#oh well. guess all my art is split between two blogs now

[alleycat-arcade]

Game Start! The Seven Lords: Journey to Love Valley(Sampler Hcs, Part 1)

(This is the headcanons portion of my sample fics/hcs for this blog. This was requested by one of my IRL friends! They paid me $20 bucks lolol. sucker I woulda done it for free. I split it into two parts because it got kinda long lmao.)

There we are, I've got that machine that you asked for all fixed up.

The Obey Me! Brothers with an MC who's like Marius Von Hagen! (Headcanons), Part 1! The Older Brothers!

Content Warnings: Chapter 16 spoilers(For next part), Spoilers for Tears of Themis also!(Episode 4 - 15) and (Marius Personal Story, end of Episode 2)

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

You were just calmly winding down for the night when you had been summoned. Honestly, you had wanted to sink into your designer couch for the rest of the night, but not literally! You felt your back slam into the hard floor quiet harshly, earning a loud groan. As you cracked one eye open, you found yourself staring up at a gothic chandelier. Odd, I don't have a chandelier in my art room. I don't even think I own one that one looks like this... As you rose from your crumpled position on the floor, you brought a hand back to rub the sore spot on the back your head.

Where am I? Looks like a courtroom... Am I having a dream about Rosa's trial yesterday? "Welcome to the Devildom, Mc." You remained silent at the person who began speaking in front of you, merely raising an eyebrow. The taller person dressed in all red continued explaining your situation, as well as introducing himself as Diavolo. As you listened intently, you slowly regained your typical composure and rose from your seated position on the floor.

With a confident smirk now on your face, you strode up towards the male, ignoring the rest of the people in the room. You gently outstretched your hand to him, as if to as for a handshake. He complied with a confused expression, but instead giving his hand a firm shake you dropped to a kneeling position and pressed a chaste kiss to his knuckles. "While I'd love to participate in this exchange program of yours Sir, I do not believe I can do that for you. I still have quite a lot of Graduate studies to do, and being the heir to Pax Group is quite the handful of a job." "Not to worry (Mr./Mrs./Mx.) Von Hagen. I have already taken that into account for you. Everything will be as you left it once you are done here at RAD." A voice spoke from behind you, belonging to someone who quite reminded you of your personal assistant.

A few more back-and-forths occurred between the three of you as the rest of the room watched. Eventually, you were convinced enough and gave in, but still kept that smug look on your face. It had only faltered once during your conversation, at the mention of NXX, but otherwise you exuded confidence. "Alright, alright. If you want me to stay that bad, I guess I'll just have to comply."

(Note: I imagine you'd likely avoid telling anyone about NXX. Diavolo and Barbatos already know, but they're probably easy enough to convince to keep quiet about it. They also probably convinced you through the power of Barbatos time travel, aka "we'll just send you back in time to the human world from when we got you, no one will know you even left". Barbatos is my beloved Deus Ex Machina)

Lucifer:

You had just barely met and he already knew you were going to be a thorn in his side.

When you introduce yourself to everyone, he finds that you have a very naturally flirty personality. One that he would soon find himself driven up the wall by.

Avatar of Pride meet your near match in ego.

Initially he liked it when you addressed him as "Sir". Initially. It took him a few interactions to notice that you were just teasing him once again.

He finds you invading himself and others' personal spaces quite often. Kabedons anyone?

At first he doesn't like it, but once the two of you get closer and he develops a little bit of feelings for you, oh he likes it alright. Probably the type to try and reverse kabedon on you to make you as flustered as you momentarily made him.

It has become a completion to fluster the other the most, but only when you're in private.

If you kabedon him in public he's gonna brush you off. It was a sad day that day for "Kicked Puppy" Von Hagen.

Impressed that you are pretty close to the CEO of your family's company. You certainly don't seem like it, especially at your age.

Not the type to really ask for gifts just because you're quite well off. He's not going to stop you from getting him those rare vinyl's from the Human World he mentioned offhandedly a while back though.

If you want to sketch or paint him secretly, the best time to do it would be when he's working on some papers in an open space, like the living room. Don't let him catch you though, his ego might go through the damn roof if he finds a sketchbook full of well detailed sketches of himself made by his love interest.

He will practically read out your own notes next to your sketches to you. You begin to feel your soul leaving your body when he gets through all of your sweet comments and gets into the ones you wrote as a joke. ("Mc, what does DILF mean?" "..." "Mc?" "..." "Mc why are you running? WHY ARE YOU RUNNING?")

Might also try and convince you to paint a few portraits for him. Probably would be a few of him and perhaps a family portrait if you do accept the commission.

Very invested in your occasional fireside chat about Art History in the Human World, as well as what University is like there. Probably don't tell him about your legal shenanigan's though, unless you absolutely want him sticking his nose into your secret business. *cough* NXX *cough* It's not that he didn't know that you happened to be framed for murder once before you came to the Devildom, but telling him details the public doesn't know might not be a good idea.

Quite intrigued by these Human World paintings your friend "Z" sends you. He will sometimes patiently listen to you speak very highly of your painter friend and show off the merchandise you use to show your support. If you squint you might catch a bit of a jealous glint in his eyes in the reflection of your Z dog tag.

Subtly tries to give you necklaces to replace your dog tag "if you wish". He also tries to gift you different paintings from across the Devildom to replace Z's. You may want to tell him soon that you are actually Z before the man drowns you in paintings and fancy jewelry. (Or don't, your choice.)

Depending on when you catch him he may or may not be a good source of comfort about your missing brother. He did lose Lilith after all, so he understands your pain, he just might not really know how to properly comfort you if you catch him at a bad time.

Mammon:

At first, your charms and flirts don't really phase him. He's the Great Mammon, of course you'd want to praise him so much!

Would outright laugh at you if you insisted that you didn't need him to be your protector if he didn't want to hang around you. Probably makes a few sly comments about you being a weak or lowly human and you should be glad he's looking after you.

Post-pact Mammon, however, is quite different.

Man's gonna need to start getting some sort of concealer to cover that permanent blush he's got now. You fluster him nearly at the drop of a dime.

Still calls you a lowly human and stuff, but it lacks any rude or vicious intent behind it and you can tell by his tone.

Call him Sir or the Great Mammon and he is dead. You have killed him.

Oh? You're a CEO? Can you pay off his debts?

Sadly has to learn the hard way that your money from the human world cannot be converted to Grimm at the moment.

Though strange items from the Human World do seem to end up in front of his bedroom door a lot. Hmm, odd. Oh well, these would make some good cash. He's keeping that Crow plushie though and everything else too. He may be oblivious sometimes but it's pretty obvious who his 'secret admirer' is.

A bit more difficult to find holding still long enough to draw secretly. You might just have to settle for sneakily drawing him whenever he crashes on the couch or when he inevitably gets in trouble and Lucifer hangs him from the ceiling.

Recreating his picture on magazines just isn't the same as the real thing after all.

If he finds all of those sketches you made of him, Mammon.exe might permanently crash. If he manages to recover, he might find it in himself to push aside his whole tsundere thing and actually confess. Just don't draw his brother more than him okay?! He's your first so he should be your primary model after all!

He will die again if you've scribble out little comments beside the images of him. "My demon", "Treasurable second born", "I can't seem to capture his smile perfectly. It's worth far more than any gold or jewels.", etc.

May also make you tag along with him to some of his photoshoots so you can draw him more so he can show you how cool and amazing the Great Mammon is.

With his luck, which is actually pretty good, the photographer probably recognizes you and probably tries to get you to model with Mammon instead of watching. If you accept, you two likely have quite a good time posing together. Mammon.exe does crash if the photographer asks you to pose more provocatively or unbutton your shirt a little. ("Ah, okay. Like this? Or is this angle better?" "You're pretty good at this Mr./Ms./Mx. Von Hagen!" "Oh, I've done this a ton for magazines back in the Human World. This isn't even close to some of my photoshoots." "..." "Mams, you good? Need to take a break?" "N-no, I'm fine...")

Mammon suddenly bought like 30 things from the Human World off of Akuzon the next day. He's acts like Levi when the packages arrive, snatching them all up and hiding them in his room before any of his brothers could get up in the morning. RIP to Lucifer who has to give him the spending lecture again with a straight face. ("Why did you buy 30 magazines?" "Because I wanted to read about, uh, human businesses." "Then why do they all have suggestive images of Mc on them Mammon?" "...")

Probably doesn't get most of your college stuff, but will sometimes just ask you about it because he likes to hear you speak about something you're passionate about. You already have a nice voice, your excitement about certain topics just seems to add to it. He's not going to admit that though.

The second most obviously jealous about your friend Z. Might go out and buy a dog tag with his name on it instead and replace it secretly. Definitely didn't try doing it before and get caught in the middle of it. He would never do something like that for a simple, lowly human. It's up to you if you tell him or not, 'cause he can be pretty cute when he tries to secretly be better than Z. May even try to make his own paintings for you or steal them for you. Maybe you should tell him before he hangs from the chandelier for the next month.

#1 demon to go to if you're feeling blue about your brother's disappearance. He may be tsundere, but he knows what it feels like to lose someone so close to you. Plus I feel like he just naturally has a very comforting presence. Big brother energy. Might offer to hunt him down for you in the human world when your stay at RAD is over.

Leviathan:

Voted #1 most likely to die on the spot from interacting with you at all. Doesn't matter if you're close to him or not, he cannot handle being flirted with.

Sadly this also means he might become your favourite person in the HOL to tease, with Mammon as a close second.

Finds it weird when you address him as "Sir", it just reminds him of the Navy really. It's better if you just call him Levi, the Sir thing would just make it kinda awkward for the both of you.

Do be careful with flirting with him though. He is quite the self deprecating person so if you use the same flirtatious remarks towards others he might feel like they're not genuine when you use it on him. Maybe mix in some Gamer lingo or sea puns when you call him cute or adorable, and add some extra feeling to them so he knows your words aren't just empty compliments. He'll especially melt if you start using TSL terms and quotes in them. ("Hey, Levi. The way your eyes are gleaming in the light reminds me of The Lord of Shadows. Remember in Chapter 9, Book 12 where Henry sees him sitting on the throne reading and Ancient tome and compliments his eyes?" "KJDHDUA" "How did you make that noise with your mouth?"

Before you make a pact with him, he'll try and brush you off as much as possible. Go away, normie!!

But after the pact? He is all but begging for you to be close to him but also as far away as possible.

Joins Mammon in the "need blush covering concealer" club. Asmo please help them.

Doesn't really care too much about the whole CEO thing, might just ask you to buy him Human World video games or limited edition figures at most. That is, if you wanna give them to a yucky otaku like himself.

You buy him so many he's going to need a second room for all of them. Lucifer is pissed.

Assumes that you're a normie, until you sit down with him to play video games with him and watch anime. You're actually better at video games than you thought you would be! No where near his skill level, of course, but pretty decent for a human.

If you draw his favourite anime and video game characters he may consider asking for your hand in marriage now. Make him a fancy and heavily detailed painting of Ruri-chan and he probably will.

He'll probably ask if you can draw together sometime, and begins showing off his own drawings to you.

Probably one of the easiest to secretly draw. Just wait for him to get really focused on something and he's a perfect art model. Plus, since you can sit close to him without it being suspicious, you can probably get a hell of a lot of good angles on him. He will only be in pretty much one pose though, either sitting or standing with something in his hands that he's focused on.

He will melt into a bright red puddle if he find's your sketches of him. Especially if you write cute little notes next to pictures of his face like "Lovely otaku", "Cutest gamer in the devildom", "His eyes are like a sunset. I want him to look at me more.", etc. You have killed him, he is now dead forever. He is so mega dead, he can never respawn from this. What do you mean you want it back? You can take it from his cold, dead hands. Wait, he's supposed to be dead.

Good luck getting that book back, he's going to keep it. Probably considers pulling out the sketches you made of his brothers but stops after considering it might upset you. He does replace it though. You find a Ruri-chan themed sketchpad wrapped up neatly on your bed the next day, with a simple note on a Ruri-chan themed post-it note that said: "Soz｡ﾟ･（>﹏<）･ﾟ｡"

Seriously where does he get some of that stuff to be honest.

Overall the most blatantly obvious about being jealous about Z. Please tell him that you are Z before he tries to hunt him down in the Human World. He can and will kill some random innocent man, and not even Rosa and Artem could save him from the Stellis police. Or vice versa.

Not really the best at comforting you about your missing family, but he does his best. Probably tries copying what you do when you try and soothe him when he's upset, but he might be too nervous around you to do too much physical contact. Uses words of comfort and tries to take your mind off of it.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

(Can you tell that I may have gotten carried away? 'Cause I defiantely did. I'll release the part for the younger brothers tomorrow, I promise! But I hope you enjoyed this part. :) I showed these to my friend who commissioned me early, so I may or may not come back and add a few things to each headcanon if they give me more ideas. If I also notice any spelling or character mistakes I'll be back and edit them later also lol.)

[sasster]

I dunno if you guys can tell but I haven’t done a lot of fantroll stuff lately. Or really. Much of anything. But I DID write this.

Mind this is just some oc species shit, BUT it would mean quite a lot to me if you guys read it. Since it’s the... Longest thing I’ve written in .. All of 2021? Yike!

Anyway, as usual, here is a link to a google doc if reading it on my blog upsets the minds eye.

----

“You know that we are practically Gods in comparison, right? It is a marvel that my people are not in the conquering business. We would be very good at it, do you not agree?”

Their captor spoke with a high in their voice, Qei was positive that they’d gotten their hands on some sort of mind altering substance to get them into the mindset that they were in -- Well, how else could you explain prattling on your master plan to a supposed lesser species? He found it rather foolish for the younger Cardali to speak so loudly and so boldly in front of newly rounded up prisoners. That was to say nothing to the tragically gaudy and unnecessary large castle-like structure that he and the four others of his crew were dragged to. Truly, he’d never seen such high ceilings outside of the Temples on Cardalith. What a waste of resources.

The upside is that the People of Aeilur were a remarkably easy species to mimic. They have no real sexual dimorphism, at least not one noticeable from the outside looking in, nor do they spend a lot of their time on ridiculous beauty standards. They were just a product of their world. Aeilur is a beautiful planet, actually, lush with fauna and vegetation long extinct on most other worlds. A strong, sturdy, practical people, with pacifism practiced down to an art, they wouldn’t raise arms even if an entire army to make a grab for their planet and it’s bountiful resources. It was Falarittus’ responsibility to help keep such things from occurring.

Qei could see how an opportunistic megalomaniac might have taken advantage of such information, he just never thought that he would see the day that one such megalomaniac would be an Ambassador of Cardalith, one of their own. He was disgusted.

There is a tug at the shackles that restrain his top set of hands, indicating that while he was lost in thought he’d stopped shuffling behind. He emits a low inquisitive grunt, he was going his usual hm, but he supposes that this is the only translation his current form could offer. How fascinating! He’d have to make plans to spend more time with the People of Aeilur. Under less pressing circumstances.

There is another sharp tug at his reins and he resumes trudging along behind the madman. How humiliating. Demoralizing. It was important for him to experience this though, so that he could speak to his short experience under their thumb when it came time to trial. There would be a trial. Not that Qei was worried that Falarittus would have much of a case. It would be short.

Not as short as it would have been if Qei were to let his patron in on the manhunt -- Why that temperamental giant would have lost it before they even stepped foot into this… Mansion? Seriously, this thing was gaudy. Might’ve burned the whole thing down Himself. No matter, this was always going to be a job for Qei. He even felt bad bringing along a crew with him. Diollea insisted he bring back up “just in case”.

He threw a worried glance over his shoulder to gauge them. They seemed comfortable, and he breathed out a sigh of relief.

Oh. Right, Falarittus was still talking.

“Once they see what I’ve done for the people of this world, the Gods themselves would shower me in praise. My peers and superiors would turn to me for guidance in the new age!”

It looks like Qei tuned back in just in time for a gem! He couldn’t help himself as the air quickly expelled from his new and quite long proboscis, which resulted in trumpets quite a bit louder than he was anticipating. He thinks this might be what a laugh is for this species. He did not intend to be laughing, but the idea that their creators would entertain the idea of the subjugation of any species, let alone one so peaceful as the People of Aeilur, was preposterous!

Only an idiot who made their home the size of a mall would have such delusions.

“What is so funny, worm?”

Worm! Perhaps not letting Diollea come was the mistake, this miserable pile of goo would long be ashes in that event. The trumpets were coming in spurts now, and Qei’s guess was that these were the equivalent of hiccups or maybe wheezing.

Qei’s crew took some steps back as Falarittus took the several steps to close the gaps between them. Now, naturally, Falarittus and Qei were eye level, but in this form they only came to just about chest level with him. Gentle, emphasis on the giant, indeed. The latters trunk swayed between them with a gentle undulation in a behavior that Qei was actually quite familiar with! Taunting.

He’d only seen it when three sisters prepared for a friendly bout of wrestling upon their reunion; It was cute. This was not.

“Oh, did you want to fight? Is that it? Did you plan to be the warrior of your people?”

Qei merely held up his two sets of shackled hands, hands big enough to hold Falarittus’ head in it. Hands that could crack their skull like a fragile piece of pottery if he were so inclined. He could not disrespect this form with violence, though, he thinks.

The bitter laugh that erupted from the man opposite him was unlike anything he’d ever heard come from the mouth of another Cardali, and he has met many of them in his day. It was almost ear splitting and made the hairs from his arms to his chest stand on end. Danger receptors? Very nice.

“It is not in you to fight, but please raise your hands to me so that I may cite self defense back to my superiors.”

There was a sick smirk on their face as they pulled a set of keys from their robes -- Robes, they were wearing robes like some sort of high priest in a fantasy story book -- and began to unlock the cruel piece of metal from Qei’s top set of arms. This was ideal, as he was fairly certain this is the set that translates back to the singular set of arms in his natural form, as they did not rudely burst from his shoulder blades like the second set did.

“Let's keep it fair, I only have the one pair after all.”

“Fair?” His own voice was quite alien to him, raspy and guttural as it tried to form words unfamiliar to the vocal cords tongue he borrowed to speak. Standard was not a language that belonged in this mouth.

“Fair. Say it with me. F-er.” Holy. Xenophobia. How did this pass the sniff test? No, there had to be another traitor in their ranks for such an awful wretched soul to have been left alone here. An example was to be made, and Qei would make sure that it was handled swiftly. The only good news was that this was so early on, that there was just this region of the planet that experienced it. Which was a really bad thing to think was a good thing. But there was a chance that the People of Aeilur would continue to allow Cardalith’s aid.

“Fair.” Qei said, once again the word barely made it past his tusks in one piece.

Falarittus cackled wildly at this attempt as Qei closed his eyes and focused his energy intro retracting that disrespectful set of arms back into his body, he’d been shifting for quite long time at this point in his life, so the rest of the shift passed by with a pleasant hum and totally not worth describing from the inside.

He reopened his eyes to the sound of metal hitting the floor, he was now looking at his own hands, ambient green glow and birthmarks exactly where he’d left them. They were clenched into tight fists. Most importantly, though, he was staring straight into the shell shocked eyes of the once quite full of himself clown.

“Fair enough?”

“Qei’eleritte, wait, let's talk about this --”

He swung hard, possibly with more force than intended, because they crumpled to the floor almost instantly. Behind him, he could hear the humored trumpeting of his still disguised crew behind him.

This could have been so much worse.

[lacktastrophe]

Daisy MegaPost Pt1

Update: 3/7/2021

This one’s been in the shop for a couple of years now. I think I started this way back in 2019 but I just became just far too busy to work on huge posts again. I had anticipated to have all of Daisy written up during the break that BCB had, but I became in need of a break myself too. Part two was written up, but I never went further.

I had come back to this recently and made some changes. I wasn’t too happy with the way I used to write and I’ve been editing this over and over, until I noticed it wasn’t keeping them. I’ve published it now since there wasn’t any point just keeping it in drafts and it’s more or less done, just not in this state I’m perfectly happy with, but it seems to be keeping my changes now it’s in this state. I anticipate I’ll still be making some edits. Before I continue on with Part 2. As for part 3 and onwards, I can’t give a time frame.

With the webtoons version way ahead of the chapters here, I’ll probably make progressive updates and start using those over the old Volume 1 art, I’d anticipate the webtoons version is a retelling of the story and thus there might be some retcons, like how Kizuna was replaced with Stacy. I’d anticipate some changes might make different meanings for the future.

I still enjoy examining the story and characters. I still plan to do some introspections to the other characters I haven’t come to, but it’ll be far fewer and in-between than years ago. I have other projects and those need priority. 

But I’m happy that people still enjoy reading these.

---

We’re onto the main characters now, things are going to need to change with the way mega-posts are going to be published from this point forward. My previous mega-posts are usually just one long post, hence the name. Though they’re starting to become uncontrollable, and Tumblr is clamping down, or at least not really working with excessive word counts.

Uh oh. . .

Well, the old mega-posts can still be accessed but you’ll need a direct link, they won’t show up on the mainroll and I’d be surprised if they still show up these days, and I’d have to guess this has something to do with the anti-spam detection on Tumblr.

If you were interested in the previous mega-posts, they can be accessed on their own page from my blog’s front page. I just wouldn’t try reading some of the earlier ones on an app, it’ll struggle. 

The other problem was with the word count, even without the characters being the prime focus, they’re starting to get long. Abbey’s alone was a 16000  behemoth. This surprised me, as despite him being a secondary character there was an awful lot to discover and talk about. Augustus, despite being a character who appeared much more in-between chapters but much fewer than Abbey, was nearly 21000 words. If there was that much to talk about with the secondary characters, the same method of just dumping as much as I can into one post is clearly not going to work when we start approaching the main characters. I had to split both of them up for my own convenience.

The main change is to make these smaller so they’re friendlier on the app and the website; maybe aim for 2000-5000 words without focusing too heavily on trying to get through on as many chapters as possible and see how far we go. 

The plan from this point forward is to do a large collection of write ups but then deploy them progressively. That’ll also give anyone who’s keen a chance to give feedback or who wants to talk further about something. 

Sound good?

Me too! So without further ado, let’s get a move on and have a look at Daisy.

----

So, our first protagonist, where do we start with  Daisy?

How you’re first introduced to Daisy really depends on whether you read the book or followed the comic through the site. The book’s opening chapter, ‘Like a Bittersweet Candy Bowl’ introduces you to Daisy as a massive bookworm who does well in school. She’s pretty smart!

Book in hand, we’d pretty much believe that right off the bat. She appears like the most studious in this group of friends. And we’d be right! She even puts the ever-perfect Mike to shame. She’s nothing less than a perfect student. 

‘Perfect’ could be an understatement, Daisy is a literal freak of nature when it comes to her academics; as when Daisy and the kids transition to Roseville high, we find her already in classes well advanced than her peers.

Daisy is just that incredible!

Through the website, ‘Simple Pleasures’ aims to introduce the kids in much the same way, but there is far less in the way of monologuing and we’re introduced as the characters interact. In much the same way as the introduction chapter in volume 1, we learn that Daisy is quite the bookworm and school-obsessed student, even during weekends. But that’s not the only thing dominating her thoughts, as when Lucy goes out on her walk, the first person she runs into is Daisy who is looking for someone else in particular!

You guessed it!

Oh GOD, does Daisy like boys! Can you guess who she’s got her eye on?

Of course it’s Mike. Are you surprised she’s got a deep crush on the boy who seems very perfect himself? Everywhere that Mike goes, you can be sure that there’s a shadow in the shape of Daisy not too far behind. . .

Wherever he goes. . .

Daisy doesn’t shy from showing her interest in him when the convenience calls for it. Ah, young love.

Eventually, Daisy would find love, though it wouldn’t be with Mike. It would however be the second longest running relationship in the comic if you consider Mike and Sandy, with an admirer of hers. 

Still, suffice to say, even after every attempt gets shot down in the most spectacular way, Daisy bounces back -- Like a daisy. Her shining ray of positivity follows her everywhere.  It’s all in the name, after all. Daisy still manages to rise up with her sunny disposition. 

But not every time.

As the story progresses, little by little, we start seeing that there’s more to Daisy. We start to see that not everything is bright and happy like her name-sake despite appearances. Things would be far from perfect, and underneath that smiling face is a character suffering with low self-esteem in that very same area; her appearance; believing their Ragamuffin/Selkirk-Rex heritage is letting them down and putting them in misery. This tends to be particularly true on rainy days, when all the hours she spends of a morning brushing down her fur become undone when the droplets causes it to fluff up and the curls start showing. Daisy attributes these traits to the reason she isn’t quite as easily noticed by the boys as the other girls, setting up for a number of stories involving her in Volume1, and opening her to be taken advantage of in the pursuit of attention and affection.

Not all the characters gain admirers or attention and for most of these characters, this is fine. But Daisy is not one of those and this above all things has an enormous impact on her. She wants to be noticed and receive affection, particularly from Mike, and others to a degree. 

It’s when faced with multiple rejections from her dream boyfriend we also progressively discover a side of her shown to be more envious if not resentful of a few others who have it so easy, particularly with one such character inside her friend circle.

As you can imagine, these weaknesses will eventually put Daisy in danger as she tries her best to come up with ways to cope and make changes in order to improve her life, especially if the means are at the cost of logical reasoning like taking advice from the seediest boy in the school to attain her goals. She isn’t infallible; Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean smarts. Even with someone who does as well in school as Daisy does, there’s always room to grow. 

But until that happens, Daisy often finds herself in trouble when her personal feelings, ambitions and dreams do the talking for them on pursuit of happiness, for herself and others.

And oh boy, doesn’t Daisy make more than her own fair share of mistakes.

Let’s move onto the story, it starts with Simple pleasures, the first chapter.

This chapter serves to introduce us to the main group of characters central to the story and so features the aloof and prickly Lucy, the playboy Paulo, the ever-perfect Mike and the bookworm Daisy. It starts with Lucy on a morning walk and progressively running into each of them. With Daisy specifically, it starts with Daisy coming across her first and greeting her by shouting ‘Hey’ behind her.

Except...Lucy ignores her, and we don’t know why -- Is Lucy doing this intentionally? She’s in a world of her own at the moment with her singing. Are they friends? Is she just so aloof she doesn’t realise she’s there?

Well, Daisy isn’t going to let herself be ignored so easily and she really needs Lucy for something. So she goes to get her attention by impulsively grabbing onto Lucy’s tail. This would turn out to be a very critical mistake that one of the other protagonists just can’t stop helping himself from doing, and because of that we notice that Lucy isn’t as aloof as she seems, and reciprocates by twisting around and kicking her in the face.

Only to find that the person she was expecting was actually Daisy, much to her surprise. There’s a reason she never noticed her.

The first chapter has a number of objectives, it serves to set up the tone of the comic by showing the dynamic between the main group of friends, but also displays their characteristics. We already learn a couple of things from Daisy and Lucy’s interaction here. We learn that Lucy has a short fuse when it comes to unwanted contact. She appears aloof, but the main reason for Lucy not acknowledging Daisy initially is through the understanding that she’s partially deaf, unable to hear out of her left ear in similar in characteristic with her breed, the Khao Manee. Many of the other characters will make this mistake too and often at times Lucy doesn’t make it obvious she can’t hear what’s going on around them and needs to ask about what transpired much later. Lucy’s aloofness will be questioned in time as we start seeing more of her.

Daisy had forgotten about Lucy’s disability because something else was more important. And naturally, we learn that Daisy has, no less; a bit of a crush on the forefront of her mind. And we learn here that crush is on Mike, one of their friends at school, and her reasoning for bothering Lucy is that she’s only looking for him. What we come to learn later is it’s a little known fact that wherever Lucy is, Mike is often not too far away. In fact Lucy is never off on her own by herself. 

Sadly for Daisy, Lucy doesn’t know where he is, so Daisy runs off in the opposite direction. That’s about as much of Daisy as we see until the next chapter. 

Before we move on, let’s talk more about their interaction. As brief as it was, the interaction gives off more in the subtext into the status of the relationships between these characters and the others. I anticipate as new readers many of the details of this interaction just fly over heads, accepting these two are friends and this is just how they are. But being as late into the comic as we are, I feel we’re already seeing some of the signs of what’s to come in the story through this short interaction. Not everything is as it seems.

Most of this payload of information is laid in the question that Daisy poses after Lucy asks her what she’s after. When Lucy states she hasn’t seen Mike, Daisy asks ‘Oh no, did you upset him?’ 

Immediately we’re given some insight into the triangle that exists between these characters and their relationship between one another, and insight into the state of these relationships.

Starting with Mike and Lucy’s relationship as the question is directed about the two of them, we learn that the friendship isn’t without it’s issues, and we’d be quick to pass this off initially as something that happens from time to time. Fight’s happen, it’s a fact of life, and it happens more so when you’re a kid and figuring things out, yourself and life.  Reading through the story, we would find the two inseparable in the later chapters and we never look at Daisy’s question again. But reading through BCB again from as late in the comic as we are, we have to wonder why this question specifically.

What we learn much later in the comic as we progress through is that Mike and Lucy’s relationship is much more complicated than what it appears to be. Much later, we see that the two do argue from time to time, until we get to the point where the plaster and apologies aren’t mending the cracks. The friendship isn’t quite as clean cut as it was made out to be and we start seeing some back stories into the characters. What appears to be a competitive rivalry through volume 1 between two friends is really something more sinister. By the time we reach Volume 4, we learn these two are really anything but friends.

For the moment, Daisy’s casual interaction gives off a sense of normality in their environment and understanding the answer to the question would actually help plan out her next move if we were to consider that maybe there was some intent behind the question. But we’ll get to the nature of it soon.

Without knowing too much about the kids as early in the story. I’d feel we’d put our trust in the kids to tell the story for us, and Daisy does come off as being quite perceptive and trustworthy immediately being the positive bookkeeper she is, she would be the expert for us until such a time as we become the experts. 

One thing we’d discover much later on our own is that the Mike and Lucy are inseparable. In one way or another, they will find each other and act like close friends again. And Daisy knows this too without specifically pointing it out. Already suggesting that they’ve fought, it would only be a matter of time before they made up again, whether that takes minutes or hours. No matter how big the town is again, so long as they’ve got each other in their thoughts, they’ll stumble upon each other in no time, almost like a six sense.

It could be said that this is for the sake of convenience in the story in getting them to interact faster in the comic and resolve disputes, and that would be right. But BCB takes this and turns it into a running gag between just these two characters. There are more than a few jokes that exist in Volume 1 to make this seem like these two are made for each other in the way that they will eventually run into each other no matter how big the town is. One such joke is seen in Volume 1 through Mike’s inability to surprise Lucy on her Birthday. It’s so powerful, even Lucy’s auditory disability doesn’t stop her from catching him just before he can do it, even if the hiding spot isn’t obvious.

We’ve only seen this fail once, and that was in ‘Its all in the mind’ when Mike does sneak up on her, but Lucy has very much moved on from Mike at this point, so we’d have to wonder if this is something to do with them both being in Sync, we might not know.

-

The question Daisy asks doesn’t just pertain to Mike and Lucy’s relationship however, it also begs the question to Lucy and Daisy’s relationship at the same time. In fact, if it wasn’t for Daisy’s sunny disposition and Lucy’s stone-faced responses, the entire interaction would appear quite rude; Daisy’s question isn’t whether or not she’s seen him, only if she’s upset him, shedding some poor light on Lucy’s personality.

It’s important to remember that while these two are friends at our current point in the comic, they did not start out as friends, especially when you consider Confrontation, as we’re coming up to. Daisy, while she was amicable around Lucy and quite hospitable to her in the friend group, has to contend with her as being this roadblock to getting to Mike. Lucy seemed more aloof around her, but there’s more than enough to suggest that Lucy had other mutual feelings.

Understanding now that there is a rivalry between the two (or a one-sided rivalry, take your pick), we can understand why that particular question had been asked. Its tent though is to give more reason to Daisy’s next move: If Lucy did divulge she had fought with him; then it would only be a matter of time before Mike showed up, as Mike would feel the need to apologise and through their innate ability, would find each other, it would just be a matter of time. If she hadn’t; then Mike could be just about anywhere. 

It turns out to be the later. And too infatuated with Mike (or not interested in hanging out with Lucy, take your pick), Daisy does not simply stay with her to wait and runs off in the opposite direction, hoping to find him first. 

It’s when Daisy is no longer in the focus, we can see that Lucy isn’t exactly as stonewalled as she initially appeared to be, blushing from the interaction.

As possible that Lucy is only reacting because of her stupid head-over-heels attitude for that other idiot, as Lucy is yet to realise her feelings for Mike, we could wonder if it might not also be because Daisy has rudely pointed at the elephant in the room in Lucy and Mike’s relationship. Who’s to say?

(2021 edit -- The webtoon has this piece of dialogue changed. This time Daisy asks ‘Awww, are you both fighting still?’, which makes this even more pronounced that things aren’t all quite sunshine already. )

Finally, Daisy and Mike. Now that Lucy’s interaction with Daisy is done, Daisy is running around town looking for Mike, for whatever reason it just can’t wait until school. 

Ah love. I’m sure it won’t be a problem in the future, right? 

Mike is a real nice guy; lending Daisy his math workbook to Daisy.

We really need to look a bit deeper into this. We know much later in the story we that Daisy is well in advance of her peers in her studies. When she starts Roseville high, we find her in no more than two ahead of the others in her grade, with the juniors, and Tess.

And in the first few chapters of volume 1, we learn that Daisy often tutors Mike, so there’s no way Daisy even needs that book.

Unless...

O---Oh. It wasn’t for Math after all.

We’d come to learn that boy troubles are generally the source for all of Daisy’s grief. We’ll find that Daisy’s crazed obsession over Mike is used to justify a lot of the actions she’ll take in the future and we don’t know how bad this is until the much later volumes. Volume one step over this lightly as just a girl wanting her crush’ affection. But it becomes more pronounced in the much later volumes, especially when Abbey makes a point out of it when Daisy is less inhibited to keep her real feelings secret after getting drunk off Alcohol at Rachel’s party in a very late chapter.

Getting back to the current chapter, Lucy will notice that Mike eventually did find Mike, but she’s not with him. So maybe that was all she really wanted.

We’d be saps for thinking that.

But without anything concrete, we can only presume that was it. So thanks for returning Mike’s book, Daisy.

Daisy appears again in Merry Snow Day, the following chapter. This is a very short chapter where the kids are going to school after Lucy (begrudgingly) accepts schools not out, and walks with Mike to school. Daisy appears not long after and the first order of the day is to talk about homework, including offering to tutor him. She’d do anything if it meant helping her fellow students.

It’s at this part we’re introduced to the subtle idea of the rivalry for Mike’s affection between Daisy and Lucy. It’s subtle since it’s very one-sided and Lucy and Daisy don’t directly interact with one another or show that they’re fighting. Their interactions for most of the early chapters happen through Mike like you can see above when Lucy adds herself into the conversation. We’d have reason despite Lucy’s aloofness that such a rivalry does exist subconsciously and there are some reasons to believe this we’ll touch on. But for the moment, we can be sure that Lucy doesn’t consider Daisy a threat for one main reason: Mike will come back, so there’s no problem.

Daisy wouldn’t make a point of the rivalry either but Daisy would take advantage of the convenience of Lucy being out of the picture to seek attention from Mike, as she does when Lucy continues to school, and Daisy directly copies what happened just seconds ago when Lucy was about to fall on the ice, and Mike catches her.

Nice.

This chapter also introduces Yashy, Lucy’s pet Lizard and her surrogate daughter into the story line. The earlier chapters of Bittersweet Candy Bowl are ripe with slap-stick humour, and Yashy is the general source of this with her outspokenness and wise-ass personality. She’s there to rile up the others and break all the ice with her innocent demeanour. This will be the case up until the kids go to Highschool when the comedy starts being turned down in place of focusing on the rifts coming between the kids.

Unlike the other pets, Yashy is integral to the plot involving Lucy and Mike’s relationship, as she’s partly the reason for the friendship going on as long as it has. Having known Yashy for as long as Lucy, Mike takes on the role of the surrogate dad in Yashy’s life and this ends up having Yashy taking on the belief that Mike and Lucy are an established couple. But this isn’t true, and it plagues Mike as this is anything further than the truth. But with Yashy’s innocence, he can’t find the means to break this to her.

Yashy’s insistence of Mike and Lucy’s eventual destiny of being husband and wife comes at Daisy’s expense, as despite Lucy not necessarily seeing reason to stop Daisy’s attempts at trying for seek Mike’s affection, it’s Yashy who perceives her as a real threat and will shout obscenities at her when she doesn’t get her way, with a particular choice of word in mind. Though it doesn’t stop Daisy. But we can’t help but wonder much later if those words Yashy chooses to throw don’t have some kind of an effect on her much later.

That completes this chapter. Daisy doesn’t have much of an impact in Unfit for Education, appearing more to just be a participant in Sue’s obsessive thoughts game. But she gets a larger role to play in the following chapter; Burden of Parenthood. 

This chapter has the kids going through sex ed. and being given the responsibility of raising a robotic baby, which they will be graded on based on their performance. This chapter starts off quite unexpectedly, as when the teacher begins pairing off the students, Yashy’s expectations that Michael and Lucy will be paired together, doesn’t actually happen for a change.

This time, Daisy is paired up with Mike, and Lucy is paired up with Paulo.

As you could guess, Yashy isn’t thrilled in the least bit. But neither is Lucy particularly when she spots Paulo pleased at the results himself.

Again I still don’t think Yashy’s abuse is really doing much for Daisy, I can’t help but wonder what that will do for her self-esteem?

Oh, I bet she’ll be fine, she’s like a Daisy, remember?

It’s during lunch we find Daisy is positively happy with the result when she confronts Mike with their baby. Although there’s just one problem. The baby is a glaring defect, a very...interesting feature about it that has Mike freaking out.

And he’s not playing ball because of it. Even Lucy is having a hard time with the baby’s smile.

But Daisy, Daisy couldn’t care; it’s Mike’s child.

The Daisy x Mike compatibility really doesn’t take off as Mike wants absolutely nothing to do with the newly-named Alegria, which Daisy is quick to point out after keenly watching a maternally-skilled Lucy teach a very clumsy Paulo how to properly hold a child, something she learned when raising Yashy. Daisy is by all means entranced by the romantic exchange.

But where’s hers?

Trying to get Mike jealous by thrusting her baby in Paulo’s arms, and Paulo taking to the baby. Mike sees his chance and gets Lucy to ditch the two and work as a team again.

There is a momentary issue when the teacher discovers the pairs do not have their correctly assigned baby, and through a quick suggestion they were giving a realistic portrayal of divorce and custody, get extra marks on their assignments.

You’d think Daisy would be quite depressed with her chance to work with Mike not going the way she planned and the opportunity going out the window. But to receive additional credit on their work, she’s actually more than ecstatic at the results!

It’s fine, there’ll be more chances. There’s still 4 more years of school!

And in the meantime, Daisy x Paulo was born. One would have to wonder if it would bear fruits.

...Nah.

Daisy has a role to play in the next chapter; Prom Preparation. She’s tasked with organising the 8th grade prom.

The first order of the day is to survey the music selection for the evening, starting with genres. Daisy gets ideas from a number of the students, almost forgetting she hadn’t asked Mike yet.

Apparently Mike doesn’t have a favourite genre of music that comes to mind. Not being a fan of new music, Daisy fills the gap and suggests he’s into much older stuff which she tries to bond over, infuriating Yashy. 

When Daisy asks Lucy for her favourite music genre. Lucy wonders why she should bother since she’s not planning on going. . .

Leaving Mikie easy pickings for the evening. Daisy sees her chance for a bit of romance that evening, and Yashy is not at all pleased about this.

It’s worth talking about Yashy at this point, as even though we’re technically focusing on Daisy, there’s something we might be able to gain from both Yashy and Lucy that might give more insight into Daisy and Lucy’s relationship. You might notice, (2021 -- Especially in the Webtoons version), during each outburst by Yashy we can see Lucy blushing as her child unleashes hell upon Daisy, and we’d have to wonder why that is, because Lucy doesn’t seem to be initially the kind of person to care too much about anything going on around them, right?

But what if Yashy was this mouthpiece of Lucy’s impulsive thoughts that she doesn’t act on, and that’s why Lucy appears to blush from embarrassment? Yashy’s impulses are not something she’s able to control, only her own through her own inhibitions. Later in the story we start seeing hints that Lucy’s stonewall-straight faced demeanour is very much a facade and she’s actually quite sensitive, but when she’s fighting her emotions inside and she doesn’t have the answer, a blank expression is all you get so she can’t be hurt in one way or another.

But having been raised by Lucy, we could assume that Yashy is very much Lucy’s child and we can expect that having been raised by Lucy, much like every other kid out there, sometimes kids pick up traits from their parents.

(2021 -- The problem of Yashy’s language was also bought up in the more recent chapter, Dinner time, when Lucy’s mum points this out as Lucy and Jordan are fighting. While the person who was called out for this was Jordan. Can’t help but think that despite Jordan pointing out something embarrassing about why Mike might not be over more, Lucy is instead more blushing over the problem with Yashy, as Yashy is still embarrassed at being called out over it too. It’s hard to imagine the problem is just Jordan as Lucy has quite opinionated language as well, and lastly, because Yashy spends more of her time with her. There’s just an awful lot of body language going on in that scene and it’s hard to tell.)

Yashy is quite innocent in the story as she is one of the fewer characters who meets with rejection and doesn’t undergo the same hardships that Lucy underwent in her youth, so where this language and outspokenness has come from, you’d have to wonder if it’s just a quirk, or something deeper at this stage. Like as if Yashy is actually Lucy without the inhibitions.

Daisy doesn’t back down from Yashy when the golden opportunity arises even despite the name-calling. It’s when Mike believes both girls are fighting over him for Lucy to set the record straight -- she isn’t; Yashy and Daisy were and makes a point out of it. This causes Mike to walk off embarrassed since Lucy doesn’t reciprocate the same feelings. It’s only a little later towards the end when Daisy is turned down along with several other girls who learn of Mike’s availability. That ends that chapter. No romance for Daisy.

The next chapter is Helping hands, this chapter stars Daisy and Paulo who appear to have become closer friends since their pairing together in Burden of Parenthood. The chapter begins with Daisy and Paulo walking through the street, with Daisy talking about how Katie had a sleep-over the previous weekend but wasn’t invited, she was sure she must have misplaced it.

Though why missing out on Katie’s sleepover is the highlight of Daisy’s weekend is anyone’s best guess, right?

Daisy screams out suddenly as she points out an injured bird on the road, appearing heartbroken at the events. Paulo points out an arriving car that is about to put it out of its misery causing Daisy to become further distraught by this. At the very last minute, Paulo saves the bird, almost putting his own life in danger.

Expecting her to be elated, Daisy is not at all pleased in Paulo’s recklessness and scolds him, before being otherwise thankful he did it to save the bird.

But the next question is, now what?

With a hospital being too far away, Daisy suggests instead to take it to Lucy’s house as a last resort. Bringing up Paulo’s crush however, garners a reaction from Paulo that, well. . . Daisy’s not to pleased at seeing.

Oh, we’re going to see more of that. 

Daisy thinks about whether or not Lucy would end up adopting the bird as she has quite a number of pets herself. Daisy would herself although her mother wouldn’t allow it.

Suggesting Paulo could with how well Paulo did at looking after Alegria, Paulo finds the talk far too embarrassing for his ever-masculine personality. Daisy tries to persuade him that girls are into boys who can be shown to have a caring attitude. Sadly, Paulo thinks he’s already at this level.

Oh, how Paulo x Daisy is teased so.

The weather starts to take a turn for the worst and threatens to rain down much to Daisy’s horror, as we learn something interesting about how her fur reacts to the rain. Paulo tries not not to give this away but Daisy then realises and starts showing how self conscious she is about her fur, a fact we learn more of in an intermission, where Daisy spends quite a number of hours brushing it down. When Daisy asks whether he’s grossed out by her curls, he avoids the question by telling them they have to hurry, or the bird won’t make it!

Unfortunately for Daisy, Paulo isn’t the last person when they arrive at Lucy’s house. Leaving the bird in her care, Daisy immediately runs into the bathroom only to run into Mike, it’s an absolute nightmare scenario.

Feeling devastated, Paulo comes in with some saving words and tells her if Mike was really worth her time, he’d wouldn’t care no matter how she looked. Which does wonders for her esteem.

Lucy arrives down shortly thereafter and lets the two know the bird will make it, having only been attacked by another creature and not so much struck by a car. Lucy will nurse it until its better, much to the joy of Daisy and Paulo.

At that point, the conversation switches as that matter is taken care of. Noticing that Mike is at Lucy’s house studying with her. Daisy tries to invite herself to stay over and help out too.

It turns out, simply asking means you’re outstaying your hospitality.

Yeah, they’re not really tight friends are they?

On the Monday, Daisy and Paulo ask Lucy about the bird, first mistaking what Lucy says meaning that the bird passed away, it healed over the weekend and left the following day.

But not before giving them a gift.

After all, they’d need it for their baby. The bird seems to think they’d make a good couple. Ah, PauloxDaisy again. If only they both felt that way about each other.

Daisy appears in show and tell, in this chapter we are introduced to the specific breeds the characters are.

Naturally, Yashy is not at all pleased about Daisy when she arrives.

When it comes to Daisy’s turn, we find she’s Selkirk Rex cross Ragamuffin.

Which would explain a lot of Daisy’s features, Selkirk and Ragamuffins are both very people-oriented and akin to Teddy Bears. Both breeds can get along with nearly everybody.

And, well that’s true for Daisy.

Daisy appears in Pep Rally, a chapter focusing on the sports carnival. Daisy appears as one of the school’s cheerleaders next to Amaya, Stacy, and her rival, Katie, who is not at all happy that she’s not the captain. Daisy is not about to give up being the center of attention.

This chapter has more to do with Mike’s super sensitive hearing than anything else. Even so, Daisy is more than capable of being able to amp up the crowd, especially when Mike lands a win.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Off to the Movies’, when Mike invites Lucy to the movies, only for Paulo, David and Daisy to show up at the same time and suggest they all go see a movie together (Lucy reluctantly agreeing). When it comes to selecting their preferences for movies, Daisy goes for the mushiest movie that’s available. Paulo and David wanting horror, Mike wanting comedy and Lucy. . .well, she wants to see a love story. It seems like they all can’t decide, but Lucy chooses the jack of all trades movie as a compromise; the ‘epic suspensful, romance thriller with lots of jokes’.

Win-win, right?

Daisy’s in heaven when the seating arrangements are chosen, right next to her crush, she couldn’t be more optimistic.

A number of things happen during the movie, but nothing got by Daisy when the movie ends as she notices Paulo on the brink of tears following its conclusion. Daisy offers to forget that she ever saw it, on the condition he explains his phobia to barking, something else that happened earlier when Paulo tried to steal David’s popcorn. 

Predictably, Paulo is far too masculine to talk about his feelings.

Eventually Paulo balks to the peer pressure (from Daisy) and explains what happened. When the others make fun of Paulo over it, Daisy leaps to his defense and tells them off. There’s a lovely moment between the two as Daisy reassures Paulo that she appreciates his forwardness and openness to the things that bothers him. And Paulo decides to talk about everything.

The PauloxDaisy content just keeps coming.

But it’ll never work. I--I swear it won’t.

By the very end, the kids all say their farewells to each other and go their separate ways.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Puppy Love’. Mike finds a love letter in his locker from a secret admirer (It’s Stacy). Mike chastises Lucy who finds the whole thing hilarious and reads the poem aloud. Mike wants to find the person responsible. Suddenly, and out from nowhere, Daisy appears suggesting they do some detective work, all in the name of romance. But Mike reveals he just simply wants to reject them.

With much similarity to Prom Night, this chapter is more to point out with how much of the school has an interest in dating Mike. It’s not just Daisy, but also Sue, Amaya, Katie, those three random girls. The only exception is dear old Lucy. 

The next chapter is Confrontation. This chapter opens with Mike and Lucy doing what they do best when something unfortunate happens; they argue, with Lucy blaming Mike for having them miss their stop. Daisy begs Paulo to get them to stop, and they do, albiet, for a short few seconds before they start arguing again.

With no sign of it ending, Daisy and Paulo day-dream of a better alternate reality where they both get their desires. Mike and Lucy are just awful for each other. Things would work out better if it was just Mike and Daisy, and Paulo and Lucy, Just think of the romance. What could go wrong?

The kids get off at the next station which unfortunately for them turns out to be a bad idea as they end up in the roughest neighbourhood a few towns over from Roseville. With Lucy suggesting they find a phone to call their parents, they go out in search of an open store. With Mike and Lucy still at each other’s throats, Daisy tries to take advantage of the situtation by suggesting that Mike could in fact stay over at her place seeing as how late it was, especially if his house is a bit too far. hoping that Lucy having been quite bitter to him will cause him to think about coming around to her advances. But Mike rejects her advance. When Daisy becomes fed up enough to suggest he’d go to Lucy’s house despite their fighting, he agrees it likely would happen, frustrating her even more.

She loses her temper, exploding about Mike and Lucy’s friendship being just horrible and suggests any investment would never be returns. Prompting a reaction from Mike for a short moment, until Mike twists that around and tells her to stop chasing the same stupid feelings, walking ahead and leaving Daisy to sulk to herself.

She’s joined shortly after when Paulo’s escapade in trying to woo Lucy goes as well as anyone would expect. Daisy, frustrated in how Mike always seems to show some compromise with Lucy, argues with him over his bad taste in women too.

Daisy’s thorns are on full display here as she starts to openly show her resentment towards Lucy who has it all so easy with both Paulo and Mike due to her looks. Daisy’s frustrated that despite her best efforts to be more appealing in every other way; Lucy has the looks, and that’s all that matters.

With Daisy being too frustrated from being inhibited from displaying this side of her, it’s clear neither she nor Lucy are good friends at all. Daisy has shown such a low opinion of her because of her attitude, knowing full well that often times Mike gets beaten up by her. Lucy’s aloofness could be confused with disinterest and both of them suggest that Lucy wouldn’t really care if either of them suddenly caught alight.

But Mike overhears this thanks to his superhearing and tells them there’s more to her than what they know. But neither of them take the comment seriously.

Lucy also overhears, and is a little distraught at how the others think of her.

The kids find a bar and Sue manages to call ther mother to come pick them up. Problems arise when Mike takes on a dare to eat as many liqueur chocolates from a stranger, and is quite positively drunk out of his mind. Lucy comments on this having watched on and Daisy chastises her for letting him do it.

She might have wished she had done something about it, as Mike is all over her, uninhibited from telling her how he feels about her looks.

And that does nothing for Daisy who sucks at all the attention Lucy’s getting. The world’s just unfair.

Though, Mike notices Daisy’s state, and goes over to give her attention too. What would be a dream for Daisy is sadly shortlived, as Mike’s attention switches to ice-cream truck music, and suddenly takes off towards it.

The kids are find themselves backed into an alley, as the stranger who Mike took the bet from comes to get his money back. 

The ordeal is quite terrifying to Daisy. Paulo tries to defend her. But he gets a little too in over his head, not realising these two were the people who created his phobia of barking .

When Paulo is kicked aside, Daisy goes to him and asks if he knows the two. But Paulo doesn’t recognise them.

Not considering herself a fighter, Daisy is only able to come to her friends’ comfort as each one is assaulted one by one. Paulo first, then Sue when she cops an arm to the nose.

She can only watch when Mike tries to defend them, actually having some martial arts experience, but being too drunk to be effective.

And finally Lucy, as capable as she was finds herself unable to fend off Alejandro. Daisy calls out, but Lucy tells her to be quiet, or to hide as Lucy bears the brunt of the assault.

Mike regains consciousness at the very last moment and saves her before both team up in a last stand against Alejandro. Alejandro realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew and runs away. Daisy watches on as Lucy breaks down having realised how close they all were to having someone lose their life.

Sue’s mother arrives and all the kids are on their way back to Roseville. Paulo can’t help but notice that Daisy is really in the dumps over the night. Lucy did something completely unexpected in coming to their aid at the last minute  — the ever uncaring Lucy put herself on the line so no one else would get hurt. And she feels awful knowing she was wrong  — about Lucy and what she said about her to Mike.

Paulo tries to reassure her that Mike probably doesn’t remember what she said, and that turns out to be true as Mike is willing to accept her apology the next day.

Things are back to normal it seems, luckily for Daisy. 

Or are they?

-

I figure we’ll stop here and resume next week. Look at that! We covered 12 chapters of 127! There’s a lot more of Daisy to come!

[dikiyvter]

✎Ⅶ :>

Munday meme ./ accepting

✎ When choosing a name for your muse, did you pick something special or meaningful in some way?

       Oh man. Okay. So. Let me preface this by saying I didn’t intend to get as attached to Riga and Gio as I did, they were v much second-thought “oh these would be neat background characters” kind of thing, so their names are a little... weird, and I’ve kind of forgotten some of the lore behind why I chose these specific names.

       I cannot for the life of me remember if this is exactly where I got it, but I believe Giacomo’s name comes from Giacomo / Giacomino Cireni, who worked as a clown in Russia for a period of time? Sort of an aside, but apparently Giacomo is like. The italian version of Jacob. and I literally can’t get that out of my mind when I say Gio’s name, now. 

       Rigatello’s name was originally Rigoletto, but I kept misspelling it as Rigatello, and by the time I started actually writing him and showing him off on the blog I decided to just keep it as Rigatello so that I wasn’t explaining that I was constantly misspelling the poor mans name ( also bc Riga sounds nicer than Rigo ). Rigoletto comes from the Italian opera of the same name by Guiseppe Verdi, which is further derived from the character Rigoletto, whose a court jester. I went to the wikipedia page for the opera to make sure I was getting some of my facts right, and apparently the name Rigoletto comes from the french word ‘Rigoler’, which means to laugh, and I just think that’s kinda neat.

       I don’t remember much about how I came to name Gio Giacomo, but I do know that Rigatello was named first ( again, originally being Rigoletto ), and for a while I considered just... splitting the name between them because I was having so much trouble naming Gio? For a while I just called them Rigo and Letto. Kinda glad I didn’t go w/ that tbhtbhtbh.

       All in all, though, I really just wanted to find two names associated with jesters/clowns that were at the very least italian-adjacent so that they would fit with the theme of the harbingers. SO in other words-- there’s not much meaning, but I guess you could say there ~ * background information * ~ to eat up if you really want. At the end of they day they’re mostly just names, I didn’t do extensive research into the characters they’re named after because it... just didn’t occur to me at the time. They weren’t meant to get this far, lol. 

Ⅶ If you have multiple blogs and/or muses, which one is your favorite? Why?

       Making me pick between my kids? Thats a lil mean--

       Uh... I can’t really rank them in terms of which is my favorite and which is my least favorite, because I enjoy them all for very, very different reasons. I think I find myself on here the most because Gio is my most fleshed-out character, his interactions aren’t very taxing on me mentally ( for the most part ), and it’s typically very easy for me to work with him as a muse. To that note, the same also applies with drawing Gio! He’s fun, easy, and it’s generally my go-to when I want to draw because I know his design by heart. Gio lets me explore very different concepts outside the character much quicker than any other because of how familiar I am with him, and that’s a sentiment that applies to both writing and art.

       I enjoy Ku Shen for more worldbuilding/lore-exploring purposes, but also because I really enjoy developing the relationships that he has and using those to further his own development as a character. He’s a bit harder to write, and his interactions drain my energy a bit more, but at the end of the day he’s very satisfying to work on. Much like Gio, the same sentiment can be applied to when I draw Ku Shen, as well. I don’t tend to do sketchy brief slacking-off things of Ku; I typically go rather all out and have fun with what I’m doing, and at the end of the day I stop when I’m satisfied, because Ku Shen works my creative muscles a bit more. 

       When I draw Ku Shen it’s typically rather personal and focused on him-- vs. when I draw Gio, where it’s focused more on environments, ideas, and his interactions with others. shhh I just think its neat how writing differences can show up in how i draw them as well shhhh

       Dottore is a muse who flip flops between being very very quiet and very loud, and I enjoy writing him because when his muse is here its VERY present, and i don’t think I’ve ever had a character that really enables me to just go hogwild on monologuing and rambling and saying batshit insane things because that’s... how he is. He’s fun to write, he’s fun to explore, he’s fun to talk about. I derive great enjoyment from him and his blog because of those things.

       With my Zhongli blog... he’s bottom rung if only because my muse for him has sort of died off recently. Hopefully with new content he’ll wake up a little bit-- I really do enjoy writing a very canon divergent, kind-of-weird take on the character, honestly. It’s nice to explore canon things in a really roundabout and kind of convoluted sense and just see how far I can stretch things. I’ve been debating, lately, making him a bit more canon-compliant so that it’s easier to write him and gather up muse for him, but... we’ll see, we’ll see. His blog isn’t my focus right now, I don’t really have any intent on forcing myself into writing where I have no muse.

[obeymestudentcouncil]

Ok I've been having this idea for a whole now if ots roo much ignore it as ur needs come first but can I get diavolo+the brothers/Angel's (or if that's too much whoever u want) discovering that the MC is related to a very well known violent monster hunter whis also known to kill Angel's and demons??? I love your blog, keep up the amazing work

I think I’ll stick to the brothers and Diavolo for this, because I can see a hunter killing Demons, but I’m not as sure about them going after Angels too.  We’ll say for the sake of this that MC has been here for a while and is close to the demons.  I’m splitting this into 2 parts too because it got super long, so here’s Lucifer, Mammon, Levi, and Satan

Lucifer:

- You’d been discussing the human world and your family over a quiet dinner break one night, both of you working in his study.- Telling a story about a Christmas with your mother’s family, you mentioned your Uncle.-Lucifer froze, eyes narrowing as he demanded you repeat your Uncle’s name, and what his surname was.-You’re confused and slightly scared at the look on his face, but you answer, asking him why he wants to know.- “Because that happens to be the name of a particularly cruel demon slayer.  One that typically destroys humans who deal with demons as well.  When you return home, be very cautious.”- He says that, but he will be speaking with Diavolo about verifying the connection and if so, making your stay in the Devildom more permanent.  He can’t lose another family member even found family.

 Mammon:

-Flipping through pictures on your phone one day with Mammon, you show him one of the few old pictures you have of your Great-Grandmother.  He grabs your wrist, stopping you from scrolling further.-”Oi!  What are you doing with a picture of that witch?”  You explain who she is to you and that she’d passed on years ago.-”So, you’re saying your great-grandmother was one of the most feared demon-hunting witches of the last century?”-Something clicks with your mind, a story he told you about one of the few scars on him.-”Mammon, that scar on your side...”  He nods, pulling his shirt up to show you.-”She almost got me that day.  Beel too.  That’s why I got hit, trying to get him out of there.  Do me a favor?  Don’t tell anyone else bout this, got it?  They might pitch you out of here, if not worse.”

 Leviathan:

-He’s excited to show you this new manga, inspired by events in the devildom a few decades ago.  “The demon hunter thought they’d be able to sneak in and assassinate the Demon King?”-You start looking through the manga with him, not wanting to tell him the gruesome art of the murdered demons is turning your stomach.  But then the drawing of the demon hunter makes you go pale.-”Hey, normie.  You ok?  You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”-You pull up your phone, flipping for a picture of your father and his twin brother, holding it out to Levi with shaking hands.-”What? ....OH...oh”  He closes the manga, pitching it into his Bathtub bed.-”I guess that explains why he disappeared when they were in their 30s.  Don’t think I’ll tell Dad that when I get home though.”  No one else needs to know this is going to give you nightmares for weeks.

 Satan:

-The two of you are discussing the history of both worlds, how demons had influenced the history of the human world before they made it harder to cross between.-He mentions a group of demon hunters that had been more dangerous than most.  And that all but one had been killed, but they’d never found the last one.-There’s a picture on the next page, taken from the group’s training center before Lucifer and Satan had destroyed it.  One face is circled.-”Satan...I can tell you what happened to him.”  At his confused look, you smile sadly, fingers tangled.  “He went on to raise a family, and he had one child...”-His eyebrows raise and you laugh softly, hoping to defuse what could be a bad situation.  “Why do you think I was so unfazed when I showed up here?  He’s told me about demons my whole life, but I refused to follow in his footsteps.  Can we not tell Lucifer?”

[gifted-burnout-archive]

The Morana-Andstone Letters

Prologue: What We Choose To Forget

Word Count: 1.6K+

Author’s Note: Oopsies, I dropped some Harry Potter fanfiction onto my blog... Guess it’s staying here. Yeah, I decided to branch out a little, and as a proud Gryffindor and after seeing a photo of Tom Holland looking handsome I just had to write this. It’s an old idea I had back in the day but never wrote, so here you go!

Warning: none.

--

In war, only the victorious come back as heroes, and the only ones remembered are the heroes and the villain who headed the war against goodness, against just practice and peace. Everything and everyone else sort of fades away into the grey, lost to the story they contributed to. You don’t find them in paintings on the walls, in memorials for the dead, they aren’t a part of the history students learn.

They become nothing, but in some cases, maybe that’s for the best.

For you see, there’s a fine line between good and evil, and in times of war that line becomes so blurred that sometimes people do bad things, horrible things, for good reason. Heinous acts, in the midst of war, become survival: betrayal, deceit, murder. It’s no longer about moral codes or what’s right and wrong: in war one decides whether to be a martyr or selfish.

You choose whether to live with regret or die without, and everyone from the Battle of Hogwarts who survived is weighed down by some level of guilt, of self-hatred. Because good people died in their stead, because they chose to be selfish.

Traces of the criminals who tried to destroy the peace of the wizarding world were wiped from the mainstream consumption, leaving only what authors offered in course textbooks and the heroes recounted in their memoirs. The act was put in place by Minister Granger-Weasley, the first muggle-born to hold the position, in hopes it would allow the public to heal, to move forward. Portraits of the Fallen Fifty were hung in Hogwarts, the souls of those lost captured in paintings for the students to remember who had died for their right to be in those hallowed halls, and for families to visit: it was nice to be reminded of a loved one’s smile, their laugh, even if they were no longer around. Every May 2nd, a national holiday came into effect, a memorial service took place in the Hogwarts courtyard, and Professor Potter disappeared into the hallways of the castle, to walk through the battle he unwillingly started and finished too late to save so many of his friends, his family.

The first and second Wizarding Wars were covered in the History of Magic classes during every student’s third and fourth year, and the young teens were encouraged to write parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, about the events that transpired, their take on turbulent time in the world’s history.

It was after one of these letters was sent home by a student that a flame of curiosity was sparked, a question posed by a distant relative who had long since left the country had enticed them to take their two closest friends on a quest through the castle one Autumn evening, as winds howled outside and the rain thundered down.

They were swift, quiet, and stealthy on their mission from their common room to the library, most particularly the Restricted Section of the school’s most active study space: it had been one of the few places that was salvageable after the war, and had amassed a great number of books in the years since. They dodged the Prefects and Teachers on patrol, one of them making the comment that the three were just like Professor Potter and his friends back in the day.

The restricted section of the library was still heavily guarded, containing works only seventh year students and teachers were allowed to peruse, but the three fourth years were fuelled by intrigue, and with their smartest learning a few special spells from a very funny red-haired portrait by the Gryffindor staircase, they had all the tools required to pick the lock without triggering alarms, and slip themselves amongst the bookshelves before the next Prefect patrol came round the corner.

“I still think this is a bad idea.” The first said, ironically the one who broke them into the forbidden area of the library. They were met with a chuckle from their companion.

“You read the letter the same as us, don’t you want to know more about the Death Eaters?” the second asked, only to be shushed by the third and final student. He was more jittery than the other two, albeit curious.

“Don’t say it out loud!” He hissed, looking around like one might appear out of nowhere and scoop them up. The organisation had been disbanded after the war, the majority of them thrown in prison to pay for their crimes.

“Oh, come on, stop your worrying. Now, what exactly do we do?” the second asked the first of the three, who pulled a notebook from their back pocket.

“Well, it looks like we just have to find the right book code for Death Eaters… Let’s each take a bookshelf. It’ll be faster, and hopefully we’ll get further than we did last year.” They muttered, the trio avoiding eye contact for a moment before splitting up. It wasn’t the first time they had attempted entry into the library Restricted Section, though it was the first time that had reason to.

The third student had received the letter that sparked the whole plan a month ago, the trio taking turns to monitor patrol schedules and hone their talents for that evening’s activity. He didn’t like knowing that some great uncle or something had fought with the bad guys, he felt it made him a worse person, though his companions had been quick to assure him otherwise. He couldn’t change the actions of some bigoted ancestor, he just needed to be a better person than they were.

As his eyes scanned the shelves on the section’s east side, his wand lighting up the titles on the leather bound book backs, his friends did the same in the west and south sections. They moved as fast as they could, reading titles as they hurried around looking for something, anything about the Death Eaters.

When they met back at the bookcase they had started at, all came back with the same report: there was no title under that name, no work in the library retaining to the information of the Death Eaters.

“It must be sorted by individual… Files on each of them?” The first suggested, the second muttered a soft cuss under her breath in response. They all looked rather defeated by the revelation, but their lock pick didn’t risk detention for nothing, and punched the third student on the arm. “Come on, we made it this far…”

“You’re acting like we just have to think of a terrible person and the book will pop out!” He hissed, the three glancing up as a light appeared at the library’s entrance. They were quick to rush round a corner, the three finding themselves sat side by side with their backs pressed to old wood and locked cupboard doors. Only once the light had disappeared, and the library plunged back to near darkness, with only the moonlight lighting up the room in a weary blue glow, did any of them let go of the breaths they held.

“This was a waste of time guys. We had fun, we got here, now let’s head back to our rooms before we get caught and miss out on Hogsmeade next week.” The third student proposed, clearly the most frightened of the three. He should have never shown his friends the letter, they were far too head strong to not act on information like that.

“Your…” The second paused for a moment, forgetting who on earth it had been that responded to third’s letter for class. “Look, some dying relative of yours said that there is always more to a story than meets the eye, right? Why don’t we find that out?!” She was more enthusiastic after her other companion’s vote of confidence in her idea, though it was rather short lived.

“You got further than last year, kids. I’m impressed.” A male voice spoke up from close by, the three letting out a combined sigh. The turning of a key and the swinging of the gate echoed in the large space, sure footsteps quickly headed their way. The three scrambled to their feet as the glow of their wands welcomed the kind face of their Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Professor Potter. He had a tired smile across his features, and gestured for the three to follow him from the Restricted Section. “I’m so impressed that I won’t punish you… This time. If I see any of you trying this again, no more trips to Hogsmeade for the rest of the year.” He warned, and a nod was shared amongst the three students.

“Yes sir…” The all muttered in unison, starting a defeated shuffle back to their rooms. Potter stayed behind a moment to lock the gate properly, his eyes unwavering from a book on the top row of a nearby bookcase, sliding back into its place amongst the stacks.

The contents of it were too vivid and complicated for such young minds to understand, and Harry left the library that night knowing he had done a good thing.

Documents of the war were all kept, an archive for the few cleared individuals to view, Potter was lucky enough to be one of them. He had read all the books in that Restricted Section at least twice, the particular book he had read many more. There were parts of the war people didn’t know happened, that people had no reason to know occurred. And it was better that way.

As far as the wizarding world was concerned, the people behind the Morana-Andstone letters stored in that book never existed, and it was better that way.

Some people deserve to be forgotten.

--

Tags: @im-a-writer-right​

[flying-elliska]

Ok I caught up with wtfock s3 because well, it felt weird to leave unfinished (except a few clips i just didn’t want to watch, like the attack one). here’s what worked and didn’t for me (i’m pretty critical so don’t read if that sort of thing upsets you or you’re not in the mood) because i still think having this story remade so often is an unprecendented storytelling experiment worth thinking about even when it doesn’t entirely work (and i think argumented criticism is good, but if you post hate about the actors/fans etc you really suck tbh) : 

- to start with positives : like many said, the acting was pretty damn good. overall wtfock has a really solid cast. the willems have succeeded in creating an onscreen queer intimacy that feels very believable, no holds barred and no awkwardness, and they have to be commended for that. there’s a lot of chemistry and tension at first between them, which then turns into something very soft and sweet and puppy-love-like. it was nice seeing Robbe evolve and the sweet bean energy that emanates from how the actor plays him is very very powerful. i also loved the warmth of the flatshare, and as a Dutchie I just adored the Sinterklaas bits, it was so funny and i loved the found family vibes. warmth is just something they do really well, esp with the last clips, perfume shopping, playing board games, the party at the end. They use the Christmassy vibes really well. the cinematography has its moments too, contrasts between warm and cold, the episode at the beach is gorgeous, the sequence in the tunnel, the light on their faces when they are in that classroom surrounded by drawings. wtfock as a whole is also good at creating some very lovable secondary characters, be it Milan, Yasmina, Noor, or especially king Senne. So, I do understand that there are things to love about this remake, which is probably why my disappointment feels so strong. I really wanted to care about these characters in their journey. 

- on to the controversial : i don’t necessarily fault them for wanting to show a more prononced aspect of homophobia. i think the debate about this often lacks nuance. on one hand, this is the sixth remake, and homophobia is something that is still often prevalent, and having one remake show that out of six is not in itself a problem. on the other, yes, happy fluffy stories are important, but sometimes people who have gone through stuff like this also need to see their experiences represented. the power of skam is that it shows difficult experiences BUT ALSO a happy ending. that can be very healing, i think, compared to other stories which focus only on the drama. the trouble is, i don’t think they dealt with it very well, or put any effort into processing the consequences of these harrowing things. and if you don’t, it feels cheap.

- on to my main gripe : the writing. previsible, i know. but to me, essential. and this is not about them ‘changing things’ - i like when remakes change stuff, when they do it well. the thing is, i have been burned too many times before. and when i sense that the writing is being wack, it makes it automatically much harder for me to invest emotionally in the characters. and simply put there were signs early on that made me distrust the writers. for starters, the first two episodes gave me a feeling that they didn’t have their priorities in order. the POV-immersion and depth is one of the most powerful aspects of skam, and it was lost. too many early clips felt out of Robbe’s perspective, and when it was him it was about Noor ; a few clips to show his discomfort were on point, but there were too many of them, and there were repetitive, losing time on what isn’t really an essential part of Robbe’s journey. and while they were spending time on clips that felt like misery flavored filler, they decided several times to condense original clips focused on Isak and Even, together ; like their first meeting and then their first hangout, or later in the series OHN and the minute by minute talk. and i think their story suffered from that. i think because they don’t have a real discussion early on, the buildup of their relationship feels mostly based on physical attraction. and while it certainly is a thing that happens, it just isn’t my fave love story thing. i missed the sweet pining from afar and tension that makes later drama believable. it felt like they brought the drama comparatively too fast without enough character work to make it worthwhile. Also there is just too much time spent on Zoenne drama, and their breakup seems like it foreshadows the dreaded s4 love triangle, which, yikes. the focus is all over the place, the rythm felt incoherent. 

- what’s more, they decided to introduce pretty grave elements of plot, like Robbe using slurs against Sander, the homophobic attack, the suicidal urges on both their sides, Sander kissing Britt while he was still saying I love you to Robbe in the morning, without either proper build up or resolution. It made it all feel cheap, jarring, and unearned, especially when they didn’t put trigger warnings or made jokes about it on insta or waited forever to give news about the characters being ok. it felt like drama for the sake of drama, and definitely not written with a vulnerable audience of queer teens in mind. and at the same time, when it came to the ‘big scenes’ of their relationship, like the first kiss or the universes talk or sander’s episode, it felt more or less lifted from OG without a lot of effort made to adapt it to them. i actually quit live watching/blogging after the first kiss scene, because of how similar it was, and how uninspired it felt, and lukewarm. it felt like a lack of imagination. when it came to OHN, the scene in itself was lovely, but the weird time gap, random timing and people seemingly doing nothing after a suicidal Sander disappeared, sort of broke it for me.  In the OG the combo of buildup, longing, realisation, fear, release works so well in a sequence, and splitting it over time really diluted it, to me. Similarly the quickly thrown out ‘life is now’ at the ending felt sort of out of nowhere, while in OG it was such a lovely bookend, him apologizing to Eva and reflecting on his growth. The symbolism, which ties everything so beautifully together in themes of rebirth, salvation, baptism, union, faith, deciding your own narrative in OG, here feels inconsistent. There is an attempt I see, something about wasteland vs. warmth/family, but it’s often absent of main clips. It’s nowhere near as coherent as it could be. 

- all of this builds up to the main problem for me, of the season. which is, i didn’t really get into Robbe and Sander’s relationship. Or their individual arcs for that matter. When it comes to Robbe, I guess he just isn’t my type of character. I feel like he is missing the fire of an Isak. A lot of the time he just felt too passive, like he let other characters make his decisions. I was waiting for him to stand up for himself more than he did. And there are too many scenes of another character doing his coming out for him. And then Sander ; I have to say I don’t understand all the love his character gets. Maybe because that’s because he sort of gives me Dutch fuckboi vibes...but there were several times he just came accross as a flat out asshole. I found him intriguing in his intro clip, chaotic and charming, but that never really went where i expected it to. i didn’t get his passion, what drew him to art. the symbolism around his character - basically Bowie, and drawing Robbe, and Chernobyl (which is a bit tasteless imho, turning a tragedy like that into a cutesy romantic thing), feels ...disjointed, and shallow to me. Like I never really got into it. And maybe some people did and noticed deeper links but to me, I got stuck at the surface. I saw a lot of interesting theories with what was going on with him but in the end they just copied OG. And I’m sad to say, but he ended up feeling like a manic pixie dream boy cliché to me, and i just didn’t understand what drew them to each other so strongly. Yes, Robbe is caring and Sander is in need of care, but that feels like a very reductive reproduction of OG. Beyond that...i don’t know. Certain complexities of the OG i loved  just...were sanded away, like Isak being ignorant about MI and learning compassion. This just...didn’t feel like it had the same depth, and often felt like soapy teenage drama, leaning too hard and too lazily on the actors’ chemistry. i like my romances wordy and solidly enmeshed in character development, and this was not it. It never felt like they had a real conversation about things, esp after the drama. 

- i think this is the first remake that made me actually angry for reasons not related to problematic cast shit, and so i’m trying to analyze that emotion. for me it comes down to too much drama, too heavy handed. Too much of the boy squad being shitty to Robbe, too much Noor, too much filler clips without any deeper meaning, too much things distracting from getting to know the main characters and going into their issues in depth. They changed stuff, but didn’t have the guts to actually follow through. They broke the mold but only in ways that ended up feeling shallow and unconsequential. Like I would have loved seeing Robbe go to therapy ! see his mom ! Zoe and Robbe go to the police together ! Sander have a complicated home situation ! or doing a Bowie related art installation to express his feelings of alienation ! seeing more of the underground graffiti scene ! or just...something, idk. And them also removing the faith-related themes also felt disappointing. and the ohn clip taking place in the place where sander draws feels very....basic to me, even if it was pretty. very ‘oh he’s an artist, here is his safe place’....hm, okay. I didn’t like that they made Britt into such a villain, I didn’t like how the boy squad showed no care for Robbe whatsoever for weeks until the plot said it was time for them to be redeemed in a way that felt too jarring, and I didn’t like that they made Moyo so horrible but redeemed him so easily. I actually thought they would show that it’s okay to separate yourself from friends who are that bigoted, because it just shows they are not willing to care for people. And him suddenly saying those sweet and mature things felt too out of characters and a ahah ‘gotcha’ rather than depth . I didn’t like that Robbe, too, was made so virulent by his internalized homophobia but got over it so quickly. I think what disappointed me most, in the end, was that I kept picking up potential and the show kept doing absolutely nothing with it, or confirming my fears, and it made me feel stupid and out of tune with whatever they were doing. And it’s, to me, symptomatic in modern storytelling of a trend to privilege shocks and twists over inner coherence and build up. And it makes for...Very underwhelming stuff, in the end. 

- all in all, i think this remake illustrates why s3 of OG is not as easy to remake as it sounds. it’s very intricate machinery, with a pitch perfect rhythm (and an extremely passionate nitpicky fanbase lmao). and if you don’t get all the parts of why it’s so great, you’re going to lose a lot of it. (and all the remakes ended losing up stuff in translation ; more or less compensated by inventivity and charm of their own.) so many mainstream press articles praise the real time/social media format and the ‘real talk about teen issues’ which, yeah, is part of the success, but doesn’t explain the devotion on its own. there’s the way the story uses real time to build up a storytelling rythm that feels organic and makes sense as if it was part of the lives of the viewer. There’s foreshadowing and aftershocks. Wtfock often feels like they wrote the clip numbers on darts and randomly threw them at a week planner. If an episode of a regular series ends on a cliffhanger, we can be thrilled and frustrated and put it aside for next week. but if you end an episode with a character shown to be suicidal, or you don’t show them being okay after a beating, for hours or days, that’s the emotion you leave your viewers with, because skam is a continuous experience. and remakes who pile on drama moments without respite (looking at you too skamfr s4) don’t get how tiring and disengaging this can be, in this format. skam worked so well because of how benevolent it was, on the whole. and also, cheeky, with that ‘don’t take it too seriously’ deflating humor. grumpy isak in ‘hate me now’ mode getting bumped into. this lightness and comedy often feels missing here. also my god the social media is absolutely terrible. plus...there is too much filler. honestly, them having more time, on the whole...ended up being a bad thing. Plus Wtfock feels like it has so much more unadressed plot points, like...why did Sander change his mind exactly and kiss Britt again ? How did Robbe’s mom react ? Who did the attack ? What is happening w Senne now ? etc. And it feels like they just missed the fact that OG, however subtly, did adress those things. 

- now, don’t get me wrong, i’m happy it’s popular in Belgium. On the whole it’s still a beautiful story of love and acceptance. and that people found something in it that spoke to them. but as a remake, it’s probably one of the most disappointing yet, to me. and i sort of...don’t get the hype. and i don’t want to be too ‘oh cute boys kissing’ cynical about it. but i think this illustrates why in the end, this is also very subjective. there are probably things i missed because i didn’t feel the need to examine it in depth or do the extra emotional work that comes with being a devoted fan of something. and some of their choices made me angry, and i’m not forgiving when it comes to these things. i still wish them success for s4 and whatever else, but i don’t think i will watch live, at least unless it gets really rave reviews about their treatment of Yasmina’s season. i mean they got s2 right, who knows? 

[shefightslikeagirl]

CORSETS AND STRIPED STOCKINGS: OUTFITTING THE ASYLUM FOR WAYWARD VICTORIAN GIRLS by She Fights Like A Girl

These articles are best viewed on desktop, but are mobile friendly. Please excuse any strange formatting on your phone browser or the Tumblr app.

This article was longer than intended and image-heavy, so it’s been split into two parts.

PART V: AN ASYLUM MUSICAL

“And if I end up with blood on my hands, Well, I know that you’ll understand ‘Cause I fight like a girl.” - Fight Like A Girl (2014)

And now we're back to the relatively recent past, when this blog was in its infancy and the fandom couldn't decide whether to stick with the forum or run rampant on Tumblr. Fight Like A Girl (the album) was still being recorded, but Emilie did a few live dates Down Under and decided to feature the title song from the unfinished album.

To my understanding, the Harvest Festival was another one of those concerts where the show was considerably downsized because of the cost of shipping props and set pieces. But where the South American tours hadn’t pulled back in the wardrobe department, the Harvest festival did. Emilie and the Crumpets performed in one costume for the entire set. But to make up for the lack of glam, EA debuted the first costume of the FLAG era.

This costume was worn for the cover art of Fight Like A Girl, and acted as the signature corset for the very first Fight Like A Girl World Tour (2012). 

“Asylum Secrets: All of my costumes over the years have been made to look as though someone had been murdered in them and come back from the dead to enact a fabulous revenge. To achieve this, I have employed techniques from melting fabrics with an industrial strength heat gun to spraying them with solutions that no human should ever breathe. In the case of the corset pictured, I burned it mercilessly with sticks of incense before painting the fabric to make it look moth-eaten.” - EA on the creation of the FLAG corset (June 25, 2018)

Speaking of the 2012 FLAG World Tour! While there were a lot of changes from The Door Tour and Harvest Festival, this tour is probably best remembered as a transition phase between eras. There were new costumes, but… the Rat Queen still introduced the show with 4 o’Clock. There were new set dressings, but… the shadow scrim was still main stage center. The new corset was mixed in with the Rat Queen ensemble and the structure of the show hadn’t changed terribly. New, but… kinda not?

Except for that Warrior Mohawk, of course.

Upper: WVC content / eBay listing photo. Lower: Making of the Warrior Mohawk from Emilie’s Flickr account.

This is the only tour where Emile wore a mohawk for the entirety(-slash-majority) of the show. Later concerts would see her removing it after the third song. There was some slight skepticism in the fandom with its debut, sparking discourse about everything from cultural appropriation to thematic relevance, but EA didn’t make much comment on the criticism.

“[The Warrior Mohawk] signified the transformation from victim to warrior. I feel that it is important for me to let go in order that I may go on to transform yet again and create new bits of wearable magic to surprise you with... This headpiece symbolized the birth of a new era in the Asylum…. This is the headdress of a tribal Queen…” - EA, 2012 eBay auction description.

“The Mohawk headdress represents the tribal, wild element of the sisterhood that formed during the imprisonment of the inmates, and shows that, once we escape and are on the rampage to take down our oppressors, we have indeed transformed from individual, helpless victims into a strong and beautifully terrifying tribal warriors.”  - EA for Natalie’s World, 2013 (x) (x)

Another costume that debuted on this tour was the MC of the Ophelia Gallery, who had his own brand-new number: Girls! Girls! Girls!

And as for its history...

(My best guess is that this photo originated in 2009, based on her hair.)

This character is a hint at the structure of the tour (and album) to come, where it would be less about the mad girls existing inside the Asylum and more about the story of how they got there, and what happened once they were interned. Allow me to stray from the costuming topic for just a moment…

A TANGENT: OF STAGE SHOWS AND ASYLUM CONTINUITY Spoiler filled ramblings of a long-time fan.

I’ve got a running theory that The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, in all its forms, runs in parallel to the concerts. But they match each other in reverse. [Spoilers for the book to follow.]

Emilie’s first concert of the Opheliac brand was in a small venue in Chicago, alongside Lady Joo Hee. In The Asylum… book, Emily-with-a-y’s final days in the Asylum were spent with Sachiko (a character based on and formerly named Joo Hee). 

The Opheliac shows of 2007-2011 were all about the women in an Asylum singing songs and welcoming others home. Cannibals, ballerinas, pyrate captains, nymphomanics -- they all ran rampant with no apparent oversight except from Emilie herself. Rats crept and crawled onstage unbothered; toys, crumpets, and cupcakes were in abundance, often served alongside “tea,” and there isn’t a single cell door in sight.

Especially in the earliest days of the concerts, the set design had an emphasis on appearing hand-made -- not only because it was, but because it should be for these girls. This was the world EA branded for herself: a world of freedom, without judgement, earned by their own hands.

In The Asylum… book, after the Inmates take over and kill the doctors, this is very much what they do: impersonate medical professionals and welcome sick and not-so-sick girls home to protect them, nurture them, and give them the best life that the Victorian Age fails to do. They take over the Asylum and make it their own.

Then in the FLAG performances (2012-2014), the storytelling shifts. EA’s Asylum world is no longer loosely themed with inmates running amok, but adheres to a more rigid storytelling structure, detailing the struggles and despair of the girls locked up in The Asylum(-with-a-capital-T). It mirrors the bulk of the content in The Asylum… book. The carefree, whimsical stage dressings shift to bars -- a representation of the cells and gates in The Asylum. There might be a bear tied to a dreary grey harpsichord; you might even see a single rat scratching about. But they don’t have dominion here. There’s no freedom. Just the story of the girls trapped behind the bars.

And now we’re stalled on both sides of the street. We’ve met in the middle. The concerts started at the end of the book, and ended at the beginning. 

Ok, I’ll put my soapbox away. Let’s get back on track.

BACK TO BUSINESS

Where were we?

Oh, yes: Girls! Girls! Girls! and new costumes.

So let’s jump forward a little more, because there isn’t much else to say about Emilie’s costume style in the 2012 FLAG World Tour. Moving on to the 2013 Fight Like A Girl: North American Tour (and following European and Australian tours), a brand new show was brought to the stage. Full new stage set-up, new costumes, and a full new setlist. 

A costume I’ll be referring to as the “armored corset” replaced the moth-eaten FLAG ensemble in the opening number. Both Maggots and Veronica were given new costumes as well, replacing the costumes they had worn for years. 

Armored Corset, with varying amounts of sparkled (2013)

Maggie Lally; Captain Maggot / Captain Maggots

Veronica Varlow; The Naughty Veronica

The show design of this tour had Emilie in the armored corset with the mohawk for the two opening numbers, Fight Like A Girl and Time for Tea. The mohawk and the armored plates on her chest and hip were removed during the 4 o’Clock Reprise, leaving her without her armor for What Will I Remember? as the narrative moves back to the beginning of the story, before the “Uprising.”

On the subject of the corset: structurally, it was outfitted with snaps to attach the armor and allow for easy removal (see corset detail above, bottom right). The mohawk proved a more difficult challenge to remove, as it was securely clipped, pinned, and secured into EA’s hair. This ended up being corrected in the redesign that produced Mohawk 2.0.

Back to the show! By the time we get to Veronica’s Dominant fan dance, EA has removed the armor corset completely in the interim to prepare for the Girls! Girls! Girls! costume change. After Scavenger, the entire cast changes into Asylum Inmate Rags to perform Gaslight and The Key, and then changes back into full costume for the finale. Emilie wears the full FLAG ensemble from previous tours to close out the show, with varying headdresses. 

But I’m skipping over something important.

The Scavenger.

Inspired by Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal, The Scavenger, a vulture-esque representation of Dr. Greavsely, appeared onstage for Scavenger. 

“This is the start of the original costume @maggotmagpie wears in our show, the one Greavesly wears in #AsylumMusical will be bonkers…” - EA on the Scavenger (February 7, 2016)

EA on Twitter/Twitpic 2012 (x)

The Scavenger was usually worn by Maggots as part of a stilt-walking performance, but if the venue couldn’t or wouldn’t allow for stunts onstage, Emilie would appear alone in the costume for the number. 

Scavenger has plenty of different “shows” (A show, B show, and C show for my theme park friends), with “A Show” being Captain Maggot on stilts.

Note: The Atlanta show featured here is a bit strange, as it uses the Stage Screen and the Asylum Bars during a tour that doesn’t feature the former. Emilie also isn’t in the normal costume for this number, using a personal scarf to cover her bloomers and bra.

“B Show” would be Emilie performing as the Scavenger, due to venue restrictions. This was actually the way Scavenger debuted, until Maggot’s first performance later in the tour. (See pictures and even more info here.)

“C Show” would be Moth’s performance in the final set of Fight Like A Girl tours, as seen below:

(There’s also “D Show,” (ha) which is this random dude performing as The Scavenger. I’ve yet to figure this out, but my guess is it was a technician stepping in at the last moment or a friend of EA from Oakland.)

Last, but not least, are the Asylum Rags. You’d think there wouldn’t be much to say here, but there is. Click on the continue link below to learn more about tattered costumes and the rest of the FLAG era, because Tumblr only allows 10 pictures per post.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE.

Fly back… PART I: Enchant and the Faerie Queene PART II: Drowning Ophelia PART III: Vecona, Seamstress of the Asylum PART IV: Wayward Victorian Girls

Remember to visit Part III and enter our giveaway! Ends 12/1/19.

[SEE ALL CREDITS AND SOURCES HERE.]

[sinesalvatorem]

Shoot Your Shot

In biology, there’s a concept of r/K selection. Reproductively, an r-strategy involves an organism trying to produce as many offspring as possible, with low resource investment in each individual descendant. Meanwhile, a K-strategy involves producing few offspring which each receive a large fraction of the parent’s resources to ensure that descendant’s success.

This is of course a spectrum, and the greatest extremes are across biological kingdoms. For example, fungi reproduce via spore dispersal, which is the most extreme version of throwing individual cells into the wind and hoping that some of them live maybe. Meanwhile, while some animals are very r-selected, the most K-selected species in nature are generally animals (eg, whales).

Humans are among the most K-selected things out there. Because of our huge brains, we gestate for nine months. (Compare rats, which gestate for about three weeks, or mushrooms, which just tell individual cells to fuck off and probably die.) Plus, we invest years in raising our children until maturity - and then we delay natural maturity a couple more years to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on them going to college.

Of course, even among humans, there’s a spectrum. As with most species with two fixed sexes (reproductively speaking), males can get away with a more r-like strategy, because in theory they don’t have to invest a ton in offspring. However, with few exceptions, males can’t actually get away with too much of this, because that nine month gestation period puts a hard ceiling on how r-strategy females around them can afford to be. So instead we tend to do pair bonding and families and all the other shit mushrooms would be baffled by. (Except they can’t be, because they don’t have our big expensive brains.)

OK, so this post isn’t really about reproductive biology. It’s about human psychology. Specifically, the fact that the r/K split in how willing one is to engage in [high output | low investment] vs [low output | high investment] can be generalised across way more domains than making babies.

In the biological model, organisms generally lean toward r when the environment is very high-variance. In such a situation, the amount that you invest in individual offspring matters far less than luck (ie, environmental factor’s beyond the parent’s control). Like, fungi can’t really change the concentration of dead logs in the area - the best they can do is hope their spores fall on some.

Likewise, if you are engaged in any pursuit where how well a given attempt goes has more to do with unpredictable conditions than with your own level of investment, r strategies are better. Meanwhile, K is ideal for the reverse. The only problem is, for some reason (I would guess due to some mixture of culture and biology), most people are stuck on K.

Call this perfectionism. Call it fear of failure. Whatever it is, a lot of people are unwilling to act unless they’re confident that any individual attempt will succeed - even when they can make an unbounded number of attempts. They just seem unable to comprehend that failure is low cost - or they’ll come up with a bunch of justifications for why failure actually is high cost. “Oh, but people I’ve never seen before and will never see again might laugh at me!” Excuse me, but what? The fuck?

All my observations seem to indicate that very few people actually shift their strategy between the r and K poles based on the circumstances. r/K becomes a feature of them - not of the optimal environmental strategy. Case in point - women in general tend to be less willing to do things they might fail at, no matter how soft the landing. I see this all around me. My male and female acquaintances are, in general, about equally competent - but the men do while the women practice and practice and practice and are never good “““enough”””.

The reason the world isn’t run by perfectionists is because perfectionists won’t get out of bed. The reason the world is run by men is because (many) men will shoot their shot at anything. Do you think Donald Trump would have run for president if he was only willing to do things he thought he’d succeed at? Are you not going to run for office because you might lose? Well, congratulations - now you know why bullshit floats.

And almost everything is like this! The modern world is made of soft landings. Almost nothing truly hurts you these days. Embarrassment doesn’t mean getting thrown out of the tribe - it means you can just do the same damn thing tomorrow and it’ll probably work. If you think you’re not good enough, you are almost certainly wrong, because few things today have a “good enough” - it’s just whether this time the right person/company/algorithm was impressed. Why are they impressed some times and not others? Honestly, this hardly matters - just keep shooting out spores and eventually they’ll land on wood.

Most people won’t put their art online because they don’t think people will like it. So??? If they don’t then they... Won’t look at it. If they do, you’ve just got both fans and information on what kind of stuff those fans like. I don’t think I’m a particularly great writer - I’ve met tons of people slaving away in obscurity who are clearly better than me. But I wrote my way to America because I wrote where Americans could read it - while my obscure acquaintances don’t let their writing out far enough to get a response.

Likewise, when I go to a concert, I’m generally the first person on the dancefloor. It’s rare that anyone else will visibly move their body until I’ve proven that it’s “safe”. Safe from what - who fucking knows? In reality, nothing. That’s why I don’t hesitate to bust a move. In the minds of everyone else - death, I’m guessing. So, of course, they all dance less expressively than me, in the hopes that no one will notice them. Meanwhile, I’m not an especially skilled dancer - I’ve taken two dance classes in my life - but at the end of the night, all eyes are on me. Of course they are - there was no one else to look at.

It’s hard for me to overemphasise the degree to which every. thing. is. like. this. This particular psychological bug is one of the most frustrating things in the world to me, because sitting over here on this heap of utility it just feels so obvious. Yes, you should ask people out! Yes, you should apply to that job! Yes, you should submit that manuscript! Yes, you should post your sketches on Deviant Art! Yes, you should try antidepressants! Yes, you should stop curtailing your life and start winning! More than half the time, the main obstacle is an unwillingness to lose cheaply.

Any time you’re considering doing something, you should ask yourself what the minimum viable product is. What is the lowest effort version of the thing you want to do that might maybe work? And how easily can you just do that repeatedly until it works? If you haven’t Googled a list of a few dozen companies in your industry and spammed them with your portfolio, why not? Because one might reject you? There are billions of people in this world and millions of companies that have never heard of you. You are not going to run out of options if you’re willing to cast a wide net.

Of course, the psychological bug in question is extremely deep, so I know the vast majority of people reading this will just feel briefly uncomfortable with their life choices before moving on and continuing to shoot themselves in the foot. That’s fine. Luckily, thousands of people read this blog, so hopefully a couple of them will get shaken up enough that they’ll be willing to stop screwing themselves out of success. And a couple people living better lives is as much as I’m aiming for.

In the meantime, I’m going to walk through some business districts in SF today and hand out my resume. Feel free to wish me luck, but I shouldn’t need it. Whether I succeed is just a matter of how much paper I can print on.

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Okay so I wanted to make a seperate post about this because it’s got me like  🤔 but i didn’t wanna get too off topic with my answer. context? The wonderful @luxury-of-insanity asked me to take a look at a pic of Tyreen he took during the We are Mayhem trailer. Here is the screencap he took for reference (because it’s infinitely higher quality than any of the ones I would take aha)

The topic was Ty’s tattoos and I noticed something really, really interesting here that I didn’t pick up on from the cosplay guide (like they were deliberately not showing where her tattoos end)

her tattoos stop before her shirt

she is clipping thru her jacket a little bit here lol but the point is, that big tattoo bit just cuts off before it goes under her shirt. Just like Troy’s don’t go down his abdomen

Now as I understand it there are a couple reasons why this could be:

there is an awesome theory that Siren tattoos get bigger and more expansive the more powerful (and, usually, the older, im guessing) a Siren gets

Ty has unique tattoos like her brother, where they are different because they’re twins (? or something??)

Ty got her powers from a non-natural source- eg she isn’t a natural/normal Siren

The tattoos are fake and the source of her succ power is something else entirely

idk what the right answer is, but I'm gonna try to go through these 1 by 1. the first one has been talked about in depth a lot (on this blog) so i won’t be addressing it here, but the others i’ll try to talk more about!

minor commander lilith spoilers below the cut

so before we begin, i just want to point this out. All theories aside and looking at the facts: every Siren we know of at least has chest tattoos. Barring Angel, because we can’t see, every known Siren has tattoos that extend down her torso.

At the moment, Tyreen is super covered up. Unlike Troy, we never see anything except her arms/head/parts of her thigh. We don’t know if her tattoos extend beyond her shoulder/arm. Personally? I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t. Amara has her hip tattoos, but no leg tattoos, like Tyreen has no leg tattoos (you can see through the gaps in her pants)

it’s possible that Lilith is the exception (for any of the theories discussed) and the tattoos don’t normally extend down their left legs. We just don’t know for certain. I do think it’s interesting how covered up Ty is in general, considering every Siren we’ve met so far at the very least has shown off their chest/neck tattoos. 

Ty has unique arm-only tattoos like her brother, where they are different because they’re twins

Sooo the unique arm-only tattoos one. Not really much to say about this tbh? We know Troy’s tattoos 100% do not go further down his abdomen. 

Timeline wise, I really don’t think he gets the tattoos after Lily has her powers stolen, but I can’t say for certain. 

If it’s the case that his tattoos are 100% based off Lilith’s powers then idk if Ty having only arm tattoos would make sense. Maybe it’s because they’re being filtered through her powers that he only gets arm tattoos and not full tattoos? Maybe bc they are twins, Ty’s powers got split in the womb (explaining the only-arm tattoos) or whatever and they needed other powers to awaken (or heal, cause apparently he’s sick- that could be the tattoos) Troy’s or some shit. idk, just spitballing here. 

But yeah, looking at Troy’s tattoos and the way they don’t go down his abdomen, beyond his shoulder area, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ty’s don’t, either.

Moving on from that one mainly because I don’t have a lot to say due to lack of evidence/info on it lol

Ty got her powers from a non-natural source- eg she isn’t a natural/normal Siren

This theory i am a fan of and y’all know it lmao

There’s a bunch of ways this could have happened: they’re products of experimentation, maybe they met an alien that gave them the powers, it’s the product of a Vault (possibly the red Vault we see in the HBC).

For the first one, it’s possible it was a corporation, be it Maliwan/Atlas/Jakobs/Hyperion/etc. Maliwan and Atlas would be my first guesses, Atlas for reasons you guys already know and Maliwan because of their elemental focus (and for some reason being on Athenas/having Amara’s tattoos on a building in the Academic District?). Hyperion is also a strong contender because of their research with Angel, though I don’t know about this one... We know they’re under new ownership, and I can’t imagine Jack would’ve captured Lilith/been so protective of Angel if he knew he had another Siren. So I guess it’s possible they were created within the 7 years between bl2 and bl3... Jakobs I threw in cause they’re apparently having a hold on the story of Eden-6. Doubt it’s them, though. If it is i’m gonna be questioning everything i know lol

It could’ve also been Tannis, as we know she’s experimenting on Lilith and [Spoilers!] now has all of Jack’s research on Angel. I have been looking all throughout the Backburner but can’t figure out where she had been staying, so it’s possible she is staying somewhere off base until her and the other Crimson Raiders take to space. That would definitely give her some room to start some funky experiments. Though I am curious where she’d get the test subjects. Also, I just realized it’s possible she could set up a room like control core angel in order to capture the twins/Tyreen. I’ve seen it being discussed that she could also create the collar Jack made which has me like 👀. She could’ve also done her experiments between bl1 and bl2, which leaves her with 3ish years iirc. Though I don’t think she has a lot of info on Lilith before bl2.

It ALSO could’ve been a totally new outside force. Kinda would suck cause all the theories haha, but hey, it might happen. 

Oh part 2. It could’ve been some alien bullshit giving Ty Siren powers (not that... siren powers AREN’T alien bullshit already, but you know what I mean). We still don’t know what the Seraphs are, yet we’re supposed to fear their return. Well we know they’re able to create the Seraph Guardians (that drop Seraph Crystals), so maybe those were them experimenting with creating their own version of Sirens? Or maybe a rogue Eridian/Guardian (a smart one like the Watcher) giving out Siren powers to offset the balance of the universe (6 Sirens) for some reason (war is coming? maybe it’s a civil war between the Eridians). Or some new type of alien. We’ve seen so many new flora/fauna in bl3, I wouldn’t be surprised if they introduced a new race of aliens as well. (in this context I mean alien like... intelligent ones. at least on the rank of human. probably more tho, let’s be real). I also am looking at those demon dragon looking things, idk they seem really unique and I’m super curious to see how they come to play in the story. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were a product of an experiment as well. They seem to be inside an Eridian temple tho (I will make a post on this later prob)

part 3. kind of a play off part 2 but whatever. The tattoos came from a Vault. we see in the HBC wall art that looks like the twins opening a red Vault. I think this may be propaganda art and that it’s just part of the believer’s stuff, like “join our cause and this will happen!” as it shows the twins with boxes of food and guns and shit, but it’s possible that they’ve already opened it. Maybe Tyreen wants to absorb the powers of the other Vault Monsters because she thinks that will help her Vault-gifted powers grow stronger. We know as outsiders that all the Vaults lead to a huge power (Hector and also the website used to say “Universe-destroying power”), so maybe that power is super strong Siren powers? (full body tattoos hell yeah) Or can only be opened by all the Siren powers as a failsafe and that’s why Ty absorbed Lily’s... idk lol

Okay and my favorite one of all of the options we have:

The tattoos are fake and the source of her succ power is something else entirely

so. okay hear me out. I know her tattoos look like they’re glowing under the surface, but they’re super ‘perfect’ looking compared to the other Siren tattoos we’ve seen. Could also be a reason they’re products of an experiment, maybe these two theories tie together. (lol) My friend (@bonelesspotter​) also pointed out that it’s possible to use jellyfish to make cats glow in the dark. anyway. They also don’t seem to glow when she’s using her powers (which are black and red/orange instead of the normal purple/blue??) (also thank you for allowing me to see this @luxury-of-insanity) 

I made a post about the tattoos being fake as sort of a joke, where they saw how Lilith had a cult as the Firehawk (Ty does tell us to thank Lily for the ‘Firehawk’ powers) and decided to masquerade as Siren(s?) in order to build their cult up.

and it is slowly, slowly, looking more and more like the truth the more we learn about Ty lmao

I am gonna posit the idea that it’s not her tattoos that give her powers, but some other sort of technology.

possibly? hidden inside her glove??? idk

idk it just seems to clunky and BIG 

seriously, this thing is thicc, i could totally see some sort of drainage tech being hidden inside. I know Moxxi’s weapons have a lifesteal component, as do transfusion grenades, so it could be based off that. I point this out mainly bc Troy is a smart boy, it’s possible he built her something so they could pretend they were twin gods. Maybe his sword/mechanical arm will do something similar/give him his own set of ‘powers’? Or maybe those screws in his left arm could also do it, too.

idk, this is all me just speculating. I will not be surprised if she is an actual Siren, I just like being extra when it comes to theorycrafting. don’t have much to do for uhhh 90 more days, sooooo

i am also curious if her powers have something to do with the tablets with the crystals coming out of them considering her lifeforce suck makes statues with eridium-like crystals coming out of them

... maybe not. different shapes and all.

are they even the same ones as the ones on promethea?

hmmmmmmmmmmmm

i do think there’s something on that tablet(?) on eden-6 that we gotta uncover by breaking the purple crystals cause when moze does it she uses a special melee tool and breaking them doesn’t add anything to her inventory.

“let’s free you up”

but that’s getting wayyyy off topic. that’s all i got for tyreen today

byeeee

[yourescapetofiction]

The Tides Have Turned-Part 3

A/N: This is my old work, The Tides Have Turned. It is a complete story that I am reposting on this blog so the work isn’t lost and can be found for those interested :)

Three

An entire month. Shit. What was I going to do? I sat alone with my thoughts, Nate’s comment ringing in my head. I felt myself get heated, I was angry at myself for letting this bother me. I am not going to let this ruin the vacation that I have been looking forward to for months. 

The last few hours of the road trip passed fairly quickly, I kept myself preoccupied playing games on my phone and snapchatting with the guys. God I feel bad for everyone viewing Sammy’s snapchat stories, he was relentless. I smile to myself, starting to feel better.

It was about five o’clock and the sun was no longer high in the sky. We started seeing signs saying

NOW ENTERING SUFFOLK COUNTY

I felt myself begin to get excited as we weaved through the narrow streets and past shop after shop. This place had everything, Tiffany & Co., Ralph Lauren, Coach, you name it. I guess that’s the perk of being wealthy and living in this area. I felt lucky that we were even able to vacation here, our three families splitting the cost.

“Ayeeee there she is!” Johnson exclaimed and pointed through the front windshield. We all directed our attention to the direction J was pointing and I heard collective gasps of awe. Directly ahead of us was the beach house we would call home for the next month. We pulled up the long winding driveway that was marked with trees on both sides. Nate pulled to a stop on the circular driveway and threw the bus in park.

“Oh..my..God..” Cam exclaimed breathless. This was their first time joining the five of us on this vacation, but even I had to admit this place had the same effect on me. I round the back of the bus and grabbed my case out of the trunk and dropped it to the ground. I placed my hands on my hips and just stared in awe.

“Wow” I let out. This place was breathtaking. It was large, so much so that it made our houses back home look like dollhouses. It was made of stone and was surrounded by palm trees. There was a gate on the right hand side of the house that led to a trail which took you to a private stretch of beach.

“Amazing isn’t it?” Gilinsky slung his arm around me.

“Always” I smile at him. He grabs my case for me and we all file into the house, jaws hitting the floor. The smell of fresh wax hit my nose as I notice the shiny wooden floors. The living room was unique in that it had floor to ceiling windows letting in massive amounts of light. The house had high vaulted ceilings and a fireplace that was eye catching. It was made out of stone and tiles with a mosaic of the ocean. I ran my fingers along the smooth colored glass, savoring each moment here.

“Hello, we’re here!!” Johnson shouts, his voice echoing through the house.

“In here kids!” we heard Johnson’s mom shout from the kitchen. We all followed the sound of her voice until we reached the equally impressive kitchen. Granite counters and state of the art appliances dotted the kitchen, complete with a dining table fit enough for a party.

“We’re so glad you’re here and made it safe and sound!” she exclaimed wrapping her son in a tight hug. She proceeded to hug us all individually and we all exchanged pleasantries until she suggested we get settled into our rooms.

“Why don’t you guys head upstairs and get settled? When you come back down you can join us for dinner” she smiled wide.

“Dibs on the master!!” Gilinsky shouted racing towards the staircase.

“Oh no way G! You got it last time!” Johnson shouted, quick on his heels. I just laughed shaking my head.

“I guess we’ll all have to settle for the sub-par rooms huh?” I question aloud making the rest of the guys laugh.

“Well you know you can always bunk with me” Sam suggested wiggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah, when pigs fly Samuel” I pat him on the back in a condescending manner. I caught a glimpse of Nate who was watching our interaction intently. He had a look of caution in his eyes, he was trying to feel me out. I stared right past him.

“You know what? Sam why don’t you show me my room after all” I say linking my arm in his.

“Sure thing babe!” Sam grinned wildly. Nate’s jaw clenched tight, his fists balled up.

“Hey man let’s get a room” Swazz slapped his back distracting him.

“Uh, sure” I heard Nate grumble.

We made our way upstairs and to the second door on the right. Sam steered me inside and I gasped at the size of this bedroom.

“This is a guest bedroom?!” I squealed.

“Nah, baby, this is the master. We all thought you should have it” Gilinsky interrupted marching into the room.

“You don’t have to do that G” I start but he holds his hand up signaling me to shut up.

“Nope, no arguments. Just take it and enjoy” he says. “But there’s one condition,” he starts

“And that is?” I question raising a brow.

“You gotta let us hang in here with you. And at least spend one night, I mean come on look at this place” he started to laugh.

“Alright G, you gotta deal” I chuckle.

“We’ll let you get unpacked and meet you downstairs for dinner” Sam says before kissing my head and exiting the room.

I plop down on the end of the bed, it was king sized and had white sheets and comforter. A flat screen tv hung on the opposite wall, and floor to ceiling windows gave me a view of the beach. The whole room was serene and had a relaxed beachy vibe. I was in heaven.

“Dude we are NOT sharing a bed!” I heard Cam shout from down the hall. I poked my head around the door when I heard Nash whining.

“Well I’m not sleeping on the floor, so get used to the idea” he smirks at Cam. I giggle to myself and slip back into my room before they knew I had heard them. I knew I was in for a lot of laughs this trip.

I began to unpack my case and place my clothes neatly into the walk-in closet. I had Spotify open on my phone and placed it on shuffle. Music always made tasks easier. I was dancing my way over to the closet with my favorite evening dress in hand when I heard a soft knock on my door.

“Come in!” I yell cheerily.

“Y/n?” I heard a voice call out.

“In here!” I yell in return. I spun around to see Nate standing in the doorway of my closet, and I could feel my face fall slightly.

“Hey” I say trying to force a smile. I didn’t want him to know anything was wrong.

“Hey,” he smiled back. “I, uh, just wanted to make sure you’re ok” he stuttered.

“What do you mean?” I ask, playing dumb.

“You know, after that incident in the car earlier…” he trailed off.

“Oh that? Yeah I’m fine Nate, really.” I lied. Nate visibly relaxed as he let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh good. I was hoping you’d say that. I mean it was pretty obvious that I couldn’t say I would sleep with you” he laughed it off. Now my blood boiled. What was so wrong with me that the notion made him scoff? I was fuming on the inside, but I wasn’t going to start World War 3 and ruin everyone’s time.

“Mhm” I uttered through clenched teeth.

“Ok, so you and me-we’re good?” he asked one last time.

“Yep, I’ll see you at dinner in five” I dismissed him turning around trying to fight back tears.

Nate’s POV

I regretted the words as soon as they came out. She looked cagey, like she was protecting herself. She shouldn’t have to protect herself from me, I was supposed to be someone she trusted. But I had to go and open my big mouth, it seems as though I’ve made it worse. I was so desperate to know that things were okay between the two of us. I can’t bear not having the closeness between us.

I saw the look of pain in her eyes as she spun around fiddling with the clothes in her closet. I didn’t want to push it, or put my foot in it again so I reluctantly left and walked downstairs for dinner. I approached the dining table where Gilinsky’s mom made us all plates. The boys were already gathered around the table diving in and yelling obnoxiously loud. Nash tried to engage me in conversation about his latest Youtube video, but I just nodded my head not fully listening. I couldn’t get y/n out of my head.

About five minutes later she emerged from the staircase. She had changed her clothes, she was now wearing a breezy white dress. She looked incredible, which just added insult to injury. She walked over and sat down between Gilinsky and Johnson. G was so obviously flirting with her which drives me fucking crazy. He could get near any girl he wanted, why did he have to have her? I mean yeah she was a part of our squad but I always felt like she was my girl.

She was about to say something but Johnson’s mom interrupted. Damn.

“I heard there’s a little party at the cabana down the beach tonight. You kids should go, it sounds like a good time” she said. All the boys made eye contact eager at the idea of a party.

“Oh yeah I heard about those parties, they gather all the teens and young adults staying in the beach houses to get to know each other and chill” Johnson answered. For the first time since that dumb game I saw y/n’s eyes light up. The girl loved to dance and have a good time, I knew she would be going tonight. Which meant one thing; I am too.

-

3 hours later; dusk

Y/n’s POV

We had all finished dinner and our parents were going out for the night to meet up with people they went to college with. This left the house to us and we blared music as we pre-gamed for the party tonight. I was in the mood to forget the drama with Nate and just have a good time tonight.

We all walked down the path, shoes in hand, and made our way down to the beach. The night air was swirling my hair around my face and I felt my dress flutter around my knees. There was a glimpse of light off in the distance and we knew we were heading in the right direction. Gilinsky came over and grabbed my hand flashing me a wide smile. Even in the dim light I could see his pearly whites.

“I’m telling you man this song is gonna be a banger” Johnson was animated while telling the guys about a new song he and Gilinsky were working on.

“You gonna learn the choreography this time J?” Gilinsky joked.

“Fuck you man, you know I can’t dance unless I have a couple drinks in me” J answered back.

“Oh now this is something I have to see” I laughed out loud, causing J to shoot me a glare.

“Baby I got moves, just you wait and see tonight” he winked.

We started to approach the light that was emanating from lit tiki torches. The cabana was open to the night air, but had enough room for a dance floor, a bar, and a dj booth. We immediately went to the bar which was run by some college kids. Needless to say we weren’t going to have a problem getting alcohol on this trip. I downed a couple shots and spun around when Kenny shouted to me over the music “y/n you have got to see this!” I shifted my focus to the dance floor and saw Sammy tearing it up- like literally tearing it up.

“Homie’s all over the place” Nate laughed loudly. We all burst into a fit of giggles to see his sporadic movements on the dance floor.

“OH! Shit, I think he almost hit that girl in the face!” Nash exclaimed out of breath. Sure enough there was a girl clutching her cheek and shooting an oblivious Sammy a dirty look. I had lost it at this point, between the mixture of alcohol and Sammy’s moves I was finally having a good time.

“Hey baby let’s dance!” Sam ran over to me.

“Sammy, how much did you have to drink darling?” I giggle grabbing his arm.

“Nothin’ yet, why?” he answered. This caused us all to make eye contact and burst out laughing.

“W-wait, you’re telling me you move like that and you haven’t even had anything to drink yet?!” Cam explained in shock while slapping Sam on the back.

“Yeah, ha-ha very funny guys. I’m just gonna jellyfish out of here” Sam puckers his lips and shoots me a silly face before disappearing back into the crowd.

I turned around to see some blonde girl grinding all over Nate, his hands fisting at her hips. She was flipping her hair all over the place, and I saw him bite his lip. She turned around to face him and I saw him place a sloppy kiss to her neck, making her throw her head back in pleasure. That was the last straw for me. I’ll show Nate who’s not hot enough to sleep with. I marched over to where I saw Gilinsky talking with Kenny and grabbed him by his shirt. He was wearing dark jeans and a white button down that he kept unbuttoned down to the center of his chest. His dark hair was long and swept every which way. He looked shocked when I grabbed him aggressively and pulled him to the dance floor. When he realized what was happening he eagerly followed.

I parted the people in my way and found a spot for us on the dance floor that would be right in Nate’s line of sight. I started by throwing my arms around Gilinsky’s neck, his hands finding my waist. Our hips were swaying to the music, when I heard the DJ take over the mic

“Alright y’all, it’s about to get sexy up in hereeeee!” he called and immediately the sound of Ginuwine’s “Pony” filled the air. The bass was boosted and reverberated off the walls. Oh hell yes, this is it. I spun around switching our positions so I was backed up against G and his hands slid down my waist and gripped my hips. He pulled me close to him as I grinded against him intently. I reached a hand behind me and ran it through his silky hair giving it a little tug here and there. I could hear his breath hitch as he buried his face into my neck. Jack brought his hands up to my neck and slowly worked them down over my bust, stomach, hips, down my thighs and back again. I was really losing myself in the song and the feeling of Jack’s hands when I dropped my head back on his shoulder giving him better access.

I glanced up slightly to see Nate looking furious. I shut my eyes again feeling satisfied with myself, when I felt a rush of air pass me. I looked up and saw Nate was gone. The next thing I know there was a separation between Jack and I, and I heard a harsh grunt as a fist flew hitting Jack straight in the face.

“Nate!!” I shout.

Jack stumbled backwards clutching his face when anger flickered in his eyes. He lunged forward out for blood. I couldn’t move as I stood there in shock.

What have I done?

[limerenze]

storytime/rant: my ex boyfriends best friend tea + my love life

okay okay okay(take a shot every time I say: okay, so, basically)

so I’m so sorry to everyone who doesn’t care about my personal life bc sksksk I wouldn’t care about it either. anyways I really gotta let it all out and who better than to my tumblr followers 😫

also imma be changing the names of the two boys in this story bc this is like, a real story between me and real people in my life & idk I feel weird using their real names

—————

Okay so, when I moved to Calgary in 2014, I met this boy- lets call him Ethan.

We were dating by February 15, 2015. Keep in mind we are both only in sixth grade. (I’m in 10th grade now)

We stayed together all the way until May 2017- I ended up breaking up with him because some shit happened in my life that January.

Then we got back together in October 2017, and it was really nice because uh I loved that boy. But I broke up with him yet again in December. Mostly bc I was like “hey I’m way too depressed to love you right now I’m so sorry” and he was like “oh my god no it’s okay please work on urself I love u” (this is ninth grade now).

Honestly, Ethan was such a good boyfriend and I really did love him and maybe I still do who knows, actually I do uh- I was taught that you never stop loving your first love? so part of me will always love him? ya. I hope he finds someone that treats him the way he deserves because he really is amazing and I know someone will take advantage of him if he’s not careful.

So ya that was that. And that lasted until uhhh, June 2018. When we got back together... yet again.

(Between the time we broke up in December and got back together in June, I had been in two relationships)

So the real tea is here, kinda. Like not the main tea of this story? But big tea.

Uhh, we dated all summer and it was actually amazing. I was totally in love with him and everything felt right? I guess.

Oh my goodness now that I’m writing this all out and explaining it, it sounds so dramatic I hate myself. I KNOW OKAY SKSKSK

Anyways, at the beginning of August he told me that he was actually moving to Vancouver at the end of August, before school starts.

And oh my fucking god I was so pissed.

I was so mad, I’m actually getting mad writing this.

I felt so betrayed I guess? I just feel like it was so selfish for him to spend our whole time back together (again) savouring it I guess? and I didn’t get that., like he got to know we were going to break up and I was kinda just left in the dark and idk.

anyways, not the point. shitty but not the point.

uhhhh ya.

so we broke up he moved away.

and since I can’t catch a break! he ended up moving back from Vancouver, in October.

I was even more pissed bc like, it was so sudden? Like I showed up at school one day and he was just, in the halls? Like okay he could’ve warned me? So insensitive.

He came to my school, and his TA (basically homeroom, you have he same ta the whole time you’re in that school) was right across the hall from mine. Well it still is, whatever.

It took us like a month of awkwardly seeing eachother in the halls and my trying to hard to avoid him at school before we finally talked.

We’ve had multiple deep conversations about our relationship and he’s apologized so many times for it and obviously I’ve forgiven him but u know how it be. We said that we would probably never get back together, and if we ever did then it was a sign? I don’t know. We’ve been through so much together and he means the world to me but IDK!!

anyways uh I think I’ve covered everything.

OKAY!

so when he moved back, I paid so so much attention to who he was hanging out with and where he usually went at lunch, basically gathering info so I could avoid him.

I noticed he was always always sitting at the back table of the library with this boy, who was in his ta- which I know because it was across from mine and I also paid way too much attention to him.

WHICH BY THE WAY I USED TO SIT AT THE BACK LIBRARY TABLE AND THEN THATS WHERE HE STARTED SITTING THEN I HAD TO FUCKING FIND A NEW SPOT DAMMIT!

it’s fine.

So this boy he was always sitting with, let’s call him Logan.

Ethan’s best friend is Logan. If you saw one outside of class, you saw the other.

And when semester two rolled around, sure enough, I had a class with Logan. Math.

So it’s March 11, and we started semester two on February 4. So a little over a month and today, I finally had a real conversation with Logan.

(I had talked to him once before in the cafeteria, it was loud and we talked about homework)

Basically, our math teacher randomly split the class into table groups. And Logan and I got sat together.

And y’all when I tell you he’s perfect, I mean he’s perfect.

He is the most hilarious person I’ve ever talked to in my life, he was so nice and witty and smart. He held a consistent conversation with me for like an hour and fifteen minutes.

He helped me with my work, he told me stories about himself, he listened to my stories.

He turned 16 last weekend, he plays hockey. He just started playing with the older division this season so he was telling me all about like the injuries he’s had and the fights he’s gotten into (hot).

He’s so cute and he dresses nicely. He coaches kids hockey teams and referees hockey games in his free time for that bread.

He told me he was saving up for a car.

He was telling me about how he quit lacrosse and how it was a long story and maybe one day he would tell it to me. He talked about his rugby tryouts that were after school and how nervous he was for them.

He said “hey you used to date my friend Ethan right?” And for like a second I was like okay that was fun while it lasted. Then he said “yeah he told me all about it a few weeks after we met, he was a complete asshole- no one deserves that” and I was like OKAY FUCK UR SO PERFECT PLS HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE.

And I stay after school on Monday’s usually for an after school program and just as I was leaving he was about to walk into the locker room to change for rugby and he had the biggest smile on his face when I went over to him.

I told him good luck and he was like thanks I’ll let you know how it goes, then he stole a veggie chip from the bag I was eating out of.

So now I’m here, it’s been like six hours since we were outside that locker room and I feel stuck.

Stuck with this big ass crush on my serious ex boyfriends best friend.

and idk what to do about it.

and like, ya I guess I’m a crushy person, hence the entire ‘carter art boy’ tag I use on my blog.

But idk it feels so different. I feel like he was so interested in my life and I was interested in his and UGH I feel weird.

So idk what I’m gonna do.

Maybe I’ll avoid him for the rest of the semester.

I cant see myself doing that tho, idk.

IDKIDKIDKIDK

pls send me advice in my asks

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

Little Known Brotherhood Members- FABIAN CORTEZ!

This Brotherhood spotlight series includes the Acolytes, the group of mutants who followed Magneto after the Brotherhood, and there’s no better Acolyte to start with than their founder, Fabian Cortez.

For all that I’ve posted about him on this blog so many times, I realized I don’t have a default bio/info post about just who he is and what he’s done. Or if I did, it was a long time ago. I tried to make this as short as possible but there’s like ten years of comic history between Magneto and Fabian Cortez to condense.

Little is known about the origins of Fabian Cortez, but his surname indicates a Spanish heritage, and he claims to be royalty by birth. Based on this, I headcanon him as coming from an aristocratic family in Spain.  He possessed the ability to charge the powers of other mutants. This could help them to a point, but he could do more, pushing their powers painfully past their bodies ability to handle, harming or even killing them.

He, his sister Anne Marie, and two other mutants (Chrome and Delgado) banded together to reach Magneto on Asteroid M and join his cause. However, Magneto himself had abandoned it at this point, having retired altogether from fighting for the mutant cause due to his hopelessness and despair.

Nevertheless, these four mutants stole a space shuttle from SHIELD, and as a result were pursued by SHIELD agents. They ended up in a firefight on the ‘doorstep’ of Asteroid M, alerting Magneto to their presence. He was going to send them back to Earth, but upon hearing Anne Marie’s pleas and pledge of loyalty, brought the Acolytes inside. Unfortunately he brought SHIELD in as well, and one of their agents opened fire on Anne Marie in cold blood, seemingly killing her. Fabian used this opportunity to immediately begin manipulating Magneto into violent action like his old days, teaching him the now-common anti-human term “flatscan” which he had invented.

While Magneto slept, Fabian led his team in an assault against Genoshan Magistrates at a hospital. The X-Men appeared to stop them, and Wolverine stated he knew Fabian’s scent from somewhere, though where has never been revealed. Just when the four followers seemed defeated, Magneto appeared to save them, deeming them the Acolytes (the first time this term was used for them) and stating he would not abandon them. Given that their targets were people who had enslaved mutants, Magneto felt they had done nothing wrong, and took them back to Asteroid M along with several captive X-Men. Here, Fabian treated Magneto’s wounds from Wolverine with his healing powers, and fostered Magneto’s trust in him further. Fabian also discovered via his genetic scanning ability that Moira MacTaggert had altered Magneto’s biology in order to treat his mental illness, news that Magneto did not take well given the history of experimentation on prisoners during the Holocaust. This gave Fabian further fuel to convince Magneto that everyone was against him, even those he had once considered friends, all while literally driving him insane with his powers

.Fabian manipulated Magneto into committing acts that frightened the governments of both the USA and the USSR, prompting them to take action against him. Eventually, this culminated, as Fabian had planned, with the Russians planning to fire a plasma cannon at Asteroid M while Magneto, the X-Men, and the other Acolytes were aboard. Fabian used this, triggering the cannon via remote technology as he escaped at the most opportune moment. The X-Men also escaped, but Fabian’s teammates—and sister—died with Magneto.

Fabian went on to use Magneto’s status as a martyr to build a cult in the mutant community, also called the Acolytes, who committed bloodthirsty acts in Magneto’s name believing that it was what he wanted. Fabian enjoyed great power as their leader, since he’d told them Magneto chose him with his dying breath. He also began bedeviling Quicksilver, trying to recruit him into the Acolytes to be a figurehead since he was Magneto’s son, even going so far as to infiltrate the government and reveal its secret “Project Wideawake” Sentinel Project” to Pietro in hopes of showing him how wicked humans were and get him to turn to the Acolytes side. At the same time, Fabian was also secretly a member of the Upstarts, a group of rich and bored young mutants who competed for an unknown-but-lofty prize by killing more powerful, prominent mutants for “points”—and killing Magneto had put Fabian in the lead.

Fabian lost it all, however–his power, his position, his people, his points—lost it all when Magneto returned from the grave, having been saved at the last minute by Chrome of the original Acolytes. Magneto brought with him a powerful new follower named Exodus, who used his teleporting powers to, at Magneto’s command, send Fabian far away (Exodus wished to kill him, but according to him, Magneto had ordered him to be merciful) Exodus and Magneto then took over leading the Acolytes.

Fabian would resurface during the conflict known as “Blood Ties”, in which he kidnapped Luna Maximoff, Pietro’s daughter, and brought her to Genosha for the dual purpose of using her as a symbol of resistance to stir the ex-slave mutants into civil war against the humans…and to use as a bargaining chip to make her family protect him from the wrath of Exodus and Magneto (who he did not know was in a braindead coma at this time) Alas, neither this nor the Genoshan followers he amassed could save him, and Exodus slaughtered him in the Genoshan sewers.

But even the grave couldn’t hold him. Like many Marvel characters, Fabian returned to life later with little explanation, and attempted to gain his Acolytes back from Exodus by using what seemed to be an amnesiac, de-aged Magneto (actually Magneto’s clone, Joseph) Claiming to be a changed man to Exodus and the Acolytes, Fabian lied to Joseph as he had to Magneto, gaining his trust, and tried to pit him and Exodus against one another so that they would kill each other, allowing him to take over once they were both gone. When this didn’t work out, Fabian fled, but returned at some point and was inexplicably allowed back into the ranks by Exodus. In Exodus’s service, he bedeviled Quicksilver even further, such as teaming up with Maximus the Mad to destroy the Inhumans and ruin Pietro’s life…and all the while, scheming to betray Exodus at every turn.

After Exodus was sealed away in a crypt by Black Knight, the Acolytes split into two groups, each searching for Magneto. Fabian led one group, but  upon realising how he has been using them for his own purposes, they abandoned him during a battle with the X-Men and Fabian fled. While wandering alone, he was approached by Magneto, who had tracked him down. Magneto was the newly-appointed ruler of Genosha now, but his powers had been depleted. He ordered Fabian, on pain of death if he refused, to come with him to Genosha and serve as his living battery. Not having a choice, Fabian agreed.

Knowing that Magneto would kill him as soon as he no longer needed his periodic hypercharges, Fabian began plotting treachery against his “master” once more. Despite Magneto being aware of this, he not only continued to employ Fabian, but gave him a political position on the Genoshan Cabinet. More covertly, Fabian also assisted in a rebellion against Magneto, but just as he had secured an escape from Genosha, Magneto regained his powers by use of a machine. And the first thing he did with them was execute Fabian Cortez by levitating him 50 miles above the aptly-named Carrion Cove and then slamming him back down into the ground in less than 20 seconds—head first.

He still came back one more time, however. During the event known as Necrosha, the mutant sorceress Selene temporarily resurrected millions of dead mutants. Under her control, they attacked the X-Men’s base on Utopia. Fabian was among them, and given orders to bring Magneto to her. For reasons unknown, Fabian was the only one able to resist Selene’s control and disobey her orders. Rather than take Magneto prisoner like she wanted, his goal was to find him and kill him. A goal he alas never reached, since Deadpool killed him once again by throwing Loa, a young mutant with disintegration powers, into him, ending Fabian’s life for the third and, thus far in canon, final time.

Part of the “Little Known Brotherhood Members” series on this blog! See previous and pending entries listed HERE!

ALSO, SOME BONUS STUFF:

- In addition to being leader of the Acolytes, Fabian was also a member of the Upstarts. The Upstarts were essentially a supervillain contest, most of its competitors rich-but-bored young mutants, who competed by killing powerful, prominent mutants for points in exchange for some unknown prize (they all believed it was something different). This was Fabian’s other motive for killing Magneto, and his (temporary) success put him in first place for a time.

- According to Fabian, he is royalty by birth. The particulars of this have never been revealed, however. Also, he screamed about it at someone while he (Fabian) was completely naked, so there’s that.

- He’s incredibly sexist and incredibly thirsty. He has plans for a harem and attempts to force a woman to agree to being in it. He force-kisses Psylocke. He’s just...look at this, man.

- He may even be too sexist for mind-control. When Selene resurrected him alongside many other mutants during Necrosha, he was the only one shown as able to disobey her. It was never explained why/how, so this is my best (crack) guess.

- He lied to a bird. Yes, really.

- Fabian is almost always wearing a cape. In fact, he even once had it wrapped around himself during a stealth mission, because I guess god forbid this drama queen take it off. I’ve also noticed he wraps it around himself when he’s scared or in trouble; perhaps it is a security blanket of sorts? Oh, and a series of art errors in the second series of X-Men ‘92 suggests that he carries spares

- Fabian normally speaks in a very grandiose, elaborate way, much like Magneto. However, while Magneto does this naturally all the time, with Fabian it seems to be a deliberate thing, as evident by how when the shit hits the fan, he exclaims: - Fabian Cortez carried a firearm to fights with the X-Men and other enemies, unusually for a super-powered person (but a smart move) He also proves so adept at martial arts as to defeat Psylocke in seconds. I like this; he’s a physically human guy, he’s going into battle with people with seriously dangerous powers, it makes sense he would build up his mundane fighting skills as much as possible. Why aren’t more bad guys this smart? - I also like how he turned a seemingly benign power into an offensive weapon, that’s a lot more interesting to me than if he’d just gotten an overtly aggressive power like energy blasts or something - He invented the anti-human term “flatscan” - He has a son (mother unknown) in the Marvel Zombies universe named Malcolm Cortez - In the 1990s animated series, he serves Apocalypse after betraying Magneto - Honestly there is so much shit I know about Fabian Cortez, guys I can’t begin to tell you, read his tag. Also, this picture: 

[the-desolated-quill]

Vincent And The Doctor - Doctor Who blog (People Like This Episode?)

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Oh I hate talking about these kinds of stories! The ones that receive critical acclaim and are adored by fans because of how deep and meaningful they supposedly are, and then I have to come along and explain why those episodes are nothing but pretentious, patronising bollocks.

Okay. Two disclaimers. I’m not very fond of Doctor Who’s celebrity historical episodes because they’re usually just an excuse for the writers to wank themselves silly to a famous historical person as opposed to telling a compelling story (see The Unicorn And The Wasp and Victory of The Daleks), and I’m not a big fan of Richard Curtis. I do like Blackadder for the most part, but his other stuff I just don’t care for. (I don’t even like The Vicar of Dibley very much, which is positively sacrilegious I know). If you’re into either, fair enough. They’re just not to my taste. But the thing to bear in mind is my hatred for Vincent And The Doctor goes beyond personal taste issues. Not only do I think this episode is monumentally crap, I also found it to be extremely insulting, and I’ll explain why in a bit.

In the previous episode Rory was erased from existence, which means Amy can no longer remember him, although she still feels occasionally sad without knowing why. To cheer Amy up, the Doctor takes her to an art gallery to look at Vincent Van Gogh’s painting. This surprised me ever so slightly. I honestly didn’t think Amy would be the type to be into all this artsy fartsy stuff, but that’s only because we’re 10 episodes in and I still don’t actually know anything about her. Think about it. What have we actually learned about her? How has she grown since the first episode? First person to come up with a satisfactory answer wins a fiver. 

It’s almost as if she’s suddenly obsessed with Vincent Van Gogh not because that’s part of her character but because the plot requires her to be. Also, since Rory was erased by the light shining out of Moffat’s crack (teehee), Amy seems to have been reduced to a wide-eyed, innocent little bunny rabbit in this episode. I can’t help but feel sorry for Karen Gillan. She’s a good actor, but Moffat rarely gives her any good material to work with.

Anyway the Doctor spots some weird creature in one of the paintings and decides to travel back to 1890 to meet Vincent Van Gogh, played by Tony Curran who admittedly does a marvellous job with the material he’s been given, although the less said about his awful pantomime-esque performance when he’s required to fight the invisible monster, the better. Here’s the problem with celebrity historicals, and I mentioned this in my review of The Unicorn And The Wasp. Usually these episodes are only entertaining to those who are interested in the historical celebrity. To everyone else, it’s just monumentally dull. I’ve never been that interested in Agatha Christie, so having to listen to the Doctor constantly talk about what a great writer she is made me feel a little bit nauseous. I’ve seen Van Gogh’s paintings. They’re okay. I’m not that much of an art lover, so I can’t really comment further, but to listen to the Doctor and Amy talking, you’d think Van Gogh was the reincarnation of Christ. It all feels utterly self indulgent. Like with Agatha Christie and Winston Churchill in their respective episodes, there’s no effort to actually explore what his life was like or anything. Instead we’re given this romanticised version of him that Richard Curtis can spend 45 minutes pouring his admiration over. It’s fine if you like Van Gogh, but spare a thought for the uncultured swines like myself who have to suffer through this too.

‘Oh look! There’s all his famous paintings! And they’re still wet! Oh no! Don’t put the coffee pot down on them! You’ll leave a stain! How can you not see how utterly perfect and amazing you are Van Gogh?! OMG! Look at his bedroom! Just like the painting! (Even though the bedroom wasn’t actually in that town. Also have you noticed that they built the bedroom to look exactly like the painting to the point where the proportions look really weird when the Doctor walks around in it?). Oh did you hear that? He doesn’t like sunflowers! How hilarious! And he fancies Amy! How sweet! Go PondGogh!’ And so on for another 40 excruciating minutes.

For the record, I don’t buy Van Gogh and Amy’s feelings for each other even for a second considering that they’ve only known each other for a day. Plus the whole thing feels less romantic when you remember that Van Gogh most probably had syphilis at the time.

But wait. This is Doctor Who, isn’t it? Better shove a monster in for no reason. What do we have this week? The Krafayis. An invisible monster that only Van Gogh can see and resembles a giant, mutant CGI turkey. Not exactly one of Doctor Who’s best monsters, now is it? So how’s the Doctor planning to see it? With some tech of course. But not something sensible like a pair of goggles or something. No. Instead he uses this awkward looking harness thing with a rear view mirror attached so that the only chance you can see the Krafayis is if it’s standing right behind you. What a stupid idea!

But as I said, this is all a taste issue. If you like it, good for you. I’m glad someone does. Where I absolutely draw the line however is when Richard Curtis starts giving us his patronising views on the blind and the mentally ill.

Yes the big twist is that the Krafayis is blind, and in one fell swoop it goes from being a savage creature of hate to being a cuddly little bundle of joy in its condescending death scene. They also perpetuate the age old myth that blind people have excellent hearing (which is not true by the way. it’s a lie created by the sighted to make themselves feel better). Oh and the reason why only Van Gogh can see him? Because he’s mentally ill and therefore can see things other people can’t. 

How anyone can find this episode to be anything other than insufferable I don’t know.

There’s been a lot of debate as to what kind of mental illness Van Gogh may have had, but Curtis decides to go for bipolar with a touch of synesthesia. This is very dark and sensitive territory for Doctor Who, but with careful handling it could potentially be emotionally rewarding, spreading awareness to important issues surrounding mental health. This is not the case here. Curtis’ portrayal of mentally ill people consists of nothing but patronising and insulting cliches. He’s bipolar, which means he’s fine now even though he was sad a few minutes ago. Being mentally ill makes you a genius. Being manic makes you a loveable eccentric. Having mental health problems allows you to see the wonders of the world in a way ‘normal’ people can only dream of.

For those of you who don’t know, I suffer from manic depression. Do you see now why I might have a bit of a problem with this? Yes there’s a correlation between those with mental health problems and those who enter creative fields like art and writing, often because art and writing are an excellent way to express ourselves and to make sense of the world around us. I myself am a writer and have had a lot of time to refine my craft. Spending nearly three years stuck at home whilst recovering from alcohol addiction gives you a lot of free time to do such things. But I absolutely resent the idea that artists, writers and other creative people are good at what they do because of their mental illnesses, as though it’s some special gift bestowed upon us by the Art Gods. People who think that are either ignorant, pretentious or stupid, and I would be more than happy to give those pricks my mental illness so they can see what it’s fucking like to be me. I can assure you it isn’t pleasant.

But wait! It gets worse!

It’s tragic that Van Gogh never knew just how successful he would become, right? if only we could tell him or show him how famous and well regarded he would be. That in my opinion is all the more reason not to do it here, but Curtis just can’t help himself at this point. The Doctor and Amy take Van Gogh to the art gallery in the future, they all stand on this turntable thing as Van Gogh cries while Bill Nighy talks about how not only is Van Gogh the greatest artist who ever lived, but is also the greatest, most awesomest person ever born in the entire universe, all while some awful pop ballad plays in the background to drown us in slush.

Good God, this is fucking awful! Who the hell thought this would be a good idea?! Talk about over-egging the pudding.

And then, big shock, Van Gogh kills himself. Amy is surprised because she thought showing him the future might inspire him to keep working. Me? I’m not in the least bit surprised. He gets taken into a blue box that’s bigger on the inside than the outside and travels to the future where he sees all the success and fame he will never get to experience in his lifetime. That’s more likely to cause his suicide than prevent it, if you think about it. And I HATE the Doctor’s speech about how life is split into good things and bad things. What is he, a fucking primary school teacher now? Depression is a little bit more complicated than that. But then again this is written by the same fucking moron who believes being mentally ill makes you a badass painter, so I guess I shouldn’t be too shocked.

Richard Curtis clearly thinks he’s written a sensitive and sympathetic tribute to a renowned artist who tragically took his own life due to mental health problems. I think Curtis royally fucked up with a paper-thin story that’s both patronising and insulting. And remember I have mental health problems, so according to Richard Curtis, I’m a genius. So basically if you disagree with me... you’re wrong :)

[quarterpint]

[Event!] On coffee cups and cults

“Now. Give me your hand...”

“You don’t need her hand."

Hasa grabbed it anyway. “It’s part of my aesthetic. You can keep your stupid twenty questions, I—” she gave a flourish with her free one “— will be conducting the noble art of palmistry.”

Goten had been halfway to the kitchen to leave them to it, though at that had spun on his heels, scooped up a chair along the aisle and planted himself at the head of the table, clinging to the backrest.

“Ohh I gotta see this.”

She bristled. “Didn’t you have some prep to do?”

“Yep.” He made no move to leave. Pan snorted. The café would open a little late this morning, then.

"Fine." Hasa settled herself, brushing her curls away from her face in a faux attempt at gravitas. "Let me see your life line..." Pan flattened her palm for her. She was older by a good six or seven years, but Hasa's excitement and determination at learning really brought out the child in her. She reminded Pan of her wide-eyed mature students, always the most hard working in the class. Her face soured. Something wasn't quite right. “Boss, shh.”

“I’m barely breathing...”

“No!” She wheeled on him, “your energy! It’s mixed up with Pan’s. Shush it.”

He rolled his eyes in response, yet did as asked.

There was a jagged collapse in the world then, that tapestry of hearth fire and playful sparking stars he carried with him folding into itself until extinguished. The dawn light in the café had dulled along with it, warming spices of mulled wine vacating the air to leave just the freshly baked pastries and coffee beans. His ki had vanished. For the briefest of moments his body was a gaping void then with a slow, calming exhalation he allowed the ambient ki in the room to pass through him. Completely invisible. In ki-sense, anyway. For Pan, her ki-sense with her as long as she could remember, the sudden change was unnerving. It was as if he were a ghost, or headless. She’d never get used to it.

The world of ki would be startlingly new to Hasa, ki-signatures a secret to uncover and concentrate on rather than an important part of someone’s voice or face. For her his ki-suppression would have reduced her confusion. To Pan just the opposite, Goten had made himself positively freaky-looking.

/Disgust, amused/ she shot to him through feeling. He wouldn’t be able to answer her telepathically with his ki at zero but he grinned in response, topping off the effect.

Hasa acknowledged the change in her favour with a nod, turning her attention to Pan and the patter she was developing. 

"Now, see the shape of the heart line here? It's telling me you're a fan of bitter flavours--"

As soon at Goten had relented to teach Hasa ki-sense Pan had been her regular guinea pig. Or one of them at least; she suspected the entire household had been enlisted and routinely poisoned by Goten's lead barista. The exercise was wonderfully nostalgic so Pan didn’t mind - bringing back the entire summer her uncle had spent home from college feeding her ever-improving cake and sweets until he’d nailed the pattern; the link between ki-signatures and taste. Everyone thought it a madcap curios, a mere party trick to ultimately impress dates. No one expected him to take a risk and try to make money from it. But he did, and over fifteen years later he was still raking it in, baffling the odd industry expert who stumbled across Paozu Place to boot. 

If Pan was going to be gifted drinks and sweets again whilst he finally passed on The Knowledge, she’d weather a few duds. Heck, she could even help in some respects. “If you’re pretending to read my palm, why are you staring at my stomach?”

Hasa started. “Oh! Oh crap. I keep doing that. It’s just easier," she smiled ruefully. "Your ki's louder looking there."

“I guess it would be. How about—” Pan brought her hand up and in a little “—this?" It was now between her centre and Hasa's face, the misdirected gaze less obvious. "At least, until you get used to it."

Hasa's eyes focussed and unfocussed between palm and ki. "Genius! Thank you!" Her fingers idly traced the creases in Pan's palm now. "I was going to talk more about the main lines, they can be the big flavours or bases? Add some twists with the smaller ones. Maybe even make up a line or t--" She dropped all palmistry pretence, knocking Pan's hand out the way to narrow her eyes, following something from Pan's own centre to chest. "Oh! Got it!" She was behind the bar in moments, a whirlwind of activity, grabbing a mug and throwing down a tub of powder.

"What did you pick up? The flow?"

"Yes! You're stressed!" She sounded far more excited at her inference than would be polite, "that's what the humming on the green is. I can play on that!"

Pan laughed at her description. It was nowhere near sensical, but no one could do any better. She knew exactly the kind of restless flitting Hasa was referring to. "Work's been crazy lately. Gramps has been building the barricades this week and I'm having to pick up his slack."  

Goten drummed on the table. "Speaking of, have you been reading the cult auditions?"

He meant the Pan Fighting Network forums. With her father's book serialisation it had exploded as the only possible hub for discussion on the net. The martial arts students of course loved it, but were impatient to learn more. So impatient in fact many were teaching each other. She was proud of their progress, though it was tinged with a growing, sickening horror that she had absolutely no control.

"Only the posts that get attention, those are stressful enough to read." Pan's suspicion piqued. "I hope you're not messing with them all again..."

"What? No no! Don't look at me like that, Gotenks has been a good boy, too." He leant forward, affecting a serious tone. "We've being reading some of the blogs--"

"The bowling ball video was scary," Hasa called over, mid-measurement "imagine how strong he'd get?"

Goten waved a dismissal. "Nah, he lifted it what - two inches for a second? You could do that if you blew hard enough." He grabbed a handful of sugar cubes from the pot on the table, dropping a couple back until he was satisfied. "Now, Can Man, that's a blog I've been following." Pan clocked immediately at the nickname. So, she wasn't just being paranoid. Goten glanced over, her rumination obvious. "You know who I'm talking about."

"Mm."

"Can Man?"

"'West City'... something something." Goten explained for Hasa, "Might be Can Cat for all I can work out, they're not planning to prove it with a video."

He tossed the cubes in the air, unhitching the lock on his genki in the process and it snapped back to the room, happy to be free. His aura densened around the sugar, slowing their fall to a stop, pushing and holding them in place with the shrink-wrapped bubbles. All invisible to non-ki-users. Pan warmed a little as the familiar glow in the room returned, the free ripples of his genki mixing and blending with her and Hasa's own. It was the comforting sense of safety she always enjoyed with her uncle. A whisper of change in his ki, and all but one of the cubes began to spin around the other.

"Hasa, how good are you at juggling?"

She double-took at the midair routine. "Can't. Too much to keep track of."

"Well, they say they're juggling cans with their ki."

She turned back to raiding the shelf, shrugging. "I saw a video of someone floating two baseballs."

"Can Man says they're up to too many to count. Repeatedly. Every day." Another silent whisper and the sugar rotated the other way. "Lifting heavy things is cool and all but it's just brute force. Keeping track of ki all over the place? Now if they’re telling the truth that's a neat trick, newbie or not."

He was thinking along the same lines as Pan. "I've had students who never get passed splitting their ki in two. To have this ability without tuition..."

They both attended to the dancing cubes for a moment, Hasa finally at the coffee machine. Pan homed in on his tiny, efficient nudges in intent keep the cubes in formation. He'd arranged them in a pattern to give the exercise a rhythm and Goten was so practiced he could probably leave this running and read a book three timezones away. Even so, it wasn't simple.

"Are you going to speak to them?"

Pan had been wondering that herself. As a default admin she'd be able to see their name and address at the click of a button and her finger had hovered a few times, but... "No. Not yet, anyway. It might be flukey early ability. I wouldn't want to get their hopes up." She caught herself, "or mine, I suppose."

Demonstration over, Goten's hand twitched to push all but one of the sugar cubes towards him. He let them fall into his mouth and crunched without resistance.

"When then," he slurred through the syrup.

That was a good question. "I'm not sure. Maybe next chapter if they're still going."

"Don't leave it too late, Squirt." It was a warning out of concern, she knew. He still saw her as that little girl, deer in headlights before taking her first class. She'd pushed against his coddling back then, worse than her father's, but was almost grateful for it nowadays.

"I know."

"Done!" With a final tink of spoon on china Hasa floated over with her latest masterpiece, passing it gently to Pan with both hands.

The warm contents smelt safe. Pan blew on it and took a tentative sip, slowly letting it roll over her tongue and swallowed when her tastebuds approved. She was pleasantly surprised. "It's great!" A full mouthful let her work out the depth of flavour. A darker roast to not key up her stress with as much caffeine she knew, a bitter chocolate, the mint stronger than the drinks Goten would make her based off her ki signature, but all there. "Thank you."

Hasa beamed. "Missing anything do you think?"

Pan racked her brain. There was something. "Umm--"

The last sugar cube flicked passed her nose into her coffee with a plink. Goten winked.

"Needed a can of something."

[apprentice-s]

sup guys it’s me again

First rule: Bold or place an * at everything that is true Second rule: Tag 9 people you want to know better oh come on, you and i both know that i won’t ACTUALLY tag nine people APPEARANCE: I am 5′7 or taller ha no I wear glasses/contacts refer to previous post haha I have at least one tattoo I have at least one piercing I have blonde hair as if haha I have brown eyes I have short hair not like…pixie cut short, but short nonetheless My abs are at least somewhat defined I have or have had braces according to mum i WILL NEED braces and :(( PERSONALITY: I love meeting new people no People tell me that I’m funny Helping others with their problems is a big priority for me is that surprising? please tell me i want to know haha I enjoy physical challenges I enjoy mental challenges I’m playfully rude with people I know well I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying it There is something I would change about my personality ABILITY: I can sing well i mean.. it’s pretty split between my parents saying “no, you can’t sing stop” and my friends going “you’re a really good singer?? wtf??” I can play an instrument i can JUST BARELY play the piano does that count? I can do over 30 pushups without stopping i can do 25 :// I’m a fast runner I can draw well i mean i don’t think so but without my crap drawing skills i wouldn’t have made this also pretty crap blog sooo I have a good memory ish? I’m good at doing math in my head im pretty much required to I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute I have beaten at least two people in arm wrestling I know how to cook at least three meals from scratch I know how to throw a proper punch HOBBIES: I enjoy playing sports i actually do!! who’da thought? I am/was on a sports team at my school or somewhere else i did not like it at all and i was peer pressured into it and ugh I am/was in an orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else I have learned a new song in the past week I work out at least once a week does p.e. count? I’ve gone for runs at least once a week in the warmer months I have drawn something in the past month you wouldn’t think it but i have!! i finished a Thing and i’m not putting it on this blog haha but i AM going to post something don’t worry lol I enjoy writing  Fandoms are my #1 passion I have done martial arts EXPERIENCES: I have had my first kiss wtf no I have had alcohol i shall give you the answer i gave to all those who offer me alcohol or ask if i’ve had it. I!! AM!!! 12!!!! AND!!!! UNDERAGE!!!!!! NO!!!!! :) I have scored the winning goal in a sports game I have watched an entire season of a TV show in one sitting pfft i’ve watched an entire series in one sitting I have been at an overnight event STARGAZING!!! AND MOVIE-SLEEPOVER NIGHT HAHA I have been in a taxi who hasn’t?? I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year not this past year but i did go to the ER a ridiculous amount of times when i was a kid haha I have beaten a video game in one day I have visited another country guess which one haha I have been to one of my favorite artist’s concerts PENTATONIX!!!! LAST YEAR!!!! RELATIONSHIPS: if i’m being honest, most of this is no i’m too hard to “love” and i’ve never really had any crushes (someone once asked me if i was ace since i didn’t have any crushes haha) I’m in a relationship I have a crush on a celebrity I have a crush on someone I know I have been in at least 3 relationships I have never been in a relationship I have asked someone out or admitted my feelings to them I get crushes easily I have had a crush on someone for over a year I have been in a relationship for at least a year I have had feelings for a friend MY LIFE: I have at least one person I consider a “best friend” i don’t really have a “best friend” more of…people i tolerate and have grown fond of I live close to my school/work ha school is a 30 minutes drive away without traffic so no My parents are still together I have at least one sibling i have two gremlins that classify as my brothers I live in the United States There is snow right now where I live yeah as if there would be snow in the philippines I have hung out with a friend in the past month I have a smartphone I have at least 15 CDs i still have my old CD collection lol I share my room with someone no, thank god RANDOM STUFF: I have breakdanced I know a person named Jamie yep!! my, currently dead, grandpa!! I have had a teacher with a last name that’s hard to pronounce I have dyed my hair I’m listening to one song on repeat right now can y’all guess which one? I have punched someone in the past week i punched someone last night I know someone who has gone to jail I have broken a bone I have eaten a waffle today i haven’t eaten a waffle in MONTHS I know what I want to do with my life no I speak at least two languages two are already given, try to guess the third!!

i tag @tessagray-herondale-carstairs @aquacanis @dork-sen @edelwary @just-a-broken-hearted-shipper @wakocytosis (ANSWER ME) and the newbie, @little-lucky-angel :>

i know it isn’t nine refer to card on top

also you aren’t required to answer this it just would be nice to see haha