#people in my life are weirdly unwilling to ask

[spoofymcgee]

i just finished watching the power of three and. i didn't like it.

don't get me wrong, it has plenty of delightful moments. it showcases beautifully just how impatient 11 is, just how unwilling to stop moving and running. it's strange how he still feels so fresh and new half a season from the end of his run.

kate is, obviously, incredible and i would die for her, and the sweet little moments between her and the doctor, the doctor and rory, the kitchen scene with rory and amy, all of those were lovely.

but this episode feels like it's designed to hurt you, to set up the devastation of the next one. i haven't seen it yet, but i know what happens and.

i don't mind that it's there to make the next episode hurt. i don't even mind how unsubtle it is about that–this doctor's run i think has a very serious problem of talking so much about the themes and how cool it is rather than showing them, but that's another post, and i can set that aside.

what i do mind is that. there's no point. it's a big, flashy, dramatic, horrible sendoff for the ponds, when approximately three seconds ago they were ready to retire from travelling, to be normal. and then, totally against everything they'd been doing and saying, they went back. for really no apparent reason other than they suddenly want to when there's no setup for that.

and i think it's for two reasons.

the first one is that this whole run has no fucking clue what self-restraint and consent and respect for other people's boundaries are. you can see that in so many places–from the beginning, how the doctor doesn't give amy a chance to change out of her nightgown, the way she kisses him and keeps doing it even though he's trying to get away, the way they have her choose and commit to rory and then turn around and make rory weirdly possessive towards her, as if without him stopping her she would go and do who knows what with the doctor (who. isn't interested? stranger in a strange land much?) the weird bit where the doctor keeps asking rory if he can hug amy, and not asking amy. right up until the end–amy's chosen rory so many times now, and she has to prove herself again and never stop proving that she'll choose him over the doctor, despite that they're married, despite that she picked him. the story won't stop punishing her for being interested in someone other than him at the beginning.

and that's just off the top of my head. this whole run has basically no clue what consent is, and is operating on a very outdated understanding of boundaries.

so what follows is that the ponds can't choose to walk away. the doctor will keep running towards them, they can't choose to leave because we think the doctor doesn't have the ability to respect that boundary, so they have to want to stay, because otherwise. well, he wants them to stay. needs them to stay. he can't let them move on. but the doctor is the good guy, so we can't go there. so the ponds have to be put permanently out of his reach, because we don't know what self-restraint and respect for others is.

which is just fucking uncomfortable.

the second reason is why i think the power of three is mean.

and that's because it's for the shock value. it's for the flash, it's because we can't let people have a happy ending, a quiet exit in this show. they need to go out with a bang, they need to be ripped away from the doctor, it needs to be dramatic and tear-jerking and what does it matter if this is telling a sound, good story so long as we can keep it loud enough to keep people's attention?

because the story being told here is that traveling with the doctor is an addiction. you either kick it or it eats up your whole life and then itself and you're left with nothing. travelling with the doctor is something that chews you up and spits you out and kills you and steals you out of your life and won't let you go back. only the doctor needs someone with him, doesn't he? isn't that what we've talked about so much? what happens to the doctor, to the universe, when the doctor goes alone?

so that leaves us with an endless parade of people marching to their doom to protect the universe from the doctor and who he becomes without them. which is a story that fits, technically. the minotaur in the maze, snapping up innocent people and emptying them out and filling them with prayer and waiting for it to all end. the doctor in his box, sweeping people out of their lives and filling them with adventure and wonder and sacrificing them to stop himself from going mad.

and i hate that story. i hate it so much. i hate it if it's on purpose and i hate it more if it's by accident, if they stumbled into that by having a flashy no-substance exit for amy and rory.

it's every take i hate on the doctor, it's the antithesis to the first message amy's arc had to say: the doctor is ancient and the doctor is alone and the doctor is kind. the doctor doesn't let other people keep hurting when he can stop it, even when it makes him not the doctor, even when it's the worst thing he's ever done.

just. i wish amy and rory had been allowed to be normal, like they wanted. i wish the doctor could have dropped in on them occasionally for dinner, or stayed away if he couldn't. i wish that they could have had a happy ending instead of a bittersweet one that leaves a sour taste in the back of my throat when i think about it for too long.

[8bitsupervillain]

Higurashi When They Cry Hou ch. 5 Meakashi pt. 8

A brief recap, Shion went to the school pretending to be Mion to try to find out what's going on with Satoshi. Satoshi rebuffed her by telling her to ask herself why he's being so cold and distant to her. She takes this harshly thinking it's an attack on her when it's really delivered to Mion. Going back to the classroom she sees Satoko crying, and so she attacks Satoko going so far as to try to slam a chair across her and Rika "in an attempt to make her stronger." Or something along those lines. Half-hearted apologies are said, and now everyone's just ducky. Because, you know, people can just forget and forgive assault just by saying sorry.

Shion, buddy, pal, Satoshi is unaware you even exist. Every single interaction you've had with the guy you've been masquerading yourself as Mion. Every interaction, every head rubbing, every manic breakdown freakout where you batter a ten year old he thinks is Mion.

This I feel really sums up Shion, always looking to shift the blame around rather than reflect on her own actions. Satoshi must be in the wrong for rejecting her, it must be Oryou's fault Satoshi rejected her. She is aware that the guy is under some serious stress, but is utterly unwilling to accept that maybe he's just lashing out.

Previously I had mentioned that I think Shion is only latching on to Satoshi because he was the first guy with a pulse to focus on her since leaving the school. I had genuinely forgot about the notebook page there that more or less confirmed my statement. I swear I'm not just trying to regurgitate what the VN says but put my own spin on it. It only looks that way. Also I see in the future Shion will still be unable to let Satoko just live. She committed the most vile crime, living.

So it cuts to the day before Watanagashi 1982, she's living her depressed life because the boy yelled at her, and wasn't instantly on her side when good ol' Kasai shows up.

While I find this interesting that this somewhat confirms that the Sonozaki family aren't responsible for the deaths I am getting hung up on a really small detail. "There were cases of multiple victims in the past." You mean, all of them? With the exception of the foreman, every one of the Oyashiro killings has been a couple. The Houjou parents, the Furude parents (then eventually the aunt Tamae Houjou, and Satoshi, and Tomitake and Takano a year from now). It's just such an odd translation error to make, I thought maybe that Shion didn't know about Rika's mom, but I double-checked and when she learns about the curse killings she is told point blank the mom is one of the victims as well.

Oh come now.

Come on Kasai, be a pal, kill a child for me! Shion-san... you seem weirdly invested in this child dying. Just do it you small-fry mother fucker!

Mion then calls Shion telling her to call Satoshi. She does so, and the two start talking, Satoshi apologizing for the way he acted after stopping Shion beating up Satoko.

This confirms this version of events takes place in a different timeline from at the very least Tatarigoroshi. In that chapter Mion mentions that Keiichi is saying things that were very similar to the last time she spoke to Satoshi. So unless we need to start thinking that every single time Mion is on-screen it's secretly Shion it seems very likely that the timeloop alternate timelines theory is the correct theory. Which, boy don't get me started on that particular conspiracy theory.

So, I wonder what this silence means. Did Mion say something different when he asked her about the curse? Or is he just giving up because try as he might Mion just refuses to accept the idea the curse exists? I would very much like to see that particular conversation. The two then end their conversation because Satoshi's aunt is approaching, and Satoshi asks Shion to keep an eye on Satoko forever. Which she doesn't reply to.

If this is the embodiment of Hinamizawa or Oyashiro I wonder why they decided to take the direct route and converse with Satoshi directly? Assuming the supernatural elements of the narrative are real, and not just the hallucinations of a diseased mind. I don't think this is an actual factual demon/god/spirit, I'm leaning on this is his mind reaching its limit and snapping like a dry twig. Like how Keiichi snapped and became demonically methodical when he decided to kill Teppen.

[clatoera]

I’m so invested now is there also a group chat comprising of the mentors?? Like is there an 8 person gc that they plan dinner parties and stuff in? And if so please elaborate on that too

Thats a great question and the answer is absolutely yes thank you for inquiring. These people got the gift of interdistrict communication (outside of bugged capitol phones and letters) for the first time and they don't know how to act. I remember when we got iphones for the first time and the group chat capability dropped. It was life changing. Thats how they feel. Like middle schoolers who all got their hands on the iphone 4 in 2010 (that was my first iphone, my first phone was an LG chocolate and then the next was an EnV3 theres a little lore about me).

They absolutely DO have an 8 person GC which is used to plan but is also weirdly used to like..absolutely roast the younger ones. Like this is their chance to just..casually haze them. By that I mean mostly hazing Cato, Clove, and Marvel, Glimmer gets a trauma pass but Marvel is called a twink by Gloss and Enobaria and Cato is called a slut also by Enobaria so maybe it's really Enobaria letting her thoughts be known BUT all this to say yes. They absolutely do. And sometimes do they send messages to the wrong group chat (ask @bodyelectric77, because yes they do)

All this to say there are so many group chats that pop up. Truly they're menaces when they realize how many subgroups can exist.

Cashmere, Gloss, Glimmer

Cashmere, Gloss, Glimmer, Marvel

Enobaria Brutus Cash and Gloss

Enobaria Brutus Cato and Clove

All the victors (UNWILLINGLY HEAVY ON THE UNWILLING)

The 8 careers plus finnick plus johanna plus annie

Finnick cash gloss glimmer

Finnick Annie Cato Clove Glimmer Marvel Johanna

Finnick Cato Marvel

Finnick Cato Marvel + peeta who gets added so cato can ask for a virginity status update and then then removed

Annie Clove Glimmer Johanna

the possibilities are truly ENDLESS and they absolutely and I mean ABSOLUTELY mix up who is in what one and say things they should not!!

The group chat lore is endless

[iniziare]

🔥 🔥 🔥 you know I’m here for it

Prompt: Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion. // Accepting. // @spiderwarden (and also @resolutepath because we'll just say that Tumblr ate yours)

Honestly, the vocabulary thing. There are some words that I desperately wish would stop being so weirdly... oddly trendy. Or even worse, quite vulgar and aggressive words that are being used so casually by so many people to a point of utmost normality.

As examples: stuff that you disagree with isn't 'gross' (god, this is possibly the one that I hate the very most), and people that you disagree with shouldn't go and 'choke', the kink of 'biting' isn't half as sexy as people think that it is or make it out to be (I know, this has literally no room in this unpopular opinion but I need to let it out somewhere— can someone send me one more fire-y symbol so I can yap about it? I'm just very salty), and on the topic of 'sexy', typing that or 'sex' in any other variation doesn't make it any less... well, exactly less than what it is. If anything, it just makes it look potentially juvenile, which I'd imagine should be the exact thing people should want to avoid when talking about that topic, right?

Maybe I'm actually a boomer at heart, but I've grown exceedingly tired, and it's getting increasingly common that I see people incredibly vulgar or rude vocabulary, and seem so perfectly fine with it— as if it's something cool. Someone in my life once said that 'words mean something', and I want to pass that message along. Yes, words really do mean something. Some really were never intended to be used so casually, they're harsh for a reason— and throwing them around so easily and quickly really... doesn't do much else from those who don't want to play into trendy things (or are too old and tired for them, like me). I'm actually confused, come to think of it, because on one side I see people overuse numerous quite vulgar things without a moment's worth of hesitation, and on the other end, I see people unwilling/unable to type out the word sex or sexy, as if they find it taboo. How did we get here, you ask? I'm not entirely sure, but I'm quite ready to crawl into my bed.

[senkicho]

The vilification of Itachi

I don’t usually scroll into the naruto fandom, but i rewatched the entire series this week and i felt like looking at what other people were saying. I was going through the anti-hiruzen hashtag ( because that man deserves the worst and was a horrible person ), when i realised something that was really surprising ( to me at least ). When people take a look at the decimation of the uchiha clan and all that led up to it, they rightfully blame Hiruzen and Tobirama, but also weirdly Itachi. Which is really surprising to me because i’d never seen itachi’s involvement in the massacre as anything but unwilling . Granted, this is a very small portion of the fandom, but it still stuck out to me. So i wanted to give my two cents on it. 

First of all let us remember that Itachi Uchiha was 13 at the time of the massacre . 13 . A CHILD.  I can guarantee you that he had no say in the final decision or in the long process that led to this decision being made. And whatever power you might argue that he might’ve had, would  not have been authentic or truly his own. Itachi was part of the Anbu, and had been since the age of 11. The Anbu were loyal to the village, and were taught to be mindless puppets who obeyed orders without question and pretty much gave up on their identity.  What’s worse is that the one controlling the Anbu at the time was Danzo. That is extremely alarming when taking into account the man’s personal relationship with Itachi. We can assume that Itachi has been under Danzo’s titular since his enrolment, given the mans interest in the Sharingan  and the fact that he was the one who appointed Itachi as captain and assigned him to the Anbu in the first place. There was no way he had any true say in what happened. He was a puppet. A sword used and then left to die. 

What’s more, Itachi was in a position, where he either had to take his clans life, or see his village plunged to war. It was literally said that “ an Uchiha coup would lead to intervention from other villages and ultimately start another World War”.  As someone who was present during the third shinobi war and was heavily traumatized by it how was he supposed to support that. He started acting as the third hokage’s spy, because he wanted to find a peaceful solution . But that was impossible. On one hand the Uchiha’s had been oppressed since the beginning of the villages foundation and were rightfully outraged and fed up. On the other hand, the third Hokage who was unwilling to resolve that issue, was enabling his council who were asking for a military response . Do y’all see the position he is in? Once again, Itachi was a child when all of this was happening . Can you imagine the sort of pressure that is for a 13 year old? Asked to join in a revolution against a system you’ve been groomed to follow since your earliest years, a revolution that will very well lead to a world war; or tasked with the extermination of your entire family in the name of protecting the village. 

Itachi was a child failed by all the adults around him, and was put in a position he never should’ve been in. He didn’t deserve any of it, and while i do understand people’s outrage at what happened to the Uchiha’s ( i get it i am very much against all of it too), i truly believe that people’s anger is misguided . 

[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is telling most people you're in a monogamous relationship so people don't try to ask you out or set you up on dates

.

[hollypunkers]

reasons Mako is really really great and should be appreciated so much for how he raised Bolin coming from just watching Republic City Hustle:

He made robbing people fun. It was a necessity, and clearly a dangerous way to live but their only choice, so he not only clearly picks a target that isn’t a threat but turns it into a game where Bolin can play the Good Guy and fool around, be a hero, and have fun.

In that same vein, with almost every chance he gets he compliments Bolin (“nice grab little brother” etc. a trait he continues until adulthood with people he cares about, it’s stilted and awkward later but clearly Mako’s trying) this is probably why Bolin’s confidence is basically through the roof.

Bolin recognized Toza and calls him his “hero” indicating he has been to pro-bending matches before, later we see them both working at the match while Mako has to remind Bolin he is working too. Mako also doesnt recognize Toza on sight. I think it’s safe to imply Bolin working with Mako is new (some evidence for that later as well) and Mako would normally work while letting Bolin have a fun night watching the matches.

Bolin is sad to see his hero lose, Mako tries to reiterate a lesson that basically boils down to “they wouldnt help us, why should we care?” It’s a lesson that rings true for Mako, the caretaker, but doesn’t for Bolin because Bolin always had Mako and knows what it’s like to be cared for.

When Shady Shin threatens to send them back to the streets Mako’s first instinct is to give Bolin a reassuring pat on the back and tell him not to worry.

While Bolin is doing his antics we always see Mako just behind him, watching and keeping an eye out. The only time he isn’t is when it is implied Mako was doing some work on his own (after Bolin got mad) and Bolin snuck away, after which Mako immediately finds Bolin the moment he’s in danger to save him.

Bolin wants an adorable pet, Mako immediately tells him “No. The last thing we need is one more mouth to feed.” Again, Mako as the parent having to juggle being the good guy and the bad guy, taking all the responsibility of caring for them on his own shoulders. And he has a point. Mako is clearly struggling just to keep Bolin and himself fed (“We didn’t eat anything yesterday.”) and the last thing they need is a pet.

Bolin begs Mako (typical kid stuff wanting a pet “aw he’s so cute!” “Ple-ease??”) and is suprised it doesn’t work and sad when Mako tells him to toughen up. Bolin begging is interesting because it tells us it often probably works, Mako giving Bolin what he asks for; and in this instance Bolin is very much acting like any normal child while once again Mako is the (reasonable) parent.

From what I inferred earlier where Bolin helping with the work being new, Mako has just started to get Bolin into this criminal world with the Triple Threats and is clearly worried Bolin is too soft for it, while at the same time interestingly never brings up how Bolin is five years older than Mako was when Mako started taking care of them. I think one of the arcs of this series was Mako realizing Bolin, because of who he was and how sheltered he’d been, couldn’t survive in the same environment Mako was. Mako has earned the respect of Shady Shin, meanwhile Bolin can’t even handle this one job. (Mako, a pragmatist, realizes by the end that if Bolin stayed in this work he’d have to become more like Mako, and so Mako takes the out Toza offers.)

Bolin. Is. An. Optimist. Bolin grew up living on the streets, hungry and poor, and he’s an optimist. Why? Just jump back to the scene with Shady Shin where the moment things seems scary Mako immediately reassures Bolin. Mako is hypersensitive to Bolin’s emotions, even when chastizing him he falls back to a kind voice and explains why, so it’s no small leap to say Bolin always thinks things are going to turn out okay because that’s what Mako has told him his whole life.

“Maybe I’m not as mean as you! Maybe I just can’t turn my back on people when they’re down!” Bolin calls Mako mean and uncaring, and Mako.... sighs. He doesn’t respond, just takes it in, lets Bolin have his emotions and even say cruel things to him and just internalizes it and leaves it alone.

Mako weirdly knows exactly how to handle a dangerous snake. I don’t know what this means. Either he has experience or it’s pure Mom Instinct where he sees Bolin in trouble and just wrangles a dangerous snake and flings it back into its cage in seconds.

Mako relents on the Pabu business right after Bolin puts himself in danger to save the animal and Bolin gives him puppy dog eyes (also after Bolin called him mean). Maybe he thinks having a pet can teach Bolin responsibility, or maybe he doesn’t want Bolin to think he’s mean, either way, Mako knows it’s not a great idea to have a pet but still gives up, apparently not able to say no to Bolin twice.

Bolin never apologizes or is asked to apologize for calling Mako mean and uncaring. In fact, considering the sequence of events, Mako is the one who apologizes by letting Bolin keep Pabu even though by all accounts Mako was right not to want a pet. When Mako does admonish Bolin it’s only in ways Bolin needs to act in order to survive, otherwise Mako seems unwilling to defend himself or make Bolin change in any way. (Mako models this type of forgiveness despite being the wronged party which interestingly, Bolin shows later throughout LoK and it is something people love about him, but the origins are here, coming from Mako.)

“You really have a habit of getting in stupid situations” Mako tells Bolin, indicating this type of behavior, Bolin getting in trouble and Mako coming to save him, happens a lot. (Even in the end, Mako finds out Bolin bet all their money on a fixed match, like c’mon Bolin.) Bolin just says “I know” and Mako leaves the conversation at that without rubbing it in. A surprising amount of maturity for a fifteen year old.

Bolin can’t keep his mouth shut and gets them in trouble, shouting and excited during the match; as Mako looks embarrassed and worried, another indication that this, Bolin being present with the Triads, is a recent development and a clear indicator Mako was right telling Bolin to toughen up or he wouldn’t survive, as they instantly find themselves running and fighting for their lives.

“Can we, Mako? Mako, can we? Mako, please!” Mako is so explicitly the parent to Bolin it’s sad. He is fifteen, he’s been on his own with Bolin since he was eight and literally witnessed his parents die, and throughout the series we see him comforting Bolin, suppressing his own emotions, and being a parent over and over again. Meanwhile Bolin acts like a child, who had a normalish childhood, who plays games and laughs and is optimistic and confident and wants a pet, so despite everything they went through, and how hard it was, Mako was clearly a very good parent to Bolin.

Shady Shin miscalculates in the end by telling Mako “don’t go soft on me”, the same thing Mako was telling Bolin; which goes all the way back to my earlier point that Mako knows Bolin won’t last as a Triad and needs something else. “I do have to take care of my brother, and I think this is what’s best for him.” There, explicitly, the only reason they become pro-benders is because Mako thinks it’s right for Bolin, ‘what is right for Bolin’ is the basis of all his choices, what is right for Mako isn’t considered because what Mako wants is for Bolin to be happy.

In conclusion, if you hate Mako and love Bolin, I think you need to take a step back and remember who raised Bolin.

[rahadaddy]

Musicals & DMing (Saturday)

More aptly it’s just me and musical theatre and theraflu tonight before I run a session some time tomorrow, So far, here are my galaxy brain takes:

Ireena songs

“Show Yourself” from Frozen 2 - specifically my Saturday Ireena having a conversation with Tatyana for what seems like hours in the few seconds it takes her to hit the bottom of the pool of the White Sun. You are the one you’ve been waiting for all of your life. I cried in my kitchen over this line. Tatyana letting Ireena go and Ireena finally getting to be Ireena and Ireena Alone. 

“Hey Little Songbird” from Hadestown - Strahd and a Tatyana incarnation. IDK who. But it hit me like a sack of bricks after “Show Yourself” tonight

“Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid - another Saturday thing specifically, but Ludmilla taking over coaching Gertruda in being a bride since Finnegan is on the cusp of catastrophic failure because this girl doesn’t know how to have a pleasing conversation with Strahd. 

“Once Upon a Dream” from Sleeping Beauty - Tatyana’s soul seeking Sergei’s EVERY LIFETIME and never finding him

“Holding Out for a Hero” in a minor key - Tatyana’s soul holding our for Sergei EVERY LIFETIME and never finding him.... But Ireena finding Dorinn. Hell yeah, this is Saturday shit. 

“Hellfire” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame - STRAHD. Strahd and Tatyana always. But also like..... the line “Destroy Esmeralda” CRACKS ME UP. 

“Congratulations” from Hamilton - Rahadin (or Alek, I need opinions by tomorrow about Alek) chewing Strahd tf out. You’re the only enemy you ever lose to. 

“Rewrite the Stars” from The Greatest Showman - Saturday game, Rahadin and Scout in the Temple except she gets to do her acrobatic routine. 

“Heart of Stone” from Six - EVERY. SINGLE. MOTHER. IN. THIS. GAME. Anya. Lydia. Rahadin’s mother, whose name I haven’t revealed. 

“Wait for Me” from Hadestown - Trevor @ Finnegan. Oh, my heart. 

“In My Dreams” from Anastasia the Musical - Ireena when she still carries Tatyana’s soul. Oof. 

“The Other Side” from The Greatest Showman - Strahd trying to seduce Finnegan into joining the Court

“Agony” from Into The Woods - S T R A H D and weirdly enough Victor Vallakovich. One singing about an unwilling bride and the other singing about one locked away who he wishes would be free. 

“Getting Married Today” from Company - Scout at the dinner, having a wedding sprung on her

“Being Alive” from Company - Strahd if he realized that Ludmilla fucking loves him, dumbass

“A Call from the Vatican” from Nine - Anastrasya, the walking thirst trap, rip queen

“Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” from Avenue Q - My party calling Barovians out

“Meadowlark” from The Baker’s Wife - Ireena talking about the difference between Strahd and Dorinn

“I Won’t Say I’m in Love” from Hercules - Scout about Rahadin. Duh.

“You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton - S T R A H D

“All I Ask Of You” from Phantom of the Opera - In a weird turn of events, Trevor is Raoul and Finnegan is Christine. Somewhere Strahd is The Phantom. Deal with it, Clare.

“Do You Love Me?” from Fiddler on the Roof - Strahd and Ludmilla

“River Lullaby” - Anya and the twins. Cry again. 

“Belle (Reprise)” from Beauty and the Beast - Ireena after Strahd approached her the first time. “Can you imagine me? The wife of that boorish, brainless...!”

“I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan - Dorinn training Vallaki’s town guard last week. 

“Honey Honey” the Mamma Mia version - People reading her journal from when Urlstra was collecting her freaking harem

“Mother Knows Best” from Tangled - Fiona Wachter and Stella if Dorinn hadn’t KILLED HER ON STAGE DAMN DUDE 

“This Is My Idea” from The Swan Princess - Victor Vallakovich and Stella Wachter and their courtship. 

“Speechless” from the Aladdin live action movie - Each of the main female characters on Saturday have had this moment s2g

“Unusual Way” from Nine - Ludmilla about Strahd. WHY HAVE THEY AND STRAHD/ALEK TAKEN UP MY BRAIN SPACE?

“Sibella” from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder - Strahd and Anastrasya during their courtship

“Could I Leave You?” from Follies - Ludmilla @ Strahd on a bad day

“Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me” from Rocky Horror Picture Show - Ireena at Dorinn lbr

“Let Me Be Your Wings” from Thumbelina - Dorinn and Ireena being cute af

“God Help the Outcasts” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Ez in the Church of St. Andral, thinking Lucian and/or Urlstra can’t see her

“The Next Right Thing” from Frozen 2 - Victor Vallakovich coping with his parents’ death and the burden of being burgomaster

“Burn for You” from the Bridgerton musical - Rahadin and Scout

“My Petersburg” from the Anastasia musical - Dorinn showing Ireena Waterdeep someday

“Dangerous to Dream” from the Frozen Musical - Stella Wachter and/or Victor Vallakovich breaking my heart

[forevercloudnine]

pre-new 52 scarebat ship meme

 (I actually have no idea what to call this period of comics. The dc wiki calls this the “New Earth” universe... it’s like, everything after Jason Todd was retconned out of being a circus acrobat up to Flashpoint. Anyway like a month ago I asked @heroes-etc​ to send me questions for this version of scarebat from this ship meme but then forgot that I did it because I got distracted by other ships. Sorry Jonathan...)

4. Who can’t keep their hands to themselves?

Bruce does DO physical affection — I mean, how many comic panels do we even have of him making out with Catwoman on rooftops — but he’s not especially forthcoming with it. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that his love interests are more likely to instigate contact than he is, especially when that love interest is a villain like Selina or Talia (can you even IMAGINE him trying to take them off guard in a fight by grabbing their face for a kiss? Because I cannot).

He does occasionally instigate affection with his children/proteges, though usually it’s in instances where they obviously need comfort. Bruce isn’t always great at handling complicated emotional situations, but grief and trauma is something he understands very intimately, and he never hesitates to physically reassure people who are in that kind of pain.

In situations where someone isn’t in the active process of being traumatized, he’s less forward with physical affection. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll reject it if it’s instigated — depending on who you are, of course. I’m guessing he wouldn’t put up with hugs from random members of the Justice League. Superman is his best friend and he would probably try to wiggle out of 90% of Kal hugs if doing so was physically possible. Most of his loved ones don’t really spring physical affection on him unless they need it or it’s an especially emotional moment, however. It’s not really Bruce’s primary love language. 

Jonathan seems even less physically affectionate than Bruce, though obviously doesn’t have a lot of opportunity to demonstrate how he feels either way. Master of Fear offers the only example of him expressing explicitly romantic affection that I know of (unless you count his terrorizing Becky Albright in New Year’s Evil as physical affection, which... might be how he’s thinking of it...?), and it’s entirely instigated by Sherry Squire. He does ask her to the Halloween party, but she’s the one who takes him down to the furnace room for some “one-on-one” time and tells him to kiss her. 

He also notably does not actually get a chance to kiss her, mainly because the whole thing was a prank meant to humiliate him. This might be why he doesn’t try to instigate anything similar with his next crush, Dr. Linda Friitawa (again, unless you count Becky Albright, but I can’t find New Year’s Evil to read anywhere so my only knowledge of his interaction with her comes from Tumblr. I’m like 80% sure he was supposed to be interested in her romantically, but asking someone to do supervillainy with you isn’t the most direct way to express attraction, so I’m taking that as more obliqueness from Jonathan).

He never expresses any direct romantic interest in Linda, but at the very least he clearly cares about her more than he cares for most people, since he, like. Defends her in conversation and apologizes to her for things that aren’t even his fault. Which means a lot, coming from a sociopath with no regard for human life. They do hold hands at one point, but Linda reaches out to him first, and he waits to see if she’s going to back away from his reciprocated touch before he reaches for her other hand. 

He never instigates anything further with her, possibly out of fear of rejection. Unfortunately, it turns out that this was a good call, because Linda was only pretending to be nice to him while Penguin was paying her to experiment on Jonathan without his knowledge. When Batman figures out what they’re doing, she immediately fucks off and starts dating Black Mask.

Even more unfortunately, his 45 seconds of hand holding with Backstabby McMad Scientist is probably the only mutual physical affection Jonathan has ever experienced in his entire life, so honestly I have no idea if he would be more into it as a concept if it was offered to him more often. He’s clearly willing to return physical contact when it’s initiated by someone else, so maybe it is something he would seek out in an actual relationship? He DOES get handsy with Bruce when he has Batman tied up sometimes. 

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

Trip out on fear toxin, both of them, hands down. There are few things more embarrassing than, as Jonathan aptly describes it, being “reduced to whimpering quivers” in front of your enemy. Especially an enemy who’s presumably jotting down notes on your worst fears, since Batman/Scarecrow fights tend to just be competitions in who’s more frightening.

11. What do they hide from one another?

I mean, obligatory mention of the fact that Bruce hides things from absolutely everyone (with the possible exception of Alfred, because Bruce trusts him as completely as he is capable of trusting anyone, and also because it’s really hard to hide things from a parent whose involved in every aspect of your life and already knew you before you developed your pathological need to obfuscate your feelings and intentions).

As Wonder Woman pretty aptly describes during the Tower of Babel arc, even Bruce’s closest allies are never going to hear the full story from him. So it’s deeply unlikely he’d ever be 100% truthful with a supervillain, even if they got close AND Jonathan reformed. 

But it’s notable that Jonathan’s fear toxin has actually given him a more honest look into Bruce’s psyche than he would ever purposefully give to people who aren’t close family members. And by “close family members” I again pretty much just mean Alfred. Unfortunately for Bruce, nothing forces emotional transparency like mind altering drugs. Fortunately for Jonathan, nothing forces emotional transparency like mind altering drugs! Not that I’m recommending that anyone drug a romantic partner into being honest with them. But Jonathan is a trained psychiatrist, so I assume his psychological know-how combined with insights gleaned from the dozens of “sessions” he’s had with Batman in the past would leave him more prepared than most to decipher the mystery that is Bruce Wayne. (@heroes-etc: riddler is SEETHING.)

Jonathan meanwhile is more than capable of putting together a clandestine scheme, but in respect to himself he’s actually pretty straightforward. Though his driving motivation in this continuity gets more and more complicated over time, from the early 90’s “I just like fear” to the early 2000’s “my Granny tortured me with birds when I was a child and now I’m obsessed with inspiring the same fear and submission she forced on me onto others,” what doesn’t change is his willingness to monologue about it to anyone who’s listening.

Also, anything that Jonathan is unable or unwilling to go into detail on, Bruce is more than capable of puzzling out himself. In Scarecrow: Year One he successfully tracks down Jonathan’s old home to recover and read through Granny Keeney’s diary, and after Scarecrow’s Master of Fear origin was published, it’s clear that Bruce has done his research on Jonathan’s childhood. There’s even a (presumably unintentionally) hilarious scene where Bruce pauses mid-rescue of a man that Jonathan has kidnapped and traumatized with fear toxin to lecture him on having bullied Jon in high school.

Is this really the time, Bruce???

(@heroes-etc: oh 100% he nailed that timing.)

13. When do they realise they should get together?

Well, circling back to Tower of Babel, it’s revealed when Ra’s al Ghul has Talia steal Bruce’s contingency plans for defeating the Justice League that Bruce has “borrowed” Scarecrow’s fear toxin in case he has to take down Aquaman.

This was back when Scarecrow had a number of different toxins that induced different phobias, or made people hallucinate hyper-specific nightmare scenarios (such as “being eaten alive by roaches from the inside,” for some terrible reason). Batman notes in his contingency files that Scarecrow has already done the work for him; presumably Jonathan had already designed a formula to induce hydrophobia, so all Bruce had to do was steal a vial of it from a crime scene.

(The sentence “Why not make him incapacitate himself... perhaps through fear?” alone is like 90% of why I think these men would get along like burlap on fire if they ever actually cooperated on something. Also, unrelated, but the polaroid of Jonathan he has in the Aquaman file is weirdly adorable.)

Bruce’s plan for Arthur is incredibly effective, and notably also Bruce’s only contingency that isn’t either inherently lethal or a ruthlessly sociopathic betrayal of emotional vulnerabilities that had been revealed to him in trust and friendship (RIP Kyle Rayner).

(Notably, Bruce’s plans for Kyle and several other leaguers directly involve using their worst fears against them, even without a fear toxin conveniently tailored for this purpose. Bruce just really likes using fear as a weapon against people.)

After Tower of Babel, Bruce obviously needed to create new contingencies, since the whole point is that they were secret plans that no one could see coming. In canon, Bruce goes on to create the A.I. satellite Brother Eye for this purpose (which backfires even worse than his first set of contingency plans, because of course it does). But I think an interesting alternative could have been Bruce tapping Jonathan for more toxin strands tailored to taking down the Justice League. If Bruce Wayne offered to pay Scarecrow’s way out of Arkham in order to develop formulas that could neutralize the world’s most powerful superheroes, is there any way that Jonathan would turn him down? I mean, obviously he would plan on betraying Wayne at some point, and Bruce would similarly be working against Jonathan’s best interests. But maybe if they set aside their “who’s scarier” dick measuring contest to work together for once, they could come to recognize their shared passion: scaring the shit of people.

Also, the Jonathan in this continuity really likes books. And you know what’s a reliably sustainable source of books that can’t be confiscated by the authorities? Dating Bruce Wayne. The manor alone probably has an insane amount of rare books that have been hoarded by his family over the years. It’s like a weird reversal of the Beauty and the Beast, where the rude rich guy who gives a library to the love interest he may or may not have technically kidnapped is the pretty one.

21. Where do they get nervous about going with one another?

If they were dating, I’m guessing Jonathan wouldn’t want to go anywhere in public with Bruce at all. Bruce Wayne is a celebrity bachelor, and celebrity bachelors get a lot of attention, and people who take celebrity bachelors off the market get a lot of NEGATIVE attention. The public reaction to Bruce settling into a committed relationship with anyone would be the kind of weirdly resentful gossipy judgement that the girlfriends of famous princes or actors or musicians always get from tabloids and entertainment television, but in Jonathan’s case it would be a million times worse. Not just because he’s a supervillain, because if there’s any town that would expect its most eligible bachelor to eventually date a supervillain, it’s Gotham. But more specifically because “ugly social outcast” is one of Scarecrow’s most enduring character traits. Not exactly the traditional trophy wife. And though Jonathan’s Scarecrow identity seems to distance him from a lot of the shame he suffered growing up, I’m guessing that the kind of spiteful vitriol that would follow him anywhere he accompanied Bruce would at the least bring back some very unwanted memories.

Bruce probably doesn’t have the same discomfort Jonathan would with being seen together in public. He doesn’t care if people think Bruce Wayne is insane or lacking in judgement as long as they don’t think he’s Batman, and I’m sure he’d find a way to spin “dating a man who prefers to dress exclusively in burlap” into something appropriately characteristic of playboy idiocy. But while he'd definitely respect Jonathan's wishes to stay out of the public sphere, he would probably enjoy any opportunity to bring Scarecrow into Gotham high society, since his presence would definitely shake up a party, and Bruce is generally extremely bored at any social event where he doesn’t have anyone to snark with. And with Jonathan’s scathing wit as entertainment, Bruce might one day fulfill Alfred’s wish and actually make it through an intermission sometime.

I’d say that Bruce would be nervous about taking Jonathan out for “field research,” but I’m sure it would be one of Scarecrow’s requirements for any long term collaboration, so it’s something that he would have to get used to pretty quickly. He would probably endeavor to keep Jonathan away from anything that could retrigger his less healthy behaviors. On the other hand, it’s not like Bruce does that for himself, so it stands to reason that he probably wouldn’t be able to successfully control Jonathan in that regard either. 

It doesn’t help that one of Jonathan’s primary motivations in villainy is his childhood, which is... exactly the same thing that Bruce is fixated on. A significant portion of Scarecrow: Year One is the two of them waxing poetic about how similar they are in this regard. 

Relating to this, even though it might be a terrible idea, I don’t think Bruce would be able to resist encouraging Jonathan to reconnect with his mom. Bruce would never recommend for someone like Cassandra to seek out a relationship with her father, but if someone he cares about has a LIVING parent who WASN’T abusive to them? It seems unlikely that Bruce wouldn’t advocate for reconciliation. Jonathan’s dad obviously never cared about the teenage girl he knocked up or their bastard child, but Karen Keeney is a different story. DC Holiday Special ‘09 makes it clear that Jonathan was taken away from her against her will, and she’s spent a significant portion of her life wracked by guilt imagining what the woman who abused her was doing to her son.  

Ultimately she attempts to commit suicide because she feels personally responsible for every terrible thing her son has ever done, which is tragic because really she’s the only member of the Keeney family completely blameless in the creation of the Scarecrow. In Scarecrow: Year One Jonathan clearly resents her for leaving him and moving on to have another baby that she actually did keep, which I would call a really paranoid case of jumping to conclusions if it didn’t seem extremely likely that Granny Keeney told him his mother didn’t want him and left him to be tortured on purpose.

(Side note, it is REALLY weird how young Karen Keeney is depicted in Scarecrow: Year One. At times her son looks older than she is, and it doesn’t help that her second born child is an infant for some reason. Even if Jonathan is only thirty years old here, then unless she had him at younger than fourteen, she should already be in her mid-forties. Why did she only have a second child so late in life? The implication with her abusive husband is that she ended up getting trapped in a bad relationship for survival when her family kicked her out as a teenager for disgracing the family by having Jonathan. It would make way more sense for her child with him to be at least in elementary school. Also the scene would have been way more interesting if Scarecrow’s sister was old enough to talk.)

Thankfully Deadman manages to convince Karen to hold on to life long enough for someone to call 911, and she ends up surviving the suicide attempt. But were Jonathan ever to reform, it seems like reconciliation would be really healthy for both of them, since miraculously Karen still seems to care about Jonathan despite everything he’s put her through, and they’re both clearly still suffering from the after effects of Mary Keeney’s abuse. 

Bruce would be enthusiastic about this prospect for obvious reasons, although he would presumably still be nervous about the possibility of everything going terribly wrong. And even if everything went perfectly right, he would STILL be nervous, because everytime Jonathan goes to see his mother there’s a chance that she will mention the time that she kissed Batman full on the mouth. And that is not information you would ever want your psychologist boyfriend to know, unless you want to be mocked with Freudian buzzwords for the rest of your natural life. 

(...This would also count as a thing that Bruce hides from Jonathan.)

[ranmanjuu]

—gen z mc with uesugi-takeda + misc. forces

ahh, i’m so glad people liked my gen z oda hcs! lol it’s usually pretty slow from my writing blog experiences until now, but i’m rlly happy! i was planning to do u-t and the others but then i decided to stop at oda and continue another day. thx for the asks tho! and yeah, i do take requests but it’s more of a pasttime, since this whole blog is just my stupid ideas written out and shared out there.

also someone said that a gen z mc could be old enough to romance the warlords, like, early twenties. and yes, very fair if u wanna romance ur mans with memes and existentialism go for it!! i just think it adds more to the comedy side of this child they have to babysit, while not fearing death or any consequences from their dumb of Ass decisions. someone who fears no death and armed with no braincells is a fool, but a Child who fears no death and armed with no braincells is also a fool, but more bizzare and has That Vibe y’know

@niphredil-14​ and @arthotsglasses​

tw: s*icidal, violent jokes treated in a light manner

also spoilers to some things of their characters

—kenshin:

who is this,, , sassy lost child??

he first saw you prepared to throw hands with ronins who were being Elite Dickheads. ofc, armed with nothing compared to the sworded-adults, he had to interfere.

no matter how cold he treated you, masking his secret !!!-like concern, you seemed so unfazed through it. you still interacted with him like normal,,,,, why?? do you want a death wish?

and each time he threatened you with,, anything, you responded with, “the only one who gets to hurt & kill me, is ME”

...... what?

he’s convinced you’re the biggest fool of a person. and he’d be right but even so, he has a weirdly strong need to protect you as you two got closer. you’re often with sasuke, so it’s harder to avoid you.

even with all the Horrible jokes you make on a daily basis, if your passionate side with everyone having equal rights of being treated as human, for him it shows a side of you that makes you seem precious and pure and kind hearted.

and the overprotective side increases.

which is, ,, a bit problematic sometimes cause you have the tendency to target and piss off anyone in a 10 meter range by just one (1) sassy comment, along with your lack of impulse control and blurting out everything in your mind. it’s made you a lot of short enemies in the sengoku period, and kenshin would always be ready to slice them down behind you.

sasuke has to tame him down with his Masters degree in kenshin-wrangling.

at banquets, kenshin would often have you beside him. if you’re too young for sake do age for drinking exist in sengoku? probably not. it’s more of sasuke advising for him to not give you alcoholic drinks he’ll have you pouring for him or just munching away at pickled plums or food.

—shingen:

(ngl i kinda had a hard time with this since it’s erasing a big part of his overall character,,, flirting)

once he heard the news that oda had taken in somone as young as you during honno-ji,, ,,,he’s in a very “how dare that demon >>:( taking such a pure soul,....”

and when you’re taken to kasugayama as a captive, you’re,,, surprisingly very calm and whelmed. you don’t have much sign of fear or anxiety in your overall demeanor meanwhile you’re busy dissociating and spacing out to feel those

you actually don’t seem to hate your captor. but shingen isn’t sure if your ‘fingerguns’ is a good thing or not cause it depicts you pointing guns @ him,, (dw is good shingen)

while yes being held hostage—no matter how good you’re being treated—isn’t ideal and kinda not very cash money, you consider shingen v chill. man has a kindheart!! “i diagnose you with good vibes.”

if he ever sees your righteous side, as everyone else, he’ll deeply admire you. he himself is someone who believes in such as well. and hearing the circumstances in the modern world regarding those things (blm, etc.) his heart truly does go out for you. he feels sympathy for such a young person like you having to take action

also your dirty humor around him, echigo’s player, kind of makes him question where and how you learnt it

and,, his illness.

through getting straight to the point and not falling for it each time he changes subject/dodges the question, you managed to get to the bottom of his illness. shingen himself thinks it’s not something you have to burden with knowing—you’re so, so young.

but that doesn’t matter to you. the world’s given you such a shit time, you’re mature enough to understand the situation at least.

and as he finishes his explanation, all there was is silence. it felt wrong to say any of your usual quips,, so all you did was slowly came there and hugged him.

that was more than what he’d ask for.

—sasuke:

oh hell yeah

you are in your element with him. the chillest guy to talk to, and probably the first one you’re the closest to

your phone was dead after like 2 days of use, and you were miserable while hideyoshi, like a typical parent, told you to go outside and into town. sensing your bad mood, sasuke asked what’s up. you deadpanned, “my phone game ended and now i’m ready to commit not breath.” you oslemnly look out in the bustling streets and clutched your fist like an Anime Protagonist, “those boomer memes were right all along... i am absolutely Miserable and Useless(^TM) without it.”

in response, you could’ve sworn he did the Anime Glasses thing as well, “then we at team Moderately Awesome Sengoku Ninja are happy to announce the launch of a DIY phone charger, made with the electricity from a fruit and the main functionality of a solar panel. and has more durability than samsung’s.”

there were Stars in your eyes now. with a big grin, you thank him, “i’d die for you, sasuke.”

“then perish.” he said with a blank look. (yukimura, in the bg: ???!!!??!??!?)

the next day he consentually breaks in through the ceiling and gives you the weird contraption. you’re now saved, soul-wise.

the memes start coming and they don’t stop coming from the two of you. in any situation. whether it’d be at a teahouse, or at a battlefield that can determine your life and death.

and you can have discussions about current world events, or the past ones, with him and he’d understand completely what you’re talking about. it’s those rare nights when you’ve been thinking and have a deep conversation with him in his room, and as an adult, it makes for interesting results as well.

the others are endlessly confused, but you’re both so unapologetically yourselves.

and he’s super protective if the circumstances are tough. he feels bad for dragging another person in the sengoku with him—much less when they’re so young like you.

if you’re enough of a lil shit, once you’re taken into kasugayama, in the nights where you can’t sleep because brain at what would be 3 am, you’d probably trudge over to his room and wake him up to tell him what kind of mind-blowing shit you realized.

—yukimura:

when he saved you from falling to your death, your reaction already set off weird Vibes inside him. what do you mean, “you stopped me from fleeing this fleeting world by the sweet embrace of death” ?!?!?! are you crazy?? yes

he doesn’t waste time getting blunt with you at all either.

once he goes into azuchi as a merchant, he silently observes you talking to sasuke for a bit. what’s with your weird language?? and crude humor???? never in his life has he met someone in your age act like that wtf

even so, he still operates on the basis of ‘‘if sasuke trusts you, i trust you’’, no matter how utterly concerned you make him feel

you have a dirtier mind than him! unsurprisingly. along with everyone else, you often tease the poor soul, a nd you’d gladly tell him what the innuendoes mean ( 69, etc.) and maybe sprinkle in some gay jokes in there

and why do you keep mentioning this “bromance between him and sasuke” ?? what us,,, a bromance????? and why is sasuke in it??

he takes you out to teahouses to eat chestnut dumplings and other desserts with you. you always seem to target the one he doesn’t like the most and have a bit of banter

your relationship is built on banter but what’s different rlly

he treats you much more maturely than other people your age. as in, he doesn’t pull back his punches in words most of the time. you don’t seem to around him also, it looks like.

and, he’s also very protective of you. he regards you as his little sibling, as rat as you may be. and he does care about you—he might just be a bit unwilling to say it

—yoshimoto:

you think he’s very chill, if a bit unique but who were you to judge. and he is, if you ever meet him in echigo or even azuchi

his big liking to art and something of apathy to people is osmething you can respect. there’s something about that kind of Vibe that you find oddly a mood.

and oh boy oh boy you wasted no time pulling up your phone and showing images of what art is in the future. whether it’d be a screenshot of anime, fanart, aesthetic-like ones, palette-themed—the whole shabang. 

and, somehow, you were left ranting to him  about how some artists in the future get it so shitty for theft, reposting, not crediting, the list goes on (please be a decent human being to artist, sincerely the author) and he can’t help but just listen in silence and kind of thinking about how you’re so passionate about the Struggles of artists. and it isn’t something he sees often in the sengoku era—where war rules most things.

and he does find art from the modern times interesting, how they’re so different and vast in styles. and not only that, it’s not like the future only has one major style like then, each hand can draw such different pictures and still have beauty in each. he appreciates and admires that.

and he does tell you his thoughts ^ while you give your own insight. it’s so fascinating to see someone like you having strong opinions on this.

because, well, rn art is a big thing in our lives as we’re stuck inside. a part of entertainment is looking at any media of art—and he finds his view of art and yours quite the same. you two came from a time of turmoil (one moreso than the other) but still think art isn’t exactly irrelevant just because it isn’t a cure to diseases or the Ultimate Weapon.

you had to Surgically Remove him from your phone so you can use it and to stop him from draining your battery looking at the art

and he often drags you out to town and admire pieces when you’re holing yourself in too much. your comments are always unknown to him, “radical”, “that’s one i can vibe with ngl”, and the list goes on.

and you occasionally call him pretty boy as a compliment rlly

—kennyo:

when you first saw him at honno-ji, and he won’t forget the one (1) line you gave him, all you said to his warning of ooo spooky demons was, “that’s lit fam gtg tho”

and that alone was enough to stun him for a few seconds

honestly you told the others of your meeting with kennyo before they told you it could be kennyo. just a throaway line of “oh yeah there was this dude with a scar across his face.” / “,,, ,....that’s kennyo. he’s really dangerous actually—” / “oh, poggers”

you’re probably kind of half the reason the oda forces found who dun it.

and it was an eye for an eye, kennyo himself found out that you were their child chatelaine, and very close to the others. as per his villain-schedule, he kidnaps you .

he laments about how “such a pure soul such as yours is not to be stained by the demon’s hands”

oh how Wrong he was.

you were the definition of the opposite of pure. and you seemed unfazed, which surprised kennyo but shrugged it off. he was willing to face you screaming and panicking, along with shouldering the sin of doing the deed. but instead, he was met with a raised eyebrow and, “this is unexpected and probably not welcomed but what am i doing here.”

he was stunned for a moment before explaining what he can. 

“......... fuck.”

he cringed ever so slightly at your curse. but your attention seems to stray so quickly off of the fact that you were bounded and helpless, to the fact that you have the man doing unspeakable things to civilians and you absolutely don’t approve.

throwing your common sense to maybe be civilized, you went off on a rant of how human rights and how to not be an ass to him. all he could do was just listened, shocked to even cut you off.

when he did, he gave the whole ‘unsaved demon’ shtick, and you weren’t taking that kinda shit. he believed he was truly unsaved—you knew that. but that doesn’t make it okay.

eventually, he left you with a cold end of the conversation.

he admires your spirit in a way—but with what he’s experienced,,, it’s a bit of unreachable for him.

if at any point you saw the soft side of his with animals, you just gaped at him for a split second and whispered, “the gap moe is strong with this one.”

also old man died inside when you said that you’d fight god, along with many things.

all in all, to him, you’re insufferable. but weirdly,, fascinating.

you’ve totally ok boomer’d him once cause he rlly looks old

—motonari:

,,. if your speech to kennyo was bad, he’s going to rant hell.

motonari already knew you were interesting even when his men just spied on you. your behavior, so brash and impulsive, is going to be so fun to have, he thinks.

through some planning to stir up more chaos, he kidnaps you and brings you unto his ship. same as kennyo, you showed no clear sign of surprise, and that’s when he decided you were either used to this in any way, or a fool. both answers, he liked.

you’re kind of really confused on why he’s doing what he’d doing. “i get it, i like to stir up chaos myself but it’s harmless,, most of it—but not until the people are in danger, bitch.”

and by that line, motonari leans towards you with a deadly smirk, “now, i can bite, ‘kay kid? you don’t wanna be in the receiving end... do you?”

“do it, coward.”

and before he could let out even a wheeze of laughter, you continued on on a lecture of, again, not being a dick and letting people live their life in peace. and much less all of this damage, for what? chaos?? yeah you wanted to see the world burn but it wasn’t literally.

however, his patience was running thin. he shuts you up forcefully, and leaves.

even so, after a cooldown period, he still talks to you (,,,, well, that’s kind of a generous term) because, right he was, you were so fun in his eyes.

an interesting observation he made,,, was that you picked up on his big dislike of physical contact. and he’d think with how annoying you were at times, that you’d weaponize it. but you didn’t—in fact, you kept your space (not that you were planning to get close) and respected his boundaries.

he thinks you a bit of peculiar for that decision, some wary, and perhaps naive.

one of the days—the more dangerous ones—he was planning to take you to the oda as bait or something. and you weren’t taking it like that. two days before arrival, a storm racked up. you stood upon the edge of the ship with the rest of the crew watching you like you were a madman.

“the oda won’t want me if i’m dead, would they now?”

motonari stands in his composure, guffawing, “all i need is to make sure they believe you’re alive, kid.”

a smile that showed absolutely no fear and 1000 percent spite spread in your face, “not unless i decimate my own body until all the trail left is my blood. the only one who gets to do that shit to me, is me.”

finally, a look of wavering shows in his face.

you were saved last minute,, and the rest is history.

[makeste]

just another long rambling post trying to explain why I, a Bakugou fan, would treasonously want him to lose his quirk

this is something I had originally intended to post about later down the line, after we actually know for sure whether or not Bakugou is going to lose his quirk. but seeing as parts of this post (see: point #5) also indirectly address some issues that people had with the latest chapter (283) as well, I decided I might as well jump the gun.

this is a topic I’ve gotten a lot of asks about, and so I’ve tried to gather all of those various arguments into one single post with my own comments and rebuttals. however, the purpose of this post isn’t really to convince anyone or change anyone’s mind. it’s pretty much just an explanation of why I am so sold on the idea. I think it’s a little defensive at times, and I definitely feel like one of the side effects of getting asks like this...

...is that I feel compelled to explain that yes, as the veritable mountain of Bakuessays on this blog can attest to, I am in fact a Bakugou fan, and have not been standing here this whole time just waiting for the perfect moment to rip off my disguise revealing my secret “#1 Deku Stan!! BAKUGOU CAN SUCK IT” shirt underneath while cackling nefariously. like. just so we’re clear on that here.

I know I’ve said this repeatedly, but it’s precisely because I’m such an adamant fan of Bakugou that I’m excited over the story potential of him possibly becoming quirkless. as for why I keep bringing it up, honestly it’s mostly just because I keep getting the asks, lol. and so my options are basically to either say “ah you know what, you’ve convinced me,” or to keep trying to explain my reasoning at the risk of making everyone increasingly mad and/or bored.

anyway, so there are five arguments which I want to address, and they are as follows:

it’s repetitive/boring/we’ve already had the plotline of a prodigy student losing their quirk.

it cheapens Bakugou’s character development by directly “forcing” him to learn something, instead of him arriving at the conclusion on his own.

losing his quirk would put him on the back-burner, story-wise, and exclude him from further fights and story development.

Bakugou doesn’t need to learn anything more/there isn’t anything important Bakugou could learn by losing his quirk that he couldn’t learn in some other manner.

losing his quirk would mean him falling hopelessly behind Deku, and playing second fiddle to him when he should be Deku’s equal. it would render his whole story and all of his development meaningless.

before I get started, please be advised that this is a very long post. like, tragically long. idk I did my best to rein it in but it just got ramblier and ramblier sob anyways so here’s a cut.

okay!

1. it’s repetitive/boring/we’ve already had the plotline of a prodigy student losing their quirk.

have you ever heard people pose the argument that all of the good stories have already been told? the idea is basically that there’s no such thing as a truly original story anymore, because humankind has been telling stories for thousands of years and we’ve exhausted any and all original ideas by this point. the problem with this, though, is that it assumes that (1) stories must always be 100% completely original in order to be good, and (2) if the basic building blocks of two stories are the same, then those stories must basically be identical. which is very much not the case. classic story structures are classic for a reason. the best stories are based around themes and conflicts and story beats which have been reimagined in a million different ways, and which work precisely because they’re familiar, and because they still resonate with people each and every time. and each and every time, it’s still a different story, because even if the ideas and themes and even some of the emotions are the same, the people are different, and no two people’s stories will ever be exactly the same.

all of which is to say that firstly, just because someone has already lost their quirk doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting enough concept to explore again. but more importantly, Bakugou and Mirio are not the same person. Bakugou is a completely different character than Mirio, with a completely different personality and history, and completely different relationships with the other principal characters. in other words it is absolutely not the same story at all. Bakugou won’t react the same way as Mirio. he’s not a character who can be faded into the background like Mirio unfortunately was. and most importantly, he’s a character whose own personal history with the formerly quirkless main character makes this an extremely personal and compelling character arc which would hit in a vastly different way than Mirio’s. I don’t think it’s repetitive at all, any more than “the heroes fight the villains” is a repetitive plotline. basically this argument, which is subjective to begin with, just doesn’t hold any water to me, I’m sorry.

2. it cheapens Bakugou’s character development by directly “forcing” him to learn something instead of him arriving at the conclusion on his own.

okay there are two counterarguments that I want to make here. the first is that this has always been Bakugou’s character development process since day one. he has never simply just arrived at a zenlike conclusion on his own through stern self-reflection or anything like that. his entire story has been him learning and growing from one humbling experience after another. examples:

he stops bullying Deku after Deku saves his life.

he undergoes a huge shift in attitude after Deku beats him in their training fight on the second day of school. he eats a healthy serving of humble pie and listens to the constructive criticisms that Momo, Aizawa and the rest pile onto him afterwards, and the result is that he becomes less cocky and starts taking his training much more seriously.

he wins-but-loses to Todoroki in the school festival and it serves as a reminder that simply winning isn’t everything. being the best is meaningless if it’s handed to you. as a result his determination is fueled even more.

he is LITERALLY FORCED POINT-BLANK to work together with Deku in order to pass his final exam. he is dragged kicking and screaming. I can’t stress enough how completely unwilling he was to learn this lesson otherwise lmao. it’s abundantly clear that he would never have done this on his own had the lesson not been almost literally beaten into his own head.

his experience at Kamino -- being targeted because he was perceived as villainous, and feeling responsible for All Might’s retirement afterwards -- is perhaps the best example of how Katsuki takes a terrible experience and uses it to grow leaps and bounds as a person. he develops a new awareness of how his actions can potentially be perceived by others (a vital lesson if he ever hopes to make it to the top). and he’s profoundly humbled (I keep using that word, so I just want to pause a sec to clarify that I mean it not in a “humiliated and crushed” way, but in a “freedom from pride and arrogance” way; in other words this is ultimately a positive thing, even if it comes about in an unpleasant way) by the experience, enough so that he finally lets his walls of pride crumble enough to have his weirdly violent heart-to-heart with Deku. and as a result the two of them grow closer, and All Might sets him down the path of Win To Save and Save To Win. something which I feel compelled to note that he still had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE ABOUT beforehand. this is another thing that literally had to be spelled out for him before he could grasp it. it’s very hard for me to conceive a way of somehow spinning this particular development, which is by far the most important in his arc to date, as being something he just “learned on his own.”

and I forgot to mention it, but him failing the provisional license exam also directly contributed to the character development mentioned above! that was what finally tipped him over the edge. even though he was reeling from everything that had happened at Kamino, he still had too much pride to actually open up to anyone about it until this second “loss” of sorts finally convinced him that he really was doing something terribly wrong, and pushed him to talk to Deku about it.

and that brings us to where we’re at currently! there are a few other things I didn’t mention, like Jeanist lecturing him on the meaning behind choosing a hero name, and his internship with Endeavor teaching him... something. tbd lol. but anyways my point here is that Bakugou has always been a character who learns chiefly through his mistakes and painful experiences. it’s extremely rare for him to just arrive at some new tidbit of enlightenment all on his own, and if it does, it often still originally stems from a past -- often painful -- experience. that’s just how he is. his stubbornness is one of my favorite things about him, but it’s also always hindered his growth to some extent, and has made it harder for him to change his viewpoint all on his own, even though he is to his credit very open to change once something finally does sink in. he’s someone who’s always trying to be better. it’s just that a lot of times he needs to be nudged and pushed in the right direction, particularly on those few occasions where the thing he has to learn is something that runs counter to his current viewpoint to such a degree that he’s resistant to learning it (see, again, working together with Deku in the final exam).

and that finally brings me to my second counterargument to this point, which is that I very strongly feel that having to learn something “directly” in this very blunt manner does not make it cheap. that actually comes off as a bit insulting to all of Bakugou’s previous character development if I’m being honest. his development isn’t cheapened just because something was harder for him to learn. he’s not less of a good person just because he had a harder struggle to learn those things, and needed help and guidance, and made mistakes along the way. I feel very strongly that people shouldn’t be judged on how they grow, or their reasons for that growth. that to me feels like gatekeeping the concept of being a good person. “Bakugou isn’t as good of a character because he only started saving others and caring about people after he got kidnapped.” like, come on. people grow through their experiences! that’s literally where all growth stems from, even growth that on the surface appears to be self-fueled and motivated. every single action, every single motivation, happens because at some point or other, that person experienced something that led to them thinking and feeling that way, and deciding to do that thing. we are the sum total of our experiences, I believe is how the saying goes. and that goes double for characters in a story, because watching them go through those experiences is how we the audience discover who these characters are.

anyway so this argument is also a miss from where I stand. if it takes losing his quirk for Bakugou to have an epiphany about true strength, and what truly makes a hero on the inside, then goddammit, good for him. that’s nothing to be ashamed of. in the end that’s still his hard-earned growth, and he’s not any lesser for having learned it through adversity instead of just stumbling upon the answer somewhere along the way.

3. losing his quirk would put him on the back-burner, story-wise, and exclude him from further fights and story development.

hard disagree here as well. losing his quirk would be the single biggest thing that ever happened to Bakugou. a development like that would almost demand we focus on it. perhaps not right away (just like we didn’t immediately focus on him right after Kamino), but it would be inevitable. in fact, I’d argue that Bakugou losing his quirk is one of the only ways to guarantee that the story puts his character development back at the forefront again at some point, and doesn’t just drop the plotline entirely in an “eh, good enough” manner. it’s a development that basically makes his character development the focus of the plot, instead of us only ever getting little side anecdote scenes of “slowly becoming less of an asshole” for the rest of the series. it’s character development on hard mode, to be sure, but the fact of the matter is that Bakugou is not the main character, and so his personal character journey is only going to make it back to the forefront of the story if and when something significant enough occurs so as to make it worthy of being a focus.

as for the other half of this argument, the thing to understand here is that “Kacchan loses his quirk” is NOT the beginning, middle, and end of that storyline all in one. it absolutely won’t be “welp too bad, guess you can’t be a hero after all” and that’s that. “Kacchan loses his quirk” is only the first act of a story arc that continues with “Kacchan struggles with the aftermath of losing his quirk”, and concludes with “Kacchan regains his quirk and reemerges stronger than ever.” how that will ultimately play out, I don’t know! Vestiges; Eri; OFA; the quirk-restoring bullets which the villains also had at some point unless I’m misremembering things; whatever! the key thing here is that I have faith that it will play out. every single argument you see here is in the context of me believing that the endgame here is not a loss for him, but a win. it’s actually the win, because if all goes well, he comes back stronger than ever because he’s finally done away with the one remaining thing that was holding him back -- that lingering unnecessary fear, insecurity, and pride that’s still at the root of so many of his actions even now.

which brings me to my next point.

4. Bakugou doesn’t need to learn anything more/there isn’t anything important Bakugou could learn by losing his quirk that he couldn’t learn in some other manner.

you’ve no doubt guessed it, but I once again disagree here lol. he definitely still has more to learn. Bakugou’s character development thus far has been extraordinary, but all the same, I still want more for him. I don’t think this is the best he’s capable of. his ceiling is much, much higher, and to say that this is as good as he gets is to underestimate him imo.

here’s an incomplete list of things that Bakugou, at present, is still clearly struggling with, numbered alphabetically so that I can explain afterwards how losing his quirk would address each one.

a.) he still obsessively compares his progress to Deku’s at every turn. we got a little bit of insight into his thought processes just recently in chapter 275, and it was extremely revealing. his rivalry with Deku has been a good thing thus far, but this is primarily because up until this point he has been able to keep pace with Deku. so much of his confidence and self-worth seems to hinge on this one specific thing which is notably outside his control, and that’s troubling to me. but more on that further down in a bit.

b.) he’s still incapable of admitting that he cares about people (which is endearing to be fair, but nonetheless indicates that he still views caring as a weakness, and is uncomfortable acknowledging or expressing it).

c.) he has not yet sorted out the problem of coming off as hostile, vulgar, and aggressive even when a situation necessitates him to be more cooperative. to put it plainly, he’s incapable of dialing back his personality even the slightest degree and as a result gets edited out of interviews and has his friends constantly scrambling to apologize and/or interpret for him. I know that a lot of people -- myself included -- actually adore this feral side of him and even consider it one of his most endearing traits, but still, the fact of the matter is that it’s not a good thing that he’s entirely incapable of even the slightest bit of emotional regulation. at some point he’s going to have to sort his shit out at least a little bit; even Endeavor and Mirko are capable of reining it in when it comes to dealing with the public at large and with the press. if he wants to reach the top ranks he still has a lot of growing to do here.

d.) he still thinks of his own worth purely in terms of physical strength. this is a big one. Katsuki has always defined his own world in terms of strength and weakness. “strong” is good; “weak” is bad. people who win are strong. people with quirks are strong. he has a good quirk so he’s strong. Deku doesn’t have a quirk so he shouldn’t be strong (which becomes a paradox and a source of great fear and confusion to him when he realizes on a deep subconscious level that Deku somehow is strong in spite of lacking a quirk). All Might is the best hero because he’s strong and never loses. he’s going to be even better than All Might, and he’ll do it by being strong and never losing.

except that these ideas are all limited, and limiting. physical strength is not the only kind of strength. All Might wasn’t the number one hero and the Symbol of Peace only because he was strong. Katsuki isn’t strong only because he has a good quirk. but he’s still stuck on this idea regardless, and everything he does, everything he is is defined by this idea. even now, with everything he’s learned, he’s still stuck in this limited perspective. and the very obvious problem with that is that it places him in a precarious emotional position where if he ever actually loses, or something happens to strip that physical strength of his away, his entire core of self-worth stands to fall apart as a result. he’s put all his eggs in that basket. and it’s the source of all of his insecurity, and it’s a weakness that’s just waiting to be exploited, and which is holding him back from discovering and acknowledging so many other good things about himself.

e.) and last but not least we’ve got what is by far his biggest current failing (and I say not to put him down, but rather in that same spirit of “learning to acknowledge your own weaknesses” which he himself has so readily embraced), which is that he is still only focused on himself. mind you, I’m not saying that he’s a bad person, or that he doesn’t care about other people! but I am saying that he is self-centered, and that’s just a fact, and I would defy anyone to try and argue otherwise tbh. he is constantly and completely focused only on his own goals. and on top of that he also has great difficulty seeing things from any perspective other than his own, which has been the cause of numerous clashes and misunderstandings with other people, some more disastrous than others (see: that one time he thought Deku must be looking down on him because he couldn’t conceive of a situation where anyone would actually want to accept help from someone else, rather than being self-sufficient, and thus assumed that Deku’s attempt to help him was in fact an insult). he casts himself in the role of the main character, and dismisses most everyone else as “extras.” and it took him an extraordinarily long time to learn the importance of learning from and helping other people (and again, this was something which had to be explicitly spelled out for him. I’ll say it again and again if I have to, because it’s so important in understanding where Bakugou is coming from and what his mindset is in all of this. he had to have it spelled out, because it was genuinely something which wouldn’t have occurred to him otherwise, because it’s so alien to everything he grew up believing up till that point, and because he has so much difficulty seeing other perspectives).

and again, I’m not saying this to dump on him or imply that he doesn’t care! because he does; we’ve seen that demonstrated on multiple occasions. he has compassion for others. he wants to do the right thing and he wants to be a good person, and he tries very hard in his own way. but he is nonetheless still stuck in his own perspective. he struggles with empathy and being able to see from other people’s points of view. and that is a huge barrier to his becoming the greatest hero of all time, and it’s probably the most difficult barrier to overcome. the behavior is something he can and has been chipping away at little by little, but the root causes of the behavior are still there.

anyway. so now that I’ve said all of that, which probably could have been its own essay in and of itself, how would losing his quirk do anything to address these issues? so let’s now break that down point by point as well, using the same alphabetical numbering system as before. I’m skipping the first one because I’ll address it further down, so we’ll start with b.

b.) it makes him more vulnerable in that it’s a huge blow to his pride. how is that a good thing you ask? because pride is always a double-edged sword. the downside is that losing it hurts his self-esteem (but more on that in a sec), but the upside is it opens him up more to accepting kindness from other people, and allowing himself to express kindness and caring himself in return. pride is almost always the biggest obstacle in doing that. so the short of this is that it could lead to us seeing a more open, willingly vulnerable side to him that would strengthen his relationships and serve him well in the long run.

c.) in a similar vein, the ego check would probably help to address some of his emotional instability as well. a not-insignificant chunk of his tactless exterior is basically just a projection; a tough guy persona he’s constructed over the years as part of his neverending quest to be strong. there’s also a fair amount of insecurity (interpreting everything other people say in the worst way possible and reacting with defensive hostility), arrogance/boastfulness, and fear of vulnerability (aka weakness) mixed in as well. so I could see the whole experience leading to a softening of his personality. in my ideal world this would mostly be just temporary, with his usual Bakuattitude gradually being restored piece by piece as his soul searching adventures wear on and he starts acting like his old self more and more. but I do think that in the end, the loss of that insecurity in particular would go a long way towards helping him gain the ability to chill out just a little bit more when the situation calls for it.

d.) it strips him of that physical strength he’s depended on and defined himself by his whole life. sometimes we need to lose something in order to see and appreciate the other things we take for granted or don’t even realize that we have. Katsuki has so many other qualities that make him a good person and a great hero. he’s intelligent, perceptive, brave, resourceful, and extraordinarily determined. he’s strategic and analytical and quick-thinking. he inspires devotion in others and is a natural leader. and he is honest and sticks to his principles and stands up for his beliefs. there is so much more to admire about him than just strength. so many other kinds of strength that he has. and stripping his quirk away would force him to see that at long last. he’s not just a nobody without his power. the things that make him a worthy hero at his core have very little to do with his quirk.

e.) and then the big one -- learning to see past himself. the truth is that Bakugou has always led a relatively privileged life. he was good at everything, the things he wanted came very easily to him, and he’s basically been at the top of the food chain since he was very young. but the downside of this is that it led to a deep-seeded fear of losing all of that, or failing to live up to it. and because he feared weakness so much, he’s spent his entire life looking down on weaker people. his fear of weakness led to him despising anyone with those “weak” qualities that he secretly feared, rather than having compassion for them. add to that the fact that he just has a hard time seeing outside of his own perspective, and we’ve got a situation in which perhaps the only way for him to really gain that kind of compassion and empathy is to experience some of these things for himself.

becoming quirkless is a way of presenting new challenges to him that he would have never faced otherwise. it forces him to answer questions he’s always been too afraid to ask. it forces him to look at himself in a way he never has before, to take a good long look at his own fears and desires. what if you can’t become the number one hero? do you just give up? do you stop trying? do you stubbornly push back against the inevitable? what happens if you do become weak? do you just accept that for the rest of your life? just sit back and watch as everyone else moves on without you? how can you fight without a quirk? what can you do without a quirk? why did you want to become a hero in the first place? why did you seek out strength? what was it for? why do you struggle with everything you have to reach the very top??

and I’d like to think that some of the answers to those questions are, yes, I am still strong. and, no, I can’t give up. and, no, I won’t accept defeat, no matter what. and, I’m not sure, but no matter what happens I’ll keep on fighting. and, because the person I admired taught me to never, ever give up. and, because I wanted to surpass my limits. and, because I want to be the best version of myself.

and that is growth. and it’s precisely the kind of growth you can’t achieve until you’ve searched deep within yourself and laid your soul out bare. and it will make him a better character, and a better hero in the end. and that’s what we’re all here for isn’t it? that’s literally what this story is about. the journey of these kids growing up to become spectacular heroes. so, just, I don’t know. is it really such a great surprise that I want to see it?

anyways, this was by far the longest of these answers and this post is really starting to wear on, so let’s just get to the last one and wrap this up.

5. losing his quirk would mean him falling hopelessly behind Deku, and playing second fiddle to him when he should be Deku’s equal. it would render his whole story and all of his development meaningless.

okay, listen. first of all, this argument often comes bundled with a whole host of other arguments about Bakugou’s relationship with Deku, and how the narrative has already given him numerous other “losses” to Deku, and how this would just be the latest and greatest loss of all. and I’m just going to say it straight up: this argument is ridiculous to me. actually, what it reminds me of is the very same flawed mindset that Bakugou himself has which I mentioned earlier (the forgotten point 4.a), where he is obsessed with comparing his progress to Deku’s at all times, and only considers himself a success if he beats out Deku. the idea here is basically that Bakugou and Deku are running along parallel tracks with the same end goal/finish line of becoming a hero. and so if Deku gets too far ahead and starts lapping Bakugou or something, then it’s like a slap in the face with regard to all of Bakugou’s hard work, and it makes Bakugou’s whole journey pointless because no matter what, he’ll never be able to catch up, especially if he loses his quirk, which is like the metaphorical equivalent of him spraining his ankle.

the thing is, this entire analogy is flawed. first of all, if Bakugou doesn’t sprain his ankle at some point, he'll miss out on discovering and healing a separate underlying injury that’s been unknowingly hampering his progress this entire time. and second, the race isn’t timed. it’s more like an infinite series of races where the finish line is never actually set in stone, because the finish line isn’t actually “beat the other person”; the finish line is “run as fast and as far as you possibly can, and do it in a better way than anyone has ever done before, and while you’re at it maybe stop and save a few million people, because being the best runner isn’t actually about being faster than each other, even though that admittedly makes this a pretty crappy analogy.” anyways though, so what this means is that the sheer magnitude and scale of this race is such that little victories and losses here and there are ultimately meaningless in the big picture. maybe Bakugou sprains his ankle. maybe Deku breaks an arm or two or three or four. maybe someone shows up at some point and starts uprooting the entire track all around them and they have to put the whole race aside for the time being, because what the fuck. and maybe after spraining his ankle, Bakugou eventually comes zooming back ahead on a segway. and maybe Deku stops running for a while without Bakugou there, because he loses sight of his goal without his rival there to keep him on pace.

but anyway! the point is that declaring a winner and loser in this race before we reach the end is kind of absurd in that it ignores the whole nature of the race and how long-term it is. you see the beauty of the race is that it’s actually the opposite of footraces in real life. in this race, the longer the two of them run, the faster and stronger they become. and this same logic applies to any hurdles which are placed in their lanes along the way. the goal of these hurdles isn’t to trick or punish or humiliate them; it’s to help them get even faster and stronger and ultimately closer to their goal. and also, tbh? it’s a long, long race you guys. and so sometimes, as a fan, you almost start to want to see those hurdles. because otherwise it’s just a lot of endless running and running and running. so yeah, go ahead and throw in a damn hurdle or two and some traffic cones and maybe even a long jump here and there. because that’s part of what makes the thing great to watch in the first place.

and I don’t care whether or not Deku is ahead right now, because I also love Deku too by the way, and because I’m not invested in prematurely declaring a winner. and if Bakugou himself gets upset that Deku is ahead? if Deku pulling ahead of him is enough to send him spiraling into despair, and questioning everything about his life, and losing hope and purpose? well then honestly I would say that’s all the more reason for him to go on and get that new character development, because I don’t want him to always be hindered by those kind of toxic thoughts his entire life. their rivalry should serve to make each other better, not bring each other down. so if Bakugou’s ego is still so fragile that he can’t handle a loss to Deku -- a loss, mind you, not the loss, because ultimately these are all just little battles, and not the actual war -- then I want him to grow the fuck up and get the fuck over that, goddammit. he’s a bigger person than that. I want him to grow beyond that. I want him to develop the real, actual confidence that allows him to bounce back from something like that, and to move on better and wiser and stronger, instead of getting dragged down by the pettiness of it all.

in short, if losing to Deku would really be enough to render his story meaningless, then maybe it’s time for Bakugou to find some meaning in his story that’s not dependent on him winning or losing to Deku. because I for one am not actually in this thing just to see which character “wins.” I couldn’t care less who actually wins. I just want to see my boy grow up big and strong and self-actualized, the better to kick ass without anything holding him back. that’s it.

so this brings me at last to the end of this seemingly neverending post. I have no doubt this won’t be the last of my quirkless!Bakugou debate posts in spite of me trying to comprehensively address every single point I could think of lol. but for now it’s my best attempt. and by the way, if it doesn’t actually happen, that’s fine! I love the idea, but I’m not gonna go full on “oh happy dagger” with it if it doesn’t actually pan out lol. the downside is it will mean that I’ve posted this entire 5600-word dissertation for nothing, but you know what, sometimes that’s just how fandom goes.

[imnotoverlyobsessive]

Mabel’s All-in-One Guide to Being a Shooting Star: How to Avoid Being Caught and Other Tips You Should Know

Chapter Three: Not Dipper

A big ol thank you to @edward-or-ford and @pacific-ship!

He’s so tall and handsome as hell; he’s so bad but he does it so well. I can see the end as it begins.- Taylor Swift, Wildest Dreams

Warmth.

Warmth and safety.

Those were the first things Mabel noticed when she woke up for those few brief seconds, the first things she could recall feeling. She was too tired to open her eyes, and her head was freaking killing her, but there was warmth seeping into her skin like melted butter into bread, and something smelled remarkably good.

It wasn’t a familiar smell, not by any means, but she found she liked it quite a lot. She turned her face towards the warm, smooth fabric the scent was coming from, nuzzling it happily with a small smile.

It didn’t help her killer headache, of course, but her bed or whatever it was, it smelled goooooood, and she was all for it.

She felt as if nothing could touch her, there in that little bubble of delicious-smelling warmth, and she wondered idly if Dipper was around, because she only ever felt so happy and safe when she was with him.

When had she seen him last, again? Mabel couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything, really.

Oh well. Whatever. She was warm. She was safe. She was comfortable. She was happy. She smiled again, just a little bit, as her thoughts faded when she lost consciousness again.

She would not be so content when she woke the second time.

———————————————————————

There was a throbbing in her skull. An intense kind, particularly in her temples and behind her eyes. It hurt worse when she opened her eyes, and it took them several rapid blinks to adjust to lights that were actually quite dim, but with her concussion headache, they seemed ridiculously bright against the blue ceiling.

“Yeesh,” she muttered, sitting up on the… was that a chaise? Yup, okay, that was definitely a chaise. She’d never even seen one in person; those things were for fancy people. Mabel had always been many things, but fancy most certainly wasn’t one of them.

Anyway, she was sitting up on the super-duper fancy chaise, her hands supporting her. “My head, what in the…” Dammit, her wrists and arms hurt, too, those were, ugh, were those rope marks? They sure looked like rope marks.

There was a sound nearby when she spoke loud enough to be heard, but Mabel’s head was throbbing so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t hear much of anything. She massaged the skin on her wrists, trying to get the soreness to dissipate. It didn’t.

And then the whole thing came rushing back.

Shit. Was she married to the gnomes now? Was that gonna be her life? No, no, it was fine, gnome marriage wasn’t legally binding, she didn’t think, and even if it was, it wasn’t legal for somebody to marry a whole bunch of people at once, and it definitely wasn’t legal for that somebody to be an unwilling participant. Therefore, any marriage contracts they may or may not have drawn up were null and void, legally speaking. Which meant she needed to escape. Which meant she needed to figure out where she was.

Wait, what about the blood-gnome? What was up with that? Or, shit, the floating glow-dude! What the heckity hecking heckfire was going on with that shiz?

Suddenly, out of nowhere (or perhaps not truly nowhere; she just hadn’t examined where she was just yet, as she hadn’t looked up), a pair of arms wrapped around her, and her head was squished against a very masculine, yummy-smelling (the same smell as before, actually! What a lovely coincidence!) chest. Mr. Hugglebus reached up and threaded his fingers through Mabel’s hair, holding her head against him.

“Mabel,” a voice whispered, like its owner couldn’t believe he was getting to say her name. It was familiar, but also very much not, and Mabel was, like, off-the-charts levels of confuzzled. “Mabel,” the voice said again. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

It was hard to think with the pounding in her ears, but she did her best to ignore it.

She had bigger things to deal with than a headache, no matter how nasty it was.

“Wh- whoa there, friend,” Mabel said shakily, putting her hand on his chest and pushing away from him lightly. Mr. Hugglebus pulled back enough for Mabel to get a proper look at him, and…

Wait.

What?

“Dipper?” she gasped. He said nothing. “What is up with your hair, man?” she laughed. “Or- or your getup, like! What? You goin’ to a fancy party or something? No, no, wait!” she was giggling, and it hurt her head, but it was just so goddamn good to see him she didn’t care. “Okay okay, I know! You’re doing, like, a knock-off impersonation of Gideon, right?” He furrowed his brow, annoyance filling his ice blue eyes.

But… wait. Ice blue eyes? Dipper has brown eyes. They were identical to hers. She knew this. She’d stared into those stupid-beautiful eyes of his a bazillion and one times. She knew her bro bro’s eyes, aight? She knew those suckers. This guy, though. This guy was different. Like. Different different.

“Are you… are you Dipper? ‘Cause like. The Dipster I know won’t even wear color contacts for cosplay purposes, and those eyes ain’t blue naturally, so…”

It was several moments before he finally spoke. He was gazing at her with this weirdly intense look in his eyes (holy crap, those eyes, they were so pretty, nobody’s eyes should be allowed to be that freakin’ blue) she’d never seen on anyone before.

“I’m not… your Dipper,” his emphasis the ‘your’ was strange, condescending, as if he loathed saying it.

She scooted away, her back hitting the arm of the chaise.

All she could think about was a gnome drenched in blood, babbling in terror before exploding violently.

”Then who are you?” she whispered, eyes wide.

He smiled, and not unkindly, either. It was… strange. It was a kind smile from someone who didn’t look like such things came to them naturally. It was nothing like her twin’s smile.

Nothing like it at all.

It did something to her insides. Something she didn’t understand. Something she didn’t know how to interpret or name.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured, keeping his distance, his legs twitching as if he wanted to get closer to her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Okay,” she said, not believing him in the slightest. ‘Cause. Like. The blood-gnome. Had that been him? Had he done that? She hadn’t seen it, but in retrospect, it totally made sense for him to have done that somehow. “But who are you?” she asked again.

“I’m something of an… alternate version of the Dipper you know.” The more he spoke, the more she found his voice to be different and strange. Plus, he looked so similar to Dipper, but Mabel only ever saw her bro’s birthmark once in a blue moon. This guy had it front and center, and his hair was slicked back, and she lowkey wanted to touch it, just to see what it felt like. His voice was deeper than Dipper’s. More monotone, too. It was bizarre.

It was… it was attractive, is what it was. His look and attitude, the whole shebang, it was just insanely attractive. Wait, no, no! Mabel thought to herself. It’s cool, Mabel girl, you’re all good, everything’s a-okay, it’s just that he looks like your bro, alright? No big deal. Well, okay, you shouldn’t be having those kinds of thoughts about your bro, either, but we’re well past that.

“Alternate… version…?” Wait. Shit. Maybe he was… “Are you the anti-Dipper?” She whispered frantically, trying to back away more as if her back wasn’t already firmly pressed against the armrest. “There’s tons of different versions of me, I know that, but I’ve never seen another version of Dipper, and you look just freakin’ like him except for your whole… style and general demeanor, I guess, so-“ she was trying to get up, but holy hot pockets, that was some serious dizziness right there.

Moreover, was there another Mabel in this universe? She hadn’t seen another Mabel in years. It’d be… interesting to see one again. Wait, shit, if he was the anti-Dipper, there was the anti-Mabel somewhere around there, and Mabel was not at all confident she could currently best the anti-Mabel in a fight. And something told her the anti-Mabel wasn’t exactly one for fighting fair and waiting till she was ready. She wasn’t the meme-worth Inigo Montoya, and this wasn’t The Princess Bride.

Dammit.

Wait, he’d said he’d never expected to see her again. And she’d definitely never met him before, she would’ve remembered a fancy, older version of her bro, which could only mean he was talking about the other Mabel. Had something happened to her? Had she left, maybe?

“I’m not,” he cut in quickly, moving towards her slowly, like she was a feral cat ready to book it at any moment. “I’m not the… anti-Dipper, or whatever it was you said.”

She looked around. They appeared to be in some sort of dressing room. No, wait, it was Gideon’s dressing room! Except it wasn’t, because Not-Dipper was there, lounging on the ultra-fancy chaise as if he owned it, which he might very well have done, because Not-Dipper didn’t exactly look like he was a broke college student.

He looked like he used hundred dollar bills as tissues like Woody Harrelson in Zombieland.

Still very much fighting the urge to attempt to GTFO, as the kids say, Mabel turned back to him. “What are you, then?” He blinked for a moment, as if he were surprised, and then she belted out more questions. “What’s your name? How old are you? You don’t look like you’re the same age as me, which is weird if we’re kinda-sorta-pseudo-twins. Why am I here? Where even is here? How-“

“Okay, let’s do this properly, shall we?” He tilted his head when he spoke, the corners of his lips curling upwards in another one of those strange smiles that did something to Mabel’s insides. “One question at a time,” he said, holding up a long, slender finger. “You can ask me anything you want, and I promise to answer truthfully. However,” he crossed one leg over the other, his foot dangling off his knee, the arm closest to her draping casually over the back of the chaise, “for every question I answer, I get to ask one of you in return. You don’t have to answer me, of course, but if you choose not to, that’ll be the end of our little game,” he paused for a moment. “For the time being, at least. Sound fair?”

She nodded hesitantly. She could stop at any time, right?

“Go ahead, then,” he waved the hand that dangled haphazardly over the chaise.

“What’s your name?”

“Mason William Gleeful, but I’ve always been called Dipper,” he said easily, as if he’d been fully expecting that very question.

“Because of the birthmark, I assume,” Mabel was very careful not to phrase it as a question, not to raise the pitch in her voice at the end of her sentence. She didn’t know how he’d react if she asked two questions in a row.

“A fair assumption,” he agreed with a slight nod and another one of those smiles. Ugh. Could ya not, man? Like, for real, Mabel thought. His smile was most definitely not helping her nausea. “And your name? Your full name, if you would.”

“Oh, um,” was she seriously forgetting her own name? Jeez, Mabel, get it together, he’s not Dipper, get over it! “M- Mabel Caroline Pines,” she managed to stutter out.

“Pines, hm? Interesting. Alright then. Shall I go along with your other questions from before, as well?”

She shook her head. “Actually, I was wondering about your last name,” he raised his eyebrows at her and motioned for her to continue. “There’s a sort of… psychic, I guess is what you’d call him, in my universe, and he has that last name. Is that… I mean… we are in what looks like his dressing room, so…”

“I did shows here,” he said quietly, a strange look in his eye, as if he wasn’t seeing her despite looking right at her. “Once upon a time.”

“Oh. I see,” she squeaked out.

His gaze sharpened on her again, and he was moving closer to her, and Mabel tried to back up further, her sneakers scrambling against the fabric of the chaise. Eeek way too close way too close back the fudge up, man, what are you even-

“Why were you in his dressing room?” He was right in front of her face by that point, like waaaaaaay too close, ‘cause their noses were almost brushing and she could see each individual eyelash, and god his eyes were even more startlingly beautiful up close, and she wanted to reach up and touch-

No no no no, bad, bad Mabel, he’s not your Dipper, this is a different version! she told herself firmly. No touchy!

“We gave each other makeovers,” she said, trying very hard to keep her voice even. When he raised his eyebrows at her, she got mildly defensive. “I was twelve! He was… I dunno, ten or eleven! Jeez!” He chuckled at that, then leaned away from her, satisfied with her answer, she supposed, and resumed his previous position as if he’d never moved from it at all.

As if he hadn’t just sent a chill down her spine that was… not altogether unpleasant, which was significantly more concerning than it would’ve been if she’d hated every second he’d been near her.

She pursed her lips and put it from her mind. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five,” he said easily. “And you?”

“Nineteen,” she told him quietly, surprised at his age. She glanced at the foot he’d balanced on his knee.

His shoes were fancy, too. Everything about him seemed to be. “Not what you were expecting, I see,” he observed from her expressions. Damn her and her expressive face!

“Well, it makes sense, because you certainly look older than… than my Dipper.” Her voice shook on the word ‘my’.

His hand clenched into a fist.

She didn’t know what to think of it. Was he angry, or did it mean nothing?

“But it also doesn’t make sense, because if it’s a parallel universe, we should be the same age, I would think.”

“Well, not necessarily,” Not-Dipper reasoned. “In some universes, time moves at different rates, from what I’ve gathered. In our case, it’s the same, but it seems I was born earlier. I was born in 1993, whereas you were born in…” he thought for a moment, tilting his head to the side. “1999.”

“Oh.” She’d never noticed that when interacting with other Mabels. Perhaps it was simply because she was too preoccupied with not dying. It had seemed rather urgent at the time.

“Indeed,” he nodded. “So, your questions,” he reminded her after a few seconds of silence.

“Right.” What had they been again? He kept looking at her, she had to get him to stop doing that. It was distracting. His eyes were distracting. She couldn’t think when they were in her, dammit. Oh! That was it! “Where are we?”

“My universe. I found you with and brought you here through a portal,” he stuck a hand in his pocket. “If you meant the locale, however, as I said before, this was our-“ he cut himself off, took a breath. “My dressing room until several years ago, when I stopped performing.”

“I… see,” she said slowly. So where was the other Mabel, then? Shouldn’t there be a fancy, blue-eyed, properly Adult™ version of herself somewhere? She looked around the dressing room (holy crapinoli, she didn’t think she’d ever seen so much blue in one room), but there were no signs of a woman anywhere. There were no perfume bottles or makeup on the vanity, no dresses on the clothing rack, nothing.

How strange.

“Why were you in Gravity Falls?” He asked.

“To get away.” Helooked at her questioningly. Did it count if it was an unspoken question? She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t risking it. “I needed an escape. College can be… stressful.”

That wasn’t the full reason, of course, but she wasn’t lying, either.

“Interesting.” He tapped his fingers on his leg. How could a person’s fingers be pleasant to look at?

“Why did you bring me here?”

“You needed help,” he said simply, shrugging a shoulder. He winced slightly when he did, but just a bit; the change in expression so minor she wasn’t sure she’d seen it at all. “However did you find yourself kidnapped by gnomes, of all things? Gnomes who wanted you for their queen, no less.”

She looked away. It’d been a long time since she had fought against anything but class schedules and exams she wasn’t prepared for.

“They… caught me off guard,” she told him quietly. “They tried something similar when I was a kid, but they lost. It never occurred to me that they might try again.”

“Gnomes are persistent little things,” he mused. “They dislike losing, and they are quite stubborn. It stands to reason that they’d try again if you’d beaten them before.”

“What… what did you do?” Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “To the gnomes, I mean. Unless, of course, I’m misremembering, because there is every chance I am, what with the concussion I very likely have and all, so if I am just say the word, but it seemed pretty dang clear that-“

“I killed them,” he said bluntly. His face was bored, disinterested. Apathetic, even. It didn’t even seem to be bothering him. How could it not be bothering him? Unless…

Unless he’d killed before.

The human brain could get used to just about anything if given enough time.

“You- you killed them,” her voice was horrified, she knew. She could hear it in her tone. Yeah, she’d wanted to get away from them, she’d wanted them to leave her alone, and maybe she’d even wanted to give them a good whack, but she hadn’t wanted them dead.

“Of course I did,” he sounded surprised at her reaction. “They hurt you. They were going to hurt you far worse.”

“I know that,” she whispered. “I know that. But that doesn’t give you the right to just… you can’t be someone’s judge, jury, and executioner. That’s not right.”

“I only did it to save you, Mabel.” She had only heard Not-Dipper say her name once before.

It was different than when Dipper said it. Maybe it was because Not-Dipper’s voice was a little deeper, a little smoother-sounding?

“You weren’t safe. Not in your universe.” His eyes were burning, which was strange since they were the color of ice. “I can keep you safe. I will keep you safe.”

“Ummm… that’s cool and all, but that’s pretty freakin’ unsettling, to have somebody just, like. ‘Splode a bunch of gnomes for you,” she eyed him warily, still trying to figure out how to get away from the dude without crawling. Would he get angry with her for not being appreciative? She didn’t want to see him angry. Would he hurt her?

“I don’t want you to be scared of me,” he told her quietly, his voice a little sad.

She almost lied and told him she wasn’t scared of him, that everything was hunky-dorey, and that he should smile.

She didn’t.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have, I dunno, made people explode in front of me?” She was being sarcastic, she knew, and that was probably a bad idea, but sometimes she just couldn’t help herself.

“Gnomes aren’t people, technically,” he reminded her.

“Semantics,” she waved his argument away. “They’re living creatures. Or they were, anyway, before you decided to go and massacre them.”

Not-Dipper had a look on his face that suggested he wasn’t opposed to killing living creatures, whether they were human or not.

Maybe he already had.

Mabel hoped he hadn’t, but something in the way he held himself gave her a sneaking suspicion that he had.

“I’m sorry if that… bothers you, or if it scares you. I don’t want to make you feel those things,” he sighed. “That said, I think it’d be best if I were up front with you: if put in the same situation again -if you were in danger again, that is to say- I’d do the same thing.”

She crossed her arms, pursed her lips, and glared at him. “Take me home, please.”

There was panic in his eyes. “I- I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The portal… it doesn’t work like that. I’ll have to find another way to get you back,” he explained. She was still glaring at him when he continued. “But for the time being, you can stay with me. If you want,” he turned his body to face her for the first time since he’d hugged her.

“Well. I suppose that’ll have to- WHAT ON EARTH IS THAT?” She was pointing, horrified, to his shoulder, where one arrow, perhaps about a foot long, was embedded in his shoulder. Another was in his side, the one that had been facing away from her. Blood had seeped through to pool around the entry wounds, though the bleeding seemed to have stopped. His eyes followed her shaking finger.

“Oh, right. I got shot with a couple of arrows. Just gnome ones, though, so they’re quite small,” she dropped her hand back to the soft fabric of the chaise.

“Okay, so you saved me, and you got hurt doing it,” she was saying this to herself, staring at her knees and speaking as if he couldn’t hear her when he could absolutely hear her. “Okay. Okay. This is fine, this is fine, Mabel girl.” She looked back up at him. “Okay, let’s go… wherever we need to go for you to treat those… yeah…”

“Very well,” he agreed. “I’ll take you there.”

He helped her to her feet, and she still found herself a bit dizzy, wobbling a bit.

“Would you like me to carry you?” he offered, steadying her with a hand on her arm.

“Carry m- say what now?”

“I don’t mind, particularly if you’re having difficulty walking still.” As if that explanation was adequate! Why was homeboy cool with it at all, though? She’d gotten a hella nasty gash on her leg once in PE, can ya guess how many people offered to freakin’ carry her to the nurse? Zero, is the answer. Zero.

What a weird dude. And Mabel was in love with her gay twin brother, so if she, of all people, thinks you’re weird, then you are weird.

“Nope!” she squeaked out way too quickly to sound even remotely close to being normal. “I’m good on the carrying front, thanks! Got it covered!”

“Suit yourself.” Ugh why, why was he smiling that smile again, it reminded her of Dipper and also not, and it made her nervous as all hell. “This way.” And with that, he promptly strolled out of his dressing room, clearly expecting her to follow.

[artificialqueens]

Love is a Dog From Hell, 1/5 (Rosnali) - Mattels

is it really that complicated that denali wants to be the best? all signs from the figure-skating gods seem to point to yes. (especially with her decidedly adult and mature hatred of coach rosé, who keeps wearing those god awful skin-tight ski-pants.)

aka denali’s a figure skating coach, rosé’s a ski coach; the rest is history

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29861322/chapters/73479360

-

November is sacred to Denali.

Although she’s a full-time figure-skating coach year round, boasting a full clientele of Olympic level students alongside a waiting list that seems to be growing by the year, November always manages to remind her why she started teaching to begin with.

Bonneville Academy, despite Denali considering its title of ‘academy’ being a stretch, has managed to wedge itself into her life, year after year. She spends six months of her year in Chicago, teaching private lessons to overenthusiastic and grossly rich teenagers, but from November through to April, she spends in Utah, working with the students to tighten their quadruple lutzes and receiving a paycheck that leaves her feeling pretty comfortable until the next November.

Although the school is technically a legitimate boarding school, offering fairly okay-quality education alongside the best training in the country all year, a lot of the students only attend for the ski season, unable or unwilling to fund a whole year.

Or maybe, Denali considers with a smile, nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere, locked away in the mountains like a fucking yeti.

Michelle Visage, school director, emails Denali every year about working for them full-time, but every year Denali finds herself unable to leave Chicago behind. She loves her cozy city life, thank you very much. Living alone in her uptown apartment has yet to be beaten, even with the promise of the best skating facilities money can buy.

Half of the kids who attend don’t even realise how lucky they are, she finds herself thinking as her rental car starts the ascent to the school. It’s a long drive, the journey from Salt Lake to Bonneville is deliberately out of most peoples’ way, ensuring the cleanest snow and freshest powder for its plethora of skiers and snowboarders. She’d definitely have killed for something like this when she was still training.

The school is specialised, known for its premium winter sports programme raved about by former Olympians and their coaches. Everything is fully equipped, facilities and machines inside the camp always sparkling new and top of the line; huge dance studios with scary Russian ballet teachers to help her skaters achieve their best on the ice; big gyms and personal trainers; meals specially catered and designed to build muscle and strengthen bones.

It’s also really fucking expensive; Denali sees the checks on Michelle’s desk with their seemingly endless zeroes, given by mothers determined to boast that their little Sally went to Bonneville! But the elusive RuPaul, who Denali knows funds the school, but has never seen or heard much about, hands out plenty of scholarships to kids she deems talented and hard-working enough to thrive.

Denali’s car turns the corner, giving her a view of Bonneville’s ski slopes. She spots a couple of instructors already at the top of the chairlifts, riding down the mountain in neat lines as they enjoy the start of what’s looking to be a beautiful season. It’s still early, but it’s snowing heavily, Denali’s windscreen wipers working hard to keep the snowflakes off her windscreen.

As Denali pulls up to their entrance, she spots a couple of other employees hanging around outside, boisterous laughter coming from their conversations. They’re all old-timers, Denali is sure one or two of them have worked at the school since its opening in the late nineties.

She immediately spots the inky black mullet that belongs to Mik, one of the snowboarding coaches for the younger kids. She’s standing alone, narrow back pressed up against a red bricked wall as she smokes a cigarette, flicking ash off of the end into the thin layer of snow below her feet.

She gets out of her car, passing her keys over to the valet Michelle hires unnecessarily every year, always insisting, rather pointedly if you ask Denali, who seems to consistently be at the receiving end of the seemingly never-ending gripe, that she knows that someone’ll fuck up her parking arrangement, Denali.

It’s a fair point– Denali would never be bothered to follow Michelle’s colour-coordinated and meticulously planned spreadsheet, in which she’s grouped all the instructors of the same sport together in the carpark, as if it matters to anyone which spot they have.

The valet takes her bags too, which she’s perpetually grateful for; her suitcases are almost always overweight in the airport, despite taking three of her big ones with her. They’ll take them down to her room for her too, as if she’s staying in a nice hotel, not just a ridiculously boujee school.

Mik spots her, dropping the cigarette she was smoking and stubbing it against her chunky boots, jogging over to catch Denali in a tight hug. “Hey slut!”

Denali laughs, embracing her. “Nice to see you too, Mickey.”

Mik shrugs, letting her go with a smile. “You know you missed me, don’t even try it.” Denali rolls her eyes but can’t deny it, grinning when Mik wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“Denali Foxx!” Michelle greets her loudly, ticking her name off on a clipboard. “Usual room,” she says, fishing a key out of her pocket and passing it to Denali.

“Roomies!” Mik says, laughing with an eye-roll when Denali pretends to shover her fingers down her throat complete with exaggerated gagging sounds.

Denali’s always grateful to room with Mik, the rooms are a slightly awkward size– too big to stay in alone, a little too small for two people. Mik works at the school year round, and Denali knows she’s equally grateful to have someone to share with, forever complaining about how empty it feels when she’s by herself with two beds.

“Almost everyone else is already on the slopes,” Michelle notes, turning around so she can point out people on the mountain behind them. “You’ve got a couple days until the kids are allowed out, so better make the most of it.”

The school is laid out like a small village, boys on one side and girls on another, divided in almost everything except meals, which they have in the dining hall all together. The dorms are split into age, six buildings facing parallel to one another in a large U-shape, each with attached communal bathrooms and showers for the students. The buildings are all deliberately short so you can gape at Utah’s mountains practically anywhere on campus.

“I’ve been waiting for you to go out,” Mik says, grabbing Denali’s hand between her cold fingers, trying to drag her down the asphalt leading to the sports instructors’ rooming in the centre of the U.

The academics take place a couple miles down the road in a big building that actually looks like a school, which Michelle swears helps the students to stay focused, but Denali can’t say she’s totally convinced. She’s seen them get off the bus after school, racing one another to be the first in the chairlift queue.

“I really don’t want to go.” Denali whines, but lets Mik tug her down the path regardless. She’s not the best snowboarder even on her best days, and Mik always wants to take her down the especially mogul-ly runs, zipping in between trees and dodging ice patches that are still missing snow.

“Yes you do!” She says, practically skipping down the road. “There’s only a couple of us here anyways, and the kids aren’t allowed to carve up the snow yet– it’ll be fun!”

Denali rolls her eyes, with a sigh. “I’m only doing green runs!”

“Only red runs? Perfect!”

“No, fuck, come on Mik,” she huffs, her breath coming out in sharp puffs in the cold air. “I’m out of practice, this isn’t fair.”

Mik looks at her, shrugging her narrow shoulders, “how’s that my issue, gorge?”

She groans loudly as they approach the staff building, letting Mik lead the way to their room, unlocking the door with her own key.

Mik keeps their room uncharacteristically clean, especially in comparison to her wardrobe filled with clothes piled up on the bottom rather than on their hangers. Denali is pleased to see her blue suitcases on the side of the room Mik’s left for her, both her skating and snowboard boot bags by the end of her bed.

Mik talks aimlessly about the year so far as Denali changes out of her oversized shirt and equally oversized jeans combo. She rifles through her suitcases, half listening to the other girl, searching for her snow-pants and a hoodie, adhering to Mik’s advice to forgo her ski-jacket as it’s still early in the season and sunny enough, despite the snowfall.

She makes her help her lace up her boots properly, watching Mik’s skilled hands tightening them in record time. “Are you borrowing a board?” She asks.

“Mm,” Denali confirms, “are they ready?”

“You can literally borrow mine,” Mik squints up at her from her kneeling position, “we’re like, basically the same height.”

Denali scoffs at this, arching one of her dark eyebrows. “No fucking way am I borrowing one of yours, they’re all deathtraps.”

“They’re literally normal boards.”

“No, they’re all weirdly thin and flexible, I’ll literally break my neck.”

Mik frowns, “ok, first of all, rude. Second of all, I’ll have you know my boards are perfectly safe–”

“–did you or did you not snap one in half last year?”

“That was one time!”

“And that’s one time too many, doll.” Denali says, leaning down to tuck the laces into the tongue of her boot, pulling down her pants so they rest over the top. She reaches out a palm, helping Mik up from her kneeling position. “Get ready and I’ll meet you by the chairlift, okay?”

Mik rolls her eyes, reaching into Denali’s suitcase to attach her goggles to her helmet, passing it over with her gloves tucked neatly inside, as she would with her ten year-olds. Denali yells a thanks over her shoulder as she leaves, weaving her way out of their building to run down to their small ski shop.

☆☆☆☆☆

Humiliatingly enough, Mik makes Denali carry her snowboard with her on the chairlift, refusing to let her sit with one foot strapped in like a normal person would.

“You’re gonna knock your teeth out,” she laughs when Denali complains loudly about it. “Like fully splat, bitch.”

“I know how to ride a chairlift, thank you very much.” Denali grumbles, clutching her board tightly in her arms and sitting down. Mik reaches behind them, pulling down the safety bar, which Denali rests her feet on.

“Can’t have any casualties on day one, gorge.”

“The only casualty will be from me wringing your skinny little neck out when you push me down the mountain, you fucking bitch.” She groans, looking at the run below them.

There’s a pack of skiers weaving their way down tightly together under the poles of the lift. She can already see the deep valleys of moguls, even with her terrible eyesight. One of them looks up at their chair, waving at them with a grin.

Denali squints and she can see it’s Tayce, one of the newer instructors at the school. They had made fast friends last year, gossiping together about who hooked up with who over Thanksgiving– no, no, no, it’s clearly Brooklyn and Vanessa, they keep eyeing each other up–, which of their kids were likely to actually make the Olympic team– all of mine, thank you very much, Taycey–, who they might fuck given the chance– have you not seen A’Whora in the physio suite? I’d let her curb-stomp my neck– et cetera, et cetera.

“Everyone else is coming up tonight and tomorrow,” Mik remarks, waving over-exaggeratedly waving down to Tayce like she’s in a pantomime. “Tayce is like the only bitch I can stand here, as of currently”

“ As of currently? I’m here, as of currently! ”

“My point still stands, gorge.”

“After this run can you join up with them?” Denali groans, “Tayce’ll go super-speed with you. And she’ll let you harass her without breaking your nose.”

Mik laughs, “I don’t go that fast, bitch.”

“Have you ever seen that Disney movie Bolt ? Y’know the one with that dog who runs like, full speed of light? They could do a live-action version with you as the dog.”

“Woof!”

Denali’s face cracks into a grin as she rolls her eyes, “I’m serious! One minute you’re next to me, the next you’re–” she slides her gloved hands together in a forward motion “–zip . And then I’m the idiot who can’t get down.

“I’d never leave you!” Mik gasps, clapping a palm to her chest. “How dare you, fucking bitch.”

Denali scoffs loudly in response. Every year Mik tries to bully her into doing a couple runs together, and every year without fail Denali obliges, only to find herself stuck at the top of a mountain, Mik nowhere in sight.

“Head,” Mik announces, reminding Denali to duck her head so Mik can raise the safety bar, as they start to approach the end of the lift. Mik lines herself up to the drop-off, riding around the corner smoothly, giggling as Denali has to jog to keep up.

They both sit down to strap in, Mik tightening Denali’s bindings for her and pulling her up with a roll of her eyes.

“See you at the bottom?” Mik asks. Before Denali can answer, she’s slipped off, whooping as she hits a bump and flies upwards, grabbing the nose of her board as she hits the jump.

“So much for never leaving me, I guess,” Denali grumbles, carefully edging herself down the slopes with big sweeping S-shaped turns, she knows Mik will laugh at her about later, reminding her how her ten year-olds could easily out-board her.

Uh yeah, I’d fucking hope so, Denali thinks to herself, curving around onto the toe-edge of her board. Otherwise this’d be the biggest waste of money like, uh, ever.

The air that whips around her is cool, blowing snowflakes into her dark hair, but she doesn’t feel cold, happy in her thick sweatshirt and pants. Her feet are desperate to be unlatched from the board, feeling slightly unnatural to be locked in. She’s much more in her element spraying ice as she nails a complicated spin, she knows Mik would eat ass on.

Yeah, she thinks, fuck you and your ten year-olds, Mickey.

☆☆☆☆☆

“Michelle’s put the board up,” Tayce says in the late afternoon, sticking her head around Denali and Mik’s door propped open by a snowboard boot.

Denali looks up from the book she’s reading, comfortably curled up on her bed with her mandatory evening uniform of thick fluffy socks and sweats on. Mik, on the other hand, is still in her lycra leggings and hoodie, having made no effort to change since coming back, much to Denali’s disgust.

“Well?” Tayce asks in annoyance, cocking her hip, “you coming or what?”

Mik groans, rolling off of her bed and moving to stand next to Tayce in their doorway, bare feet on the cold linoleum. Denali carefully places her bookmark in her book, grabbing a pair of Nike slides– sponsored, thank you very much– and begrudgingly walking down the corridor to their big common room.

The Board– with an optional trademarked symbol from Mik– as it’s been aptly dubbed, is a large whiteboard divided neatly (by the increasingly anal Michelle) into a leaderboard. The top ten coaches are listed top to bottom, ordering the number of world title holders they’ve coached at Bonneville, bonus points being allotted to those whose kids win gold, and double points if the title being held was Olympian.

Michelle says it builds healthy competition. Denali says it builds a desire to Tonya Harding every other bitch in this place. Tomayto, tomahto.

Denali hadn’t even been on The Board, until she had returned three seasons ago with the last World Skating Championships under her belt, managing to land three podium spots. She proudly boasted for months to anyone that looked like they might listen that her girls had swept the categories, winning medals across the ladies’ single event, ice dance and pair skating.

Despite her allure of confidence, she knows she only made it up there because Michelle insists on starting fresh each year. She tries to tell them that she’s giving the new coaches a chance, but everyone knows it’s to keep egos in check.

Egos like mother-fucking Rosé McCorkell’s, who’s placed first on The Board two years running.

First as in one spot ahead of Denali’s second, first. First as in gloating in Denali’s face every opportunity she gets (and rest be assured, every opportunity means every opportunity ), first. First as in deliberately sabotaging Denali’s skaters, first– well, at least in Denali’s eyes.

Okay, whatever, yes it could have been a coincidence that one of her front runners’ sole came unglued from the attached blade on the morning of Nationals a year ago. And yeah, sure, maybe Rosé was like, several states away from the incident. And okay, yes, she still came in first after the whole thing, so it’s not it even really mattered after all. But Denali just knows Rosé had something to do with it, that bitch.

“Who’s on top of the pyramid this year?” Mik sing-songs when they approach The Board. Denali instinctively works her way through their photos from the bottom to the top, clapping Tayce lightly on the back when she sees her smack-dab in the centre.

She isn’t nervous; she knows she did well this year, the girls she had coached in the previous season competing in nationally-recognised competitions, pictures of them grinning up on their podiums, flowers in sequinned arms, emailed to her and the school. And it’s not even like it matters.

Her photo stands in line with another, both placed side-by-side at the top of the leaderboard. She can hear Mik mumble an oh shit, with a laugh as she realises that Denali is tied with Rosé at the top.

Okay, so maybe it matters a little bit.

Rosé’s photo looks down at her. She’s wearing her obnoxious signature pink ski jacket, her name embroidered into it in a sparkly silver thread. Her equally obnoxiouly signature curly pink hair has been tied up in a messy ponytail, and she stares at Denali with a big fucking grin on her face.

Denali wants to rip down the laminated photo, putting it into a paper shredder and watch as Rosé’s dumb face gets torn into ribbons.

“Healthy competition huh?” Tayce remarks, wrapping a long arm around Denali’s shoulders. “The cheek, the nerve, the audacity and the gumption, mama.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” A voice groans, Denali turns around and is met by the woman of the hour. Rosé looks her up and down, irritation flickering in her green eyes. “Stepping your shit up, this season ice princess?”

Denali arches an eyebrow in response. “Evidently, McCorkell.”

Rosé smiles at her, all pearly white teeth Denali is pretty sure are veneers– well, at least that’s the rumour she and Tayce started last year as a laugh.

All of a sudden, she feels like a shark’s prey, a minnow trapped inside the great white’s tank. Rosé doesn’t have to say anything for Denali to know that she’s going to be in for a tough season.

Better get that hammer ready, she thinks to herself, I am not the Nancy Kerrigan of this competition, bitch.

tags: rosé, denali foxx, gottmik, rosnali, rivals to lovers, coach au, figure skating au, skiing au, lesbian au, love is a dog from hell, mattels

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November is sacred to Denali.

Although she’s a full-time figure-skating coach year round, boasting a full clientele of Olympic level students alongside a waiting list that seems to be growing by the year, November always manages to remind her why she started teaching to begin with.

Bonneville Academy, despite Denali considering its title of ‘academy’ being a stretch, has managed to wedge itself into her life, year after year. She spends six months of her year in Chicago, teaching private lessons to overenthusiastic and grossly rich teenagers, but from November through to April, she spends in Utah, working with the students to tighten their quadruple lutzes and receiving a paycheck that leaves her feeling pretty comfortable until the next November.

Although the school is technically a legitimate boarding school, offering fairly okay-quality education alongside the best training in the country all year, a lot of the students only attend for the ski season, unable or unwilling to fund a whole year.

Or maybe, Denali considers with a smile, nobody wants to live in the middle of nowhere, locked away in the mountains like a fucking yeti.

Michelle Visage, school director, emails Denali every year about working for them full-time, but every year Denali finds herself unable to leave Chicago behind. She loves her cozy city life, thank you very much. Living alone in her uptown apartment has yet to be beaten, even with the promise of the best skating facilities money can buy.

Half of the kids who attend don’t even realise how lucky they are, she finds herself thinking as her rental car starts the ascent to the school. It’s a long drive, the journey from Salt Lake to Bonneville is deliberately out of most peoples’ way, ensuring the cleanest snow and freshest powder for its plethora of skiers and snowboarders. She’d definitely have killed for something like this when she was still training.

The school is specialised, known for its premium winter sports programme raved about by former Olympians and their coaches. Everything is fully equipped, facilities and machines inside the camp always sparkling new and top of the line; huge dance studios with scary Russian ballet teachers to help her skaters achieve their best on the ice; big gyms and personal trainers; meals specially catered and designed to build muscle and strengthen bones.

It’s also really fucking expensive; Denali sees the checks on Michelle’s desk with their seemingly endless zeroes, given by mothers determined to boast that their little Sally went to Bonneville! But the elusive RuPaul, who Denali knows funds the school, but has never seen or heard much about, hands out plenty of scholarships to kids she deems talented and hard-working enough to thrive.

Denali’s car turns the corner, giving her a view of Bonneville’s ski slopes. She spots a couple of instructors already at the top of the chairlifts, riding down the mountain in neat lines as they enjoy the start of what’s looking to be a beautiful season. It’s still early, but it’s snowing heavily, Denali’s windscreen wipers working hard to keep the snowflakes off her windscreen.

As Denali pulls up to their entrance, she spots a couple of other employees hanging around outside, boisterous laughter coming from their conversations. They’re all old-timers, Denali is sure one or two of them have worked at the school since its opening in the late nineties.

She immediately spots the inky black mullet that belongs to Mik, one of the snowboarding coaches for the younger kids. She’s standing alone, narrow back pressed up against a red bricked wall as she smokes a cigarette, flicking ash off of the end into the thin layer of snow below her feet.

She gets out of her car, passing her keys over to the valet Michelle hires unnecessarily every year, always insisting, rather pointedly if you ask Denali, who seems to consistently be at the receiving end of the seemingly never-ending gripe, that she knows that someone’ll fuck up her parking arrangement, Denali.

It’s a fair point– Denali would never be bothered to follow Michelle’s colour-coordinated and meticulously planned spreadsheet, in which she’s grouped all the instructors of the same sport together in the carpark, as if it matters to anyone which spot they have.

The valet takes her bags too, which she’s perpetually grateful for; her suitcases are almost always overweight in the airport, despite taking three of her big ones with her. They’ll take them down to her room for her too, as if she’s staying in a nice hotel, not just a ridiculously boujee school.

Mik spots her, dropping the cigarette she was smoking and stubbing it against her chunky boots, jogging over to catch Denali in a tight hug. “Hey slut!”

Denali laughs, embracing her. “Nice to see you too, Mickey.”

Mik shrugs, letting her go with a smile. “You know you missed me, don’t even try it.” Denali rolls her eyes but can’t deny it, grinning when Mik wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“Denali Foxx!” Michelle greets her loudly, ticking her name off on a clipboard. “Usual room,” she says, fishing a key out of her pocket and passing it to Denali.

“Roomies!” Mik says, laughing with an eye-roll when Denali pretends to shover her fingers down her throat complete with exaggerated gagging sounds.

Denali’s always grateful to room with Mik, the rooms are a slightly awkward size– too big to stay in alone, a little too small for two people. Mik works at the school year round, and Denali knows she’s equally grateful to have someone to share with, forever complaining about how empty it feels when she’s by herself with two beds.

“Almost everyone else is already on the slopes,” Michelle notes, turning around so she can point out people on the mountain behind them. “You’ve got a couple days until the kids are allowed out, so better make the most of it.”

The school is laid out like a small village, boys on one side and girls on another, divided in almost everything except meals, which they have in the dining hall all together. The dorms are split into age, six buildings facing parallel to one another in a large U-shape, each with attached communal bathrooms and showers for the students. The buildings are all deliberately short so you can gape at Utah’s mountains practically anywhere on campus.

“I’ve been waiting for you to go out,” Mik says, grabbing Denali’s hand between her cold fingers, trying to drag her down the asphalt leading to the sports instructors’ rooming in the centre of the U.

The academics take place a couple miles down the road in a big building that actually looks like a school, which Michelle swears helps the students to stay focused, but Denali can’t say she’s totally convinced. She’s seen them get off the bus after school, racing one another to be the first in the chairlift que.

“I really don’t want to go.” Denali whines, but lets Mik tug her down the path regardless. She’s not the best snowboarder even on her best days, and Mik always wants to take her down the especially mogul-ly runs, zipping in between trees and dodging ice patches that are still missing snow.

“Yes you do!” She says, practically skipping down the road. “There’s only a couple of us here anyways, and the kids aren’t allowed to carve up the snow yet– it’ll be fun!”

Denali rolls her eyes, with a sigh. “I’m only doing green runs!”

“Only red runs? Perfect!”

“No, fuck, come on Mik,” she huffs, her breath coming out in sharp puffs in the cold air. “I’m out of practice, this isn’t fair.”

Mik looks at her, shrugging her narrow shoulders, “how’s that my issue, gorge?”

She groans loudly as they approach the staff building, letting Mik lead the way to their room, unlocking the door with her own key.

Mik keeps their room uncharacteristically clean, especially in comparison to her wardrobe filled with clothes piled up on the bottom rather than on their hangers. Denali is pleased to see her blue suitcases on the side of the room Mik’s left for her, both her skating and snowboard boot bags by the end of her bed.

Mik talks aimlessly about the year so far as Denali changes out of her oversized shirt and equally oversized jeans combo. She rifles through her suitcases, half listening to the other girl, searching for her snow-pants and a hoodie, adhering to Mik’s advice to forgo her ski-jacket as it’s still early in the season and sunny enough, despite the snowfall.

She makes her help her lace up her boots properly, watching Mik’s skilled hands tightening them in record time. “Are you borrowing a board?” She asks.

“Mm,” Denali confirms, “are they ready?”

“You can literally borrow mine,” Mik squints up at her from her kneeling position, “we’re like, basically the same height.”

Denali scoffs at this, arching one of her dark eyebrows. “No fucking way am I borrowing one of yours, they’re all deathtraps.”

“They’re literally normal boards.”

“No, they’re all weirdly thin and flexible, I’ll literally break my neck.”

Mik frowns, “ok, first of all, rude. Second of all, I’ll have you know my boards are perfectly safe–”

“–didn’t you snap one in half last year?”

“That was one time!”

“And that’s one time too many, doll.” Denali says, leaning down to tuck the laces into the tongue of her boot, pulling down her pants so they rest over the top. She reaches out a palm, helping Mik up from her kneeling position. “Get ready and I’ll meet you by the chairlift, okay?”

Mik rolls her eyes, reaching into Denali’s suitcase to attach her goggles to her helmet, passing it over with her gloves tucked neatly inside, as she would with her ten year-olds. Denali yells a thanks over her shoulder as she leaves, weaving her way out of their building to run down to their small ski shop.

☆☆☆☆☆

Humiliatingly enough, Mik makes Denali carry her snowboard with her on the chairlift, refusing to let her sit with one foot strapped in like a normal person would.

“You’re gonna knock your teeth out,” she laughs when Denali complains loudly about it. “Like fully, splat, bitch.”

“I know how to ride a chairlift, thank you very much.” Denali grumbles, clutching her board tightly in her arms and sitting down. Mik reaches behind them, pulling down the safety bar, which Denali rests her feet on.

“Can’t have any casualties on day one, gorge.”

“The only casualty will be from me wringing your skinny little neck out when you push me down the mountain, you fucking bitch.” She groans, looking at the run below them.

There’s a pack of skiers weaving their way down tightly together under the poles of the lift. She can already see the deep valleys of moguls, even with her terrible eyesight. One of them looks up at their chair, waving at them with a grin.

Denali squints and she can see it’s Tayce, one of the newer instructors at the school. They had made fast friends last year, gossiping together about who hooked up with who over Thanksgiving– no, no, no, it’s clearly Brooklyn and Vanessa, they keep eyeing each other up–, which of their kids were likely to actually make the Olympic team– all of mine, thank you very much, Taycey–, who they might fuck given the chance– have you not seen A’Whora in the physio suite? I’d let her curb-stomp my neck– et cetera, et cetera.

“Everyone else is coming up tonight and tomorrow,” Mik remarks, waving over-exaggeratedly waving down to Tayce like she’s in a pantomime. “Tayce is like the only bitch I can stand here, as of currently”

“As of currently? I’m here, as of currently!”

“My point still stands, gorge.”

“After this run can you join up with them?” Denali groans, “Tayce’ll go super-speed with you. And she’ll let you harass her without breaking your nose.”

Mik laughs, “I don’t go that fast, bitch.”

“Have you ever seen that Disney movie Bolt? Y’know the one with that dog who runs like, full speed of light? They could do a live-action version with you as the dog.”

“Woof!”

Denali’s face cracks into a grin as she rolls her eyes, “I’m serious! One minute you’re next to me, the next you’re–” she slides her gloved hands together in a forward motion “–zip. And then I’m the idiot who can’t get down.

“I’d never leave you!” Mik gasps, clapping a palm to her chest. “How dare you, fucking bitch.”

Denali scoffs loudly in response. Every year Mik tries to bully her into doing a couple runs together, and every year without fail Denali obliges, only to find herself stuck at the top of a mountain, Mik nowhere in sight.

“Head,” Mik announces, reminding Denali to duck her head so Mik can raise the safety bar, as they start to approach the end of the lift. Mik lines herself up to the drop-off, riding around the corner smoothly, giggling as Denali has to jog to keep up.

They both sit down to strap in, Mik tightening Denali’s bindings for her and pulling her up with a roll of her eyes.

“See you at the bottom?” Mik asks. Before Denali can answer, she’s slipped off, whooping as she hits a bump and flies upwards, grabbing the nose of her board as she hits the jump.

“So much for never leaving me, I guess,” Denali grumbles, carefully edging herself down the slopes with big sweeping S-shaped turns, she knows Mik will laugh at her about later, reminding her how her ten year-olds could easily out-board her.

Uh yeah, I’d fucking hope so, Denali thinks to herself, curving around onto the toe-edge of her board. Otherwise this’d be the biggest waste of money like, uh, ever.

The air that whips around her is cool, blowing snowflakes into her dark hair, but she doesn’t feel cold, happy in her thick sweatshirt and pants. Her feet are desperate to be unlatched from the board, feeling slightly unnatural to be locked in. She’s much more in her element spraying ice as she nails a complicated spin, she knows Mik would eat ass on.

Yeah, she thinks, fuck you and your ten year-olds, Mickey.

☆☆☆☆☆

“Michelle’s put the board up,” Tayce says in the late afternoon, sticking her head around Denali and Mik’s door propped open by a snowboard boot.

Denali looks up from the book she’s reading, comfortably curled up on her bed with her mandatory evening uniform of thick fluffy socks and sweats on. Mik, on the other hand, is still in her lycra leggings and hoodie, having made no effort to change since coming back, much to Denali’s disgust.

“Well?” Tayce asks in annoyance, cocking her hip, “you coming or what?”

Mik groans, rolling off of her bed and moving to stand next to Tayce in their doorway, bare feet on the cold linoleum. Denali carefully places her bookmark in her book, grabbing a pair of Nike slides– sponsored, thank you very much– and begrudgingly walking down the corridor to their big common room.

The Board– with an optional trademarked symbol from Mik– as it’s been aptly dubbed, is a large whiteboard divided neatly (by the increasingly anal Michelle) into a leaderboard. The top ten coaches are listed top to bottom, ordering the number of world title holders they’ve coached at Bonneville, bonus points being allotted to those whose kids win gold, and double points if the title being held was Olympian.

Michelle says it builds healthy competition. Denali says it builds a desire to Tonya Harding every other bitch in this place. Tomayto, tomahto.

Denali hadn’t even been on The Board, until she had returned three seasons ago with the last World Skating Championships under her belt, managing to land three podium spots. She proudly boasted for months to anyone that looked like they might listen that her girls had swept the categories, winning medals across the ladies’ single event, ice dance and pair skating.

Despite her allure of confidence, she knows she only made it up there because Michelle insists on starting fresh each year. She tries to tell them that she’s giving the new coaches a chance, but everyone knows it’s to keep egos in check.

Egos like mother-fucking Rosé McCorkell’s, who’s placed first on the board two years running.

First as in one spot ahead of Denali’s second, first. First as in gloating in Denali’s face every opportunity she gets (and rest be assured, every opportunity means every opportunity), first. First as in deliberately sabotaging Denali’s skaters, first– well, at least in Denali’s eyes.

Okay, whatever, yes it could have been a coincidence that one of her front runners’ sole came unglued from the attached blade on the morning of Nationals a year ago. And yeah, sure, maybe Rosé was like, several states away from the incident. And okay, yes, she still came in first after the whole thing, so it’s not it even really mattered after all. But Denali just knows Rosé had something to do with it, that bitch.

“Who’s on top of the pyramid this year?” Mik sing-songs when they approach The Board. Denali instinctively works her way through their photos from the bottom to the top, clapping Tayce lightly on the back when she sees her smack-dab in the centre.

She isn’t nervous; she knows she did well this year, the girls she had coached in the previous season competing in nationally-recognised competitions, pictures of them grinning up on their podiums, flowers in sequinned arms, emailed to her and the school. And it’s not even like it matters.

Her photo stands in line with another, both at the top of the leaderboard. She can hear Mik mumble an oh shit, with a laugh as she realises that Denali is tied with Rosé at the top.

Okay, so maybe it matters a little bit.

Rosé’s photo looks down at her. She’s wearing her obnoxious signature pink ski jacket, her name embroidered into it in a sparkly silver thread. Her equally obnoxiouly signature curly pink hair has been tied up in a messy ponytail, and she stares at Denali with a big fucking grin on her face.

Denali wants to rip down the laminated photo, putting it into a paper shredder and watch as Rosé’s dumb face gets torn into ribbons.

“Healthy competition huh?” Tayce remarks, wrapping a long arm around Denali’s shoulders. “The cheek, the nerve, the audacity and the gumption, mama.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” A voice groans, Denali turns around and is met by the woman of the hour. Rosé looks her up and down, irritation flickering in her green eyes. “Stepping your shit up, this season ice princess?”

Denali arches an eyebrow in response. “Evidently, McCorkell.”

Rosé smiles at her, all pearly white teeth Denali is pretty sure are veneers– well, at least that’s the rumour she and Tayce started last year as a laugh.

All of a sudden, she feels like a shark’s prey, a minnow trapped inside the great white’s tank. Rosé doesn’t have to say anything for Denali to know that she’s going to be in for a tough season.

Better get that hammer ready, she thinks to herself, I am not the Nancy Kerrigan of this competition, bitch.

[365days365movies]

February 7, 2021: Emma. (2020)

Another late one, people! Tomorrow might be a bit later, too, full warning. Like I said, school’s back in session, and I got students to teach and class to prepare!

When I was a kid, I was a pretty avid reader, mostly due to my mom’s drive to get me to be an avid reader. I read Shakespeare from an early age, which might be why I like it so much, and why I remember it so well. 

I also read Jane Austen’s Emma when I was 10 years old. On a related note, I remember none of Jane Austen’s Emma. On another related note, I’m fairly certain that I saw its most famous adaptation, Clueless, and I don’t remember that either.

I’m tempted to rewatch that one, since I don’t remember it AT ALL, but I figure that I’m going to place a more direct adaptation of the work first on my list of priorities. And so, one of the ONLY movies to come out last year is one my list, starring an up-and-coming “it girl,” Anya Taylor-Joy.

From what I can tell, this is a fairly popular movie on this platform, so I’m looking forward to watching it, despite knowing NOTHING about it, other than the fact that it’s a romance drama, and based off of a classic British novel by Jane Austen. Shall we? SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap

Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy) lives in the 1815 English countryside, with her father, Mr. Woodhouse (Bill Nighy), and her caretaker, Mrs. Taylor (Gemma Whelan). However, this is about to change, as she is to marry Mr. Weston (Rupert Graves) that day.

Emma is a sweet girl, who seems to be ale to predict things to pass. She also set up the present marriage, although she seems not to want one for herself. However, she also seems interested in the whereabouts of Mr. Taylor’s son, Frank. He never shows up, though.

Meanwhile, the Woodhouses are visited by George Knightley (Johnny Flynn), whom her father favors, and whom Emma seems to clash with. And Imma call it now: they totally end up together in the end. I mean, c’mon.

Emma’s trying to replace Mrs. Weston nee Taylor as a governness, despite the fact that her father doesn’t want it. Emma finds Harriet Smith (Mia Goth), a young women whom she goes to school with, and apparently might be the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman. She’s also interested in setting Harriet up, as Emma prides her skills as a matchmaker.

However, Harriet’s already interested in a local farmer, Robert Martin (Connor Swindels), but Emma’s trying to set her up with a local vicar, Elton (Josh O’Connor). They go to meet Mrs. Weston, and Emma introduces herself to Elton, who she believes likes her in return.

The next day, Emma and Harriet go to the store, where the gossipy busybody Miss Bates (Miranda Hart) comes to speak with the VERY unwilling Emma, and the considerably more interested Harriet. Miss Bates is speaking up her niece, Jane, although Emma certainly doesn���t seen to care nearly as much as Miss Bates thinks she does.

On the way home, Harriet and Emma encounter Robert Martin, and Emma's definitely not a fan of that potential relationship. Instead, she regularly puts down Mr. Martin, and talks up Vicar Elton.

As Elton and Harriet begin getting closer, and Emma seems to be vindicated in support of the relationship she set up, Knightley’s...not impressed. In a conversation with Mrs. Weston, he basically says that she gets high on flattery, and while she isn’t necessarily a true narcissist, she still NEEDS approval from her peers and others. That’s why she’s setting up Harriet, who feeds her constant flattery.

In addition, her whole “never going to get married” thing doesn’t seem to fly with George, here, who’d like her to fall in love with someone who isn’t...well, a simp, let’s be honest here. And honestly, this is already an interesting character dissection, and I can dig it.

Knightley complicates matters for Emma, when he convinces Martin to write a letter, asking for Harriet’s hand in marriage. However, due to Emma’s subtle manipulations, she convinces Harriet to refuse the proposal, despite the fact that she clearly wants to say yes. And while Emma might be beautiful, and quite smart...yeah, she’s a bitch. Or, at the very least, she acts like one for her own benefit.

Knightley, pissed off about this whole thing, confronts Emma about her manipulations, and states that Martin might be the ideal match for Harriet. After calling her out, and warning her that Elton miiiiiiight be a bit of a ladies’ man, and that he’s certainly the wrong match for Harriet in the end. Emma admits that she mostly wants to keep Harriet for herself.

Autumn turns to Winter, and Emma’s older sister Isabella Knightley (Chloe Pirrie), and her husband John Knightley (Oliver Chris) (and George’s younger brother) come to visit Emma and her father for the holidays. George and Emma make amends, although Emma still won’t admit that she may have been wrong.

Christmas Day comes, and Harriet is sick, while Frank Churchill once again neglects to appear at the house of his father and new wife. George berates his neglect of his familial duties, while Emma argues in his favor, obviously harboring a crush on him still.

At dinner, Elton makes a remark about snow, causing LITERALLY EVERYBODY to leave the party prematurely, and Emma’s father accidentally leaves her behind. Elton, however, offers to give her a ride in his carriage. And in the carriage, he reveals that not only does he actually love Emma, but that he doesn’t care for Harriet at fucking ALL. Fuckin’ WHOOF.

Looks like Elton’s misread EVERY POSSIBLE SIGNAL, and Emma FUCKED UP SOMETHING FIERCE. Harriet is quite saddened by this, and is about to destroy a portrait of herself that Emma made for her. However, Emma instead keeps it. Elton disappears for a number of weeks, just as the niece of Miss Bates, Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) suddenly reappears.

At dinner, it’s revealed that Jane appears to know Frank Churchill, as they live in the same place. During a piano performance of Jane’s that’s WAY BETTER than Emma’s performance, it’s also revealed that Emma’s been compared to her all of her life, giving her some fat, fat insecurities!

After an awkward encounter with Mr. Martin, Harriet goes to the Martin household to visit his sisters. Meanwhile, the long-awaited arrival of Frank Churchill (Callum Turner) comes, and Emma is unsurprisingly smitten with him. He asks her for a dance at an upcoming dinner, and she accepts.

Knightley is, of course, not impressed with the worldly gentleman. Meanwhile, someone has apparently delivered a pianoforte to Jane Fairfax, and it’s pretty goddamn obvious that it was Frank Churchill. Although, it’s possible that it was George Knightley, who’s been matched to her by Mrs. Weston.

And it’s at this point that I should point out that GODDAMN THIS IS A SOAP-OPERA OF A MOVIE. The hyper-detailed intentions and events, all happening within the confines of high society and etiquette are both overly intricate, while also managing to be...weirdly enrapturing.

The next morning, after a six-week absence, Elton’s come back to town with brand new wife, Augusta Elton (Tanya Reynolds) in tow. Augusta matches Emma’s passive-aggressiveness measure-for-goddamn-measure, which, yeah, PISSES EMMA OFF.

But it’s still good news on the horizon, as Frank’s appearance has prompted the Westons to hold a ball. While Emma and Frank seem to be getting along, Elton is prevented to opportunity to dance with Harriet, only to refuse LIKE AN ABSOLUTE TAINT. On the verge of tears, Harriet’s rescued by George, and they dance alongside the rest of the partygoers.

Emma shows his appreciation for this, and Knightley returns his appreciation for her friendship with Harriet, who’s way goddamn better than Augusta. The two decide to dance together, and the two basically fall in love RIGHT GODDAMN THERE AND I AM GODDAMN HERE FOR IT.

Which sucks, because I’m, what, a little more than halfway in? No way it’s this easy.

And as Knightley and Emma realize their feelings the next day, they actually run towards each other, SEE each other...and then get iterrupted by Frank carrying Harriet post-her being attacked by muggers GOD FUCKING DAMMIT REALLY?

Plus, it looks like Harriet might be in love with Knightley now, after the previous night. HowEVER, since the previous night, Emma is now in love with Knightley, and believes that Harriet’s feelings are directed towards her rescuer, Frank Churchill. But Frank’s in love with Jane. Like, for sure he’s in love with Jane. And Knightley’s in love with Emma, although Mrs. Weston believes that he’s in love with ane, as he leant her his chariot the previous night, although he DIDN’T do that, and the chariot (and piano) must’ve come from Frank, who’s actually in love with her, not Harriet, as Emma believes. YOU GOT THAT? BECAUSE I’M ASTONISHED THAT I DO

Summer comes, and there seemingly no major changes to the love lives of our main characters. Can’t say that for George’s mansion, as he’s unveiled all of the paintings in the place.

Might be wrong about the progression of relationship thing, as George and Harriet appear to be getting along, and Emma and George suddenly...aren’t. And THEN, Jane tells Ema that she’s feeling super down at the moment, and leaves. Which is when Frank shows up, which Emma appears to not be super happy about.

Later, at a luncheon, Emma takes out her emotions upon Miss Bates who, while kind of annoying during the film, doesn’t deserve the insult lobbied her way by Emma. Afterwards, George DESTROYS her, and she...she gets it. She’s been an asshole.

After a good cry, she goes to apologize to Miss Bates, who immediately forgives her, as she tends to do. It’s also pretty quickly revealed after that that we find out that Frank has ALWAYS been engaged to Jane, since he arrived to Highbury. AND, Emma finally findss out that Harriet’s in love with George, not Frank. Which...yeah, Emma’s not a huge fan of, for obvious reasons.

However, Emma points out that George might have been trying to get Harriet involved with Mr. Martin, but also tries to step back. However, Harriet RIGHTLY calls her out this time, bringing up the fact that Emma fancies George, and that it’s because of Emma that she refused Mr. Martin. And Emma finally gets it. ALL of it.

George, hearing of Frank’s engagement, goes to comfort Emma in her time of distress. And after railing out Frank for his lying ass, he starts to confess his true feelings to Emma. But she tries to stop him, but THERE AIN’T NO STOPPIN’ LOVE BABY

And as he STRAIGHT-UP PROPOSES to her...her nose bleeds and she says no.

Finally, it’s confirmed that George was speaking on Mr. Matin’s behalf, not his own, and Emma pledges to make things right herself. She delivers the painting of Harriet to Mr. Martin, and he proposes to her. Harriet accepts, and has also finally heard from her father, who isn’t a nobleman at all, but a shoemaker. Emma still invites them over to their estate, and the two make up as friends.

And speaking of making up, George and Emma also make up, and the two are officially engaged to be wed. And it’s honestly...quite lovely. Which describes the whole film, which comes to a close.

WHEW. Now THAT...was a Recap. See you in the Review!

[pensivetense]

Someone might have already asked but top five characters and top five ships for magnus archives? You can add why I'm always curious to see the reasons.

for characters:

1) Jonah Magnus - for loads of reasons, but mostly bc he’s the character with the most agency/choice and the most compelling tragedy to me because of it.

2) Martin Blackwood - I like the layers in the way he’s written, the way that he’s at once manipulative/deceptive and yet the character who consistently tries the hardest and hopes the most. Also, his character arc leading up to 158 is so satisfying.

3) Gertrude Robinson - she’s so interesting! Her unflinching dedication to a thankless task which quite literally killed her and ate her humanity could so easily have been framed as heroic, and the ultimate pointlessness of it was terrifying and tragic. Love her.

4) Annabelle Cane - specifically, the version who lives in my head who’s been terrified of being manipulated her entire life and is now the unwilling avatar of the Mother of Puppets, and first witness to its growing sentience and personhood.

5) og!Elias - what can I say, he may have no presence in the story but I’m very attached to him and I about lost my mind when he got an episode. Also, he accidentally an old, deep fear of mine, so now I project on to him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. He should have had Jonah killing rights, imho.

For ships:

1) LonelyEyes - I ship lonelyeyes so hard you guys. It’s the angst and tragedy of two people who could so easily choose to be happy together deciding instead to say ‘fuck it, murder.’ Also, aro!Jonah rights, and I think aro!Jonah/ace!Peter is just sublime.

2) GertrudeAgnes - they’re metaphysically bound by the Web, okay? Also, the tragedy of Agnes, whose touch burns and Gertrude, who cannot ‘afford’ intimacy being bound to humanity by the other... yeah.

3) MartinElias - there’s just something appealing about Martin being an extremely competent liar in the stronghold of Beholding to the extent that he impresses the only person who Knows. Alternately, Martin being overlooked by Elias until he puts him in prison and suddenly Elias is like, “oh. 😳”

4) JonElias - um, this ones weird for me because I feel it is very carried by religious undertones and I don’t actually view Jonah as religious at all, especially compared with an avatar like, say, Peter Lukas. But on the other hand, I am not immune to religious undertones.

5) Jonah/Elias. Crackship? Maybe. Do I care? Nope. The inherent intimacy of sharing a body, my friends. (I’ve also been weirdly into Jonah/Smirke recently)

[enrychan]

Burakovsky fanfiction recs

ok so I read every single Burakovsky fanfic on AO3 (no, really) and I started thinking about writing down a list of those I particularly appreciate. because the Patho fandom is tiny, and the Burakovsky fandom is even tinier, but there are a lot of incredible talents in it, and they deserve all the recognition we can muster.

I apologize to those who did not make it into this list, unfortunately I can’t read Russian (for now... that might change in the future😏) AND I have very specific tastes. Which is why some authors are repeated more than once (sorry!). Also I’m following at least a couple of beautiful fanfics that are currently unfinished, and I’m probably gonna include those in the next list.

You’re all extremely talented though, and I hope to read more of your works very soon (do I refresh the Burakovsky tag each day? yes I do)

anyway here’s my list, in no particular order! Enjoy all the love, hate, death and philosophy!🥰

In Vivo by meradorm. After a long silence, the Haruspex travels to the capital to seek out his old companion.

Arguably the best fanfics in the Patho fandom; and one of the best fanfics I’ve ever read. The writing style simulates the first translation of Patho Classic, which was weird and sometimes almost incomprehensible, but somehow it enhanced the odd, alien experience of the first game. Using this particular and sometimes difficult language, this fanfic gives the impression of being an integral part of the original story. The characters and the love story are beautiful and raw, sweet and cruel, and the ending is so... so perfectly Pathologic it makes me angry. Prepare lots&lots of tissues because you’re gonna cry your eyes out!

How cleverly the trap is made by Modlisznik. "My apologies." Daniil clears his throat. "Usually I reserve views like this for at least fourth, maybe fifth date."

Ok yes I’m going to recommend a lot of fanfics by Modlisznik, I just really really like their style. This is one of my favorites because Daniil is so in character, trying his best to appear strong even while in pain and almost blind with one of his migraines... and I’m always weak for Artemy being sweet and caring for Daniil. Just *chef’s kiss* excellent

Of the Town and the Steppe by Modlisznik. Artemy wonders how Daniil feels about this vastness, autumnal grass as far as the eye can see, the sky so clear, hanging so low, so close you can almost touch it, you can almost get swallowed whole. Insignificant, a little speckle on the face of Earth. Daniil is a creature of the city, Artemy thinks, of clear boundaries, of walls to hide behind, of places to be alone in. He must feel exposed. I'm a bad host, Artemy thinks.

Just a romantic, intimate moment between our two idiots out in the steppe. Daniil imagining all the places in the Capital he would like to show Artemy is so unbearably sweet I think I’ve cavities now. Totally worth it though.

All about Blood by Modlisznik. Daniil is aware that Isidor has been murdered just a few days ago. That his memory is still fresh, his touch lingers in this place. That Daniil, an intruder, shouldn't come down here to Isidor’s workshop - his laboratory - his sanctum - and most certainly, he shouldn't be here to fuck Isidor’s son. Even less, to use the elder Burakh's table for that purpose. He's aware of that. He also doesn't care.

Hot damn. This fanfics pushes all my buttons at once and then dances on the keyboard just to be sure. Artemy/Daniil kinky sex? Check. On the stone table in Artemy’s lab? Check. Subtle power games between the two? Check. Artemy marking Daniil with his blood? Check. A sprinkle of bondage just to spice things up a bit? Check. Um... is it just me or it’s kind of hot in here?

The Line of Red by Modlisznik. Bachelor Dankovsky does not believe in luck. Artemy wants him to understand, that the charm he's offering will protect him - just not in the way Daniil thinks it does.

Another sweet moment brought to you by or Official Sweetheart Artemy Burakh: Artemy wants to give Daniil something to remind him that he’s not alone, even in his darkest moments, that Artemy is his tagloor. Daniil doesn’t understand all that steppe folklore, but recognizes a precious gift when he’s given one.

Something old, something new by Modlisznik. In which Artemy considers the importance of not being watched, and Murky's doll needs urgent medical attention.

Just an adorable fanfic and a joy to read from start to finish. Artemy is best dad, Murky is best daughter, Daniil is back with a new title, and I’m always ready for some teary-eyed happy reunions.

Bloodflood by Xyloto. A flood of blood to the heart.

Artemy is used to be on top, and the relative new experience of being on the receiving end doesn’t start particularly well for him, but he is determined to let Daniil have what he wants. Daniil has other ideas on the matter. I have a thing for “top that bottoms for his bottom”, and especially in this case because this fanfic is written beautifully. It keeps all the more abrasive traits of Artemy’s personality&speech, while remaining very sweet and romantic somehow.

A Curse Befalls Your Heart by CurrieBelle. Daniil Dankovsky suffers from a Steppe curse. Burakh performs triage.

Speaking of sweet and romantic, are you ready for a good bucket of literal honey? This is my comfort fanfic, the one I return to every once in a while when I need something soft and lovely to shut off my brain. Not only that, but the story is awesome too, because it is based on an actual canon curse in the Patho lore. Remember when Anna Angel was cursed with the “returning heart” in Patho 2? What if something similar happened to Daniil? Luckily, Artemy is there to help.

Ode to the Body by kylee. In which Bachelor and Haruspex flatter each other shamelessly.

The Powers That Be have always destroyed Daniil’s self esteem by reducing him to a list of failures. Artemy wants him to understand that he’s not just his failures, nor his accomplishments, but so much more. Sex ensues. Praise kink anyone??? (yes please)

life overflowing by Yellow. Artemy needs someone to look at what he's done, to see he's done well, to take over for him, his head and his heart. just for a little while.

This is both lovely and kind of heartbreaking, with some suicidal tendencies/ideation? I feel it is completely appropriate after all Artemy has gone through by this point in the story. But Daniil doesn’t have any intention of letting him go.

Vae Soli by Adoxography. Daniil becomes Artemy's unwilling caretaker when Artemy is infected with the Sand Pest and is forced to take a Shmowder to cure himself, or die in the attempt.

There are a lot of sick fics in the Patho fandom (obviously), but I particularly love this one because it doesn’t embellish the pitiful state of Artemy, caught between two terrible ailments, nor makes Daniil appear too soft and generous. There is rivalry between the two idiots (as it should be), but also trust and even some attraction on Daniil’s part. In other words, it rings true and believable!

sub derma by Jagged. Dankovsky takes to the Town better than he thinks, but less than he'd like. Artemy would know.

Super sexy fanfic! dom!Daniil turns Artemy on with some pain play which Artemy is only too happy to be subjected to. I just love the power dynamic between the two, it’s visceral and even a little bit cruel at times, but the absolute trust they have in each other makes everything weirdly romantic.

foreign bodies by hoverbun. They have some time to themselves between dissections and the sharing of alms.

So it turns out that I also have a Thing for fics about shaving. apparently??? Artemy has some free time and a beard to get rid of. He asks Daniil for help with that. And everyone knows there are few things sexier than a hot doctor with a very sharp blade pointed at your throat!

I hope you blink before I do by vespirus. Maybe he was fated to gravitate towards men like these; the men with loose morals, the men who understood what it meant to be an arbiter of life and death decisions, the men who felt the weight of the future on their shoulders. Or maybe he just had an inescapable interest in the macabre.

AU fanfic about Daniil as an unscrupulous researcher and Artemy as a medical undergraduate willing to kill to make enough money to keep living and studying in the Capital. In other words they are both horrible people, and the tension between them is so thick you could slice it with a knife. There also a sequel, but it’s a death fic and I personally don’t like that. I hope the author will write an alternative ending where they become an awesome couple of gay criminals in love sooner or later!