me go off real quick. i will talk way more abt mikan in my next nm essay, but ill summarize some of my ideas briefly for this. mikan’s arc is all about feeling useful, having agency, and how best to help others. she is maybe one of the few characters who undergoes OVERWHELMINGLY negative character development. i dont mean she was flanderized or ruined, i mean that this little girl started developing the idea that she should smile all the time and hide all her negative feelings in order to make OTHERS feel better. this is not good! but its treated like its good, like thats the best choice she can make (this is the actual reason that i only ship her romantically w natsume actually, but ill go into that in my essay). it can be fun for a character to devolve, to make the wrong choice, but this change wasnt treated that way.

another issue is i genuinely HATE mikan having the stealing alice. she should never have had the stealing alice. do i realize thats more than half the manga im talking about? YES. it completely upended her character arc. her nullification alice was so understated! she felt like it was useless and was SO insecure about it. then all of a sudden she has the stealing alice, which can be dangerous, but definitely cannot be called “useless” and her story about uselessness/having a “boring” alice just. falls short. yukas story w the stealing alice was so meaningful and impactful on its own. mikan ALMOST being the next yuka couldve been compelling if it didnt ruin the set-up that the entire first half of the manga was focusing on. 

anyway mikan is NOT a mary sue for the above reasons. she is not effortlessly perfect. many people in the manga call her plain. she can be really stupid. she doesnt always save the day. in fact, other people often have to save her, making her feel useless (which is why she shouldve saved natsume. they were each other’s key to resolving arcs and yet. and YET.) she can be loud, brash, bold, and often says the wrong things. she has a really apparent character arc and calling her a mary sue ignores all that. ppl who think mikan is a mary sue are my worst enemy and i will fist fight them.

now ill talk a little about mikan in fanfics bc i think its worth mentioning, especially since i filled out that square abt her being done dirty. like i said, mikan is stupid. im not insulting her. some people are stupid. shes not good at academics. shes a lot more sporty than she is brainy. she rushes to conclusions and doesnt always think things through. shes not really a rational person all the time. fanfics often treat this stupidity as a negative trait to be fixed. maybe shes stupid when shes little but she’ll be a genius when she gets older! look how smart she is now! instead of just letting her be dumb. she has other traits, like deep empathy, athleticism, passion, optimism, that are often sacrificed in fanfic in order to make room for her made up intelligence. 

mikan in fanfic (especially if shes supposed to be older) is often painted as more subdued than her loud manga counterpart, more often cynical, introverted, skeptical, etc., and ALWAYS pretty even if SHE doesnt see it (despite being described often as plain in the manga). i have some theories about this. 

1: western fans are more comfortable making mikan like a western mc than one more typical of anime. if u think abt what a typical western female lead looks like, she’s usually less feminine, “not like other girls,” a smart bookworm who is cynical and rational. this is familiar so i think a lot of western fanfic writers end up leaning mikan this way even at the cost of making her unrecognizable. so mikan being stupid and loud and optimistic are all traits to be fixed, bc theyre not as familiar in a lead role. 

2. fans want to have a mature mikan, and they think theres no way she can keep her childish traits, like stupidity, boldness, impulsiveness, and idealism, and NOT be a child. i find that ridiculous. why cant mikan be a giddy, happy, upbeat adult? why does she have to lose all the traits that make her mikan in order to demonstrate maturity? 

3. i might be off base with all of these, but this one... i feel the most strongly about. mikan is the main character. in a lot of stories, the reader is invited to relate to the main character, to project onto her. often, the main character is vague or universal BC imagining her as you is the whole point. fanfic (especially the older fanfic) turns mikan into that easily recognizable and relatable mc we can insert ourselves into. 

anyway i have a lot more thoughts on mikan, way more than i could ever say in one post (which is why im doing an essay series) but these are some basic thoughts i have. im sorry its so long. 

[icyowl]

Hello again! It’s me: the anon who asked that question about “Quiet Eyes”. I’ve been visiting your blog a lot lately (I hope that doesn’t sound weird lol 😓) bc I really like the posts you reboot or write that have writing tips/prompts. Writing is one of this things that I both hate and love 😩 but going through your blog tends to reignite my passion for it! Anyways, I wanted to ask: what got you into writing and if I could be 🌺 Hibiscus anon?

A NEW ANON?!?!?! AHTODFNVWRGLHN SSQQQUUUEEEEEEE!!!

I'm so happy you like the prompts! I always worry when I post or reblog stuff not related to fanfic because I feel like I should have sideblogs with dedicated themes like most people do rather than post fanfic/prompts/art/photography all in one chaotic place. Then again I share stuff mostly so I can go back through my own blog at a later date and it's all in one place, so, whatever I guess haha.

I'm so happy I ignite your passion! I gotta say, if you don't have a love/hate relationship with writing, you're not a writer. Like I hate how slow I write and that my ideas are usually just the same tropes with different characters and my WIPs constantly plague me and I don't know how clear my writing comes across to others and and and. . .

But I love how I can make anything I want by writing and I love how it can make people feel and I love how much work I put into making my writing better and so on, so yeah, I love and hate writing too!

Info-dumping below the cut haha

I got into writing when I was about 10 because I've always had a really active imagination and my dreams have always been very imaginative so I started by writing them down so I wouldn't forget them because some of them were pretty neat. Then I was like "I gotta add this to it, and this, and that" and that became my first word doc. Then I got really into the warrior cats series and created a storyline with my own characters, which I think had like 20-30 original characters and got to about 60 pages single-spaced on word, so that was my first fanfic!

Then writing became an outlet for the shows I got really into. I think bleach was one of the first?? One look at Renji and I was gone haha! I'd get little crushes on the characters and couldn't talk to anybody about it because my family and everyone at school made fun of me for watching anime, so I wrote to get it out of my system in a private way, and now I've evolved into having tropes I like and having (countless) WIPS and I've made a blog I'm proud of! I even recently discovered I kinda like a bit of whump, which has become its own journey since a lot of people think its weird and gross (I'm not even that bad, I only like cute whumpee-caretaker stuff, so).

Early on I came up with the philosophy that writing was like a superpower. If I write well enough, I can make people imagine and feel anything I want. I can make people fly and fall in love and never age and go to war and find peace. It's still pretty much just a creative outlet and a way I can put myself into the stories and with the characters I like so much, but I share my stuff in case anyone else would like to read them too.

Don't get discouraged. Write for yourself, not for others. Write what you want and when you want simply because you want to. When you don't want to write, then don't. That's why I don't really do requests and only post a new fic once in a while. It also means that I still write even when I don't get the number of likes or comments or reblogs I would like or anticipated. How much or how little interaction my blog or fics get isn't why I write, so it doesn't affect me that much. Sure I'd like to have 1000 followers and get asks like this every day, but I'm happy with what I've got. I hope you can be, too!

P.S. Just know that I'm saving this ask to remind myself that I have a positive influence on people for when I don't feel very motivated, so thank you for this

[theveryworstthing]

So over on patreon Trevor asked for my take on the Addams Family and I grew up LOVING the Addams family movies so here we are. Instead of doing a straight up style interpretation, I decided to do a full on design challenge, using the characters as bases to make a black southern gothic Addams au. I actually drew the kids first, using the character bases of Wednesday and Pugsley to create some delightful kiddos I'm calling Sunday and Blanche. I of course then redesigned Gomez and Morticia into Carlisle and Mortesha.

The Addams have a very specific high aristocratic goth aesthetic (they've got a butler and nobody really works among other things) so in this re-imagining I wanted to go with vibes that run a little more middle class/upper middle class.  I thought it would be interesting to think about what would be considered weird and off-putting in an entirely different culture, and how being a big ol' goth is way less controversial than it used to be.

I tried to keep this short (HAHAHAHAHAHA) so I didn't spin off into an essay about villain coded families, black people in the horror genre, and normalcy as it pertains to social survival, but just...bits of that are in these designs and lore. Keep that in mind.

Also I made the kids twins because they've flip flopped in age so much in different media and also twins run in my family (i'm the daughter of one). And let's face it, I'm pulling a lot of their southern gothic traits from living as a southern goth so *shrug*.

10 thousand pounds of lore incoming loooooooooool.

The Parents

From the moment he saw her he knew that there was a 50/50 chance of him either never making it out of that swamp alive or marrying the figure that was creeping out from under the distant willow tree in a black cocktail dress. The third time she found him trussed up in one of her traps, he complimented her rope work and asked if she'd like to go out sometime after his head wound stopped bleeding.

Or while it was still bleeding.

If she was into that.

Some kids and a mysteriously burnt down Piggly Wiggly later, their love is still as strong and inescapable as a bear trap in a sink hole.

Carlisle Guillermo (now Addams through marriage but I wanted to give him two first names for a name since Gomez has two last names) makes a vaguely described living practicing ‘law’ around town. A loophole king, people come to him from miles around with contracts signed in blood, fights over chunks of hair buried in their rivals’ yard, dehydrated primate hands, memories that seemed like dreams until the evidence of their happenings became too real, and other regular Legal Items asking for counsel which he is all too happy to give. For a price. Sometimes that price is a homemade pie and sometimes it’s a million dollars, depends on who you are. Whatever you’re asked to pay it’s worth that price, and if you try to scam him out of work or he just plain doesn’t like you? Well. He knows how to twist a contract better than anything at the crossroads.

And he always gets his due.

He doesn’t just serve the local (living)humans though, there are many things that need proper legal representation in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe how many city councils try to build on sacred burial grounds even after he lets them know that his ghostly clients are totally gonna haunt the FUCK out of the ensuing shitty condos and curse their families for all eternity. At least 50% of his energy goes towards dealing with real estate bullshit.

Carl is an excitable and good natured(?) man who loves his family, cigars, dancing, and his many knife-based hobbies. People find him very charming once they get past the feeling that they’re talking to a sultry gator badly disguising itself as a human. I didn’t put a ton of deep thought into designing him, mostly I wanted to make a middle aged dude who looked like he would have been voted ‘most likely to smooch the literal devil’ in high school. Tbh he probably has, but no demonic ex’s can compare to his lovely wife~

Mortesha Addams(her name was already perfect so I just tweaked it)is a woman of many talents. A self proclaimed homemaker, she prides herself on a greenhouse full of Concerning Foliage, a beautiful wasp apiary, and a coop full of what are probably chickens that she keeps for what are probably eggs. She’s also an avid creator of the outsider art that can be seen around the estate. She has taken on the family business of selling her homemade goods in a little stall by the road just outside the swamp with her mom, and makes pretty good money doing so. A surprising amount of poison gets bought in quaint southern towns.

Speaking of poison, people who come out to the edge of the swamp to buy it are usually carrying a lot of secrets around, and Mortesha knows most of them. It’s not like she pries the truth out of people, it just so happens that many nervous hellos eventually turn into the tragic backstory power hour if she’s alone with a client for long enough. She supposes that’s just how people are. Despite the fact that the Addams are very active in the community (whether the community likes it or not) she especially, as a direct descendant of the first Addams matriarch, is seen as…Well not an outsider because the community feels A Certain Way about outsiders and despite it all the Addams are their people, but maybe something like an exception. They feel like whatever weirdness they’re hiding can’t be weirder than any given Addams, so they get a little loose with their words.

This is amusing to her, since Addams’ don’t naturally keep the kind dramatic secrets that their surface level prim and proper neighbors do. It’s much more fun to openly talk about those things.

Do they have a sadly decrepit yet terrifying grandma up in the attic? Yeah, like three. They got a tv, all the creepy porcelain dolls they could want, and they’re close to family. Where do you keep your gram-grams?

Any bodies buried on the property? Yeah some, but most are thrown to the gators.

Any creeping through the balmy summer night with ill intentions? Yeah dude, everyone loves a nice family stroll.

What about dangerous forbidden love? If an adult Addams isn’t incorporeal then they’re either queer or in a torrid romance with some person/thing mysteriously drawn to that awful swamp. Sometimes both at the same time. Most times actually.

Mortesha would know.

The current head of the Addams family is just as outgoing as her husband but a lot quieter and harder to read. She never really seems to get mad about much and always has a genteel smile for everyone whether they deserve it or not. A seven foot tall human shaped “Oh, bless your heart”. A perfectly composed Lady even when she’s, oh I dunno, burning down a Piggly Wiggly. You know. A regular southern mom. Chat her up at the hair salon for 50% off a jar of wasp honey with your next purchase of a mysterious but foreboding packet of herbs.

Designing her was pretty easy because I just drew a lankier Grace Jones and called it a day. I had some problems with her outfit simply because if we were going HARD southern gothic then she’d probably be wearing a white/cream dress with a fuller skirt but I thought keeping the silhouette and the black was more important. She’s supposed to be an anti southern gothic southern gothic character anyway. A woman who looks like she has a million secrets who is actually the most open person you could meet. For better or worse. The red hair came from a coloring error that I really ended up liking (my mom had red hair her whole childhood that only darkened up in high school so I can buy that an Addams can be naturally fire engine red) and the veil was to get more of that classic Morticia silhouette in there.

The Children

Sunday and Blanche are the twin children of Carlisle and Mortesha Addams. Some say the Addams clan got their cursed homestead when a wealthy local businessman made a deal with the devil and lost, leaving his grand mansion to his least favorite maid and cutting his losses once he realized that the swamp would do everything it could to drag the house into the water and take what was owed with its horrible curse. Others say that the family has just always squatted there and no one really cares because man, fuck that particular swamp. Have you been in there? Absolute horror show.

Anyway.

Blanche is the more outgoing sibling and quite the engineer/mad scientist in the making. He started going grey at 2 weeks old but considering he was also rocking some extra fingers, toes, and a tiny tail (he takes after his dad), his parents just put it on the 'not life threatening' pile and decided not to worry about it. He's the kind of smart that teachers find utterly infuriating, less a dog eagerly learning and obeying commands and more a hyena who keeps teaching itself how to pick locks. He has a few friends in his school's robotics club (which they honestly allowed him to make so the school could contain his... creations) but mostly hangs out with his sister exploring the swamp. They find all sorts of neat things in there! wedding rings, suspiciously lumpy garbage bags, cloaked cultists who can't read private property signs, it's an adventure every day!

Blanche is all about experimentation with his creations, his look, and his tether to this mortal coil. Is lipstick a cool thing to try? Let's find out. Can he get out of a strait jacket fast enough after being pushed into the depths of the swamp by his sister? let's find out. He's not dead yet and confused local doctors can attest to the fact that he's rarely attained more than a bad bruise so he's pretty set on continuing to kiss rattlesnakes on their cute little heads and have his sister practice her knife throwing at him until that fact changes.

Blanche is very much a country goth. Cowboy boots (customized by his mom), knife, and lighter are daily accessories. He likes to wear the crusty swamp jewelry they find (the rust adds a splash of color!) and despite appearances he does try to keep himself neat. He's just got  natural Grunge Colors and a tendency to wear clothes he likes until they fall apart. Pugsley always seemed the most modernly styled to me (which might just be because little boys clothes have been the same for a long time) so I wanted Blanche to be the most purposely fashionable Addams. Everyone else is goth by nature, but he's the only one truly familiar with goth as an alternative fashion.

I got really into designing Blanche because honestly, I find Pugsley to be the most boring member of the family. And he was hard to design! I had to mess with his vibe a lot to get him looking how I wanted. I know he's supposed to evoke an " 'evil' little boy next door who's parents never reign him in", but that's just goth Dennis The Menace.  I's 2020. We can at least go queer goth Calvin.

Sunday was much easier to design. Wednesday was my favorite as a child (of course) and I really wanted to keep the spirit of her look while adding things like billowy sleeves (it gets HOT down here), big poofy twists instead of braids, and a nice tie. She's a professional after all, been running the local pet cemetery since she was 6 and the previous groundskeeper met with an unfortunate accident after telling her that tarantulas don't have souls. Her specialty is creating beautiful naturalistic animal funerals similar to those that Maquenda (https://linktr.ee/artofmaquenda) makes, and she takes pride in creating miniature dioramas of her subjects after each burial which she uses as a kind of 3D catalog for future clients.

She really wants to try out her skills on humans one day. Well. Publicly try out her skills. Lotta random bodies float into the swamp. None of them have turned down her requests for diorama models so far. Most seem downright flattered. Plus, she usually figures out which graveyard/crime scene they floated over from and gets her parents to give them a lift back. She'll even help enact terrifying revenge from beyond the grave on whoever put them there if she's not, y'know, busy.

Besides arts, crafts, and pet based funerary arrangements, Sunday is an avid lover of archery (any ranged weapon really), books where little fantasy adventure animals die dramatic deaths, and history. She is That Kid who eagerly raises her hand when asked who Christopher Columbus was and ends up being sent out of class after 15 minutes for making 'a scene'. Her favorite party trick is just picking an item in the room and talking about how it relates to either some obscure historical figure with a buck wild life or a horrible disaster. At least one charity pancake breakfast ended with children in tears after her vivid description of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Social-wise, while Wednesday is the girl that people ask to smile because they think she'd, "look so pretty", Sunday is rarely asked anything at all. People just kind of assume from her quiet nature (in between horrible history facts) that she's angry all the time and that she hates everyone. This is untrue. She hates some people but she's ambivalent to most everyone else and even downright friendly if you bother to talk to her like a person instead of a terrifying cryptid. Like, she IS a terrifying cryptid but she's also a little girl.  

That’s about it for now. One day I might do the other family members but for now I’m happy with the four I’ve redesigned. Making an au! Lurch in a family that doesn’t do butlers could be interesting. Over on patreon I put forth that he could just be Motesha’s mute little brother (similar bone structure) but Amy Crook had the nice idea of quote: “ a mysterious "cousin" that "helps around the house" whose origins are both long in the past and faintly unsettling. He's good for lifting heavy things, like that tank of propane you're about to throw into the burning Piggly Wiggly... “ which i now consider canon. Who's kid is he? How old is he? Not important. Anyone willing to commit arson with you is family.

Annnnyway.  This challenge was a lot of fun! I love indulging in AU’s.

[cinnaminsvga]

intermission • vi | moonlight

→ summary: When the love letter you wrote and submitted as an assignment is leaked to the entirety of your university, it becomes a race against time to dispel rumours and convince the seven suspected muses of the poem that they aren’t the subject before anyone realises that you are the author. Easy, right? Well… maybe not as easy as you think.

→ pairing: bts x reader (feat. jungkook) → genre: college!au, crack, fluff, angst → warnings: none!! it's just jungkook being a cutie!! → words: 3.7K → a/n: this intermission chapter was actually written by @jincherie!! i'm posting it on her behalf since she's currently on hiatus. she had this chapter mostly finished a few months ago and we were waiting to post it until we were both more active (lol) but yeah... things change i guess... anyway see you guys next year (i wanna say /j but really... is it really /j...)

— • masterlist | prev | intermission vi | next • —

Jungkook's strength has never been making friends.

In his mother’s words, a “pleasant and sweet boy” though he might be, that didn’t help much when it came to meeting someone new and the storm of butterflies in his stomach would grow so strong that it froze his limbs and caught his tongue. He’s not too good at first impressions.

A “pleasant and sweet, but terribly shy boy” is actually more along the lines of how Jungkook’s mother describes him, now that he thinks about it. That’s probably a little more accurate.

The sprawling complex he lives in is full of kids, and Jungkook knows each and every one of them. He might be challenged in the social area, but his mother is anything but. She says he takes more after his father, and since his father is usually relaxing inside and reading or drawing when Jungkook sees him at home, he figures that makes enough sense.

Every time someone new moves into the complex, Jungkook’s mother goes to greet them. Of course, he is graciously asked (read: forced) to come along too, just in case they have any kids around his age. This is how he normally meets the other kids on the block. It’s fine, he can’t complain. He has to admit it’s nice meeting all the new and different people that come through. His family is probably one of the ones that have stayed in the complex this long.

When the house next door is emptied of the family he knew, it’s a while before the next one comes in. By the time Jungkook peeks out his window one morning, woken by the telltale sound of a truck beeping as it reverses, and finally sees some movement in the house next to his own, his mother isn’t home. She’d moved into the hospital just a few days earlier, looking ready to pop with the little brother he’d heard so much about in her belly. He’s excited to meet his little brother, and now as he stands on his tippy-toes to get a good look from the window, he finds himself a little excited to meet the new neighbours, too.

It only has a little bit to do with the great, big, fluffy dog they have. Just a little.

It takes a few days for them to move in fully. Jungkook watches from his window every now and then, seeing all sorts of different cars come through. This family has lots of helpers, he notices. By the time they seem to really settle in, Jungkook doesn’t see much of them. Actually, to his disappointment, he doesn’t see anyone around at all. He still hears the dog, glimpses it every so often, but realised that they probably walk it in the mornings before he wakes up.

His mother is home before long, his baby brother cradled in her arms. The first thing she asks as she steps through the door is, “Have the new neighbours moved in? Have you met them yet, Kookie?”

This is perhaps the first time all week he hasn’t cared about the neighbours-- he’s transfixed with his brother. It stays that way for a few days, until the allure wears off when the tiny baby won’t stop crying at night. Perhaps his little brother is something best loved from afar for now, Jungkook surmises.

Back to the window he goes – except this time, there’s actually something to see.

There’s a child! A combination of nerves and excitement bubbles within him as he sees a kid in the backyard playing with the dog, throwing a Frisbee for the massive puppy to leap up and catch in its mouth. The kid looks a little…. feral. Like the baby from that one funny caveman movie he watched with his parents. They’re rolling around with the puppy, uncaring of the way grass and dirt get on their clothes and tangle their hair-- they laugh the whole time. It takes a second for the sound to reach him, but when it does it makes his heart do something funny in his chest.

Ah, the neighbour's kid is a girl.

It’s you.

Jungkook has always been a little more shy around girls, but has never known why. To meet you, he’s going to need his mother there for backup. This is probably the first time he’s outright wanted to go meet one of the neighbours. It’s a little embarrassing, so he elects not to think about it too much.

He thought he would have to pester his mother more to get up and go greet them, but it seems she’s a little sick of being in the house so much because she jumps up the second he mentions it. His baby brother is graciously asleep when they make the trip one morning to the house next door, nestled in his mothers arms looking like an angel wrapped up in fluffy clouds. Jungkook wonders if you’ll like his brother as much as he does. If you don’t, then he doesn’t know how good of a friend you’re going to be.

The doorbell is different, it’s the first thing he notices about the house. Your family must have changed it when you moved in. It’s a bubbly, fun tune now, and he doesn’t even realise the smile it brings to his face. His grip on his mother’s hand tightens, but he misses the fond look she casts over him.

When the door opens, Jungkook thinks his nerves just might eat him alive. He’s so stiff he’s worried he might turn to stone and disintegrate into dust on the spot.

It’s you who answered the door.

You don’t look as wild and unkempt as you did that day he saw you from the window. Actually, your hair is in two cute little buns on top of your head and there isn’t a spot of dirt or grime on your overalls.

The way your eyes light up when you see him and his mother, as well as the baby held to her chest, is enough to make him forget to breathe for a moment. When he remembers, he feels like running his head into the pole of the awning.

“Hey, sweetie,” his mother greets, that big smile on her face that normally wins everyone over. “We’re from the house next door! We wanted to come say hello and meet you. Are one of your parents home too?”

“Hello!” Your response is instant, and the smile you return is so big Jungkook can easily see the gap where you’re missing a tooth. It seems like you’re beating him, he hasn’t lost that one yet. “Yeah, my mama’s home-- you should come in! She said she wanted to meet you guys! Oh, also, we have a puppy! She’s big, and actually maybe she’s too old to be a puppy but… she’s cute. I want you to see her!”

You’re rambling, but you don’t seem to realise. Jungkook couldn’t get a word in edgewise if he wanted to, but he finds himself more than happy to simply listen as he and his mother follow you into the house.

Your mother isn’t as wild as you, but he notices the same little sparkle in her eyes that you have in yours. He wonders if he and his mother have their own matching sparkle. That would be cool.

Right away, his mother hits it off with yours – two socialites of a feather, it seems. You fawn over his baby brother for a few minutes while they talk (he knew right then that you were a good one), before grabbing him by the sleeve and insisting on showing him around. You get a full tour in, and miraculously Jungkook finds it in himself to ask a few questions as you go.

“S-so, you like it? Here?” Every time he opens his mouth the words don’t come out how he wants them, but he can’t do anything now. At least he only stuttered once.

“Yes! It’s so much better than my old house! There’s so many more kids here, and they’re all so nice too!” You’re more than happy to blabber on, a hand thoughtlessly carding through the long, fluffy fur on your dog’s back. Jungkook’s own hand is doing the same (the fur is just as soft and fluffy as he imagined). “There’s more room for Poopie to play, too.”

Jungkook still isn’t quite used to the name of your pet, but something more important in what you said is taking hold of his attention. “Wait, you, uh… you’ve met some of the other kids?”

“Yep,” you say, gaze off in the distance as you try to summon them all from your memory. “Not all of them, but some! Um, I think one of them is named…. Chanyeol…? He lives down the street. Then there’s-- …”

A queasy feeling fills his stomach. He thinks it might be disappointment. For some reason, he thought he was going to come in here and be the first kid you met, that he was going to tell you all about the complex, maybe show you down the street. If you turned out to be a real good egg, then he had even planned to show you his secret place. But now that he thinks about it, it’s a bit silly to think that none of the other families would have come to greet you by now. You’ve been here for more than a week, after all.

He had a good time when visiting you, but for some reason after that day, he finds himself hanging back a bit. He wants to go out and play with you and the other kids, but when he sees you getting along with them so well he’s reminded of that queasy feeling from that day and he stays inside. Which, oddly enough, makes him feel even worse. He feels like no matter what he does, he’s losing progress with you. Maybe you won’t even want to play with him at all, you might think he’s boring after having so much fun with the other kids.

“You gonna go out and play, Kookie?” his mother catches him staring out the living room window one afternoon. She’s bouncing his brother on her hip, the demon baby sated for the time being. “There’s still plenty of time before dark.”

“No, I’m okay,” he answers, hating himself a little bit for it. Why was it so hard to say that yes, he wanted to play, but also that he didn’t. He thinks his mother would be able to help, but he has no idea how to tell her his woes. “I think I might draw a little.”

“Okay, sweets.” She comes over and ruffles his hair. “But if you do decide to go out and play, just let me know so I know where you are, okay?”

He nods, and she leans to kiss his hair before wandering back into the depths of the house. Maybe he will do some drawing, he ponders. It might distract him from the sight of you getting along so well with all the other kids.

Jungkook’s strength has never lain in being outgoing. This proves itself over the months when his attempts to grow closer and befriend you turn out unsuccessful, without fail.

You’ve made a good space for yourself amongst the kids of the block. You’re nice, caring and understanding, and never mean – sure you pushed Chanyeol off the seesaw once, but that was because he was being mean to Suzie. He didn’t do it again afterwards, and peace was maintained in the playground in the park at the end of the complex. Your friendship is sought-after, and with the beginning of the school year looming so close he’s running out of time to establish a friendship between the two of you.

When he spends an afternoon riding his bike at the end of the street, looping around and through the park, it’s definitely not just because you’re sitting there with some of the other girls on the block. When he summons all the knowledge stored in his brain from watching those bike tournaments and attempts to do a little trick, it’s definitely not because he thinks you might be watching. If you happen to see and think he’s cool, then it is what it is. It’s not like he’s actually trying to impress you or anything.

It goes okay, for the most part. His legs are a little tired though. He probably shouldn't attempt the trick he’s thinking of next, but he swears he sees you glance his way and he feels a surge of confidence flow through him. He attempts it.

He botches it.

The bike clatters to the ground and he rolls a bit, but his knees take the brunt of his meeting with the concrete path.

Lucky he wasn’t trying to impress you, because that was pretty humiliating. Lucky you probably didn’t see, either. His knees burn and he feels tears prick at his eyes, probably not just from the pain. He feels so embarrassed, so dumb. He’s touched his bike five times since he got it for his birthday last year, why did he think he would be able to do awesome tricks on it? Dumb, so dumb. He flees the scene before anyone can notice what happened, and completely forgets his bike.

He’s made it all the way home before he even realises it, his vision blurred from the tears that just won’t stop falling and his knees still singing in pain each time he bends them. He almost goes inside, craving a hug from his mother and her gentle hands on his wounds, but then he realises she would ask what happened, and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to tell her. It’s too embarrassing. He’s so embarrassed.

So he bypasses the front door, going around the side and slipping through the gate. There’s a tree that lines the side of the house where his window is, and it’s so tall it reaches well above the roof. Without pause, he climbs it, hands finding familiar grooves. He halts, hissing at the sudden sting – it would seem he’s scraped up his palms, too. His eyes burn with the added humiliation and he darts up the tree, making quick work of the climb until he reaches his special spot.

The roof of his house is mostly slanted, but there’s a flat bit at the very top on one side of the house. This is where he likes to go. No one ever looks for him here, plus the view is always very pretty. He doesn’t appreciate the sunset right now, though. He feels like he doesn’t deserve it.

The whole way home, Jungkook held in his cries. He didn’t want anyone to hear and tell his mother. But now, in the embrace of his little ‘safe haven’, he lets them out. He buries his head in his arms and sobs, the pain of moving his palms only making it worse.

He doesn’t know how his little body can handle so much embarrassment, let alone so many tears, but for the moment he doesn’t think about it and surrenders himself to his woes.

He must be up there for a while before his crying ceases. By the time he lifts his head, the last of his tears drying against his cheeks, the sun is just beginning to disappear beyond the horizon. It’s pretty, how it casts light around the shadowy silhouette of the city buildings in the distance. He kind of wants to show it to you. That thought is quickly shut down. He’s going to ask his mother if they can move cities so he doesn’t have to face you again.

Alas, the world just doesn’t seem to be working in his favour today. He hears the rustling of the tree before he sees it. By the time he looks over to investigate, you’re already clambering onto the roof, an oversized fanny pack bursting at the seams with whatever you’ve shoved inside slung over your shoulder.

“Hey!” You greet with a smile, apparently oblivious to the dumbstruck look on his face. “Man, it took forever to find you! If I didn’t see you from the window in my room, I never would have known where you went!”

That was the idea, he laments. He hadn’t wanted to be found.

“Anyway,” you say, plopping down a foot away from him, safely away from the edge of the roof. You swing the fanny pack around so the zip is at your front, and rip it open. Immediately, a tsunami of bandages and band-aids flow forth, fluttering to the tile before you. They’re all sorts of different sizes, but one thing is common across them all – they all have pikachu’s face plastered on them in one way or another. “These are my special band-aids! My mama uses them when I hurt myself, and they always make it heal really quick! I didn’t know how big your owie is, so I brought them all.”

Jungkook is still stunned into silence as you sort through them, organising the chaos at least a little. One of your buns has come loose, he notes. One pigtail, one bun. You look a little more like that wild child he first saw from his window. The knees of your overalls are smeared with dirt, too. He wonders if it got like that while you were looking for him. It makes him feel a little warm inside.

And a little warm outside – his cheeks are starting to burn. He doesn’t remember scratching them too, but maybe he did…?

“Let’s see…” you’re practically just holding a conversation with yourself at this point. He surrenders his leg without protest as you grab it to inspect his knee. “Yep. That’s a big ‘un.”

His whole face has lit on fire. Even his ears feel hot. Is that normal? Probably not. He’d have to ask his mother to take him to the doctor. Maybe he’s dying.

He notices how close you are suddenly, realises this is the first time you’ve been fully alone together (without Poopie), and suddenly he can’t think. Like, at all. He may as well not have a tongue because he can’t remember how to use it anyway.

Somewhere amongst the bandages you’d shoved some tissues. You pull them out now, gently clearing the dirt away from the wounds on his knees. You’re talking as you do it, but his brain is full of static. Your hands are even tinier than his. Is that normal? Wait, no-- they’re the same size. What is he doing…?

Is he going to get in trouble for being alone with a girl…? His mother hasn’t told him about the birds and bees like she said she would yet-- is that what this is? Will he turn into a bird if he gets any warmer? Jungkook doesn’t want to be a bird.

You are placing large plasters over his knees when he finally tunes in to what you’re saying. “… -that last trick was pretty cool, too. It would have been even cooler if you didn’t fall.”

Jungkook squeaks, “You saw that?”

You nod, apparently unaware of his utter humiliation. “Yeah! You’re pretty good on a bike. Can you teach me sometime? I want to show my dad.”

He makes a noise that sounds enough like an affirmation that you accept it, a big grin on your face. For a few more minutes, you finish patching him up.

“There! All done!”

Pikachu stares back up at him from his knees, looking a little wonky because of their shape. The band-aids are a bit wrinkled, but you look so proud of yourself he forces himself to ignore it. He looks up, the words of thanks he took so much courage to summon dying on the tip of his tongue as he sees you.

The setting sun changes the colour of your eyes a bit – it’s pretty, he finds himself thinking. Immediately afterwards, he blushes. Even more embarrassingly, he finds himself unable to help but observe that the sun suits you, actually. Bright, persistent, a little bit sparkly. In the sun’s last reaching rays of afternoon light, you look a bit like you’re glowing.

Of course, Jungkook is used to his silence, but it seems you’re only just noticing it. You seem to misunderstand it’s cause. “Oh, do they hurt?”

Your words tear him from his reverie, and the startled look on his face doesn’t exactly help his case. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realise they were that bad-- oh! I almost forgot the next step! My mum always does this whenever I hurt myself.”

Then, without a second spared for him to prepare himself, you lean over and plant a kiss on each of his bandaged knees.

Jungkook thinks he might explode. The entire neighbourhood is going to see him take off and zip through the sky like a rocket. His earlier thoughts of moving cities and changing his name come back full force.

“There, they hurt less now, right?” But you’re still grinning, still bright as ever with shining eyes hoping for a certain response. Despite himself he takes a moment to assess the level of pain he’s feeling – oddly enough, it does feel a bit better.

There’s no way he can manage to say that, though.

Instead he nods, wide-eyed. You let loose a sigh of relief, muttering about how you didn’t know what you’d do if that didn’t work. He swears he catches the slightest warmth in your cheeks, but doesn’t know whether it’s a trick of the sun.

“Thanks,” he finally manages, his voice just shy of a whisper. You hear him anyway and flash that gap-tooth smile his way.

“Of course! This is what friends are for!”

You think of him as a friend? Jungkook can’t help the dumb smile that rises to his face. He likes that. Friends. As the two of you stay on the roof until moonlight begins to filter through the tree and your parents are calling your name, he thinks he’d like for things to stay that way.

He’d like to be friends with you. Always.

[ellewriteswrongs]

picking favorites (a @tsbandau drabble)

if y’all aren’t emotionally invested in @underdog-arts ‘s band au, idk what y’all are even doing /j

anyway, here’s a wholesome family drabble insp. by the band au and my (not-so) subtle obsession with remus and janus. also subbing to their patreon is the best $5 i’ve probably ever spent, no joke

“Honey, you can still pick up Ry, right?” Janus called down the hallway, carrying a basket of laundry on each hip before depositing them in the hallway to put away later. Remus was seated in their shared office catching up on emails as Janus began packing up leftover pasta into containers to take to their show scheduled that night. 

“I told you I got ‘em,” he agreed, banging the last clumps of his protein shake into his mouth with the heel of his hand. “I’m gonna’ jog to V’s and grab the van.”

Janus nodded to themself out of instinct before faltering, their brow furrowing. 

“Wait—Re, that’s like three miles,” they challenged, dumping the dirtied dishes into the sink. “Just take the fucking car.”

Remus’ snort laugh was audible from down the hallway. 

“They asked for the van!” Remus cackled. “And I, for one, do not disappoint. Apparently making my kid’s friends think they’re cool is worth a three-mile jog.”

Janus rolled their eyes, albeit fondly. This was, unfortunately, not news. 

Riley was having an…interesting phase. It wouldn’t be abnormal for kids their age if it weren’t for the fact that their parents were ridiculously competitive, and all of their parents’ friends were eager to get in on it. 

As soon as Remus attended career day in Riley’s first grade classroom, resulting in the entire class of six-year-olds marveling at the fact that their friend’s dad was a “rock star.”

Janus loved that conversation over dinner that night. 

They weren’t jealous. No, in fact, it was probably overdue for Riley to have a bit of a “Daddy’s kid” phase, considering how joined at the hip they were with Janus for multiple years now. But they wanted to win. 

Riley could make their own decisions about picking a favorite parent. As long as that decision was Janus. 

“You’ve gone so-oft,” they sing-songed, smirking as Remus appeared in the kitchen behind them, wrapping one hand around their hip and pressing a kiss to their temple. “Ry’s got you wrapped around their finger.”

Remus have a flash of his crooked grin. 

“Yeah, well…at least I know where they get that from.”

Janus rolled their eyes, trying to hide their reddening face. 

“Sap,” they grumbled fondly. “Hurry up and get on with your run before you’re late to pickup. And tell V I said hey.”

Remus gave an exasperated chuckle and affirmation, but pocketed his keys and wallet nonetheless. 

The jog to Virgil’s apartment wasn’t a particularly strenuous three miles, being downtown and all, and Remus was far from out of shape. Still, three miles was three miles—especially in the late afternoon sun. Needless to say, Virgil wasn’t thrilled to have a giant sweaty man on his doorstep, but he handed over the keys nonetheless. 

The van was old, still clinging to its axels from when Remus himself purchased it from an old neighbor and declared it the band’s “tour bus.” It was nice enough at the time, especially for the price he paid, but it certainly wasn’t still around for anything more than sentimental value. 

Mainly just Remus refusing to get rid of it. 

That, and the fact that, for whatever reason, Riley thought it was the coolest thing ever. 

The drive wasn’t long, only the sitting in traffic of other parents in minivans trying to get into the school parking lot. He…wasn’t a fan of that part of being a parent, that’s for sure. He could do without any other parents, thank you very much, but at least it was fun to see how obvious all of them were in their distaste of both him and Janus, compared to how much their kid absolutely adored them. 

A fact that was only proven when Remus eventually made it to the parking lot and exited his van, only to be met with ear-splitting squeal of “daddy!” and an armful of six-year-old. 

He can’t deny how, even after all these years, the title still makes him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Like…he is a dad. That’s his kid! How fucking rad is that!

He happens to spot a few other parents, along with some of Riley’s friends that he recognizes, and he offers a quick wave with the hand that isn’t mussing up his kid’s hair. 

“You brought the van,” Riley points out with a toothy grin that Remus can’t help mirroring. He can’t help the knot in his throat when he spots the gap in their teeth from their first ever lost tooth—which only meant they were getting much too old and Remus would really appreciate it if they would slow the fuck down.

“I told you I would, didn’t I?” Riley nods, bouncing on Remus’ hip just a bit out of excitement. “I gotta’ warn you though, JJ’s getting pretty jealous.”

Riley laughs before sticking out their tongue and making a fart noise in Remus’s face. 

Remus is, for the thousandth time, bewildered at how Riley couldn’t possibly be more like Janus if they tried. And mostly smitten. He has the coolest kid on Earth, after all. 

“They can suck my butt!” Riley squeals and Jesus Christ, Remus is going to have a heart attack right there in the parking lot. He’s gonna’ have to grill Jan again to make sure those two aren’t secretly biologically related. 

“Hey, your words not mine, squirt,” he smirks, opening the van door and strapping them into the car seat. “And your early bedtime if you let JJ hear any of that.”

He finishes with a pinch on their nose before closing the van door and getting back in the driver’s seat. 

Riley, as soon as the radio turn on, starts protesting very aggressively to listen to “your songs, daddy! Play your songs!” 

Thankfully, he has a CD burned with some of their…cleaner songs for that exact purpose. 

Riley, for lack of a better word, was ‘singing’ along at a volume that Remus would’ve otherwise found hilarious and impressive if it wasn’t right in his ear. Still, there was a certain fondness that came with watching his kid’s excitement over his work—something that, as usual, was paired with thrashing within the confines of a car seat and headbanging their little heart out. 

Along the drive Remus made every attempt to stop the barrage of the screamo singer in the making, but all were ultimately unsuccessful. At least…until he pointed out one particular building out of a strip mall assortment. 

“Hey, you see that store right there? The one with the red sign?” He spoke up, catching Riley’s eager attention in an instant. They placed both hands on the van window to look out. 

“What is it?” They asked, squinting to try and read what was on the sign. 

“You know the snake on my leg?” Riley nodded, quieting down. “That’s where JJ took me to get it.”

They paused, seemingly putting some pieces together in their head.

“How come you only have one?” They asked, still kicking their legs against their seat. “JJ has lots, how come you don’t have lots too?”

Remus chuckled, continuing along the road as the light turned green. 

“‘Cause I don’t need another one. They’re very expensive, you know.”

“Is it ‘cause you’re a wimp?” 

Remus choked on his own spit. 

“N-no,” he choked out, laughing. “No I’m not, I just think it looks better this way.”

He didn’t bother looking into the backseat to see what Riley thought of that answer, but if the return to karaoke that followed was any indication, they were not impressed. Still, he’d probably take the teasing over the screaming, but kids are kids. 

Even as they pulled into their driveway, Remus had to strategically dodge Riley’s flailing limbs in order to un-fasten the seatbelts on their car seat and actually get them in the house. Apparently the music was not as vital to the ‘sing-along’ as he’d hoped it was when he turned the car off. 

“Alright, alright, calm those legs down before you knock my teeth out, will ya’?” Remus teased, placing Riley on his shoulders where they instantly took fistfuls of his hair to hold on. Riley toned down the velocity, but otherwise did not stop. “Careful, squirt, if you wanna’ kick so bad, I’m signing you up to play soccer.”

Riley stopped almost instantaneously, gripping Remus’ hair even tighter as they headed back inside the house, Riley’s tiny backpack slung around Remus’ forearm. 

“Nooo,” they wailed, half punctuated by laughter that echoed through the house. 

“What are we complaining about?” Janus spoke, leaning against the doorway across the room with a fond smile. 

“He said if I kick him in the teeth I have to play soccer,” Riley whined, attempting to climb down from Remus’ shoulders on their own. Janus snorted a laugh before swiftly crossing the room to collect their child and place them on their hip. 

“Wow, your daddy’s so mean,” Janus agreed, raising a challenging eyebrow as they stood in front of their husband. Remus pouted before bending down to steal a kiss.

“Gross,” Riley giggled, pressing a hand on each of their parents’ faces to separate them. 

“Gross?” Janus smirked. “Well in that case, maybe your dad was being a bit unfair.”

Riley turned to Remus to stick out their tongue at him. 

“I mean, soccer? That’s just ridiculous,” Janus continued, a mischievous glint in their eyes. “We’ll obviously have to sign you up for football instead. A punt like that has got to be put to good use.”

Riley immediately went back to their dramatized complaining, this time reaching desperately for Remus to get him to take them back from Janus—to which Remus just held up his hands in mock innocence.

“No can do, kid,” he smirked. “The punishment has to fit the crime, after all.”

Riley continued their attempts to wiggle out of Janus’ unyielding grip.

“Never!” They declared, trying a different approach of reaching over Janus’ shoulder to escape from behind. “I won’t! I won’t do it, I promise!”

Remus and Janus both knew they wouldn’t actively try to hurt either of them, but sometimes it was just more fun to assert rules when it came with shrieking laughter and climbing their parents like a jungle gym.

“Well, now you know where we stand,” Remus spoke in false authority, reaching for one of Riley’s tiny shoes and holding it up to address it as if it were in control of their legs. “I better not see you around these parts again, ya’ hear?” He added in an over-the-top western accent, gesturing to his face. 

Riley squealed with laughter as he held out his hand for a handshake and they shook it with their accused foot. 

“Alright, alright, you two,” Janus intervened with fond exasperation. “Snacks are on the counter, take it or leave it.”

Riley whipped their head around to peer into the kitchen, cheering when they spotted two plates on the kitchen counter, each with a toaster waffle piled high with blueberries. 

“Second…breakfast!” They cheered, drumroll-ing on their leg before whooping and slinking out of Janus’ grip and climbing up onto the kitchen barstools. Remus, giving a fond eye-roll at the enthusiasm, turned to drape his arms over Janus’ shoulders from behind, perching his chin on top of their head. 

“They get it from you, you know,” he mumbled, smirking at the scoff it earned him. 

“Shut up,” Janus grumbled, the smile evident in their voice. “That is all you.”

“Babe, sports are a threat in this house,” he teased. “You’re telling me that came from me?”

“Yeah, I’ll take that one,” they chided, turning around to face their husband. “As long as you’re aware that the energy, the volume—honey, that’s all you.”

Remus quirked his brow with a proud smirk. 

“Or maybe it’s the fact that they sleep for fourteen hours and we haven’t even had eight in the last six years,” he challenged knowingly. “You know, I happen to remember that back in the day…that bed was hardly even for sleeping.”

Janus snorted, their face reddening slightly.

“Is it bad to think of those as the ‘good old days’ already?”

Remus swept a piece of their hair out of their face. 

“Hell no, dude. We lived like kings back then,” he chuckled. “How ‘bout this—I’ll get Ro to take ‘em to the park or something this weekend and I’ll dick you down just like old times, ‘kay?”

Janus sputtered out a cackle, smacking Remus on the chest before covering his mouth with their hand.

“Fucking christ, they’re like two yards away,” they hissed, still laughing. “I am not going to be the one fielding questions about what getting dicked down means, oh my god.”

“You say that like they listen to anything when there’s food in front of them,” Remus countered, nodding in the direction of their kid as Janus rolled their eyes with a chuckle. 

“Now that, is from you,” they grinned, jabbing him in the side with their elbow. 

“Hey, it’s not my fault you’re serving up delicacies like toaster waffles,” Remus said, raising his hands in mock defense. 

Janus gave him a look before crossing their arms. 

“Yeah, well, you’re lucky I know you can’t go two hours without food. Go on, there’s one for you, even if it’s probably cold by now,” they teased as Remus excitedly kissed their forehead before practically running to the kitchen. He hopped up to sit on the counter, folding each toaster waffle like a blueberry-filled taco before funneling them into his mouth. 

Janus followed close behind—at a normal pace, thank you very much—and took the actual seat next to their kid, sipping at the cup of tea they had left on the counter before the two had returned home as they listened to Riley regaling their day at school.

———

Realistically, Remus probably should’ve seen it coming. He was a couple days past his previous record of days as Riley’s “favorite” and he knew he likely didn’t have much longer before Janus dethroned him again, but he certainly hadn’t expected the scene he walked in on that night. 

He had heard hushed laughter coming from one of their house’s bathrooms that evening, assuming at first that Janus was just handling Riley’s bath or something like that, but as he cleaned up the mess from their dinner and finished washing the rest of their dishes, he was surprised to find they were still in there. So obviously he had to investigate. 

He knocked on the door, rolling his eyes fondly as shushing and giggles came from within. 

“Everything good in there?” He teased, leaning against the door. “I gotta’ say, I’m a little hurt I didn’t get invited to whatever club this is that hangs out in the bathroom.”

More giggles followed by the oh-so familiar sound of Janus’ shushing. 

“I guess I’ll just have to find out for myself what all the fuss is about,” he sing-songed, slowly creaking open the door before letting out a snort laugh at the scene before him. 

Janus was seated on the edge of the bathtub, wash cloth in hand, as Riley sat on the sink counter, covered on all limbs with temporary tattoos. At least the pieces of tape that Janus had cut into circles and colored black to look like ear gauges were admittedly cute. 

“Oh, I see how it is,” he smirked from against the doorframe. 

“JJ said you’re a wimp,” Riley proudly announced. “I was right.”

Janus stuck their tongue out and made a spitting noise and…yeah, that was their kid alright. Not that Remus would have it any other way. 

[thistle-01]

Just another CHCH idea // TW: passive death wish, aka suicidal ideation

Modern day AU where it wasn’t Harris village that was razed to the ground it was Choi Han’s entire family and because the fire was a freak accident, no one’s fault, CH falls deeper and deeper into himself, no outlet. He becomes severely depressed but can’t picture himself actively offing himself so he just trudges through each day, unable to die, unable to live.

He doesn’t care when the guy next door to his new place moves out.

Doesn't care when someone else moves in.

He does care when the muffled wails of a baby keep him from sleep for three nights in a row, and he bangs on the wall, sleep deprived and pissy.

After a moment the person on the other side of the wall bangs back, making Choi Han glare incredulously at the wall, but he decides to let it go.

New kid, new parent. He used to take care of his little cousins so he knows how difficult it can be. He remembers the colic, he remembers the spit ups and giggles and laughing as they sat around for dinne—

He realizes that the new guy moving in may affect him more than he initially realized.

Morning comes and goes and CH gets ready for work.

Before the fire he’d been planning to take up bodyguarding as an occupation, it seemed like it suited him, it felt right. Without the training which he couldn’t afford due to obvious reasons though no one would hire him, so he turned to gym training. He’s a personal trainer.

He fetches his bag and fetches his towels and he’s about to leave his apartment when there’s a ding on his intercom.

When he looks through the screen there’s a person who’s unfamiliar but he was gonna leave anyway so he just meets them at the door.

”What is it?”

The person looks surprised when he sees Choi Han standing there and CH knows it’s because he’s kind of tall and imposing.

He doesn’t do anything to make them more comfortable though, he’s on a timer, and the guy just stammers, makes him sign to receive a package which CH does bc again no time to argue that he hasn’t ordered anything.

It’s only at the gym that he finds a break to open the package, it’s addressed to him with his apartment number, no name. Inside he finds a fucking fruit basket and a note:

Should have written this earlier but I have a newborn. It may get loud. Apologies for the inconvenience.

TBC

- CH resigned to suffer through baby

- CH reliving his most painful memories again bc baby

- guy next door’s little gifts being about the only thing that keeps him from just upping and moving but some of the stuff he gets are damn nice and maybe sort of worth it? Maybe

- guy next door always attaching little notes to his gifts

- guy next door‘s notes sometimes being sarcastic and witty, and sometimes kind of rude but also funny

- CH replying to one and attaching it to guy next door’s door on a whim

- guy next door attaching a phone number to his next gift

- CH texting guy next door bc why not if he’s some kind of serial killer maybe he’ll—

- CH and guy next door exchanging texts

- texts starting off irregular, stilted, but eventually they increase without them even recognizing that they do because apparently they’re both lonely fucks who have no real friends but a lot on their chests

- guy next door still being guy next door, literally that’s the name attached to the contact in CH’s phone bc out of some silent agreement they still haven’t exchanged names

- CH telling guy next door about the fire

- guy next door telling CH about his family (they’re dead too, only his son left and even then he’s apparently adopted)

- CH having a bad day at work and seriously considering suicide. there had been multiple factors, but the worst was probably it being 5/5, children’s day and a bunch of families gathering in the park right in front of the gym. They looked happy. CH remembered being that happy.

- CH holding a knife in his hand and surrounded by alcohol but on a whim - he seems to have a lot of those - texting guy next door

- CH telling himself if guy next door doesn’t reply within the next twenty minutes it will be a sign but guy next door replying instantly

- CH calling guy

- “How’s your son?” “He’s fine?” “…remember to love him as much as possible.” “Is something wrong? You sound off,”

- CH gripping the knife in his hand

- CH letting go

- CH sobbing wetly into the phone with a call to the guy whose name he doesn’t even fucking know but somehow relying on him anyway. He doesn’t know how this happened. How did this happen?

- CH telling guy everything and after a loaded silence guy asking CH like he’s about to break, like he’s fragile, whether he wants to come over, in fact just do it I’ll be home soon

- CH numbly collecting himself and somehow dressing himself with minimal effort and opening the door to walk over to his place

- CH finding a man standing in front of the door next to his, who’s stunning through the tears in his eyes but he doesn’t care too much about that - does he? - because he feels so shitty

- guy, who’s apparently a slightly scarred but handsome enough to be a model type of guy, and despite CH expecting the same subtle pity and concern he’d heard over the phone, greeting him blandly and ordering CH to come in like he’s discussing a fucking history book

- guy being named KRS

- CH being named, well, CH

- CH marinating in his own depression after the shock of guy - no, KRS’s physical form has worn out

- KRS looking at him with an unidentifiable expression

- KRS appearing to think for a minute and then leaving the room and CH dimly hears him opening a door but he’s too spent to hear much more than that

- KRS returning and CH meaning to look up but before he can something warm and squirming and kind of squishy is plopped into his lap

- “this is the terror I told you about. Say hello Raon.”

- Raon being the cutest fucking baby CH has ever seen aside from his cousins and baby sibling

- Raon giggling and squealing with laughter and clutching CH like there isn’t a single good reason he shouldn’t trust CH when in about a second CH can list at least five

- CH being unable to do anything but curl his hands reflexively around warm baby because of said giggling and squealing and clutching

- CH mumbling his concern that baby is too open to strangers despite knowing that at this age it’s perfectly natural

- KRS replying that Raon is a better judge of character than him and wrapping something around CH’s shoulders before turning on a giant ass TV

- KRS and CH and a drooling happy Raon watching Disney movies

- CH unintentionally spending the night bc he fell asleep to Alice in wonderland songs and woke up smelling traditional Korean food and the tunes of soft jazz on a radio

- ”are you hungry?” and CH unable to pull away bc he’s still kind of fragile and tender feeling and the baby is thankfully gone now but nope he’s sitting in his high chair and there’s good food on a table and KRS is looking blandly at him with his good looks and invisible kindness and CH is only human

- CH leaving the next morning before KRS is awake but KRS pretending to sleep so he doesn‘t pressure him

- KRS thinking he’s really dodged a bullet, humans are so much work, he just wants to slack-

- CH going home and putting the knife still on the floor back into its shelf and cleaning his place top to bottom on a sudden urge to be productive

- KRS and CH going back to texts and an occasional phone call like before

- KRS and CH’s interactions being different from before though in that when Raon cries through the wall CH plays baby shark or soft jazz and baby’s cries turns to coos and KRS sends him another basket in the morning

- KRS and CH somehow seeing each other more often

- KRS and CH greeting each other on the elevator

- CH deciding to see a psychiatrist

- KRS driving him to his first appointment

- “have fun.” “this is supposed to be fun?” “For me it is, I finally get a break from you and your drama,” and CH seeing right through KRS and taking a chance and reaching over to squeeze KRS’s hand on the gear

- “thanks,” and KRS looking bland but with a twist of a smile as CH heads in and watching him go

- CH making progress

- CH taking antidepressants and settling down after a month and he doesn’t have relapses for a year and decides to finally put an end to the fragile push and pull he and KRS have been dancing around all this time

- CH inviting him over for dinner

- CH making all the preparations, smiling to himself at providing for KRS this time, excited kind of at the thought that he’s going to put That Smile on KRS’ face and the doorbell ringing

- CH saying hi and KRS looking at him with an unreadable expression for a second before there’s a warmth at his lips and then it’s gone

- “took you long enough,” and CH knows KRS doesn’t mean it bc he’s looking at him quietly and like he’s quietly proud and there’s a soft, reserved sort of affection lining his smile and CH just wants to hold him forever, never let go

- so he does

- over the years they have their ups and downs, with KRS’s own emotional baggage, and CH‘s depression, and Raon grows up and demands more siblings and they decide, yeah look it’s time to get hitched here’s the ring

- they live happily ever after

the end

[autisticzukka]

what is this hakoda zuko arranged marriage you speak of? i am intrigued

okay so the long story short is that it’s a slight rebuttal of a popular post that is very fun but i find like... unrealistic in a really intriguing way like, how would this ACTUALLY play out. I’ve talked about it at length in my server a few times, and it’s one of those AU’s -- like the genderbend zukka ATLA rewrite or the zukki fic that starts with sokka failing to assassinate zuko -- that lives rent free in my head and I’ve written a couple thousand words for.

tw for like VERY unrequited zuko in love with hakoda and the inherent comedy of sokka being in love with his fire nation stepmom.

so here’s hakoda, chief of the southern water tribe, happily not-married to Bato. and here is a more balanced war, where the north and the south are actually  allies, rather than whatever the fuck they were in ATLA. Yue already has a fiance and the Northern chief refuses to remarry. that leaves hakoda responsible for biting the bullet and doing a political marriage even though, as he points out at length, he is an elected official and if he stops being elected it’s no longer a marriage with the chief of the south pole. intelligently but mostly selfishly motivated (yue’s fiance is his nephew, after all) pakku points out that its not like the fire nation knows... that. the fire nation is dumb. ozai’s stupid.

faced with such inarguable points hakoda stiffens his upper lip, pre-emptively ends things with bato on the understanding that if this is another kya situation they’ll get back together and that he’s still the most important person to him but the tribe comes first yada yada, and deals with katara throwing the mother of all tantrums. it is slightly softened by the fact that in return for him marrying the fire nation noble, a thing everyone can agree isn’t traditional, the north has finally agreed to train katara. she heads out before the wedding, in protest but also so as to not cause an international incident.

(on her way, she’ll find aang. with the war less dire, katara will be sympathetic towards his desire to live without committing violence, even if she deeply can’t relate. they’ll have a hot girl romcom summer of self discovery and coming to terms with the dichotomy between duty and love as they become master benders. at some point they pick up toph. they ARE a throuple.)

sokka meanwhile is like.. not cool with it.. but ? kind of relieved? like. he’s the eldest kid. he’s 18, and he’s been a man of the tribe as far as legalities for several years. it would have been entirely understandable if his dad had asked HIM to do it. he had his emotionally crushing romance with yue, and as much as he was like ‘im kind of a prince’, he finds he doesn’t actually want some of the responsibilities and demands that would bring. yue’s life sucks.

back in the fire nation, zuko never demanded a quest and never went on it. he’s spent years hardening into something that, while brittle, can survive the pressures of the court around him. he still has his scar. he still wants his father to love him, but he knows by now that it’s not something he’s capable of earning. he watches his sister, never the most stable person, start to have complete breakdowns of sanity once she hits puberty, and helps her cover for it and receive medical treatment on the down low. he’s the heir, but he lives knowing that if he was ever in a position to inherit his choices are to abdicate or have the baby sister who he raised kill him and destroy herself and the country in the process.

when he realizes the plan is to marry azula off rather than someone more reasonable-- mai is RIGHT there, for fucks sake-- he doesn’t realize ozai’s true intent is to fuck this up through malicious compliance and false shows of good faith. he panics, and does the zuko thing: he blurts out that this is unacceptable and immoral and she’s only 16 and Ozai sees the true opportunity for two birds with one stone. send zuko, let him piss someone off so badly he gets killed or divorced, and he gets rid of zuko from the line of succession permanently. there are those who are incredibly attached to teh idea of a firstborn for firelord, and it’s been a constant thorn in unpopular ozai’s side to nto be able to name azula his heir apparent without costly rebellion. but if he can taint him in the mind of the fire nation so much that birthright is easy to supercede-- yeah. this’ll work PERFECTLY.

so zuko is sent to marry hakoda, chief of the water tribe.

literally NO ONE was expecting it to be a member of Ozai’s immediate family. besides the fact that his oldest child is half hakoda’s age and his brother has 20 years on hakoda, it would have been sus as fuck - the treaty is not favorable enough to grant that kind of secession of interests. it becomes quickly apparent that this young man -- hakoda reminds himself of that repeatedly. not kid. not kid. young man. don’t think of him like a kid, it’s hard enough on both of us already. -- is not a horrible threat. he’s scared shitless and shakes with what he thinks is bravado. he’s desperate to make the marriage work. he’s desperate to not go home. he’s got a giant fucking scar on his face from where the fire lord punished him for some grievous but unstated offense.

zuko “daddy issues” fire nation sees his husband to be and, despite being scared shitless, immediately begins to soften a little. like... he’s not nearly as scary as he thought he’d be. his face can be stern, but it just as easily breaks into huge smiles, and his eyes are crinkled with laughter. he’s incredibly handsome. and his biceps are. his biceps. are. his hands are...

like. zuko thinks. okay. maybe. maybe his marriage duties. won’t be so horrible as he thought. maybe he’s ready for this. and he knows what to expect, Uncle had discreetly provided him the means and the contacts to acquire an intimate education in the whirlwind of activity that was the two months before leaving. and like, once he’d gotten past the nerves, it was often even... good? or at least... not bad? he thinks that even if hakoda isn’t a professional expert, he has a certain.... je ne sais quoi, if you will.

((DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF DILF))

sokka sees his new stepfather and immediately falls in love because he’s that kind of dumb bitch. (the core of this au is that i cant breathe thinking about sokka falling in love with his hot young stepmom his age who his dad doesnt even want to fuck. like. i CANT. sokka masturbates to ‘hand caught in the washing tub’ fantasies which are even more absurd for requiring zuko to be DOING LAUNDRY. i find it so funny.)

bato watches them at the wedding feast while hakoda is very clearly trying to treat zuko as an Equal Adult Partner and mostly managing to seem like someone having a serious conversation with a seven year old about the game they’ve made up. zuko is clearly enamored with it, soaking up the attention, blushing and doing his best to Bravely Flirt, which at one point includes awkwardly attempting to feed Hakoda by hand. bato has to excuse himself to have a teary eyed giggle, hoping that Kya is in the spirit world looking down and laughing with him. he can’t resent the kid even a little bit, when hakoda is sitting there looking so incredibly fucking befuddled as to what he’s supposed to do with this star struck infant he’s legally wed to

anyways all of this... is very funny. their wedding night... is less so. zuko does not take the rejection from hakoda very well, especially because he’d been caught wanting. HE’S the one who should be rejecting hakoda. and he catastrophizes almost immediately about his potential value to the water tribe, his future treatment, that endless inescapable freezing cold loneliness is the good ending for him here... hakoda, meanwhile, drops zuko off at his home, reassuringly informs him that there’s NOTHING else expected of him and he will be well taken care of, and books it to bato’s. bato refuses to let him in on grounds of ‘you can’t sleep under the same shelter as me on your wedding night to that kid, have a fucking brain’, and he ends up crashing at sokka’s.

sokka, who had KNOWN that his dad wouldnt, but also upon seeing zuko and zuko’s awkward flirting was like... but how COULDNT he???? sokka is relieved.

the core of this fic is that i find it endlessly hilarious for zuko to try and seduce his husband while sokka simps around zuko and bato tries to be heartbroken or betrayed but mostly ends up with a giant case of hysterical schadenfreude. but the thing that CLINCHED it for me, like THE scene. several years after being married, settled into their life. they’re partners and they see each other as people. and zuko just fucking snaps one night

he just kisses him, desperate and clawing and climbing and maybe a little drunk. he knows hakoda is going to push him away, maybe even hit him, but he doesn’t care anymore, he doesn’t care. he can do anything he wants to him as long as he just-- finally does something. zuko is 21 and married to the surface of the sun and the surface of the sun jr is his best friend and clearly in love with him-- so clearly not even zuko can miss it-- and like. listen. listen. zuko is not a patient person. but he’s been patient for this. he waited and he matured and he is a fucking amazing husband and he wants this, he wants him. he wants to be wanted.

but hakoda doesn’t push him away. hakoda doesnt yell at him, or hit him. hakoda gentles the kiss into something soft and closed lipped. he pulls away slowly, and his eyes are so sad for zuko, so pitying. he strokes his cheek with the back of his hand so gently. he says, I’m sorry. I don’t want you.

and zuko daddy issues fire nation swallows

and he nods

and he leaves, even though its his own fucking house

and he knows he’s never going to be good enough

like FUUUCK i am OBSESSED WITH THAT

[janiedean]

if you ever wrote that rant about grrm making jon his chosen one deconstruction i'd be very happy to read it 👀

hello anon sorry for the lateness but here we go *deep breath*

sssooo, I had once ranted about it though not mentioning the thing I mentioned in those tags so lemme see if I can find the op and like... cp the main argument and amend it bc it was long, but okay so I found it, original anon asked me: why is Jon considered to be one of the most special characters grrm created? Why is he not the typical hero of fantasy books?, my original answer was here if anyone wants to go there but basically lemme just cp the first part making it shorter and then I'm adding:

first thing, the Typical Post-Tolkien Chosen One With A Shitty Life Before He Finds Out He Is Chosen™ character (I’m saying post-tolkien because every fantasy writer in existence who copies tolkien thinks that lotr went like that and instead it didn’t) usually goes through the following steps: his life sucks up until the beginning of the series, his family generally hates him/her or doesn’t appreciate them or abuses them or anyway doesn’t make their life easier and they’ve never known any different, but *something* never quite worked right and they always knew something was missing in their life, they just didn’t know why. suddenly someone who knows they were Chosen™ shows up and tells them that they’re actually Special because of this this and that and they have a quest to go on to save the world or something. our hero/heroine obviously is finally validated and while their quest is hard and full of hardships and maybe they lose a few friends along the way, finding out that they were Chosen gives their life meaning, they usually find love/friends/everything they didn’t have before until they fulfill the Prophecy™ and live more or less happily ever after, possibly after hooking up with the Person Of Their Dreams with whom they had UST up until the last twenty pages of the book. basically: being Chosen™ in regular fantasy novels is a good thing because suddenly you’re special and all the crap you suffered acquires a new meaning and in the end it made your life better.

jon snow is a complete overhaul of about everything in this sense because

instead of having a family who hates him he has a family who actually mostly loves him, and with ned it’s arguably so much that he risks royal treason by keeping him hidden from his *best friend* - sure, there’s cat and peripherally sansa, but his issues stem from the fact that he feels lesser because he’s a bastard (as far as he knows) and it’s a *class* issue, not a *my family hates me* issue not counting catelyn obv but that's what gives him freudian issues more on that in the emended part later

no one actually knows that he’s Chosen™ - like mel could get there and probably will and someone will put two and two together when his parentage comes out in the open, but he doesn’t have a gandalf or mentor who shows him The Way Towards His Quest

so instead of going from ‘my life sucks but I’m going on a quest which is gonna be a+’ he actively chooses to leave a fairly decent situation (a household he knows, siblings who love him - ned actually hoped he’d become robb’s counselor or right hand man or something from what we can gather) because he feels like he has to prove he’s better than his name and goes to the Crappiest Place In Westeros. like idk if people grasp it, but the wall is basically a prison and at the ripe age of fourteen he decides that it’s totally a good and honorable choice (his only choice actually) to go defend the realm in the freezing cold along with a bunch of criminals/derelicts/rejects of society

at which point he makes friends among said rejects and let’s remember that it’s the point where he actually has to do his first an only privilege when donal noye made him go like hey you were brought up with nobles these ppl are here because they stole bread, and that helps making him more into the person he is rn but like your tyopical fantasy hero who has had a shitty life doesn’t usually have to acknowledge that other people might have had it worse

then he goes on the Quest where he finds his first One True Love, and that’s where it turns even worse because usually the quest is where things start to go right for the Hero™, instead for jon they start to go wronger, because first he has to go undercover which pretty much tests most of his belief/code system, he falls in love with a girl he has to betray, half of his friends and his lord commander die along the way, while he’s off doing his thing winterfell gets taken/burned and robb dies when jon openly stated that he also was going to the wall to defend his family and keep them safe (yeaaah worked out real well), when he goes back to the wall he has to fight the people he lived with for months, the woman he loves dies in his arms and he can’t do anything about it and he’s aware it couldn’t have gone any other way, people put defending the wall on him and then put his loyalty in question, when stannis shows up with a legitimization (which is everything he ever wanted) he refuses because he doesn’t want to accidentally steal his siblings’s inheritance (which was what cat was so worried about hahaha) and actively chooses the crappy defending the realm life all over again. also in all this time his being Chosen™ hasn’t manifested or helped him in any way whatsoever - actually all his honor-moral code related baggage is what  moral dilemmas come from that. like, your usual chosen hero™ would always take the right decision and it all turns out good eventually, jon takes the morally right decision and it all turns SOUR eventually

at this point he finally gets elected LC, thanks to his friends also pitching in, which is about the one fantasy hero™ thing that’s happened for now. should be good, yes?

lol no, because he ends up with THAT hellish responsibility at sixteen, since he thinks that he has absolutely to be even better than that now and he has very specific notions about how you should lead and he knows he has to take unpopular decisions/decisions that he doesn’t necessarily like, he ends up either having to send his friends away forreal (sam) or detaching from them (pyp/grenn/the likes) and when as far as he knows he learns that his sister is married to ramsay he can’t do anything about it

never mind that it’s the same situation as when he had to pick the watch or robb in book one - he went there to defend his family and now being there actually prevents him from helping them in person. ops. meanwhile he’s trying to implement a new vision of things which is modern and smart and actually makes sense because why fighting the wildlings when you have ZOMBIES coming. your usual Chosen One™ would get people to approve just because he’s the Chosen One

instead jon gets stabbed to death - okay, that was also because he wanted to go get arya but it was the last straw, people were pissed over the wildlings plan first and foremost

so basically he’s gone through all the Chosen One™ steps but in reverse - he loses his family which did love him instead of finding another one that makes the first pale in comparison, he does find a new one who loves him but has to alienate most of its members for responsibility reasons as a consequence of what should have been the crowning achievement of his life choices (which eventually is NOT one), he falls in love and they don’t drag the UST forever but they never get a chance to be together without small print in between, he chooses the admittedly most masochistic life he could for his family as well and half of them die and he can’t do a thing for the other half, every other mentor-like figure he runs into after ned dies, instead of finding validation he ends up having to isolate himself and on top of everything HE STILL DOESN’T FUCKING KNOW HE’S THE CHOSEN ONE™

so instead of his life going better the more he learns stuff and matures as a person, he gets murdered. by the people he trusts and who were supposed to be his new family. haha?

never mind that when he finds out he’s the Chosen One™ it won’t bring him closure because all he ever wanted was being full stark like his father/siblings and then bam he’s going to find out his father’s actually targaryen and what does that even mean to him?

on top of that being AA will just be a pain because I don’t believe for a second he’s not going to get leftover ptsd and who the hell is gonna help him deal with it? or how is he ever getting over his *brothers* murdering him? and people are going to ask stuff of him all over again and he’s gonna have to go slay a mythical monster and if I know grrm it’s not gonna be fun, pretty or cathartic FOR HIM

on top of that, Chosen Hero™ fulfills the prophecy and gets a realm to rule and everyone lives happily ever after. money is that if jon does get that realm (and I think he is because he has the best claim if he's legitimate and most likely it'll turn out he was on the targ side but ROBB also legitimized him so he has double the legitimization), he’s going to hate every second of it and he’ll take it because a) duty, b) literally no one else is available, and like this guy didn’t want to rule a realm or be a king or anything he just wanted to be a stark, and instead he’s going to have to after all that shit thanks to Magical And Noble Heritage he hadn’t even known he had and probably didn’t even want up to that point because since when jon wanted to be a targ? yeah since never

obviously I hope he manages to be somewhat happy regardless because the alternative is too miserable, but basically being a Chosen Hero™ is what makes jon’s life worse rather than better and the fact that hew went through all the regular self-discovery journey for the fantasy hero list doesn’t mean he’s not flipping that over in his sl. the fact that he stayed a decent person more or less throughout it and that he hasn’t turned into a bitter asshole also doesn’t change the main point XD

tldr: jon snow is not a typical fantasy hero because he deconstructs that trope into tiny little bits same as robb deconstructed the arthurian flawless king hero trope

now ^^^^^ THAT was what I originally wrote for that meta but adding on to what I said in those tags

okay so... there is a certain tendency to also make the chosen one™ special in the sense that he's kind of goals - good looking, rich or set to inherit, gallant, takes the initiative, he's like.. social or anyway immediately makes friends etc and all that jazz which jon... doesn't really fit

like jon is an introvert who immediately makes friends just with outcasts and his siblings also bc he feels like one but he's hardly a social butterfly and charms everyone wherever he walks by

I mean ffs says all that the only person he charmed in that sense is stannis who is the literal only person in charge in the books who is more introvert than him and has worse communication issues and appreciates ppl going straight to the point

on top of that in the book he looks like ned.... and arya looks like ned and ned isn't described as being particularly handsome that was brandon so he's not even like... I mean kit h. is v. pretty and I think he was a good choice for the role and I'll die on the hill that he was born to play that character and he did it well but book!jon doesn't have that kinda pretty face so the concept that he's the HOT alternative to anyone to me is kind of iffy bc he's not

he's shit at social interactions and at PR which is why robb and him would have been a key winning ticket like he has a better idea of the larger picture but robb would have actually made sure ppl didn't turn against them bc he actually was good at that but like he doesn't go around rallying armies in his name does he

the one time he's been with a girl it was ygritte and like he courted her without realizing it and then she had to pursue him and he barely knew wtf to do on top of the fact that they slept with ghost in the middle of them like a sword which..... is.... I mean sleeping with the sword in the middle was a thing to make sure the maiden stayed a maiden and he's the one who is like i CAN'T HAVE SEX WITH HER EVEN IF I WANT TO BECAUSE I'M TECHNICALLY SPYING ON THEM like... he's not... gallant-knight coded

never mind that the moment they do the do she basically does everything until he decides to try the oral which I mean... isn't exactly alphadominatingmale out of jon which is not a given with the trope he's supposed to represent like he's not smooth he's not suave he's like WHAT THE FUCK when ygritte tells him he has a pretty face bc most likely no one else told him that and he like... doesn't pursue people like that in general which is also not exactly 100% what that trope usually goes for

we can add that he has a lot of passive-aggressive little shit sarcasm in him that they didn't let him go for in the show but like... usually chosen heroes™ don't think what he thinks about selyse in general

we can also add that he's not automatically above being better than his position like... he doesn't take winterfell bc ygritte is dead but he did think he'd have taken the deal sansa or not if stannis had said he could marry her and not val and if she wasn't dead, he basically went off the rails at the dude he was fighting with thinking about robb telling him that he couldn't be lord of wf because he was a bastard and he's absolutely not in the frame of mind of 'well I was born a bastard who cares it doesn't define me'

he's obsessed to the point of unhealthy with actually being defined by it which is why he was better off with the wildlings aka the only idiots in the realm who don't gaf about that

and that's like... I mean usually if chosen ones™ have parental issues it's like 'you were an orphan and raised by asses who weren't your parents but your parents loved you and you'll find out at some point and you'll be happier for it and make your own family', jon is like... he has the mommy freudian issues of the century bc of how cat treated him, on the other side he's obsessed with living up to ned's/his father's name and he hates that it makes him not-belonging or that he feels like he doesn't even if he does with his siblings, and at the same time when the truth about it comes out he's going to get the cold shower of the century bc like - he's spent all that time thinking BUT DID MY MOTHER WANT ME WHO WAS MY MOTHER and he's going to find out of who it was and how he was born and honestly considering that lyanna most likely did regret running with rhaegar the moment he finds that out and that she died birthing him how is he going to feel? - also he spends his life wanting to live up to his 'father's' name aka ned aka someone known to be honorable to a fault and then it turns out his bio father is... the dude who started that entire rebellion not doing a very honorable thing? - also if jon*erys is a thing idt that he'd take 'I fell in love with my aunt' so nonchalantly as he did in the show tldr: he's never gonna get over his parental issues in a short time and when that particular brick hits him in the face it won't be pretty

like the entire point of jon is that he goes through all the chosenone™ cursus honorum as we'd call it in high school when studying latin but each step that means smth good for the usual chosenone™ to him is something bad, being one is not going to make his life better and throughout the entire thing he does not fit that stereotype when it comes to look, personality, basic traits and familial history and like hell he's going to have the happy ending tied up with the bow - like I think he gets a bittersweet one and eventually goes off with the wildlings bc he belongs there after being jon snow first of his name (bc like hell he's not reclaiming his bastard background at the end of this entire mess I'm eating my hat if he doesn't) after splitting the seven realms and fixing things but that's hardly the neat happy ending the chosenone™ usually gets so that's my two cents

... christ this was long *raises hands*

[sydneyshipsstuff]

so uh last night at like 4 am i couldnt sleep, decided to walk my dog, and came up with this bad boy. It’s a rough draft, though. um @professional-benaddict read it and told me to post it, so whatever rafni says goes. 

-Little! Peter with like everyone lmao (platonically), but main pairing is Tony x Peter. everyone is 18+ and Littles are known. but yeah, I call this “uncanonically Canon AU” because it follows canon character tropes (except Peter).

----------------

so i LOVE the doctor trope w stephen and tony to death, like probably a lil too much, but hear me out

--canon tony and the avengers with not canon (aka powerless) little peter

--im thinking how they met is before peter became classified as a little, he was smart smart. so, he still gets the internship, but a real one this time.

--hes hanging out with the other interns when he feels himself regress. he freaks and goes to hide in a bathroom or something

--he runs into (probably pepper??) someone and they help him get out of the tower because he's obviously very vulnerable

--they (pepper?) take him to the hospital to get tested and find out hes a high care little. once they find out peter freaks out because omg he cant work like this

--(pepper?) assures him that they will figure it our, but with no CG, and just for plot sake, he also is living alone at this point so they dont feel comfortable sending him home, so he stays overnight, at least, in the hospital

--(pepper?) goes to talk to tony himself about this since hes the one who chose and hired the interns. tony isnt quite sure what to do because peter is one of the best in their group

--(pepper?) suggests that he go have a one on one talk with peter and see what the boy wants to do with his future, and also meet with the doctors to see what they think is best for his future

--now, tony has met peter a few times, and the kid is pretty cool, but he never really cared about him (harsh, but canon tony is pretty reserved so yuh) so, when he goes into the hospital room to talk with him, hes mentally preparing to never see peter again

--but, when he walks in, he sees peter sat on a cot carefully coloring in an avengers coloring book, and his entire aura is different and /adorable/

--as if he wasnt already kinda done for, when peter notices he's there, he looks up, eyes blown wide and a kid-like face on full of awe

--he sits on the end of the bed and they simply stare at each other before peter finally gets the courage to ask why tony is there, stuttering through it like an adorable mess

--tony freaks out, because as good as peter is, he planned on letting peter down, but now that hes here, all he wants is to see the boy.

--instead he smooths his nervousness and easily asks about how the boy is doing. he asks if peter has a CG, and predicably, peter just sadly shakes his head

--anyways i dont really know how this part would be worded, and it probably wouldnt happen in just one day, but eventually tony asks peter if he wants tony to take care of him

--peter is a cutie and accepts, again dont really have this part planned out, im akward when it comes to writing about the adopting of a little

--he goes with tony and since he lives in the tower, he also gets the avengers as glorified CGs. now this is the part i LOVE

***added part by Rafni:

"I’d imagine that Peter would just be kept in the hospital, like he doesn’t need any meds nor saline so he doesn’t even have a drip nor is he hooked up to any monitors. He is just there in the hospital pyjamas colouring and waiting for someone to take care of him🥺👀"

And since there’s no medical concerns (anymore) the nurses would have more time to just chat with Peter and make sure he is like mentally taken care of 🌸🌸

---

tony stark- he's obviously the main man and does all the main caring. hes the one who sleeps with peter and makes sure he gets food, and plans the days. he also sometimes will hand make little gadgets (safe ofc) to occupy peter. he gets peter little engineering/inventing kits and will hold back any groans he has as peter hits his leg with a plastic hammer and screwdriver. he also is the one who is ALWAYS there, when he cries, when he's happy, when he's sad.

thor- he lets peter play with his hair, and even lets the boy snuggle, and sometimes even chew on, mjolnir (because of course peter would be worthy)

steve rogers- he lets peter look at and hold the shield. one day he finds the boy curled like a cat dosing on the inside of it

natasha- she speaks in russian to him, and when he goes outside to the park, shes there making sure no one disturbs him

wanda+sam (i had an idea for them when i originally thought of this, but i cant remember it now :/)

bucky- he lets peter also mess with his hair, although more rare than thor, but he does let peter suck on his metal fingers when hes really small, and will scratch peters scalp with it, the metal scratching much better than normal skin. also if he ever gets a fever, the cold of the arm feels amazing on his forehead

bruce- not strictly canon since hes more sciency than doctor, but i imagine bruce is the one who does checkups and takes care of the meds when peter is sick

stephen- he doesnt do it often, plus he's not at the tower much, but hell do little harmless "magic" tricks to excite Peter and when peter gets grumpy, stephen will give him a little stress spell thing to calm peter down

peter quill- i imagine hes the one who is down to do lots of fun stuff, but is also the most reckless towards the actions suited towards littles, getting a lot of scolding from tony. also, he has great taste in music, so when peter has bursts of energy, he'll bounce around the room dancing to old 80s music

rocket- hes the closest peters ever gonna get to a pet, and with lots of bribing from tony, rocket /occasionally/ lets peter pet him and feed him "treats", sometimes peter will ask rocket to do a trick like jump or spin, but rocket with always decline...at first. peters trademark pouts do the trick because either rocket will concede and hurt his pride, or tony will see and threaten rocket into making his little boy happy. its always worth it to see the happy little squirms and claps

gamora- she's the resident story teller. when its bedtime, she'll share her cool space stories, leaving out the gory/scarier aspects. it always does the trick as hes out in minutes. sometimes hell catch her and peter q engaging in loving activities (ie kissing, hugging, whatever), and he'll just giggle away, and as embarrassed as gamora gets, not being an openly affectionate person, she might just go to the extreme to hear the cute giggles out of the little boy

clint- hes pretty chill with peter. he also likes to play games with the boy, playing things like peek-a-boo when he's super small, or playing darts when he feels older. tony isnt /too/ happy about it, but its better than quill so he doesnt say anything.

pepper is there too because i love the idea of tony working away somewhere and pepper calling peter in, handing him a few sheets of paper, sometimes actual documents, sometimes just scratch paper to entertaim the boy, before asking peter to deliver them to tony. she always has a smile when peter eagerly nods with his whole body before running to the office to give tony the papers. it almost always ends with peter in his lap, but it /always/ ends in tony praising him, saying something along the lines of 'theres my little helper boy. look at you'

---

--on any particular day peter wakes up aged up, he doesn't even miss his old internship because this life is so much better, although on these days tony actually lets him help with some safer stuff in the lab with him

--also, they are still the avengers and still have to save the universe. tony leaves him in the care of Happy or Pepper, trusting them both to handle him. sometimes, it ends in disaster. sometimes, they are lucky enough to find happy laying on the couch, with a drooling little boy soaking his suit

--no matter how things end up, it never gets old being able to come home and cuddle up with the reason tony wants to save the universe.

--its no surprise peter is able to help the man just as much as tony helps him. tony stops locking himself up so late at night so he can put peter to bed and cuddle up. he stops drinking when he's stressed, instead finding his boy and reading a story to him. his hookups end, he wants to be there for peter all the time. he gets more work done, the added bonus of having a pretty little boy in his lap helping keep his mind on track.

--tony still has his canon issues, but having peter there makes everything a little more manageable. and when he eventually gets too old to be ironman, its okay, because his universe is lying in bed, a red pacifier in his mouth, and a family of superheroes softly arguing about who the boy loves most

--and despite tony being a narcissist, he knows this is not that, when he thinks that without a doubt he is peters favorite. after all, peter helped him see the good inside the bad

---

so uh yeah thats all i had to say. maybe in the future it will become an actual thing, idk. i still have so many projects im working on first. feel free to add whatever you want to it though !!

[hobgayblin]

Rambling and trying to piece together Ricky’s lore like a madman. very long and insane

the BIGGEST lore thing for him is that I want him to be a Hunter or an ex-Hunter like Marco for the purposes of drama and also for him to be wildly strong for no reason bc its sexy and fun 

He was more of an experimentation case than the other Destroyers and thus wasn’t well known amongst the second destroyers since, given his age (early 30s), he probably would have been grouped into their squad. He still had one of their gun names tho his code name was Heckler and the other destroyers probably heard of him but never really met him. And uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh the whatever fuckin experiments made him much stronger than the others but unfortunately he was not as obedient so they made this super powered weapon of a man that will not fucking listen to them or pretty much anyone else for that matter. Since the shit starts when theyre really young he probably listens for a while and DOES end up killing a bunch of twilights but in the end hes like. actually this sucks im gonna do other shit byeeee ❤️ and he just drops out of existence and becomes hard to track by changing his name frequently AND going on T

Hes uhhhhhhhh somewhere around 16-18 when he dips and he’s now kinda wandering around Ergastulum trying to survive as everyone else is. He takes a bunch of random jobs (waiter/bartender/probably random jobs for some of the mafia families/maybe works in a brothel for a bit/dancer of various sorts) and just kinda lives his life for a while. I think I’m gonna make him a dancer/dance instructor and ALSO a self defense/hand to hand combat teacher with stuff he learned in his hunter training or w/e. Also he becomes a drag queen at some point bc it’s fun and I say so. his drag name is Wyld Fyre because hes an insane redhead.

Might have it so the Corsica’s track him down, threaten him or do something to make him work with their new destroyers against his will. He won’t actively participate in their bullshit but his “”job”” is to track down the A and S ranks and 1. keep a ledger of them, 2. keep an eye on them, and 3. be ready to kill them because he’s the only one who could easily take care of them himself. He’s like yeah sure whatever, and DOES keep an eye on the higher rank twilights but never really does anything about them. He’ll give the Corsicas/Destroyers info but never very much and sometimes will just lie and they cant do anything about it because while the destroyers COULD kill him it would take most of them is not worth the casualties and injuries he would cause during a fight, which would fuck up their whole operation. 

That’s probably how he meets the Benriya bitches because he’s trying to keep an eye on Nic esp because of whatever nonsense is going on with Nic’s actual rank. He befriends them and may even join Benriya I havent decided but it would be fun and sexy. and Alex can come stay at his house when she wants so she doesnt have to deal with Worick being stupid GHKSDGH Also him and Worick fall in love a little and its sweet and nice

anyway DRAMA and HEARTBREAK and NONSENSE when Worick goes to the Corsicas and sees Ricky with the other destroyers. Worick is heartbroken seeing he was working with these bitches the whole time, and Ricky is heartbroken seeing Worick has switched sides and seemingly abandoned Nic and all the tagged he’s worked to help and theyre gonna have a dramatic talk about it eventually but who knows when

tldr: all of this is a big excuse to make this tiny bitch able to punch people through walls 

[ibijau]

and another thing for the lingzhui winter exchange :D this one for HamsterQinghua

Sizhui smiled, looking absolutely devastated.

“I really would love to hang out with you, but I already have plans with someone after school. Another time?”

Jin Ling scowled.

First of all, because he hadn’t cornered Sizhui on the way to his next class to invite him to hang out. It was a date. He was trying to ask Sizhui out. Sure it’d be at the fast food place they always ended up after school, because Sizhui had an early curfew on week nights and too many activities to attend in the weekend, but they would have gone there with intent, and so that would absolutely have counted as a date.

Second of all, Sizhui had exactly two other friends: his annoying cousin Jingyi, and Zizhen from the art club they all went to. And Jin Ling, prudently, had made sure that neither of them had plans with Sizhui that afternoon. Which meant that Sizhui had plans with someone that Jin Ling didn’t know about.

Before he could ask about that, Sizhui’s phone started buzzing, its screen lighting up to warn of an incoming call. Because Sizhui had it in hand at that moment, Jin Ling was able to catch a glimpse of the screen, which was enough to turn his blood to ice, especially with the way Sizhui’s eyes lit up and a small smile crept up on his face.

“Ah, I’ve really got to take that!” Sizhui apologised. “And you have English next, right? So I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He dashed off without so much as a last glance at Jin Ling, all his attention on his phone. 

-

Jin Ling sat with Zizhen at the back of the English classroom, and they both proceeded to ignore anything the teacher intended to share with them, too busy whispering about the crisis that Jin Ling had just discovered. And it had to be a crisis to distract Zizhen, who usually at least tried to pretend he was paying attention. But the situation was too dire for that.

“Are you sure it can’t have just been his father?” Zizhen asked in a hushed tone.

“Sizhui would never call him ‘daddy’,” Jin Ling assured him, careful to keep his voice low as well. “He’d never be so informal, he’s not Jingyi. So it has to be someone else. And he looked so… happy.”

Zizhen rested his chin on the palm of his hand. He glanced at the teacher, just to make sure their lack of attention hadn’t been noticed yet, then glanced sideways at Jin Ling.

“Do you think he has a sugar daddy or something?”

“But he doesn’t need the money,” Jin Ling grumbled. “His family owns half the town.”

“Yeah but Jingyi says his dad checks how he uses his allowance,” Zizhen pointed out, “so maybe Sizhui wants to have money he doesn’t need to explain how he spends? Also, it might be his way of rebelling. I mean, he’s overdue for some real teenage rebellion. Nobody can be that good all the time. Or maybe the guy is just, like, insanely hot and Sizhui is super into him.”

Jin Ling checked that the teacher wasn’t looking, and kicked Zizhen’s chair.

“So what?” he hissed. “I’m hot too.”

“Cute at best,” Zizhen retorted, unphased. “On a good day. Nothing that could compare to the appeal of an older guy with money, ready to spoil him and buy him everything he likes.”

“I always buy him milkshakes,” Jin Ling pouted. “When he lets me, anyway.”

In truth, Jin Ling would have loved to spoil Sizhui more, but Sizhui refused most of the time and even insisted on paying for Jin Ling’s snacks frequently, like Jin Ling was some sort of little sibling who needed to be looked after. It didn’t help that Sizhui had weird hang-ups about debts and owing things to anyone. Jingyi said it was because he had gone through some difficult things before being adopted by the Lans, but on bad days Jin Ling felt it was just because Sizhui wanted to put distance between them.

Today was definitely a bad day, because Sizhui had a cool older boyfriend, maybe.

“So, what are you going to do about it?” Zizhen asked.

“Nothing.”

Zizhen’s eyebrows rose high on his face. “Your crush has a sugar daddy and you’re not going to do anything about it?”

“It’s his life,” Jin Ling hissed. “I’ll get over it easily.”

There were people he might have hoped to convince with that. Zizhen definitely wasn’t one of them. He had been Jin Ling’s confidant through the whole ordeal, from the slow realisation that he had a crush on Sizhui, to trying to get the attention of the older boy. Zizhen had brainstormed with him through dozens of ideas for a first date to ask Sizhui on. He knew how much Jin Ling liked their friend. More than liked, perhaps, though it wasn’t something Jin Ling felt ready to face, especially not after this new development.

“Okay,” Zizhen whispered. “That’s very mature of you and all. Then I guess I’ll be the only one following Sizhui after school to catch a glimpse of his mysterious super hot sugar daddy. I understand how that doesn’t interest you at all.”

Jin Ling kicked his friend’s chair again, this time attracting the attention of the teacher who glared at them. They both put on their most innocent smiles, and their usually good grades meant the teacher let it go for that time, only warning them to be quiet and let others work.

“So, are you coming with me or not?” Zizhen whispered when there was less attention on them.

“Only to make sure you don’t get in trouble,” Jin Ling retorted. “I don’t care at all about who Sizhui may or may not be dating. And I swear if we’re spotted, I’m blaming you.”

-

Sizhui’s date was an older man who was at least in his mid-thirties. He didn’t look particularly rich though, not with his patched up leather jacket, ripped jeans, and long messy ponytail. He looked rather like the sort of person who some of Jin Ling’s relatives made fun of sometimes for refusing to grow and act their age, and who obviously didn’t have a real, serious job like they did.

He was very handsome though. Movie actor handsome. And he smiled so wide when he walked to Sizhui that it illuminated his face, like Sizhui was the best thing to have ever happened to him. And he wrapped an arm around Sizhui’s shoulder as they walked together to the café across the street from their high school.

It was awful. Sizhui really had found himself a 'mysterious super hot sugar daddy' as Zizhen put it, and it was obvious that they both cared a lot about each other, and there was just no way Jin Ling could compete with that.

“I’m going home,” he grunted as they watched the couple sit on the terrace.

“No you’re not,” Zizhen retorted, grabbing him by the elbow and pulling him ahead.

With how much Jin Ling struggled and complained, it was a real miracle that Sizhui and his mysterious date didn’t notice them coming to sit at the nearest table, nothing but some potted plants hiding them. But apparently the couple was just that into each other, and Sizhui had his back on them anyway and he was too polite to turn around and look at the commotion, while his stupid hot date didn’t know the two weird teenagers peering at him through the leaves of some small palm trees.

He was even more handsome from up close, the bastard. However, the older man’s face had something very punchable to it. It might have been just Jin Ling’s jealousy speaking. At the same time, the waiter very pointedly rolled his eyes at something Hot-and-Mysterious said, so obviously he was, in fact, a universally annoying person.

Still, he had such a soft expression when looking at Sizhui, Jin Ling didn’t know how anyone could allow themselves to show their emotions so openly, especially at that age. He wanted Hot-and-Mysterious to stop already, especially because of what Sizhui was saying to deserve such an expression.

“It’s just so much, you know?” Sizhui explained, almost shyly. Jin Ling could just picture that smile his friend had sometimes, with just a hint of insecurity, like he feared to bother people just by being around. “I’m… it’s too much. I’m sure I’m not supposed to feel this much. My great-uncle would say I’m too young for this.”

“But you’re feeling it,” Hot-and-Mysterious retorted, clearly a little amused. “You can’t be too young if you’re already feeling it.”

Sizhui nodded. “It’s a little scary though, isn’t it? Every time, it feels like my heart is going to explode, and… and I keep wondering if I’m going to ruin this by saying too much, or doing too much, or…”

Hot-and-Mysterious leaned toward Sizhui, and took his hand, gently brushing his thumb against Sizhui’s knuckles.

“Love is scary,” he said. “But it’s good as well, right? Don’t listen to people who tell you to be reasonable or to wait until you’re older. School’s important, studies are important, but… you’re young. You’ve got to live a little, right?”

“You think this could be love?” Sizhui gasped.

“Sounds like it to me,” Hot-and-Mysterious replied with a fond chuckle. “Hey, it’s fine. I don’t mind. If anything, I’m happy. I’m glad the two of us can talk openly about something like that. I’m glad my baby can tell me this.”

That, it turned out, was exactly as much as Jin Ling could put up with. He stood from his chair so fast it fell behind him, and strode away from the café and from Sizhui being in love with someone else. It had been a stupid idea to follow Sizhui and his boyfriend, anyway, so Zizhen could pay their tab for having suggested that in the first place. Jin Ling had been raised better than that, and if his parents heard about it, they’d have his head for acting like such a creep.

He hoped Sizhui would find joy with his stupidly hot boyfriend.

Personally, Jin Ling knew he would never be happy ever again.

-

The following day, Jin Ling didn’t see Sizhui until lunch break at school. It was unusual, because they always chatted a bit before their first class, and would at least smile at each other when they met between lessons. That morning though, Jin Ling changed path to make sure it wouldn’t happen. It got him scolded by the teachers when he arrived late, but it was better than having to see Sizhui and be reminded that the older boy was in love with someone else.

It worked until lunch, when Sizhui managed to spot him trying to buy a sandwich he’d eat in a hidden corner.

“Hello, A-Ling!” Sizhui greeted him as he joined him in the queue. He was smiling brightly, a touch of colour to his cheeks. It was unfair, really, that someone so pretty existed in Jin Ling’s life. How was he supposed to not have fallen for Sizhui? “I didn’t see you this morning, I was starting to wonder if you were sick maybe.”

“I’d have texted you,” Jin Ling grumbled.

“Not if you were very sick,” Sizhui replied. “So I’m glad I found you. Especially since I have something I want to talk about, if you have time?”

“Sure. Let me just grab lunch.”

Sizhui nodded, clearly in an excellent mood. They both got a sandwich, and walked toward a deserted corner, under the stairs to the science classrooms. It was a quiet place to hang out at, especially at that hour of the day. They only ever went there when it was just the two of them, because the space would have been too small if Zizhen and Jingyi had joined them. In fact even for two people it was a little cramped. Normally Jin Ling secretly enjoyed that forced closeness. That day he couldn’t bear it and sat a little further away, even if it meant he’d be visible should anyone pass by.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” Jin Ling grumbled, glaring at his sandwich.

He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered buying it. He really wasn’t hungry.

Next to him, Sizhui nervously nodded, also looking down at his lunch.

“Right. That. Right, right. Here is the thing,” Sizhui explained. “I’ve been wondering… would you like to go to the cinema with me on friday? Just… just the two of us, I’m not inviting Zizhen and Jinyi. And it’d be my treat of course. And if you want, we can grab something to eat after? I’ve already asked my father, he’s okay with letting me stay out a little later.”

“You’re making it sound like a date,” Jin Ling huffed.

“Well, yeah, that’s because it would be one. I’m… I’m asking you out, A-Ling.”

Jin Ling looked up at his friend with round eyes. It was everything he’d ever wanted to hear, and Sizhui didn’t look like he was joking. If anything, Sizhui seemed so embarrassed that he couldn’t even meet Jin Ling’s face, his entire face red, his knees drawn against his chest.

It should have been the best thing ever, except…

“What about your boyfriend?” Jin Ling blurted.

“My what?” Sizhui gasped.

“I know about him!” Jin Ling announced. “I saw you with him yesterday, and Zizhen too saw you! You were at the café, all cozy and happy with that guy! And he was holding your hand!”

“A-Ling, that’s not… it’s not like that, I swear!”

“Of course it’s like that!” Jin Ling exploded. “And I like you a lot you know! I like you and I want to go out with you! But I know you have a boyfriend and I’m not desperate or stupid enough to go out with you when you already have someone! I’d have thought you liked me a little better than that, and I’m so disappointed that you’d try something like that, and…”

“A-Ling, that was my dad!” Sizhui exclaimed, hurriedly putting away his sandwich.

Jin Ling blinked a few times, shocked into silence by that very stupid lie.

“Well, not my real father obviously,” Sizhui hurriedly corrected. “You’ve met my father. But that’s my… my other dad, I guess.”

“You said your birth parents were dead!”

“They are,” Sizhui confirmed, drawing his legs to his chest once more and resting his forehead against his knees. “It’s… it’s a little complicated. I don’t even remember all of it, honestly, but my dad told me some of it, and my father confirmed it. So… when I was very young, my parents died, and I went to live with some relatives of mine. There was my great-aunt, an uncle, and some cousins, as well as a friend of my cousins.”

Sizhui turned his head so he could look at Jin Ling, and smiled. 

“It wasn’t a bad time. I was pretty happy there, and that friend of my cousins kind of informally adopted me. Or I adopted him?” Sizhui chuckled. “Well, I started calling him daddy, anyway, and nobody corrected me. It was… it was really great. I stayed there for a year or two. Until there was that fire.”

Sizhui hid his face again, while Jin Ling nodded along. The rest was new, but Sizhui had already told him about losing his family in a fire. He had just assumed that meant his parents.

“Dad managed to get me out,” Sizhui whispered. “But he couldn’t save anyone else, so after that it was just the two of us… but not for very long. It really hit him hard to lose everyone like that, and he didn’t really have a steady job at that time, or any family to turn to, you know? So for a while we lived in the streets or in squats here and there, until I got sick and he realised he couldn’t keep me anymore. He managed to get social workers to take me away, and he just disappeared from my life. And then a few weeks ago, he contacted me again. He’d finally managed to land on his feet again after struggling for years, and he’d found out I was adopted, and… and it turned out my father and him knew each other in school, so my father agreed to let him talk to me. We’ve met a few times, and we text a lot and call sometimes. It’s nice.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jin Ling mumbled.

Sizhui raised his head, blinking away some moisture at the corner of his eyes before smiling at Jin Ling.

“It’s okay. It’s not so bad, I’m glad to have him back. And one of my cousins actually survived the fire, so I’ve been in contact with him as well. It’s… it’s kind of cool to have family again. I mean I have my father and his family, but this… this is different, right?”

“I meant sorry for forcing you to share that,” Jin Ling corrected. “It’s… you didn’t need to tell me that. I messed up. Fuck, I messed up again!”

Sizhui laughed, softly, a fragile little sound that made Jin Ling’s heart beat faster.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “If it’s you, I don’t mind sharing that sort of things. I’ve wanted to tell you about it actually, but I was waiting to make sure that things were going fine first. Plus I was kind of hoping that maybe when I introduced you to my dad, it’d be as my boyfriend. It’s… I’ve been telling him about you.”

“You have?” Jin Ling gasped. “Oh no. What did you say?”

Sizhui laughed again, a little lighter and more cheerful this time.

“I’ve told him that you’re clever and determined,” Sizhui announced with a warm smile. “That you always try hard to do the right thing, and even though you have an awful temper sometimes, you’re never afraid to admit when you’re wrong. I’ve told him also that you’re… you’re very handsome, that I like you a lot, and that I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a long while. And I have, now. So, uh. Friday night?”

“No way!” Jin Ling exclaimed.

When he saw Sizhui’s pretty smile fall, Jin Ling almost slapped himself.

“No way you’re asking me on a date,” he clarified, “because I’m the one asking you out. I’m the one taking you to the cinema, and taking you out to eat after! It’s the least I can do after...” Jin Ling made a vague hand gesture. “So, yeah. I’m asking you out, and I’m taking you on a date!”

Sizhui stared at him with wide eyes. He blinked a few times, his mouth dropping open, and burst out laughing.

“Sure, let’s do it like that,” Sizhui agreed, smiling beautifully once more.

Jin Ling smiled back.

It was going to be the best date in the history of dating, he’d make sure of it.

[aclosetfan]

I’m still mad about Bunny from an earlier post so here’s some headcanons for an au affectionately titled “what could have happen if CN didn’t nuke the one ppg with an intellectual disability”

Long post! Look under the cut!

Bunny has Down Syndrome!

The Professor is a little...tifted when he finds out his children made another child, but Professor is a man full of love, so he takes it in stride. He’s never mad at Bunny, but the triplets have a very long and thorough talking to.

Bunny is an adjustment, but so were the triplets. Professor adjusts well to the change. He doesn’t like his lil honey bun (cause ofc he has embarrassing nicknames for her too) to go out and fight. He doesn’t want her getting too overstimulated and would rather leave the bigger villains to the girls. He can’t stop Bunny from running to help when her sisters call though!

Bunny is no damsel in distress!

But for the most part, Bunny does her part for the team by helping the professor in the lab! She’s a little uncoordinated when she gets excited, but so is the Professor, so it’s a match made in heaven. She has her own lab gear and happily hands over tools and chemicals (w/supervision!) at the Professor’s request. She also very good at reminding the professor when it’s time for a break. Bunny doesn’t let him miss snack or bedtime.

She also makes sure his experiment have a touch of cutesy because Bunny loves her a bit of sparkle and frills!

Having a sister with an obvious disability is difficult for the girls in their own ways. But Bunny really teaches the girls a lot!

For Blossom, she has a hard time puzzling how Bunny was going to live a fulfilling life in an unforgiving world. Since Blossom strives for control over things she doesn’t understand, it takes her a little bit (and a few lectures from the professor) to realize that Bunny will find her own place and that she doesn’t have to be so anxious. Bunny will be fine. She’ll be okay. She’s not so fragile. (But Blossom still has bouts of extreme worry that her little sister won’t ever be accepted) Like I said though, Blossom strives for control and tries to help the Professor keep Bun well structured and safely entertained, but Bunny’s has an independent mind of her own and teaches Blossom that while structure is good, everyone deserves a little fun!

For Buttercup it’s a giant lesson in calm and patience, which if you follow the show, is generally the lesson Buttercup needs to learn. But Bunny isn’t Bubbles or another kid on the playground, she’s special in a different way and even though she has super powers too and can get a little rough—because Bunny often forgets her own strength—Buttercup has to often be remind that she needs to be gentle. It takes a little bit for Buttercup to realize that Bunny doesn’t get things right away and what Buttercup thinks is funny can be hurtful to her. But Buttercup does learn and she’s extremely protective of her baby sister. She finds games and sports that they both enjoy, and every once in while Buttercup will buckle down and play the princess that Bunny has to save. Fr Bunny and Buttercup never give up on each other.

Bubbles is immediately the best with Bunny. It’s not so much her disability that Bubbles has an issue with, it’s more like the family displacement. Bunny gets a lot of the extra attention Bubbles has been use to. Bunny and her like a lot of the same things—dolls, coloring books, things that glitter and sparkle, bright colors, stuffed animals etc. They’re both very much into everything girly. And that means Bubbles really has to learn to share. Her stuff, her sisters, her professor—everything. Sometimes she gets a little jealous, but after an incident with Octi (where the beloved stuffed animal was ripped in two and crudely taped back together by her little sister in apology), Bubbles eventually realizes that Bunny looks up to her as a strong, tough older sister and that’s A-Ok w/ Bubs. And I know it’s cliche but I think Bubs would give Bunny Octi—not forever mind you—they share.

School’s interesting! Bunny goes to preschool with them and gets her own special teacher. But kids can be cruel and the bullies of the preschool (which is, yeah, Mitch and his group) do what they do. The sisters learn early on how to deal with insensitivity and it’s not easy (especially for BC/Blossom), but with the help of Ms. Keane, the Professor, and Bunny herself, the preschool learns that Bunny’s just a little girl who likes to play too!

I mentioned this one in a previous post, but I think Mr. Green should be her parateacher instead of the girls substitute. That way his character can stay in the show and they can have the “don’t judge a book by its cover” episode. But now it can wrap back into the episode of Bunny’s first day of school to really hit the point home! Mr Green can explain that Bunny was “different” but the girls loved her anyway, so “hey give me a chance to, I promise I won’t let you down!” (The intensity of the episode would be heightened because the girls would be extra protective of Bun) (Bunny absolutely adores Mr. Green and Ms. Keane appreciates the help!)

Bunny teaches them how to stim!! Whether it’s flappin around or playing with slime the sisters like doing it together (and tbh they’re fun stress relievers that the triplets carry into adult life)!

Also, now that I think about, I don’t feel like Bunny would get over stimulated often, but it takes her a bit to calm down when she does. Bubbles is the best at calming her down when she gets too excited, but when she’s angry, it’d be BC. I think that’s because Buttercup’s marked as an aggressive kid and, like I mentioned earlier, her and Bunny’s relationship would be filled with “learning to be calm” lessons.

Bunny has sensory issues! Nbd we all do, but Bunny doesn’t like her ears being touched so sometimes it’s hard to brush her hair. She loves Blossom’s hair though and Blossom can usually convince her that if she wants long pretty hair she needs to wash and brush her own. Blossom and the Professor are the only ones allowed to touch her hair!

Sensory wise, Bunny only likes soft cotton clothing. Everything else is too ichy. She also only wears dresses because they’re both pretty and light. good thing t-shirt dresses exist!

Purple! Bunnies! Purple! Bunnies! She has a niche and my baby fills it!

Hard ‘T’s are hard for Bunny. They round into ‘D’s instead. So Buttercup becomes Buddercup except Buddercup can sometimes be too much too, so Bunny more often then not calls her sister Buddy and that’s how Buttercup eventually earns the nickname Bud.

If you h/c the girls with fingers, the Utonium’s learn sign language, which helps when Bunny become too over stimulated or has bouts of being non verbal! Buttercup has the hardest time, Blossom catches on the quickest, Bubbles and Bunny keep making up their own signs, and Professor’s just trying to teach them all!

Can’t stay in preschool forever! Kids grow up! Sucks though :/ because the girls don’t stay in the same class. But don’t worry the triplets make sure they always eat lunch with their sister! And two weeks into middle school they realize that their baby sister doesn’t need them much anyways. She’s the queen of the SPED room. She’s so helpful, kind, and popular that she’s socially doing better then her sisters 😂😂

Bunny really gets into gymnastics! She wants to be in the special olympics, but she has super powers and the Professor has to explain that having super powers is a bit like cheating. She throws a tantrum and Bubbles, with all her crafty genius, saves the day by making fake medals and trophies. The Utoniums though are still very involved in the special olympics and other like activities . It makes them all happy and Bunny gets to hand out the medals! (Helps that she’s a superhero 😏😉 always getting that special treatment)

Guys, my gal? She’s a huge flirt! If you’re like ew no, that’s morally wrong, you need to re-evaluate what YOU know about Down Syndrome! Yes developmentally she’s a little slower, but Bunny’s still a teenager—a growing young women—and very much human, so romantic idealtions are very normal. And that applies to all our friends irl too. It just depends on a persons mental capacity! Admittedly, the Professor was a little uncomfortable at first too because there’s consent and power imbalances to think about, but the people of similar age that Bunny interacts with on the daily are people just like her—like minded individuals with puppy crushes. You can’t deny a person their humanity, so when one of the boys in her SPED class gets the courage to ask her on a date the Professor buckles down and calls the boy’s mom.

Their date is a at a park, properly chaperoned by their parents. They swing and have a good time. They end it with a hug! It’s very exciting and Bunny doesn’t stop bragging about it. Two days later she’s broken up with her new BF for the next brave soul. (Truly everything stays completely innocent don’t worry. I can understand anyone’s concern—Bunny isn’t a sexual being she’s just a romantic. Also there’s ALWAYS a chaperone)

Her family still worries though. Blossom because she always worries about Bunny and the things Bunny could be missing out on. The Professor for much the same reason + she’s his little girl. Bubbles because her LITTLE sister keeps getting more dates then her. And Buttercup doesn’t worry much, but she is annoyed because if the Professor isn’t available, she’s the one who ALWAYS has to chaperone.

Why buttercup? Don’t let her fool you. She actually volunteers. She’d chaperone any of her sisters’ dates if Blossom and Bubbles would let her. Ain’t no gross boy touching her sisters.

Tbh bunny flirts with boys most of the time to embarrass and get a rise out of her sisters. She’s a lil shit sometimes. (It’s the spice in her)

Bunny also makes sure to keep her sisters IN CHECK. If she thinks they’re being too judgmental or mean to the “bad guys,” she makes sure they remember how they were mean to HER.

Most of the main villains though don’t know her. Mojo tried something once and ended up being carted back to Townsville Correctional Facility in a gurney. Bunny has an aversion to violence after the “you’re being bad” incident, so she isn’t one to fight/protect herself (protecting her sisters is another story tho lol she’d kill for them), but her sisters are fiercely protective. Incredibly protective. So protective that when the other main villains saw Mojo carted into jail they went 😬😬😬 and stayed away.

She meets Princess though! She likes Princess for all her glittery dress-up shit. Idk how yet, but I think she’d be a good catalyst for Princess’s redemption arc (along with Robin, who yes is also Bunny’s best friend). She thinks Princess’s hair is pretty and really let’s be honest Princess goes soft because she likes the positive attention. In Princess’s defense, she was never insensitive to Bunny’s disability. She’s a ppg and a ppg is what Princess wants to be. Sure, she’s petty, but goodness gracious, Blossom, she’s well versed in etiquette and that’s just uncouth.

And she meets the boys because she’s a flirt remember? Boomer’s name is her favorite but she never gets the “-er” part out. Just likes the way BOOM sounds. Her sisters have to remind her to use her inside voice, but Boomer’s a good sport about his ear drums being blown out and usually yells right on back. She thinks they’re cute! Like Princess, Bunny makes the boys feel liked and needed and helps them along their redemption arc! But they’re hesitant to be around her because they saw MoJo and....😬😬😬 (hell would freeze over before the girls let them near her anyway) (their fear is also why they aren’t completely insensitive shits towards Bunny—Mitch is a human so he got away from a beating, but someone like Butch?? Nah, BC’s always actively looking for a reason to decimate him)

Bun’s fave villain though is Fuzzy. He’s like a giant fuzzy pink teddy bear!

Bunny’s essentially made out of the exact same stuff as Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice. So what if she’s a smidge bit different. Everyone loves her just the same!

[cescalr]

u kno how everyone has their own version of Reverse Falls?? well i have one of those lol but rn what im saying is: my version of the au where the pines twins swap places (grunkles for mystery,,,, u kno,,, i think its called Gravity Rises? Anti-Gravity??? I can’t remember damn) yeah i have little bits of dialogue written,,,, if only i could draw... anyway all under the read more:

[[the scene where Mabel cheats off of Dipper in class; prev the scene where Stan cheats off Ford. Flashback to convo;]]

Dipper: Look. All you need is decent grades in math, right? Just copy off me. 'S not like the teachers pay attention during exams, anyway.

Mabel: I dunno, Dipper...

Dipper: Come on. We need scolarships. Our parents can't afford two full rides to college.

Mabel: It feels kinda... fraud-y, though.

Dipper: Think about it this way, hey - those rich kids pay their way past exams to a full ride, this is no more unfair than that. Just levelling the playing field. They're cheating at life - you're just opening up opportunities.

Mabel: True...

Dipper: Anyway. Nobody gets left behind, right?

Mabel: Haha. Yeah. Who's to say I won't leave /you/ behind? [punches his arm, with a smile.]

Dipper: Hah. Very funny.

Mabel: Thanks, bro-bro. Awkward sibling hug?

Dipper: Awkward sibling hug.

[hug]

Both: Pat-pat.  

---

[[Big argument! Replaces the ford accuses Stan of breaking his machine. The conversation with the headmaster [uhhh, principal? in america?? i dunno im sorry] of the school is done w/ Dipper replacing Stan and Mabel replacing Ford bc I Like To Make Things Interesting!]]

Mabel: Come on, Dipper! I mean. Just - what kind of money is in /paranormal investigation/, anyway?

Dipper: What kind of money is in sculpting?

Mabel: That's not fair.

Dipper: Neither is you repeating our parents' talking points, but here we are. It's not about the money, Mabel.

Mabel: Well if it's not, then what's the point of you being on the opposite kind of the country to me?

Dipper: What's the point of you being on the opposite side of the country to /me/? Oh, that's right. You got a full ride anywhere you'd like, and there I am, trouble-maker, crazy-guy extraordinaire with the weird interests and stuipd belief in the supernatural. There was only one film school that'd take me, Mabel. You're the one who locked yourself into California.

Mabel: Why didn't you /tell/ me?

Dipper: I didn't think you'd want me around that much. What have I ever done, except pull down your stupid reputation?

Mabel: You can't still be on that. You know I don't-

Dipper: Still didn't say anything, though did you?

Mabel: That's not fair at all, Dipper.

Dipper: You never say anything. And here I am, always defending you. Maybe I felt we needed some space, huh? Maybe you give off the aura of wanting space. I'm not fun to be around.

Mabel: I didn't mean that. I just meant - you can get... kind of into a headspace I can't follow. I'm not - I don't believe in all your -

Dipper: Dumb conspiracies?

Mabel: Yes! Dipper, just - there's nothing down that road. You know that. You'll be -

Dipper: A laughingstock? Been there. Used to it.

Mabel: It doesn't have to be like that. You're really, really smart-

Dipper: So the only thing I can want to do is science?

Mabel: No, that's not it at all -

Dipper: He's a punk, he's headed nowhere, 'Mabel's a good girl, a real talent, smart and artistic... Dipper has the brain for a good life, but not the mindset. There's Fantartstic Academy, it's in California, so it's not too far from home, but it's on the other side of the state, a good distance away - I think it'd be good for your daughter to get independence, to find friends and a life outside of the trouble her brother brings. Mabel could have a real good go of it -'

Mabel: Stop it! Dipper, you know I don't believe-

Dipper: But you do! You always have!

Mabel: Just because you're /anxious/ doesn't mean you're right! We're okay! You're just paranoid!

Dipper: That's not fair.

Mabel: Oh, so now /I'm/ the unfair one? I get it. Things are only unfair when it affects /you/.

[pause]

Mabel: Why d'you have to do this?

Dipper: I - I have to prove that I'm right, Mabel. I have to. This stuff exists, I know it does, I've just got to find it.

Mabel: And, what? You're going to prove something people have been trying to figure out for centuries? Dipper. How can you tell me to get out of dreamworld when that's where you're staying?

Dipper: Screw you.

Mabel: Screw /you/.

---

As for other stuff;

Mabel makes the portal! It takes Dipper 30 years to activate it after she’s pushed in bc her instructions are Terrible. Partly because she didn’t understand much of it. Bill painted the whole thing as like, a monument of the arts or w/ever im still figuring that one out 

Dipper takes Grunkle Stan’s place as the person they’re sent to visit. He’s been pretending Mabel’s been in various foreign countries for years @ this point. Uses either magic/tech to create voicemails for the family, has her be bubbly but distant, w/ promises to visit that she never keeps, which. you know he feels bad about but he needs to make people think she’s alive

Dipper had a ghost hunting TV show! For like three years, then went off the air bc of low ratings. Apparently real ghosts scare people! And kill them. Who knew. Also everyone thought the special effects were bad. Whoops. Anyway he runs a tourist attraction out of Mabel’s old ‘nature living art lodge’. It makes a good haunted house during high traffic at halloween/Summerween. The entrance to the basement is in his office, which used to be one of Mabel’s art studios. Dipper took all the bill art down because he pays attention to warnings written in blood. 

Im swapping all ages here, so Dipper is good friends with Pacifica and Wendy. Gideon is ... a threat. Lee, Nate and Thompson are still in town. Tambry and Robbie are not. 

Soos is 8, Fiddleford is 13, Stan and Ford are 12. Etc. 

Because of how we’re swapping this, some people’s parents might have to become their children. I’m not a fan of that, but we’ll see. Filbrick Pines was the youngest sibling of Mabel and (Mason) Dipper. He’s not well liked by the family. And he doesn’t like his own family all that much, hence the distance between them. He likes his kids even less, though, so Gravity Falls they go! I hate that guy. 

Ma Pines may or may not come with them? Hmm.