#like ill most likely just stop showing up to family stuff

[ripplestitchskein]

The most compelling thing about this whole relationship, and I’d argue the show in general, and what the episode highlighted so exquisitely is that they are perfect for each other, they honestly are exactly what the other one needs but their individuals issues are preventing them from seeing and actualizing it. It’s a delicious character driven conflict. There is no big bad keeping them apart. There is no ill intentioned person pulling the strings and putting things in their head to foster this miscommunication. It is solely their own traumas and issues fucking them over in the most relatable ways. What is brilliant about it is that the entire linchpin of this, and the overarching theme is that this is all a circus show, that the root of it is that both of them have been putting on these acts their whole lives and if they would both just STOP performing they would get what they need. The conflict now is one of them is trying to stop acting altogether while the other is scrambling to stay on book.

Blitzø needs someone who will appreciate him, build him up, encourage him, love him without condition, obligation or most importantly, as merely the consequence of putting on a good performance. Stolas does that from the beginning, he sees and admires Blitz as he is, his problem is actually rooted in the act Blitz puts on. Even Blitz’s closest friends and family, and Blitz himself, can’t or won’t allow Blitz to stop the performance though.

Millie, Moxxie, and Loona all love him, but even they went into this episode putting pressure on Blitzø to perform even going so far as to follow him so he wouldn’t fuck it up. The sex toy shopping spree was just gathering props in service to that performance, to this show they are encouraging him not to bomb.

Fizz, who recently learned the lesson Blitzø needs to learn, who stopped performing for the benefit of others, is probably the only one approaching it from a “What kind of stuff do you guys actually like?” perspective, but because Blitzø is so focused on doing a good job he really doesn’t consider what he actually wants, he’s buying things he thinks will support the show. Lighting, costumes, props. Even the Stolas Sex Stuff box is basically just a prop comic box.

He needs to get his act just right and put on the best show he can so they can keep the book and to allow the show to go on.

But like his performances in the past, Blitz chokes. For the entire scene in the bedroom he is basically saying “Let me run that again, I’ll get the lines right this time!” And the reason it is so heartbreaking is that what Stolas wants, is just him, not the facade of a clown doing his best bits, just the person behind it. We see in The Circus Blitz has been told his whole life that not only does he need to keep putting on that show but that if he doesn’t he’s worthless. There’s always a better act waiting to take your spotlight, you can be bought and sold on a whim.

The Circus and its parallels in The Full Moon perfectly encapsulate this issue. He kept doing the same thing over and over, trying to make that balloon horse and it’s when he improvs and is himself that someone appreciates him, laughs with him and sees the value of him as Blitz not the clown, but because its not the audience as a whole it’s not worth anything and that’s when someone else swoops in to wow the crowd. We see this over and over in the show: he keeps trying the same schtick and when he flops he just gets more and more desperate to get his self assigned role right.

In Stolas’s case he was actually really good at his act when he followed the scripts he was given. Everyone around him seems shocked by his recent behavior, they really bought the happy family, regal prince play he’s been putting on all this time. Blitz comes back into his life and gives him a new script. In The Circus Stolas is himself at first, showing off his books and enthusiasm for knowledge but his audience isn’t responsive so he switches “What do you want to do? Give me the script for how you want me to act.” From when he first wakes up bouncing with enthusiasm and told “Stop being yourself, act like a Prince” he calms himself and tries to be what he’s supposed do be and he keeps doing that until Full Moon.

While Stolas enjoys their game and his new playmate he is pretty much putting on an act the entire time, looking to Blitz for cues over and over until they are under the tree. In this scene both Stolas and Blitzø are, in my opinion, both completely genuine and without artifice. Blitz expresses what he really wants, and Stolas is delighted and supportive of it, admiring him and expresses that he hopes he’ll do a good job with his grimoire and when Blitz says he’ll maybe hire him, Stolas is delighted but expresses that he hopes he’ll “qualify”. This shatters my heart into pieces, because even here while Blitz is dreaming his big dreams of being a boss Stolas is still “I hope I can learn how to do a good job with the role I’ve been given. I hope I can be what you want me to be.”

When they meet again 25 years later he looks to Blitz for the script again and fulfills the role Blitz more or less implies he wants to the best of his ability, if not over the top and over dramatized as it’s a new role for him. It still doesn’t fit quite right though. He’s still acting.

In The Full Moon Stolas is still following a script but one he’s at least written himself this time, no doubt influenced a bit by his romance novels and telenovellas. When Blitz approaches him and tries to seduce him again he flushes and wavers to go back to the character Blitz assigned him but he has a new script now and he gets back on task. He has a whole performance he is sticking to. He presents the crystal and has a little animation to explain it and everything.

But then we come to the moment when he isn’t acting anymore, when he genuinely tells Blitz this is how I feel, this is what I want, this is who I am. He even takes off his hat, you can hardly see his royal outfit, just his earnest face as he waits for the reaction of presenting himself as just Stolas saying what he wants and not Stolas the performer saying what everyone wants to hear.

Blitz is too caught up in trying to get them back on script, to keep up the show. He tries desperately to stick to the act, which Stolas is trying to break free from. This unfortunately confirms what Stolas suspected. It was always a play, it was always just a performance, like Stella and the other Ars Goetia, Stolas is only valuable if he says his lines right. Even his daughter lashes out when he starts breaking character. Those around him only value him if he is acting to type, he is not enough as just Stolas.

The horrible irony is he truly was awakened by Blitz. Hs stops acting because of him. He learns that he wants to be himself and not a scripted version designed to please others, but sadly it is Blitz, the catalyst for all of it, who is still stuck in performance mode. Stolas realizes because of Blitz something real, but during their conversation is shown that even Blitz just wants him to stay in character, that there is nothing real here, just more lines for him to say. So Stolas exits pursued by imp.

A lot of Blitz’s fury in this scene is because Stolas is not fulfilling his role any more. In this way he is no different than Stella or even Octavia. He is angry when Stolas stops saying his lines. He has gone off script. But where Stella is upset because it ruins her image, and Octavia is upset because it upset the fakery of her perfect family, Blitz is instead panicking because he NEEDS to get this performance just right. When he fails bad things happen, he is replaced, he is unloved, he is sold off, he is forced to do things he doesn’t want to do.

So he lashes out, he tries to FORCE Stolas back into the role he assigned him, to incite a confrontation from the character of pompous royal asshole stepping on the lower class and using them for their own gain instead of just a person earnestly trying to be genuine. Why is Stolas not saying his lines? Why isn’t he fulfilling his role? So he tells him what he is supposed to be. He yells at him to get back into character.

Stolas is devastated to realize the trope he’s been fulfilling in Blitzo’s life, he’s not the romantic love interest but rather the villain of the piece. He doesn’t even want to be in this show anymore, he wants to just be Stolas, and he is absolutely destroyed to learn that rather than just being himself, rather than even being the love interest, he is instead the antagonist in Blitz’s play. But he doesn’t want that role, or probably any role, any longer, he’s finally breaking out of these performances and being himself, so instead of reverting to type, Stolas sends Blitz off stage completely.

In this way it’s really beautiful for Stolas’s character growth, he could have just given in, stepped back on stage. He has so many opportunities to pick up these old characters he’s played, but instead Stolas follows through and just shuts the show down completely.

[me-loving-woso]

Monthly visits.

Prompt: Honestly? I don’t know what this is, nor I know if it’s any good. The idea came from one of my midnight delusions when I think about stuff to write. Is this a kid fic? Yes? Kinda. Most probably. Do I care? No. Will there be sequels about it? Most probably. I still don’t know. Probably the sequels will feature more Alexia, but for now, you have to endure this 7.4k Drabble.

Actual prompt: In one of your monthly visits to a children’s hospital you meet Ava, she is going to change your life completely.

It was a hectic day for you in Barcelona today. Every month, whenever you had a day off, you would go to the local children’s hospital to support children with Leukaemia. Your younger brother had the same condition, so it has always been an important topic for you to support. 

Every month you tried to convince one of your teammates, or from the girl’s team or the boys, to go with you. Usually, the children would go crazy if you brought them Pedri or Gavi. They would sign autographs and shirts and sometimes even get a ball and show off some of their tricks. When the club found out about this, they wanted to set up interviews and shootings in which they would broadcast or post your visits with them on social media, but you always said no. You liked this to be kept quiet, to not stress the kids, and not bring unwanted attention towards them; you weren’t there for the money, but just to give happiness to anyone you could. 

You knew you weren’t the most famous athlete in the club, especially when you had the likes of Lewandowski, Pedri, and Gavi. On the girl’s side, you played for one of the most famous women’s soccer clubs and was one of the captains; well, if Alexia and Marta wouldn’t play in a game, which wasn’t very probable. But still, Alexia and Mapi were more famous than you; therefore, the children they tend to want their jerseys to be signed by them, but occasionally, some would recognize you, and you were delighted in signing and taking pictures or carefully playing with them whenever they wanted to. 

You tried not to get too attached to the kids as you knew that they still had a deadly illness. Initially, it was hard, especially when you asked a nurse about a kid, and they would just give you a sad look. You would come home from the day and lay in your bed, absently trying to make sense of it. You hated seeing children suffer. 

But there was a girl you met 5 months ago; she was brilliant but also a little prick. Her name was Ava. The first month you saw her, you brought with you Pedri. He was like a little brother to you, you got along great, and he was great with kids. 

You went into her room, she was super excited to meet you both that she even asked for a double autograph. At first, you were confused by the request, but then you figured that the second autograph would be for a friend or a family member. So you went on normally with your day. The kids were all happy, you played Fifa with them and then, when it was time to leave, you decided to say goodbye to all of them. As you entered Ava’s room, you saw her working on something with her computer. As soon as she saw you, she shut it down very quickly. 

“What are you doing?” You smile, walking to her. You were curious as to what she was doing. She was eight, so you knew that whatever it was, it was going to be something funny.

“Nothing!” She says quickly, hiding her computer behind her back.

You started to gently tickle her sides, conscious of her weak state. She started laughing, but soon you stopped and got her computer.

“If you open it, I will cry, and you will never come here ever again!” She threatens me, pouting.

“Why don’t you want to show it to me? Is it a secret boyfriend?” You smirk suggestively.

“No! Ew! Boys are gross!” She exclaims disgusted.

“I agree with you.” You say. “Boys are gross.”

“You can’t see it! It’s - It’s a secret.” She says, trying to grab the computer from you.

“Oh, come on! I’ll tell you one of my secrets if you tell me.” You try to convince her.

“Okay, but promise me that you won’t get mad.”

“Pinky promise.” You say, putting up your pinky and waiting for her to do the same.

You slowly open the screen and see a tab with eBay. She posted one of the two autographs she received today, with a picture of you and Pedri signing it. You start laughing and looking at her, amused.

“You sneaky little child! You are selling them?” You chuckle.

She crossed her arms unamused and replied as if it was the most obvious thing, “One is for me, and one is to sell.”

You look at her with a questioning look.

“My sister told me that I can’t buy too many books and video games because they are too expensive, so I buy them myself.”

“You are a little businesswoman.”

“Shh, you can’t tell anyone, especially my sister. She would get so mad. She hates it when I do this kind of stuff!”

“Your secret is safe with me.” 

“Pinky promise?”

“Again?” You chuckle.

“Yes.” So you promise, then you stand up from the side of her bed and are about to leave when she asks, “Will you come back?”

“I come every month,” You say, turning around to face the little girl.

“If I’m already better, can I come here just to see you?” She asks shyly, hiding her mouth with her hands.

“Of course, you can!” You say goodbye to her and leave the hospital, waiting for Pedro. When you see him, you both get in the car.

“You know, today, I saw Ava again, and I saw her selling our autographs on the internet.” You laugh.

“That girl is sneaky!” He replies. 

“She even insisted and made me promise not to say anything to anybody.”

Over the next three months, whenever you saw her, you would wink at her and make whoever was with you that day sign a double autograph for her. Then when you finished staring with the other kids, you would go into her room, and you guys would talk and play with cards. You would always question why she would never talk about her parents but only about her bigger sister and how great she was. You weren’t expecting her to be sixteen when you finally meet her. Her name was Lucia. You saw her as you were about to say goodbye to Ava. You went into her room, but she was already asleep, and Lucia was sitting on a chair next to her.

You thought both girls were sleeping, so you quietly left the room, but as you were about to close the door, you heard a quiet whisper.

“You must be y/n.” She states, rather than asking. She stands up and walks to you. 

“Yes, that’s me. Are you Ava’s sister?”

“You know, she always talks about you.” She says, whispering and closing the room behind her.

“She always talks to me about you.” You say. “I think that as of right now, I know more about you than myself.” You try to joke, but she doesn’t laugh, leaving an awkward silence between you. Making you notice how tired she looks, as if she hadn’t slept in a long while.

“Do you want a cup of tea or coffee?” You offer.

“Nah, don’t worry.” She shrugs.

“Come on, I’ll pay for it. Five minutes, then I’ll get out of your hair.”

She slowly nods and then follows you to the cafeteria, which is open 24/7. Thankfully there was nobody there, so you could sit in peace.

You follow her as she sits down at a table, and then she breaks the silence.

“Why are you helping her?” She whispers.

“What?” 

“Listen, I don’t know your intentions here, but she is really getting attached to you, and whenever you are done with these ‘trips’ to the hospital for the kids, she will suffer from it, and I don’t want that.”

“What are yo-“

“She has already lost so many people in her life; she doesn’t need another one.”

“Your parents are not in the picture anymore, right?” You ask. 

She slowly nods. “It’s just me and her for now.”

“Where are you guys staying?”

“As you know, she is staying at the hospital.” She says as if she is stating the obvious.

“You?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Listen, I know what it’s like to be in this situation; let me-”

“No, you don’t know that!” She says defensively.

“Ten years ago, I was you.” You slowly explain. “My brother, Nico, had Leukaemia, and I was in the same position as you. I was just a little bit older and could work. My parents didn’t give a shit about us. They said it was too much work to take care of Nico and wanted me out of the house because I was a footballer and gay. I didn’t have a support system. I was the support system.”

You take a deep breath and then continue. “Fortunately, I had a job, so I was able to take care of Nico and I, but not everyone is that lucky.”

“So you are saying that you feel bad for us?” She asks rhetorically, standing up from her chair, ready to leave.

“No, I don’t. When I started these ‘trips,’ as you say, five years ago, I told myself that I would never get too attached to any of the patients. But then I met Ava, and she is so smart and also a little sneaky, I grew fond of her.” You give her a light smile and continue.

“I know that the money she gets from selling autographs, t-shirts, and stuff, isn’t for buying books and video games, as she says, but for you guys to survive. I would love to help in any way. And I know that you probably won’t trust me. I wouldn’t trust a stranger either.”

Lucia sits again and looks at the table, playing with her drink. Looking almost guilty, as if you found out about a secret no one was supposed to know.

“I can’t do this anymore.” She barely utters, breaking the cold and defensive mask that she put on with you.

You slowly take her wrist, trying to reassure her. “You are stronger than you think.”

“I’m just so tired. She deserves better than me. She deserves a whole family. A better support system, and instead, she got stuck with me. I still need to finish school. I don’t have a paying job; how will we go through this?” She starts to silently sob. Hearing her cries breaks your heart; you stand up and circle around the table to hug her.

“You are already doing a great job. Ava is so proud and thankful for you. You are already doing the best you can, which is more than enough.”

She removes herself from the hug. And you continue, “Where are you staying? Not Ava, but you.”

“I’m staying during the night at a local women’s shelter. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the best option.” She says shyly.

You couldn’t let her get back there. 

“Come to my home with me. We have a spare bedroom, food, and whatever you need.”

She takes two steps back. “No no. You are already doing more than enough for us. This is too much.”

“Let me help you. You won’t leave her for too long. You need to rest too, so you can be there for her. Come on, go get your stuff. I’ll wait for you here.” 

She just nods and goes to her sister’s room.

In the meantime, you text your girlfriend Alexia that Lucia will stay at your house for the night. After a few minutes, she reappears with a backpack. you exit the hospital and get to the parking lot.

You get inside your car, and she sits beside you. “I live fifteen minutes from here. I hope you are not scared of dogs because you are going to see one.”

“I don’t have a problem with dogs. I didn’t even know you owned one. Ava didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“Well, it’s not technically mine. It’s my girlfriend’s. And you will probably see her too.”

“Is she okay with me staying? Cause if that’s not the case, it’s okay.” She soon rambles.

“Don’t worry, she knows. Most probably, she won’t even know you are there. She is a sleepy head.” You smile, remembering how Alexia would never get out of bed if not for training.

“Is she a footballer too?”

“Yeah, it’s Alexia Putellas. I think you know her.”

“Oh my god! So the rumors are true.”

“Well, we tried to hide it.” You remark, slightly blushing, thinking that you actually hid your relationship well from the media.

“Not that much.” She laughs.

-

As soon as you get home, Alexia greets both of you. 

“Que tal, mi amor?” She hugs you instead of kissing you and then focuses on Lucia.

“You must be Lucia. Hi, my name is Alexia.”

“Yeah, I know who you are. Here in Barcelona, everybody knows you.” She chuckles while your girlfriend blushes lightly.

You take her to your guest room and show her the bathroom. She takes a shower while you go to your kitchen, searching for Alexia. 

You sit on top of the counter and ask her to come closer to you. She finds herself between your legs while you take hold of her shirt. 

“I believe you owe me a kiss.”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know if you told her we were together or even if you wanted to kiss me in front of her.”

“Don’t worry, Amorcito.” You cutely rub her nose with yours, then put your finger to your lips, asking her to kiss you. 

She kisses you sweetly, then gives you pecks everywhere on your face. First on the cheeks, then on the nose, on the forehead, and finally on the lips again. You smile at the action. Even though you had been together for three years now, she still managed to make you feel all fuzzy on the inside with even the smallest actions.

When she finished, you hugged her and stayed in her embrace until you heard a door open, and Lucia came down the stairs. 

“Sorry to interrupt you guys.” She says awkwardly. “I just wanted to thank you guys again and say goodnight.” She quickly goes up the stairs, embarrassed to have interrupted something, not letting either of you reply.

“Go to the nena; I’ll get ready for bed.” Alexia encourages you.

You get to the guest room and knock on the door; you hear a faint ‘come in’ so you enter.

“I’m sorry I interrupted you guys.” She says she had her back on the head board, with the covers tucked to the stomach.

“You weren’t interrupting anything.” 

“Thank you for letting me stay today. You really didn’t have to.”

“Nonsense, I’m happy you stayed. Honestly, I really needed some new energy around the house. Don’t tell Alexia, but sometimes living with her it’s like living with a granny.” You joke, earning a laugh from her, while you hear from the other room, “I heard you!” 

“Ooh, she’s mad.” Lucia teases you.

“Nah, don’t worry, I said worse in three years of relationship.” Now turning back to serious, “Listen, I’m really sorry, but tomorrow I have training early tomorrow and-“

“Y/n, just tell me when I have to leave.”

“You can stay until you want; I can call you a taxi or take you to the hospital whenever me or Alexia come back from training.”

“I’ll be out of your hair in no time, don’t worry.”

“I don’t care, honestly. I know reaching out for help is difficult, but here is my phone number; if you need anything, just call me.” You gave her a note with your phone number, then affectionately caressed her cheek. “Good night Lucia.” You close the guest room door, turn off the light, and go to your room.

-

As soon as you enter your room, you are met with your girlfriend, who is cutely pouting on the edge of the bed. “I’m not a granny!”

“Yes, you are! You always go to bed early and make weird faces when you can’t see properly.” You tease her. 

“I’m a footballer!”

“Yes, you are! A pretty darn good one!” You add. While literally pushing her onto the bed and getting on top of her.

“Get off me!” She says, trying to be serious. “I’m still mad at you!” She says while trying to squirm out of your grip. 

“Nope! I’m sorry for calling you a granny. Will you forgive me?”

“Never!” She says, so you begin to tickle her sides. She started laughing while trying to remove your hands from her, but she couldn’t. “Okay, okay, I forgive you! Stop it!” You stop tickling her and get off her going to the bathroom.

You get ready for bed, putting on one of her nike shirts and a pair of soccer shorts, and then you plop on the bed beside Alexia. “Can I have cuddles, Amorcito?” You ask while stretching your arms, opening and closing your hands.

“Si, mi chiqui. Come here.” You put yourself on top of her and begin giving her sweet pecks in the middle of her chest. “No funny business tonight; la nena is sleeping two rooms from us.”

“I wasn’t going to do anything.” You say, continuing while smiling. 

“I’m very proud of you today, Y/n.”

“I’m really sorry if I didn’t tell you beforehand.”

“Look at me.” She says, waiting for you to look at her.

“You did what is right and what everyone should do. Whatever you do, I will always support you.”

You give her a loving kiss on the lips, thanking her for the words. “Next month I’m coming with you. It’s been long overdue, and I want to meet Ava.”

-

The next day you wake up and go to see Lucia; you knock at her door, but she doesn’t reply, so you slowly enter the room. You found all of the bedsheets neatly folded and a note that thanked you for everything. You were a little disappointed, but you knew how difficult it was to trust people and accept help, especially when you are alone. You figured that she probably went to see her sister in the hospital.

-

The following month you finally brought Alexia with you. The kids would always ask you to bring her to the hospital, but unfortunately, she never had the time to do that with her busy schedule. You had already informed the hospital that you would come, and the children were thrilled to do something different rather than always boringly watching tv or reading some children’s book. 

As Alexia greeted all the kids and played and joked with them, you went to see Ava, hoping that you would see Lucia too. You didn’t expect to see everything packed up and the two girls with their backpacks on, ready to go. 

As soon as she saw you, Ava ran up to you, and you lifted her weak body, giving her a hug. “The doctor said I can go home now! I’m not sick anymore!” 

“I’m so happy!” You say while hugging her a little tighter.

“So, who is it today? Who did you bring today?” She asks you excitedly.

“Why don’t you go and find out?” You say, indicating where Alexia is; she quickly squirms out of your embrace, exiting the room and leaving you alone with Lucia. Her eyes stuck to the floor from the moment you opened the door. She wouldn’t look at you.

“I’m really happy that she is finally healthy now,” You say honestly.

“That’s the most important thing.” She agrees weakly, finally looking at you.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling better now that she is better.”

“Where will you guys stay now?”

She hesitates, but then slowly, she starts, “I do-“ 

“Lucia! Look who came today with y/n!” Suddenly Ava came inside the room, dragging Alexia with her.

“Hi, Lucia.” Alexia waves at her, then focus again on Ava. “Y/n, how did you manage to convince Alexia to come here today?” Ava asks you in awe. “She is soo famous and the best player in the whole world!”

“I know! She really wanted to come, though, right?” You say, searching for Alexia’s confirmation. “Yes, of course!” She says, then kneeling in front of the small kid, “Y/n talks a lot about you.” She whispers, “She never talks about you, though,” She remarks, smirking. Alexia puts her hand on her hand, pretending to be offended.

“Who cares? I’m still better than her at football,” She whispers loud enough for you to hear, then sending you a cheeky wink; you react by poking your tongue out at her. This made Alexia earn a laugh from Ava and a chuckle from Lucia. She then drags Alexia out of the room, asking her if she could show her a trick with the ball.

“She’s her favorite player; our dad always brought us to your games.” She says sadly.

“I didn’t know you liked football.”

“I loved football, I even used to play it until a year ago, but now it brings out too many memories, so no football for me for a while.” She chuckles.

“Which position did you play?” 

“Guess.”

“Center back?”

“Nah, striker.”

“Oh wow! I’m sure you were the top scorer in your team.” You nod, surprised.

“I was, I even was called up in La Masia, but my parents wanted me home, and then Ava got sick, so I never was able to go.”

“Oh wow! You were good then!”

“Don’t act too surprised!” She says, teasing you, hitting you on the shoulder.

“I’m not!” You say rubbing where she just hit you “If the circumstances were different, would you have wanted to go?”

“Yes? I guess, I don’t know? I loved football.”

“Not anymore?”

“I haven’t played in so long; I don’t think I even remember how to kick a ball.” She chuckles.

“Well, I guess we have to find out!” You say, while she looks at you puzzled. 

“Come on, go get your stuff.” You say to her while putting your backpack on your shoulders, waiting for her to do the same.

“Where do you want to take me?” She says, looking at you puzzled.

“Don’t you wanna show off your skills?”

“I guess I don’t?”

“Come on, it will be fun!” You try to convince her.

“I don’t have cleats.” She tries to find an excuse.

“What’s your shoe size?”

“39, why?”

“I have the same size. If you want, you can use a spare pair of mine.” You offer.

“Why are you so nice to me?”

“I’m not being nice; this is me trying to show you that you, too, deserve to be happy, and you can have fun even if you think you don’t deserve it.”

“I-I don’t know what to say. I can’t leave her alone in the hospital; that girl has too much energy for a cancer patient.” She jokes.

“I think Alexia is keeping her busy enough. I genuinely think she is trying to steal my girlfriend from me.” She’s still not convinced. “Besides joking, Alexia is really good with kids, and she wouldn’t mind, but if it bothers you, we can bring her with us. Or they can come later on.”

“Oh, definitely, later on, I won’t embarrass myself with Alexia Putellas; I don’t think I could recover from that.”

“Oh, thank you! You know I am too a Barça player, right? And that I was the one that scored the winning goal in the last champions league, right?” You fake being offended.

“Oh, it was merely a tap-in.” She jokes, trying to rile you up. You knew she was joking, but you also knew this was a low blow to your confidence.

“Patri was the real hero in that Final, and I guess it was a tap-in, but it still brought us to the victory; that’s got to be worth something.”

“You know Ava basically woke up the whole floor when you scored that goal; she was so happy.” She smiles at you, quickly reminiscing that memory.

“Well, I can show you that I can score goals that are not tap-ins if you come with me.”

“Let’s see if you can do that!” She challenges you.

“If you win, I will get you two tickets to Camp Nou next year for every match you want to see, but if I win, you will let me help you.” You hesitate to say those words, hoping you wouldn’t push her away.

“Prepare to spend a lot of money because I never give up.” She teases you.

“You have some confidence, pequeña.”

“I’m not small!”

“Come on, go and say goodbye to Ava; we’ll leave in five minutes.”

As she exits the room to find Ava, you wait in there for her when you see your girlfriend appear from the door.

“Ava is wonderful.” She says while taking your hands.

“So wonderful that you would stay with her for another couple of hours?” You try while she gives you a puzzled look.

“What did you do, Y/n?” She asks, removing her hands from yours.

You tuck your arms behind your back, and shyly, you explain. “I’m taking Lucia to the field. Apparently, she played football, so I want her to have fun for a minute.” She doesn’t reply, so you continue, “But if it’s too much, I can bring her with me and Lucia, no problem. I just-“

“You are rambling, mi amor.” She says while grabbing you by the waist, trying to ground you. “You go have fun with her. I will come to the field after so we can play together.” She offers while smiling at you.

You give to get on your tippy toes and give her a small peck on the lips, “Thank you, Amorcito.”

“Just don’t have too much fun without me.” She grins, giving you a forehead kiss. You hear steps coming your way; you turn your head and see Lucia and Ava looking at you.

“You two are disgusting,” Lucia says, giving you guys a disgusted face while you just laugh at her. Ava instead looks at the two of you, trying to understand what the relationship is between the two of you. She looks at you and asks, “Is Alexia your wife?”

You choke on saliva, not expecting that question. After a mild coughing session, you received an annoying look from Alexia and Lucia. 

Not that you didn’t want to marry her because she was the only woman you could see yourself growing old with, but you were just waiting for the right moment to propose. Honestly, you didn’t even know if she wanted to get married, especially to you. 

You reply, “No, no, she is my girlfriend.”

“Wow, how did you land her?” She asks you curiously.

“Why is everybody bullying me today?” You say exasperatedly without even replying to the question. “Lucia, are you ready to go?”

After saying goodbye, you get in the car with Lucia and drive to the training facility.

“So I guess you don’t like the idea of getting married?” Lucia asks, breaking the silence.

“No no, it’s not that. I would love to get married, especially with someone like Alexia; she is incredible and so supportive.” You take a deep breath. “Do you want to know a secret?”

“Wait, are you going to propose?” She asks excitedly.

“I was planning to!”

“Oh my god!”

“Don’t you dare tell her! Or I swear I’ll get mad.” 

“I won’t” She makes the movement of zipping her mouth with her hand and throwing the key away.

-

You get to the training facility a few minutes later; the field is closed, so Lucia looks at you and asks, “If it’s closed, how can we enter?”

“Can you keep another secret?” She nods, and you take out a key and unlock the door. “I was drunk after we had won our first Champions League, I don’t know why, but I decided I wanted the keys to the field, so I convinced Mapi and Patri to help me. Let’s just say that Alexia had to come out and help us because we were too drunk to keep quiet, and she didn’t want me to get in trouble. I got the keys, made two other copies for my accomplices, and slept on the couch for two days, but it was well worth it.” You say proudly.

“You know, when I imagined what you were like, when we would see you on tv or at the stadium, I pictured you differently.” She smiles at you while following you to the changing rooms.

“How did you picture me?” She asked curiously while handing her a spare pair of cleats. 

“They call you the asesina silenciosa for a reason, you know?” While putting on the cleats, she continues, “You are always so cold and precise on the pitch, scoring and assisting in so many games, whereas in real life, you are basically the opposite. You are very nice, and you always try to help everybody, and a literal gay panic in front of Alexia; it’s so funny and very painful to see.”

“She’s just very beautiful and amazing, okay? Leave me alone.” You reply shyly, blushing a little.

“So, are you ready to get your ass beaten?” She asks you jokingly.

“You know that I’m a professional athlete, right? I get paid to play football.”

“Don’t get too cocky, Y/ln.” 

You get on the pitch and begin passing the ball to each other; initially, she was a little rusty, but as soon as she got comfortable with the ball, you knew she had a lot of talent and potential. 

“So favorite player?” You ask her.

“Messi. He’s just way too good and so great to watch.” She answers. “What about you?” 

“All-time favorite, of course, is Messi too, but right now, I really enjoy seeing playing Rodri and De Bruyne.”

After passing the ball to each other and chatting, you begin doing some shooting drills and dribbling. You were shocked, to say the least; she was so good, she dribbled with ease, and her finishing skills were incredible.

The first time she dribbled past you, your ego got scarred for life, but then as time went on, you began cheating a little by holding her shirt or picking her up from the air and moving her whole body away from the ball. She would get mad at you, while you would just laugh it out, but she began to do the same thing to you after a while. By the end, you were laughing on the ground, trying to catch your breath. 

As you both calmed down, she began talking. “I really missed it.” 

“Playing football?”

“Yes, and having fun. You know, I couldn’t even touch a ball after our parents left us; my dad was the one that loved soccer and Barcelona maybe more than anything, probably more than his family. I tried playing soccer to make him proud of me so that maybe he could see and pay attention to me, but I guess it wasn’t enough. After Ava was diagnosed with Leukaemia, they told me they would have to go on a ‘work trip,’ but they never returned. And I stopped playing football.”

“I hope that this didn’t bring back bad memories. I know how it feels when you think you are not good enough, but if it helps, you are a great kid, Lucia. In these last months, you have proven yourself to be more than enough for Ava and your parents. Any parent would be proud of what you did for Ava; not everyone is capable of that or willing to do it. You have proved everyone wrong. You couldn’t be more proud of yourself.” 

“Thank you, I really needed to hear that.” She breaks down crying. 

“Come here.” You say to her while gently holding her while she cries. “Let it all out; I’m here for you.” After a few minutes, she stops; you keep hugging her, waiting for her to let go of you, when you hear a car arrive. “Your sister is here. Do you want me to come with you to freshen up?”

“No, no. I can go alone; just tell them I went to the bathroom.” She informs you. 

“Will do, captain.” You say, giving her the military salute; she replies with a surprised chuckle and a ‘you’re so weird.’ 

As Alexia gets inside the pitch, you see Ava running towards you, giving you a crushing hug that makes you stumble from your sitting position on the grass to falling to your back on the ground. 

“How did it go with Alexia? Did she behave well?” You ask the little girl.

“We stayed at the hospital, we played games and I pranked a nurse!” You hear the voice of Lucia from behind you, so you tell her sister to go to her and cheer her up. As she walks to her sister, Alexia sits next to you, and you turn to her.

“You are really good with kids.” She remarks.

“You too, you know. Would you ever want kids?” You ask her.

“I never thought about it, but I think it would be something I would like with you.”

“I think I need to help them. They deserve to have a house and a support system. Lucia is so smart and kind, and fierce. While, Ava is so full of energy, funny, and sneaky.”

“I love you, Y/n, and even though this is too early and I still haven’t fully processed every-“

“It’s too much for you. I get it. But they’ll be on the streets if I don’t help them. You must understand why I’m doing this, but I can’t do this without you.”

“We’ve been by each other’s sides for years; you think I’m gonna leave now? If you’d let me finish, Y/n, I would have told you to do it. I will always support you, and I kinda got attached to the Nena. So go through with it; you have my full support.”

“If it actually happens, our lives are going to change drastically, would you be ready for that?”

“I got you all for myself for three years; it’s time to expand our little family. Of course if they want to. Don’t push too hard; she is still scarred and scared to trust again. Be cautious.”

“I don’t know how I got so lucky.” You say beaming at her.

“I’m the lucky one.” She smiles while gently rubbing my thigh and then standing up. 

She goes to Lucia and asks her if she wants to play some football with her; she is hesitant at first, but after a bit of convincing from you and Alexia, she eventually decides to play with her, but you know that she is holding back. 

Alexia knew that something was wrong. Hence, she took the ball into her hands,  and stopped the little competition that they were doing, “I’m not made of glass; you can play harder on me, you know.” She offers.

Lucia throws her hands in the air, “I’m not going to be the reason why La Reina got injured again.”

“I’m taller and stronger than you; you won’t injure me.”

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes, I’m sure.” She chuckles while they return to playing, Lucia clearly getting more physical. 

You laughed at their interaction and how Lucia worried about hurting Alexia;.while Alexia just wanted to have fun. After a while of playing, Alexia turned her head to you, mouthing the words “She’s good”, you respond by nodding approvingly, shifting your focus on the little child next to you, who at the moment was very quiet.

“Did you get your autograph from Alexia?” You ask her, trying to break the silence.

She slowly nods, still looking at her sister, then turns to you. “Yes, only one, though.”

“You didn’t want one for you?”

“No, I only got one for me; I didn’t want to sell hers.” You see her softly yawn, trying to keep open her eyes.

“Did you have fun today?” 

She nods, then looks again at her sister, who was trying to dribble past Alexia, “I hadn’t seen her that happy since before I got sick.” She smiles like a proud sister, showing signs of her tiredness again.

“Are you tired?” You ask her.

“No.” She says defensively while crossing her arms, yawning again. You chuckle at her, finding it adorable how she tries to hide how much she wants to sleep. 

“Yes, you are!” You say, poking her side. “You can nap if you want; I’ll watch out for your sister for you.” You offer.

She slowly nods and then moves near you; you didn’t expect her to sit between your legs, curling on your chest. You were shocked; you didn’t know what to do, so you just put your hands on her tiny body and rubbed her back. “You’re comfier than the grass.” She says, dozing off to sleep. You kiss the top of her head and then whisper, “Go to sleep, Nena.” And she did. 

You were physically in a very weird position, as you knew that you would be getting cramps in a couple of minutes, while mentally, you couldn’t nor remember the instance of ten years ago when you were holding your brother in the same position you were with Ava. She reminded you of Nico, both of them had the same personality and were too smart for their age.

Trying to get more comfortable, you slowly sink to the ground from your sitting position. At the same time, Ava gently stirs, repositioning herself, fisting your shirt with her tiny hand, not wanting you to let go, even though you wouldn’t go for the world. After a few minutes, you doze off and get woken up by a light caress on your cheek. You slowly open your eyes, Ava is still sleeping soundly, and on your side, Alexia is waiting for you to wake up.

“Mi Chiqui is getting dark outside; we need to leave.” You slowly get up, still Ava in your arms, spoiler alert: you couldn’t feel your arms and back anymore. She gently stirs awake, “Shhh, go back to sleep.” You whisper to her, still rubbing her tiny back. She was so small for a six-year-old.

You see Lucia, she was taking your cleats off her feet; putting on her shoes again. You give Ava to Alexia, and then you walk up to her. “I’m sorry she had to sleep on you; I-I was just too caught up playing that I didn’t even notice she was tired. I’m really sorry.” She tries to explain.

“Hey, don’t apologize; you were having fun, and she was just tired after a long day. And now look! She stole my girlfriend again.” You say sincerely while trying to joke in the last part, pointing at Alexia, who was rocking Ava in her arms, showing off one of her big smiles reserved for children and for the people she loves. 

Then you turn to her and ask her, “Are you hungry?”

“Oh yeah, I’m starving. I haven’t run that much in months.” Then she backtracks. “Oh, wait. I knew what you were doing; you are trying to manipulate me into eating with you guys.” She asks, clearly understanding your intentions.

“Manipulate is a big word, isn’t it? I guess you can call it offering to eat something with us?”

“Nah, the right word is definitely manipulate or gaslight.” She remarks.

“Well, do you want to come with us?”

“I don’t know; I must get her to bed.”

“Where are you guys staying, if I can ask?”

“You already know the answer. And don’t you dare ask me to stay with you. That is too much, and I wouldn’t know how to repay you. I can deal with everything on my own.”

You knew she wouldn’t budge on that one, but you had to give it to her; she knew your actions before you said anything.

“Why don’t we just eat something and figure everything out later?” You offer. 

-

So you did that; you brought Lucia and Ava into your home, ordered take-out, and put on a movie to watch. Alexia and Ava were petting Nala, which in the beginning, the little dog hid in your room, but progressively through the night, she slowly got accustomed to the new people and gladly accepted the cuddles that the younger girl had given her.

The scene that was before your eyes oddly felt really domestic. Most nights with Alexia, if they weren’t spent out with friends, would include snuggling on the couch and relaxing; the only difference was that there were two new other people now. 

You tried not to get too attached to them and tried not to act as a parent but more like someone that could help. They already had parents, and you for sure didn’t want to replace them. You just wanted to give the help you weren’t given when it happened to you, so if some food and a roof were needed, you wouldn’t hesitate to share that and maybe a little love here and there. 

Ava was asleep, and Alexia was about to, so you tried to get the attention of Lucia so you could talk to her. You went outside on the porch with her so you wouldn’t disturb Ava from her much-needed sleep. 

“Thank you for today, I really appreciated everything you did for us, but I think we have to get going.”

“You can always stay here.” You offer while she tries to dissuade you. “Listen, if it’s a problem to stay with us, I can book you a hotel room, but please let me help you find accommodation. I would love for you to stay until you find a better place. Ava can start school, while you could go and play in La Masia, or finish school and go to university, or both, whichever you prefer.And I know I’m not your mother, nor your relative, I’m just a stranger, but it wouldn’t sit well with me to let you guys leave somewhere that maybe it’s not even safe.”

“I don’t want to be a burden. And you don’t owe me anything.” She scratches her forehead, thinking, “Why are you even doing this?”

“What?”

“Why are you helping us?” 

“Honestly? I don’t know. I just know that I would love to help you in every way you let me. And you can always tell me to fuck off. But I hope you don’t” She chuckles, and for the first. The time she looks at you. “So what do you think?”

She remained silent for a while, while you patiently waited for her to reply, hoping it would be a positive answer. “Only until I can find a better solution for us. Plus, Ava already loves it here and loves you. When she saw you for the first time, she kept gushing about you and how you were her second favorite player, the first being Alexia” You chuckle. “And maybe living in a real house is better than waiting for social workers to find another accommodation.” She shyly adds. “I think you should ask Alexia if it’s okay for her too; I don’t want to get in the middle of you too.”

“She’s okay with it. She loves kids, and believe me, in a matter of days, she’s going to turn all protective, especially with Ava; she always had a soft spot for kids. As for the social workers, let me handle it, okay? I’ll try my best to make it as quick as possible.” She slowly nods and whispers a ‘thank you,’ taking you by surprise and hugging you. It took you a second to react, but soon you tightened the embrace, waiting for her to leave it.

“Probably, it’s going to be much of a burden for you rather than us.” You chuckle, “When our friends and Alexia’s family and my brother find out that we have two new people in our home, they’ll want to meet you. But I’ll take care of it.” You explain.

She removes herself from your embrace and looks at you. “Can I come to your games too? I miss being at the stadium.” She asks shyly.

“Oh, you must!” Your jokes. “I expect you to come every week with my jersey on.” You grin, pointing at her.

“We’ll see about that. I also like some other players in the squad, like Mapi Leon or Caroline Graham Hansen.” She playfully smirks.

“Then I don’t think I can give you any tickets.” You fake being offended. “Now go to your sister and take her to bed.” You grin, winking at her.

“Yeah, yeah. Thank you y/n.”

[choccy-milky]

Status update on the dark relic nsfw comic please ma'am 🙏 my family is dying

ITS DONE!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉...well, the DRAWING part is as of yesterday BAHAHA. now im just adding all the dialogue/speech bubbles/sfx, SO ITS DEFINITELY GONNA BE SOON!! DEFS BY THIS WEEKEND!! ive just been very nitpicky on the font which i cant decide on LMAO and im also nitpicky abt other final touches LOL. i didnt wanna show anymore cuz ive already shown so much but HERES THE FINAL SNEAK PEEK

and speaking of fonts, i normally use handwriting by jeremy paz!

oh man its so random, but i either use the name lumi or clora for everything whenever i play rpgs (baldurs gate 3, dragon age, you name it) and clora originated from rune factory 4 LOL. theres a character named 'clorica' and i really liked that name, it sounds so elegant and fantasy ish, so i eventually just shortened it to clora bahaha. now its my go-to. i like how simple it is but it also sounds unique and works in modern AND fantasy settings, imo

my first and ONLY playthrough was as clora! i originally did try to make myself at the start, but i have short brown hair and straight across bangs, and they didnt have a style that felt 'me', so i went with just making a ravenclaw that i liked, and then gave her my go-to name of clora HAHA. and yea, i built up her and sebs relationship in my head as i was playing, especially with all the running around the castle i did. i just liked to imagine her constantly out of breath and flushed and seb just watching like ....🧍girl chill...

AND SPEAKING OF MY DARK RELIC COMIC/SMUT, my biggest advice for writing smut id say is to have a reasoning behind it, i guess? i focus a lot on their headspace/WHY they're fucking at that moment when i write it LOL instead of just the movements/sex for the sake of sex. in your case, the sexual tension leading up to the first time gives you SO much to work with, since you can just be in his head with how much hes looking forward to it, how much hes savouring it, how he's also nervous but enjoying it and trusting the other person, etc. the thoughts are hotter than the actual deed a lot of the times (which is why when clora and seb did it for the first time it ended up being like, 15k words of just foreplay and build up from sebs perspective LMAOO) so yeah id just try to focus on their emotions and desires if you can! and a lot of the times with consent stuff it CAN feel forced, and you dont even really need your characters to talk about that stuff verbally, at least not too much. you can do it in body language, or just something as simple as 'ill stop if you want'. it doesnt have to be a long therapist-like conversation about consent, which CAN tend to sound a little awkward and unrealistic (esp in the heat of the moment), if thats the problem you're having. HOPE I COULD HELP

also i love this for you and for me. YES GO ON AND MAKE A BUNCH OF CLORA CLONES, I COMMAND IT👉👉👉

and last but not least the most important question. honestly i like plain sweets a lot with no icing/filling. im a slut for shortbread cookies and also just plain glazed donuts. and also custard/portugese/egg tarts, which i also forced clora to like in my fic HAHA. IF YOU HAVENT HAD THEM YOU HAVE TO, THEYRE SO GOOD😩😩💖💖

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for calling my roommate crazy?

I (28f) live with 2 other people, a former college roommate who I’m pretty close with (29f) and 2nd roommate (28nb) who we both met when we moved in together 2 years ago.

Let me start this out by saying, this isn’t a fandom aita, it’s going to sound a bit weird at first, but bear with me.

I have a medical condition (relevant later) which stopped most of my bones from maturing past puberty (growth plates closing, cartilage not hardening into bones, ect.), so my skeleton is basically stuck somewhere between 13-19, (I look about 17-19, but the last time I tried to buy hard cider, the cashier thought I was 14, so that’s how young I can look). I also have very pale skin (unrelated to my disorder, just a ginger), and (related to my disorder) lack some liver enzymes so I need eat meat or I get sick (the same reason why cats need to eat meat), I ended up in the ER when I lived with my vegan sister for a week and ate the same veggie diet as her.

Trouble is, Roommate 2 is really into conspiracy theories and other fringe stuff. Nothing alt-right or anything, just like, (for example) they fully bought into that Mermaids: the body found show, and wouldn’t be dissuaded, even when Roommate 1 googled it and showed them solid proof that it was fictional. Wholeheartedly believes the US government preformed 9/11, does alternative medicine (homeopathy, ect), wishes there were ‘all natural’ vaccines (still isn’t an anti-vaccer though, just needs to be persuaded that Bill Gates didn’t put microchips in them).

Anyway, Roommate 1 and I have a recurring joke that I’m a vampire because of the meat thing and the pale thing and the not aging thing. Roommate 2 overheard us and laughed, but weirdly. She kinda joked along with us, but she seemed...odd. About a week later, they start asking me stuff about being a vampire. But they seemed friendly and not nervous then and I was hoping they were just joking and I also sincerely thought they were just asking me about how vampires work on one of my shows (I’m a big fan of Carmilla and the Originals), so I tried to explain, but I cited each show when I’m explaining a thing. This continued for several weeks, but getting worse and more weird every time, eventually culminating about 2 and a half months later into them asking me more stuff about life as a vampire and I really realised that they were serious. Bear in mind, Roommate 1 and I were trying to be very clear that we don’t believe in vampires this whole time because we both know how Roommate 2 is about this. As a result, this was the first time I really registered that they seriously seemed to genuinely believe I was a vampire. I firmly told them that I am not a vampire and that vampires aren’t real, they’re fun to joke about, but they aren’t real. They implored me ‘to be straight with them about being a vampire,’ and that ‘I could trust them,’ and I’m ashamed to say, I kinda freaked out at this point, cuz I was afraid that they would be scared of me and maybe try to hurt me, since they seemed kinda unstable because of this.

This is where I think I was an asshole, I am usually very sensitive to mental health issues. I have some c-PTSD myself and there are a lot of mental health issues in my family (unfortunately, I think some history with my own mentally ill father may have made me react this way, since he has very similar issues to Roommate 2 (vaccines, alternate medicines, specifically involving me in his delusions) and I had a very bad experience in my early teens where he thought I was a demon and ‘sent to destroy him’). Anyway, I got very upset and I yelled at them, I told them they were completely crazy and needed to get mental help and said I thought Roommate 1 and I needed to move out because they might try to stake my heart or something. I feel really bad for calling them crazy, especially because Roommate 2 has some very mental health issues and words like crazy make light of and stigmatise that and I’m very big into not blaming people for their mental health problems, but this was very triggering and in this moment I was very distresssed.

So, aita, all things considered here? I’m still gonna feel like the asshole no matter what, since mental health problems aren’t to be taken lightly or blamed on the person, but I’m curious what the internet thinks.

What are these acronyms?

[b1adie]

looking into it i think yingxing would have been fire hunt. he’s hunt for sure considering his main thing was hatred of abominations of abundance anyway but he was trained by huaiyan who is known as ‘the flaming heart’ on the zhuming. people and heliobi hang out together there. flint emperor is there. they use the flint emperor’s flame to forge weapons. the forge is called flamedisk forge. lots of fire stuff. so if he learned there he should be fire element. also makes sense with blade’s trailer showing that he is the single candle still lit despite the rest having gone out. would be cool if he had bluish/teal fire bc heliobi and whatnot.

i was gonna say something about how his skill could be him like heating up his sword as one would to forge it (but not THAT hot obviously) and now im thinking about how with blade’s skill he turns his sword from black to red? he is forging that thing. also crazy that that sword weighs like 300lbs and he launched it through the air like a frisbee and dan heng got impaled with it and hardly even stumbled. how strong are these guys. OOOH or yingxing could have a FLAMETHROWERRR thing. he made awesome shit and everyone loved him ok? i know he’s never going to be playable as old man furnace master yingxing but i am just imagining if he was… hehe. arrogant craftsman. god they need to let me see/hear more of him like that. I WANT TO SEE OTHER WEAPONS HE MADE I WANT TO SEE HIM SMILE AND BE PROUD AND ANNOYING!!!!!! OLD MAN NOW!!!!!!

anyways fire/hunt yingxing. imaginary/hunt would be cute and fire/destruction makes sense too and obviously most characters playable paths dont line up with their actual beliefs but idc he seems very hunt to me. i miss him. you guys remember when he said “be careful, high elder, lest you hurt yourself with it.” that was some crazy shit. show me geriatric bladie again pleeeease. blade companion mission better be 6 hours long and at least 100k words and 2 cinematics. i’ll wait. give me his life story all 800 years of it. well i guess that’d be like

age 0-7: love my family. sure hope the beasts don’t arrive!

age 8-15: beasts ate my planet. went somewhere else they are teaching me shit here

age 16-30: i am the best at the shit i was taught. idc that everyone is rude to me about it cuz they can be rude but they can’t beat meeeee 😋

age 31-70: im still the best and now i’m hanging out with my immortal friends yay :) they’re all going to outlive me but that’s for the best i think. Right guys?

age 71-800: Ow ow ow ouch ow. Where the fuck am i btw & who the fuck am i as well. Oh well guess ill stick a branch in my hair

age 801+: kidnapped by robot and woman but it’s fine. girl keeps asking me to play games with her even though i tell her i’m busy cutting my hand off each and every day. beast upon my shoulder saying ‘Meow’ frequently. unsure of the implications of this. robot here sometimes. i like it. woman tells me to stop foaming at the mouth so i do because i respect women. except ONE OF THEM. (can’t remember which one right now). branch growing from my stomach again. not my problem. i will be taking a week long nap now.

but i want 6 hours and 100k words of it with pictures and voice acting as proof.

[kookidough]

sierra is sooooo complicated to me like. i could go on about her for so long & also i wish the writers did certain things with her character (which i will get into later in this rant) so ya here we go

firstly her childhood is . very clearly messed up?? it’s established that her mother is Ultra Obsessed with chris and i think sierra mentions being a 3rd generation chris mclean scholar at one point which implies that obsession just runs in the family atp😭 before even going on the show she’s grown up in an environment where this level of obsession is Normal so she doesn’t see anything wrong with turning out the same way

since her mother is like . obsessed with chris & stuff that’s probably what would bring sierra to watching total drama in the first place and i personally feel like she’d fixate on it because it was a group of teenagers her age, people she would like to be friends with if that makes sense? i can imagine she’d be a pretty odd child without many friends so that’d maybe be a reason for her to latch onto total drama, maybe why she latched onto cody too because like. she thinks he’s cute and they have things in common (like theyre both pretty geeky) so she gets pretty parasocial about it because, as mentioned before, her mum being obsessed with chris is just Normal to sierra so she thinks it’s normal for her to be obsessed with cody (spoiler alert girl: it’s really not)

while she’s on the show i feel like she doesn’t change / gets worse because chris sees her exhibiting Mental Illness and just… actively encourages her behaviour? and the other contestants do nothing to stop it, like how most of the time (e.g. paris) team amazon get mad at cody for sierra’s behaviour instead of helping him out for some reason??? no one tells sierra her behaviour is wrong so she just. Continues to get worse until shes out of the competition😭

this is where im gna interrupt with a canon divergence because like . personally i think in the episode where votes were revealed and cody was revealed to have voted sierra Every Single Time, sierra shouldve gotten over him!!!! it was the harsh truth she needed to hear, the dose of reality that cody is NOT interested in her and she needs to move on. she couldve had good character development, building her relationships with other characters and showing off her skills. maybe she’d still be eliminated in drumheller because she made cody that birthday cake as an apology and then kaboom or whatever idk just some way to keep her elimination the same

going down this train could’ve made her character in all stars Actually Interesting ! we couldve seen a side of sierra that kept some of her old eccentric vibes but had her head in the game this time instead of being focused on a boy, especially since cody isnt even in that season

and of course lastly i just wanna say i’m not excusing her weird actions or her creepiness at all, she has some Extreme Flaws and all the stuff she did was absolutely not okay, i just like rotting and seeing maybe why she acted the way she did and i wanted to drop my own two cents on interesting avenues her character couldve went down :3 i know everyone in td is some form of stereotype and sierra was an obsessive uberfan but she couldve still been that after getting over cody, in fact im disappointed that she knew SO much about the cast yet didnt use any of their weaknesses to her own advantage, she couldve dominated the competition😭

so uhhh yeah thats my thoughts on sierra, i probably over-read her to filth but shes very complex to me and i wish certain aspects of her character were done differently, she had a lot of potential especially in all stars but um Everyone had their potential destroyed in all stars so i’ll overlook that

[raggstorice]

FLASH HEADCANONS!

Where I take a fandom and give a Headcanon for Every. Single. Character.

Twisted Wonderland! #1

Here we go!

Riddle: whenever a bug lands on him he freezes. Just stops.

Ace: His parents always shut down his beliefs. Very much a 'Stay in line and You'll be fine' type of family. (If requested I will rant on my HC Ace backstory)

Deuce: He calls his mother every day and one day she just starts crying and is all like 'Im so proud of you. You've changed so much and I love you.' and Deuce started crying too.

Cater: Does not actually care that much about Magicam. He just needed something to base his personality off of.

Trey: Uses southern insults All. The. Time. People talk to him and he's just 'Well good for you!' and people think he's the nicest.

Leona: If you put a weighted blanket on him he will just fall over like that one scene in Lilo and stitch.

Ruggie: Knows everyone. And I mean EVERYONE. Try to introduce him to someone new and he'll just be like 'OMG my old friend!' yeah.

Jack: Named his cactus Paula. Also Talks to it and uses it like a doll. (Like that one scene in DRDT)

Azul: His first experience with a land dweller was when he saw a coin fall from the surface and he followed it. There was a language barrier so he couldn't talk to them. He wonders how they're doing some days.

Jade: Had a bonding moment with Jack over their love for plants (mushrooms and cacti) also eats mushroom-spinach pizza (like me!)

Floyd: He bites. Also he's banned from playing against other schools in Basketball because of the sheer amount of fouls he gets. Jamil is so done.

Kalim: Will summon a rainbow to cheer someone up. He's precious.

Jamil: Doesn't actually hate Kalim. He just needs to be mad at someone. Oh also he cooks for the Basketball club and brings food to practice. Ace is his biggest fan.

Vil: Godly eye makeup. He's the one who gave Rook his feather in his hat.

Epel: Bad Ass Mother Fucker. He prefers to fight with his tounge rather than his fists. The only one to realize Trey's passive aggressiveness.

Rook: Will bring back fresh meat from his hunts. Him and Jade bring the best ingredients to the Cafeteria and no one knows.

Idia: one time he hid from people in an empty classroom for several hours after school. Ortho almost sent a search party.

Ortho: Spends hours analyzing his friends. Like as a hobby. He brings them perfectly planned gifts and they all love it.

Malleus: Lilia cuts his hair. He also polishes his horns. He secretly really enjoys Sebek's loyalty just wished he was quieter.

Silver: Takes care of the horses so well. They love him and will only accept food from him.

Sebek: He can be surprisingly quiet if you ask nicely. He gets loud again if he gets worked up. Autistic.

Lilia: He loves his sons. He ends up taking care of the whole Campus. No one in NRC can take care of themselves properly so he does it. Mockingbird by Eminem coded

Crowley: He shows up randomly and helps students. Lilia is taking a student to the infirmary? He's there and takes them for him. Leona is asleep in the botanical garden? Crowley kicks him away from the path. The teachers are so done with the chaos and are ready to combust? He's there. He will make the chaos worse and somehow contain it at the same time.

Crewel: He stays stocked up on potions ready to help any students that are ill, tired, or in any sort of pain. He will let you sleep in his classroom and will pull you into his office if he thinks somethings up. Many students have cried in front of him.

Trein: Will go out of his way to include history not taught in textbooks. Stuff about gay rights, racism, trans right, war crimes, fun facts about political leaders, etc. He does it all in the most monotone voice ever.

Lucius: The best cat. Used to be a stray wandering campus. Will bring gifts to students it likes. Recognized Leona as one of its own.

Vargas: Always down to help students. Oh you have Asthma? Good thing I have SEVENTEEN EXTRA INHALERS. You seem to be struggling a little why don't you sit down? Exercise without rest is as good as no exercise at all.

Sam: Will give freebies to students who need it. Oh you skipped lunch to study for a test? Good thing I have a sandwich just for you! Your pen broke? Which one do you want? Also will tell you all the tea.

Grim: Whenever he eats those blot crystals he suddenly knows all of the victims trauma which he reports to Yuu.

Yuu: Has serious conversations with Overblot victims. The best non licensed therapist.

Authors Note: It's 1:23 AM. I'm going to sleep.

[wettestnjaay]

“SUCCESFUL MISSION”

DAD!HENRY CAVILL x FAMOUS!PHOTOGRAPHER!BLACK!READER BASE OFF OF THE POLL I POSTED MOSTLY EVERYTHING IS ABOUT HALF OF 50% BUT DAD!HENRY HAS THE MOST, IDK FOR SURE BUT ILL TRY TO AT LEAST, STILL DO ALL OF THEM BUT LETS SEE HOW IT GOES :). (POLL DOESN'T END UNTIL FEBRUARY 12TH) FLUFF

4 OF HENRY AUTUMN AND CALLIE JUST REQUEST W/ A PLOT AND WITH "DAD!HENRY AND THE TWINS"

-----

JOIN TAGLIST TO BE TAGGED AND @'D IN THE FICS.

2023-TAGLIST | REQUEST | WATTPAD

SUMMARY;

picture you a busy working woman, who travels most of the time, you better famous, and popular but not as popular as the family you met on the airplane,, and not just that the pretty faces you get to speak to and numbers you've given to the little ones.

WARNING !

nothing I think, small talk, children (toddlers)?, airplane, mentions of being famous and stuff, hookup(not rlly) flirting, the little girls being adorable :) blonde haired baby = Callie and Brown haired baby = Autumn.

_________

YOUR BUSINESS HAS BEEN FLOWING HEAVENLY GOOD, you been traveling around a lot, keeping your fans updated on instagrams and twitter, going to meet and greets and other famous stuff the people go to.

You were in California right now, and in the airport to fly to New York to attend some business, but lucky enough you didn't even notice a curly headed male and two toddlers coming along on the same airplane as yourself.

It were so busy, and trying to take focus you didn't notice them at all, but hey work needed to get done.

You sat by the open walkway while you allowed the other person sat by the window.

You'd been on about five different phone calls, three different papers you had written on and about 7 different times you opening up your laptop and connecting your camera to it and viewing, sending and saving photos from the camera.

You were so focus, wanting and having to get this work done you didn't even notice the whispering right across from you and the looks you were given on the other side of the plane.

"That right there is a famous photographer named, Y/N Y/L/N.., isn't she pretty?" Henry whispered to the two little ones siting next to her.

The blonde headed one turned her head fast as hell to get a good look like the pretty lady her father was talking about.

The brown haired one laughed as she pointed at you and said "Th-tat won..? da-addy.. th..tat won!?"

Henry's face full of embarrassment as he choo'd at the young girl for her to stop being loud, "Oooo daddy got a b-big fawt cruwsh on a jiiirl"

Henry looked at the blonde pointing a finger at her to shush as they laughed a giggle even more which caught her attention.

You made eye contact with the brown haired girl as she smiled and giggle at you which exposed a big sweet looking smile from you towards her.

She motioned her hands to you, a heart and pointed at her father which made you pay more attention as her dad brushed her off, "Stop that Autumn.. you going to freak her out."

You just laughed at the girl not even noticing her father just as you turned you head away.

You finally finished more of your work as you were hearing the two little ones babbling around about something,

You figured out to ignore it and mind your business as you used the tv on the seat and picked out a movie, finding dory which was you new favorite Disney show.

Before you could press play, the blonde haired toddler was in the walkway right by your knee..

You smiled at her as you questioned and asked, "Hello there princess, can I help you..?"

She just started up at you for a while before looking back at her sister and then at you.

"Daddy's innn-the t-t-toilet and.. mwe and swissy can-wt!" she complained, dragging her works before stomping her feet as she was embarrassed but trying her best.

You figured she was only about 1or close to 3, still needing speak lessons but was trying her best, you just talked to her as she was a normal child oldest to speak proper, ignoring all the mispronounces and the stuttering.

"You can't what sweetheart?" you said in a smoothing voice wanting to calm her down a bit.

She looked down at you lap for a moment seeing the route for the tv seat, but didn't say a word just pointed at the screen and back at you.

You smiled at you and question, "You and your sissy can watch finding dory?"

She nodded with a adorable pouty lips as you hand out to see if she'll let you carry her, which she gladly accepted snuggling into your embrace and laying her head on your shoulder.

You got to their original seats as you were introduced to the brown haired baby who looked quiet familiar,

You ended brushing it off and greeting the child, "Hi there sweet pea.. your sitting over here all alone like angel, could me and princess.." you paused looking at the toddler in your arms

"Mmm-my nawe iws caw-collie" she says in small pauses, which makes you proud.

"Right, Ms. Y/L/N, and Princess Callie has request to sit with you, madam." you cheered to the chubby toddler,

As she clapped her hands and nodded, "C-callie.., Aw-Autummmn!" she slurred as she point at the toddler in your hands and then at herself.

You sat in their fathers sit with Callie between your legs with the brown headed girl, Autumn was in her own seat.

Not for long tho, you quickly got on Disney plus, searching for something to put on for the both of them just as you heard babbling and cries coming from them both.

"Stawp!.. no! Stawpppp ii..it!" one called out, "nooooo youuuu stAWP!" the other yelled out right after louder

You looked down at both seeing the blonde pushing her sister off of you, trying to keep you all for herself.

You chuckled which caught their attention as they pouted loudly.

The chubby toddler had wet tears coming from out her eyes, a silent sob coming him her as you watched her puffy cheeks turn a bright red,

You put your hands out for her to grab ahold of you as you choo'd at her to not cry, "Oh no.. no need to cry sweet girl,"

"They're enough of me to go around to both of you, okay?" They both just stared at you for a while before you smiled and tickled them both.

"That's the lesson for today, sharing is caring, okay we're on the same level right?" they finally got it with the small giggles that were still coming out of their mouth, they nodded their heads at your question,

You settled Callie back between your lap again, and Autumn on your thigh as she laid her head on your breast relaxing herself.

You were surprise on there attachment on you, which caused you to wonder did they a female figure or even a motherly figure in their life to provide them.

You got your answer quickly as you felt how clingy they were if you only moved a little inch, it was as if they thought you were going to be leaving them very soon,

They ended up calming down, stop whining, clinging on to you as if you were their own mother for them to keep, but you didn't mind.

You guys problem were watching the movie for about a half of 30 minutes when you figured that their father was maybe busy with a phone call.

That thought left you mind as you felt a device slap across your thigh and stopped the young girl from trying to do a password for a phone,

You laughed, "Can I see that Callie.. I'll give it back-I promise."

She gave you the phone just as you opened it you were presented to the lock screen which was a picture of a celebrity.. but not any celebrity the celebrity whose attention you've been wanting for a while, the CELEBRITY YOU WERE CRUSHING ON FOR A WHILE NOW.

You see the picture of Henry Cavill, with Callie clinging to his chess as he held her, and Autumn's legs hanging on his shoulders as she had her head laid on top of his,

They all looked identical by the face, Henry and Autumn looking alike the most by them both having that brown curly texture hair while Callie stood out a little with her dirty-blonde but curly hair.

You were particularly drooling over the picture.. he was such a dilf, like some kind of geek god.

before you knew it, and before you tried,,

You opened your mouth to ask the girls a question just as the brown haired twin called out, "Daddy! hewwooooo daddy!"

The shock-ness written all over you face as you quickly turned your head meeting Henry's eyes as he is staring at you.

"I foo-found cruwsh dada.. see!" You eyes were turning toward him and then the children in you lap, you were all shaken and nervous.

You were trying to from sentences but nothing was working at all, you were so embarrassed-"Sorry.. fuck- this is a mistake.. uhh., I didn't even know they were yours!" you bit your lip,

The girls in your lap were laughing and giggling with those adorable toddler voices and giggles, you could feel your heart racing and your brain melting in seconds.

"It's fine, Y/N.. we seen you when we first arrived on the plane you know, I told them about you." He said as he walked more towards the seat exposing what he had in his hand, "Snawk!!"

You looked down at his hand seeing a bag of Cheetos puffs and two of the baby food puffs.

Just as you felt something missing on you lap, Autumn was about to fall as she was sliding down you lap and pass he sister.

You quickly grabbed her cradling her in your arms as you started to feel a increase in your breath, "Jesus Christ, you almost scared me princess, you got to be careful."

Autumn nodded and apologized, "Sowwy,"

Just as you felt a body slide in next to yours it was Henry, he was so close to you, most likely could even hear his breathing.

"You really good with kids."

You smiled at his words and hummed as you turned the hand with his phone to him, "Callie was close to disabling it.. so I took it."

He claimed it was fine before he unlocked his phone and gave it to the young girl who smiled and mumbled a small "Thank you daddy!"

Which made you and him smile as Autumn pouted a little puffing out her cheeks as she looked back up at you guys.

"Hi Auttie, would you like to play on my phone?" you asked move her hair before her ear as Henry punch her cheek making her move a little as she looks back up at you and nods.

You smile at her before pulling you phone out and doing you password and giving her the phone on YouTube.

You intend to look around and the two kids in your lap, you adore them, just as a voice broke your thoughts, "So, how have you been?"

You looked up at Henry who was already staring at you, smiling as you looked back into his eyes with fiery cheeks.

"I've been okay you know, this whole famous stuff is new to me but I'm working my way though you know." you replied back removing you eyes from and looking out the window.

Henry cleared out his throat before mumbling, "You very pretty."

Which snapped you right out of your thoughts, "Huh,?"

You both turned, facing each other as he tried to avoid your eyes as they were staring down at him, "I said.., your very beautiful and pretty.."

You let out a small laugh and blinked at him before smiling even harder, "Im sorry, sorry-Your an attractive man as well.. all big and strong-which!, Which is a good thing of course!"

Before he could reply back, the babies on your lap were tapping your thigh and hip like crazy to get your attention.

"Y..Y/N, looka!" one started shoving the phone in your face so you can get a better look, "You-cawn have daddy's nwumber!" Autumn called out as she showed you,

your phone on the contacts app..

Callie giggled up a storm as she showed her daddies phone with a random contact and a picture that was really recently.

A picture of the 4 of you, Callie and Autumn in your lap and Henry looking at you loveably and you looking at the Children with a very kind heart.

"Oh Jesus!", you called out as you spotted the phone, "Cal, Auttie.. that isn't Y/N's number girls."

You called to them as Henry watched you, transform into a parental figure for his sweet girls.

"There that's my number okay, you guys are going to call me whenever you can right?" you smiled at the girls in your lap.

They quickly nodded and cheered, "suwccesful mi..mmisson!" they said in sync

"Sorry about that, you can delete my number later."

"No, no it's fine, I'll keep it for whenever they want to be near you, honey." Henry said quickly as you were in shock as he kissed your cheek and let you kiss his daughters forehead.

Before you knew it the plane was landing, you left from their seat shortly after the announcement, and grabbed your lounge which you were helped by Henry as he came in right behind you.

He even helped you find a cab, and place your bags in the trunk, him and his girls were all to sweet and kind to you,

you were most definitely going to miss it, and hoped they'd call you soon.

Once you got home and gotten settled in, you notifications went off on your phone, a message from 'Dada-Henry' you smiled at the contact name before opening the message,

^ ‘the girls said they miss you already, I miss you also.’

You smiled at the message before falling onto your bed and hitting the FaceTime button.

_________

ANY MISTAKES/MISSPELLS TELL ME.

[drvnkd4zed]

Enhypen reacting to your kiss scene in a kdrama

Heeseung: "So you got a kissing scene in your drama... interesting" he'd mumble. As you nod smiling, he's coming closer to you. "You surely need to practice for a fake kiss, I'm in if you need my lips". Even if he's joking around, he's definitely jealous. His heart would be devoured by jealousy and as you were practicing, he'd hold your face between his palms and kiss you passionately. "Don't forget my kissing skills when you're with that guy".

Jay: "Okay so-" and he's teaching you 100 different ways to avoid someone's lips while kissing. "Don't worry, I kno-" - "Wait! I found a guide online". He's probably spending the night texting the director of the drama stuff like "I'm paying you to replace the male character with me, I can act, I'm good please hire me". (Of course he won't get that part) So he's attending the shooting, I can clearly see him yelling at the male actor:"That's not how you do it! Tilt your head a little more! My goodness, I should do it".

Jake: He'll be so so proud, happy that you got such an important role. After the realization he'll start to feel jealous since you have to kiss another boy. "Hear me up" he'd start confidently - "I'm happy for you, it's just a kiss, I'm not jealous". Then he's spending the night planning how to become a professional actor on wikihow just to replace the male character. But he'd still be proud and happy you got a special role.

Sunghoon: Sunghoon would be proud of you and of course he's coming to see you at the set. At first, he won't show much reactions, he will showcase his real emotions after the kiss. In his head he's probably picturing you with that male actor having a family, married with kids. He'd be so jealous comparing himself to the actor, repeatedly asking you if you prefer him. Seeing the actual kissing scene, he'd go:"It seems like you really enjoyed kissing that hot, muscular, tall and handsome man. Why don't you date him, huh?"

Sunoo: Sunoo would understand that that part means a lot to you, so he'd be happy for you at first. He's most likely to not kiss you for a while as your lips touched someone else'. "What if the male actor had a cold? or a weird illness that can be transmitted through kisses? Stay away from me for a while and let's see if you survive". He'd buy you lip balm and a mask so you won't transmit him anything.

Jungwon: "That's amazing! is the male actor taller than me? is he more handsome?" he'd ask. "Jungwon, don't worry. You're always my number one" you'd say, calming him down. He'd just smile and trust you. I have a feeling that Jungwon would ask the male actor his phone number just to call him during the shooting and stop the two of you from kissing as he'll feel very nervous.

Niki: He'd be hella jealous, but he'd still support you in every way possible. Niki would come with you to the set just to stand behind the cameras and try to make you laugh, making funny faces and dances. I'm sure after the filming he'd approach the male actor and "I like your lips. Can I kiss you too?"

[hannahssimblr]

In the evening we bike to the shop to buy firelighters. Jen says she likes the idea of a bonfire while we eat our barbeque food, even though the only time one has even been lit at the beach house is when my dad did it, all the while ranting on about how he learned everything he knew about fire in the boy scouts, and how if I had an iota of discipline or self control I might have benefitted from them before the local pack expelled me for being a shithead.

He was right. I reluctantly accept it as Jen and I approach the materials for making fire. Nobody has ever told me about the difference between briquettes and coal, what firelighters actually look like and exactly where peat plays into all of this. I know nothing about how to do manly things, and only ever figured out how to pitch a tent after subtly watching Shane do it the first time he and I went camping in the woods. 

In contrast, my father has shot an actual gun. He and his brothers hunted deer, game and wild pigs in the hills around their family farmhouse in Redding California. As they loaded up their rifles and zipped up their jackets they would say things to me about how I’d be coming with them someday, as though was some sort of honour, something to strive for, but by the time I was big enough to kill pheasants I was already five thousand miles away drawing comics on printer paper. My soft hands were meant for art.

“You grab the firelighters,” I tell Jen, and take a swerve towards the magazine stand so that I can peruse something in my comfort zone. There’s a small selection of artsy magazines, and I flip one open. 

“Um, do you think we should buy gasoline or something?” She stands chewing on her lip. 

“Probably not, right? That seems dangerous.”

“Should we ask someone?” 

“What? No.” Embarrassing.

I pretend to be engrossed in an article so that I don’t have to help, but while I'm there, an ad catches my eye, “Hey,” I call out to Jen, “would you want to go to an exhibition this weekend?”

“What kind?”

“Art.”

“Yeah, what kind?”

I turn the page to her so that she can see it, “contemporary,” and her eyes narrow at the images of weird sculptures made of bits of scrap metal, canvases with random splatters of paint dripping off the bottom, colour bleeding onto the floor.

“Hm. See, that’s the kind of weird art I don’t get.”

“It’s not about the art specifically, it’s about us doing something fun together.”

“And that’s in Dublin?”

“Yes.”

She smirks in a self satisfied way, “You’re bored,” she stops a passing customer to ask him if he knows what firelighters are, and if so, what does the box look like.

He shows her, and while she’s picking up the last two packets I come to stand with her, not helping, because now I'm more interested in selling this new idea to her. “It’ll be fun! How nice would it be to have a change of scenery? Get back to the city where stuff is actually happening, maybe go to that ice cream place you like.”

I’m certain this will sway her, but she pulls a face, “There’s loads of ice cream here, and the only reason you think nothing is happening on the beach is because you’re deliberately not doing anything.”

“Is it so bad that I want to have a day out with you?”

“No, I suppose not, but...” She wrinkles her nose “Fine. I don't want to be cynical. Do you think I’m cynical?”

“Yeah a bit.” I pay for the firelighters. As we exit the shop into the lingering light of the evening I admit to her, “I’m trying to cheer myself up, I just think I should make the most of the time I have left.”

She laughs, “It sounds like you’re terminally ill. You’re moving. So what? I’ll still talk to you all the time.”

“Yeah but I really want to savour these last few weeks. Will you come to the gallery?” I grip her arm and pretend to die, letting my knees buckle under me to really sell it, “...before it’s too late?”

“God, yes, fucking hell,” she groans, “I’ll come. I’ll do whatever you want for the rest of the summer, right?”

I throw an arm around her, “Thanks Jen.”

“Yeah, manipulator.”

“Takes one to know one,” I say cheerily, and we unlock our bikes and head towards home.

Beginning // Prev // Next

[entertext]

HGSN 23-2

Chapter (Japanese)

(Please hit the green thumbs up at the end of the chapter to show support)

Rough translation by me

P1

Hikaru: (A change...)

Yoshiki: ...It's my fault

Hikaru: No, it's not...Stop saying things like that

Hikaru: (So that's why I started to feel pain)

Hikaru: (and lost to the impurity at the family restaurant and got my head chopped off, huh?)

P2

Hikaru: (And on top of all that, somehow there's this strange feeling...)

Hikaru: Oh! That guy! The sword that sunglasses guy cut me with...

Hikaru: That sword wasn't normal...

Hikaru: That guy must have attacked me knowing that

Hikaru: There's something suspicious about it.

Rie: ...It's clear that he must be someone well-informed about that sort of thing

Yoshiki: (I'm so stupid! I didn't notice anything...)

P3

Yoshiki: If you get attacked by him again...

Hikaru: Then I'll just run away!! Even if he cuts my head off again, it'll stick back on!

Hikaru: But maybe my head'll come off easier now, haha!

Hikaru: Wahahahahaha

P4

Rie: As I thought, this child is dangerous

Rie: But...it's no good. I've also gotten attached...

--

(sfx: crowd chatter)

(sfx: crowd chatter)

P5

Asako: I'M SO GLAD YOU'RE OKAY!!!

Yuuki: Maki was surprisingly the one that worried the most, cute huh?

Maki: Hey!

Yuuki: You said "It's so boring when Hikaru's not around" like ten times

Maki: I did not!

Maki: By the way, what've you been writing all this time?

(text:

Nounuki-sama

→Grants wishes in exchange for human heads?)

P6

(sfx: snap shut)

Yoshiki: No...it's nothing

Maki: Are you looking up "Unuki-san"?

Yoshiki: Huh? What...did you just...?

Maki: Hehe, I'll tell you all about it

Maki: A looooong time ago, around these parts

Maki: It was used as a secret codeword

P7

Maki: Since ancient times, this area for some reason has suffered from lots of illnesses, crop failures, and accidents

Maki: Despite being a place like that, the reason there was still a fair amount of settlement was 'cause mercury could be mined here.

Maki: Even so, year after year, the amount that was extracted dwindled...

Maki:...and in the struggle to put food on the table, there was often the need to abort a pregnancy

Maki: In order to do that, they made a medicine using the mercury here

Maki: An abortion pill local to this land

Maki: If I remember correctly, the medicine was called "Uronuki" medicine

Maki: Apparently it refers to "infant-culling" medicine

P8

Maki: Since it was a medicine made with mercury taken from the mountain, they started to call using it to end a pregnancy as "returning it to 'Unuki-san' of the mountain"

Maki: That's what it's code for... Ummmm

Maki: Eventually, it started to be worshipped as the god of the mountain...

Maki: And after that, strangely the illnesses and stuff died down...

Yoshiki: Mercury... that's the origin of the name of the forbidden mountain, Nisayama*?

Hikaru: ...

* 丹砂山 - red sand (cinnabar) mountain

==

Next chapter: 2023/01/02

Twitter Extra (link):

Yoshiki: Is the line on your neck okay?

Hikaru: Yeah, there shouldn't be anything physically wrong

Hikaru: 'cause it's a ghost scar!

Yoshiki: Oh...that's a relief

Hikaru: Oh, it came off

Yoshiki: Uwaaaaaaah!!

(sfx: wakes up)

==

EDIT 2024/01/18:

Fixed Translation Error: It's what you'd call "haunted" → There's something suspicious about it.

[picturingchappell]

Love story au: you and Abby have a sort of forbidden secret romance 💛 takes place during medieval time.

𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙚 𝙬𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙨 | 𝙖. 𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣

pairing: abby anderson x afab!reader

tags: (sorta modernized!) shakespearean english, no smut, abbys father is mentioned, reader lowkey living that rapunzel lifestyle but like not rlly. 😭🙏, abby has a bow and arrow, im still terrible at tagging, so i probably missed some stuff??

a/n: honestly, i rlly only chose this song for this fic bc i was watching berlin while writing this and lowk.. i figured that it was fitting! honestly this prompt was super fun to do!!! i absolutely loved doing this, and i promise i will finish out my requests soon. 😭🙏 there’s still two more i have to start. uploads might be slow next week since i have some tests at school but ill def still try to be active here. ^^

You weren’t supposed to see each other, it was forbidden. Ever since your families began to quarrel, they had kept you held up in your room for seemingly no reason at all. Your father often fought with Abby’s, and they’d go extreme lengths to show their superiority, whether it be trading and buying the most expensive things they could, draping their daughters and significant other in the finest silks, or flat out going toe-to-toe with each other. Of course, you had already been seeing her secretly beforehand, and she showed you things you weren’t ever gonna be allowed to see. Fighting tournaments, erotic literature, the finest alcoholic beverages her kingdom had to offer, and how it felt to rebel. You loved doing these things with her.

These days, you’d been confined to the stone walls of your room, cold floors, and whatever other luxuries your father decided to drape you in. You were only allowed outside for a few minutes, or whatever your father allowed. It happened to be 45 minutes today. During this time you and Abby meet up secretly. Today, you found yourself running through the thick forest behind your castle. You were out of breath and your mouth went dry, but there she was. Her long braid would’ve been noticeable from any distance. You catch your breath and you stand up straight. “Abby.” You say with a smile. She turns to you with a smile, holding her bow and arrow. “Wherefore doth thee at each moment come running to see me? What is the reason behind thy eag'rness to seeth me?” The curiosity in her tone was playful. “I couldn’t possibly miss out on seeing thee. I'm willing to wend to most wondrous lengths just to beest with thee, coequal if 't be true t means running a million miles. You know that I can't be outside f'r long these days, so I want to make it count.” You admit as your smile grows. Abby chuckles. “Nobodys ever did like me so much to running to me ev'ryday. Concluded, be it, follow me. I want to showeth thee something, and I think you’d plaited it.”

   Abby takes your hand and she leads you deeper into the forest. The flora of the forest was to die for this season. The beautiful greens, the flowers, the dew drops sliding off tree leaves, it was a sight that was just impossible to want to not see. But it was only something the two of you knew about. After some time, she stops by some trees. Attached to them were some targets. “I suppose thee haven’t forgotten that day we spent a few fortnights ago? Did thee say.. thee did want to see how valorous mine aim was, no?” Abby asked with a smile. You nod enthusiastically. “Oh, of course I’d want to see how well thee uses yond bow and arrow. You speak so highly of thy aim, I’m sure it’s better than any sirs in the entire kingdom.” Abby always found your enthusiasm cute. Her body felt warm and fuzzy, as stupid and cliche it sounds, but she always felt that way around you. She loved how alive you made her feel. She readies her bow and arrow, and you watch her. You observe her pulling the string back and being mindful of how much she does. She inhales and loses the arrow in the middle of her exhale. Dead center of the target! She turns to you with a smile as your face lights up equally as bright.

   She was amazing! God, you’ve seen men competing for the other princesses hands in marriage (thanks to Abby), but you wanted her to do this for you when your time came. “That wast most wondrous! Oh my gosh, thee should it again. I want to see you do it again!” You say as you give her a face of pleading. She lets out a small chuckle before she turns to another target. This time, she decides to be flashy. She readies an arrow yet again, closing her eyes before she lets it loose. She opens her eyes to find that it had just nearly hit beneath the target. She shrugs her shoulders with a small smile. “Well, art thee did impress, princess?” She asks as she goes to collect her arrows. You turn to her with a small smile. “Of course I’m impressed.  Thee nev'r faileth to impresseth me, Abigail.” “That’s the second timeth you’ve hath called me that. I still rememb'r the first liketh it’s yest'rday.” Abby’s cheeks were dusted in a pink blush as she remembered that day you’d asked her out. All loopy from your drinking, your drunken rambling had resulted in you asking her out. “I rememb'r that day fondly. It was the day I hath asked thee out.” You reply in a soft tone almost as if you were falling in love with her all over again. But you couldn’t help it. This woman was timeless, and she never failed to take your breath away no matter what she did. Whether it be simple housework, gardening, or using that bow and arrow. Every aspect of Abby was attractive. Once all her arrows had been collected, she walks back over to you. She grabs your hands, her thumb gently grazing your knuckles as she looks in your eyes. Your gaze meets hers. She smiles, you look away with a giggle. She turns you back to face her. “I loveth thee. For many nights, I’ve hadst these dreams. Those dreams beshrew mine own mind.  All of those were about thee. Well, us.  Running hence. Being joyous. Not having to encave our love.” Her voice was soft. Her tone was sincere.

   Her gaze softened. One hand comes to softly hold your face. You melt. You couldn’t stop the words from spilling out of your mouth now. “I want to be with thee. I’m not restful of hiding. I want to run in the lush gardens, waketh to a sleep chamber that isn’t bitter cold, and stay out with thee for howev'r long mine own heart desires.” You smile at her and she smiles back. Slowly, her eyes become half lidded and she moves closer to you. “Run away with me, princess.” She whispered before she softly pressed her lips to yours. She pulled away for a moment to see if you were okay with it, but when you pulled her right back in, it solidified that you were more than okay with this. Her arms wrap around your waist, and yours find solace around her neck. This moment felt surreal. Being surrounded by forest, her hands on your body, the humming sound of cicadas and whatever else was in the forest, and the sounds of her soft, quiet moans filled your ears and burned in your memory. While you’re kissing her, you remember its way past the time you should’ve returned. You pull away. “Goodness, it’s getting late. We shall meet. Here, before sundown. I expect to see thee waiting for me here.” You say sweetly but in a rushed manner. She crosses her arms, then closing her eyes as she gives you a confirming nod before she bids you farewell. “I’ll see you soon, princess.” She says as she watches you walk off, then turning to head towards her own castle. This was the start of living freely, not confined by the restraints of parents.

[steveandbuckysdaughter]

since you talked about Izumi in some of your posts (like Dad!Zuko and Mom!Mai and their “conquering Ba Sing Se adventure”) and the Hou-Tong/Izumi beef, I was wondering if you were open to make Gaang kids headcanons.

and if you were, can I request Kya and Izumi headcanons on their friendship etc?

Ok so, anon refers to this post and this other post in the ask, FYI.

But yes, I absolutely am down to make adult gaang/Gaang kids’ headcanons of any kind. So if y’all want any headcanon of that kind feel free to send an anon!

Anyway, back to the ask. I absolutely love the potential of Kya and Izumi’s dynamic. But since I love angst, here’s some little HCs with p a i n.

Izumi and Kya are roughly the same age, maybe Izumi is a year older than Kya.

Ever since they could sit straight, they’ve been inseparable. And as kids, with the republic city construction, they used to be constantly together

I headcanon that Izumi was more responsible and protective of Kya, while Kya saw Izumi as her idol, because you know, pretty firebending princess who punches everyone who looks at Kya the wrong way

I also like to think that Izumi was Kya’s gay awakening in her teens, but never acted on it because Izumi was straight and uninterested. Also, I HC that Izumi had a thing with Bumi, but that’s another story

Anyways. Since Izumi most likely had Iroh at like, 20, Kya would always hang out with Iroh as his fun aunt, doing mischief around etc.

But, and let’s go to the angsty part, I also HC that Kya and Izumi kind of began losing contact once 30s approached. Because you know, Kya was always traveling, and Izumi had crown princess duties to partake in.

Also, given that Zuko was Fire Lord and kind of not as involved in republic city as he used to be, the FN royal family did not hang out with the rest of the gaang as often, and Izumi ended up being often excluded from the drama etc. nothing unfixable, but stuff that definitely hurt Izumi.

I also feel like Izumi (and parents) was always invited to all of the gaang’s and their kids’ milestones, like weddings, ceremonies etc.

And when in 158AG Sokka died protecting Korra, Zuko and Izumi were at the funeral despite their problems in the fire nation.

But, and here we reach the most angsty part, a year later it was Mai who died, of an illness that had taken her like, five years prior. Of course Zuko and Izumi were distraught, and asked Katara, Toph and the others to attend.

But the day of the funeral, only Katara showed up. Because Bumi was in the United forces, Kya couldn’t interrupt her spiritual travels, Tenzin had a heavily pregnant Pema at home, Lin was working, Suyin was just up in her business in Zaofu and Toph was nowhere to be found.

This made Zuko very sad, but Izumi? She was furious. Absolutely furious. Because, how could they miss the one time they needed to be there for her after all the times she had gone out of her way to support them?

And especially, Izumi felt betrayed by Kya, for not even passing by or answering back to the news. So Izumi kind of ghosted and stopped talking with everyone.

The first time she saw any of the Gaang kids was during Kuvira’s storyline. And even then, as cold as ice

So I kind of headcanon that Korra had some business to do in the fire nation and the gang kids tagged along, and kind of had a some of fight with Izumi about her ghosting them and them never visiting

Izumi would be the most angry and hurt with Kya, and they would kind of be angry with each other for the entirety of the storyline

But then by the end, they would have an actual talk and begin speaking to each other again

So yeah, happy ending but TONS of angst. I know right? Amazing❤️

[tokkias]

something old, something new ship: natsu dragneel x lucy heartfilia summary: Though Lucy tries not to let herself live in the grief of losing her mother, there still lingers a hint of regret that she never got to meet Natsu. Or at least, that's what she thinks. The red string of fate seems to have a different story to tell. ao3

A soft cough passes through Lucy’s lips as dust sputters up into the air. It’s been a while since she’s been in this storage unit and the thin layer of grime that has built up on every surface shows it.

She’s not a hoarder, but the look of the unit, holding every single memory of her late mother that she could get her hands on might imply her to be one. She’s not, she’s just sentimental.

It’s hard to go through this stuff, but it’s harder to get rid of it, so it stays inside this unit. Today she has no intention of ridding herself of the burden of anything in here though, no, she has something much different in mind.

Lucy idly twists the ring on her left hand—a habit she’s picked up since the day that Natsu first got down on one knee. She’s not really a ring person so she’s not used to the way it feels on her finger yet. Natsu had told her that she didn’t have to wear it, that they could change it for something else, a necklace, a bracelet, perhaps, but she had staunchly refused. The ring was special, something he had put a lot of time and thought into. If she wasn’t a ring person, she would become one, just for this.

It’s nothing fancy, a simple gold band with a dazzling red garnet as the centrepiece. Red isn’t typically her colour, but it’s Natsu’s colour and she is his and he is hers so it only feels fitting.

Though she hasn’t stepped foot in here in many years, she still knows most of what makes up the mess. She knows her mother’s astronomy books are piled up in the left corner, right on top of her vast collection of fairy and folktales. Her jewellery, sparse of what’s left of it, sits in a box right next to her collection of dresses, both of which pique Lucy’s attention today.

With their wedding date inching closer each day, she’s in here looking for something that might constitute her something old to bring the memory of her beloved mother with her on what is soon to be the happiest day of her life.

She knows her mother would have loved Natsu and she knows he, in turn, would have loved her. It’s a thought she doesn’t like to dwell on for too long. Though knowing that at least one of her parents would have loved her life-partner is soothing to the soul, if she lingers for just a moment too long, it fills her with a deep sorrow that she often cannot contain. Knowing the fondness the two most important people in her life would have no doubt held for each other just makes it all the worse knowing that they would never meet, that though Layla lives on in Lucy’s heart and memory, that is all of her that she can share with Natsu—memories.

Before her thoughts can lead her any further astray, Lucy reminds herself of why she’s here. Weaving past boxes stacked across the floor, she makes her way to the back of the unit to find her mother’s jewellery.

Though she wasn’t one to flaunt their rather excessive wealth, Layla had procured a few pieces in her time. Most of them were lost to time and pawn shops upon the bankruptcy of the Heartfilia Konzern but there were still a few sentimental pieces that Lucy couldn’t bare to part with that remained in her possession. Several earrings, a few necklaces, a bracelet or two—hopefully one of which would lend itself to match the rest of her wedding ensemble.

As Lucy goes to retrieve the jewellery box, she’s stopped in her tracks when she finds a stack of photos sitting atop it. They’re not personal ones—all of her family photos now reside in Lucy’s apartment, rather, it’s a collection of school class photos. Before she had succumbed to her illness, Layla had been an elementary school teacher, a job that Lucy could not think suited better to anyone than her mother. She was full of love, kindness, compassion—everything you would want in someone who was raising a future generation of children. She had no doubt touched the lives of hundreds of students who passed through her classroom in her tenure.

A soft smile graced Lucy’s lips as she thought about it. Most of her students would no doubt be her age by now. She wonders if they still look fondly back on their time in Mrs. Heartfilia’s classroom. She hopes so. She hopes that her legacy lives on in the hearts of more than just her kin.

Unable to thwart her curiosity and sentimentality, Lucy picks up the stack and begins to flip through it.

She doesn’t expect to recognise anyone in the photos—Layla taught at a public school whereas Lucy found herself attending private school at her father’s insistence, so it’s mostly brief glances as she leafs through the images, watching the way her mother ages through each one.

Mostly, anyway.

There’s one image in particular that does manage to pique her interest. If she had spent even just a second less looking at the students in it, she’s certain she would have missed it altogether, but she doesn’t—she spots it out of the corner of her eye and she almost can’t believe what she’s seeing. Right there, next to her mother, is a familiar head of pink hair, one that she knows she would recognise anywhere, one that surely belongs to her beloved fiancé.

Lucy can’t do anything but sit and stare at it for a moment in disbelief.

Surely it can’t be him.

If her mother had taught her fiancé, she feels like that’s something that would have come up in conversation before now, but that messy pink hair combined with those lively dark eyes and that toothy Natsu grin that always had her tripping over her feet and words are the telltale signs that give him away.

Her eyes flick down to the names and what she has already figured out is confirmed when she sees the name Natsu Dragneel printed out at the bottom.

It feels like a prank, something too good to be true, but no, it’s real. It’s in print, in her hands, and as she runs her thumb across Natsu’s image, she knows that her eyes aren’t playing tricks. She doesn’t even realise she’s crying until her vision starts to fog up and the tears begin to land on the picture, rolling off the laminate and leaving a damp trail in its wake.

She doesn’t bother going through what she came here for, barely even remembering to grab it on her way out, her attention instead captured only by the photo in her hand.

“Natsu!” She calls out into the apartment, class photo in hand. “Natsu!”

Her cries draw his attention up from his lunch and she doesn’t give him any explanation before she thrusts the picture into his hands. He glances up at her in confusion for a moment, finding her looking expectantly back at him which prompts him to give it a better look.

“Where did you get this,” he asks, brows furrowed in confusion as he finally realises what it is.

“I found it in mama’s storage unit,” Lucy explains.

He looks up at her, then back down at the photo, then up at her again, and she can see the gears turning in his head as he begins to put the pieces together. His mouth drops open as he seemingly struggles to come up with a coherent response but Lucy doesn’t need one. She’s so overcome with joy over this new revelation that simply sharing it with him is enough for her.

She had already mourned the loss of her mother once, then again as she mourned the fact that she and Natsu would never meet. Now, she realises that the red string of fate that winds around her finger has always led back to him, as though her very own mother had sent him to her from her space now amongst the stars.

“You’re Mrs. Heartfilia’s daughter,” he finally manages to say, a hint of disbelief tainting his voice.

He holds up the class photo as if to look at her and her mother side-by-side, comparing them as though to see if it’s real. She’s been told that she’s the spitting image of her mother, but given how young Natsu must have been when she taught him, she doesn’t blame him for not realising it until now.

“Man,” he breathes as he finally puts the photo down before breaking out into a grin. “She was the best.”

Lucy laughs, her heart swallowed with an insurmountable joy that she’s certain words will never adequately convey. She imagines a rowdy child Natsu running around her mother’s classroom, she imagines scribbled drawings of dragons and fire scrawled with crayon filling up Layla’s desk. It gives her a sense of closure that she had never even thought possible until now.

She beams up at Natsu, her heart full as she embraces him, burying her face in his chest. As his arms slip around her, she’s able to make peace knowing the tie between her something old and her something new.

[comicaurora]

If you've finished The Dragon Prince, S5, what's your opinion? Personally I'm still processing everything and there were a few things I was kind of "ehhhhh" about, but those were just one-off moments and overall I'm satisfied, even though it ended up playing out very differently from how I was expecting (for one, I was certain Aaravos would be getting out by the end of the season).

I liked it a lot!

SPOILERS AND STUFF:

Because I liked it a lot, most of my more specific thoughts are about the few things that sort of jarred me a little bit and felt a little rough or strange. But before I get to that I wanna list some of the stuff I loved:

Soren! My sweet boi has finally gotten the acknowledgement the previous seasons denied him. Soren locking eyes with Deadwood and going "yo same issues" was incredible, and after the last season treated his abduction by and confrontation with his abusive father as 90% comedy funtime hijinks in a nightgown, it was really refreshing to see him get a chance to actually shine in a serious, heartwarming context and be narratively rewarded for it.

In fact, that whole sequence with the pirates was incredible. I knew there was no way they were gonna cleanly outrun the bad guys, but I was not expecting how exactly they would catch up.

They did a lot of elegant work this season setting up Claudia as going from being family-motivated to being anger-motivated, and I like that, because at the rate things are going she's gonna run out of family to be motivated by in T-minus one episode, and if she's going to continue being the main boots-on-the-ground antagonist she's going to need some new motivation to swap out for her dad. Showing her actively reveling in having power over creatures that used to frighten her is a clever way to ease into that.

Viren's arc this season of being forced to confront his own coping mechanism, "I had no choice", was damn elegant. He had to realize he did have a choice the whole time, even if it was a choice between two bad options - he took every step along the path of his own free will, and he can choose to stop walking at any time. I'm not anticipating a redemption arc - my guess is Aaravos is going to let him die and just keep his soul imprisoned with him, "your soul is my treasure" and all that - but it was a very cool way to confront the audience and Viren with his humanity, which is easy to lose sight of when he spends all his time being a horrible dick.

The stuff with the Nova Blade screams "sneaky poetic double meaning" and there's absolutely no way it can actually kill Aaravos. The fact that the novablade and the three quasar diamonds they need to let Ruunan out of his coin after four goddamn seasons are all in the same place called the Starscraper that is so most definitely a boss arena makes me absolutely certain that they won't get there until some sort of final battle or immediately-pre-final-battle confrontation, but it's also almost guaranteed that the novablade is not going to cleanly resolve everything because the characters were realistically sus about that poem but quickly dismissed their entirely reasonable concerns. My guess is the novablade has already stabbed Aaravos once and he's the dude from the poem who was somehow both immortal and "no more," which feeds into the other thing they're 100% setting up, which is that Callum is one thousand percent going to be the one who lets him out in an ill-fated attempt to save his loved ones, which would cleanly make Callum three for three. Which segues into my "things that bothered me a little bit" zone-

Every time there's a story where the heroes are like "we're going to make our way through the incredibly circuitous and hard-to-navigate traps and secrets to finally find our way to the closely-guarded and ludicrously dangerous macguffin so we can take it with us and put it somewhere much less guarded" I feel my investment slip just a little, because how can anybody be surprised when the bad guys then get ahold of it with a tenth of the effort it would've taken them to get through the circuitous treasure hunt themselves? Claudia was not on track to figuring out the secret in time, and Aaravos didn't seem to have a way to tell her directly, and once the deadline ran out she'd have almost no reason to want to release Aaravos anymore. I worry this plotline could've solved itself if the heroes hadn't inexplicably concluded that they could guard a magical prison better than a centuries-deep conspiracy of archmages and archdragons.

The Dragon Prince character writing is usually rock-solid and very good at showing slow growth and development, while occasionally being vulnerable to characters seemingly losing their braincells to facilitate plot points that they would reasonably be too smart to let happen. That happened a few times this season, most notably with Zubeia getting very clearly bit by a shadowbeast - something we know everyone riding on her back saw, because Corvus intervened to get it off her and nearly died in the process, and we later see Soren talking to her about it - which means Amaya at minimum, and probably Callum and Rayla as well, should reasonably be expected to have both the information "a wound from a shadowbeast magically festers and turns the infected victim into a shadowbeast" and "zubeia was injured by a shadowbeast." So it's a bit weird that this doesn't come up and they just leave her alone about it, and only Soren - who doesn't know about shadowbeast stuff - even asks her about it.

I have this theory that there was a draft of the season's plot where the main characters had access to a different space of information - for instance, knowing about Zubeia's wound and its implications instead of her inexplicably brushing it off, hiding its true severity and then nearly dying. The most notable instance of this feeling struck me in the same episode, when right after Amaya's incredibly dramatic "go!" moment and the gang are about to fly away, Callum pointedly looks down one last time, then sees her shove Corvus and herself into the book drop, and he says "they made it into the book drop! they'll be totally fine!" and then they fly away. It feels a little jarring because it seemed like the natural flow of the episode would've been to let Amaya and Corvus's sacrifice play out as expected, with Chekov's Book Drop at their backs to save them as soon as the heroes were out of sight. Then Amaya and Corvus could show back up later in a big heroic moment, possibly even keeping the camera off them until Amaya rides to Janai's rescue a few episodes later - a classic "aragorn goes over the cliff jk he's fine" style reveal.

The reason they didn't do this, I think, is because it would've been hard for the kid heroes to be quippy-fun-time jokey-joking mere hours after losing their last living relative to presumed horrible zombie death. And I get that! But I think that was a notable factor in the way some of the episodes were structured around making sure that the heroes mostly got to spend their time being light-hearted and funny, which meant troubling information was artificially kept from them and encouraging information was shoehorned into their eyeline in slightly contrived ways so they could stay safely partitioned away from the actually heavy emotional implications of their situation. That's why I think the pirate episodes hit the audience as hard as they did, because suddenly the story dipped really seriously into the extremely painful and scary side of this otherwise fun and exciting fantasy adventure, and the characters shone in the unusually serious environment.

I kinda feel the same about Viren, but in the opposite direction. He spent the entire season comatose and safely partitioned away from the other characters, and while his highly symbolic coma dreams were extremely cool and revelatory to see, it feels like a squandering of his character potential to keep him from interacting with anyone but Aaravos - which is why I think they're gonna keep his ghost around at minimum. Hell, maybe Claudia will take a page out of his book and store him in a coin for safekeeping. Either way, they've had no problems sticking Viren on the proverbial shelf for seasons at a time and it seems like it's just too convenient for them to stop now. Viren's inner life is very cool, but I want to see him actually interact with the real world, because he's so bad at it.

I don't really know why the sunfire civil war thing is still happening, and my only theory is that Aaravos is still influencing the bald elf guy he possessed to kill the Queen back in season 3, meaning that these guys will be bolstering the ranks of General Problems in season 6 onward. I don't mind that concept, but I kind of feel like the problem they're running into is they killed their actually interesting Dickhead Royal back in season 3, and without Prince Kasef they have to make do with We Have Kasef At Home, aka Karim, who's not good enough at machiavellian scheming to be interesting and not enough of a dickhead to be fun to watch. They didn't even let Amaya take one of his eyes and make him look cooler, so I can only assume he'll be usurped as the primary threat next season and replaced with someone actually threatening, aka Aaravos. It seems plausible that Aaravos is going to sell both the poison and the cure, promising a way to fix Lux Aurea's corruption, but it's just a weirdly disconnected plot thread at present.

The thing with the ocean archmage felt like a very transparent Yoda homage, which started out cute and then went on about three times longer than I wanted it to, and it kind of highlighted the running theme of how every new character in this story is introduced saying "I absolutely cannot let you do this thing you need to do to progress the plot, no way no how." and then after some arguing and quips and ten minutes of wasted time and optional sidequests they're like "you may now proceed with the story." The ocean archdragon had the exact same gimmick in the opening scene, even the pirates were introduced that way. I think part of the reason the pirate episode felt so different and cool is that it broke the episodic formula in almost every way and highlighted some character tropes that the lighthearted tone doesn't normally allow for, which is why people keep describing it as "like a fanfic, but in a good way!" It took the characters we were at this point very familiar with and put them in a Situation, and fans love it when characters get put in Situations.

Kinda feels like the show only remembers Ezran has geopolitical kingly responsibilities when it's most inconvenient for the gang, and while I find his presence in this season refreshing, it is a little weird that he can just run around adventuring and getting kidnapped by pirates without anyone bringing up how the throne and the crown are burdens like they've been banging on about for the previous four seasons. I assume that'll come back into focus later, but it ties into the same thing I've observed where it feels like the characters are very carefully contextualized to only have to consider serious responsibility things in very specific contexts, usually when it will facilitate actively frustrating character arcs and decisions, so they can just loosely quip and react to things the rest of the time.

Anyway I had a dang good time, excited for more! Harrow is one thousand percent in that bird.

[neonnoir-ao3]

Okay so I absolutely adore both high fantasy levels of storytelling as well as extremely mundane AUs. But when it comes to making my own AUs? I’m the ultimate slut for hilariously mundane slice-of-life stuff. (I literally made a domestic/family AU for what is considered one of the scariest analog horror series to date)

So as soon as I saw the words “carnival AU” in a post from @sm-baby about their carnival AU (I am begging you to check it out, it’s absolutely phenomenal), I had the stupidest fucking thought: a shitty little Showtime carnival AU

No, literally. A literal carnival.

Like a traveling circus with a midway of games and shit. County fair style rides that are literal death traps. The whole nine yards.

Pomni is a disgruntled wage slave (nothing new) who starts her new second (perhaps even third?) job: a temporary one at a local carnival. It’s like a month long event at most, but extra cash is extra cash.

Alongside her, Gangle and Zooble are also temporary workers for the event. Jax, Ragatha, and Kinger are circus members— Ragatha is one of those human pincushions in the sense that she has an insanely high pain tolerance (she also does sword swallowing). Kinger is a magician, and Jax does acrobatics or something idk. Caine, as always, is the ringmaster.

So Pomni & crew are working the carnival games and stuff while the circus does their performances, but they all share a break area so they know each other and shoot the shit, but she never sees the ringmaster. The circus members allude to him being… off. Ragatha says he’s just eccentric, but Jax basically paints them a picture of a genuinely unhinged man. Pomni is now extremely afraid of the guy that’s in charge of her paycheck.

She manages to get her check as an auto-deposit, but a few weeks in the system is down for their bank and she has to actually find Caine to get paid. She pussies out and is like “I’ll just hope the system is working by Monday, I can eat ramen and tap water for two days”.

It’s been a shit day overall— it’s pouring rain and there’s been like no customers, so she’s ready to get the hell home. She gets to her car, only to find her keys locked inside.

She’s cold, she’s wet, and she’s stuck out there. She’s trying extremely hard not to cry about it. She pulls out her phone, and googles lock-picking videos.

After like 25 minutes she gives up, just crying on the ground next to her car in the rain. She’s having the mentally ill equivalent of a Feel The Rain On Your Skin moment when suddenly the rain stops. She looks up to see a guy with an umbrella. She’s never seen him around before. He takes her into the backstage area of the circus show and gets her warm and dry. She learns that this guy is indeed the infamous Caine she’s heard about and tries not to panic.

*yadda-yadda-yadda slowly falling in love/aspects I haven’t fleshed out yet*

They’re interested in one another and want to stay together but the show leaves for the next town at the end of the week so they need to decide if one of them has to leave their current life or that they just can’t be together.