#like border princes is the elite mystery team member story

[captainlynxx]

30 day torchwood challenge- day 18:

Least Favourite Villan:

I can’t tell if I love or hate the 456 and it’s driving me up the wall. So instead of them im going to say Adam. I don’t have a real reason other than he gets on my fucking nerves (no offence but srsly)

[saintanism-archive]

daaaamn aj, back at it again with the long as fuc headcanons !! anyway hi everyone it’s me this is saint he’s a pretentious fuck & my ( really long, sorry, feel free 2 skip them, there’s a tl;dr summary in my bulletpoints so u can just scroll past it ) headcanons and intro stuff is under the cut !

first headcanon. while most houghton parents are doctors, lawyers, and business executives, saint’s always been something of a horse of a different color. his family certainly isn’t unwealthy—he does, after all, live in one of those multi-million-dollar brownstones in beacon hill auctioned by freaking sotheby’s—but they’re certainly neo riche, which can be sort of hit or miss, depending on who you’re asking. saint is not unlike his parents in that they surround themselves with a kind of off-kilter opulence ( sure, that kind of cash value would have bought them a newly constructed sleek mansion in the suburbs, but why go for something new and modern when you could live in a brownstone with over three hundred years of history that, supposedly, one of the founding fathers lived in? besides, you just can’t beat that location—never mind that the brownstone’s been totally gutted and replaced with sleek, modern interior anyway, and definitely not anything that ben franklin or whoever would have touched ) while pretending to eschew materialism and vanity. why else would they live in boston instead of new york or la, right? anyway. saint is the only son of the one and only cordelia st. mercy ( pronounced, unlike saint’s name, the french way—san merci, which sounds hilariously close to ‘sans merci,’ meaning ‘without mercy,’ a joke that is not lost on saint ), a renowned fashion photographer and portrait artist ( think in the vein of annie liebovitz  and arthur elgort ) with a marked celebrity and high art clientele, and also the one and only son of the less elegantly named garrett wallace ( a pen name; his real name is garrett wallerstedt, but his editor and agent agreed that last names that are difficult to pronounce are harder to sell ), whose grisly but artful novels earned him a national book award in 1997, a film deal in 2001 ( the film was a critical and box office success but, in garrett’s opinion, too reductive of his book; ‘pure snuff’ ), and a professorship in the creative writing program at MIT. yes, that MIT, which yes, does have a creative writing program, and yes, it’s a very good one. SO—that’s the pedigree saint mercy-wallace was born into, and it probably explains a whole lot about him. his parents are not and were never married, so he can’t quite say he’s a child of divorce. instead, he spends the school year with his father while his mother travels all over the world, doing her work, though she comes home for holidays and saint’s birthday, and the summers he spends with his mother, dipping his feet into the world of the new york art scene. it was an unusual arrangement, but not a bad one; it was a long time before saint even understood that his family situation was out of the ordinary, but, like, at least he knew both his parents loved him or whatever. they are both pretty emotionally distant and prone to getting caught up in their own work—his father is always focused on teaching or poring over his latest book or invited to give a talk somewhere, for example—but it’s not a bad situation. they’re just more like friends than parents. as a result, saint grew up with a lot of freedom ( more than most of his houghton peers, whose helicopter parents put the weight of the world on their shoulders ) and little discipline, often left to his own devices and trusted with the ability to take care of himself.

second headcanon: ah, yes. the houghton food chain. it’s easy to say saint sits at the dead bottom. like, he’s not even the bugs that get eaten by the birds or whatever. he’s the plant that gets eaten by the bugs. or the soil nutrients that get consumed by the plants—something like that. but the easy answer isn’t necessarily the correct one, and you see, once upon a time, saint sat somewhere near the top. he was never number one, of course, but he was up there, in that little crew of self-proclaimed high school princes and princesses ( quite literally, what with calling themselves windsors and all ). and he fit quite well, all things considered. what, with his pseudo-celebrity family background and his instagram roll full of selfies with models and musicians and actors and that specifically youthful brand of devil-may-care attitude that bordered at times on cruelty—he was a perfect fit for the windsors, his five-story, oft-empty brownstone the perfect venue for their parties and his unconscious need to belong to some kind of family the perfect host for going along with anything that dante and his ilk said. that’s not to make it sound like he was manipulated into it or anything of the sort—he wasn’t. he and dante were good friends—they were all good friends—and like anyone would, saint relished in the perks that came with sitting at the king’s left hand instead of dancing for his entertainment. he was ( and still is ) always the kind of person who gave off an air of not really caring about anything at all, but that’s especially easy when you want for nothing. his life was impossibly easy. too easy, perhaps—exactly what went down that infamous day when saint fell from his high school pedestal remains a mystery. all anyone really knows is this: it was your typical rager at chateau mercy-wallace. the party was going as saint’s parties typically did, so, pretty well, until saint cut the music and ( red-rimmed and wild-eyed, or stinking of about a hundred cigarettes, or with a bloody nose from too many lines of coke, depending on who’s telling the story—it’s morphed a bit over time ) threw everyone out of his house with no explanation. just a party’s over, fuckwads, get outta my house, and some monologue about the bullshit superficiality of high school, of all of them, about how they were all talking in circles and repeating the same lines over and over, but not even their own lines, lines they’d inherited from generations and generations past. it’s equally up for debate whether saint left the windsors or was kicked out, but there’s something of a general consensus that it was in the muddy lines of both. that went down somewhere towards the middle of the end of his junior year. since then? total social pariah. he left behind the lacrosse and soccer teams, opting instead for chain-smoking under the bleachers and cutting class. he’s a mystery, that saint mercy-wallace.

third headcanon: they were friends until they weren’t. they met in middle school and hit it off pretty easily, these two sons of daedalus who feared not the dangers of flying too close to the sun. they were handsome and charming and confident and gifted and the world opened for them—it made it easy to get along. eleven-year-olds didn’t need much by way of substance to start friendships. if you were to ask saint, looking back on it, after that they remained friends out of habit—because they were in the same place at the same time, because they had similar privilege, because they both felt they could do anything and get away with it, because they had similar luxurious sensibilities. it was ( if you ask saint ) what really bonded all of the windsors together more than any other kind of commonality. but, you know. when you wake up—as saint describes it, a waking up—and you look around and you see all this shit you’ve been brainwashed into thinking matters about anything, and you call out the only flimsy common ground you’ve got. well. you’re not going to be friends anymore, are you? after that, saint didn’t harbor any particular resentment towards dante, but he made no attempts to be friendly, often making snide remarks about the absurdity that was the whole premise of the “windsors” and how maybe they all needed to get outside and look at something other than their phones once in a while. he was still fairly shocked and upset by his death—nobody wants anyone to die, old friend slash new enemy or otherwise—but not enough to make a big thing out of it. saint’s had a pretty hard time feeling much of anything these days.

OK THE TL;DR VERSION:

son of a big hotshot fashion/art/celeb photographer ( cordelia aka cordy st. mercy ) and an acclaimed writer, essayist, novelist, thinker, etc ( garrett wallace, who teaches creative writing at MIT )

lives in a big ol brownstone in boston proper, often left to his own devices

his parents are not married to each other so he usually spends the school year w dad and the summer w mom - pls advise if u want some kind of step sibling or “our parents are dating this is terrible!” connection

used to be a windsor ! he was once (in)famously a member of the elite Inner Circle(TM) until he even more infamously had a giant burnout , threw everyone out of his house during a Classic Saint Rager ( he used to be known for throwing parties ), stopped hanging out w the windsors and has been kinda.....weird ever since

i mean don’t get me wrong he was always a pretentious fuck but he used to be better at keeping it inside and like having fun and talking about silly things now he hates talking about basic high school bullshit

his instagram is full of selfies w models and artists and musicians and actors and he only listens to bands you’ve probably never heard of who are “on the up and up”

and also house music and gregorian chants and weird af shit he’s into, like, industrial noise. anyway..........

prides himself on being very fashion forward and forward thinking in general

BIG MESS

literally never says things that aren’t . ridiculous

examples:

“can’t today my existential dread is acting up”

“i only eat squid ink pasta it’s the most melancholy of pasta”

“i can barely navigate the hellish vortex between breakfast and dinner, let alone the labyrinth of the soccer field” ( said when he quit the soccer & lacrosse teams, which he used to play )

does not give a single fuck about anything ever

chainsmokes like u wouldn’t believe catch him on the bleachers during football practice wearing all black and smoking three cigarettes at once it’s disgusting ( lowkey he thinks it looks cool lol what a loser )

reads pretentious af shit like jd salinger and allen ginsburg and the other beats and thinks he’s so edgy. kill him

skips class.....all the time . . . . but has really good grades ? wild

hates everyone and everything that isn’t Elegant

acts like he’s so above all this high school hierarchy nonsense & too cool for it & blah blah but uh

he’s probably just depressed

maybe still gets invited to parties if people forget for a second that he’s a giant fucking weirdo now? but maybe not

i would Love a ferris bueller to his cameron frye but we’ll see

anyway he’s super hard to plot with but you should plot with me anyway

this has been an intro by aj thanks for coming to my ted talk

[metalandmagi]

Hogwarts House Anime Recommendations: Gryffindor

Okay, it’s that time again, time for the last round of Hogwarts house anime recommendations! And this time it’s Gryffindor!

other house recommendations:

ravenclaw

hufflepuff

slytherin

As we all know, Gryffindors are always in the spotlight and are basically the most represented house, and that sort of reflects in my recommendations. It was very difficult to try and think of lesser known shows to go with, so I mainly kept to what I thought are some of the most defining Gryffindor anime despite their popularity.

Some of the key Gryffindor traits running through these anime are bravery (bordering on recklessness), selflessness, and characters that are highly fueled by their emotions.

1. Haikyuu!!

For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, Haikyuu is an awesome sports anime. Lovingly referred to as “the volleyball anime” this story focuses on the once powerful Karasuno high school volleyball team, with Hinata Shoyo as one of the new first year members of the club who wants to work to take the team to nationals. However, also on the team is his middle school “rival” (a term I use loosely considering they only played one match against each other), and the two have to learn to work together to actually make the team successful.

I actually mentioned this anime in my Hufflepuff recommendations because I believe many sports anime do fall into that house. However, I actually think Haikyuu is a good Gryffindor anime because of its inclination towards showing the characters branch out and define what it means to be brave in their own separate ways. Each character has their own way of being bold and unique in their talents and work hard to make themselves better at the sport, even if it is scary for them. I mostly see this in Kagayama, Yamaguchi’s, and Asahi’s characters, but everyone has their own demons to fight. Hinata may be the main character but this is the only sports anime where I actually remember every member of the team’s names and care just as much about the other high school teams as well. This is going to go down as a classic sports anime because it keeps you gripped on the game as well as the growth of the characters without dragging out the play time or giving the characters super human abilities that is so rampant in the genre.

2. Hunter x Hunter (2011)

Again, for those who don’t know about it, Hunter x Hunter (at least the 2011 version) is basically a standard shounen anime setup about a spunky 12 year old kid named Gon, who starts a quest to find his “missing” father. Gon’s father is a Hunter, meaning in this world, he is part of an elite group of people who basically travel around the world just doing whatever the hell they want, from being hired as bounty hunters, to catching rare animals, or pretty much anything you can think of. So in order to find his father, Gon sets out to become a Hunter too, along with his lovable, rag-tag group of misfits. But be careful, this show starts out as a typical happy-go-lucky adventure anime and turns into an extremely dark and fucked up show involving everything from organized crime and genocide to the mass extinction of the human race to weird animal hybrids.

Okay stay with me, because this is gonna be a wild ride. I can only go off of the 2011 version, but this show is straight up amazing. I promised myself several years ago that I would get around to watching it someday, and that didn’t end up happening until the English dub started airing on Toonami in 2016. After watching the first 5 episodes dubbed on television I sprinted to my computer to watch the rest of the series as fast as possible...while also catching the dubbed episodes every week. Around episode 115 or so, I realized I was going to burn through this anime...and I didn’t want it to end. So now I’m back to watching one dubbed episode a week as it comes out just so I could prolong the experience. That’s how good this anime is. So technically I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s only because I don’t want to end it….and also I had some serious issues with the pacing of the last arc.

In terms of why it fits Gryffindor so well, all you have to do is watch Gon for about 5 minutes. All of the main characters...apart from Killua...have very noble goals and want to help others in their own ways. Hisoka is also one of the best...villains?…..anti heroes?...antagonists?…. that I’ve ever seen, and he is a great mixture of discomfort and intrigue to watch every time he’s on screen. If you love the old school shounen shows, if you want to feel nostalgic for when you were a kid watching Naruto or Bleach, if you want a show with clearly defined arcs, interesting characters, and not one, but two of the best tournament arcs I’ve ever seen, then for the love of all that is good, GO WATCH THIS SHOW if you haven’t already...I know I’m pretty late to the game with this one.

3. Akatsuki no Yona (aka Yona of the Dawn)...And Arslan Senki (aka The Heroic Legend of Arslan)

It’s official, I can’t do one of these things without doing a double recommendation. But seeing as these anime fit so well together and the protagonists seem very similar, I figured I had to do both. Both of these shows focus on the sweet cinnamon rolls royalty of a kingdom trying to regain their thrones after their respective countries have been overthrown or taken down from the inside. Akatsuki no Yona deals with a young princess who is trying to bring together a group of magical dragon people in order to regain the throne and fix the problems with her country. Arslan Senki (the 2015 anime version, not the ova), is more military oriented, focusing on a young prince trying to free his country as well as his father and mother from an invading country, led by a villain wearing a silver mask...who may have more of a claim to the throne than Arslan does.

Both of these shows are very fantasy oriented and desperately need to be continued. They also both have tried and true Gryffindors as the main protagonists who only want what’s best for their people. Arslan and Yona both look at the world through very innocent eyes but have to learn the harsh realities of their kingdoms and be brave enough to overcome all obstacles with the help of their friends.

4. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle

This anime follows four main characters (Kurogane, Fai, Syaoran, and Sakura) as they travel through different worlds trying to find pieces of the shattered soul of Princess Sakura. This takes place in the same universe as literally every other CLAMP created work, meaning that yes, it is the same Sakura as the one in Cardcaptor Sakura….just in a different world. If you’re a fan of anything CLAMP related, you need to watch it if you haven’t already.

This show will probably mean a lot more to people who have seen/read literally every CLAMP anime/manga in existence, but I actually hadn’t seen any other CLAMP material before watching this show. I basically just knew that Cardcaptor Sakura was a thing that existed and Tsubasa involved those main characters. But this anime is what sparked my love for the universe, so you don’t really have to know anything about the CLAMP universe to enjoy the anime (the manga on the other hand is a completely different story). I have always thought that Sakura, Syaoran, and Kurogane are all good examples of Gryffindors in different ways. Kurogane is more of a protective father figure, first showing nothing but recklessness and learning to become more thought out in his plans. Sakura is a Gryffindor in the sense that she also wants to protect people and learns to be brave over time, while Syaoran’s sole purpose is protecting Sakura and can be extremely chivalrous. Anyway it’s a fun adventure show that leads into a very dark and mysterious set of OVAs that will make you go “damn I should read the manga....and also every other CLAMP manga I can get my hands on.”

5. Attack on Titan

Yes, I had to. There was no way I could leave out Attack on Titan from a Gryffindor recommendation. I’m not even going to bother with a summary, since everyone and their dog has at least heard of it. This truly is the most Gryffindor anime to ever Gryffindor. It completely embodies the idea of the house both in the actual anime and in the real world. It even has it’s own golden trio, with a bookish character, a “chosen one” character, and a character who relies mostly on instinct.

Like I said, Eren, Mikasa, and Armin are all great Gryffindors in the same way that the original golden trio are. The plot of the show constantly evokes the idea of doing what’s right, even if it means putting your life on the line. Everyone who joins the military in this universe knows they need a mixture of bravery, daring, and just the right amount of recklessness to be successful. Even in the real world the anime has been in the spotlight the same way Gryffindor house is all the time, with great characters, an interesting plot, and intriguing world building that keeps people invested even with four year waits for the next season. Every episode has you rooting for the main characters in the same way that you root for Harry Potter and the rest of the gang. Not to mention it looks and sounds fucking amazing. So if you decided to skip the second season because you’ve read the manga...don’t. The anime just makes everything a million times better.

So that’s the end of my Hogwarts house anime recommendations! Sorry I couldn’t really branch out very much with Gryffindor house, but I tried my best. I hope these are helpful!