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heloisedaphnebrightmore · 2 years

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please don’t apologize!!! one of my best friends does that a lot too, she just reappeared after being MIA for a month so just imagine me waving my hand dismissively at your worries

oh i don’t take this list too seriously tough hahaha i’m a helplessly methodical person, i love lists and order and spreadsheets so i try to have a TBR but if a book on my shelf stares at me too hard I drop the list and I go at it or if somebody recommends me a book and I feel its calling, I rush to amazon (which is what happened with ‘everything i know about love’).

you GOTTA do a celebration when you reach 1000!! not like on tumblr like in real life, idk like buy a bottle of your favorite expensive wine or a perfect comfy loveseat to match your shelf or some other self indulgent shit that preferably involves confetti being thrown around. you’re your spreadsheet scares the bejesus out of me hahaha not because of the book quantity but because it’s such a complex layout!!! i sure as hell don’t have the excel skills to do it – wish I had though)

so that may be kinda serendipitous or i’m just too wrapped up in my own head buuuut i’m gonna start a publishing MA course soon!!

I was lucky the woman who managed my flat spoke English and helped me and my friend when we needed it but yeah Budapest has loads of international students who all face the same issue. Also, this may be a touchy issue so if you don’t wanna dive into it I get it, but how do you feel about politics in your home country? Is it a topic you try to avoid because you left or it gets under your skin nonetheless?

i don’t mind i mean i’m on anon and countries are big so…… (tough europe is pretty small in one train ride you’ve seen it all) i’m moving to the UK actually

uhhhh yeah the silence thing is something i’ve never seen before as well and that’s at least one props to SJM hahaha

Az has a tough façade but he’s a big softie (my favorite kinda guy) underneath it all – kinda like you he too looks like he wants to unalive people – and yeah I’m diving into the account you suggested right freaking now!!!

you should!!!! Get them out of your shelf now!!!!! Look, the first book has one POV only, the older sister, the second book has one as well, the younger one, only the third has two though it’s more focused on the younger sister. it’s probably on my top 3 favorite fantasy series so i highly recommend it

exactly!!! i like trash talk like on the hating game (i have a lot of critiques about this book if I take off the rose colored glasses) when it’s funny and sometimes childish and petty but there’s some amount of respect there and sometimes even admiration for your rival. And those silly misunderstandings, like A and B are C’s best friends but they are jealous of each other are fun as well. The worst subtrope in my honest opinion is the bully falling in love with the victim or vice versa.

ohhh that!!! People whose brain is a smart little cookie don’t judge people on what they read, I mean, if you see me on the subway holding a book whose title is ‘how to kill your family’ and you think I’m trying to kill my family, you’re a straight up idiot who doesn’t understand the concept of escapism. And books in general. Have fun with your dark fantasy novels babe, I bet they’re hot as hell, read one (promises and pomegranates) and wanna dive deeper into that pool (neon gods is on my radar, have you read it?)

I mean........ i’ve only admitted that to three people but yeah I do. I want a partner and kids and a house and a cat, I’ve always wanted that – though after a terrifying child-birth video my sex ed teacher showed us I’m pretty sure I’m gonna go with adoption when it comes to the kids phase. And I don’t take marriage that seriously I guess. The commitment I do, the partnership and monogamy of it all, but the till-death-do-us-part part that comes with the ceremony I don’t. I want the party, big, small, intimate, whatever, but for me it’s not this moment that makes up a marriage. There’s also the thing that since I was little I’ve kinda known I would end up alone (oh those daddy issues) so I guess I just think if I ever manage to find someone who wants me at the same time as I want them I’m lucky enough no matter how long it takes. There’s a Brazilian poet who once wrote, may love be eternal while it lasts, and I believe in that wholeheartedly. I wanna grow old by someone’s side, be them my first love or that cute 70-year-old I met at yoga for pensioners’ class on a sunder morning. Maybe I’m trying to say I don’t believe in one soulmate or one true love…… it’s just all so chaotic. And the taking-someone’s-name thing rubs me the wrong way too, i can’t see myself doing this. What i can see myself doing is being with a guy who growls “mine” in my ear hehe ~goodreads anon

Hahah my kind of people xD It's a very bad habit to forget to reply to people because I get immersed in something but sometimes I just do. Not always!

Woah, I just read back this whole message that I wrote and I have to say you caught me in a very intense moment. Please grab a seat and a cup of tea or coffee because I was spilling some passionate monologues below. Not gonna lie, it's a solid novella xD I'd also like to warn you of my swearing and cussing :D

Lol, that's me every time TikTok recommends me books. Like there are so many books, it's impossible to buy and read them all xD *awkwardly laughs with an empty wallet*

Oh, I definitely will celebrate. I'll go to Waterstones, Piccadilly, London (Europe's largest bookstore, 6 floors of goodies <3) and buy even more books xD Nah, but for real, I'll probably celebrate somehow, maybe by buying a new shelf because it's getting quite full. Back in the day I could turn my books to have the front facing me, but I don't have enough space to do that anymore :D Wine is a no though. Whilst I love it, it makes me extremely sleepy without being able to sleep xD

Honestly, I was working in an office before so excel became my life for years. I picked up a couple of things from there and google and youtube. To be fair it's not difficult, you just have to add a background photo, insert some shapes and adjust their sizes, link hyperlinks to where you need them and add some formulas. It's all done after that :)

Publishing is a goodie, I love it too, but at the same time it's very hard to get into a good company and many times they don't even look at your qualifications they only look for experience with any kind of book related job. Librarian, book seller etc. It's very weird if you ask me, but not a bad thing.

Let me leave the Hungarian part for last, because that's gonna be a very very very long rant and I'd like to ask you to grab a second cup of coffee or a tea to survive it xD

Oh you are coming over here?! I hope you will love it :D You defo need to visit Waterstones, Piccadilly if you ever come to London. It's amazing! They even have a little instagram corner which was like a garden aesthetic before and now it's Heartstopper related :)

Okay, if only the third book is dual pov, then I don't mind. It sounds better because by then I'll have more knowledge on the characters. First I have to get through this stupid Restore me (Book 4 of Shatter me) and then I'll put that series on hold. I put it down for the 4th time already. 4th! I'll never finish it xD Is there romance in Caraval? How important is it in the story if at all? I'm a very romance and character focused reader so I need me some info xD

"The worst subtrope in my honest opinion is the bully falling in love with the victim or vice versa."

No! I can't agree with that, I'm sorry! xD I personally love that if the series goes on longer and we see a redemption arc and/or character development. I don't excuse bullies, don't get me wrong, but seeing them improve themselves and then fall in love (NO INSTALOVE or standalones) is quite satisfying to me. Like how they are trying to fight their feelings because they hated each other. Though I only like these when there was no physical torture only like hurtful words and then later on the LI is ACTUALLY remorseful and although he fights it, he tries to make up for what he had done. Once again, redemption arc or character development. I'm a romance and character focused reader so me likey xD

Oh, please, so many people don't understand escapism. I actually had to unfollow a really popular BookToker because whilst they read Fantasy, YA, NA, Contemporary and Historical romance, so everything I like, the way they explained that readers of dark romance are r*pe apologists and romanticise domestic ab*se was the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. How dare someone judge another for first of all reading a fictional story, secondly enjoying something that doesn't harm anyone, thirdly questioning how they cope with whatever possible trauma they might have gone through and then lastly shame anyone for enjoying a goddamn book. Like should I go back and shame them for enjoying spice with a blue alien? Or the fact that in one of their favourite romance books the LI kidnapped the FMC? So kidnapping is okay for them? Isn't that also dark romance? Like the sheer stupidity of all these judgmental people makes me so mad. Like I don't judge you, nor do I give a flying heck about what you read, so why do you feel the need to judge me? Are you bored maybe? You should think about picking up some activity and buy a new personality because this just didn't pass the vibe check. Khm, sorry, got a little passionate about it xD

Oh dear, Neon Gods? Book 1 is an average read.

BUT! BUT! BUT!

ELECTRIC IDOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(Yes, this is me screaming!)

ELECTRIC IDOL! BOOK 2 OF NEON GODS! OH MY GOD! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! IT'S LIKE THE CHEMISTRY BETWEEN THE TWO MAIN CHARACTERS SWALLOWS YOU! IT'S THE PERIODIC TABLE FROM A TO Z. PERFECTION!

Okay, I feel better. So, yes, Neon Gods was a 3/5 for me, but Electric Idol was a solid 5/5. The plot is not some brain-twister so don't expect much on that front, but the chemistry, the tension, the witty comebacks, the banter, THE CHEMISTRY, yeah, it was very good. Excuse my SLIGHTLY passionate outburst. I'm alright xD

Here are my Goodreads reviews on Electric Idol and Neon Gods. Feel free to read them, they're spoiler free. :)

It's perfectly fine to want marriage, children, cat, dogs, house or whatever you imagine as a family, it's not something you should feel bad about for admitting. Some people want it, some people don't and that's the beauty of it. We all want different things.

I feel you on the 'end up alone' part. I mean people don't even want to communicate anymore and relationships have become so difficult with all these, seeing each other, dating, situationship, casual dating, casual relationship, exclusive relationship and what not, that at this point people don't even know what they are doing. A couple of years ago, I was dating a guy for 11 months when he told me he was still not ready for a relationship. B*tch, you know where the door is, disrespectfully, walk yourself out! Besides, with how men behave nowadays, no surprise that noone, regardless or gender or sexuality, wants to date them. I'm saying this from a heterosexual point of view, but the 'your place is in the kitchen' comment is so outdated. Like don't you dare degrade my worth to a kitchen when you can't even do as much as I can.

To be honest, Hungary in general is a touchy subject, but I don't mind talking about it. Before I get into politics though, let me explain something.

I left because I don't like Hungarians. I have wanted to move to the UK since I was 14 and soon I wore my parents down enough to actually move. Hungary is beautiful, but the people are rude af. Now Hungarians can come and bash me for it, but honestly it's a disgrace what people in retail, hospitality or healthcare get away with, both employees and customers. I'm not a patient person, but when I go out, I always behave in the most respectful ways because I had been working in customer service before and I know how customers can be. But the sheer disrespect people get away with disgusts me. One of my parents' friend talked to a waiter in such a disgusting manner, that I actually had to stand up, walk up to the waiter and apologise myself, because I literally couldn't handle the sheer disrespect. I CAN NOT stand this kind of behaviour. And this is just a very minor issue. It gets so much worse.

Besides each time I travel to Hungary, I get so depressed that I can't f*cking move. A month ago when I flew back, my mother had to fly after me 3 days later, mind you I'm a 28 years old woman, I'm not a child, because at one point I called my mother 25 times a day telling her how f*cking suffocating the country is. I had to stay because I was getting my teeth done. It would have cost me £20,000 in the UK whilst it cost me £1,000 in Hungary, I had no choice but to stay, but I fell into such a horrible depression that I don't wish on anyone, not even my enemies. This is a reoccurring situation each time I travel there so I don't go unless I must.

Regarding politics. Have you seen who runs that country? A freaking moron who apparently studied in England, but can't for the life of him have a meeting without a translator. A man who preaches the unimportance of EU only to beg for money from EU. A man who keeps saying that he is loyal to the EU only to become bffs with a country that is killing innocents. Nah! I know this is the dark side of politics, I partially study this after all, but I still believe that the only reason he is still in his position is because Hungary doesn't have a good opposition, noone is better, besides even if they were, the sheep follow him anyway. But the funny thing is that he isn't stupid though. He knows what he is doing and he plays his hand right. He builds on people's stupidity. Keeping them uninformed and misinformed. It's key knowledge that the opposition can't even go on the Hungarian national tv only to another free to view channel. Though luckily the Hungarian national tv is not very popular anyway. The idiots who follow him like stupid sheep are the one who are still keeping him in his position for long enough to sell all public places, like the freaking Lake Balaton to all his bodies and make them private. A freaking lake! How dare he? Well, he dares, because Hungarians complain about everything but before the election they magically forget about all their sufferings. Whether they vote for him or he cheats (because we've seen evidence) it doesn't matter. It's a freaking joke, if you ask me. And in what other country do they have a minister in charge of the Prime Minister's Office, instead of the Prime Minister being charge of his own office? Excuse me, but Hungarian politics is the dumbest, the silliest, the most moronic political system I've ever had the unpleasure of knowing. I hope this sums up my feelings. :)

I would also like to apologise for making you read through this, I might have been in a bit of an intense state xD

#Heloise's inbox #goodreads anon

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anxiouspotatorants · 2 years

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Oh god I think I need an actual thought compilation for this episode (3.05):

Anika got at least one episode again!!! I love that she was actually used as the pov character for all the stupid beurocratic choices The Deep and Homelander are making as new leaders of Vought.

I am kind of surprised the Maeve and Butcher interaction happened before her meeting any of the other Boys again, but as soon as the scene started I was surprised at my surprised. They are self destructive self loathing violent jackasses with alcohol issues, like of course they would poke at each other’s wounds and then hook up just because they felt like it.

MM really is the heart of this season and I need him to get some catharsis or kind of win in the end because the first half has been rough.

Speaking of moral compasses of the show I keep getting surprised over how much I love Annie and Hughie and their relationship. I genuinely squealed when Annie said she didn’t need him to save her she needed him ;-;. Also the angst the angst

Where is Maggie/Maeve. I need to know she’s okay or comes back swinging in the finale where is she she can’t die of screen please don’t kill her off now her character has so much to do where is she where is she where is she where is she-

I’m genuinely starting to think Nathan is the key to A-Train’s redemption because he seems like the one person that can genuinely call him out while inspiring Reggie to do better. Like, it is hard to bring that boy back after not just Robin and Popclaw but now Supersonic (I miss him already ;-;), but Nathan and this plotline might just do it. Or at least start it

If you think I have forgotten about Frenchie and Kimiko you are sorely mistaken. Shit, they deserve their whole compilation of thoughts. Like is Kimiko permanently powerless now? Or is it temporary? Will she have to start using temp V with the rest of the team?

As a musical lover that scene just brought me so much joy. It was just so energetic and happy and happened in a way that makes sense for the show and for musicals (when your feelings are too strong to say you sing them etc.). I just know I’m going to rewatch that scene ten thousand times.

«I have mon coeur.» That’s it, that’s the line replaying in my head now.

She kissed him!! It was an actual consented soft kiss! And they were both so giddy and adorable after it! We’re officially free of the disaster kiss from season two!

Nina is a terrifying side villain and I am here for it. I do hope Kimiko having to go save him solves itself in the next episode though because I can’t take all the angst coming at me by the end of this episode

Okay but if nobody has then somebody has to make a post about the contrast between Maeve x Homelander/ Soldier Boy x Crimson Countess and Kimiko x Frenchie/ Annie x Hughie. Something about honest love and saving each other because there is so much there.

My one critique of this episode is not enough Black Noir. (Also just to note on an earlier episode his backstory holy shit I did not expect him to actually grow past scary comic relief ninja he had an actual name and personality and feelings and he might still have them oh my god-)

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mrsmaybank · 3 years

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Honey - Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Summary: Spencer and the reader were very much in love during Reid’s brief stint in Pasadena. When he has to see her again on a case, he is super nervous.

a/n: first section is inspired by such great heights

C/W: Swearing

PASADENA - 2002

A note from the love of your life is a lovely way to wake up.

------

When you can understand everything but yourself, finding somebody who does is like seeing a comet; disappointingly rare. My shaky hands can only be stilled by the smile of my most incandescent--in every connotation--creature, and that is you. The universe always seems to know what it is doing even if humanity does not. The stars align and move in patterns we as it’s audience do not fully understand. I think we have watched the stars so much the universe has aligned us as a favor to our poor, overestimated souls. I am so grateful! Tolstoy noted that "We are asleep until we fall in love!” And I thank you for waking me up.

However I thought it best the favor not be returned this particular morning. You were up late last night, and looked too cute to disrupt. Do not kill me, I am getting coffee.

I love you and do not leave the bed.

-Spencer

------

Only Spencer Reid would write that on a sticky note, and only for you would he do so.

You heard the rattling of keys and a door being opened and shut as Spencer made his way back to your bedroom. The smile you saw on his face was the start of a story that ended on the upturn of your lips, revealing the two protagonists in a mad frenzy of love. As soon as he reached you, your lips pressed to his in a desperation to be impossibly closer.

“Hi.” he said.

I am thinking it's a sign

That the freckles in our eyes

Are mirror images

And when we kiss they're perfectly aligned

“Hey love.” you tucked a loose brown hair back behind his ear for a closer look at the face you adored. “Please get back in bed.”

He sighed but crawled in next to you, big nimble hands making their way across your torso to diminish the space in between you two. You nuzzled into his chest.

“Your note was beautiful.” you whispered into his ear.

A big, goofy grin spread along his face.

“I meant every word.” his voice so sweet, it sounded dipped in honey.

Honey is incredibly sticky.

-----

There had to have been a world where it all worked out.

In this world, my things never got old, and the ice cubes in my coffee never melted. I could listen to that song over and over again without draining the life out of it and I could like my hair style for more than three months.

Spencer had read to me the greatest works of the world. Words of the greatest thinkers, authors, and minds. He had an appreciation for them greater than those of the average passerby and I adored that, because so did I. Truly, our similarities are what connected us. Our minds were correlated perfectly when it came to subjectivity.

In accordance to human nature however, certain matters were never agreed upon. In particular, we argued about the future. The canyon of discrepancy so vast it tore us and our love in two. I didn’t think that was possible.

I wanted to write the book and watch the film as I lived my life and he and his arrogant over-practically thought that impossible. He thought himself an oneirocritic, but my dreams were not looking for critiques.

Like I said, Spencer read to me the greatest works of the world. And years would pass and the heartbreak and sorrow would fade, but I would always find it ironic how the last thing I ever heard in that honey soaked voice was a work of Confucius. “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”

Spencer chose to go to Washington. He took his heart and a piece of mine with him.

-----

BAU JET - 2011

Seaver must’ve noticed my flinch when the sound of her name resonated through the jet. I’d never liked going to California, but this...this had never happened. “That name mean something to you Reid?” She smiled, “You look kind of horrified.”

I ran my hands through my hair in a futile attempt to ground myself. “No. I just...I used to know her.”

In between the fine lines of love and hate, fell a blurry midsection where feelings came before logic and screams and whispers sounded the same. She ruled over this midsection of chaotic emotional fury.

Morgan spoke, and I quickly realized I might be falling into a conversation I really did not want to be having. “How the hell d’you know her pretty boy?”

There was no point in lying on a plane completely occupied by profilers. My best option was to clumsily dodge any direct questions about just how well I knew her.

“I’m from the West coast.”

“So are over 50 million people. You mean to tell me you know all of them?” he laughed.

“The exact estimation is actually 53,492,270. And no, I’m not saying I know all of them, Morgan. I lived in Pasadena for a year after I graduated from Caltech.”

“Okay?” Morgan questioned my previous statements relevancy.

“She went to USC. We were in the same social circle.”

Morgan laughed again, “You had a social circle?”

Emily, next to us, was presumably combing through her file.

“You, ultimate three doctorate dorky dork, were in the same circle as a film major?” she asked. “

What the hell is ‘doctorate dorky dork’ supposed to mean?

“She double majored actually. Film and political science.”

Emily double checked the file, “And Reid’s right. Per usual.”

“Reid and Prentiss, Y/L/N has agreed to talk to us in her home. She lives in the Hills. When we land, you guys go talk to her.” Hotch stated.

“Why?” I said before I could stop myself. The team sat in confused silence in reaction to my bluntness, but Hotch, like always, was not having it.

“Because we have a serial killer that is reenacting the murders in her movie, Reid.” his tone was stern and swift, with a patronizing sarcasm I supposed I deserved.

“Sorry,” I got out, “I guess I just meant..why me?”

“Well, you know her don’t you?” Rossi asked.

I was not ready to divulge the personal details between me and this girl to my entire team, so I just pursed my lips and nodded.

“Right. Sorry.”

----

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. George Santayana. I was in the biggest fucking predicament I’d ever encountered in my life.

Nothing could slow the incessant, double time pounding in my chest. I was showing symptoms of the beginning of a heart attack. Hopefully I would die and never have to face this.

Fuck, don’t think that.

Have the seats in these cars always been this uncomfortable? God, is California always this hot?

I looked at Emily for half a second, and instantly recognized that keeping quiet from her was proving to be dysfunctional. I could feel her eyes burning into my brain with every profiling skill she knew.

“What are you not saying Reid?”

I sighed. “Do I have to tell you?”

“Yeah. Unless you want me to just find out on my own. It’ll be a lot less delicate.”

Here goes nothing.

“I dated her. For two years. I was very much in love with her. It ended....abruptly. I haven’t spoken to her since, and now, nine years later, I am on my way to her house. I might have a heart attack.”

Emily's eyes widened, “Shit..” She laughed a little, “Reunited at last?.”

I answered with a glare. Hard no.

“Fine, sorry.” She said, masking a giggle with a cough.

I shifted in my seat and I could practically see the gears in Emily’s profiler cerebrum spin. She knew exactly the question to ask. “Is it nerves?”

I nodded my head, “I was a very different person back then.”

“Nothing like time and the bureau can change somebody.” she said. “But, hey..”She smiled again and my eyes widened when I realized what I’d revealed. “I asked you if you were nervous. I didn’t-”

“Emily..” I started.

“Are you nervous she won’t like you now? Do you still like her?” her mouth hung open, “Oh my god Reid!”

I shook my head, “No, I don’t still like her! I don’t even know her anymore! I just..I’d never loved somebody the way I loved her.”

Emily had figured me out at the same time I had. “And you still haven’t.”

Fuck.

“Correct.”

The car pulled into her driveway, and conversations from all those years ago started to replay in my head.

“When we get a house, can we paint our front door bright blue?”

“I want a lemon tree in the front yard.”

“Windows. Huge windows. It’s a must.”

All these things I’d promised her in our future home she’d gotten for herself. Good.

Fontaine said “Sadness flies away on the wings of time”, but the pain I felt from the loss of her was as prominent as ever.

Here goes nothing.

---

Thank you for reading!

a/n2 : this is completely unedited so if its sucks dick i am sorry :/ i just wanted to post it lol

A/n 3: the typos oh my fuck. I wanna Kick myself for letting this cute fic be up in that state for so long. Anyway, fixed! :)

#spencer reid #drspencerreid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid reader insert #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid x you

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

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Eccentricity [Chapter 9: Now I Love Your Shadow And I Love Your Curls]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make. Potentially a better love story than Twilight.

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sex, violence, and drug use.

Word Count: 7.6k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk

Field Trip

“You want to go to Chicago with me?”

I coughed, having almost inhaled a chunk of pineapple off my slice of GrubHubbed pizza. We were sitting on the grass outside Forks And Spoons under the shade of the maple trees, which were turning from jade to ruby to amber to fool’s gold, rejoining the earth they once rose from one fallen leaf at a time. It hadn’t rained in almost four days—was that some kind of record?!—and the leaves littering the ground crunched when I stepped on them, which I did purposefully and often. The breeze was soft and whispery and temperate. I could get used to this whole having actual seasons thing. “What, in like a hypothetical, at some point in my life kind of way?”

Joe smiled. His U Chicago hoodie of the day was black. “No, as in this weekend.”

“Really?”

“The Cubs have a game on Saturday, and it’s supposed to be rainy and overcast the whole time, and I just thought...” He shrugged, toying with a piece of pizza crust before tossing it to the squirrels. He’s nervous, I realized. How the hell do I have the ability to make the sexy undead Italian man nervous? “It might be nice for us to be able to get away for a few days. Away from my family. Away from Charlie. Not that I don’t appreciate the ambient noise of his snoring from the living room couch, it’s super endearing, I seriously consider dating him instead of you at least twice a week.”

“Go for it. Charlie could use a rich husband. His pension is pathetic.”

“You wouldn’t miss me?”

“I am not necessarily opposed to clandestinely seducing my sugar daddy stepdad should the occasion arise.”

Joe crossed himself like a nun passing tattooed, cursing, lip-pierced teenagers on the sidewalk. “Lord, protect me from this harlot.”

A weekend away. No Charlie, no constant and chaotic whirlwind of Lees, no Ben. I hadn’t spoken to Ben since our misadventure in the Lee kitchen; if he wasn’t avoiding me of his own volition, he was following orders to stay away. Joe claimed that they’d talked it out. I wasn’t sure if I believed him. “I accept your invitation. Although, truthfully, I’d rather get hit by a bus than watch an entire real-life, no-commercial-breaks baseball game.”

“I accept your acceptance. And I’ll throw in a visit to the Shedd Aquarium, just for you. They have baby sea otters.”

“Sweet.” I checked my iPhone. “I’m gonna be late for Chemistry.”

“Anything fun planned?”

“We’re doing a lab involving hydrochloric acid. I’m highly concerned that Ben will accidentally spill some on himself. The miraculous instantaneous healing thing might raise a few questions.”

“Hm,” Joe replied. But he wasn’t looking at me; he was looking at my bandaged hand. And he wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Joe, I’m fine.”

“Yeah.” He took a preoccupied swig of his Dr. Pepper. Solemnity never seemed right on him; it was like he was wearing somebody else’s skin. “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Hey. Mob guy.”

Now his eyes flicked to mine.

“No more sad spaghetti.”

“Okay.” He surrendered, took my face in his hands, gave me a kiss on each cheek and then one quick parting peck on the forehead. “You win. I’m not sad. I’m ecstatic, actually. I’m gonna be eating my weight in hotdogs and mustard-slathered pretzels on Saturday. What’s there not to be ecstatic about?”

“The fact that your license says you’re only twenty and consequently can’t get a beer?”

Joe blinked, remembering. “Fuck.”

I drained my Diet Coke, flung my pizza crust to the skittering grey squirrels—no eerie albino forest friends today—and pulled on my backpack. “See ya. Have an awesome time in Game Theory.”

“Thanks, I probably won’t!” he chimed, waving, grinning compliantly; and yet did I still sense some lingering menace of disquiet, of fear? I suspected I did. Chicago would cure everything.

Ben tensed when I walked into Professor Belvin’s classroom, ran his fingers through his unruly blond hair, peered fixedly down at his notebook and feigned obliviousness. There was already a metal tray of Erlenmeyer flasks, labeled bottles of solutions, burettes, goggles, gloves, and an unassembled ring stand crowding our small table by the open window. Autumn air poured in like seawater through cracks in the hull of a ship.

“Guess who’s gonna see the Cubs play up close and personal this Saturday?” I announced.

He pretended to have just noticed me. “...You...? But that doesn’t sound like you.”

“It was Joe’s idea. I’m acting like I’m not totally thrilled and freaking out about it, but I am. Don’t tell him.”

Now Ben was the one staring at my bandaged hand. His green eyes were large and unfocused.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Sure,” Ben returned noncommittally.

I started skimming through the packet of lab instructions and setting up our titration experiment as Professor Belvin circulated through the classroom, observing, commenting, offering suggestions and critiques. My wounded hand—still sore in the lull between Advil doses and relatively useless—was quite the embarrassing hinderance; I fumbled with a large glass flask and almost dropped it.

Ben shook his head and reached out to stop me. “Here, oh my god, this is so pitiful, sit down. Please sit down. I’ll set it up. It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” I peeked at his notebook. “Your handwriting is atrocious. Haven’t you had like a century to work on that?”

“Penmanship was never at the top of my to-do list, tragically.”

“What language is that, anyway?” The phrases scrawled in black ink in Ben’s notebook definitely weren’t English. Or Italian. “Elvish? Are you a lowkey Lord Of The Rings fan? Magic and self-sacrifice and nearly insurmountable evil, I could see that being your thing.”

He smirked, struggling with the ring stand. “It’s Welsh.”

“Welsh,” I repeated, perplexed. “Welsh...like how Gwil is Welsh?”

“Precisely.”

Professor Belvin checked in on us, nodded in approval, reminded me that I was always welcome to stop by at bowling league activities, and resumed his wandering.

“Gwil still speaks it,” Ben continued. “The rest of them speak it too. At least enough for basic communication.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, fascinated, examining the long, unfamiliar words riddled with Ls and Ws and Cs. “But that must be very useful.”

“It is. Welsh is nearly a dead language at this point. It’s like talking in code. I always refused to learn it on principle...or maybe I was just being difficult. I would study other languages, Arabic, Japanese...but not Welsh. That was always Gwil’s language. Their language. It was a Lee thing. But now...”

“Now you’re sort of a Lee too,” I finished for him, smiling.

“Whatever,” Ben said, hiding behind his bangs.

I watched him as he at last tamed the ring stand, secured the burette, placed the Erlenmeyer flask. Then he began reading the labels on the solution bottles. “Guess what else.”

“What, Baby Swan?”

I grinned, showing off my unremarkable, entirely benign human teeth. “I’ll bring you back your very own U Chicago hoodie.”

That night, after a pleasantly prosaic dinner with Charlie—burgers, one veggie and one of the conventional variety, and milkshakes at Danny’s Diner—I started packing a small, Arizona-sky-blue suitcase as sparse raindrops pattered against the roof and moonlight streamed in through the open window. Then I ticked off my mental inventory.

“Jeans, sweaters, pajamas, socks...”

I pawed through the top drawer of my old, scratched dresser—the same one that had once upon a time been Renee’s—and contemplated the bra and panty options. Would my theme be comfort and practicality, or feral impenitent seductress? Friday and Saturday in Chicago would be our first nights alone together. That had to be significant, right? After some deliberation, I gathered a handful of lacy, transparent, and/or exceptionally skimpy lingerie from Victoria’s Secret that Jessica had more or less forced upon me during a shopping trip in Port Angeles last month. As I dropped them into the open suitcase, I glanced up to see the albino owl outside my open bedroom window.

“You never know,” I told the owl, shrugging.

It leered judgmentally back at me with those gory red eyes.

“Oh shut up. How many eggs have you laid in your lifetime, Casper The Unfriendly Ghost? Probably like a bazillion. Freaking feathery trollop.”

The owl had nothing to offer in its own defense.

“Why don’t you ever come around when Joe’s here? I’m sure he’d love to meet you. He’s pale and weird too. Although I like his eyes a little better than yours. No offense, Snowflake.”

The owl blinked, tilted its gaze at me, ruffled its feathers and sent the raindrops that had gathered there flying in every direction.

I slid my iPhone out of my back pocket, spun around, and snapped a quick selfie with the owl in the background. “Say cheese, Marshmallow!”

The owl immediately unfurled its wings and flapped off into the trees, vanishing.

“Huh. I guess homegirl is camera shy.” I texted my selfie to Archer, typing out with my thumbs: I am the Steve Irwin of Forks. Behold, one of my many forest friends.

Archer replied a few minutes later: WOW! Pasty and mildly disturbing. Exactly your type. :)

“Yours too, apparently,” I murmured, smiling in my empty room.

I went to my full-length mirror with the plastic, teal-colored border, briefly appraised my reflection, felt a dull swell of approval for what I saw there. The version of myself that had once been so consumed by fears of inadequacy seemed impossibly far away, maybe even fictitious, a dream so vivid I could mistake it for truth. Three things were taped across the top of the mirror: Joe’s Official Citation!! No More Sad Spaghetti!! post-it, his Official Whatever You Want Pass, and a photo of us dressed up together and standing in front of the limo in the Lees’ driveway just before the Calawah University Homecoming dance. I peeled off the Official Whatever You Want Pass, carefully folded it into a neat little square, and tucked it into my wallet.

When the rain began to pour and thunder rolled in off the Pacific Ocean, I closed my bedroom window; but I remembered to leave it unlocked for Joe.

Departure

“Got your license?”

“Yes, Dad,” Joe sighed.

“Got your airport snacks?”

Joe held up the gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with pumpkin and white chocolate chip cookies. “We’re ready to rock.”

“Call me when you get there safe,” Mercy fretted, hugging me and then Joe. “And Joseph, sweetheart, you make sure you keep an eye on her. She’s never been to Chicago before, it’s a big city, and O’Hare is an absolute nightmare, it’s so easy to get lost...”

“I don’t think he needs any reminders, love.” Dr. Lee laid a hand on her shoulder, stroked his neatly-trimmed beard with the other, watched us with a vague and wistful smile.

Mercy went back to trimming the flowers she had spread out across the kitchen countertop, white calla lilies that she threaded one by one into a translucent sapphire blue vase. “Now don’t forget to say goodbye to your brother. He’s out back feeding the new ducks. And I expect these ones to stick around for a while, thank you very much.”

“Mom, I don’t need to say goodbye to Rami. I’ll just think it. Really loudly.” Joe rubbed his temples with his fingertips and squeezed his eyes shut. “Peace out, you nosy bastard.”

“Joseph,” Mercy pleaded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll go say goodbye. Don’t get all aggressive. Don’t take it out on the flowers.” Aggressive...what a joke. I doubted that Mercy Eleanor Lee, formerly Martin, had a single aggressive bone in her immortal body; not even the infinitesimal stapes of her inner ears or the sesamoids of her feet.

“They’re calla lilies,” she replied dreamily, tending them like children. “And they symbolize love, and beauty, and fidelity...”

My nostrils itched and burned faintly in dissent. “I think I’m allergic to them.”

“You’re allergic to fidelity?” Joe asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s it, now you’re definitely not getting my reclaimed virginity. No ma’am. I am not hit-it-and-quit-it material.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Mercy murmured.

“I’m going,” Joe said, showing his palms in capitulation and disappearing out the back door. I dragged my suitcase to the front one, politely declining Mercy and Gwil’s offers to help.

Lucy—her bleached hair in a high half-ponytail and wearing polka-dotted black tights, combat boots, a plaid miniskirt, and an extremely Octoberish orange sweater—was sitting cross-legged on the roof of Gwil’s Volvo. God, he’s such a dad. “Have a nice time,” she chirped artfully.

I opened the hatch of Joe’s Subaru and threw my suitcase inside. “Why do you sound like you already know I will?”

“I might have some relevant clairvoyant insight.”

“No way.” I stared up at her, stunned, my hands on my waist. “But you can’t see me, right...?”

“True. But this vision wasn’t of you. It was of Joe. You just happened to be there.”

Interesting. Very interesting. “And what transpired in this vision?” A night full of hot, steamy, blissful vampire sex? A girl could dream.

Lucy closed her eyes, recalling it fondly, maybe even cherishing it. “You were sitting in the stands of a professional baseball game. I could hear the crowd roaring, the umpire’s trumpeting interruptions. Blue and white...everyone was wearing blue and white. And you were there together—Joe a vampire, you human, side by side, almost entwined—shouting to each other over the thunderous noise and laughing and pushing nuggets of soft pretzels into each other’s mouths. So happy. I’d never seen Joe so happy.” Her striking pale eyes came open. “And he’s someone who’s already rather prone to happiness, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I have,” I agreed.

“He’s never been serious about anybody else. I hope you know that.”

“I know that’s what he tells me.”

“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted. “I would know if it wasn’t. Rami would know, Ben would know. Joe...he’s kind of the opposite of you. He’s always been the easiest to read. He’s the one Rami hears most loudly, the one who shows up most often in my visions. He’s clear, you know? Uncomplicated. Authentic. And what you mean to him...it’s something everybody sees. It’s a contagious sort of lightness, of joy. So thank you for that.”

And if whatever mysterious genetic switch that renders me immune to your talents wasn’t flipped, I’m pretty sure I’d look the same way. “I should definitely be thanking you,” I said. “You guys have a pretty cool existence going on here. And I’m so grateful to be invited into it.” For however long this lasts, anyway.

“None of us really invited you,” Lucy demurred. “We just let it happen.”

“So everyone knew I was coming? Because you saw it?”

“Everyone but Joe.”

“You never told him?”

“No. Not even now.” Lucy turned sharply towards the trees, as if she heard something in the soaring western hemlocks that swayed drunkenly in the wind. After a moment, she continued. “I’m not sure if I can even explain why. It wasn’t that I feared changing the timeline or something...my visions always come true regardless. Always. But I guess...” She tugged on her short half-ponytail, pondering. “I guess I didn’t want to cloud any of his decision-making, any of his emotions with the specter of the inevitable. I wanted whatever he felt for you to be completely organic. And it is.”

I considered her. “You are extremely thoughtful for someone who spends as much time shopping as you do.”

Lucy laughed in a high-pitched, almost juvenile trill, netting her fingers beneath her chin, her elbows resting on her bent knees. “I do like to shop. I didn’t always though.” She peered off into the trees again, this time pensively. “Did Joe tell you anything about my life before Gwil saved me?”

“Aside from the copious hippie jokes, not really.”

She nodded, her eyes far-away and still lost in the forest. “Gwil and Mercy are inordinately wonderful people. My biological father and mother, unfortunately, were not. And maybe they couldn’t help it, because from what I understand their parents were monsters too. I don’t think of them very often now, not even to resent them. But when I was alive I burned with it, with all that hatred, with all that bitterness. Every bruise was another log on the fire. Every screaming match or hurled plate was a splash of gasoline. So I ran away and found what I fancied to be a new family, and I lived on basement couches and out of vans and in abandoned buildings, and I explored increasingly inventive ways of putting that fire out.”

The October breeze cascaded through the trees, carrying echoes of birdsong and disembodied distant voices and the scent of pine. It reminded me of Joe.

“Chemically speaking,” Lucy said, “that first hit of heroin, that first high...it’s the best you’ll ever feel in your entire life. Nothing else will ever compare. Not skydiving, not backpacking through Southeast Asia on some Pulitzer-prize-winning journey of self-discovery, not winning the lottery, not the births of your children, not falling in love. And once you accept that, what’s the point in stopping? Everything you ever experience will live in the shadow of that needle. You’re twenty-five and you’ve already seen the endgame. You’re born, you suffer, you catch a glimpse of paradise, you pay bills and push shopping carts down the aisles of grocery stores and insipidly smile your way through your husband’s work parties until you die. What’s the fucking point? So I didn’t stop shooting heroin. And the whole time, I knew it was killing me. That’s what they don’t tell kids when they force them to make those idiotic classroom promises to never do drugs. You know it’s killing you, but you don’t care. Because it feels so goddamn good. Because it becomes the only sliver of your existence that doesn’t cut like glass beneath your skin. Sometimes you love things so much you let them kill you, isn’t that ridiculous?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her; still, I heard my own voice: “Yes, it is.”

“It took dying for me to see that life is worth living. That there’s magic in the mundane and the frivolous. And that there’s beauty everywhere if you bother to look for it.” Lucy uncrossed her trim legs, leapt gracefully off the Volvo, and—with definite but not unkind scrutiny—pulled at the collar of my thrift shop sweater. “Even in your very, very, very misguided fashion preferences.”

The front door of the Lee house swung open, and Joe jogged out, carrying his suitcase. Gwil, Mercy, Scarlett, Rami, and Ben appeared on the porch to wave us off.

“What’d you do?!” Joe demanded, pointing at Lucy.

“Nothing,” she quipped.

“You guys gotta stop doing this!” Joe exclaimed. “You know what you’re doing, you know exactly what you’re doing, you gotta stop cornering people and forcing them to listen to your creepy tragic backstories! Nobody freaking asked!”

Lucy chuckled patiently and stood on her tiptoes to hug him goodbye. “Have fun.”

“You know it.” Joe tossed his suitcase into the Subaru and opened the driver’s door. “Ready, Baby Swan?”

“Almost.”

I walked to the wrap-around porch, climbed the steps, held my hand out to Ben. My stitches had almost completely dissolved over the past week, and the clunky impediment of bandages was no more. Joe crossed his arms and watched from beside the Subaru with an uneasy frown, but he didn’t try to stop me. He nodded to Rami, so subtly I almost didn’t notice. Rami nodded back.

“I will miss your melodramatic brooding immensely,” I told Ben. “Please do some fun family stuff while we’re gone. I’ll see you soon. Dan eich bendith.”

“Dan eich bendith,” he replied, taken aback. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, he ignored my outstretched hand and embraced me, his grasp so strong and yet so careful. His scent like crisp leaves and salted caramel and autumn sieved into a bottle unfolded in my lungs like an opened book.

“I Googled that especially for you,” I whispered. “You’re welcome.”

“I’m in awe.” His words were characteristically sardonic, but I heard warmth in them as well. When Ben pulled away, I saw that everyone else was smiling. Mercy had tears in her eyes.

I retreated back down the porch steps and met Joe by the Subaru. “Okay, mob guy. I’m good.”

He slid on his sunglasses, shook his head, flashed a proud and toothy grin. “You definitely are.”

All the way down Route 101 to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, we listened to Joe’s classic rock mixtapes and my NOAA Ocean Podcast episodes, reviewed the weekend itinerary, ran through the bare essentials for me to understand an MLB game (“Which I am totally not excited about whatsoever,” I informed Joe, who knew enough not to believe me).

When the Boeing 747 ascended above the clouds and unimpeded sunlight poured in from the other passengers’ windows, Joe put on a black sleeping mask over his sunglasses and reclined his seat, tried to nap, passed the time until he would be safe beneath the curtains of the sky again.

Somewhere over the Dakotas, as I leafed through a book about the Great Barrier Reef for my Marine Botany class, Joe’s hand bumped mine. “Hey,” he said drowsily, seriously; and I braced myself for some emotional declaration, some dire warning, some grave realization of the futility of what we agreed—almost always wordlessly, and yet unfailingly—was love.

“Yeah?”

“It’s an emergency.”

“Uh oh,” I replied, smiling now.

“Flag down the flight attendant and get some more of those honey roasted peanut packets,” Joe said. “I’m starving myself back to death over here.”

The Windy City

The bat cracked deafeningly against the baseball pitched at nearly a hundred miles per hour. It was a home run. The crowd erupted into mindless, primal shrieks of conquest; and when Joe jumped to his feet, clapping and cheering and nearly spilling his blue-and-white bucket of popcorn, I found that I did as well. I screamed for the team of a city I’d never lived in, sank back into my seat beside Joe, nestled against his chest as his right arm closed around my waist and hauled me in closer, as his left hand teased me with a soft pretzel nugget hovering just out of reach. And in that moment, I felt like Lucy, snatching Polaroids out of the space-time continuum of the present and the future and the past. There was where Joe and I were right now, of course; the day we had met each other in the nonfiction section of the Calawah University library; the dance floor at Homecoming; the first night he snuck soundlessly into my bedroom window; all those years we still had left to spend together. Not forever, but perhaps long enough.

“I like this baseball thing,” I told him over the roar of the crowd, twirling my fingers around the curling locks of dark hair that stuck out from under his Cubs cap. Or maybe I just like you.

“Whew, thank god.” Joe wiped his forehead with the back of his hand in mock relief. “Now I don’t have to break up with you.”

After the game—a 5-3 Cubs victory, close enough to keep the spectators’ blood pumping throughout—we boarded the L, held onto the metal railings as the packed train car bumped and swerved along, and disembarked in Little Italy. Historic brownstones were interrupted by a freckling of pizzerias, Italian ice stands, and sports bars spilling out shouts of triumph and despair. We were staying in the Four Seasons with a view of Lake Michigan; but we had an hour of daylight—albeit chilled, dreary, and forever threatening rain—left in our Saturday. Tomorrow would be the aquarium, and then dinner before catching our flight back to Seattle, back to the greenery and fog and eternal dampness that I was beginning to think of as my home. Had I really only left Phoenix two months ago? Had I ever really lived there at all?

“So,” Joe said as we walked under shedding green ash and black cherry trees, his arm draped across my shoulders. “Guess what the University of Chicago has. In addition to a killer Economics PhD program, which yours truly will be graduating from in approximately 2027, astonishingly aged not a single day. Maybe he’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline.”

“Hideous sweatshirts?” I guessed.

“One of the best Marine Biology departments in the world. And the affiliated Marine Biological Laboratory up in Massachusetts, where they send their PhDs to do research.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stopped abruptly, the heels of my boots squealing against the sidewalk. “You mean...for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, for my other girlfriend who is also inexplicably super obsessed with the ocean. I clearly have a type.”

“You want me...to come to Chicago...with you...after graduation? For like...a five to seven year commitment?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, that just sounds...serious.”

“Huh. What do you know. I guess we’re serious after all.” He took my hand and pulled me gently forward, leading me down West Taylor Street. He seemed to have a destination in mind.

“How is this going to work for you, anyway?” I asked, beaming uncontrollably now, trotting along beside him. “Living in a place that isn’t Washington or Scotland or Alaska?” Chicago was cold and cloudy for a lot of the year, true, but few cities were Forks-level wet and sunless. Forks-level tyrannically depressing, I would have said two months ago.

He shrugged, unphased. “Night classes. Sunglasses. Faking a chronic illness so I don’t have to leave our house. I’m really good at that one. Plus I can get a doctor’s note any time I want one. I’ve got connections, you know.”

Our house. He said OUR house.

Joe came to halt in front of a stately yet plain brownstone which now operated as a trendy bookstore, the kind that sold six dollar lattes and hosted anarchist poetry slams on Friday nights.

“Is this where we’re going to crack hipsters’ kneecaps as a bonding activity?” I asked.

“This is where I grew up.”

I looked again, studying the earth-colored stone quarried over a century ago, the wrought iron railings that framed the front steps, the rectangular windows revealing the illumination and shadows of other families’ lives. “Joe,” I said softly, leaning into him, searching for my words.

“There were eight Mazzello kids: Joseph, Charles, Mimi, Salvador, Donna, Lucia, Bianca, and Giuliano.” He rattled them off like a jingle from a fast food commercial. “And I was the oldest. So when my dad dropped dead of a heart attack in the middle of his shift at the Zenith Radio factory, it was my job to step up and figure out how to keep everyone fed. I was seventeen and completely hopeless at school back then; Sal was always the smart one, the disciplined one, he ended up as a math professor at Loyola University. I was just some directionless, grieving kid who never shut up. But there was a place for boys like me in Chicago in the 1920s. The mob could get you money. The mob could turn that same incessant chatter that got you bruised at school into something useful. And the mob could give you a family.”

Joe watched the brownstone solemnly, meditatively, his hands in his pockets.

“My mom sobbed for an hour the first time I brought home an envelope full of bills with Hamilton’s face on them. She knew how I got it. But how could she say no, how could she tell me to stop? We’d never seen money like that. All my siblings could finish school. My sisters could have new dresses on days that weren’t Christmas and Easter, my brothers new shoes, Sal the glasses he needed so badly. My mother always had something to put in the offering plate at church. And once you were in the mob, it wasn’t exactly easy to leave. But they took care of their own. After I died, they sent my mother money for years, until her own children were established enough to support her. That’s when I learned that money wasn’t just something that put food on the dinner table or kept the lights on. It’s a way of showing loyalty, of giving people peace and comfort and meaningful choices in their lives. It’s how I’ve been taught to give back to the world. So I guess I shouldn’t have disparaged my fellow vampires back in Forks, because there’s a slice of my tragic backstory, Baby Swan. Now you know. And you should know everything, since we’re in this thing together. Or maybe I just want you to.”

I laid my palm against his cool and flawless face, ran my thumb lightly across his cheek. “You really are serious about me.”

“I am alarmingly serious about you.”

“Even though this thing of ours has an expiration date?” Since I can never become a vampire. Since I will never have the distinction of being a permanent fixture of the Lee coven.

“That’s not a problem for today. That’s a problem for ten or fifteen years from now, whenever you decide you want to settle down and have kids and do the whole Great American Dream bit. You’ll be sick of me by then anyway. You’ll be dying to get away from us. Hahaha, get it? It’s a pun. Dying to get away from the vampires.”

I couldn’t imagine ever being sick of Joseph Francis Mazzello. Still, ten or fifteen years felt almost as good as forever to me. Fifteen autumns, fifteen Christmases, fifteen journeys around the sun that he avoided so deftly. “Why me, Joe?” I asked, incredulous. “You could have anyone. Any human, any vampire. Why me?”

“Because you’re you,” he said simply. And his mystified dark eyes added: What kind of a question is that? “You’re smart and you’re hilarious and you actually care about the world, about where it came from, about where it’s going, about people and places and animals that you’ll never meet. You’re indomitable. You’re fearless almost to the point of recklessness. And yet you’re so kind. You’re even nice to Ben, and humans are never nice to him...they’re either horrified or confused, or they’re too busy fantasizing about him to remember that he’s a real fucking person. But you’ve always tried to see the good in him. Even when he didn’t deserve it.” Joe shook his head, marveling. “And yeah, I’ve...I’ve screwed around, full disclosure. I’ve done the hookup thing. And it was great for what it was. But I never wanted more. I never felt some gnawing, sentimental, Hallmark-channel need for connection, to understand who they were as people. And then I met you, and...I want to know every single goddamn thing about you. I want to know your favorite color, what books you read, what the hell is so appealing about pineapple pizza, what you dream of. I feel like I could never get tired of trying to understand you.”

A refrain circled through my mind like a whirlpool, dragging every other thought down into oblivion: I love him, I love him, I love him. “Blue,” I said at last.

“What?”

“Turquoise blue, like the sky in Arizona. That’s my favorite color.”

The smile, slow and wonderous, rippled across his face. He took my hand again. “Come on.”

Joe led me onwards, down a few blocks and around a corner, as the muted sun receded from the sky and the first stars took its place, pinpricks of celestial light in a blanket of violet, azure, amber, rust. He stopped in front of the Church of Saint Lawrence, established in 1902 according to the sign mounted on the brick wall that faced the street, perhaps the same church that he had once visited with his family as an impatient child, snickering with his brothers and sisters and kicking the back of the pew in front of him with shoes that never fit quite right. There was a fountain bubbling with transparent water, a statue of the Virgin Mary at the center, coins made of copper and nickel and zinc glinting through the water under corridors of silvery luminance cast by the streetlights.

“I lied about not having my own superpower,” Joe informed me mischievously, not at all serious.

“Oh, did you now?”

“Absolutely.” He opened his wallet, rooted around, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. “I can make wishes come true. So go ahead.” He nodded towards the fountain. “Make your wish.”

The penny was worn and nearly indecipherable, but I was just barely able to read that it had been minted in 1928. The same year Joe was turned. “Joe...I can’t just throw this away!”

“You’re not throwing it away. You’re exchanging it for a wish. Now wish.”

I closed my eyes, chose my wish, tossed the penny into the fountain. The plink it made when it hit the water was bright and yet mournful somehow, like windchimes, like flickering candlelight.

“Outstanding job,” Joe complimented.

He was so visibly proud, so content, so faultless. The streetlights threw shadows across the sidewalk, the fountain, the whole world it seemed. I laced my fingers behind his neck, gazing up at him. “What are we doing tonight, mob guy?”

“I’m so glad you asked. You see, we have options.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Door Number One,” Joe began. “It’s been a long day, and you’re exhausted from the illustrious honor of witnessing a Cubs victory firsthand. So we go back to the hotel, find some shark documentary on tv, order room service, shower, and drift off into a peaceful slumber. Just like last night.”

“Not bad. How about Door Number Two?”

“Door Number Two. You’re tired, but not that tired. We go back to the hotel, find that same aforementioned shark documentary, but totally ignore it and make out instead. Maybe we even round second base, in the spirit of the Cubs. Whatever you’re up for. Then we shower and drift off into a peaceful slumber.”

“Even better,” I said, and I meant it. “And what’s Door Number Three?”

Now Joe became jittery; his eyes darted to the fountain, the church, the cars that rolled lazily by. He was so desperate to conceal his hope, to not impose any undue influence upon me. I felt infinitesimal, almost weightless drops of rain against my cheeks, my collarbones, the downy undersides of my arms. “Well, uh, Door Number Three is...it’s...well...uh...it’s...”

Door Number Three is a home fucking run. “I want Door Number Three.”

“Really? Because you don’t have to say that, you can say no, that’s completely fine, it’s more than fine actually, it’s awesome, it’s totally cool, I’m seriously fine either way, and you can obviously change your mind whenever—”

“Wait.” I broke away from him, yanked my own wallet out of my purse, found the Official Whatever You Want Pass, hastily unfolded it, and presented it to Joe. “I want Door Number Three.”

He barked out a shocked laugh, accepted the pass, studied it in disbelief. “You are full of surprises, ma’am. It took me a hundred years to find a woman like you. And I don’t think I ever will again. Makes one wonder if this whole eternity thing is all it’s cracked up to be.” He tucked the pass into his pocket and kissed me beneath the streetlights, beneath the stars. “So there’s one tiny caveat to my wish-granting superpower.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled impishly, nudging the tip of my nose with his. “You have to tell me what you wished for.” He was joking, as he almost always was; I didn’t have to tell him anything. He wouldn’t press the issue. I doubted that he was really expecting me to answer at all. And yet I wanted to tell Joe; I yearned, for once, to be as clear as Lucy had said he was.

“For you and me,” I replied in little more than a whisper. “And for forever.”

Home

The only thing that startled me was how profoundly unstartling it all was, how wholly uncomplicated, how effortless.

I didn’t feel like a different person afterwards. I didn’t feel that some latent spark of lust, of carnality had been ignited, had singed through me, had left me forever marked like the heights of children ticked off on a doorframe over decades; I felt neither ruined nor awakened, no wiser, no older, no more enlightened as to the incalculable eccentricities of the vast and enigmatic universe. I felt only happiness, and exhausted satisfaction, and a deep, dreamless peace that engulfed me like frothy fingertips of waves dragging pebbles and shells back into the sea. I felt only a homecoming that was measured not in miles but in soul.

We slept in as the morning sun rose over Lake Michigan, bought Ben a hoodie (black, of course, per his usual aesthetic) from the University of Chicago gift shop, strolled unhurriedly through the dimly-lit, relentlessly blue pathways of the Shedd Aquarium. As I stood in the glass tunnel and watched sawfish and blacktip reef sharks soar by overhead, Joe linked his arms around my waist, tucked his chin into the dip of my collarbone, kissed the slope of my jaw.

“What do you think?” he asked, perhaps a touch apprehensively. “Could you get used to the Chicago life for a few years?”

“I would be tempted to kidnap some of these guys and bring them home to live in our bathtub. But yes.”

And Joe murmured, smiling, his lips to my temple: “That’s illegal, ma’am.”

Our flight back to the West Coast took off after dusk, and there was no blinding sunlight for Joe to avoid; only immense glooms of clouds and gleaming distant stars and the unfathomable void of space, cursed with crushing pressure and darkness like the cervices of the ocean floor.

Fifteen years might not be enough, I thought, resting my forehead against the cold airplane window as the city lights died behind us, as Joe’s hand weaved through mine on the armrest. But forever sounds just about right.

Larkin

There once was a boy born in a stone cottage with a dirt floor in a vanishingly inconsequential village just west of Clifden, Ireland. It was February 9th, 1672, bitterly cold, miserably wet, and the sea was murderous with storms. His mother was illiterate, as her mother had been, and as her mother had been as well, all the way back to people who painted mammoths on cave walls with their fingers; she was thirty-three and already exhausted with living, her seven children forever underfoot, her full and ruddy cheeks perpetually smudged with dirt from the field and ashes from the fire. Her husband was a failure and a drunk, but half a day’s worth of work once or twice a week was better than none at all; and as much as she never would have admitted it, he was a tether for her in a world that was often, as she had learned, both lonely and cruel.

She gave the baby boy a name—a strong Irish name, none of that audacious English rubbish—that meant rough or fierce, just like the sea that rose and ruptured against the rocky cliffs outside. He would need to be rough to survive in this world. He would need to be fierce.

He began like all the other children had been: sweet and yet anonymous, yielding, needful, worryingly small. She rocked him absently with one arm as she stirred the stew pot with the other. She sang to him, told him stories long before he could comprehend them, tales of the Lord and the saints and all their malevolent adversaries: serpents, pestilence, demons, dragons. She tossed stray sticks to him so he could carve pictures into the dirt floor and keep out of the way as she labored with the laundry or the sewing. And he grew, and he grew; and there was nothing remarkable about him at all, that boy speckled with mud and soot and the perpetual bruises of children mostly left to their own devices, that boy with pallid skin like his mother’s and black hair like his father’s and eyes so light and vibrant a brown they were nearly gold.

The boy was a baby, and then a child, and then a young man. And his mother realized one day—all at once, as a mother does when their attention is divided among so many other lives, when the children’s analogous faces bleed into each other and even their names sometimes escape her, even those names that she had chosen herself from the stories her own mother once passed to her through threadbare whispers—that people had a habit of following him, of listening to him. That there was an ether of allure that hovered around him like the mists that clung to the precarious, crumbling cliffs that touched the sea; that there was something like what the heathens called magic. And when the war came, that boy who was no longer a boy left his mother’s stone cottage and enlisted in Clifden, lied about his age, signed his name with an X because that was all he knew how to spell. But he was sure to tell the man who handled the ledger that he did have a real name, a good Irish name, a name apt for a soldier, a name that his mother had told him meant rough or fierce: Larkin.

There are men who join wars out of loyalty, principle, love for their homes; and then there are men who join to escape their homes, perhaps to forget them entirely. If you were to consult that ledger signed in a pub in Clifden, Ireland in 1688, you would read that I fought for Ireland, for the Catholics, for Christ the Lord and all his saints. But what I really fought for was my own resurrection: to take that boy stained with dirt and ignorance, drown him in the blood of other mothers’ trivial sons, and dredge up some greater version of myself that I had always known existed, that was hidden somewhere in the netlike darkness of the marrow of my bones.

People follow me, and they always have. I couldn’t tell you why. When I called them to enlist, when I thrusted swords and pikes into their calloused farmers’ fists, when I told them they could fight and live to see their wretched homes again, they believed me. I climbed the ranks like a ladder, like a mountain made of bones. And all those other mothers’ sons laid down for me so I could walk across the bridge of their spines to what I mistakenly assumed was invincibility.

At the Battle Of The Boyne, my horse was shot out from under me. A Williamite caught me beneath the ribs with his dagger. And as I bled out, staring up at the sky and impatiently waiting for the pain to vanish as my consciousness withdrew like low tide, I became aware that someone was lifting me, holding me, spiriting me through the battlefield and then the wilderness; and that my pain, in a disconcerting turn of events, had swelled to a vicious and unrelenting inferno.

Three days later, I woke to find that I was resurrected again, this time as something more than human. The man who turned me was blond-haired, light-eyed, agile and yet gentle, ancient and yet ever-changing.

“I thought you’d survive,” Nikolai said in a thick Slavic accent, standing over me with a kind smile. Then he helped me to my feet. “You have greatness in you. It sweats out of your pores, it’s in every word you speak. What a shame it would be for all of that to go to waste.”

He taught me everything: how to read and write, how to hunt, how to dodge the sunlight, how to survive an existence that was both theoretically endless and yet forever on the precipice of being cut short. He introduced me to the Draghi, to vampires who were remarkable for their ferocity, or their creativity, or their curiosity, or their cleverness, or all those things at once: Victorien, Honora, Elizabeth, Kestrel, Zhang, Sergei, Ana, Gwilym. And most crucially, Nikolai showed me that my human talents were magnified several times over, that his own followers were not immune to them, that there was power in collecting exceptional individuals like pieces of china stacked in a locked cabinet; and that if I could learn to climb immortal bones, the ladder never needed to end.

You never quite get used to the power, to the invincibility, to the promise of eternity. You never take it for granted. It hits you, again and again, in ceaseless and victorious waves. Once I was a barefoot toddler who sketched dragons and Catholic saints from the stories my mother told me into the dirt floor of our drafty stone cottage. Now I live in palaces with marble floors, with spiral staircases and libraries and gold-dripping ballrooms, with unobstructed views of any sea I choose. Now I am the dragon.

My phone rang, and I checked the name on the screen. Then I answered. “Hello, beauty. How’s the other side of the Pacific treating you?”

And Liesl answered, in a soft and astonished voice: “I don’t think Lucy can read her. I don’t think any of them can.”

I could feel it again. Another wave, crashing through me like the ocean, like the unstoppable rolling of time: power and insatiability and exhilaration. I smiled in my twilight-lit study as long-dead stars rose outside and the wind howled like wolves over the East Sea. “You know what to do.”

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chibimyumi · 4 years

Note

Hi Chibi! I’m kind of obsessed with your blog. I’ve loved Kuro for a long time so it’s nice to see someone make very thoughtful posts about it. I was reading some of your posts about the kuro anime and was wondering. What is your opinion of the season 2 OVA The story of Will the reaper? I love the reapers so getting to know about their world is great, but will kicking grell’s ass was not great 😖.

【Response to: “are there any S1 or S2 OVAs you enjoyed?”】

Dear Dagonl,

Thank you very much for your interest! I’m happy you like my content, and it’s always nice to hear that somebody is interested in long-winded posts deep-analyses! ^^

Short answer:

As for my opinion on ‘The story of Will the Reaper’: as I said in the original post, in my opinion “[a]ll OVAs for the second season were (almost) as awful as the season itself, save for ‘The Making of [Kuroshitsuji]’.” Though, ‘the story of Will the reaper’ is actually the one that made me add the ‘almost’ in the previous sentence, meaning that it’s marginally better than the rest.

Click for Full Answer: The good things and the... awful things.

1. The good things

The reason I found this OVA marginally better is because I do respect the ambition and (attempt at) creativity the makers have shown. At the time of release the manga had not revealed anything yet about reaper origins. So I guess they could be forgiven for their artistic liberties (unlike the spoiler-revelation of Undertaker’s nature that ruined his big revelation in the manga.)

1.1. Fair world-building

The world-building works well with the idea of Yana’s satire on the Japanese Salaryman through William. As William is something of a self-proclaimed ‘model’ and so unforgivingly rigid, it gives us reason to believe the Reaper Dispatch Society is built on this type of ideal; aka the Japanese office environment. We have also seen that the technology of the Death Scythes is a century more advanced than Kuroshitsuji’s contemporaries, so the 1980s setting was well done in my opinion.

1.2. Fair reflection on reaper/Salaryman doctrine

The biggest critique on Salaryman culture is the robotic attitude employers demand. The Japanese Salaryman™ is expected to be no more than silent executors of the will from above. As explained by William, reapers don’t actually do all that much; all they do is meaningless double-checking JUST IN CASE something might be off.

As a satire this OVA is not ‘complete’ because you do need the information from the manga that came out many years later to understand why the reaper world is a satire in the first place for the actual punch. But in the very least the OVA pays adequate lip-service and does not disrespect the satirical origins of Yana’s design.

One thing this OVA does arguably better than even Yana is showing that most reapers are robotic work zombies like Will, rather than that the Dispatch Office is filled with eccentric youngsters as the named reapers of the series might suggest. (Though there is a downside that I will discuss in section 2.2.)

2. The awful things

So, to me this OVA has two good things, but they are insignificant in the face of the awful things that’s the rest of this OVA.

2.1. Raging homo and transphobia, etc.

This OVA handles Grell extremely poorly. First of all, this OVA makes it explicit that Grell is a homosexual man, blatantly defying both canon and Yana’s explicit statement of her female gender. Why? Because the most obnoxious shippers want their Yaoi, and this sells. This one literally needed to sell because it’s an OVA.

As explained in more detail in this post, Grell was called a man and she eagerly responded “oh, yes”, and later she herself confirms this statement by making it explicit that she dreams of herself in a m/m relationship. (Yes, these subs are accurately translated. Click the link for a Japanese to English breakdown).

Some fans have explained this as Grell’s words before she realised her own identity, and I understand why. We all want something to not be this gross and try to make sense of the nonsensical, and some actual identity discovering journey would have been nice. For Grell as a character however, it only serves to give Man!Grellers more ammo (even though they have the destructive power of cotton wads).

As I said in the post linked above, “[if this statement] used to be [Grell’s] thoughts that are no longer relevant in present time, the script should have addressed that in present-timeline of the story. As it is now, it is clear as day that the writer Nemoto Toshizou did not take that into inconsideration.”

Secondly, this OVA is desperately trying to cater to Grelliam shippers. Fans have always come up with different reasons to ship this, but this OVA had to choose the most toxic one to capitalise on. Why make Grell so shitty to Will for no reason? Being degrading to him is one thing, but Grell was outright deadly violent to William for trying to do his job. And then Grell only stopped being so hostile because she got beaten back and therefore fell in love?

Yes, people justify this by saying that it’s charming to Grell because she’s a masochist, “whatever”. This however, paints a very askew image of real people who enjoy masochism as a kink. Any responsible adult in the SM community would tell you how painfully shallow Grell’s masochism is portrayed as, and how this portrayal takes away all accountability from someone who harms a kink-masochist if something went wrong.

This OVA would ironically have been more effective as an anti-Grelliam story, except that it sells itself as the opposite. With just the manga, people could just say: “oh, Grell doesn’t respect William’s personal boundaries, and William is very aggressive to Grell, but they can sort that out...eventually.” Add this OVA however, suddenly William is an indisputable abuse victim, and Grell is just an “in your face gay” (as the gay stereotype dictates...)

2.2. Contradicting Canon

I am actually not all that harsh about this OVA contradicting canon history because at the time of release nothing about the reapers had been revealed yet. Like I said above, I even respect the creativity to some extent. The only real problem is because this fandom tends to conflate canon with anime information by using cross-media information to understand Kuroshitsuji.

As discussed in section 1.2., the glimpses of the Reaper office are interesting, but the downside to this is that it suggests reapers are a race one is born into because all newbies are approximately the same age. Without the manga, this information in a vacuum is fine. Later however, Yana reveals that all reapers are suicides and are being punished for this sin. If a fan accepts both pieces of information and tries to piece them together, then suddenly this bit of creativity becomes a totalitarian nightmare.

People of all ages commit suicide. If a fan were to try shoehorn the OVA info into canon material (for lack of more stories), then we get: 1. reapers are suicides who get punished, and 2. all reaper newbies are approximately the same age and able bodied. The only conclusion we can draw then is that only able-bodied suicides who fit the ‘newbie age’ are punished. What happens to people who fall outside this norm? Is becoming a reaper and ‘paying off’ your sin the only way to “serve your term”? If so, then do suicides who fall outside this norm never get a chance to redeem themselves?😱 Or...... do only able-bodied youngsters get punished for committing suicide because they still had “societal value” but wasted it? Either way would be f*cked up!

But again, none of this is a real problem as long as a fan can distinguish canon from non-canon information ^^ So, moving on

2.3. Are reapers God Almighty?

Unlike the second, the third issue I have with the OVA is actually something I am quite harsh on. In this OVA we see that even trainees like William and Grell have apparent power to judge over somebody’s life and death based on their intellectual value. However, this begs for an urgent question!

Under section 3 of this post I discussed whether the law of “a human dies because a reaper says so” according to Grell would be feasible. It’s a relatively long discussion, so please click the link if you’re interested in the details. If you just want it to be quick then just ask the following question: “why give trainees/reapers with human subjectivity an almighty God’s** power to decide over life and death of others?” If we then add the manga’s canon information that reapers are being punished for having committed suicide, then why give people whose sin was ‘deciding over life and death wrongly FOR THEMSELVES’ the power to do so for OTHERS????

Still, even if we disregard the manga and view this OVA in a vacuum, it is still VERY alarming that trainees are given this power. Perhaps if a trainee misjudges there will be due consequences from above, but why give a trainee this power in the first place? Are human lives just test objects to this “reaper race”?

This third issue is so awful to me because it shows how little the OVA creators thought through matters and just wanted a quick money grab by selling the most toxic version of the Grelliam ship.

**TLN: A ‘shinigami’ is Japanese for ‘Death (shini) God (gami/kami)’, but please note that in Japanese definitions, a ‘kami’ is not ‘god’ in the same way it is in the Abrahamic sense. A ‘kami’ is more similar to a ‘spirit’, and is therefore not a supreme being. Entirely accurately, a ‘shinigami’ would be more similar to ‘death angel’ or ‘death spirit’.

Why would Sascha have committed suicide? Rutger, Will and the JP Salaryman

How does a scythe kill a reaper? A discussion of MBD musical’s horrible writing of universe laws, and canon reaper laws

Can reapers teleport?

A reaper’s dormitory

#Shinigami #reapers #reaper #Grell Sutcliff #William T. Spears #William #Shinigami Will's story #The story of Will the Reaper #OVA #Kuroshitsuji 2 #Season 2 #Black Butler OVA

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jinruihokankeikaku · 4 years

Note

Classpect analysis for a Prince of Life? Love your blog btw!

omg thanks!! Glad you’ve been diggin it hehe, I didn’t expect to get this much attention as a blog that’s been nigh-dead for 3ish years but i love it :3 This is our second Prince, and our second Life player. Here we go…

Title: Prince of Life

Title Breakdown: One who actively destroys [kills, breaks, threatens, annihilates] Life [rebellion, growth, biological life, consumption]

Role in Session: “Destroyer of Life” …what could go wrong, eh? Well, as with any Prince, the answer is “a whole lot”. A whole lot could go wrong, but with enough teamwork, this doesn’t have to be the case. The key for a session’s survival here lies in the Prince’s mindset, and what makes it so easy for them to derail.

In the case of an (undeveloped) Prince of Life, the first word that comes to mind is “repressed”. Something about their lifestyle, way of thinking, or treatment by others has quelled the spark of Life within them, and left them clinging to a “false Doom” – that is to say, a set of rules or restrictions, or sense of fate, that they no longer truly believe in. Their task, in developing themselves and their aspect, to realize that they have room yet to grow, and to know when to destroy a thing and when to have the forbearance to give it time. A healthy Prince of Life makes their own way, makes their own rules, lets Life flourish to a degree but prunes it down to make it beautiful.

In terms of party composition, a Prince of Life is gonna find it hard to work with just about anyone at first. However, a Maid of Rage could be the key to breaking through their repression, showing them the power they have to say No, to admit that they’ve been holding themselves back. The resulting realization could be explosive, but will ultimately be in the best interest of the Prince and their team. Another role that might play an interesting role in the Prince’s development is the Seer of Space, who could figuratively “give the Prince some space” by showing them the path to develop their own beliefs and forge a new beginning. At any rate, the Prince of Life won’t have an easy path ahead of them, as by definition they’ll start out with a lot of growth left to do.

Opposite Role: The Sylph of Doom. There’s so much potential for miscommunication here. All the pot8ntial, one might say, if one hypothetically said things like that. The Sylph will want to repair what they see as faltering belief or concerning lack of acceptance in the Prince, not realizing that the structure of beliefs that the Prince espouses is inauthentic and/or forced upon them. This would only escalate when the Prince finally realizes the inauthenticity of their beliefs, which the Sylph might well see as unduly chaotic / derailment on the Prince’s part. While the Sylph is unlikely to immediately escalate this disagreement, it’ll be a real cause for resentment between the two until the miscommunication is resolved, as the Sylph will be all too likely to fixate on healing a disease that was never actually there.

God Tier Powers

The dialectical contradiction inherent to all Princes is that they both destroy their Aspect and destroy with their Aspect. While this is usually reflected in internal turmoil and struggle personally, their powers post-Ascension, generally speaking, fall into the latter category. Here are a few ideas as to how the Prince might destroy things using Life…

Decadent Irruption: The Prince causes growth to occur at an extremely accelerated rate within a person or thing. Cell division immediately comes to mind, which would cause a slow death through lingering malignancies, but really it would amplify any “status effect” currently attached to the Prince’s unfortunate victim – flames would burn faster and brighter, drugs or poisons would reach lethal concentration within moments, violent urges would be amplified and aggressively expressed… This is a, needless to say, an extraordinarily dangerous power. Wield it with care.

Poison Ivy: The Prince causes nearby flora to grow uncontrollably, mutating in novel and deadly ways, and lashing out at whomever the Prince sees fit. A theme is emerging here – it’s quite possible that the Prince of Life would have a real knack for working with poisons, as somebody who’s been figuratively (or perhaps literally?) poisoned in the past. Maybe they use compounds they grew themselves on their weapon – a poisoned rapier sounds like a rather Princely weapon indeed.

Live Fast: The Prince of Life channels their Aspect inward, accumulating a massive supply of life-force and consuming it all. Physically, this might be subtle or invisible to onlookers; however, it might also manifest as temporary mutations, with the Prince’s body transforming to acquire the more lethal attributes of a life-form with which they have a particular affinity. Either way, the end result is that the Prince temporarily becomes a virtual killing machine, plowing through obstacles before crashing and taking a long while to recharge. Like any Prince, not destroying themselves is going to be a top priority.

Personality: As mentioned above, the Prince is going to start out rather repressed, lacking in self-awareness and tied to a set of beliefs that are no longer theirs. Religion immediately comes to mind, but it’s not necessarily the only possibility. Maybe it’s a more general sense of Fate – I could see an unhealthy/pre-realization Prince of Life believing something along the lines of “Why bother, I’m going to die anyways.” Alternatively, they could be adhering to a code of ethics or set of laws that’s holding them back in their personal pursuits – in any case, a key moment in their character arc is going to be that moment when they do finally stop limiting themselves.

This “limit-break” or “apostasy”, whatever form it takes, is not necessarily going to be a happy moment, or healthy in the short-term, as the Prince might double down on whatever coping mechanisms they’d been using in the past. Food, alcohol, drugs, obsessive exercise, fixation on a particular person or goal… these are all possibilities, which would manifest under the surface while the Prince was repressed and bubble over when they break through the repression, causing a lot of chaos or an “excess of Life” before (hopefully) simmering down to a well-adjusted level. Once this has settled, the Prince will be happier than they’ve ever been, finally becoming as excitable and bubbly as most Life players are to begin with. While the Prince of Life might seem like a bit of a trainwreck personality-wise, their story is one of growth, and growth invariably takes time.

Songs

Heel Turn 2 by the Mountain Goats (listen to this song, srsly; not only does it fit the Prince of Life exceedingly well, it’s just damn good)

Kill the DJ by Green Day (believe me, I already I have shitty music taste, this one just kinda stood out to me vibewise ok)

Numb by Linkin Park (this is maybe more of a Prince of Heart thing but I’m putting it here anyhow)

That was an interesting one!! It’s easy to read the Prince of Life as just “someone what kills things”, but they have a lot of potential for complexity, and a great many potential directions to take. Thanks for the request, and please do send an ask if u have any further requests/comments/critiques, or want clarification on anything posted thus far!! :3

~PLUR~

#anon #ask #Homestuck #classpect #prince of life #life #prince

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dreams-madeof-strawberrylemonade · 4 years

Text

Reunion

Request: The reader and him had dated when they was 17-19 but she moved to UK for studying in royal academy of music and they "broke up". so when they are 23 they meet again at some event/party because of their careers A/N: Guess I really let myself go for it in this one lol. @pennylane-gvf I hope you like it! Critiques and comments are welcome Word count: 2.9 K Warnings: drinking, steamy stuff (nothing too explicit)

To be added to the permanent taglist, DM me or leave an ask!

Fanfiction Masterlist

You sat down at the long dinner table as you took a sip of your clear glass filled only up to a quarter of its full capacity with cognac. Your eyes wandered around the room filled with dim lighting. People started gathering around the table and in the following minutes it was almost full. You downed the rest of your drink and raised your hand to ask for a refill from the waiter.

About the same time the waiter came back with a bottle to pour in your glass, the seats across the table from you have been occupied. You didn’t pay much attention to the people who sat down, you just mumbled a polite “good evening” and told the waiter to stop pouring the drink only when the glass was filled a little bit more than half.

The woman sitting to your right extended her arm towards you, holding her glass in it. You raised yours and lightly touched glasses with smiles on your faces, as a sign of good luck. She was your manager. The person who helped you to get where you were today. Without her you wouldn’t have made it out of the underground British music scene and for sure you couldn’t have been at this beautiful party with all kinds of artists.

You drank a sip or two from the freshly poured cognac, but you decide to hold it for a moment since your stomach was burning from the alcohol and lack of food.

“Hello,” spoke the man sitting exactly across the table from you. Your head shot up and glanced at the man. Short and curly hair, bright eyes and a wide smile – that would sum him up. “Sorry to interrupt you, I just wanted to say I am a big fan of yours and your work,” he continues and reaches out to shake your hand. “I am Josh Kiszka.”

Your face brightens up at his words. You never found the words to explain the joy that filled your whole heart, soul and being when someone told you they enjoyed your work. “Pleased to meet you, Josh and thank you for your kind words. I am making the music I’d love to hear myself, because if you won’t do it, who will?” you smile.

“That is very true, I must admit. This is what set us out for the first time – the will to create something that is missing from this world and spread out the word that this place is beautiful and love isn’t to be ignored,” Josh spoke, moving his hands a lot. “Shit, sorry, I forgot. This is my band. Daniel Wagner, here to my left, and next to him is my baby brother, Sam. To my right is my baby twin, Jake.”

“Jake…” you repeat and your head shots in his direction. Hair dark brown, flowing down his shoulders, a little bit curled at the ends. He didn’t seem to quite pay attention to what was going on. On the contrary, he seemed totally spaced out, being caught in a trance-like state, staring at the amber gold liquid flowing in his glass while swirling it around. His shirt was neatly arranged, but the top three or four buttons were undone (putting it in another manner – his shirt was held together by only three buttons), slightly revealing his chest and a necklace falling down on his chest. On the middle finger of his right hand, you saw a simple black ring, no inscriptions or decorations on it.

Your eyes wandered on the man to Josh’s right side for a few moments, but you took in every single detail. The dark brown eyes, completely lost, the hair falling down, his prominent cheekbones and jawline (or maybe that was just the lighting’s fault, who knows). Your eyes widened as you realized.

“Jake!” you speak up, snapping the man out of his trance. He was now looking at you, probably doing to you the same thing you did to him a couple of moments ago. You saw his eyes wandering all over your face, then over your hands, clothing, taking in every little detail. By the look on his face you could tell he had the same realization as you did.

“Y/N,” he spoke, his voice a little bit hoarse, probably from not exchanging any words for quite a while. He cleared his throat and tilted his head sideways, as if to get a better angle of you.

“Flesh and bones,” you let out a nervous laugh and realize that you actually knew all of the boys from back in the day, when you dated Jake.

You ate dinner in silence. I mean as silent as it can get at a table with so many people. You changed a few words with your manager, and you kept it simple and professional with the boys across the table. You threw an occasional glance over to Jake, but quickly looked away every time he caught you looking. Which was really… every time you looked. It didn’t take you that much time to down the drink down your throat, leaving at first a burning sensation on its way down. You repeated the same thing one more time and then you decided it was time to stop. You didn’t want to get drunk and do something embarrassing or that you would regret.

Once you finished up with the dinner, you excused yourself and sat up to the table. You walked in the other room, which was filled with people more or less drunk, dancing to the music blaring through the speakers. You were honestly tempted to join this dancing mass, but you weren’t in the necessary mood, so you just leaned against the wall in a corner less lighted by the stroboscopic lights, changing colors every single damn second.

You saw the door to the dining room opening and you saw someone walking around aimlessly at first, but then straight to you. You knew it was him and you couldn’t run from this. This was necessary. Your breakup with Jake hurt your soul as much as it benefited your career. It still hurt, even after 4 years since it happened. You loved him truly. He was your first real boyfriend – the first one to treat you accordingly. You needed to do this. To heal your soul, ease the pain, plus Jake deserved it. He didn’t do anything wrong, he didn’t deserve to be broken up with. After all, you were the one who left Michigan, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, in the United Kingdom to study music.

“Hey,” Jake spoke hesitantly once he got next to you.

Your eyes met his and you could see all the memories from the past that you wanted so badly to forget. Your heart slightly fluttered and you felt your throat drier than ever, needing to drink something immediately.

“Hi, Jake,” you struggle to get out.

“Do you want to talk?” he asks and his fingers brushed yours and you quickly nodded. “Great, let’s go in the lobby of my hotel, we can get a drink and catch up.”

In no time you got to the hotel where Jake stayed. It was downtown, not far from the one where you were staying. The lobby was really simplistic, but sophisticated. It really gave you a nice feeling. There was a light cherry blossom scent flying in the air, making it feel even better. You and Jake chose two armchairs facing each other, in the corner of the room.

Jake ordered for the two of you some rose wine. He still remembered that it was your favorite drink.

“If somebody would’ve told me that I’d meet you at the party this evening, I’d straight up laugh about it and say they’re delusional,” you chuckle nervously as you watch the waiter pour half a glass of wine, the color of roses.

“Tell me about it,” he answered and played with the black ring on his finger. “So, please, do tell me what has been up with you since we parted ways,” he continued, his voice getting deeper at the end of the sentence.

“Well, let’s see…” you say and start browsing through the library of memories in your head. “I left Michigan, and as I said, I went to the Academy in London where I got that scholarship. While there, I got in this band – it was a music academy and I guess you can assume how many bands there were – and we played in pubs, no success, but we did what we loved. One night, I took the lead for a single song, I played guitar and vocals, and Camelia, my manager, the lady you saw with me, she saw me and she took me in and cared for me, and brought me where I am today,” you summed up the past 4 years of your life.

Jake smiled at the mentions of the guitar. He thought of the exact same thing you thought when saying it – the memory of him teaching you how to play guitar.

“And what can you tell me about yourself?” you ask, your eyes glued to the man in front of you. Man, he looked so damn good. You really liked what he did with his hair and his new style (but you could still see hints of the old one, which made it even better).

“Well, what can I say…” he pondered for a moment and finished the wine in his glass. He reached over to grab the bottle and pour himself another half a glass and poured you a little more, since you had only about two sips left. “I am in the same band as before and actually I am quite disappointed you didn’t recognize Josh, nor any of them!”

“What? Jake! He introduced himself to me and said he was my fan!” you protest and laugh, realizing it was one of Josh’s old tricks to get your attention.

“You’re saying it like you don’t know him,” Jake rolled his eyes with a smile blooming in the corner of his mouth. “And he really does enjoy your work, he has been rubbing it in my face since day one he discovered you.”

“An honor,” you laugh with a dramatic hand gesture. “But please, do continue your story.”

“Alright, so we just kept the hope, we wrote, we recorded. We really hit it off with Highway Tune. After that, things followed their natural course, really,” he shrugged as if it was no big deal.

“Congratulations!” you smiled. You were genuinely happy to have met Jake again and you were proud of him and his band.

“Thank you,” he nodded. “God, don’t you ever miss the day that have passed?” he spoke moments later, like he was caught in the world of the dreams.

“Yeah, I miss them…” you ponder. “And I miss you,” you add, even surprising yourself with your boldness. Maybe the wine (and the few glasses of cognac) gave you the strength you needed to speak out your mind that way.

Jake looked at you and blinked a couple of times. You could tell he didn’t expect that to happen.

“Oh shit, I am sorry,” you say as you notice his reaction. “I am so, so sorry, I didn’t think this through,” you add, feeling your cheeks heat up.

“No, it’s alright, really. I feel the same way, Y/N. I have missed you since day one and nothing could fill that void.” Jake said and almost as if you were commanded with a remote control from somewhere, you sat up and walked next to Jake.

Jake sat up and you felt his fingers brush against yours. He was only a little taller as you, but you always considered yourself on eye level with him, but now it felt like he was towering over you. When Jake eventually got a proper hold of your hand, he leaned in, closer to you, while snaking the other hand around your waist. You felt the tension building up between the two of you; the tension and the anticipation.

All the wait has finally been rewarded when Jake’s lips pressed against yours. Everything felt like it was still those old days. The same faint taste of cigars and mint, now only with a taste of wine, too. You let yourself melt away into the kiss and be washed over by all the memories. Your first kiss underneath the delicate moonlight, just like in the movies; your first date which was a cheap one, but come on, you were two teenagers head over heels in love with each other, so who gave a damn about the price?

Your breathing got heavier and needier. Four years you’ve missed his touch. It was like he had put a spell on you.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” Jake whispered in your ear, his breath getting heavier as well.

You nod and follow Jake who was already two steps ahead of you. In no time you were in his room. It was really spacious. You eyed the double bed.

“Jake, is there someone else?” you ask. You didn’t want this unless it was real and you were sure that you didn’t get in the middle of his possible other relationship.

“No, it’s not,” he shook his head and walked towards you with small and steady steps. You didn’t know why, but you backed up step by step until your back hit the wall.

Jake’s fingers swiftly switched on the light at the entrance in the room. It was a rather dim light, but enough to see what you were doing and where you were going. You looked over his face and you felt your knees and joints turning into jelly.

Jake didn’t hesitate to come near you. With a hand he cupped your cheek and with the other one he caressed the other cheek. A smile bloomed on his lips. He was so happy he met you again, despite all the thoughts that he had lost you forever.

“Do you want to do this?” Jake asked, his lips only millimeters away from yours. You hum an affirmative answer and the next thing you know, Jake’s hand helped you wrap your legs around his waist, while pressing messy kisses on the lobe of your ear, and slowly down the neck, until it met the fabric of your dress.

That’s when he stopped and took you to his bed. In the moment you touched the fluffy sheets with your back, Jake was already back at it.

Four years of failed relationships and meaningless kisses. You didn’t even realize until now how much you wanted it to be Jake instead of all those similar, yet unknown faces. No one in all those years managed to make you feel as good as Jake did now with only a touch of his lips.

Jake’s fingers roamed around the fabric of your dress, trying to locate the zipper, his lips not leaving yours, not even for a single moment. He was as lost in your touch and desperate as you were. He had spent too much time away from you to afford to slow down now.

You didn’t know how he managed – even back then – Jake earned control of the kiss, even though he was still busy pulling down the zipper. He was doing it painfully slow, probably only to tease you, but the one who he was teasing the most was himself.

When the zipper finally reached the end, Jake’s hands ran on the sides of your body, as if trying to remember the shape of it, alongside with every little detail. Everything happen at such slow speed that a needy moan escaped your lips, earning a groan from Jake.

A moment later, Jake was already back on kissing you, starting from the jawline, down to the collarbone, while with his hand he slowly removed the dress and kicked off his shoes. He did take his time, working on every kiss and slightly biting here and there.

You were already driven out of your mind. “Jake,” you whisper hoping that you’d get his attention.

“What?” he answers and goes right back at it.

“Please.”

“Time makes perfect,” he answered and you could feel the smirk on his lips against the sensitive skin on your neck. You only groan as an answer and push yourself into the middle of the bed.

Jake took off your high heels and joined you in no time. Jake was laying on top of you, your legs on both sides of him. The dress was gone by now, so Jake took the trail of kisses over your chest and down your tummy, stopping right underneath the bellybutton. Through your whole body flowed something electric. Your hands traveled to Jake’s hair, roaming through it and tugging at it a little bit.

“I like what you did to your hair,” you speak and gasp loudly as Jake proceeded to kiss the inner part of your thighs, squeezing them here and there.

Since the early days Jake loved teasing you with everything he could and time didn’t change that. He stopped in between your thighs and he looked at you straight in the eyes. You could see the familiar gleam of his eyes that has quickly been replaced with a darker look, a look of lust.

He returned up, sliding his hands underneath your back while keeping you occupied with needy kisses in which he told you without words how much he needs you and before you realized, your bra was unclasped and tossed aside.

“God how I missed you,” he groaned. “Please never leave again.”

Tags: @myownparadise96, @satans-helper, @jeordinevankiszka, @littlegeekwonder, @songbirdkisses, @pomegranatecurses, @umbriellethenightfall, @freeeshavacadoo, @karrotkate, @mountainofthesunn

#god id sell my soul for jake #jake kiszka owns my ass #greta van fleet #gvf #greta van fleet fanfiction #gvf fic #gvf fanfic #jake kiszka #jake kiszka x reader #imagine #requested #writing #fanfiction

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bottomlwjrights · 4 years

Text

MO DAO ZU SHI REREAD:Thoughts™️....and Stuff

Chapter 40

“They should’ve been able to talk, to say who they were, to shout for help. However, the awful thing was that somebody had cut all of their tongues off before this.” In case i havent said it enough, i hate Xue Yang!!!!

I dont have anything funny or witty to say, this whole situation is just sad

“She instinctively hated him and refused to settle. And so, whenever Xue Yang went out night-hunting with Xiao XingChen, she’d secretly follow them. Even when they were in the same house, she didn’t lower her guard.” She lived constantly on guard for, what, years?

Nobody told xxc stories when he was a kid, which I believe to be a crime

The first disciple to leave the mountain, YanLing DaoRen, was an excellent and renowned cultivator, but suddenly became a villian for some unknown reason and died under thousands of swords, according to xxc (parallels wwx a little)

“‘The second disciple was a girl and also very outstanding.’ Wei WuXian’s chest felt warm. She was ZangSe SanRen.” 🥺

“How would an outstanding and beautiful cultivator settle on a servant. This story’s so cliche. It’s probably made up by some poor scholar.” Oh little A-Qing... (wait this mirrors lwj and wwx’s love story, except of course the death part, because in my eyes they just cultivate to immortality and live happily ever after, together forever)

Shut up, wwx, you’re not a villain

Xxc describing sl makes me uuuh wanna cry “A very good friend of mine.” “A sincere man of noble nature.”

Shut the fuck up Xue Yang, no body cares

SHUT UP XXC CARRIED A-QING TO BED THATS ADORABLE 🥺 BIG BRO XINGCHEN EVEN TUCKED HER IN

Shut up!!!! He went and got her candy!!!! And then gave her candy everyday!!!!

Sl said to A-Qing the exact same the xxc said to her, like almost word for word... hold i...

Also note that wwx said they must have been very good friends to be so much alike

Why did he hesitate???

“Song Lan answered straight away, ‘His height is similar to mine. His appearance is rather fine. His sword is carved with patterns of frost.’” Dont ask why this drove me crazy

Sl was looking for xxc for years....

“For some reason, Song Lan’s face was extremely pale. He stared at the door of the coffin home, as if he would rush inside if he could, but was too scared to do so.”

“The instant he heard the [xxc’s] voice, Song Lan’s hands trembled so much that A-Qing could clearly see it.”

Sl was so angry his entire body was shaking

Xy is disgusting

After the attack of Baixue temple, while injured, sl said some nasty things to xxc....sounds alot like the aftermath of Nightless City....

“Who was the one who said ‘from now on, we won’t need to meet again’? Wasn’t it you, Daozhang Song? He listened to your request and disappeared after he dug out his eyes for you, but why have you come to him now?” Shut up shut up shut up

Fuck Xue Yang!!!!

“Song Lan looked down at Shuanghua’s blade, which penetrated his heart, then slowly looked up again. He saw Xiao XingChen, who calmly held the sword.” Im gonna cry

“Slowly, Song Lan fell to his knees before Xiao XingChen.” Yup im crying

“At such a time, if Song Lan passed his sword to Xiao XingChen’s hands, Xiao XingChen would’ve immediately known who he was. He’d be able to recognize the sword of his closest friend with just a touch.” He would have known sl’s sword by just a touch....

Sl didnt pass his sword to xxc so that he didnt have to bear the burden of knowing he killed him.....

“...large drops of tears rolled from her eyes. Although she was scared, A-Qing reached out to close Song Lan’s eyes. She then kneeled in front of him and put her palms together, ‘Daozhang, please don’t blame me or the other daozhang.’”

She kowtowed in front of sl’s body....

A-Qing is smart and quick witted, pulling such a fast lie like that

“Cut a few dozens of times on her face so that she’ll never have the guts to go outside again.” 😧

How xy can say something like that and then offer up a plate of bunny shaped apple slices that he cut himself is beyond me

“Looking at the plate of cute, delicate slices, disgust filled both A-Qing’s and Wei WuXian’s hearts.” Yeah me too

(Chapter 41 & Chapter 42 below the cut)

Chapter 41

A-Qing didnt wanna tell xxc about sl...

“The blood grew more and more and eventually leaked through the bandages, trickling down from where his eyes once were.” God he’s crying ....

“Originally, the injury of his eyes would bleed whenever he had excessive thoughts or emotions, but it hadn’t recurred in quite a long while.” I hate this

“...after Xiao XingChen managed to calm down, he told A-Qing, ‘A-Qing, run away.’” I hate this so much

“I can’t go. I need to find out what exactly he’s trying to do...If I left him here alone, I’m afraid that the people of Yi City would sink into his hands.” Y’all gotta stop with this selfless,self sacrificing, being a good caring person shit man, its okay to save yourselves sometimes

“A-Qing’s sobs weren’t faked anymore. She tossed the bamboo pole to the side and clung to Xiao XingChen’s leg...”

“Xiao XingChen asked coldly, ‘Was it fun?’ Xue Yang took another bite into the apple that was still in his hand. He only replied after calmly chewing for a while and swallowing the fruit, ‘Yes. Of course it was fun.’” I hate him

Even the idea that xy did all this because he was bored...

“My finger was my own, while those lives were other peoples’. They wouldn’t be equal no matter how many lives I killed. It was only around fifty. How could it have possibly been equal to one of my fingers?” I cannot even begin to express my disgust...

This is all so sad....

“… Is that you, ZiChen?”

“Even if the two swords had just clashed, Xiao XingChen should be able to tell who the other was from only the strength of the attack...He turned around slowly and reached out a quivering hand, feeling for the blade of Song Lan’s sword.”

“… ZiChen… Daozhang Song… Daozhang Song… Is that you…?” Im crying again

And he’s crying nonstop

“… What happened…? Say something…”

“Xiao XingChen stood blankly in front of Song Lan. Putting his hands on his head, he wailed as though he was ripping his chest apart.” I cant handle this shit im about to stop reading

Fuck you, Xue Yang

“At this moment, Wei WuXian saw himself in Xiao XingChen. Him, who failed miserably as he stood drenched in blood, who couldn’t do anything except silently acknowledge the critiques and accusations, who was wholly beyond hope, who could only cry in despair!” Yeah i didnt need that in the middle of all this

“He could only whimper in pain, ‘Please. Let me go.’” Im really going through it

They all died in such horrific ways

Thank goodness thats over!!!!

Chapter 42

Wwx really implied that xy killed Chang Ping as revenge for xxc huh....wow no

Even in death, A-Qing is brave. Thank you for your contribution in ending that mf

Lwj cuts off xy’s arm when he reaches towards wwx

There was so much blood on the ground that wwx almost slipped in it, gross

Lmao i didnt think lwj would be the one to just toss a pouch to someone but here we are

Wn just squatting on the ground, chillin

Okay yanno what im still confused as hell as to why the juniors were lead to yi city...

God that makes me so angry, Xue Yang keeping the piece of candy for years and holding onto it when he died, like even the idea that he liked xxc and still decided to torture him to death good lord

“Lifting up the hem of his robes, Lan WangJi stepped over the high threshold in an elegant manner, then nodded.” Wwx just looks at lwj do literally anything and is just like “he’s so elegant 😍 so graceful 🥰 look at my lan zhan, so pretty 🥰😍🥰”

“When he wakes, say I’m sorry, it wasn’t your fault.” Wow....

“He still wore the dark cultivation robes. Standing alone, he carried two swords, Shuanghua and Fuxue, he brought two souls, Xiao XingChen and A-Qing, and walked another path.” Wow.... i wish for you the best, Song Lan

Lsz standing and wondering if xxc and sl would ever meet again....

I agree with jl, death is too light of a punishment for xy

Lmfnck ljy cried the loudest out of everyone sjnckck

The juniors light incense and burning paper money for them 🥺 they’re so sweet

ItS nOt lIkE yOuVE DiEd HoW wOuLd YoU KnOw iF DeaD pEoPle ReCiEve PaPeR MonEY

PLEASE WATCH YOUR MOUTH JINGYI

“How come? Was I really that much of a failure? Was there not a single person who burned paper money for me? Was it really because nobody burned them that I didn’t receive any?” STOOOOOP

“Looking at his calm face, Wei WuXian thought to himself, Really? Had he really not burnt anything?!” Okay i don’t remember if he actually did or not but nonetheless this shit hurted

The hunter was probably the same person who lead them together to yi city with the corpses, BUT WHY THO

Awwww wwx happy to see Lil Apple

Stop teasing jl, wwx, its not nice

Even though the lookout towers are a good idea, and benefit smaller more remote towns, i cant help but wonder if there was some kind of ulterior motive behind them

“Almost all of the dishes were covered in red. Paying attention to Lan WangJi’s chopsticks, he notes that he ate mostly from the milder dishes, rarely the bright-red ones. Even when he did, his expression remained the exact same. Wei WuXian felt something tug at his heart.” uGGgGgGHhHhH

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lavenderarts · 4 years

Note

Do you have any advice? I want to make a sona similar to yours but I’m not good with art. Is there a generator or piccrew you know of? PS I love the blue wolf sona you posted for the icons

Oh thanks so much!! The blue and white one is actually a hyena hehe :> I’m so glad to hear you enjoy them!

Before I say anything more, as a quick disclaimer to put my mind at ease since I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “similar to mine,” please do try to draw inspiration from more places than just me! I caught somebody who had stolen and was trying to sell that specific sona recently and it was really disheartening; inspiration is good and fine, but use your best judgment and please don’t be afraid to come and ask me if you’re not sure about something, I’m always glad to help.

Unfortunately I’m not aware of a Picrew for sona making; there are probably some dollmaker type things out there, but I wouldn’t know! Googling it might help, or if you have the cash there are a huge ton of artists you can commission to create a sona just for you, myself included! If anybody following me knows of a dollmaker or Picrew, etc., please link it in the replies to help this person out!

As far as advice goes, I suggest googling “x animal fursona” and taking a look at the work of others to get a feel for how artists stylize certain features, especially if you aren’t already familiar with the anatomy of the animal(s) you want your sona to be (but again, while it’s great to take inspiration from the work of others, put yourself in there too! Nothing good comes from outright copying). Check out the real animal(s) you want your sona to look like as well and take note of the general anatomy and what features stick out most to you — with Cherry, the blue hyena, the most prominent features of hyenas to me are their large ears, their mohawk-ish manes, and the shape of their snouts, so I tried to emphasize those features with Cherry! Since they’re also part whale shark, I looked at them too and tried to include some minor aquatic features along with their big fish tail. You say you’re not good at art, but nobody was born good! We all had to learn from others and practice to hone our skillset, and with time, patience, and practice, you can too. Take pride in your efforts so far and keep going! 💖

If you have a design theme you really like or a particular aspect of your personality you want this sona to express or showcase, that can help you make decisions about design details. Some themes are really popular, like space or plants, but use your creativity and you can create your own unique expression using them! Have confidence in yourself and create something that makes you happy. (Though please do be careful to avoid offensive “native/tribal” themes.) It’s your sona, it should be something you enjoy! They can have natural colors, bright colors, be a mix of 10 different animals or just 1, whatever you want!! The sky’s the limit, be as creative or common as you want.

For what it’s worth, I’m always happy to look at people’s work if they DM me from the messenger function, and I can give some casual feedback/opinions if you’d like to know my thoughts on a design or piece of artwork — though my word isn’t god, of course! (And if you’ll excuse a quick plug, if you hit up my Patreon or perhaps toss me a few bucks on Ko-fi I can do a more in-depth review and give critique/suggestions! I always try to do such things in a kind way, nothing harsh.)

Good luck making your sona, and thanks for coming to ask me! I’d love to see them when you’re finished, if you feel up to it.

#lavies asks #anonymous

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kariachi · 4 years

Text

Okay, we’re gonna see how much liveblogging I can get done today. We’re still in full Kevin mode, and we’re starting the day with Heads of the Family. I have minimal idea what to expect, but I love Kevin and I love the Bugg Brothers, so it can’t be bad.

Right?

My love for this show’s music selection continues.

Oh good lords, these people take family reunions seriously. There’s a fucking banner. You can see more people in this frame then there was at my last family reunion in it’s entirety. And that was everybody from this farming family that still lived in the northeast within six generations of relation. Not kidding.I know nix and I play with there being too many fucking Joneses but goddamn there are canonically too many fucking Tennysons!

Just, goddamn.

...Last year Ben and Gwen had a burping contest where Ben won by so much a fucking gazebo collapsed on them and several relatives. I’m not surprised, just concerned

And Aunt Kathy damn near banned them from future reunions. Honestly I can’t blame her. Made Max give her a month’s worth of foot massages to re-earn the right to attend.

They’re bringing the deviled eggs.

That is, a sad amount of deviled eggs for the number of people here.

Nobody is happy to see Ben, which, given last year, not surprising.

...yep, that’s a level of offhand rudeness you only get from relatives.

Honestly I gotta write a fic involving family reunions, that’s shit’s gotta be confusing for an Erinaen like Argit.

(probably Great) Aunt Kathy likes bacon in her deviled eggs. The presence of them was likely planned ahead.

There’s a Sweden branch of the Tennyson family. The representatives shown are Sven and Len. I’m horribly amused. Also Max apparently can’t tell which is which.

...Somebody just showed up given a headcount of nearly 600. What is wrong with these people?!

The headcounter’s name is Alfred. He has pumpkin pie. This earns him a point.

He’s Max’s second cousin. This is a relation I can accept as a family reunion.

Somebody is showing off Max’s baby pictures. Making him out to have been a worse-looking teen than he was though. Doesn’t look good, but I was expecting worse from the characters’ reactions.

Also this is apparently Grandma Rita, which given it’s Max saying that I have to assume she’s either his mother or his grandmother, so Ben & Gwen’s great-grandma or great-great-grandma. Probably great-grandma. Either that, or she’s aged real well, or she and Max’s mom had kids real young.

“I’m gonna get some deviled eggs“ Ben says before being stopped by the realization that there, by the food, is his archest of nemesises, Kevin. Who, given there’s nearly 600 people here, may actually belong. I mean statistically, with this many people just attending the reunion, nonetheless in the family, there’s acceptable odds he’s a cousin of some bent.

Also my son, dual-wielding fried chicken

Gwen, concerned Kevin might be related to them. Max, concerned Ben’s going to do something that gets them banned from the family reunion.

“Don’t do anything rash“ like Ben has ever done something not-rash ever in his life

Boys please. I know you’re both disasters but, for five minutes pretend to have something resembling chill.

Ben: *totally down to kick Kevin’s ass for daring to eat a food* Kevin: *certain he won’t because they’re surrounded by innocent relatives* Ben: *does not care one iota* Gwen: *about to have an aneurysm because holy shit is her cousin trying to get them disowned*

I have to admit, I do enjoy the addition of episodes where Kevin is just existing and it’s Ben who’s starting shit? Having a wide range of hows with regards to the boys getting into fights makes sure that we get some real character depth out of both of them, as well as making sure the episodes don’t get samey and that they can always do something new. They aren’t pigeon-holing themselves.

The boys have left to a less target-rich environment and are now fighting because, again, how dare Kevin come to a Tennyson family reunion and eat the food. And we still don’t have any real evidence he doesn’t belong. I mean he makes that ‘where you got all your weird’ comment, but it’s Kevin, if they were twins he’d say that just to rile Ben up.

Me thinks these boys should’ve gone out a little further. Attract less attention.

...Ben knocks Kevin clear across the fairgrounds, jumps into a dumpster to stay out of sight until he comes back for round 2, finds the Bugg Brothers. Of course.

Ben is just having A Day.

A particle decimator. Okay, cool, but why you guys hiding in a dumpster?

It’s a shrinking ray. The plan is to use it to destabilize the national economy, undermine the government, disrupt social order, and wreak havoc among the entire world population. I feel like Maurice needs to start thinking smaller.

And lo, they were using the wrong device and accidentally switched Heatblast and Maurice’s heads. I’m shocked.

This is gonna be a weird episode from here out isn’t it

Kevin, gonna kick somebody’s ass even if he’s not sure what the fuck is going on

Kevin, rolling with the head swapping thing. Though honestly with some of the shit he’s been through this probably don’t seem too bad

I do like how Maurice made a head-swapping helmet and yet he and Sidney have not swapped heads, despite, well, everything.

Ah, this is presumably the device that swapped their heads in the first place. Cool cool.

My son

So clarify, he’s outnumbered, his head in on the wrong body, and the Maurice and Sidney are looming. He shows no signs of concern, or lack of confidence he can handle the situation. He still gets divetackled, but hey

And he’s not doing bad, given he’s wrestling against two guys his size.

And Ben has the helmet

“You need to fix us!“ And how, pray tell, do you expect your cousin to do that, Benjamin?

Welp, Gwen and Max got their heads swapped now.

And the watches timed out, meaning how Maurice and Sidney are basically helpless until shit times back in.

Welp, Maurice and Kevin swapped. So now Kevin’s head is on Ben’s body and Maurice is on Sidney’s. Meanwhile Ben’s head is still on Maurice’s body, Max’s on Gwen’s, and Gwen’s on Max’s.

This play-by-play brought to you by Fanta. Thirsty? Get a fanta.

And now Ben’s head is on a squirrel body. And a squirrel head on Maurice’s.

“Gotta fix this before I get infected with this dork’s genes“ Kevin pls.

Okay, Maurice is whole again, but now there’s a squirrel using Sidney’s body

Wow, Maurice, maybe you should’ve hedged your bets on whether you wanted to leave the helmet in the care of an 11-yo or a fucking squirrel.

And lo, now Maurice is back on Ben’s body and Kevin is on Maurice’s.

And I’m not even gonna give a play-by-play of these last several switches, just assume everything happened including the rise and fall of the roman empire

Kevin is fucking done. Also he and Ben are on each other’s bodies now.

Oooo, I was wondering if this episode came before or after Kev joined up with the Forever Nerd, turns out it’s after. Also this phone doesn’t have the spikes.

Oh gods and Ben is answering the damn phone.

FN: Kevin where are you? Me: Kevin is dead. Yeah, horrible accident involving a sprinkler system, a can of soda, and a mountain lion. Just awful. So, ya know, you may as well just lose this number-

Oh fuck

Oh gods damn

Okay so Ben imitates Kevin and claims he’s hanging out with his family (which, kudos Ben for trying to cover for him, your sweet child) and the Forever Nerd fucking- The quote-

“Family? *scoffs* That’s a laugh. You have noone. Without me, you’re all alone, remember? Now stop playing around and report back here at once.”

I’m gonna kill him, y’all. I’m gonna kill him and then wrap Kevin in a blanket and feed him cookies and cocoa until he pops.

Even Ben’s like ‘wait, no family?’ Which, given this clearly takes place after Introducing Kevin 11, what is going on in Kev’s life and what did Ben think was going on in Kev’s life?

Also Ben theorizing that maybe that’s why Kev crashed his family reunion, just to be part of one, and gods preserve me that’s a painful thought.

Kevin, critiquing the Bugg Brother’s evil plot.

Ben: If you want your body back you just need to blast me- Kevin: *blasts him*

Maurice and Sidney have been getting on so well this episode, it warms the heart. And makes sense in an episode involving a family reunion and the official reveal that Kevin has jackshit in the way of familial relations. Now to find if this is because he dropped them for being shit, because he’s actually an orphan, or he’s been taken from his family because they were shit.

Rath trying to be friendly and welcoming towards Kevin.

Kevin, just walking away from that shit.

And Max and the squirrel are still mixed up, and continue to be as the family flees the event.

9/11 solely due to Kevin things. My son deserves better.

#achi liveblogs #ben 10 2.os

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

Text

Team Titans #16

I'm fairly certain that this is some of that 3-D art that was popular at the time. I'm also fairly certain it's a dick.

"Oh no! My horse was shot straight up the asshole!"

Image Comics changed the face of the comic book industry in many ways that smarter people than me actually know about. But one of the ways that people don't talk about as much (unless they do. I don't have time to actually read about comics or research them or interact with other comic book fans in any way except to make a disgusted face when they try to speak with me!) is how, immediately following Image Comics push for creator's rights, DC decided to create and trademark characters by every name they could think of. "Here are a bunch of characters created by committee that we can get our writers to use instead of creating their own and then expecting royalties on those stupid characters we own and don't legally have to pay extra for, you Goddamned vampires! Fucking Image Comics! Suck our dicks!" Team Titans had to be a reaction to this new mindset. The premise of this terrible comic book was that thousands of superheroes from the future were sent back in time to save their future. And most of those characters had terrible names, like Redwing and Gunsmoke and Battalion and Sparkle Boy. Evidence from the letters pages suggests that this comic book was expected to last long enough that audiences would see what happened to hundreds of these teams. About the same time this series was hitting the shelves, DC put out their summer blockbustr, Bloodlines, which was just a blatant attempt to create as many new heroes as they could come up with before writers began expecting created by paychecks. I'm not sure how well it worked though since Hitman is probably the only hero created at that time that anybody could now name. And also, maybe Garth Ennis gets a created by paycheck for him? I don't know! How should I know?! Remember that part about how I don't do research?! In conclusion, Team Titans can be criticized harshly because it was never meant to be a work of art or a coherent story or entertaining at all. It was just a repository for new characters that DC editors could later mention to new writers when they came on board. "Oh, you don't want to create your own character that you would really be into and thus probably write a terrific story about which would help make DC a lot of money even if we had to pay you creator's rights on it! Maybe you'd rather write a story about Loose Cannon or Joe Public or Cardinal Sin?!" Years later, that editor might be wind up looking at the top selling comics of the month to discover the writer who they drove away was writing a hit comic book with Image Comics because it was the story they wanted to tell but didn't know how to tell it using Loose Cannon as the main character. Meanwhile, Terry and Donna had a baby that didn't grow up to be an evil narcissistic time traveling world conqueror. I sort of forgot about that.

"Stop being hysterical, Donna! Listen to me, a failed history professor, when I downplay our child's potential illness!" -- Terry Long, typical man.

I can't wait until Donna's child's skin sloughs off and he's revealed to be a mutant lizard monster. Then Donna can be all, "I told you something was wrong!" And Terry can be all, "You just live for these moments, don't you?! Wonder Girl! Always right! Can't do anything wrong! Won't let her husband live it down that he failed to write his book on mythology that would have given him a tenured position at NYU!" And Donna would be all, "I never bring that up! You need to let that shit go, you stupid bastard!" And then Terry can be all, "Our child is a lizard because you probably fucked some mythological creature during those months I couldn't get an erection because I felt like such a failure!" And then Donna can be all, "Why are you still even in these comic books?!" And then my writing teacher can be all, "Is this really how you want to write dialogue? With all the 'so-and-so can be all's?!"

Oh look! I was right about Lobo still being used to increase sales. I think this was right around when Lobo was being used on any series that wanted to prove that their hero could beat the unbeatable Lobo, thus turning Lobo into a punching bag and a loser. Which maybe he always was but look at how cool he looks! And at least he's only a genocidal monster and not a pedophile like Deathstork!

The rest of the comic book seems to be Jeff Jensen's attempt at art. That's my guess because he's doing something different and that means it must be art! The final nineteen pages are narrated by Nightrider, the vampire, as he's shot by a neighbor, crawls off to die, and then infiltrates the dreams of the other members of the Team Titans. That's not the artsy part though! That's regular comic book stuff. The artsy part is that Jensen tells the narrated story through the second person point of view. I always think of it as the Choose Your Own Adventure perspective. Maybe Jensen thought the reader would actually give a shit about Nightrider if they were put in Nightrider's bloody shoes? It's a decent attempt since if Nightrider were telling the story through the first person, I would read it while constantly thinking, "Is his name really Nightrider? Did I misread that? I should go back and check where Terry says his name. Let's see. Yep! It's really Nightrider. What a terrible name! Although I'd read a comic book where he teams up with Gunsmoke, sort of like Iron Fist and Luke Cage." But since the story is told in the second person, I completely forgot to think about Nightrider's dumb name because I was distracted by the use of the second person. Instead, my thoughts were these: "What the fuck is Jensen doing?! This is so awkward! It's like when my cousin began writing essays and stories at Mission College and he wrote them all in the second person because I'm pretty sure the only books he ever read were The Cave of Time and The Mystery of Chimney Rock!" So congratulations, Jeff Jensen, on completely succeeding at taking my mind of Nightrider's name which, I guess, means I cared a little more about his story? Not that this story where he crawls into a cave to die concentrates on him and his pain anyway. It's more a storytelling trick to catch up the reader on all of the angst and pain and turmoil the other Titans are suffering through. Poor Nightrider! He's not even interesting enough to carry the story when he's dying!

Yeesh. Mirage dreams she "gives birth" (quotes because I don't think this portrays normal birth!) to her baby, conceived when Deathwing raped her, after which her baby threatens to rape her.

After a bunch of mysterious images and bits of story that make the reader believe they've seen some clues as to the future direction of this comic book (but actually haven't seeing as how none of the dreams mentioned how they'd be cancelled in nine more issues), the neighbor who shot Nightrider clambers into the cave and cradles him in his arms. "I won't let you die," he screams to the Gods! "Even if I have to let you suck my dick!" He glances around furtively. "That's probably how your life will be saved, right?" he says as he unzips his jeans. Team Titans #16 Rating: A+ because it was artists making an effort, I guess. But this comic book wasn't for me.

#Comic Book Review #Comic Book Reviews #DC Comics #DC #Team Titans #Teen Titans #Titans

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angel-with-a-pipette · 6 years

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Dream Drop Distance - My opinion

I’ve waited nearly 6 years to play this game. Now I finally finished it.

With these 6 years come a lot of expectations - but to be honest, a lot of negative expectations. Be it a confusing story, bad execution or supposedly the end of my OTP. Yes, I wanted to play this game, but I also dreaded playing it.

As it turns out, there was really no reason to.

If you’ve been following my DDD playthrough posts, you know that I have criticized DDD at times, but all in all, it’s an enjoyable game. It is not without faults and while none of the negative expectations were wrong per se, but they were often grossly exaggerated.

Yes, the voice direction in this game wasn’t top notch. You can tell by listening to Lea and Xigbar, two people who absolutely nailed their lines in the previous games. You can even hear how poor Young Xehanort sounds while his KH3 performance (as far as we’ve heard) is tremendously better and make him so much more interesting. I’ve braced myself for Sora’s voice and while yes, he is forced to sound young for his KH1 self, his voice isn’t even as grating as I remembered from watching the cutscenes. Maybe it helps listening to his battle grunts in between cutscenes XD Also, his KH2 model voice is A+ and we’ve already heard his KH3 performance is incredible. I cannot wait for more Sora! :D

His “dumbness” also wasn’t as grating as I thought it would be. Sure, he sometimes said stupid stuff and was way too trusting, as always, but playing the game (and seeing the link attacks with his Dream Eaters), Sora just struck me as not taking any of this serious. He didn’t want to take the Mark of Mastery, deeming himself Master enough, and only agreed to for Riku’s sake. He dances with his Dream Eaters, chills with them in a tub, it honestly feels like a big game to him and he’s just trying to have a good time while letting his guard down. I mean ultimately this is one of the contributing factors why he was nearly norted and Riku wasn’t, and I think calling Sora stupid doesn’t quite hit the mark for this game. However, I do enjoy that we get our sassy KH2 Sora back in KH3 as far as we’ve seen, and that shows us that Sora just works best with companions to interact with. The whole franchise actually works best when we have the Sora-Donald-Goofy dynamic.

The story. Ho boy. Well, let me say that I critique the story of DDD a lot and I honestly still have trouble wrapping my mind around which nort was where at what time to make things happen. Or even how exactly Sora and Riku traveled in time and how the heck Riku ended up being Sora’s Dream Eater. However, none of this is truly important when you play the game. The game is engaging, it is fun and the last stretch kept me on my toes even though I knew Sora was going to get out of that unharmed, I can’t even imagine how I would have felt had I NOT known that we’d save him (and this is exactly why I am staying away from the new trailers now, I want this experience! I want to hurt when I play the game, not before!).

I mean, I will go back and read some of the journal entries and rewatch cutscenes, but even if I didn’t grasp the entirety of the concept. It didn’t bother me in the end or make my experience bad. Sure, I was so confused during half of the game and I come out confused, but it doesn’t bother me that much anymore because I had a genuinely good time.

As much as I will always criticize that they barely included Kairi in this game - especially, since the set up would have allowed her to train already instead of doing it in KH3 - I honestly love the portrayal of Sora’s and Riku’s friendship. It makes me incredibly happy to see how much the two of them care about each other, I love the adoration in Rku’s face when he looks at the dreaming Sora. Once again, the characters are incredibly expressive and I love it so, so much.

Now onto the one thing I really, REALLY dislike in this game. I mean I know I mentioned the world building and level design, but none of it is such a deal breaker like the Dream Eater system. I probably wasted a good 15 hours just on this. I know Kingdom Hearts is big on mini games, but the beauty of it is that it’s always optional. Many people enjoy mini games, I don’t necessarily do. But that’s okay, I just skip them.

You can’t skip the Dream Eaters.

It’s really the one big negative point of this game, the gameplay apart from that is quite enjoyable and if they used this experiment to improve KH3, even better, but for the love of God, never make this kind of system again.

And since I wasted 15 hours (at LEAST) on Dream eaters my final clear time is about 35 hours. Which is a little weak. Sure, I know the mini games are part of this game, but still. It is a shorter game and you feel it. But it’s also a handheld game which I guess excuses it again. And I did enjoy myself. Thankfully, KH3 is going to be big!

Oh, I also want to remark that the Ending was NOT High Definition, as well as the renders in the Credits weren’t. This game initially cost 60€ and in contrast to 1.5 and 2.5 which featured 2 full console games, this one only featured one remastered handheld game plus a 3 hour taste of the new engine. Square, no. Bad Square. This is unacceptable.

Now, I have been asked about the ship in this game time and time again and I have said “I can’t say because I haven’t played DDD yet”. Well, now I have and I know the questions will come once I enable asks again, and I honestly just want to be done with them, so please read the read more. This is going to be the last time (hopefully) I make a statement about Sora and Riku because I just want to have fun with my ship and not explain myself again and again why I don’t ship this one, okay?

Alrighty, this is the “SoraRiku” game, huh? I mean, I won’t lie, I see where people are coming from. Some scenes give off a shippy vibe, like when one of them nearly wistfully thinks of the other, but other scenes don’t strike me as even remotely shippy? I know people freaked out about the Dearly beloved thing in Symphony of Sorcery and Mickey’s dialog is quite suggestive, yes, but Sora’s reaction is not. At all. And that’s kind of the theme I keep seeing: One scene is suggestive, but the follow up scene that could actually further this subplot and establish a possible romance is strictly friendship again. But even so, the one scene that could nail the coffin of the rivaling ship is when both of them are awake again, when Sora has his tea party with Donald and Goofy and dives in to hug Riku.

Guys, this is not how you hug someone you’re romantically interested in, but I talked about this before here. And even after finishing DDD, I stay by what I said there.

However, I definitely see where people are coming from - surprisingly, since I expected this to be a repeat of Days, where people claimed they started shipping AxelRoxas after playing the game while the game supplies no foundation whatsoever for that ship. Dream Drop Distance at least gives us some suggestive scenes and some heartfelt scenes that shippers are obviously bound to love.

And I am good with that. It’s not close to enough for me to ship them romantically, but I don’t mind if somebody else does. These two certainly love each other dearly even if we all don’t agree on what kind of love it is.

So now please stop trying to persuade me that this is the better ship and we’re good.

#DDD playthrough

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dragimal · 6 years

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thoughts on Voltron s7

this is prolly old hat by now, but I still wanna throw my two cents to the wind. this is gonna get very rambly, and I’m gonna derail A LOT to air out other grievances I have w/ the show/fandom. a rant like this has been a long time coming-- the reception to s7 only pushed me to write this now. so beware, I guess. also I’m not rly tryin to Start Shit, so I’m slottin’ this under the cut

I think I should start at the beginning: I didn’t like Voltron for the first 3 seasons.

it was perfectly passable, but not.... exactly the kinda thrilling saga Tumblr made it out to be. all the hype put me under the impression that VLD was a deeply emotional/character-driven story much like ATLA-- I was sorely disappointed to find this wasn’t the case. instead, I found a typical space-mecha plot populated by pretty tropey characters-- certainly not bad, but not all that emotionally gripping either

I actually grew p bitter over Voltron’s particular brand of popularity-- mainly the comparisons to ATLA, as if VLD was anywhere as deep and clever. I wasn’t mad that it was popular so much as it seemed popular for the wrong reasons

now I’m not saying that enjoying VLD is “childish” or whatever, I’m just saying that comparing VLD to ATLA is p damn insulting, imo. ATLA has a level of depth in plot, worldbuilding, themes, character arcs/interactions, etc. that’s incredibly impressive-- esp for a kid’s show. u just don’t get that depth from VLD-- and honestly, that’s just fine! I know I’m singing ATLA’s praises to the heavens here, but I’m also kinda sick of Tumblr trying to compare every damn thing to ATLA, as if every piece of media HAS to be another ATLA to be worthy of praise (like the whole “Zuko redemption arc” thing has been taken wayyyyy too far when critiquing villains...)

ATLA and VLD aren’t trying to accomplish the same things, so it’s kinda shitty to place those kinda expectations on the creators of VLD when they’re trying to do their own thing? like, I don’t expect Osomatsu-san-- a very stupid show I deeply adore-- to be the next FMA just b/c both shows have a focus on brotherly bonds; they’re clearly two separate things that I can enjoy for different reasons

anyways, to cut that ramble short, VLD just wasn’t my thing when I first started it. I’m not big on mechas, and I typically prefer pointed storylines over ‘adventure-of-the-week’ setups. not that VLD doesn’t have some underlying plot for the first couple seasons, but it takes a while to get past random villain fights and/or adventures every ep and condense it into a continuous plot thread. some ppl like that kinda thing, I just don’t. the reason I continued to watch it-- despite my misgivings-- is b/c I like watching things with friends. my bf has always liked VLD and wanted me to see it, so I enjoyed watching it with our audience of two

I’m glad this setup forced me to continue watching, or else I would have never reached the turning point-- episode 33 (s3): “The Legend Begins”

this was the point at which my feelings switched from “eh” to “oh... OH. OH SHIT.” I’d finally started to get INVESTED. I finally began to develop real attachments to the characters! I was finally eager to learn what happened next; finally perched at the edge of my seat in anticipation! VLD had finally found its footing and solidified its unique voice, and I couldn’t have been more proud!

yet, what did I hear from the fandom as this narrative transition began?

“the show has gone downhill, and it’s only getting worse!″, "[x] characters aren’t developing anymore” and/or “the showrunners HATE [x] character!”, etc. etc.

though I suppose it’s a bit simplistic to say the fandom as a whole thought this way; in reality, just a vocal subset of the fandom thought-- and continues to think-- this way

yes, patient reader, this is one of those conversations. because we really can’t have a proper fandom discussion anymore w/o getting into those topics, can we? god, if only

so I’ll stop beating around the bush: antis fucking hate the new seasons, mainly because:

1) a lot of antis love Lance for some reason? antis don’t like the fact that Lance isn’t, like, the entire damn focus of the show (calls for “black paladin Lance” galore....), so they don’t like the fact that other main characters play significant roles in the show. this has devolved into unfounded critique of Lance’s character development in the last few seasons, when in reality Lance has gotten SIGNIFICANT development from s4 onward (just like most every other character..). he’s gotten more confidant in his abilities and is less defensive of his character, he’s more cooperative w/ his teammates, and he’s learned to (usually) recognize when a situation requires a serious approach rather than nonchalance. like, as someone who doesn’t much like Lance, I think it says something that my feelings have advanced from, “jesus I can’t stand this guy, can he shut up for one goddamn second,” to, “nice, Lance is mostly bearable and sometimes charming, now.” this point bleeds into the next point--

2) a lot of antis LOVE klance-- or the ship Keith/Lance, for any random readers that don’t know the Voltron fandom. klantis-- as these particular antis have been dubbed-- hate ANY semblance of connection either of these characters have w/ other characters, b/c it threatens klance. Keith and Lance both canonically have strong connections to other specific characters (Keith to Shiro, and Lance to Allura), so these ships are the most threatening to klance

now, all stans/shippers have fans that are a bit too defensive, sure. I’m not saying that sheiths (Shiro/Keith shippers) or any other stans/shippers in VLD aren’t ever at fault. but antis always ALWAYS bring an insidious dimension to fandom wank in the form of-- for lack of a better term-- “social justice posturing”

I’m not claiming that discussions abt representation and sj issues in fandom aren’t important, but antis always take these sensitive issues and simply use them as ammo in what are typically giant ship wars. there’s no nuance, no room for different interpretations-- only black/white divisions of what is “valid”/”canon”/”acceptable”, which are then strategically warped in favor of what the antis of that particular fandom favor (which, in the case of VLD, is Lance/klance)

of course, not ALL VLD antis are specifically out to discredit just one ship, as evidenced by the proliferation anti-shaladins (those against shippers of Shiro w/ ANY of the paladins). BUT this is exactly where anti tactics are utilized in full-force, and where this petty ship war further devolves:

antis fucking HATE Shiro.

Shiro poses the biggest threat to klance (at least in terms of fandom, b/c Allura canonically poses a much bigger threat tbh), thus antis have steadily built a “case” against Shiro not only as a bad partner to Keith, but as a bad character in general. the more “reasonable” antis claim things like, “Shiro’s too mentally ‘broken’ to be with anyone!” “Shiro’s too old to be with anyone, he’s practically a grandpa!” and, “Shiro’s too much of a parental/guardian figure to consider any paladins as potential partners,” while more extreme antis have claimed that Shiro literally IS a pedophile, or straight-up dangerous due to his mental hang-ups

there is clearly a lot wrong here both canon-wise (Shiro has shown 0% confirmable attraction to any character in canon; everyone’s actual ages are vague at best, thus there are no exact age gaps to measure, etc.) and in terms of plain ethics (callin a guy w/ ptsd “too broken” fuckin WHAT). but this is what antis have devolved to-- dismissing Shiro’s mutual connections to his fellow paladins at best, then accusing him of straight-up horrific shit at worst. all in the name of protecting a ship. boy howdy.

(*SIDENOTE* I hypothesize that Allura doesn’t get nearly the same level of hate b/c mlm ships are favored in fandom, thus there are more sheith shippers than allurance (Allura/Lance) shippers to oppose klance. she may also be protected by Tumblr’s over-the-top glamorizing of any and every female character, but that’s a rlyyyy weird discussion that’s hard to quickly/accurately dissect, so I’ll just leave that particular hypothesis to the side..)

anyways, patient reader, let us return this tangent back to the original point: the general criticisms directed at s4 and onward. how do antis relate to this?

well, it’s real fuckin convenient that ppl suddenly started recognizing VLD’s writing/plot/etc. flaws when the show wasn’t catering quite AS much to Lance, or Lance/Keith interactions. real fuckin convenient ppl suddenly started criticizing Shiro as a character when said character’s relationship w/ Keith began to gain more focus and development. real fuckin convenient that ppl are finally recognizing that VLD isn’t as great as ATLA, when the last few seasons have gotten PRETTY DAMN CLOSE to ATLA’s level of emotional depth

so I’m bitter abt Voltron again. but rather than being bitter abt VLD being popular for the wrong reasons, I’m bitter that VLD’s flaws are finally being recognized for the wrong fucking reasons

and this is where it gets real fucking dangerous, b/c antis are dangerously persuasive to the general fandom public

since antis use sj language as ammunition for petty-ass shit, they can easily gain the attention of... god, I hate that I have to unironically use this term, but Tumblr “normies”. I literally have no better, simple term to describe somebody on Tumblr who hasn’t watched VLD (or simply hasn’t engaged in the fandom in a significant way), so please just roll w/ me here, for my own sanity. so Tumblr normies-- as those on Tumblr are prone to-- are vigilant in keeping up w/ sj issues across the board. this is good! it’s good to be aware of and critical of the content we consume..... until it’s. not.

I’m not the first to say that Tumblr has a very warped, very dangerous approach to sj activism. much like full-on antis, there is so much black/white thinking, lack of nuance, swift and unforgiving retribution for even slightly differing opinions, etc etc. it’s why so many ppl on Tumblr even ARE antis, b/c it’s rly just the fandom-offshoot of this mentality

but even beyond the most extreme “activists” of tumblr, anti’s sj language is dangerously appealing to even the chill normies-- nobody WANTS to support dangerous relationships or bad representation, after all! so they latch onto that rhetoric too, b/c when normies see antis' (usually unfounded) criticisms thrown around, they don’t know the show/fandom well enough to be able to verify those criticisms. and like, I get the appeal of it-- I’ve def made similar mistakes w/ unfamiliar fandoms as well, b/c I want to support a cause that seems just. it’s p natural to want to align w/ what we perceive as a just cause, esp when convinced by a persuasive speaker

thus, antis have gained a significant following of normies due to the simple fact that Tumblr normies DO care abt sj issues, but they DON’T care enough to research the show themselves to see what’s what

so, let me quickly recap the stage I’ve set for you here:

1) the fandom in general has given Voltron more credit than is due, and has subsequently placed ridiculous expectations on it. this has given Tumblr normies a false impression of VLD and its standards

2) antis are SUPREMELY protective of klance (and Lance in general), and have thrown around WILD accusations at any ships that threaten it, leading to--

3) antis throwing Shiro under the bus time and fucking time again.

4) by abusing sj language/tactics, antis appeal to Tumblr normies’ sense of duty, thus gain their approval in ganging up on whatever antis deem unjust in VLD-- whether it’s actually valid or not

so fuckin forgive me for being a bit skeptical when I heard rumors of “bury your gays” in Voltron from antis/normies, when these same ppl are actively throwing around accusations of pedophilia in the name of goddamn shipping

but I’ll fully admit, I passed judgement on this criticism a bit too quick, considering I hadn’t even seen the new season yet. it’s never good to blindly accept opinions purely on the basis that they bolster ur own assumptions, and I’m not immune to that charming trap (tho thankfully I’m not typically a vocal member fandom, so I was mostly just nodding along w/ my fellow shieths asdfg)

so finally, dear reader, we reach the actual point of this post: after seeing s7 for myself, what even ARE my opinions on it?

well. the handling of Adam and his relationship to Shiro............... wasn’t great. it was pretty fuckin terrible, actually. despite all I’ve said against antis, I agree w/ their general view that Adam’s relationship w/ Shiro (and his subsequent death) was shoddy, underdeveloped, and disrespectful to some degree. I’m personally not sure it’s worth the title of “bury your gays” for several different reasons, but I wouldn’t fault someone for calling it that, b/c there are definitely several other reasons that reinforce that trope. it’s worth discussing, and definitely worth voicing criticisms towards, esp in terms of Dreamworks’ “lgbt rep” advertising before s7′s release (which was absolutely scummy, there’s just no other word for it)

so if I agree w/ antis’ basal complaints in this instance, then why the hell am I even talking abt this? why am I putting so much effort into dissecting the fandom, only to essentially reach the same conclusion as those I fundamentally disagree with?

well, I suppose it’s all abt the framing.

I’m not gonna link the post b/c, again, I Don’t Wanna Start Shit, but most of y’all have prolly seen that one post that breaks down the history of the “bury your gays” trope, and how it was possibly utilized in VLD. it’s a p good argument in that respect-- I think it hits the main points of how/why Adam and his relationship w/ Shiro was just plain Bad

and to the untrained “normie” eye, that’s all it is. however, there is a cryptic framing present that reinforces anti talking points, which only someone involved in the fandom would recognize.

(*SIDENOTE* I don’t mean to pick on SPECIFICALLY this post, I just think it’s a nice rundown of a few of the main rhetorical tactics used by antis. it’s certainly not a unique post in the fandom, but merely a good example of this brand of posts)

for one, this post forces an emotional distance between Shiro and the paladins. this post INSISTS that Shiro can ONLY be interpreted as a guardian character that can’t relate to the other paladins in any significant way due to age gaps and traumatic experience. THUS, according to antis, Adam was the only person that Shiro could have intimately discussed his problems w/ b/c they’re the same age and have a history. Adam's death removed this potential confidante, thus leaving Shiro to sort out his issues alone

while I agree that it would have been nice to see Shiro chat w/ a new character he has a history with (esp considering we rly haven’t gotten much backstory on Shiro yet), so much of this argument is simply false

I’ve already mentioned the bullshit that is the vague age gaps, but even if we were to take them into account, there ARE characters who are assumedly at or over Shiro’s age: Coran and Allura. and yeah, Coran is prolly not the best choice in terms of real emotional connection, but Allura? she could prolly fuckin relate. Shiro’s had his body and autonomy violently violated by the Galra, to the point that his original body is now destroyed; Allura has had her culture and people violently violated by the Galra, to the point the her original planet/culture is now destroyed. Shiro is/was a leader to the paladins, and takes their collective failures to heart as his personal failures to his team; Allura is a literal princess to her people, and takes their downfall as a personal reflection of her lack of ability to protect them. their situations obviously shouldn’t be 1:1 conflated, but to say they have no points of relation here is fuckin insulting

but since age gaps like this mean JACK SHIT when it comes simply developing emotional connections and mutual respect, we don’t even need to go so far as to match ages! this is evidenced by actual intimate interactions Shiro has had with the paladins!

the first one that comes to mind even involves antis’ favorite-- Lance! episode 45 (s5): “The White Lion” involved a moment where Shiro approached Lance on his own and opened up abt his mental health, saying he, “didn’t feel like himself.” now it could be argued that this was Shiro’s clone-- not Actual Shiro-- approaching Lance for help. tho I firmly believe that are still true parts of Shiro present in his clone, even if he’s not fully there. the clone is still protective of his team (before his mind is COMPLETELY hijacked, of course), and I believe any connections/loyalty/trust Shiro has towards the paladins is still true for the clone (even if this can, once again, be forcibly overridden). this moment is Shiro-- the part of Actual Shiro that’s present in his clone-- approaching a fellow teammate for help. of course, Lance doesn’t know exactly what to do in this situation, but he at least stays w/ Shiro for support

and then of course there are all the great moments Shiro has w/ Keith that antis want to forget abt. moments where Keith has laid down his health and safety for Shiro, moments where Keith has barred his soul to Shiro, moments where Keith has done everything in his power to reach out to a hurt and struggling Shiro. moments where Keith has made it ABUNDANTLY fucking clear that he’s here to the bitter end, that he’ll NEVER give up on Shiro. it literally doesn’t fucking matter if u interpret these scenes as platonic or romantic, b/c the fact of the matter is that Shiro and Keith care DEEPLY abt each other in some shape or form. disregarding that is forcibly ignorant. also, we've now confirmed that Keith and Shiro do have a HISTORY back at the Garrison together before all this Voltron nonsense started (even if it isn’t necessarily a romantic history), so Keith also has that leg up

the subtle framing of Shiro as STRICTLY a “guardian” character is also a classic anti tactic, as it implies a sort of pseudo-pedophilic undertone to any Shiro/paladin ships, which is just.... gross and dishonest. yes, he’s canonically a leader to the paladins, and oftentimes takes on a guardian-type role, but once again, he also canonically opens up to other paladins on a mutually respectful/intimate level. there’s nothing in canon that would strictly suggest he’s ONLY a guardian figure-- “space dad” is a fandom interpretation in the same way that framing him as Keith’s lover is a fandom interpretation. neither is more or less 'canon', and it's petty to suggest otherwise

another weird point in that post is the insistence that Shiro is a “tragic gay character”, which is just..... not fucking true, first of all. he’s definitely suffered the most out of any main character, I agree, but he’s GETTING THROUGH IT. he’s been pulled through it by the paladins, and he’s learning to use his own strength to pull through as well. he’s so incredibly fuckin strong and it’s a fuckin shame that ppl don’t see how inspirational he is to those that may be struggling emotionally. plus, he's never suffered BECAUSE he's gay, nor has he ever had a damn HINT of queer-coding until Adam was shoehorned in (which is its own separate problem w/ the show, but it's not a "tragic gay" problem)

but beyond all that is an even more subtle insistence that Shiro has always been a beloved character to ALL in the fandom. antis’ underlying implication that, “hey normies, Shiro-- our beloved Space Dad-- has been given the shit end of the stick, and u should be mad abt it too!”

as if antis haven’t spent the last several years shitting on Shiro at every turn, saying he’s got “scrambled egg brains” b/c of his ptsd, and other horrific shit. the fact that they can turn around to “defend Shiro’s honor” now that he’s *confirmed queer* (and, initially, confirmed less of a threat to klance due to Adam) and STILL be taken seriously is goddamn terrifying

like I am literally seeing posts like this-- IN 20FUCKIN18-- that normies are taking at face value and reinforcing:

to any normies reading this: SHIRO AND KEITH AREN'T FUCKING RELATED!! racist antis insist that they have to be related b/c they're both Asian and the second half of their last names (Shirogane and Kogane, respectively) are similar. I'm literally so baffled over how this tactic is ever taken seriously, but who fuckin knows I guess. and if antis are trying to make a case for adoptive siblings, Keith canonically met Shiro by at LEAST his early/mid teens-- LONGGGG past the developmental age of youth where he might latch onto another person as a strictly non-romanceable relative, so. No. fandom is free to interpret Keith and Shiro’s relationship as brotherly, but to say that that is the STRICT and true 'canon' interpretation of their relationship is, once again, fuckin petty and dishonest

just. how fuckin DARE antis act like they give a SINGLE goddamn shit abt Shiro’s emotional needs and trauma after pullin this shit. how fuckin DARE antis misuse real sj issues to appeal to the lowest common denominator in normies, looking for fodder to fuel the flames of hate

so, if I may be so bold as to utilize one of antis' many battlecrys: this discussion does not exist in a vacuum. Adam's shoehorned relationship w/ Shiro is shitty and worth criticism, absolutely. but brushing aside the fandom history driving the resulting uproar-- as if ship wars aren't HUGELY influencing this backlash-- is SUPREMELY fuckin ignorant

antis latched onto Adam HARD when he was first announced, despite all the signs he'd be a side character at best, that he was stated clearly to be Shiro's ex, and having no context for his personality. Adam was antis' newest shield to their ship-- somebody to take Shiro's romantic potential away from Keith, thus leaving Keith open to Lance. Adam's death eliminated that shield, leaving antis reeling-- they couldn't just jump right back into hating Shiro after having showered his newly-christened gay ass w/ praise for all of the Tumblr normies to see. so, their anger was tactically redirected towards Adam's development

there is nothing shocking abt any of this tbh. all antis is the same, and they're all bitter assholes that are completely willing to abuse real sj issues for their own goals. plain and simple.

I don't rly have a proper ending for this. I'll just say that I like s7 a helluva lot, and Adam’s shitty development doesn’t rly phase me? not everyone feels that way, which is valid, I just don’t particularly give a shit abt Adam. I have hope for s8-- esp in terms of potential development for Shiro. since Shiro got such heavy focus in s6, it makes sense that he was pushed to the sidelines a bit this season to leave room for the other characters (Keith, Lance, Commander Holt + Earth stuff in general, etc.) to develop and shine. I've heard rumors that Adam did in fact have more development that was cut, which I'm honestly willing to believe b/c the development we got felt cut short, rather than simply planned that sparsely in the first place. my hope is that s8 will return some focus to Shiro, and possibly slot in some of these cut scenes to bolster a better backstory to their relationship? pure speculation tho, and it doesn't rly excuse Adam's treatment in s7, but it's worth considering

before I completely end off here, I just want to go on one last FINAL tangent: I'm so damn disappointed that everyone is sleeping on kexa (Keith/Acxa)??? if anything it poses MUCH more canon threat to BOTH klance and sheith purely b/c it's 'safely hetero' and b/c the show itself has hinted at potential feelings there (“She’s always been sweet on that one with the flippity hair,” and “Oh look Acxa, it’s your favorite paladin~”). like I haven't seen antis OR sheiths even mention this, it's baffling. the fact that it'll prolly be canon is bittersweet for me: bitter b/c DAMN I love sheith, and sweet b/c damn.... I'm rly diggin kexa....

so the moral of this post is: blease appreciate Keith's beautiful goth gf, she deserves love

thank u and goodbye

#shut up ashley #voltron #voltron: legendary defender

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