#marshmallow introductions

[eoieopda]

Hi Jade! Could I request a cute, fluffy Jungkook drabble where his girlfriend meets Bam for the first time and they instantly become besties?

sure thing, sweet bean!

i saw this pic while i was looking through pinterest for possible banners and it sent me, then it inspired this nonsense 🤪

The first few weeks of dating anyone new are a certifiable mindfuck. Underneath the warm wave of infatuation, there’s a maelstrom brewing; and if you’re too short-sighted, you might drown.

To keep afloat, you spend more time than ever preening — making damn sure that your appearance and personality are at their most palatable. You wear carefully coordinated underwear; you wash your hair on a regular schedule for once; and you try to keep that persistently doubtful inner monologue of yours locked in the vault at the back of your brain.

Meanwhile, outside of presenting yourself as the prettiest of all packages, you have to — somehow — keep an eye out for the other person’s red flags. Sure, you’re a firework whenever their texts light up your inbox, but are they good for your mental health? What if you take off the rose-colored glasses and find that your little love boat is actually trash barge; and — surprise! — that trash barge has been on fire this entire time, with you none the wiser?

If you successfully cross that minefield and survive long enough meet who you’re really dealing with, the introductions don’t stop there. They meet your friends, you meet theirs. Then come parents, then the hidden flaws that are no longer waiting in the wings, then the final arbiter.

If their pet doesn’t like your vibe? Game over.

It’s with a weak jolt of panic that you stand on Jungkook’s doorstep, poised to knock. Before your knuckles can hit the wood, you hear a muffled call from inside: “It’s open!”

Odd.

You inhale as you turn the knob and push it open — and the second you lay eyes on him, it leaves you in a wheezing, entirely and embarrassingly authentic laugh. The very laugh you’ve nearly fainted trying to suppress, which prompts you to immediately slap your hand over your mouth.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor is the bad boy your friends all warned you about — donning a face mask that looks like marshmallow fluff against his tan skin — with a dog wiggling excitedly in front of him, and a toothbrush in hand. Both of them look up at you like everything’s normal, and you swear they’re both smiling.

“Hi,” Jungkook chirps, grinning carefully so as to not disturb his mask. He speaks at his usual quick pace like his body contains more energy than he knows what to do with, “I’m almost done with his teeth. Are you hungry?”

You blink, absolutely dumbfounded, and then you ask, “Did — did you forget I was coming over?”

Jungkook furrows his brows— which are, for the record, hidden under bright, white clay — and now you feel like an absolute asshole for making assumptions. If the roles were reversed, you wouldn’t be caught dead in this state. Not this early into the relationship, when he might not be invested enough in you to see past it.

Yet here he was with all his cards on the table, leaving it up to you to take them or leave them.

“No, I didn’t. I’ve actually been looking forward to this all day,” he admits with a sheepish smile, suddenly shy. Then, Jungkook glances down at the dog, whose wiggling only intensifies as you toe off your shoes and begin your approach. “So has Bam.”

You join them both on the floor, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle. With your weight propped up on one arm, you tilt your head and muse, “He’s really well trained. Normally, dogs are all over you the second you walk in a room, you know?”

You really should’ve known better than to bait Jungkook like that. There’s barely time to process the look he exchanges with Bam — as if they’re plotting telepathically — because there’s a quick nod in your direction, and then there’s a doberman bowling you over onto your back.

It’s impossible to tell who’s laughing louder: Jungkook, whose watering eyes might leave streaks in his face mask; or you, hugging forty kilograms of unadulterated bliss. One thing is clear: Jungkook is over the moon. So much so that he coos, “Aww, look who made a friend!”

You’re not sure if he’s referring to Bam or to you.

“Best friend, obviously,” You peep, “No one has ever been this excited to see me before in my life.” You have to squeeze your eyes shut to avoid the tongue lapping lovingly over your cheeks. Turning your head abruptly to the side, you snort, “God, he even kisses like you!”

“I sure as fuck do not kiss you like that,” Jungkook huffs with a pout you just barely catch a glimpse of. He’s up on his knees in a heartbeat, carefully removing Bam from you just to take his place. He narrows his eyes playfully as he settles with one hand on either side of your face; and the wicked glint in them isn’t lost on you. “One of us bites, doll. The other one was trained not to.”

You flex an eyebrow and it’s more of a dare than a reaction, “Is that so?”

Jungkook tucks a renegade strand of hair behind your ear. “Definitely,” he hums as he does the same to the other side. “Pretty thing. Know what you’re missing, though?”

You’re scared to ask, so you let your widening eyes do the talking.

“Bit of skincare!” He declares with a wolfish grin.

Within a split second, Jungkook cups your face in his hands and you realize exactly why he bothered to push your hair out of your face. His is pressed to yours as he kisses you deep, right through your startled gasp. Jungkook makes sure to smear the goop from his chin and cheeks onto yours in the process. You can feel his smile as he does.

There’s a teasing nip at your bottom lip when he eventually pulls back, gently tugging what he’s captured with him for a millimeter or two before releasing you. Gazing down at his messy masterpiece, his brows crinkle under the weight of his thoughts. Wordlessly, he drops one hand from your jaw; drags the pad of his thumb down his nose; then swipes the excess along the bridge of yours. He taps the button of your nose gently, looking pleased as fucking punch.

Now, it would seem that you’ve rocketed straight through the awkward, not-quite-yourself phase of dating and ended up crash-landing on the other side.

“That better?” You pant, knowing full well that it really, really is.

Jungkook leans down again to kiss you much more sweetly than before. With his lips still pressed to yours, he smirks, “Much.”

Then, he drops onto the rug next to so you can sit upright again. “And I think you’ve been greenlit, but I won’t presume to speak on Bam’s behalf.”

You both turn to Bam — the final boss — for his verdict. When he lets out a quick boof, it sounds like a sneeze, but it says everything you need to know.

[worseforwords]

The Beginning

(Alessia Russo x Reader)

Chapter II of Marshmallow

The anticipation hung in the air as you opened the door, revealing Alessia to your parents. Greetings were exchanged, and your mom, with a sly grin, asked, “Hi sweetheart, is this her?” You sent her a nervous smile. “Yes, this is my girlfriend, Alessia,” you said, trying your best to sound natural. “Yes, we know who she is, darling. She’s quite the star, you know?” Your dad joked, as if you weren’t also a professional athlete. Chuckles filled your hallway as you invited your parents into your living room.

After the initial polite and just a little awkward introductions, you all settled down at the dinner table. Wine was poured, dinner was served, and the atmosphere was pleasant. Everyone made small talk; your dad made some jokes, and the initial awkwardness melted away easily.

However, you knew your mom well enough to know that as wine continued to flow, it wouldn’t be long before she lost some of her filters. “So, girls,” she began, leaning in with a conspiratorial grin, “I don’t recall you two ever being very close. Y/N certainly never spoke about you much. So, tell me. How did this happen?” She waved her index finger between the two of you to explain what she meant by ‘this’.

You shot your mom a glare, a wordless plea to dial it down, rolling your eyes when she didn’t respond and instead looked at you expectantly, waiting for an answer. “Fell for my football skills, obviously,” you grinned slyly while internally panicking. Under the table, away from your parents’ gaze, Alessia quickly squeezed your hand, silently signalling that she had this covered, which had you looking at her expectantly.

“Actually, it wasn’t football-related at all,” she started. “You know, on the pitch, Y/N is a force to be reckoned with—focused, passionate, a bit... intimidating, honestly. I always assumed she’d be the same off the pitch.”

She paused, letting curiosity build. “At an away match early in the season, Kyra lost her mother’s necklace. Kyra’s from Australia and had only just moved here to join the team. She was probably hiding how daunting it was to move to the other side of the world at her age.”

In that moment, your eyes met, a silent acknowledgment passing between you as you realised what story she was about to tell. A subtle smile from her as you wondered if and how she knew about what you did.

“So everyone, all in good spirits of course, teased her about her clumsiness. We were all having a laugh when Y/N left the room quite suddenly, without many people noticing.” Alessia, with a fond smile, continued the story. “When warm-up time came, both Y/N and Kyra were still missing. That’s when I offered to go find them. I discovered them in the dressing room, and there was Y/N, holding Kyra’s necklace in her hand.”

The realisation hit you that she was indeed talking about what you thought she was. You didn’t know she had noticed, and you felt your cheeks flush at the unexpected revelation. Alessia’s tone softened, “Y/N was helping Kyra dry her tears, cracking jokes to cheer her up. It was a side of Y/N that I hadn’t seen on the pitch, a softer, caring side.”

Everyone at the table stayed silent, waiting for Alessia to continue telling her story as she took a quick sip of her wine. “Later, I found out from a staff member that Y/N had insisted on going back to the bus. She didn’t want to leave until she found Kyra’s necklace, tucked in between two chairs.”

As Alessia spoke, her words painting a picture of a side of you that even you hadn’t fully acknowledged, your cheeks burned with a mix of embarrassment and something else. You hadn’t expected her to notice the small act of kindness, let alone share it with your parents. But, as her words lingered, a warmth spread through you. Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

You stared at your plate, trying to hide your now likely glowing cheeks, poking at your food and thinking back to that moment as Alessia continued, her gaze warm as she sent your parents a quick smile, “After that, I started noticing more of these acts of kindness from Y/N, not just for Kyra but for everyone, and never taking any credit for it. It’s those moments that made me fall for her.”

That last sentence had you accidentally drop your fork onto your plate with a loud clang, grabbing your parents’ attention as you looked at Alessia, studying her face as it was now her turn to avoid any eye contact by focusing all her attention on gathering some spaghetti on her fork. You were pretty sure your mom was saying something like “aww” in the background, although that seemed like noise to you as you were sure you saw Alessia’s cheeks flush as well now. She looked flustered, clearly taken aback by her own words, yet somehow all you could think about in that moment was how beautiful that made her look.

The room fell into a brief silence after Alessia’s heartfelt recount of that day. Your heart, which had been racing a moment ago, now thudded softly. Alessia’s gaze now held yours, and suddenly you felt something beyond the charade you were playing. As she looked away again, you found yourself wanting to say something. Yet, words eluded you, and all you managed was a grateful smile.

You pinched yourself under the table, trying to rid your mind of the spiral it was heading towards. It only semi-worked, and any distraction was useless as long as the person causing your inner turmoil was sitting next to you, drowning you in her perfume. You didn’t really think about your actions when you suddenly got up from your place at the table. When you felt everyone’s eyes on you, you quickly stacked some plates, starting to clear the table.

Before you could grab Alessia’s, however, you felt her hand on yours, stopping you in your tracks. “Let me take care of that. Everyone got room for dessert?” Your parents both smiled and nodded as you started to panic again. “Oh, I didn’t g—” you started, but Alessia quickly stopped you again by softly putting her hand on your shoulder and sitting you back down. “Don’t worry, I got this. Just wait here.”

“Did you really do that?” Your mom’s voice drew your attention back to the table. “Yeah,” you said, thankful for the moment of peace as you took a sip of water in an attempt to cool down a bit. “That’s really sweet, honey. I guess we raised you right.”

The three of you chatted away for a few minutes until Alessia returned carrying four plates with some delicious-looking tiramisu. “If you guys are anything like this one over here,” she gestured towards you, “I think you might like what I’ve made.”

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the surprise dessert as Alessia, upon your mom’s curiosity, spoke about her Italian roots. Your dad remarked that it was the best dessert he had ever had, to which your mom insisted Alessia sent her the recipe as she’d never seen your dad this quiet.

When everyone had finished the delicious tiramisu, your dad mentioned something about a basketball game. Alessia, a bit of a basketball enthusiast herself, asked him which team he supported, and before you knew it, they were caught up in a conversation you and your mom could not contribute to in the slightest. After a while, you decided to just turn on the game for them to watch whilst you and your mom took care of the dishes.

“She’s a catch,” your mom immediately said when you two were alone in the kitchen. “She’s really lovely.” “Yeah, she really is,” you said, and you realised you didn’t have to lie about that. “The way she looks at you, and how she talks about you is really special, Y/N. You should hold on to that,” she added. “I know mum, thanks,” you said, your head starting to spin again wondering what she meant by ‘the way she looks at you’.

When you went back into the living room to collect the last items from the table, you saw Alessia and your dad both shouting angrily at the TV. You chuckled quietly as you picked up an empty wine bottle and some napkins. A warm feeling crept into your stomach as if you had just taken a sip of strong liquor, and you wondered if it had anything to do with you seeing Alessia getting along so well with your dad.

By the time you and your mom had finished cleaning up and going through all the recent family gossip, the game was over, and everyone decided it was time to go bed. Your parents stayed in the guest room, and you and Alessia took off to yours to wait until the coast was clear, and she could sneak off to Lotte’s.

“I think that went pretty well,” Alessia started as she sat down on the edge of your bed. “I hope they liked me.” “Oh, they loved you,” you said. “You were perfect. Thank you for doing this, Alessia.” You sent her a quick but kind smile. “Alessia,” she mumbled. 

“What was that?” You asked. “Oh, nothing. It’s just I’ve noticed you keep calling me Alessia. It’s not very girlfriend-y, is it? Maybe you should call me something cuter,” she said, a teasing grin on her face. 

“Oh, should I now? Like what?” You said, matching her teasing tone, not giving her enough time to answer as you plopped down next to her. “Hmmm shall I call you… buttercup? Sweetie pie?”

“Noooo, none of those please!” She giggled. “Honey? Pumpkin?” You continued. “Y/N! You know what I mean!” She laughingly exclaimed as she grabbed a pillow to smash you with. “Muffin? Marshmallow!” 

You and your snake reflexes caught both her wrists before the pillow could reach your face. “Why are they all food related?” She grunted, trying to escape your grasp. 

“Oh, you want serious ones? Fine. Have it your way, babe,” you grinned smugly. Alessia clearly saw her chance as she stopped trying to rid herself of your grip and instead suddenly lifted herself off the bed, using gravity to push you and the pillow down beneath her.

You knew you had lost the battle when you felt the pillow connect with your face and then your body, Alessia keeping you trapped between the bed and the pillow. “Hey! Is that still not good enough?” You asked, a chuckle escaping your mouth. She pressed down a little harder, grinning at your useless squirming. “Cutie! Sweetheart? Baby girl?” You tried. 

“That’s more like it.” She loosened her grip slightly. “Sunshine,” you added as you used the momentum you gained to push yourself back off the bed. “Beautiful,” you said, a bit more quietly as you suddenly found yourself sitting face to face with Alessia again. 

There was a bit of an awkward silence after that one, your eyes meeting and then both looking away and quickly getting off the bed. “Yeah, that’ll do. Or you know, you can start by calling me Less or Lessi instead of Alessia.”

“Fine, I’ll consider it. I think the coast should be clear by now, by the way,” you said, opening the door and peaking around the corner, nodding at Alessia after. “Good night, Y/N,” she whispered. “Good night, marshmallow,” you whispered in return, to which she sent you a quick glare before quietly sprinting off to Lotte’s room.

What followed after was a restless night. A combination of all the events of the night and the alcohol still in your system left your mind a spinning mess. You eventually tired yourself out and fell asleep, but not before you noticed light starting to seep through your curtains.

When you woke up the next morning you felt exhausted and confused. At first, you thought last night might’ve just been a dream, but then you noticed one of your pillows was still on the floor, and you knew it had been real. You stumbled downstairs to be met with Alessia cooking breakfast in your kitchen. You wondered how she became such a good actress because the sight felt oddly familiar to you, like she did this for you every morning.

“Morning marshmallow,” you said, voice still raspy as you startled her out of her focused state. “Morning Y/N, how did you sleep?” She smiled, and you wondered why she didn’t fight the new nickname. “Hey, how come you get to call me Y/N?” You asked, crossing your arms. 

“So you didn’t sleep well, huh?” She looked up from the counter to meet your eyes, tone almost accusatory but her look rather soft. You had become quite good at changing the subject when you didn’t want to talk about something, yet somehow she had already figured you out. You tried to busy yourself with making coffee, but you soon felt a hand on yours, stopping you in your tracks. 

“How about you go take a shower? I’ve got this covered,” she said, hand not leaving yours before you set the pot back down. You wondered when her little touches had started to set your skin on fire yet make you shiver at the same time. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

After your shower, you made sure all doors were closed before you had your morning chat with yourself in the mirror. After all, Alessia apparently knew about your weird habit, and you could not afford having her listening in on this one. Today you were in for a stern talking to from yourself. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” You asked yourself, sending a harsh glare to your own reflection. 

“You can’t do this to yourself, and furthermore, you can’t do this to her. She is doing something really nice for you, and you can’t turn something you both agreed on was just pretend into something more. It’s not fair to her. You know she has a boyfriend. Frankly, Y/N Y/L/N, you’re being extremely inappropriate and it has to end now. Today, you behave yourself.”

As you walked back down the stairs, the smell of scrambled eggs and fresh coffee caught up with you, and you found your parents and Alessia sitting at the table with the delicious food in front of them. “Yesterday’s tiramisu and now this? She’s a keeper Y/N!”

The rest of the day went by swiftly as you gave your parents a tour of your neighbourhood and then some other parts of London, with a newfound determination to keep your walls up. ‘Friendly, but not too friendly’, is what you kept telling yourself as you interacted with Alessia throughout the day.

When she put her hand on the small of your back as you stood in line at a coffee shop, you thought about the moment before a corner kick in a football match, where your opponent would usually do the same thing. When you were sat shoulder to shoulder on a bench at the park, in your mind she was a tree you were leaning against. When that tree started to talk, you were inside a fairytale. One about friendship, and certainly without a princess. Whatever you had to tell yourself to make the bad thoughts disappear.

The four of you walked by the Thames, you showed your parents some of your favourite sights, and you walked around Covent Garden before settling down for a delicious lunch at your favourite café. After that you took them to the Museum of Natural History where you spent the majority of the afternoon. Everything went surprisingly well and your change of mindset seemed to work. When the sun started to set the four of you settled at one of your favourite restaurants around the city centre.

“Thank you for having us here, girls. I know you both live busy lives, so it’s really nice of you to spend all this time with us,” your mom said as you all waited for your dinner to arrive. “Of course!” Alessia answered with a genuine smile. “It’s been lovely meeting you, finally.” She quickly winked at you. “And you!” Your dad replied as your mom nodded along, both of them smiling broadly. 

“So, Alessia,” your mom started after a brief moment of silence. “I’m sure Y/N has mentioned this before, but Charlotte, her sister, is getting married next month.” You felt your temperature start to rise as she continued. “Now I know you’re a very busy person, so it’s totally fine if you can’t come on such short notice, but she did plan it after you two have a Friday match so Y/N could be there the rest of the weekend.”

You and Alessia shared a few glances in which you desperately tried to communicate she didn’t have to come. “So, Alessia, how would you like a little trip to Paris? All expenses paid off course.” Your mom and dad both looked at her expectantly, but before she could even open your mouth you interjected. 

“Invites went out months ago and we shouldn’t bother Charlotte by adding a plus one so last minute, don’t you think?” You asked, hoping this would solve the situation. 

“A plus one?” Your mom asked. “Don’t be ridiculous Y/N, she’s family now. Besides, I already asked your sister about it and she said she’d love it if Alessia would be there.”

You thanked your lucky stars as you noticed a waiter approach your table with several delicious looking dishes, interrupting the excruciating conversation before your mom could ask anymore questions. The food served as a perfect distraction as you all munched away and hums of enjoyment filled the air. 

You managed to keep up chit-chat about anything an everything but your sisters wedding until all four of you had finished your dinner and took the last sips of your wine. When your mom went to the toilet and your dad went to the counter to settle the bill, you finally had a moment alone with Alessia. 

“Less,” you started. “I’m so sorry about that. I promise you really don’t have to come to Paris. I will make up an excuse for you, don’t worry about it,” you blurted out. 

“Actually,” she started. “I thought it might be fun. Besides, what girlfriend would skip their partner’s sister’s wedding?” You took a moment to examine her expression to ensure she was being serious. “Really?” You asked. 

“Yeah, if you’d like that of course,” she stated, though it sounded more like a question. “Yeah, no, of course, let’s do it.” You smiled at her and she did the same as a brief but comfortable silence fell over both of you. 

“Hey, you finally called me Less!” She teasingly interrupted the moment. “Better get used to it, marshmallow.” You teased back, right before your parents returned and you both got up to leave the restaurant and head back home.

The next morning the four of you had one last breakfast together before your parents left. “So, girls. I don’t mean to rush you and there’s no pressure, but I did promise Charlotte I’d let her know as soon as possible if Alessia would join us in Paris.” Your mom spoke. You and Alessia shared a quick glance as if to check if you both still agreed on what you decided yesterday. “I would love to be there.” Alessia smiled at your mom. “Great, I’ll let her know!”

Once everyone had finished their breakfast you hugged your parents goodbye, Alessia doing the same, and they left. “Less,” you started as she smiled at you finally getting used to not using her full name. “I don’t know how to thank you for doing all this. It’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me,” you admitted. 

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I had a great time.” She smiled sincerely. “Do you think it went well?” She asked and you glared at her in disbelieve. 

“Are you kidding me? You’re pretty much the ideal daughter in law. Polite, kind, funny, charming, beauti-” you stopped abruptly as you realised what you were about to blurt out. “-fully talented. You know, at football,” you tried to save yourself as you quickly busied yourself with gathering dishes.

“I best get going,” Alessia said as you looked up at her and noticed her cheeks having a light pink shade. “Yeah, of course.” You put down the plates and gave her a quick hug. “Thank you again, Less, so much.” The hug wasn’t as short as anticipated as you both held on just a bit longer than you would usually.

You belly flopped your tired body on the couch as soon as Alessia had closed the door behind herself. The weekend had gone infinitely better than expected. Your parents fell for your deceit and they loved your pretend girlfriend. You, however, almost seemed to fall for your own deception as well. Was it really just acting? Or did the line between pretence and reality blur somewhere? Surely it couldn’t. This was just your mind being inappropriate again.

Either way, just when you thought you had managed to get through the weekend, it turned out the adventure was not nearly over yet. There was much more to come. The city of love awaited you and your pretend girlfriend. You and your wonderful, sweet, beautiful pretend girlfriend that wasn’t actually yours.

-> Chapter III

[erissheiress]

I Swear It

Eris Vanserra x Reader

Warnings: 1 swear word, implications of postpartum depression (barely mentioned), Beron (barely), angst, arguing, happy ending

Summary: Eris has been on a mission for a while, and comes back to find his family struggling. (Also introduction of my child OC's)

Word Count: 1421

Taglist: @reetriestbr @pandabiiissh

REQUESTS ARE OPEN

Your mother in law sat before you, cradling her youngest grandchild in her arms. The fire was dying slowly, but neither of you paid it much attention, instead letting it gradually fade by itself. Winter had arrived and made its presence known immediately, barely allowing time for the Autumn Court to transition into the colder months. Cold days like this were more suited for staying indoors by the fire with those you love, drinking mugs of hot chocolate or tea, and quietly basking in each other's presence.

You watched your baby coo softly in her grandmother’s arms, her little noises making your heart burst. In your own arms, your eldest two children nestled into your side, their fists clinging to your dress. The scene was almost perfect, besides lacking one detail. Your husband and your children’s father, Eris, had been away for weeks now, fulfilling his duties as Heir to the Autumn Court with his father.

Every night you'd go to bed alone, and wake up with two pairs of arms around you, little elbows prodding your stomach. Before, you would be awakened by gentle kisses on your skin, but now sleepy mumbling and soft cries pulled you from your slumber each morning.

You truly missed Eris, but had to get used to being without him for the time being. His absence was mostly felt through your children, when they'd seek your comfort, missing their father.

At least your youngest child, your darling girl, was unaffected, although the lack of a relationship between her and Eris worried you slightly, as he had to leave only a couple of months after her birth. She slept soundly across the room, and you pushed the worries to the back of your mind, lest they overwhelm you completely.

"Mama?" Your second child, Hugo, mumbled, rubbing his bleary eyes with his fist. 

"Yes, my love?"

"Is Daddy home yet?"

Across from you, your mother in law quietly sighed, knowing what your answer would be. She knew all too well what an absent father did to a young child.

"Not yet, baby, soon." You brushed a hand over his red curls, an inherited gift from his father.  Hugo just nodded, burrowing further into your side. In the distance, a grandfather clock chimed, and you took a deep breath.

"Time for bed, I think." 

Maeve and Hugo couldn't even argue, too worn out from their snow day, bellies full of hot chocolate, marshmallows, and gingerbread. Slowly you sat up, pulling Hugo into your arms, and holding Maeve's hand to guide her to her own bed. They kissed their grandmother and their baby sister, before allowing themselves to be put to bed by you.

"G'night, Mama."

"Night, Mama."

"Goodnight, my loves." Quietly slipping out, and back down the corridor. The Lady of the Autumn Court was standing now, smiling down at baby Alysa. 

"I think it's time for me to retire as well, love," She said, carefully handing you your daughter.

"Of course, sleep well." You kissed her cheek and watched her leave, leaving you alone with Alysa in the firelit room. "I think it's time we go, princess, don't you agree?" Her nose twitched in her sleep and your heart grew in size.

"I'll take that as a yes then. You've had a long, hard day." You continued to whisper to her as you walked down the corridor, nonsensical comments. Talking to your baby was supposed to improve their speech in the future, you had read, and you found yourself enjoying your one-sided chats with your daughter. Especially when she gazed up at you with those beautiful, familiar eyes. 

The fire was lighting in your room, a maid clearly having just been there, for which you were grateful. Slowly, you lowered her into her bassinet, stroking her soft cheeks.

The door opened softly. Quiet footsteps. You didn't turn around.

"How is she sleeping?" Eris' voice was quiet in the dimly lit room.

"Fine, she sleeps through the night, thankfully."

"I'll get her if she does wake up."

"She doesn't like strangers." A low blow, but necessary. Where was Eris when Alysa cried her tiny lungs out and Hugo and Maeve cried from the overwhelming noise? Where was he when you were so exhausted and overwhelmed that you sobbed into your pillow in the early days of his departure, or when the postpartum feelings lasted longer than they had after your first two births.

"I'm not a stranger…"

"You held her as a newborn, she won't remember you. She barely tolerates the maids that have been there since her birth."

"Darling…" a hand on your shoulder, turning you around.

"What, Eris? What do you want me to say? That I missed you? That I was drowning when you left? You cannot just return all of a sudden and expect things to be as they were. Maeve and Hugo miss you desperately, Alysa doesn't know you, and I… "

"And you?"

"I needed you." Your voice was barely audible as you confessed, avoiding his eyes. “This recovery…has not been like the others. Your father-”

“What about him? Has he done something?” Eris’ eyes flamed, his mind clearly racing with possibilities of his father’s actions.

“No, Eris, he has not. He visited after you left, to see the children. Hugo received most of his attention, of course. Called him your heir.”

“He knows that Maeve is my heir. She is the eldest.”

“It hardly matters. Hugo is a male, and that is all Beron sees. Otherwise, his visit was fine. Nice to have company, no matter how awful the person.” Another earned blow.

“I will see him.”

“So he can give you another reason to leave?”

“Y/N, please, I had no choice.”

“I know that! You had no choice, I’m fucking aware, what I’m frustrated about is that you expect things to be the same as they were. Did you think I would not be angry?” 

Alysa stirred, making soft noises in her sleep, reminding you to keep your voice down. 

“I will make it up to you. To our children.”

A wave of exhaustion washed over you. Exhaustion, frustration, and also acceptance. “I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

Eris looked uncertain, standing in his own room. “May I-”

“I don’t care, Eris, sleep wherever you want. She’ll wake in a few hours to be fed, anyway.”

“My love, I can’t sleep if you are upset with me.”

“I’m just tired. So, so tired. Goodnight, Eris.”

No more was said, sleep hitting you almost immediately, the exhaustion of motherhood more powerful than your frustration. When Alysa awoke, Eris was not in the room.

. . . 

For the first time in a while, you woke up in an empty bed. Alysa cried softly, soothing easily once you picked her up from her crib and put her to your breast. You quietly walked down the corridor, to your children’s shared room, until they get older. 

Eris was in Maeve’s bed, his tall body barely fitting in her small bed. She was held tight in his arms, as Hugo lay on Eris’ strong chest. The three of them slept soundly. Alysa’s cry made Eris’ eyes flutter, making eye contact with you. 

“You look comfortable.”

“So comfortable,” he said, looking the exact opposite. “I went to Beron last night.”

“You did?”

“No more missions for a time, not until I make up for my actions. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there for you after Alysa, I’m sorry that she doesn’t know me. Please, my love, not sleeping with you was torture.” He got up slowly, careful not to wake up Maeve or Hugo. Walking to you, holding your face in his calloused palms.

“I needed you…” gradually the wall began to crumble, as tears began to stream down your face. You held your baby girl close, a protection of sorts.

Eris looked like he was on the verge of tears as well, pressing his lips to your forehead. “I have failed you, without a doubt. I will make it up to you, my love, if you’ll let me.”

He took Alysa from your arms, carefully holding her in one arm, using the other to pull you in close. “A second did not pass where I did not think of you. I’m so sorry.”

“Please, stay.”

“I will, my love, I’ll never hurt you like that again.”

“I love you.” Wiping the tears from your face, looking up at your mate, the father of your children.

“I love you too, darling. I am yours forever. I swear it.”

[mxrp-official-steve]

Welcome back campers, to this weeks episode of TOTAL, DRAMA, HELLSITE! On this weeks episode, me and my handy Chef Hex will be cooking up a delicious meal of parpy goodness! But the campers will have to roll a single... WITH A PROMPT! The first one to get a proper Roleplay going gets the immunity marshmallow. Now watch out, cuz this ones gonna be a doozy, dudes!

Your September 2nd PARPdate: "Remember that time on TDI where they called god to make it rain? That happened" Edition.

News this month is sorta slow- those of you In The Know already know this, but Hex is being forced to move again. This hasn't impacted Dev TOO much, honestly, and I'm gonna break down WHY in this wonderful little post!

Ok so if you remember the August update, you likely recall us showing off our shiny new mod features and how we can now play funny roleplay police state in order to nail rulebreakers and bandodgers.

If you're also a huge Bubblehead (which is what you're called), you're also likely familiar with this bastard:

(Image description: The red miles, basically. Its a message failed message repeated like ninety times in a row in red font. Thanks to Alienoid from the server for posting this screenshot for me to steal!)

This is because, somehow, these new mod features almost completely broke Dreambubble in ways that make no sense (the new features use Redis, but for some reason their introduction is making PostGres, a completely different system, go absolutely haywire)

So, Hex decided to move forward with their pet project to rewrite Dreambubble. Normally, this would mean a development delay on Parp2 and I'd feel pretty bad about laying this on yalls feet after two years of parplessness.

But hey wait isn't this literally just how they made parp last time.

The answer is yes! The previous Msparp version was built using what is now Dreambubble as a skeleton, evolving on itself into the rickety but lovable RP site we knew before she tragically passed away last February after choking to death on fresh air. As such, Dev is actually going pretty good! Hex has been COOKING through the bones for Dreambubble 2, getting a ton of barebones stuff working right off the bat:

(Image description: A barebones but functional chat window using Felt theme; complete with system connection messages, text preview, and quirking)

Along with our first new feature preview in a while: PUSH NOTIFICATIONS!

(Image description: A felt-theme settings menu showing the ability to turn on and off push notifications, as well as a browser popup in the bottom corner showing that it's been activated)

These are also working on Android! What this does is it pings you when the chat you're in gets a new message, operating on a system level instead of a site level so you don't even need to have the tab, or the browser, open to keep up with your chats! This is gonna be especially useful for mobile users, since this means they can navigate away and use their phone for other things, and their phone'll just ping them when their partners' next message comes through. (These are gonna be off by default, btw. You'll have to turn them on yourself on a per-chat basis in the final release)

It should also be noted that we've Snagged Ourselves A UI Guy recently from the userbase, so we've got a dedicated Make It Look Good person for when things get closer to launch!

That's all for this update, though. Absolutely thrilled to be showing off some progress after the restart. Hopefully we'll have even more to show off next month!

Until then, cheers!

[artdcnaldson]

ok ok ok, so what im thinking is something like this.

its summer vacation btw, probably the summer right before he goes pro/art leaves for stanford

patrick has never really been very invested in his parents lives, but he wasnt surprised in the slightest when they had announced their divorce earlier that year. everyone had seen that coming for years. what he is surprised by tho is you, walking around his parents - well i guess now just his dads- house in tiny pj shorts and one of his old shirts from the academy. one that he'd left behind in his room ages ago. who are you... and why are you in his house?

turns out his dad had moved on from the divorce very quickly. so quickly in fact that his dads new wife, your mom, and you had already been moved into the house. before patrick was even told about any of you. patrick is pissed. not because he really cares about his parents relationships, he couldnt care less, but he's pissed that he now wont have the second floor all to himself. he has to share it with you. not that you're even sharing a bathroom or anything, this house is enormous. but his space is being invaded by some chick he's never even met.

i want him to be so pissed at his dad that hes totally taking it out on you, teasing the shit out of you, always flirting with you in that infuriating but oh so attractive way. you cant really tell if he actually wants to fuck you, or if hes just an ass who gets off on being a perv and pissing you off. i want it to start as a way for him to spend the hours, summers at the house are boring and never ending, he needs some form of entertainment. but then slowly he starts enjoying the way you groan at him when hes whispering over the noise of the dinner party to sneak away for a quicky with him.

i need to be so confused on whether he truly means it, does he actually want to fuck you? its wrong, and its very dirty. i dont think reader would be like overly innocent here, shes had sex before, nothing crazy though. nothing like the things patrick tells her about, nothing like the nights he recaps in her unwilling ear over breakfast...

i just need him to be a cocky asshole whos insistent that he will make you beg for him by the end of summer.............. hope this makes sense

-🐞

GODDDDDDD fell to my knees sobbing shaking

As soon as he’s been forced through cursory introductions (And this is your new stepsister, she’s your age too), he’s slammed his door and locked himself in his room.

He can tell you’ve been snooping— his shit is all off-kilter and scattered. CD’s out of order in his organizer (it’s by genre, then alphabetical, it’s not that hard), DVDs removed from his shelf and stacked on his dresser. His TV turns on to MTV, which he doesn’t fucking watch. It should turn on to Spike, or nothing. Worse, the carton of cigarettes he kept stashed in his bedside table was gone.

So he walks over to your door, which you’ve decorated with fucking stickers and a dry erase sign that you’ve scribbled on in lime green marker (Keep Out!). He shoves the door open and finds you straddling the windowsill, one dangling out the window as you smoke.

“What the fuck, don’t you knock?” You snap.

He grabs the cigarette from your mouth and you slap at his arm. It tastes faintly like marshmallows, must be from your sparkly lipgloss. “Keep the fuck out of my room,” he says firmly, exhaling smoke into the air. Your room smells like fresh paint— he realizes then you’ve painted the walls pink. “And buy your own fucking cigarettes.”

You look at him, roll your eyes. “We’re siblings now, we’re supposed to share,” you deadpan. He grits his teeth. Because you’re wearing one of his shirts, you’ve got one of his CD players on your dresser playing the Pussycat Dolls. You climb back inside the window and he swallows hard at the sight of your shorts all ridden up.

You have a nice ass, honestly— he stares at it when you bend over to grab the rest of the carton. When you turn, his reaction time is delayed. You sneer when you realize what he was doing. “Take your cigarettes back, perv.”

You shove him out of the room and slam the door in his face. He grins. You’re pretty hot when you’re annoyed with him.

That weekend, you’re in a study that had been repurposed into a game room— big TV, ping pong table, a big, caved in couch. You’re curled up beneath a blanket watching some movie he’s never heard of.

It makes you scowl when he sits down, pulls your legs into his lap. “Can you not?” You mutter.

He shrugs, trails delicate touches along your calves. Your toes flex, you instinctively lean into his touch. “I’m bonding with you,” he says. “Isn’t that what mommy and daddy want?”

Your face turns in disgust. “Gross. I’m not calling your fucking dad that.”

He laughs, trails his fingers a little higher so they brush against your knee. “No? You don’t want to be my cute little sister? Don’t want a big brother to scare all the boys off?” You shake your head, but your thighs part slightly, inviting his touch higher. He feels your thighs tense, only a bit. “Oh? Now who’s the perv?”

You kick him hard, scramble out of his lap. “You’re disgusting, Patrick.”

He grins, watches you walk away. You made it too easy for him.

[the-conversation-pod]

Let's Go, Lesbians! (A Japanese GL Episode)

And we're back! This week we're back with @ginnymoonbeam to talk about Toxic Yuri in Chaser Game W and Food Yuri in She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat. Join us as we talk about pouring champagne on your ex's head, slapping your mean boss and her big ass red outfit into next week, choosing yourself over your cruel family, becoming the best gay you can be, and marshmallow parties.

Also, because we did not talk about it in the recording, we want to repost Rina Sawayama's Chosen Family song because this scene was so powerful in SLTCSLTE.

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00:00 - Welcome 00:01:15 - Introduction 00:02:45 - Chaser Game W: A Flop 00:18:31 - She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat 00:23:14 - SLTCSLTE: The Women 00:34:18 - SLTCSLTE: Yako and The New House 00:39:17 - SLTCSLTE: The Food and Nagumo 00:43:02 - SLTCSLTE: Depictions of Intimacy 00:50:53 - SLTCSLTE Ratings and Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

00:00:00 - Welcome

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

00:01:15 - Introduction

Ben

And we're back. This week, we're talking about lesbians, finally! And we brought a friend along.

NiNi

Say hi Ginny.

Ginny

Hello!

NiNi

Ginny is here with us and we are going to talk two Japanese GLs, Chaser Game W and She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat. 

Ben, what did you think, like, sort of overarching about these two before we delve into the nitty gritty?

Ben

I thought Chaser Game W gave us a lot to anticipate early on, and unfortunately went in the direction we did not want it to go. Ended up being kind of a mess toward the end? I did not end up walking away too happy with it. 

With She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat season 2, this time we had twenty 15-minute episodes and they had things to do and say with that time and I have a lot of things to say about that show. [laughs]

NiNi

Ginny, what are your overarching thoughts about these two shows?

Ginny

I had high hopes for Chaser Game W because I always want more toxic lesbians. [NiNi laughs] I want to see the girls get to be messy, I want to see complicated dynamics. And I did really enjoy the first couple episodes, but it kind of felt like the characterizations really fell apart as the series progressed, which was a big disappointment. 

She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat was a delight. Every time I sat down to watch it, my heart was full and happy and warm.

00:02:45 - Chaser Game W: A Flop

NiNi

We always go from worst to first on this show, so let's start with Chaser Game W. 

Ben, what is Chaser Game W about?

Ben

Chaser Game W is about a team of women at a game development studio in Japan who have been contracted to develop basically a demo for a GL adaptation, by a Chinese company named Vincent. It gets complicated by their project manager from the Chinese team, who clearly has beef with one of their team members and just spends most of the early show fucking with her because she's mad that they broke up in college. And then a bunch of other shit happens that is kind of weird.

NiNi

Okay, that's a hell of a description [laughs].

Ben

I'm sorry! Like, it starts off being a show that looks like it's playing into the complex dynamics about workplace power and possibly sexual harassment, and then kind of loses its way because it wants to be this mess of a story about lesbians with families and the difficult choices they have to make, and where do the husbands and children fit in this, and how does this play into career expectations? Bosses who might also be queer but evil queers?

And it's not necessarily a very coherent experience. There's a lot of ideas that sound good when you describe them to people, but in practice really weren't that satisfying to watch. This was not the Japanese GL experience I was hoping for.

NiNi

Ginny, what about you? What are your thoughts on Chaser Game W?

Ginny

It did seem like it was setting up to have some messages about not only the sexuality components, but also things about women in the workplace and being a mother and balancing those expectations… dealing with sexual harassment… all of that. But it didn't end up saying much that was meaningful to me about it, it just was like, ‘these are issues!’ If you try to draw any kind of conclusion from what the show is doing, you end up with some really messy messages. 

The way that the evil queer boss came in was so funny to me. One of the selling points of this show is this strong femdom, woman in power exacting humiliation dynamic. But halfway through the show, we're resolving the relationship between the two women, so Fuyu, our previous femdom power boss, is not going to be that anymore. So we have to bring in a new one — and it just did not work for me.

NiNi

It was the dom getting dommed. It was like an inception of domming. It was a little strange. There were definitely some Chinese-Japanese dynamics in there. I don't have the cultural competency to pick up on entirely what they were doing, but it was pretty clear from the way that the show was operating. I don't know if it's stereotype, but it was clear that there was something going on there; my cultural competency in this area is not enough to figure out exactly what was going on there.

Ben

It was kind of weird seeing a Japanese show complaining about unrealistic expectations of Chinese developers? This is not a uniquely Chinese problem.

NiNi

I feel like it being set in gaming almost didn't matter to that side of things? They wanted to have this difference the show sees in working cultures be stark and to say something about that difference. But the supposed center of this, aside from the game and the development of the game, is a relationship between Fuyu and Itsuki. It's an extremely convoluted central story that just seems to serve as an excuse for why Fuyu, when she comes back to Japan, hates Itsuki so much. 

The writing feels slightly unnecessarily complicated, but I actually rather enjoyed quite a lot of bits of this. I enjoyed, for example, the direction. I thought the camera was very assured, I thought it was very clear. I don't know if this is an original story or if it's coming from manga, but the direction is very very clear to me. I really enjoyed watching the camera move. The shots are really effective. But the story itself? It's not like I thought necessarily that… the story was badly told? I'm just not sure that it was the story that I wanted. Where we're going in the beginning with Fuyu, a mean lesbian comes back and is mean to her ex-girlfriend, I felt like, okay, that's where we're going. And then, suddenly, Fuyu is married and Fuyu has a daughter and there's all this stuff around the husband and Fuyu’s feelings, or not-feelings, about the husband. It got a little muddy. 

But even with all of that, I think I probably enjoyed it more than you guys did. And I think part of the reason is that I binged it? So I didn't sit with a lot of these feelings or a lot of the confusion for very long.

Ben

It was not a fun week to week watch. As it started to deviate and get lost in itself, it was not fun to be like, 'oh right, this is where we were, all right, let's go and see how this week goes. Ohh… no. Okay.' 

You asked about whether it's original or an adaptation. It is an adaptation. The original work is about power harassment, but I believe Itsuki’s character is a man? A lot about the show made sense once we realized that it was not an original queer story being adapted. A lot of it felt really tacked on to justify the drama and not really something that the writing really contextualized or dwelled on, at all.

Ginny

There were a lot of big character turns and big decisions made without a lot of grounding in why this character would make this choice. Once the mystery of their past is explained, you do understand why they reconcile suddenly, but then all of their choices afterwards just felt baffling to me. I'm not getting any kind of character journey. The show is like, well, this happens now, and then this happens now, and then they do this thing that you didn't expect. And I want to know why!

NiNi

I… feel like in some bits I was cottoning onto it, and then in some bits I was not. For example, when Itsuki starts to take care of Fuyu’s daughter, when she comes over and realizes that the husband's left and her daughter needs taking care of. I followed that bit of the character journey. I understood in some ways why, when the husband came back, Fuyu felt maybe guilty? 

There was also, like, a little thing which I was really surprised didn't go anywhere. Early in the show the husband was video chatting with, I think his mother. And she says something like, 'you know, you have to be good to Fuyu. You're so lacking, and she is with you anyway.' that made me think that their marriage was lavender? I genuinely thought that they had some kind of arrangement or agreement — and then to find out later down the line that the husband actually was in love with her and was jealous of the thing that she had with Itsuki? That came out of nowhere for me. And then everything that followed on from there kind of didn't track, almost. 

Did either of you get that feeling initially from the husband and were surprised or was that just me?

Ginny

My sense was that the husband had been perceived as not a good marriage prospect. Probably it was not earning a lot of money and had other loserish qualities or something. So my sense from the conversation was that that was what she was talking about. I certainly didn't ever get the sense that he was in love with her, exactly? Even when he's upset, it felt more to me kind of about pride. You can't have your wife sleeping around. That's an embarrassment. I don't think there were any deep feelings in that marriage.

NiNi

I don't even think either of them really had extremely deep feelings for their daughter. Like I think Fuyu loves her daughter, but in a distracted kind of way, almost? The only depth of feeling that I felt anywhere was between Fuyu and Itsuki, and even that was tied up in all this anger and bitterness and guilt and whatever else. That's a direction to go in for sure, but it really didn't make me understand why they wanted to be together, and then why they decided not to be together… and then in the end, why Fuyu comes back out of nowhere. 

It's all muddled and mixed for me, especially the closer that we get to the end. But like I said, I don't think that I had as bad a time with it as other people might have.

Ben

I had a very bad time. [Ben and NiNi laugh] 

This show was aggravating. We've been talking about this a lot on the show lately about how much work we think we should do for a show to like, meet them emotionally, where they're trying to take us. There are times when either the writing or the performance doesn't necessarily get you all the way there? And you kind of have to just feel it for the show. But this show just does not feel complete. There are a bunch of ideas that are fine on their own, like, ‘and then she comes in here and then she pours a fucking champagne on her head.’ That's an unhinged lesbian behavior that I have seen happen in person! So like, I totally believed that.

NiNi

Oh yeah.

Ben

But then Fuyu’s turn where she’s suddenly nice to other women in the company that they're in and stops being a huge dick to the other moms, that just doesn't really track? Like, what changed in that moment? I don't really know how we went there. They had her suddenly start being nice to them so they could be on the same team against Big Red.

NiNi

I'm so mad that you called her Big Red, but it kinda works. [Ben and NiNi laugh] I'm not gonna call her anything except Big Red now.

Ben

I did not remember what her character name was. Her name was Big Red.

Ginny

That's her name now, yep [laughs].

Ben

Like it was funny when Itsuki was like, 'Fuck off, Big Red' and knocked her ass down. [all laugh]

All these moments are like, well, that was amusing on its own, but it doesn't really come together as a coherent story unto itself. There’s this huge branching point later on where it's basically the supporting cast trying to seduce a guy to give them information to save the game, and that's happening separately from the drama with Itsuki, Fuyu, Fuyu’s husband, Big Red and all the drama going on there. 

NiNi 

I want to talk a little bit about the actual game development plot, because that stuff was wild. They're preparing whatever they have to do to develop this game, and along the way they're going through literal sexual harassment. There's a point in time that they're trying to get information from this artist. And this guy is a caricature of a sexual harasser, like at one point there are five of these female game developers in his house, and they're literally peeling this guy off of each other as he gropes them. And I'm just like, is this normal or is this exaggerated? I don't even know?

Ben 

Actually, it felt like most of that was actually normal. 

NiNi 

That is terrifying. 

Ben 

The drama with the team felt pretty straightforward for me. You had women in the team having varied responses to the sexual harassment. One of them was like, 'I will absolutely not compromise myself and use sex to get ahead' and another one was like, 'I will, I got this for us.' [Ben and NiNi laugh] I thought that was fine. I didn't mind there being a character who is willing to use men's desire to advance her goals and her team’s goals. I liked that it wasn't required only for her to do that, that there were other people who didn't want to do it that way accomplishing things for their team. The up and down of, ‘is this game going to get developed or not, the expectations of our client keep changing, it seems to be for reasons well beyond us and other drama’ — that felt fairly normal for trying to get any sort of major creative endeavor with the expensive team off the ground. Most of the game development stuff tracked normally for me. Even the whole plot line about poaching talent and then dumping talent: that is a real problem right now. That sort of stuff mostly tracked for me. I wasn't that fussed about the game development stuff and the workplace conditions that they were working under. 

It was the stuff about Fuyu and Itsuki's relationship and the motivations around them romantically, and other characters’ reactions to it, that is where I struggled the most with this. It wasn't a show that left you in a cool place at the end of an episode and picked up in a great place with the next episode. Spending two months watching this was not a great experience. 

NiNi 

I think my rating’s definitely going to be higher than you guys, so I'll go first. 

Ben 

Okay. 

NiNi 

I'm gonna say 7. To me, bits are cool and I can follow generally where this is going, and the bits that I thought were weird were not offensive. It wasn’t very good, but it wasn't terrible. 

Ben 

Ginny? 

Ginny 

I gave it a 5.5. 6 is my mad-I-watched-it threshold. Anything 6 or higher might be very bad, but I'm not mad I watched it. Below a 6 I'm kind of mad that I watched it. That's where this one landed for me. 

Fuyu was very beautiful, and I did enjoy watching her every week. But when that's the nicest thing I have to say about a show, it's not good. 

Ben 

It gave this a 4. It is not recommended. I don't think this is a good lesbian story. I don't think this is a good game development story. I don't think it's a good workplace story. It is a mess. This was developed by the same person who made His the movie, so I am very confused how we ended up with something that absolutely failed on the queer front like this. I do not get it. When this show was confused, it lands on the wrong side of the coin a lot. And it felt like at the very last five minutes they were doing a shit ton of clean up. I don't think this show is worthwhile. 

NiNi 

That's gonna land us somewhere in the 5ish range overall?

Ben 

Round it down, because it sucks! [all laugh] It gets a 5 from The Conversation. 

NiNi 

So that is officially a chop. 

00:18:31 - She Loves To Cook, and She Loves To Eat

NiNi 

All right. So we're gonna leave that behind and we're going to move on to She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat. 

Ben, give us the synopsis. What is She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat about?

Ben 

Okay, let me be much nicer now because this is one of my favorite shows now. So, [laughs] She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat is like the lesbian neighbor of What Did You Eat Yesterday? We have a young woman who's a programmer. She feels like she's like late 20s, early 30s. Her name is Nomoto. She runs like a food account on Instagram, and whenever she's in a bad mood and needs to work through some stuff, she ends up making too much food, and she has a small appetite, so it goes to waste. She has a neighbor who is a taller, bigger woman, and on a whim one night she invites her over to share food with her. And this is the beginning of their friendship that eventually becomes a more serious relationship.

Second season picks up with twice as many episodes, and boy did they need them. We spend this season with Nomoto and Kasuga befriending their new, younger woman neighbor. Nomoto becomes a full-time employee at her work and develops a more reliable friendship with Sayama. She also befriends her Twitter friend Yako, who is basically one of us. She loves her stories, she loves her little food, and she loves hearing about other people's drama and poking them to get their shit together. I love her so much. 

It was a really delightful season watching these two grow closer, figure out what their relationship was going to be, and develop that into more as they dealt with some of their real personal and professional issues. I really, truly loved the season. 

Ginny, you were fairly recent to watching this, so you watched the first and second season basically as one dedicated viewing experience. What was your experience engaging with this for the first time in the last month or so? 

Ginny 

It was very fun. I did this as my unwinding as I was moving in with my girlfriend who is the loves to eat in our relationship, where I'm the loves to cook. So it was a lovely experience. The two seasons flow so seamlessly into each other. Season 2 picks up right where season 1 left off so I'm kind of glad I did it this way. I think I might have been a little frustrated at the end of season 1, especially having to wait and not knowing if we'd get more, because they don't entirely confirm their relationship by the end of that? It's understood that they're very important to each other and they have this very meaningful place in each other's lives, celebrating holidays together, but they don't even start to have conversations about what their relationship is until we're a little ways into season 2. So I'm glad that I got to watch it all unfold as a single story. 

So many details of, just the way that that develops between them felt so realistic to journeys that I've seen between two women who are close friends and realize that they might have romantic feelings for each other. All of the angsting you do about that, and the 'what does this mean' and the 'what does it even mean to love someone romantically instead of as just this very special, most importantest friend in the world,' — just so many little details were perfectly done and extremely relatable. It was just gorgeous. 

Ben 

NiNi, since you watched the first season and angsted with the rest of us about whether or not it was going to come back, and whether or not that second season was gonna be good, what were your overall impressions of the second season after you walked away from it? 

NiNi 

I loved it, but I knew I was going to love it. I had some angst in the middle of the season that we're probably gonna get to, not bad angst. Just, ‘oh, I wonder if they're doing this thing that I think that they're doing.’ But I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

I love so much how the show expands in this season. The first season is very tightly focused, mostly on Nomoto and Kasuga, whereas this season expands outward to show you some of the other people in their life and show you them developing their relationships with these other people, some new, some not. I always love stories that show you the life that these people are living. So I thoroughly enjoyed this season, had a great time with it. 

00:23:14 - SLTCSLTE: The Women

Ben

There were a lot of presentations of various women's issues that played out this season. Do the two of you have particular storylines that you especially enjoyed, or connected to?

Ginny

I love Nagumo's story. I think the one I connected to most was probably Kasuga, but I thought bringing in Nagumo as someone who could receive some mentorship from these two women and also [laughs] kind of help coach Kasuga through her feelings revelation, and relationship transition… it was a beautiful relationship and a wonderful addition, and the way that her character brings a different perspective on the whole nature of food and communal eating was also just a gorgeous touch.

Ben

What about you, NiNi? Did you have a particular plot line that you enjoyed or connected to?

NiNi

We got some stuff on the fringes about Sayama trying to date and looking to potentially get married, realizing and talking to Nomoto that she can't get married if she wants to, and then that leading Sayama to think about whether she even wants to get married. That resonated in a particular kind of way. It was a quiet little side runner, it didn't take up a lot of space in the story, but it did hit me. We end the season without really an answer from Sayama on that, but the fact that she started thinking about it? That resonated with me, for sure.

Ben

What I love about Sayama as a straight character in this narrative is: queer people don't fit the heterosexual mold, and loving queer people forces you to reckon with why we don't. And then that can often open up things for you, as well. I really loved her apology scene with Nomoto. Recognizing that her working through her own ambivalence about marriage is dismissive of the fact that it's not even an option available for Nomoto.

Ginny

You also have Kasuga's coworker, who's older and is getting a divorce after her children have grown up. Getting a divorce is extremely liberating for her. It really does show this kind of 360 view of heterosexual marriage not necessarily being right for all heterosexual women.

Ben

I think it's notable that when they show multiple older women working at this grocery store, they're all like, 'mm-mm, divorce was the right call for me, because I don't think it's right that I'm expected to take care of my husband's family and everybody else does nothing, and that's gonna be my entire existence.' And I love how explicit she was, she told Kasuga straight up: if you were my own daughter, who I do have, I would tell her the same thing, and I would say please live your life. Do not sacrifice your life for a bunch of other people who do not appreciate what you want for your life. Because Kasuga decided to sever ties with her family, because they did not respect her and they wanted her to just take care of them, and sacrifice anything she wanted for her life. It was really lovely that the show went out of its way to be explicit about that.

NiNi

Since we're already sort of diving into it, let's lean into that storyline. Kasuga left home a long time ago and decided to live her life. Kasuga has a brother who is the favored child, but Kasuga’s brother does nothing. Now Kasuga's parents are older and ill, and her grandparents are older and ill and need taking care of. And so Kasuga's dad has started looking for her now. He's like, 'Well, you're not married, whatever you're doing isn't important, you gotta come home and take care of everybody.' It only comes to her doorstep because her aunt gives her father both her number and address, because 'oh, you’re a family, you shouldn’t not talk to each other.' Her aunt thinks she's doing the right thing, but this is definitely not the right thing for Kasuga. Kasuga's father has never appreciated her as a person, has never cared about her as a person, has only focused on his son. And now he wants Kasuga to take care of him essentially until he dies. Kasuga really struggles with this. She wonders, is this my responsibility? Is this something that I have to do? Is she a bad daughter if she doesn't do this? What does this mean for her? Fujita tells her, 'Look, if you were my daughter, I would tell you do not go. You don't have a responsibility to give up your life for somebody else.'

All the conversations that Kasuga has with her father, she has them in her car. She does not talk to him when she is in her house, her safe space? She does not speak to her father in there. When she has decided that she's not going home, not just not going home, but never going home again, she sits in the car and has the conversation where she tells him, 'I'm not ever coming home. Don't contact me again.' And then she goes from the car straight to Nomoto. And Nomoto gets so furious on her behalf that she starts to cry. She's like, 'I can't believe that this man made you feel this way about yourself. He's a horrible person.' Basically, everything that Kasuga needed to hear, she got from Nomoto in that moment. 

I am an eldest daughter. I have a fantastic relationship with my family. And any caregiving I do is of my own volition, and I am happy to do it. It is still tiring. It is still exhausting. Even when it is received with gratitude and happiness and love, it is hard to do. If you have to take care of people who don't care about you? You can feel like you're dying. I am certain about it. That expectation being placed on you is hard enough. To do it for people [who] do not love you — because I do not think Kasuga’s father loves her — is impossible. And so I had a lot of feelings about it while it was happening, but watching her say, 'No, I am not going to just let go of my entire life and everything that I want for this person.' 

And then to have Fujita tell her, 'if you were my daughter,' which releases her from that burden of thinking about her mother — because that's the other part of the guilt that she's feeling. Not necessarily guilt towards her father, but the fact that if she doesn't come home, her mother's gonna have to do all of this. And she thinks about her mother all the time. It's just, it's so much. It's so deep. It's so intense. It's so delicious. And it's not what you expect to get out of a story that's told in little 15-minute episodes! It really isn't.

Ginny

I'm also an eldest daughter and feel so much of that. I spent my childhood, really, like Kasuga, very aware that there were a lot of things I was expected to give up. The way that that sinks into your brain… you just feel like, 'I am worth what I can do for people.' 

What struck me the most in that conversation with Nomoto when Kasuga first tells her what she's done, is Nomoto begs her to keep living her life here where she's thriving, and to keep being happy. Through their whole relationship, Nomoto has taken such joy in Kasuga’s love of eating and just celebrated that this gives you pleasure and you're taking pleasure, and that's a wonderful thing. And in this moment, she kind of expands it to Kasuga's whole life. And she says, please don't ever go somewhere where you can't thrive, where you can't feel joy, where you can't feel loved, and yourself. To hear someone say that? I think I did cry in that scene. You need to hear someone say that. Someone who grew up like Kasuga needs someone who loves you begging you to take care of yourself and to do what brings you joy. The heart of their relationship and what draws them together is how deeply Nomoto celebrates Kasuga taking care of herself and being taken care of and experiencing pleasure. It's beautiful.

Ben

I really enjoyed the way that continued in the whole strawberry debacle.

NiNi

[laughs] The strawberry thing. It was so funny. [Ginny laughs] It was so cute, too. It was really cute. This is after they've started dating, but their relationship hasn't changed very much. And so she asked Nagumo, is there something that she should be doing? Which I found adorable.

Ginny

It's so real.

Ben

It's funny, too, because Nagumo admits she doesn't have much experience either [Ginny laughs], and is like, 'You could, like, go do things you both like doing? Together? That sounds right.' [all laugh]

NiNi

It’s so funny. And that's when she sees this flyer for the strawberry picking. And she's like, 'Oh, okay, I like strawberry picking. I should ask Nomoto to go strawberry picking with me. That's like the kind of thing that people do when they're in relationships, right?'

Ben

'That's, like, a food thing. She likes to make food. This might be fun!' Kasuga doesn't really say what she wants to do, she just hands it to Nomoto and is like, 'Hey, I thought this might be fun for us to do' and Nomoto’s like, 'Oh, yeah, that sounds great. We can maybe go vegetable picking and then make some stuff afterwards.' And Kasuga doesn't really speak up about what she maybe wanted. 

Late in the day Nomoto realizes Kasuga maybe wanted to go check out a restaurant in the area, and wanted to maybe do strawberry picking instead. And Nomoto ends up feeling so bad about this, feeling like she was not really receptive to what Kasuga actually wanted, and like she was steamrolling her. This plays out across almost two or three episodes, but the culmination is Nomoto saying very clearly to Kasuga, 'I want you to be selfish with me. I want you to feel like you can want things and express them. It's really important to me that you are doing the things you enjoy.'

Ginny

And Kasuga admits that that's hard for her. Another moment that rang so true for me, for both of them.

Ben

So much of their relationship is Nomoto getting intense pleasure [laughs] out of watching Kasuga enjoy herself.

00:34:18 - SLTCSLTE: Yako and The New House

Ben

I'd like to talk about my favorite character of the season.

NiNi

Ben wants to talk about Yako. Let's go.

Ben

Yako is the best thing that has happened to BL and GL in the last two years. [laughs]

NiNi

She's really just like us. [laughs]

Ben

No character’s been a better audience stand in than an asexual lesbian enjoying her wine and her takeout, watching gay movies with other girls, and then hearing about their relationship drama and giving completely reasonable advice by just asking questions.

Ginny

Best life.

Ben

I love her so much. She is everything that I am trying to be every day. [NiNi laughs] And she's good at it! [laughs] She never tells anybody, 'Just do it.' She's just like, 'What are you feeling? How do you feel if you don't do it? Well, there you go.’

And then they have the curry party? That looked like so much fun. They all go over to Yako's house and meet her properly. Nomoto and Kasuga take Nagumo with them. And they make a bunch of different curry, and naan, and some fancy juice, and they have themselves a good-ass time. And this leads to Yako becoming friends with Nagumo, and she ends up becoming a confidante to Nagumo as well. She recognizes after the girls reveal they're gonna move out that somebody should check on Nagumo, who has probably gotten used to having two really reliable neighbors who care about her, and how Nagumo might be anxious about saying, like, she misses them and still wants to see them. Even as Nagumo admits, moving out is the right call for them, I love that Yako gave Nagumo space to admit that she was a bit bummed that she was gonna not be living next to two solid friends anymore. 

I love Yako so much. She is in competition for blorbo of the year.

NiNi

Yako has the best ideas for parties, too, like the first time she had the watch party with Nomoto, they've both got snacks and drinks, and they're talking about what they've got for their snacks and their drinks and then they watch a lesbian movie and they cry. [Ben and Ginny laugh] It’s so good. Literally, Yako is really just like us. 

The only thing I'm sad about in this entire season is that Sayama hasn't yet become a part of this whole little group that they have, but she will. I know she will.

Ben

They just moved in together. They got a big space. There's room for Fujita and Sayama to show up for another party they're gonna have. These two could host all six major female characters at their new place. 

Let's talk about the new place while we're here. Where…?

[all laugh]

NiNi

Go ahead. I know you want to.

Ben

I love Kasuga. I love everything about her. I love her big chair, I love her big bed, I love her big TV. I need to know where these things are going to go in the new space. [NiNi laughs] Nomoto is totally fine to just use her iPad as her fill-in device for all of her tech needs and entertainment needs. I understand Kasuga. When I moved out, I got myself two big-ass TVs! I need to know where this goes in their new space.

NiNi

[laughs] Doing it real big, right?

Ben

Mhmm! Her car real big. Shoes real big. TV real big. Everything real big.

NiNi

We can talk a little bit about the new space. It looks really good. I like the way that it feels like both of them, which is exactly what you want in a place where you’re gonna be moving in together. But can we just talk about how U-Haul lesbian it is of them to get together and immediately start talking about moving in together?

Ginny

Hang on, they started talking about moving in together [Ben laughs] and then got together. That was the order! [NiNi laughs] They were like—

NiNi

That is true, that is fair.

Ginny

—'I’m gonna move.' 

'Oh my God. I can't bear the thought of you leaving, but I understand why you have to.' 

'Well, it's okay ‘cause I was going to ask if you wanted to move in. Also, are we in love with each other?'

Like, that was the conversation. [NiNi laughs]

Ben

'And we finally picked a place to live. Do you wanna make out for the first time?' 

NiNi

[laughs] And the other good part of it is that before any of this, they somehow adopted a child together.

Ben

Right?

Ginny

Yeah! This all tracks. This is all very typical. 

NiNi

Mmhmm. This felt like the correct order of things for lesbians.

00:39:17 - SLTCSLTE: The Food and Nagumo

NiNi

Okay, we need to talk about food.

Ben

Okay.

NiNi

Because Ben started talking about the curry party and I got excited.

Ben

I got hungry, I need to go make food after this. [Ben and Ginny laugh]

NiNi

We didn't even talk yet about the takoyaki party. I am not a huge fan of takoyaki, but that looked really good.

Ben

All right, as we go into the food, let's talk about Nagumo's eating disorder, because I think that this is one of my favorite food plots in a food show in a long time.

NiNi

One of the things about these food shows is that it's about the communal experience of food. Nagumo has a social anxiety disorder where she can't eat in front of other people. The way that this is brought to the surface, and then the way that Kasuga and Nomoto figure out how to include her in the communal experience without trying to force her to eat or making it an anxious space for her where other people are eating… There's something about Kasuga that just reads incredibly reliable from the off. So when Nagumo first meets Kasuga, she very quickly gets very comfortable and feels like she can tell this woman anything. And Kasuga is just so forthright and so understanding about things, that when Nagumo tells her, you know, 'I really can't eat in front of other people,' the first thing she asks her is 'oh, well, can you drink something? Can I make you a cup of tea?' And that sort of becomes a jumping off point for the way that they interact when they're having these communal experiences around food, and the way that Kasuga explains to other people for Nagumo, but without giving too many details of Nagumo's private business. The way that these women make a comfortable space for her to still have the community of meals together without forcing her to eat, drives Nagumo to say, 'I want to go and get myself treated because I want to be able to eat with these women, because I care about them.'

Ben

I really love the arc of that. In a show about two people bonding over food, they met somebody who they couldn't necessarily do that with right away, they had to work into it. And I love the way that they slowly built that out — like the donut party was so satisfying.

NiNi

Donut party was fantastic.

Ben

There’s the donut party. There's the marshmallow party.

NiNi

Don't get me started on Nomoto and her, like, zoning out thinking about Kasuga with these marshmallows. [laughs] It was almost erotic but not in a male gaze erotic kind of way. She's got a comically large number of bags of marshmallows in Nomoto’s mind that she's hugging to her, and then she starts eating the marshmallows with a smile on her face. [laughs] All this is happening in Nomoto’s imagination and I'm just like, 'Yes, girl. Yeah, I understand what is happening to you right now.' [laughs] She's zoning out thinking about Kasuga and these marshmallows and I am cracking up. I'm having a whale of a—Oh, it's so good. 

Okay. I'm gonna get over Kasuga and marshmallows, but [laughs] not immediately. So good, so funny. No notes.

00:43:02 - SLTCSLTE: Depictions of Intimacy

Ben

You had a little bit of hesitation in the middle of the second season. Do you want to talk about that on the show? And do you feel resolved by the way they played it out?

NiNi

Not resolved, but more… comforted, I guess. Part of the agita, I think that I was having, is that I was working through myself. Yako and Nomoto are watching these lesbian films. Yako is introducing Nomoto to these lesbian movies, and they're watching them together. And Nomoto is saying she's watching these movies and all these women are so passionate, and she knows that she likes Kasuga in a romantic way, but she doesn't think that she has these passionate feelings like these women in these films. That's when Yako tells her, 'Well, you know, I'm asexual, this is how I feel about these things.' 

And in the middle of the season when this is happening, I had a bit of a moment where I'm just like, okay, is it that they're doing this purity thing where it's fine to be a lesbian if you don't have sex or sexual feelings? It was something that I was worried about. I think it was a little bit of burden of representation stuff that I was maybe putting on the show? That I felt like it was important to show female sexuality as being good and okay and fine, and not to wrap female sexuality and women loving women up in this thing of it being somehow chaste and pure. That was something that was coming from my own thoughts about it. There's not a lot of ace spectrum rep out there in terms of media and dramas in this field, so intellectually I felt like, oh, well, this is fine. But emotionally, I was having a hard time with. Intellectually, I'm like, okay, yes, if it is that this is an ace lesbian story, this is fine because there's not a lot of representation of that, either. But then I was also, like, feeling that even if it was ace lesbian representation, it was being done in this weird binary where you're either sexual or you're not, when acespec is just a whole spectrum of things. I was getting tied up in my own feelings about a lot of this, and it was giving me a little bit of grief and a little bit of gripe. 

But when we come down through the season and come down towards the end of the season, it starts to feel more like a journey of discovery, of Nomoto figuring out what labels that she would apply to herself that make her feel comfortable with the relationship, and understanding how she feels about Kasuga and in what ways they want to proceed with their relationship and the things that they want to try or not try, and having those conversations with Kasuga, as well. And that eased me in the way that I was feeling about it. I fully admit that I got tied up in my own feelings about this, because it didn't have anything to do with what the show was doing. It works out well. I feel comfortable and comforted by the way that the story goes down through to the end. I'm good with where they've decided to take Nomoto, and Nomoto and Kasuga’s relationship, and where they have hopefully paused, not stopped.

Ginny

I understand that feeling completely. I feel some kind of meta regret that the two lesbian shows we’re talking about, the horny kinky concept one was bad, and the very chaste, ace spectrum one was good. I would love more horny kinky concept lesbians that are also actually well done. But as you said, that's not a problem with this show as it is just sort of with the bigger media landscape, and the show is giving also voice to really important, very representative experiences. 

I love where they land on the question of physical intimacy, because I was wondering what they were going to do having gotten so far into the season. They hardly ever touch each other. There is this sensuality in their relationship around food, and I don't think it functions as a metaphor or a substitute for sex — it's just a different kind and source of pleasure that is important to their relationship, and that's so cool and I love it! But I love where they end up on the question of touch. Kasuga saying, 'yes, I would like to try things out one by one with you.' That's such a lovely way to say, we don't know where this ends. We don't know how we're going to feel about it, but we trust each other enough and we want to explore together at whatever pace feels right for both of us.

Ben

I am less concerned, I think, with certain styles of Japanese shows delving into onscreen depictions of sex and sexuality because of the space those shows fill. Zenra Meshi, What Did You Eat Yesterday?, and this show. The ton of sensuality in the food stuff supports the thinking around sex and intimacy, and I'm really glad they had the hug and kiss scene to make sure that we didn't skip that? But I don't necessarily need to see it in the show, in the sense that I'm okay with just confirming that it's gonna happen, or it is happening. What I do need NHK and TV Tokyo to figure out is: how does the cast of this show meet the cast of What Did You Eat Yesterday? There has to be a way to get these two stories a crossover.

NiNi

It does feel like there needs to be a crossover between these two stories. The new place that they've moved into, I'm pretty sure it's in Shiro and Kenji's building, like it has to be. That's the only thing that makes any sense to me in my head. [laughs]

What you were saying about seeing it on screen, it's not necessarily that I need to see their physical intimacy on screen, or whether there is physical intimacy on screen. I just need to understand, I think, if it was something that they were even gonna talk about or discuss, or if it was something that they wanted or not wanted. I think that it's fine for me for them to have the conversation and say, 'Okay, let's figure this out.' And if that lands upon them not being physically intimate that's fine, if it lands up on them being physically intimate, that's fine, but I think what I was worried about, and maybe I shouldn't have been, was that they were not going to talk about it at all.

Ben

I'm very glad that they had a conversation about it before they moved out, and established that it is something that they want, even if it's something they're gonna have to figure it out.

NiNi

Most definitely, but let's move back to the part where they're moving into Shiro and Kenji's building, because I feel like somehow that has to happen. And I feel like somebody needs to slip Nishijima and Uchino a note that says, 'Hey. Y'all are good at making stuff happen. Make this happen, too. Find a way.'

Ben

It's just difficult because it's an NHK adaptation versus TV Tokyo and I don't know how that plays out because one is a for-profit broadcaster and the other is explicitly a public entity.

NiNi

Figure it out. [Ben and NiNi laugh] I don't care if it's a movie, I don't care if it's a special, I don't care what it is. They need to figure this out, because there's no way that these two shows are not existing in the same universe. They have to.

00:50:53 - SLTCSLTE Ratings and Outro

Ben

I think that's it. This show is excellent. I guess we should rate it. Let's go around. 

Ginny, you're newest to this. What's your rating for this?

Ginny

I gave season one a 9 and season two a 10. Season one felt a little incomplete to me, but season two sewed it up. If I was rating them together, I would give them a 10 as a single experience.

Ben

What about you, NiNi?

NiNi

Why you even asking me? You know my answer. This is a 10.

Ben

It's a 10! 10s across the board. Go watch it right now and then when you're finished, go show it to a friend, and then make them show it to a friend. I'm not even kidding. This is excellent. This is going to have to get a new supercut for me on the show. I’m gonna have to mention this every goddamn recording we do after this. [Ginny and NiNi laugh]

NiNi

It's a good thing Ginny's here because now she goes, she's like, okay, so I'm looking for What Did You Eat Yesterday? and then She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat.

Ginny

Making notes.

Ben

It was really just so lovely. One of the things I really enjoy in my queer stories is realistic and believable-feeling friend groups around them. It's really important for me, not just that I believe in the integrity of the couple, but also the integrity of their network. And I really like when queer friend groups grow as a result of two other people finding something in each other, that was really important for me. And it's why this particular show is so special to me. I really love this show, so much. Please go watch it.

NiNi

And with that, that's all she wrote. That is going to wrap us up, say bye to the people. 

Say bye Ginny!

Ginny

Bye!

NiNi

Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

[shadows-from-helvete]

Introduction about Adam

(before anybody comes at me they are aged up a few years. And I think Natasha should break up with Markus until then and come together with Vanessa. So yea just a headcanon of mine so you don't wonder. Also going to answer any questions I may have about him)

•=Name=•

-Adam Dahl -Also known as Adam the Panther under his old team

•=Age=•

-16 years old

•=Gender & Sexuality=•

-Homosexuell & Non-binary

•=Height=•

-1,71cm

•=Family=•

-Sebastian Dahl (Father) -Natalie Dahl( Mother,left when Adam was 12)

•=Nationality=•

-German🇩🇪(Father side)/Norwegian🇧🇻(Mother side)

•=Home=•

-Is living in Grünwald with his Father after moving back here. In the middle of everything in a small apartment

•=Pets=•

-A 4 year old black male German Shepard named Boomer and a 3 year old female White swiss Shepard named Marshmallow. -An aquarium with shrimp

>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<

•=School & Class=•

-Highschool(Gesamtschule) and Grade 10

•=Relationships=•

-Good friends:Jojo,Vanessa,Deniz,Marlon,Raban

-Friends:Leon(would still kick his ass all the time because he annoys Adam)

-Seem nice: Willi,JoJo's mom, Leon&Marlons dad,Edgar,Deniz Father(dilf energy)

-Finds them weird:Hatschi(doesn't trust him and doesn't know him that well)

-Ew:Markus dad

-Hell na!:Siegers,Natasha

-has crush on:Markus

•=Hobby's=•

-Used to play soccer and be a keeper but after an accident he needed to stop play soccer. The accident was also the reason they moved. -Really enjoys drawing,making music and exploring the forest

>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<>=<

•=Appearance=•

-Skintone:very light(bro doesn't get brown no matter how long in the sun)

-Eyes:Dark moss green

-Nose:more on the average side

-Face shape: sharp

-Hair: longish hair that is black on the roots because the hair colour grew out. Black fades to dark and a bit lighter blue. Bangs are tight back or gelled back. One hair strain in his face.

-special markings: has a birthmark under his right eye

•=Clothing style=•

Style: sometimes more emo sometimes more punk or metal or something between depending on the mood.

-Mostly to lazy to dress up so he mostly keeps it basic.

-Loves his leather jacket,leather boots and battle jacket with lots of patches from his favourite bands like Tokio hotel,Mayhem,Metallica,Nirvana,Skillet Slayer ect.

-Wears eye shadow when he's outside all the time.

-Adam also loves to do corpse paint but doesn't do it that often and if just at home for pictures

•=Backstory=•

-Adam was living with his dad and mom until he was 12. His mother left his father for another man and never came back. It was a pretty hard time for him but he wasn't really sad, just really angry. He changed school one time became they moved into another part of the city when he was 13. He was more an outcast because of his blue hair and the way he was so of course be got bullied which didn't botherd him to much even tho he has mental problems since he was younger and they just got more and worse over time.

-Loved soccer and drawing since he was younger and to that day still draws. When they moved he got into a soccer team and they got along pretty well. At the age of 14 he had his last game. Adam was a keeper and was pretty good at it. He was holding almost everything. His team won the game. It wasn't anything special just a simple game against another team. But one of the members of the other team weren't so happy about it. Turned out this kid was known for aggression problems and so he turned to Adam and yelled at him at first. It was probably a coincidence that he picked Adam . He got closer to him and without thinking he kicked Adam in the kneecap out of anger which made him fall to the ground. Long story short he kicked Adam in such a weird and bad place that his kneecaps were damaged so he couldn't walk properly for a few months and even tho he can walk normally now he can't play soccer or much other sport anymore. This is why they moved to Grünwald and Adam acts like he doesn't know anything about soccer or played it. He thinks its better than explaining why he doesn't play anymore ect.

(Picture of 14 year old Adam before his last game with his team next to him)

-At first the bunch thought the new kid was one of the Siegers because of his style but after JoJo saw Adam with a pigeon he found and talked to him he found out he was pretty cool. So from that on JoJo forced Adam to come to there training a few times or hang out with them because as JoJo means he needs to go out more and be more social.

-2 years after the kneecap incident he tries to go back to soccer even tho it's hard but he tries. Also sometimes asks Willi for advice

(black eye and Bandage because he got into a fight with the Siegers and they kicked his ass)

-he gets along with the bunch pretty well as well as Willi but sometimes he really wants to kick Leon's ass because this little shit can be annoying.

-had a crush on Marlon and Markus and struggles because he doesn't know if he should have something for both.is stupid and doesn't notice the signs

-Extra-

[moving-asfateentertwines]

Spreading the Rotxo x Spider agenda

Listen they're buddies

Rotxo has no clue what the hell he's supposed to do with this little demon when he shows up after Three Brothers Rock but he keeps showing up and he's actually kind of cool

He's like Lo'ak but slightly calmer?? He'll dive headfirst off the cliffs but he'll also sunbathe for 3 hours and that's the energy he needs

At first, their relationship is sorta tense; Lo'ak gave them a run for their money the first time they tried the mean girl routine but a few still try to pick on Spider

Seeing his siblings band around him and he himself attempt to bite and claw his way out of it is sort of his introduction to the group

(aka that's when he realizes they're cool, Kiri dragged Spider with them about a half hour after they got settled)

Meanwhile Spider lowkey thinks Rotxo is a little bitch tbh, it takes until Rotxo punches a guy for him to separate him from Ao'nung at all

Once they start actually talking its game over

Rotxo falls first but Spider falls harder

Spider grew up with absolutely 0 belief that anyone would ever be romantically interested in him and so he never really paid that stuff any mind

So when Rotxo tentatively offers him a courting gift, he has literally no clue why everyone is freaking out cause they're just bros???

But Kiri insists on braiding the little beads into the front of his hair and Rotxo damn near goes down when he sees his gift accepted

Listen he acts all big and tough but he's a big damn softie

Homie is a marshmallow

His next gift was a pair of woven gloves that honestly are absolute crap cause Na'vi don't normally need them but Jake may have quietly dropped that it could help Spider with riding

because yes, Jake is in on it and dammit he needs to make up for the lost Dad time

Spider thinks they're the shit and starts trying to make more pairs. At first, Rotxo thinks his weren't good enough until an even shittier pair ends up on his Marui in the morning

Kiri eventually sits Spider down to be like ",,, you know how na'vi courting is...right??"

But he thinks she is trying to get him to notice his feelings for Rotxo (which she is) and court him (she groaned so loud the birds flew away)

So they both start attempting to court the other, not realizing that the other already is

It isn't until Tsireya sits them down 3 months in and sounds it out for them that they realize anything

At that point though they just settle into a courtship filled with competition

Cause now someone needs to win

Gifts, lessons, help, etc fly between them to everyone's amusement and frustration

Eventually, Rotxo gets a little too confident and gets him a blend of herbs from Ronal that is not human safe and that's when they finally have to call it quits (Spider is adamant that almost killing your boyfriend means he won)

Rotxo is the second person that Spider tells what happened to him in his captivity

(Kiri was the first, they spent hours one night lamenting everything that happened with their feet in the water)

Unlike Kiri, Rotxo had no idea what the sky people are capable of

It's he who finally gets Spider to tell the Sullys, Tonowari, and Norm what happened

Rotxo trains him with Neteyam to get Spider's strength back up, trying to help him regain his abilities from before and feel capable again

Spider never really got real lessons on much of anything, it was all that Neteyam and Lo'ak taught him after Jakes lessons or the few times he snuck with them on a hunt

So his fighting style is a weird mix of instinct, forest techniques, and the military skills he picked up in Bridgehead

Rotxo thinks its hot lowkey but Ao'nung and Tonowari decide he needs real training

(Especially if he's gonna be a part of their clan someday)

Thoughts??? I have many

[anneapocalypse]

Introduction

junelezen day one: hello

Name: Ariane Clairière (tag)

Age: 27 at the start of ARR; 30 post-Endwalker.

Race: Wildwood Elezen

Main Job: White Mage through ARR and Heavensward; Scholar in Stormblood; Astrologian in Shadowbringers; Sage from Endwalker onward.

Crafter/Gatherer: Omni (specializations Alchemist, Culinarian, and Weaver)

Physical traits: Short (she's the shortest possible height for a female Elzen). Small in the chest and hips. Dark blonde/light brown hair that she usually keeps long. Moss-green eyes, light warm-toned skin, freckles, thick eyebrows. Short upturned ears, straight nose, pointy chin. Near-sighted and rarely seen without her glasses. Rarely wears makeup or any kind of nail polish. Always wears double ear clasps, usually in a gold or bronze tone.

Family: Annette Clairière (mother, Gridanian ancestry; the family name is hers), Gratien Clairière (father, non-Gridanian, rarely spoke of his own history but has Sharlayan ancestry, probably including some non-Elezen), and Gratienne Clairière (sister, 18 moons younger). Lost all of them in the Calamity.

Childhood home: Born in Silvertear Falls in Mor Dhona, raised there until the Garlean attack; relocated to a hamlet on the outskirts of the Twelveswood where she lived with her family until the Calamity.

Love Interests: Minfilia (unrequited crush), Haurchefant (during late Heavensward), Urianger (late Shadowbringers onward)

Favorite things: Plants, books, tea, cooking, magic, the stars, her cat Marshmallow.

Personality: Introverted, a bit shy until she gets to know you, warm when she does, compassionate, curious, bookish,

Style: Magical, bohemian, outdoorsy, elegant, bookish

[maleyanderecafe]

Honey Hotline (Visual Novel)

Created by: chuiipon

Genre: Horror

Phew, I was really happy to see this game come out since I've been following this artist for a while. It's always really fun seeing people create ocs that are in games, especially now that there's this trend of yandere vns (which I appreciate). Anyways, this is an r18 game and it's a good introduction to the story of this game. If you are interested, you can learn more at @ringringringbananafone.

Honey is the default name, so I'll just be calling them as such.

Honey wakes up after a strange dream in the middle of their college class. They find out that they're going to be part of a group project and Amesy asks them to join their group. Their group consists of her, a guy named Fone and Seon. Fone is a quiet guy who has trouble communicating and writes on a notebook, while Seon seems to be a tidy guy. Amesy suggests that Honey and Fone work together on the slideshow and the two head to Honey's house to finish. The two work on the project together, getting closer with one another until Fone has to go home. Honey fiddles with the slides more until they get a strange recording of someone moaning their name and seemingly masturbating to them. This person sends message after message apologizing and stating that they love honey, asking them to not block them. Honey realizes that with this new phone, the only people who could have sent this message are the three classmates that they're working on the project with. With this, they set out to investigate which one it is. The next day, Honey can go to Amesy, Fone or Seon's place.

Going to Fone's place makes Fone very excited. In his house, Fone reveals that he has a cat named Mallow (Marshmallow), which Honey (and I) enjoy very much. Honey can ask Fone about a lot of different topics like hobbies, what his family is like and why he has a hard time speaking. After hanging out, Honey returns hom.

Going to Seon's place, there is a chance to reveal that Seon is really into anime, which makes him really happy and blurt out a thousand facts about anime. Seon even invites Honey to a convention later before walking them home. Otherwise, Seon and Honey will still have a good time, but won't find out that he's really into anime.

Going to Amesy's house, she offers Honey some cookies and the two talk about various things. We find out that Amesy and Fone are actually cousins and that Fone used to be a very cheerful and extroverted child, but isn't sure what happened to make him the way he is now. Thus the reason why Amesy was trying to help Fone and Honey talk to each other. Afterwards, Amesy offers to bring Honey home on her motorcycle.

After all of that, Honey gets another voice recording stating that they enjoyed their time together today and wishes them a good night. Honey deduces it must be someone who they've hung out with today.

For an introduction, it does a good job of showing off all the different characters, and sets up the mystery of who the person stalking Honey is, though if you follow the creator's blog, you'll find out pretty quickly that it's Fone who is the one sending these messages. It's hinted at as well when Honey mentions that the person sounds raspy as if they haven't talked in a while, as well as when talking to Fone there's the chance to talk about the neighbors, and the recent murders happening, which is awfully suspicious and likely related to Fone. Still, there are other mysteries such as what kind of childhood Fone had to have changed from a cheerful child to how he is now. The artwork in this is very nice, though I'm biased because I really love the art style of the characters.

As for yandere behavior from Fone, there is several that goes on. The first one and most obvious is the message sent to Honey on the first and second day. Based on what Honey mentions about the neighbors, likely is also next door to hear what Honey is saying. There's also the aforementioned murders which are likely tied to Fone, and if Honey refuses to work on the project with Amesy in the beginning, the game will sort of reset, forcing them to be in that team. Ominous messages at the beginning and end of the game also play out, as well as some text files that will spawn inside of the folder depending on what options are chosen. I'm not sure how these breaking the fourth wall things will come to play later as a lot of yandere vns are using them these days, but hopefully it will be a unique idea.

Overall, for a demo, I thought it was an interesting premise. Even though I believe we already know who is the one sending these messages to Honey, I am curious about other aspects of the game. If you enjoy these types of games, please feel free to try it out.

[br1ghtestlight]

I think a gene and nat episode could fuck EXTREMELY hard

gene and nat are both obviously queer and gnc. louise might look up to nat in a more obvious way but I think nat would enjoy spending time around a Young Queer who is so openly and unashamedly themselves and gene spending time around someone who really understands him could be good too (this also goes for marshmallow. he loves queer elders they're his fave)

very similar eccentric personalities. would yes-and each other NONSTOP and have so much fun together (especially if they brought louise along with them)

gene would love having nat give him a makeover and then hype him up. this is a fact. she could take him to drag shows

nat would love gene's music very much and hype him UP

he's louise and tina's sister which automatically makes him like the best ever to nat <3 the third belcher sister she never got to meet in her introduction ep

nat knew that gene would be jealous if louise got to dress up as an old lady and he didnt. she got him a wig and a dress even though she really only needed one old lady for her show (note that she didnt make gene an Old Man even though it wouldnt make any difference). she understands him and his gender expression. most supportive adult

gene would enjoy riding in a limo without surprise snakes. could heal from that traumatic experience

[anonymous-dentist]

Today, I would like to explain the concept of a story to the qsmp fandom.

Look at this chart:

This is a story’s most basic structure. Every story follows this. It’s what called a plot.

To make it a bit clearer, let’s look at it in terms of something we’re all aware of: the Eggs Plot.

Introduction: The Eggs arriving and living up through their first disappearance/cracking.

The introduction sets everything up. We’ve got these eggs, and they’re kids. The characters need to take care of them or they’ll die. They’re fragile. They might die.

Rising Action: The time from the Eggs’ first disappearance and up until the day of their most recent disappearance.

This is when the initial plot threads start to come together. The eggs are fragile, so they get kidnapped and come back cracked. Nobody knows who did it, but the eggs are all scared. Richarlyson arrives. Pomme arrives. It’s discovered that the eggs are all artificially created by the Federation. The establishment of safe rooms that, according to the rules, nobody but the eggs and their families/trusted ones can get into. A1/Memory/Hope.

Climax: the Eggs disappearing, seemingly for good.

This is the PEAK of the story!! This is when all the big stuff comes together and creates an explosion of conflict! The Eggs came back dirty one day without any memories of how they got that way and then they disappear, leaving everything behind. Their parents start grieving. It’s revealed the kids ran away. The maze. The wheel. Chayanne’s floatie.

…But honestly? I think that, realistically speaking, we’re still in the rising action part of the graph. The climax would probably be when the eggs come back… or when they don’t come back and they’re confirmed deceased or escaped. But people don’t care about that, they want the eggs back now, and. Well.

There’s this issue in the qsmp fandom where everybody wants everything solved immediately all of the time, and nobody seems to understand that this series is still in its introduction/rising action stage. Quackity and the admins have stuff planned out to December at least, it’s a very longform story. And the thing with longform storytelling is that things take time. Nothing will be solved immediately. If it’s solved quickly, that’s just bad storytelling because it’ll make the admins have to patch in new stories like filling a hole in the road with marshmallows; that shit just doesn’t work.

Instant narrative satisfaction is fun. What’s more fun is actually consuming a narrative to its natural conclusion and feeling rewarded at the end of it. What’s the fun in a deep tragic story arc being solved in a week when it’s obvious that this Egg Arc is gonna impact the rest of the server’s story? This is just the beginning! Experience it, and breathe it all in.

[phightingconfessions]

MEET MOD SWORD!

yes, just like mod bio, im doing an actual introduction post :) im sure some people are familiar with my collection of now dead (but hopefully not for long!!) rp blogs (that i will not be linking you WILL not find me), or my anon posts both here and on hot takes (i have so many opinions baby) or even from several phighting discord servers (HELLO PHIGHTING PARODY SERVER AND PHIGHTER SMP!)

but now im gonna yap about myself :)

YOU MAY CALL ME.... marsh or sword :D i will respond to both usually, and i use either it/its or NO pronouns! mains// marshmallow sword (duh), bivekit, exorspace, hyperlaser, cozyshot, snowboard (in order of who im MOST likely to play, i love playing dps medkit!) fav phighter// .......sword :') fav sfoth sword// I LOVE YOU ICEDAGGER!!! weirdo little kid... cryptid child.. fav skin(s)// marshmallow sword, sunburst sword, cocoagraft fav npc(s)// broker (SORRY. I KEEP GETTING CALLED HIM SO IM ADDING HIM.), ghosdeeri fav ost(s)// as a jet set radio future fan: bearings broken. and stylish stickup fav phest theme// MERMAID MERMAID MERMAID!!

im just a little guy who makes a living drawing for people and doing game concept art :) i havent been playing phighting as often as i should (tryhards. make the game so demotivating to play.) but i still love the game!! i mean i have like 20 ocs and i dragged my friends into it so? win?

thats all you need to know about me :D

[monsterpie]

My thoughts on the Pride comics:

(Below the cut is my opinions on both the Toradeen AND Spellentine comics)

Toradeen comic:

Overall, it was a cute comic. They somehow made Toralei and Clawdeen cute together, props to them. That said... it's a random-ass pairing. There is no way those two would have ever dated each other in g1. They didn't like each other and they didn't even spend time together alone if they could help it. It was very clearly a ship made because they thought dog x cat would be good. I think if it were a comic about, say, Ghoulia and Kjersti instead, it would've been better and more realistic.

The two new characters, Bridgett and Jackie, were very cute. It is VERY hard to believe that they're Monster High students, though. I thought they were college age or young adults. In my mind, they seemed around 25 years old. Regardless, they were quite endearing. I thought the lesson they taught Toradeen about respecting your partner's boundaries and understanding their needs was a very important lesson for people to learn, whether they be kids or adults reading the comic.

The comic was pretty well-paced. It did a good job with the amount of pages it was given and didn't drag things out or rush through too much. The art style was cute. There were small additions made to the world that I enjoyed, like the existence of the fire-salamanders and how they seem to be popular to catch and use to cook things like marshmallows. Overall, it was pretty solid and a relatively enjoyable read once I ignored the fact that, again, it is an INCREDIBLY random ship.

Spellentine comic:

I... honestly don't have a lot of nice stuff to say about this comic. 😬

I think Spelldon really didn't have much personality at all. I think that it is also a disservice to have Spelldon's first introduction outside of an obscure diary mention be a comic that isn't about him. I think they didn't do a good job of establishing Spelldon's personality or character or motivations or... well, anything really. If they had, for instance, leaned more into Spelldon being clumsy like when he accidentally tripped and bumped his head, or if they made him a little more judgmental like when he said Valentine's fake Southern accent was bad, maybe that would've at least made him more memorable.

I also think they made Valentine... off. I'm aware that his personality in WDGFIL was largely a farce, but his personality in the comic didn't feel like him at all, neither the suave and cool self from the movie nor the accepting and calm self from the SDCC diary. He was... well, emotional and whiny. Annoying, frankly. His entire SDCC diary was about accepting things and growing as a person, and although he seemed to have SOME of that in the comic, he was also ready to stop feeling love at the drop of a hat - something which is especially confusing when we remember that Mrs. Goblin from the diary specifically mentioned that free and true love was so important for emotional vampires, and also something that doesn't feel like a decision he would make given the fact that he's supposed to, y'know, have come to terms with and accepted the fact that things won't always go his way. Teenagers are dramatic, I understand that, but in his SDCC diary he had come to terms with the fact that Draculaura and her friends might never come to trust and forgive him, but that he still wanted to prove himself to them if it was possible. In the comic, Draculaura turns his invitation to fang out down in the kindest possible way and he reacts like...that. It didn't feel like him at all.

The comic itself felt badly-paced and rushed. It felt like they had too much that they wanted to do and not enough pages to do it, resulting in feeling rushed. Valentine's decision to give up on love forever, Spelldon's first official appearance giving him almost zero time to establish himself, a potion-making quest, a lesson about... whatever they were trying to teach (acceptance? again? I guess?)... it was just too much. Maybe a full-length comic could've tackled it better, but I think this short one couldn't do it. They should've cut out some parts (my vote is to cut the not-wanting-to-love part out and instead have Spelldon and Valentine just need to make a potion for class or whatever). Another problem with the comic was that it was largely ruled by Valentine, rather than both boys equally. Spelldon made almost zero impression because Valentine was so loud, both in personality and in amount of words spoken, leaving Spelldon to kind of flounder behind.

The relationship itself was... fine. There really wasn't much any substance whatsoever. Person A takes care of Person B. It just didn't feel like it had much going for it. Their personalities seemed to mesh alright as friends, but as boyfriends... I don't know, to me it just doesn't work. It's not like Jackie and Bridgett where they're differing personalities that still work in the end, it just feels like... guy-who-will-inevitably-be-overlooked and his boyfriend, the guy with giant neon signs pointing him out.

Also, small gripe: I really wish Spelldon hadn't called Valentine's fake accent dumb lmfao. Valentine said he liked the accent, and I think if he had explained that it made him feel comfortable and confident around others, and also explained that he just *liked* doing it regardless, that would've been a sweet characterization moment that I could've truly believed.

A personal gripe and overall criticism: I still, even now all these years later, think it was an absolutely horrific idea to make Valentine gay. Like, catastrophically bad. The guy preyed on a bunch of innocent ghouls and stole their ability to love for centuries (for some, if not all of them, that probably meant their entire lives), but, oh, it's okay guys! He's gay! He was just doing it because he was gay! Sometimes men hurt every women in their loves because their true soulmate is gay! This isn't about his ability to change - he CAN change and he DID change. This is about the optics of it: the (at the time of the SDCC diary) ONLY "confirmed" (in loose quotes because that was bullshit back then too) gay character in the children's media Monster High was one of, and I can NOT stress this enough, the WORST VILLAINS THAT MONSTER HIGH HAD EVER HAD. Just another evil gay trope. Again, yes, he did change and get better... but how many people have read his SDCC diary? How many people even know it exists? Probably not many casual fans, probably not anybody who was a kid when the movie came out and is now seeing this comic on shelves a few years later. He should've just been straight. In my mind, he is. That way, at least, I don't have to worry about yet another evil gay in kids media.

Anyway, things I liked about the comic: Spelldon's design was really nice, I enjoyed seeing Whisp again even if it was very brief, I thought Valentine apologizing to Draculaura and attempting to befriend her was very sweet, as was her apologizing to him at the end of the comic while still maintaining her boundaries and not trying to change her schedule too much for him, and I thought it was funny that Spelldon and Valentine were going around and stealing shit for a useless potion lmfao.

[mycartoonmonster]

Gideon Gleeful and Bill Cipher parallels

Both are snappy dressers with charm they use to trick people (Both of them even do the same trick of being cute to appeal to their respective audiences; Gideon with the cute look in the Tent of Telephaty and Bill with a picture of him as a baby in the Book of Bill)

Both lie about being beloved by everyone in their hometown (Gideon's manipulation had everyone in Gravity Falls fooled,his parents were scared of him and the Mystery Shack's workers alongside the Pines Family dislike him as a whole and Bill was bullied by his peers by singing rhymes like "Cipher! Cipher! He's insane! He starts fires with his brain!" and no one truly understood him when talking about the 3rd dimension or that there was an "up" )

Their modus operandi is to manipulate people, usually convincing their victims that they have more power than they actually do or with video materials (Bill by being a divine muse but he´s extremly limitated by his deal´s system and the attempt to hypnotize the visitors of the thisisnotawebsitecom.com with whats shown in "One Eyed King" code and Gideon being a mind reader when in reality he's powerless without his amulet and with the commercial shown in Dreamscapper where he sings about being the viewer's friend)

They both spied people through their own image (Gideon pins have cameras in his pins and Bill's imagenery serves as a peephole for him to look through into Earth)

Shadow introduction.

Both know the name of a member of the Pines Family without them telling upon first meeting them.

Both have an unhealthy interest in certain Pines Twins to whom they view as the same as them (Gideon's stalked her Bill projects too heavily onto Ford due to how similar their lifes were) and are attracted to them by quirks or worldview they have (Gideon adores Mabel's interest in the sparkly things of life while Bill shares Ford's thirst of revenge and is fond of his smarts or his sixth finger)

Both use several nicknames or terms of endearment with the Mabel and Ford (Gideon leaning more towards terms of endearment like peach, peach dumplin', marshmallow, dear and Bill with Fordsy as well as Sixer and IQ or Smart Guy)

They see the Pines they're interested in as their partner and/or their property.

Both are very hard to say no to.

Both seem able to speak/communicate in other languages (as seen in his debut Gideon speaks French and in Bill´s case he can leave messages in different codes)

Both pressured Mabel and Ford respectively to go on a night out with them (Mabel to a fancy restaurant with Gideon via puppy eyes while Bill was insistent on a karaoke night with Ford)

Both forced the Pines into relationships where they couldn't say no or leave easily without exterior help (Bill's abuse whereas Gideon used peer pressure and took advantage of Mabel's kindness, although Gideon's was somewhat unintentional due to him being oblivious to her feelings and he always gets what he wants, Bill's actions were 100% intentional and he was fully aware of Ford's feelings regarding the portal after the betrayal)

When the relationship fell apart they blamed others for the fallout when it was their own actions that drifted their interests away.

Both have mind reading habilities, as well as pyrokenisis and psychokinesis. (Bill's powers being a natural hability while Gideon's were thanks to an evil amulet)

Both gained power at a very young age which started their rise to villany very soon (Gideon finding the journal 2 near the school and getting the amulet which corrupted his mind and whitened his hair and Bill could start fires back when he was in school and eventually his powers led to accidently destroying the entirety of Euclydia alongside his parents)

Both force-choked someone of the Pines family (Dipper in Gideon's debut and Ford & Stan in Weirdmageddon Part 3)

What both truly crave is adoration and attention (Gideon's feelings for Mabel were genuine even if he went about them the wrong way whereas Bill wanted someone to finally get him after a lifetime of being treated like a freak, he wanted Euclydia to see the stars just like he did and he got that or the closest thing to that with Ford )

Both have villain songs which surprisingly involve pianos(Gideon's 'Wittle ol' me' or the Commercial song seen in DreamScappers and when he's controlling Bud in the Stanchurian Candidate and 'We'll meet again' in Bill's case as well as the scrapped song 'Its Gonna Get Weird')

Both use make up (Gideon has his own dressing room and liked to play makeiver buddies with Mabel and he steals Wendy's cream to keep his skin baby soft whereas Bill uses mascara and eyeliner for his eye)

Both had some type of throne with something they play with(Gideon's chair in his family's factory with a Gideon doll and the throne of human agony during Weirdmageddon with Ford's golden statue)

Both harmed the brother of a Pines Twin at one point just to be a nuisance (Stan by blinding him with the flash of his glasses and Dipper by blasting him through the stomach when they first met in Dreamscappers)

Both have terrorized the people close to them (Gideon's parents and Bill all of Euclydia)

Both have been shown the to have the access or the capacity or hability to control zombies (Bill can posses Zombies as seen in the Book of Bill while Gideon has the Journal 2 and one of its pages talks about summoning an army of them)

Both are shown to be threaths not to be taken lightly.

Both looked for a journal, but with different motives but all linked to a goal related with power (Bill wanted the journal 3 destroyed so Dipper wouldn't interfere with his future plans aka Weirdmageddon while Gideon seeked the journal 1 to obtain maximun power)

Both wanted something inside the Shack (Bill the Rift and Gideon the Journal 1)

Both have a lawyer.

Both seem to care greatly about their appearence (Gideon constantly remarks his hair and keeps it shiny, gets disturbed when it gets messy, doesn't like when it's getting touched by others or when he cant take care of it as seen in Little Dipper and The Stanchurian Candidate and has a helmet over it in the finale while Bill cares about his bowtie with him screaming when Dipper blasts it and he's seen readjusting it a few times during Weirdmageddon like in Part 2 and 3)

Both refer to themselves as little guys in a way (Bill thinks of himself as a silly guy and even writes it in the ID booking he holds in his mugshot while Gideon tells one of his dolls he's a cute lil guy just to be replied "no, you are")

Both have merchandise of themselves which eventually failed like the Bill Cipher figurines and the Gideon dolls alongside the Gideon pins (Bill's tries to sell them went bad while the Gideon pins and Gideon dolls were no longer sold after the events of Gideon Rises being the few times we see them when Stan uses one for the crowd to boo at in ScaryOke and Bud burning them to be warm in Weirdmageddon Part 3 now only serving as warmth fuel)

Both aint too fond of Dipper and Stan, recognizing them as the brother of Mabel and Ford and even lesser versions of them at first but grow to hate them later on when ruining their plans for power or related to their twin.

Both are referred to as a either a monster or demon by Stanley/at least a Pines member or someone in a Gravity Falls (When Gideon was a baby, Robbie graffitied the word "demon" on his billboard and he gets called a monster by both Stanley and Dipper in ep 4 while Bill gets called an "isosceles monster" by Mabel, Ford describes him with "Monster" in the Journal 3 page where he warns us not to summon nor trust him and "My muse was a monster" and Stanley adresses him as a "all powerfull space demon" and "One Eyed Demon")

Both dont truly think that highly of Dipper at first until he does something that shocks or impresses them and use condescending names for him (Gideon refers him as "boy" while Bill tends to call him "kid" but the nickname he constantly refers to Dipper with in all his appearences is "Pine Tree", referencing his sign in the zodiac which he doesn't do with other Pines Members like Mabel, Stan or Ford-at least not all the time, being Ford the one he refers to by name the most)

Both tried to kill Dipper and actually did it in different timelines as revealed in the Book of Bill, with Gideon either stabbing him with his scissors or pushing him off the cliff and Bill's plan with jumping off of the Water tower in Dipper's body so he'd get stuck in the mindscape forever and the timelines where Dipper and Mabel get turned to stone in Weirdmageddon.

Both push/toss Dipper back before he can do anything to stop them, damaging him in the process (Gideon tosses Dipper behind him when he's controlling the Gideon Bot which causes him to get hit with a rock and bleed from his nose a little and Bill pushes Dipper with his power before he can actually punch him and ends up rolling in the ground and colliding with a tree that does wound him up a bit and leaves bruises onto him)

Both do see Mabel in a better light than they do other members of her family but for different reasons and to different extent (Gideon has a crush on her and considers her a sweet peach, his queen while Bill just likes her for her chaotic nature since it reminds him of himself-once again projecting onto others-but still sees her as a pawn and he's far more interested in her grunkle Ford)

Both add a "I was here" in certain places (Bill in Journal 3 and Gideon in the cell Stan was while getting interrogated by Agent Powers)

Both tried to have someone help them with their plans at first but when it failed they ended up taking matters into their own hands (Bill attempted to get Pacifica to bring him the Rift after the events of The mystery of the Northwest mansion but when that didn't work, he contacted Blendin and possessed him so Mabel could hand him the Rift and destroy it whereas Gideon wanted Bud to drive him to the Mystery Shack so he could shrink Stan but had to go there himself and attempt to attack Stan all alone)

Both got defeated via tickles once, in their second appearence in the show (Little Dipper and Sock Opera)

Both present their plans with the town to a whole crowd once they obtain what they wanted from the Pines (GideonLand after getting the Shack's signature and Weirdmageddon after getting the rift from Mabel)

Both pulled a "this isn't the last you've seen/heard of me" after their defeats

Both used someone to do their dirty work to be freed (Toby Determinated to contact Dipper or Bud to win and become the amuor so he could be freed from jail while Bill used several humans and Ford to build a portal but Blendin as well to get the Rift to enter the human realm)

Both forced a smaller creature than them to wear a sailor uniform (Gideon with Waddles & Bill with Gideon after betraying him by letting the Pines enter Mabel's bubble)

Both are seen interacting with animals in pictures (Bill riding jackalopes in the intro of Weirdmageddon and Gideon by posing with several puppies in the news of Gideon rises)

Both mistreat animals (Gideon with Waddles by forcing him to be the GideonLand's mascot and making him stay in a corner with a dog whistle while Bill tore the teeth out of a deer's mouth just for show, something he considers "fun")

Both puppetered someone for their evil schemes (Dipper and Bud)

Their arch nemesis is a Stan Twin (Stanley and Stanford)

Both taunt Dipper after they've obtained power and no longer consider him a threath after taking the journals from him (with Bill actually destroying them for good measure)

Both flicked the smarter twin's nose (Gideon with Dipper and Bill with Ford)

Both tell Dipper and Ford that they're nothing without the exterior factor that's been giving them knowledge about stuff (Gideon refers to the journal while Bill talks about himself in an attempt to manipulate Ford)

They're revealed to not be so great at their job (Gideon was using magic and spying on people while Bill's lies work on lone, naive, deseperate people in vulnerable times like children such as Dipper and Mabel or loners like Ford Pines) not to mention they got outdone by Stanley Pines.

Both kept the Pines they were interested on trapped/imprisoned during Weirdmageddon (Ford as a statue in the Fearamid and Mabel stuck in her prison bubble)

They appear crying on the "Dont color this book its cursed", even in the same possition (hands out, eyes bowling with tears)

Both have a criminal gang they dont cherish as much the Pines Twin they have an interest on (Henchmaniacs-whom didn't know about Bill's past until the Time Baby told them while Bill revealed it to Ford by showing him the last remains of his home dimension-and The prison buddies-He may respect them but bites back when Ghost eyes questions him about keeping his love interest locked in a prison bubble)

Both sent their henchmen after Dipper to avoid him from being a nuisance on their plans later on during Weirdmageddon (Bill sents Teeth and 8 Ball after him so they can eat him as a snack while Gideon sents his prison buddies after Wendy and Dipper so they dont get into Mabel's bubble after stealing the key from him)

Both promise positions of power alongside them to certain Pines Twin if they submit to them, betraying their homes and family(Mabel gets the chance to rule the town as Gideon's queen while Ford gets the chance to be a literal god by submitting to Bill) but fail to get them to agree, saying they'd rather die than join their side.

Both have a fit of rage and almost harm the people that work for/alongside them (Gideon gets enraged when his dad tickles him and throws what remains of his ice cream at the wall, staining it and nearly hitting his mother and Bill gets mad that his weirdness cant cross the borders of Gravity Falls and takes it out on the Henchmaniacs by invoking a storm that nearly hits them, destroying a bit of the Fearmid´s insides)

Both are in the need for a code that will grant them what want in the season finale that they can only obtain from a Stan Twin by going inside their mind (The combination to Stan's safe and the equation)

Both tormented a Stan twins when they were in restrains (in Pioneer Day, by throwing tomatoes at Stanley when he was in the stock and by electrocuting Ford to give him the equation for several hours before the rescue)

Both were caged and forced to dance for someone's entertainment (Bill in one of his portal attempts ends up getting tricked and has to dance for a king while Gideon was forced to do cute dances for all of eternity as punishment for betraying Bill and the Henchmaniacs)

Both have damaged/destroyed the Mystery Shack at one point (Gideon with dynamite and Bill by fighting Shacktron, attacking the limbs)

Both planned to use the Twins as a bargaining chip to get something they wanted from a Stan Twins (the Mystery Shack & the equation to collapse the barrier)

Both shed light onto the smarter twin with evil intentions behind it

Both get injured by the Mystery Twins after getting too close to them

Both chased the Mystery Twins in a season finale in a new form and held them in thir hands after the chase (Gideon Bot and Demon Bill)

Both tried to offer Stanley riches/money but it failed (Gideon with having his lawyer pretend to be a part of the Winninghouse Coupon Savers contest in Little Dipper and Bill as a desesperate plea to be spared from his death)

Both got punched in the face by the twin of the Pines they were interested on inside someone's head (Gideon-Bot's head and Stanley's)

Both tried to talk their way out of sentences but it failed (Axolot isnt stupid and tricked Bill while Gideon couldn´t avoid going to jail as Manly Dan was in his trial to testify against him)

Both went to prison where they do art therapy and still swear revenge on the Pines (they even wear the same orange jumpsuit).

Both get trapped in jail or a cage as consequences of doing a deal with another entity more powerfull than them that can get them what they want (Bill traps Gideon in a cage after him not fullfilling his end of the deal they made back in the Stanchurian candidate where he was promised Mabel's love and/or revenge on the Pines Family by letting them into Mabel's bubble while Bill gets sent by the Axolot to the Theraprism after striking a deal with him in order not to die after getting erased with the memory gun)

Both follow a pattern of getting defeated by Dipper and Mabel twice, annoy a Stan Twin in episode 15 of their respective seasons (Gideon with the perfect spot in the pool in Deep Dive while Bill annoys Ford in his dreams in The Last Mabelcorn) and getting defeated for good in a season finale.

In both seasons finale, they take over a place and its up to the Mystery Twins to take back what they stole and stop them, getting close to their goal but its Stanley who ends up stopping them for good, returning what they stole and saving the day; becoming a hero for Gravity Falls on two different occasions (by revealing the truth about Gideon and punching Bill in the face)

Both hate Stanley's guts for messing with their plans to obtain ultimate power.

Both have photos/pictures of someone with a part of or their entire face scratched with red paint (Stanley's eyes crossed out in a photo Gideon uses to summon Bill while The Oracle's face is all covered in red in Bill's book)

Both try to make Stanley look bad in several ways (Gideon with the commercials where Stan is featured as a fraud or a demon to the people of Gravity Falls and with the wood dolls where he imitates Stan making him say "Look at me. I'm old, and I'm smelly" and Bill with the Wheel of Shame, sharing shamefull stuff and secrets of his past in hopes to ridicule him so the visitors of his page think less of him and just blantantly insulting Stanley, not only on the website, but also on his book by calling him a lesser version of Ford among other stuff like Bootleg Sixer or PTSD Barnum, stupid, lame, side character, hack, etc.)

They made stuff for the Pines in jail (Gideon made a dress for and wrote letters to Mabel in shorts while Bill created his book to send it to Ford)

Whatever stuff they give to the Pines its rejected, thrown away or destroyed (Ford constantly gets the book of Bill back but tries to get rid of it in several ways while Mabel throws his love letters into the Bottoless Pit and rejected the dress he made for her in prison)

Both burn a photo with members of the Pines Family, leaving only one of them intact.

Add more if you know.

[strawberryys-stuff]

𝘿𝙄𝙎𝙍𝙀𝙂𝘼𝙍𝘿𝙀𝘿 | Percy Jackson x Ares!oc

Introduction

The midnight blue umbrella snapped closed, releasing a gravity defying plume of small droplets. The defeated elementary school student pulled down her hood and tucked a lock of red hair that barely reached her shoulder blades behind her ear.

After she leaned the overflowing cloth bag of groceries against the brick wall beside the entrance to the block of flats that she had recently moved into with her step-family, Alexis shrugged her rucksack off her aching shoulder to fish her keys out of the front pocket.

"Crap," the redhead squeezed her dusty teal eyes shut and threw her head back with a groan, "not again.."

She pulled out her dying cellphone and unlocked it, sighing. Alexis dialed her step-brother while she was collecting her stuff from the muddy ground and blew strands of hair out of her face.

"Hugo?" she called out to her sibling when the obnoxious ringing got replaced by awkward silence. The young boy on the other side of the line hummed as he rubbed one of his squinted eyes and stifled a yawn. "Could you come down? I forgot my keys."

Hugo grumbled and pinched the bridge of his nose, slightly annoyed. "Come on, Alex.."

"I know and I am sorry, okay? Just-" the red-haired student exhaled heavily and glanced to the side- "come get me, alright? I'll make you a cup of hot chocolate in return," Alexis suggested.

"With marshmallows, though."

She pursed her chapped lips, unamused, but had to agree with his request in the end because she did not want to turn into a popsicle before the eyes of the entire neighborhood.

Alexis chewed on her bottom lip as the early humid autumn breeze swept past and tickled all the exposed spots of her pale skin. She continued to shiver and grew impatient.

"I will murder that boy," Alexis stated with a sarcastic smile as she searched in her jacket pocket for her cellphone once more.

While she was entering the password, a boy her age approached the entrance to the block of flats with earphones in his ears and a skateboard in his hand. Unlike Alexis, the blonde hadn't forgotten his keys at home before he left for school that rainy morning.

The jingling of keys startled the frustrated girl. She stumbled backwards with a shriek when the boy appeared out of thin air beside her. He was taken aback by her reaction, also flinched and dropped his keys in the process.

"Shit!" Alexis covered her rapidly beating heart with her ice-cold hand, her breath sharp and fast.

"My bad," the blonde apologized with a quick nod her way and bent down to pick up his keychain. He inserted one of his many keys into the keyhole, unlocked the door and held it open for Alexis to walk into the warmth of the building.

"Thank you." She bowed her head and gladly stepped out of the autumn weather with the boy on her heels.

The blonde pulled down his drenched hood in the lobby and shook his hair to gain some life back into his messy and undefined curls. With her adventurous spirit and undying curiosity, Alexis searched for his eyes and when their gazes collided, her jaw went slack.

"Oh.." The boy breathed out and scratched the back of his neck after he connected the dots and put a name to her imperfect face. "It's you."

Alexis laughed nervously and shrugged her shoulders. "Yep, it is me! The girl you spilled your apple juice on at lunch.."

"It was an accident," he clarified, "I swear!"

Alexis arched one of her eyebrows at that and looked down at her outfit. Instead of her favorite light blue jeans, she was wearing baggy gray sweatpants along with a black T-shirt that did not belong to her, but to the boy standing in front of her.

After he spilled his drink and some of his leftovers on her clothes, the blonde offered her his clothes, which he planned to change into for his PE class.

"I really didn't mean to-"

"Hey." The redhead placed her hand on his shoulder to stop his upcoming rambling with a tiny smile on her lips. The boy screwed his mouth shut. "I am just messing with you, blondie."

Her smile was contagious. She also had dimples, he noticed. "Yeah," he chuckled and shyly broke their eye contact, his cheeks flushed, "okay."

His gaze trailed a tad bit lower, to the handmade necklace she had around her neck - a thin leather string with three differently colored balls. It looked familiar, he was sure he had seen it before.

"Well," Alexis broke the awkward silence and adjusted the cloth bag that hung loosely on her shoulder. "I have to go.."

"No yeah-" the blonde shook his head slightly and brought his pure blue gaze up- "of course."

"Thank you for the clothes by the way," Alexis gestured to his gym class outfit with a smile. "I will give it back on Monday if that's okay."

"Sure, yeah. Whenever it's convenient for you."

"Okay.." She nodded and bit the inside of her cheek. "See you on Monday then?"

"Yeah.. See you on Monday.."

They shared one last awkward smile before she turned to the elevator and disappeared behind its doors.

The blonde squeezed his eyes shut, regretting that he decided not to follow the red-haired girl he found quite intriguing into the elevator. He was captivated by her playing the electric guitar and musical talent in general.

Alexis Driscoll was a hot-tempered, mysterious and brutally honest elementary school student with a passion for music, who also lived in the same block of flats as Percy Jackson.

Percy could tell she had an enormous amount of secrets and trouble hiding behind her in her shadow, but that was one of the reasons why she had caught his eye.

He didn't know her name nor why her cool grey gaze seemed to be something he would recognize anywhere in a heartbeat, but he knew one thing..

she had been haunting his dreams for quite a while.

How did he know?

Percy Jackson would recognize that necklace blindfolded.

That piece of handmade jewellery was what he had been wearing around his wrist in every dream and every spine-chilling nightmare of his.

For some unexplainable reason, Alexis Driscoll was the key to most, maybe even all, of his unanswered questions.