I have been taken by the sickness again (curse you viruses!) and sleep eludes me. Brainrot does not. What do you think each of the counselors are like when they're sick?
booo viruses :( i hope you feel better soon!
i think Jacob is the most dramatic about it. if you've seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off, he's Cameron
total baby. even just for a cold. injuries, he barely notices, but gods forbid this man start to sniffle
Abi honestly prolly does what you're supposed to - she takes the day off, stays in comfy pants, drinks honey lemon tea & eats toast, takes the gross meds, a bath, & she's good by morning. couldn't be me but. yk. girlbossing
Ryan for sure just pretends it's not happening. he takes some cold n flu meds, keeps a water bottle close, and keeps having to blink spots out of his vision but he's fine! he's fine until his sister notices & chews him out bc he's always telling HER to take it easy when she's sick & "look here, mr. hypocrite, you better get in that bed or ELSE" so then he goes & lays in a dark room, listening to his podcast until he falls asleep
i think Emma prolly complains about it the entire time & spends an hour in a hot bath but i also don't think she stops working. if she can't go out, she's answering emails, keeping her social media updating, working on editing/scheduling/whatever an influencer does. picture Emma in her desk chair with atrocious hair, wrapped in a blanket, three mugs of tea, & a sinus strip just firing off emails
i see Dylan as a low-energy sick. barely awake, shuffling to the kitchen for crackers (he has a weak stomach when sick) wrapped in his comforter with his hair sticking up. sometimes he crashes on the couch, sometimes he makes it back to the bed, but it's all restless sleep, tossing & turning :( he keeps mumbling nonsense to his cat, who definitely tricks him into feeding him twice. you go schrodinger <3
Kaitlyn HATES being sick. she wakes up with a stuffy nose & a fever & she's like... "i'm gonna kill someone today & it might be myself". she has shit to do. she resists as much as she can & tries to do a bunch of things just to spite it, which usually ends up in her crashing hard & sleeping for twelve hours to recuperate. everyone knows to stay out of her way when she's stalking around, pale and clammy with a thermos at her hip, & just wait for the burnout
Nick doesn't get sick, even germs don't want this weirdo. i'm just kidding. kinda. anyway Nick one thousand percent just straight up goes comatose. dead to the world for 24 hours & then he's right as rain when he wakes up. how? no one knows. why? no one is brave enough to ask.
the love of my life, Laura, also tries to strongarm thru it but she's better about it. she takes her meds, sucks on cough drops, prolly drinks coffee to stay awake, & she's better about managing her workload. it's kind of just a background thing to her & it works great until her fever spikes high enough to be noticeable or she slips up & then Max finds out. he coaxes her to lay down on the couch while he makes them some soup & then they watch movies together until she falls asleep :,)
the other love of my life, Max, doesn't stand a chance. he coughs once & his girlfriend has a thermometer in his mouth & a mug of tea warming up. he always tries to downplay it, "honey, really, it's nothing" & it never works. he spends all day with a live-in nurse & he feels bad that she keeps doing things for him so he continuously plays the "i'm feeling better" & she lets him do it for the ten minutes before he throws up, then it's back to bed "& cut the bullshit this time, max"
One of the funnier aspects of playing with the Pennyworth canon is being able to play into Alfred having fourth-wall-breaking powers.
He's not psychic. But his relationship with reality is a little bit to the left of everyone else's on account of the War Trauma, Witches Spiking His Tea With Hallucinogens That One Time, and a heaping dose of Main Character Energy.
He's just a little bit too aware of things. A little bit too ahead of the plot. Everyone else around him is staggering about, fumbling their way through the dark, and Alfred's already pulling out his gun, anticipating the next shot. Except for when the plot needs him in the dark. Then he's just as surprised as everyone else, if not more so, because he didn't see it coming, and Alfred always sees it coming.
Not to mention all the times he hallucinates a dead person conveniently telling him how to resolve this week's plot while quietly worrying he might have gone A Little Bit Mad.
It makes for an entertaining character study when you drop him into a more traditional Batman world, and he's suddenly second-fiddle to the somehow even more insane shit Bruce is dealing with on a daily basis.
Bruce: I don't know what I'd do without you. It's like you anticipate everything. How did you know I'd need an antidote for fatal laughing gas?
Alfred with the ghost of Martha Wayne standing over his shoulder, absolutely sweating bullets and not about to admit to anything lest he end up enjoying a mandatory 72 hour grippy sock vacation in Arkham: Oh, well, y'know, what's a butler for...
(Image Description: Various panels from the Otherside Picnic manga showing the main character Sorawo Kamikoshi. In all of them a single pointy tooth is visible poking out of the top of her open mouth)
Hello! Random whipper snipper! Share a WIP of your work!
ooh, with pleasure. six the musical araleyn fanart? in the year 2k24? more likely than you think xDD
i realize this looks finished, but technically i'm still deciding whether to add a background or not lol. still, for the sake of sharing a proper WIP, here's a line or two from an araleyn brainworm WIP that i started reworking yesterday (mild tw for religious guilt and period-typical internalized homophobia from aragon's pov):
She remembers sharing her bed with Anne at Henry's behest, remembers the nights of tossing and turning and trying not to think about Anne asleep next to her-- remembers waking up to dark hair spilling across her pillow and the press of blood-warm bosoms against her own, softer than sin, as hot as the Devil, remembers lying still as death, mouthing prayers into the heat of Anne's neck like an act of penance.
some recent thoughts on Nie Mingjue and Jin Guangyao, and why even though I find Nie Mingjue very frustrating in the midst of his Baxia-induced anger issues, I think he’s also a pretty sympathetic character as a whole and it’s really understandable why he thinks the way he does
(as someone who ships 3zun and nieyao, and through the lens of “Jin Guangyao is my blorbo”)
I’ve seen a tendency to paint NMJ and JGY’s relationship in black and white in terms of who was fundamentally more in the right, which to be honest is not really the approach I take to fandom in general. to me the tragedy is that NMJ and JGY before JGY's casting-out had immense respect and perhaps even love (platonic, romantic, whatever) for each other. in the end, a lack of mutual understanding of each others' circumstances that could have otherwise eventually been overcome was driven, by bigotry, Jin Guangshan, and the Nie cultivation style, into becoming an insurmountable difference that eventually killed them both
NMJ definitely Did Not Get where JGY was coming from when JGY was making survival decisions and keeping secrets. he was simply not raised in a way where he ever even had to think about the types of choices that JGY has been forced to make since he was quite young. but at the same time, NMJ was a teenager raising his brother and his sect from a very young age and I think it's a disservice to his character to fail to acknowledge that his entire life he expected to die a young and horrific death, just like he watched his father die, and that this expectation deeply colors his approach to the world. JGY plays the long game. NMJ does not get to think about that, he just has to raise his brother, win a war, and try not to drive his sect into the ground before he kicks the bucket in a violent and gruesome manner. he does not have a choice about any of these things.
and said things are extremely difficult to do, especially as a teenager, which I think is a reflection of MDZS's whole thing where their entire generation is just traumatized by war and conflict and a dearth of genuine, honorable guidance and leadership, which leads to such fractures
but it's also a series of tasks that required the kind of attitude that Nie Mingjue develops, and that in combination with Baxia’s influence gives him this really immovable perspective on life that he just won't budge on with JGY. I think it’s really significant that when Jin Guangyao does regularly play Clarity for NMJ, they get along quite well. and I also think it's really understandable why NMJ is so stubborn and headstrong - he's had to fight his way through being sect leader and not take "no" for an answer, because what the hell else can a young, new leader do to avoid being taken advantage of? frankly even if he had taken up a bit of whatever guile Nie Huaisang didn’t hog from the Nie gene pool... why would he direct it towards self-preservation? he has no room for that kind of fear because he is going to be dead in a few years.
importantly as well, Nie Mingjue unjustly judges Jin Guangyao because he is unable to understand the context that JGY is coming from, but that same righteousness is the reason that he's the first person to have given Meng Yao a fair shake and rewarded his hard work and labor, and that matters a lot to Jin Guangyao and their relationship as a whole. you can’t really have one without the other unless you give Nie Mingjue time to grow up.
unfortunately, Nie Mingjue died his 20s, and was in his teens when the Sunshot Campaign began. look me in the eyes and explain to me what kind of behavior you expect from a 20-something with a magic rage sword.
More MoLiu Liu Yue crumbs in episode 24!! (relatively spoiler-free)
Hold on, let me just put on my shipping glasses... is that jealousy i smell, Xiaohei?
(But also, it's an interesting tidbit about Liu Yue- for someone who doesn't like to leave his estate much, he sure likes to keep up with Tianqi's affairs 👀
I mean, it could've been added in for Plot Convenience™, but still).
gentle reminder that the man who said ‘you shall never know a lonely day again, as long as i draw breath’ also said ‘you’ve inserted sand into the crack of my ass’
This is long overdue, but here is the ref sheet for Klaus Lierstark! He's the main character of my personal passion project where he's a monster hunter who, due to specific circumstances, lost 10 years of his memory and is working with a demon to get them back. The two of them travel through the mortal realm and through different planes later on, solving different dilemmas and unearthing the greater plots at play in their world. they also discover more about themselves and each other along the way!
Hopefully now that i'm on summer break i can start posting more official stuff for this project of mine!! im so excited to finally have more time in my life to write more for Klaus and his world! i hope you enjoy reading thru it twirls hair stick around if you wanna see his boyfriend's demon patron's ref sheet in about a month hehe
Transcript for the written information on the sheet, expansions on said info, and closeup on details under the cut:
Klaus Lierstark (next to his basic outfit is his height: 6'6 or 200cm)
Human, White and Chinese
46 years old
Lives in the mountains as a monster hunter
10 years ago made a pact with a patron for magic
Recently lost those 10 years of memories
Made a new deal with demon patron that if Klaus acts as [the demon patron's] bodyguard, his patron will endeavour to help Klaus recover his memories
Now traverses the mortal realm with his demon patron, but starts developing feelings beyond the parameters of their agreement
✧ ABILITIES ✧
Enhanced strength and speed
Swift healing
message reception from patron (any distance and interplanar but only one way; Klaus can only receive messages from his patron, not send any)
Limited spellcasting (still in the midst of learning)
Proficiency with virtually all melee weapons
✧ LIKES ✧
Warm, thick clothing
Home cooking; doing it and eating it
Outdoor activities (eg fishing, hunting, hiking)
heavy/strong tasting food and drink
✧ DISLIKES ✧
Complex social situations (eg parties, negotiations; just any event where people's motives aren't immediately obvious and every word matters)
manipulative people/social situations (eg talking to someone who purposely misconstrues what you say to prove a point)
really humid and hot climates
Being idle in the same place/indoors for too long
✧ FUN FACTS ✧
Really high resting body temperature; feels like a furnace 90% of the time (really prone to overheating as a result, even in the mountains)
lactose intolerant
greatly enjoys romantic poetry and stories
most normal guy in the whole story (im not joking thats why hes the protagonist of the story because he's so normal)
Closeup on details:
(i will figure out how to do an image id for the ref sheets hopefully soon! theres so much text here already weeps)
back again rereading twsb despite the fact that i have yet to make it past chapter 83 ever but im thinking about how jesse's ignorance must seem to the people around him. we never see anyone think his lack of knowledge about the divine or magic or anything which you would think is a plot hole but actually it aligns perfectly with their perception of him. it is publicly known that the king hates jesse's guts and wants him dead- so why would jesse have ever received a proper education? how sad must it seem to the cardinal that someone from the holy kingdom knows nothing of his own power- because the logical assumption to make is that he simply was denied the chance to learn.
but also the progress he makes so quickly considering that he landed in this world like a week before starting to train with his power is incredibly impressive