#so i'm sorry i couldn't help more

[honnelander]

asdfghjkl I love your writing. Your Sanji & reader have my heart forreal 🫶🏼✨ keep up the great work 😘

Suggestion: reader having a niche hobby (like knitting/crocheting, or collecting shells, anything really LOL 😆 your choice) and Sanji’s reaction to that

you are soooo sweet thank you!! this request/suggestion was so cute, i loved it.

when i read "collecting shells" i immediately knew what i wanted to write for it and this is how i think go fish!Sanji would react to reader collecting sea shells as a niche hobby:

masterlist

When you had started collecting shells, it didn't start out as a hobby, far from it in fact. You didn't even know collecting sea shells was considered a hobby until Luffy pointed it out to you.

"Oh, wow! You collect shells y/n? How cool!" Luffy gushed with his signature bright smile that lit up his face. That's one of the things you loved about Luffy, he had the ability to make any rudimentary task seem like the most special thing ever. "What a cool hobby!"

And that was when your shell-collecting hobby was born. At first, you had just wanted a souvenir of some sort, just wanting a small piece of each island you visited so you could look back at your collection one day and remember all of the places you've ever been to.

It was something very special to you. So imagine how you felt when you nearly forgot to grab a shell one day, during a routine island pit stop to restock the ship's supplies, when the weather suddenly took a turn for the worst just as the straw-hat crew was making their way towards the ship.

You liked to grab a shell right before you left. Usually, you had your routine: you would go to the closest beach to where the Going Merry was docked at, take a moment to survey the assortment of shells scattered along the beach, and pick out the shell that most reflected your either long or short time on the island. You loved it.

But during that particular trip, your shell-collecting routine didn't go as planned and you nearly had a heart attack at the thought of missing a shell.

The weather had suddenly turned for the worst as you and the crew were walking back towards the Merry. All of a sudden, it started to downpour so everyone decided to run back to the ship as fast as they could before all of the ship's supplies got ruined (well, everyone except for Zoro, who was already back on the ship with his stuff, not wanting to stick around on any island longer than he had to).

As you all were running up the plank to board the ship one by one, Luffy suddenly called out to you from the dock as you tailed behind Nami with Sanji right behind you.

"Wait! Y/n!" he called out and you stopped at the top of the plank to look back at him through the rain. "What about your sea shell? Don't forget to go and grab one!"

You gasped and your eyes widened. Your heart nearly dropped at the thought of forgetting to grab a shell and in turn, forgetting all about your visit to this island. "My shell!"

"Your what?" Sanji asked loudly over the rain, next to you.

You quickly dropped your crate of supplies on the ship's deck, not caring anymore if they got wet or not. "I have to go get my sea shell!" you replied quickly, running past him and back to the dock.

"Don't worry, y/n, we will be waiting right here for you!" Luffy reassured with a nod. "Now go get your shell!" he yelled and raised his fist in the air.

You gave him a grateful smile as you dashed towards the nearest beach, Sanji watching you go with a curious look in his eye before bringing your supply crate inside and out of the rain.

That night, as Sanji was cleaning up the kitchen, you were still at the table finishing up the warm soup he had made that night for dinner (he loved that you were a slow eater, it meant that most nights he got to spend a little bit of extra alone time with you in his favorite place), he asked you about your niche hobby.

"Feeling better now?" Sanji asked, breaking the comfortable silence as he cleaned off one of his knives with a rag, sneaking a look at you with a small smile. "All warmed up from being out in the rain too long?"

You hummed in agreement. "Absolutely," you nearly purred in delight (Sanji felt his heartbeat stutter for a second at your tone. He's never heard you like that before). You looked at the chef with gratitude. "Your food always hits the spot Sanji, but the soup you made tonight just hit differently. It warmed me right up."

"Ok good," Sanji laughed softly, looking at you for a few seconds through his blonde hair, and flicked it to the side slightly. "I can't have you getting sick on me now." He finished cleaning off the one knife, setting it down on the counter, picking up another to clean before he asked with a raised brow, "So, uh, why did you go back today? Something about a sea shell?"

And that's how he learned about your niche hobby.

You told him all about it; about how you wanted a small token from everywhere you've ever been, how long you've been doing it, described some of your favorite sea shells you've found so far, and how you couldn't wait to show your collection to your kids and grandkids someday and in turn, telling them all about your adventures with the straw hat pirates.

As Sanji listened to you explain your hobby to him, he couldn't help but smile to himself, stealing glances at you every so often. He loved listening to you talk about the things you were passionate about. He loved the way your face lit up and your eyes sparkled.

And for something as unique and special as this? He loved it even more because he knew that this little hobby of yours went way beyond just collecting shells, it was your own way of physically manifesting your hopes and dreams. Each shell you acquired was another story you would tell your future kids about. You were sharing a part of your soul with him, and Sanji was completely enamored.

From that night forward, Sanji had decided that he too would start a sea shell collection of his own, without you knowing, so that someday in the future, he could surprise you and your kids with it, with the beautiful sea shells he had secretly collected right alongside you, his future wife, the whole time.

He couldn't wait to see the look on your face someday.

taglist: @mischiefmanaged71 @smolracoon25 @smol-book-nerd @shuujin @amanda08319 @nimtano @your-platonic-gay-lover @lovelymrvl @whiskeypowder

[batsplat]

as our resident Casey expert i wonder what do you think would have happened if marc and casey competed against each other? since casey retiring is so important for marc coming into motogp im always thinking abt the what ifs...

my initial instinct with this hypothetical is always 'that sounds horrible', though I do have more thoughts and opinions about it than that! marc obviously would have loved the chance to race casey, and casey has even been one of his picks of 'guys he would've liked to be teammates with' before, so, you know, clearly something there - and he does very much respect casey as a rider. I think it's quite likely that by the time marc entered the premier class, casey had already developed... I don't know if wariness is going too far, but maybe a little bit of unease or caution where marc was concerned. marc already very much had a reputation based on his 125/moto2 track record, and some of these incidents were controversial enough that the motogp riders commented on them. so take the phillip island 2011 incident where marc rode into the back of another rider:

the valentino quote serves as a bit of a benchmark here, given he was generally pretty pro-marc. yes, casey's phrasing is perhaps a little harsher, but unsurprisingly none of the riders were big fans of marc's behaviour in that particular incident

on the other hand, it's not like casey never sided with marc. take catalunya 2012, where marc was slapped with a controversial post-race penalty:

yes, casey's main complaint was about inconsistent stewarding - but still, he believed marc had been unfairly treated here. feels like these incidents were some of the only things casey and valentino actually agreed on in those years, so that's nice

that being said, it's hard to see how casey wouldn't have his issues with marc and marc's whole approach to racing. I did include some thoughts on the teammate question here, but mainly I'm going to pilfer the relevant autobiography passage:

"if a rider doesn't care about his own safety then it stands to reason he doesn't care about anybody else's either"... there's nobody really who embodies the 'doesn't care about his own safety' maxim better than marc. he was the young rider desperate to win, and I can't imagine casey would have enjoyed actually racing him much. casey mostly didn't enjoy racing valentino, after all, who is a generally a lot more selective with his aggression than marc is (though casey did have to experience some of the worst valentino had to offer in that regard). casey talked in his autobiography about getting a sense when he just wasn't really able to trust another rider on the track, how much it bothered him - and that exact lack of respect is something that's been pretty closely associated with marc. that doesn't mean he would immediately declare marc his enemy... he'd just want marc to change, to learn, to grow up, to start treating his competitors with a little more respect. the way casey talks about young riders, there is a sense in which he has more time for them than he does for valentino - whose lack of respect casey views as more integral to who he is as a rider. valentino isn't a bully on track due to the exuberance of youth, he's a bully on track when he thinks he can use it as a tactic of intimidation. then again, marc by this measure is worse... and I think very quickly casey would have grown pretty disenchanted with how marc approaches all his wheel-to-wheel racing, especially when it becomes more and more clear marc does not feel particularly inclined to change

it's always important to remember how recent the trauma of losing simoncelli was for the whole sport, and it coloured both dani and jorge's wariness of marc... but also (in my opinion anyway) their restraint in how they dealt with him. how they tried to stop themselves from actually making an enemy out of him, in part because they'd just had an experience of harshly criticising a rider for a whole year and then having to process his death. both dani and jorge actually had more public and more serious disagreements with simoncelli than casey did, but I reckon there would have been an element of that restraint with casey too... on the other hand, his experiences with marc would have left him feeling even more alienated from the sport than he already was - at times frustrated (like jorge was) less with marc directly but more with the regulatory bodies for not holding marc back, for not giving him a race ban or whatever to teach him a lesson. that being said, marc's shamelessness vs casey's stubbornness means that if they had direct on-track encounters and casey didn't like marc's post-race response... well, I certainly think that'd end up being a pretty tense situation, even if it falls short of active hostilities

worth including irl!casey's take on marc in 2013:

which, you know. it's not just that marc's a hard racer - casey is accusing marc of deliberately wanting to make the defeats extra painful for his opponents, of wanting to not just beat but humiliate them. anyone else that reminds you of? someone who is as motivated in securing his psychological victories as his actual ones? perhaps someone who has a bit of a history himself with casey?

let's bring in valentino. it's not that casey would really have begrudged marc his friendship with valentino, and he generally kept his hatred of valentino quite 'clean' in that he wasn't conducting any proxy wars or anything (for instance, I don't get the sense the vale/sic friendship ever affected his view of simoncelli... though I have very little to go on here either way). also, if nothing else in this timeline changes, we're assuming valentino in 2013 is fairly clearly the... fifth? best rider? kinda depends where dani would have landed I suppose (casey's retirement announcement did save honda from a bit of a headache)... but anyway what this means is that valentino probably wouldn't initially have been much of a competitive threat to casey. mostly he would have been consigned to the sidelines

that being said, I doubt casey would have massively enjoyed the whole laguna seca saga. unfortunately, we don't even really know what real life casey's stance on the copycat move situation was... though if I had to guess, in this timeline I'd say his position would've been, a) marc could and should have carried out that overtake two corners later, there was no need in that race situation to take that risk, b) still, it was valentino's slight error as he attempted to reclaim the position (in what was a pretty aggressive manner, it has to be said) that led to them both ending up off-track and fuck that guy, and c) the problem with 2008 wasn't just or even primarily the corkscrew overtake and it's annoying that that's the only bit everyone talks about. of course, there's also the question of whether casey would have bought marc's explanation that it was totally by coincidence that the overtake happened there... and again, complete guesswork, but my sense of casey is that he would have assumed marc was being at least a little bit dishonest. (which, you know... laguna's not an easy track to overtake at, but marc did prove with the bradl move that he was perfectly capable of overtaking after turn 8 - might not have been planning on the off-track excursion, but he was still attempting to overtake just ahead of a blind crest that happened to feed into the corkscrew lol.) I think casey by his honda days had calmed down a bit (though he still certainly had some conspiratorial tendencies), but I also don't think it's a stretch to imagine that he would've felt like he was a victim of a joke between the pair of them... not ideal

overall though, I reckon casey's main frustrations would have been less with the move itself and more with how it was discussed. in the presser, while joking with marc, valentino does take the opportunity to get in a jibe at casey for old time's sake. there's this clip, where he directly addresses livio suppo (at ducati in 2008, by then at honda) - specifically about how both casey and suppo criticised him for that overtake. in response, suppo says something about how he's grateful to marc because they finally got payback. valentino is later asked directly about casey's complaints in 2008 in this clip, and replies with the following:

would valentino have said this stuff with casey still in the paddock? well, yes! honestly, given valentino did very quickly lay off needling casey once he had retired, there's a good chance he would have said something worse. and marc would have laughed along at the whole thing. I don't know, I just don't see casey taking particularly kindly to that... he can hold a grudge, that man can, and at a certain point he'd probably be increasingly less willing to give marc the benefit of the doubt. interesting situation though, laguna seca '13 + casey is a very juicy scenario that could play out in several different ways

but I'm guilty of burying the lede here - there's a far more obvious reason than anything I've described above for why the casey/marc relationship would have turned sour. it's the simple fact that they would have been teammates which would do the damage all on its lonesome; they have radically different conceptualisations of how that dynamic is supposed to work and would inevitably have clashed as a result. the one commonality they do have is they don't see their teammates as potential friends, which is... also not helpful! I think they'd probably initially be fine on the interpersonal level - and, actually, given how the casey/valentino relationship played out and marc's general approach to his rivalries, I can see marc/casey more or less being able to maintain a minimum standard of politeness towards each other even at their worst. like, I still think they'd be able to smile at each other and do some small talk when face-to-face, but I also think everything else would be a complete disaster. I talked a bit about how marc approaches his teammate relationships in this post - and I'm not going to rehash too much of what irl!marc got up to, but I'll include some bits relevant to casey

from marc:

related to casey:

and dani comparing the two:

we do obviously even have actual real life controversy wherein casey thinks marc felt threatened by him and forced him out of honda... and this in a timeline where they weren't even direct competitors! if this is the level of tension a test rider role can generate, then if they'd actually been teammates...? yeah, no. casey thinks that teammates should cooperate - and he thinks that riders enforcing divisions within the box are essentially doing so because they are "afraid". marc has openly admitted to lying about what parts he likes to make sure his teammate doesn't get any edge over him. this is the thing, right: marc might think casey is a cool rider, would've liked the chance to race him and even be teammates with him... but this is the stuff he did to dani, who was one of his literal idols! this is his understanding of competition - (like valentino) he might love the fight, but simultaneously he'll do pretty much whatever it takes to win, because he considers this stuff fundamentally part of the game. casey does not. to casey, this kind of victory is dishonest. any kind of gamesmanship is a sign of weakness... the victory is worth less if you're accomplishing it like that

now, hey, maybe marc would never have been able to go as far as he did with dani because he wouldn't have the kind of performance edge that allows you to definitively impose your will within the team. I think it's a popular interpretation that marc wouldn't have won the title in 2013 if casey had been there, which... I mean, I think it's true that it would have been less likely - in that in a season with that much volatility, the more plausible championship contenders you have the less likely it is that any single one of them takes the title (same goes for instance if you add in a valentino who had not gone to ducati for two years and would have presumably been more competitive in 2013). but it's not like casey would have been the defending champion and the clear class of the field... partly due to injury, he ended up finishing in third in 2012. jorge and dani didn't win the 2013 title in part as a result of their own injuries, and who knows how casey would have fared... like sometimes it's just luck of the draw really. you can be the better rider and still not win the title, shit happens. I think for as long as a more or less healthy-ish casey stays in the sport, it would have been unlikely that marc establishes quite the same performance edge as he did over dani... but, well, if anything that would have meant he would have fought even harder out of perceived necessity to win the internal honda wars

it's the kind of thing that can make a relationship quickly deteriorate, especially with a prickly character such as casey, and it's entirely plausible that dynamic would have become strained at best and horrendously toxic at worst... sooner rather than later. and the thing is, this environment would affect marc considerably less than it would casey. again, it's the fact that he relishes the fight... he's very good at shrugging off (most) criticism and thrives in that kind of tension. the emotional fatigue that this scenario generates would be painfully lopsided, where casey offers harsh criticisms and means them and is endlessly frustrated with marc's approach, while marc... doesn't really care. at least dani also had a questionable manager who was conducting behind the scenes warfare on his behalf - casey doesn't want to play these games at all. he just wants to ride a bike, and marc is never going to allow him to live in peace as long as he's an internal threat. if casey were exposed directly to all of that from marc, I doubt he'd walk away from the experience with a particularly positive impression of him

does he walk away? I think there's a decent chance that casey would have ended up so disillusioned with the whole thing that this would have been what pushed him into retirement. if he wants to get out of that mess, let's say after two years, his options would have been pretty limited. yamaha is closed off and I'd struggle to think of a scenario in which either jorge or valentino would have been particularly interested in a direct swap (also, if you're sick of being marc's teammate, you're probably not gonna be jumping at the chance to be valentino's instead). I suppose you could go back to ducati (which he did return to as a test rider so it's not like those bridges were permanently burnt), and maybe casey could do something special even with *gestures* that version of the bike. really though... I think enough would have been enough for him. regardless of the actual balance of success between the pair of them, my guess is marc wins that war because he's happier to get nasty and because he wants it more. casey has his two to four titles... he's done. let him go fishing

[feydfuckernation]

just noticed your (new?) icon. bless that is good

You like Sondheim? His early work was a little too Rodgers and Hammerstein for my taste. But when Sweeney Todd came out in '79, I think he really came into his own, commercially and artistically. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the songs a boost. He's been compared to Andrew Lloyd Webber, but I think Stephen has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor. In '23, Thomas Kail released this; Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a full scale revival of the original text and score, complete with a 26-piece orchestra for the first time since 1982. I think the undisputed masterpiece is "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd." A song so catchy, most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should, because it's not just about Sweeney's personal reputation! It's also a Shakespearean chorus and a warning in the form of a prologue about the story, the tragedy even that's about to unfold before our eyes. Hey Paul!

[theavatarandthefirelord]

Because I always love to read your thoughts ♥️ For the ask game- number 3 for Zukaang in Ship It?

Ahhh thank you for the ask...and for an excuse to gush about Zukaang🥺😍🤭

Zukaang - I ship it!

What made you ship it?

I've always loved their dynamic, and IMO their relationship is one of the best things about ATLA. Even though I shipped Kataang from the start, the way Aang and Zuko went from being mortal enemies to genuine friends is something that's so special to me. The connection they made when they glanced at each other during The Storm, and then the famous "Do you think we could have been friends, too?" scene gives me the chills EVERY TIME. There's this particular kind of vulnerability that they share with each other and no one else. They share the unique privilege and burden of being the Avatar and the Fire Lord, they're the descendants of Roku and Sozin (one literally, the other spiritually), and they're the only ones who can work to bring out about the kind of world that Aang remembers and that Zuko dreams of - TOGETHER. But what really made me ship them is how they keep getting drawn to each other and are never able to escape the other no matter how hard they try, until they both relent and accept that their destinies are inseparably intertwined, that each of them carries a part of the other within them, and dflkgjsldkfjsad IM OBSESSED

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

The vulnerability they share with each other. Both of them keep their emotional walls up pretty high. Zuko is closed off and brooding, and Aang hides a lot with his smile and seemingly open nature. Even though they let down their guard with Mai and Katara, there's a deeper part of themselves that even the women who love them can't quite touch. For Zuko, it's the validation and healing and eventually justice he seeks as someone who both perpetuates and suffers from being part of the FN imperial family's generational cycle of destruction. For Aang, it's the loneliness from being cut off from the world he once knew and from his destiny as the Avatar, a revered and almost mythical being especially in a world that has waited for his return for so long. Aang and Zuko are unique among the ATLA cast in their emotional isolation, and it's only in the moments when they bare their souls to each other (even when they're still enemies! even when it doesn't feel entirely safe!) that they begin to find a kindred spirit. (I know I sound very normal right now but I'm actually internally screaming)

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I haven't been in the Zukaang fandom for very long, but from what I can tell (and from what I'm told), there aren't a lot of Aang-centric fanworks, especially when it comes to fic. So I guess my unpopular opinion is that we could use a lot more Aang-centric Zukaang art and fic...mostly so I can enjoy it LOL. Zuko taking care of Aang? Give it to me because I. will. eat. it. UP. I've already discovered a couple of fic authors, including you, who tend to write Aang-centric fics, and they live rent-free in my brain 😍

send me an ask from the ship ask game!

[dylanconrique]

ya know, whenever tim does finally meet lucy's parents i sincerely hope that like the gentleman he is he insists that he cooks for and host them all so i can witness him getting increasingly more upset with the way they're berating their daughter, to the point where he just can't take it anymore and practically throws their asses out, because like hell you're gonna talk to her that way, not in my house!!

[blueberrysan]

MC Yeosang for @kangyeosaang from your atiny secret santa <3

[tls123]

Oh my god HOW DID YOU LIKE SVSSS!!!!!

i liked it more than i thought i would but overall less than i might have given the potential of the story, i think in general i really enjoyed the characters (mxtx never goes wrong with characters, she creates them in a way that makes me feel unhinged) and the world building but the pay off to the set up—which i really liked!—felt a bit........ i mean, just alright.

the dynamics too are pure mxtx, personally the bin/gqiu dynamic specifically really was the least interesting part of the whole story. to me!! but individually i loved both characters. my interest was just elsewhere because """elsewhere""" felt way more fascinating idk how to explain it

was very, very happy about the extra with airplane and the yue qingyuan / shen jiu one because that's exactly what i wanted more of in the story itself as well as just more shen yuan/qingqiu interacting with cang qiong mountain

maybe it's my orv brain but like i told jana a while back i think i would have enjoyed svsss way more if it was more about shen yuan (loner; hater; etc) suddenly finding himself among all of these people (disciples looking up to him; sect siblings relying on him one way or another; common folk admiring him; etc etc) and starting to.... live? again?

Shen Qingqiu hadn't noticed that, unconsciously, he no longer considered the disciples around him (...) to be mob characters the novel had described in a scant number of words.

^from volume one, he starts seeing them almost immediately because he's not actually that separate and he genuinely cares. all the time. about everything. even before that we get:

This was only a book, and all the people were constructs, imaginary characters. Logically, Shen Qingqiu was very clear on this fact...but when a character was actually being taunted and bullied right before his eyes, it was just flat-out unrealistic to expect him to be completely unmoved.

like why are you lying, shen yuan (<- svsss tagline if there ever was one)

just the idea of this really lonely detached guy finding a community, i know it's not the story mxtx was trying to tell but again, with the set up i really wanted to see it go in that direction.

there's one line from vol two where liu qingge goes "you fear becoming a burden to cang qiong mountain (...) but cang qiong mountain fears not your burden"

and basically what i'm saying is that i wish the story had been about THAT

(and also ning yingying's lines in that same chapter about shizun always taking on everything himself and why is it always you like that whole moment with the cang qiong mountain almost begging him to see that they care. idek what i'm saying but you know)

(also foaming at the mouth that we only got tiny tiny glimpses of shen yuan's life from before, those handful of times he mentioned his siblings i wanted to take a bite out of my kindle. tell me more!! dear fucking lord tell me more!! keep talking! elaborate!! he really felt very "kim dokja and his fourth wall" at times, sorry once more about the orv brain)

tldr: i guess i wanted a story about shen yuan/qingqiu but mxtx created svsss to be a story about bin/gqiu. and i just have to be okay with that.

[seiwas]

a good cry always does wonders

[ikemenomegas]

Kakashi, Young

Kakashi is quietly panicking on many levels, springing over rooftops, scanning them and the ground below.

Konoha was a big village.

Pakkun was a very, very, small dog.

He'd known that going into the exercise, but Pakkun insisted. An unwilling part of him grudgingly admitted that he was probably owed some of the stubbornness.

It was still a stupid decision to let a seven pound pug try and run on the rooftops.

"It's not like you could have known," Rin pointed out, as though she had read his mind.

She loved the puppies and while he had initially been resistant to it, he was glad to have her around now.

"Bisuke was about the same size when he started training with you, and Pakkun is already faster. I'm sure he's fine."

"If he was fine, he would have already found us," Kakashi replied.

Rin fell silent.

He felt a little bad, but Pakkun had never failed a tracking exercise before. The only thing he could figure was that adding a restriction to rooftop travel alone had resulted in some kind of incident.

"We should split up --"

"No," Rin interrupted. "What if he's still looking for us? Splitting the scents won't help."

She was right, and he sighed.

-- Across the village --

"Are you sure it's this way?"

You'd always suspected part of the reasons the village shinobi stayed on the roofs wasn't just to keep out of the way of civilians.

Confined to the ground yourself and with a little passenger in tow, it was very clear that the two of you were getting lost.

"I'm sure," growled the little pug. "Put me down. I'll find the boss on my own."

You looked skeptically at the bandage you'd wrapped around his back leg and then quickly away when he twisted his ears back.

You looked up into the sky, maybe this "boss" would find you two before you found them. In the mean time, the pug was cute. So cute. Too cute. Especially when he wrinkled his wrinkly little nose and growled at you like that.

"No way," you say, turning in the direction the little pug is still facing. "That leg needs to be treated. Are you sure you don't want me to take you too the hospital instead? Or maybe the Inuzuka compound?"

The puppy's little whine almost breaks your heart. You really wish that you could get up on the roofs too, but walking around with your crutches hoisted over your shoulder so you can carry him is really about all you can do right now.

"Left," he says sulkily, as you trail down yet another narrow street.

"At least put me over your shoulder," he grumbles finally, when your right leg shakes again, protesting the weight placed on it too early.

You pause, admittedly tired, but putting the dog on your shoulder seems a bit unstable.

You put him gently down on top of a barrel and shrug out of your jacket. It's a bit of maneuvering to make it into a serviceable sling but you do actually try to pay attention in the academy's survival classes so it doesn't take that long.

The dog seems much more comfortable in it while you click down the street at a slightly more even keel.

"By the way, what's your name?"

The dog is silent for so long you look down at him. He's swinging his head to-and-fro to catch whatever scent he has you tracking.

"What's yours?" he asks, gruff.

When you give it, he tells you to turn left again.

"I'm Pakkun," he says finally.

"It's nice to meet you, Pakkun."

He just humphs and tells you to turn right.

"Are you sure you're ok--"

The dog, Pakkun you remind yourself, glares at you.

"-kay with the sling?" you quickly tried to cover.

Pakkun grumbled and then told you to pause. "It's fine," he said. "You're in the academy, right? We need to go west."

You dared to stick a hand in the sling to pat Pakkun's back. "That's probably easier than trying to navigate the alleys. Just let me know if you loose the trail."

Pakkun tensed under your hand so you withdrew. Ninken weren't like normal dogs and this dog wasn't like a normal ninken.

"Maybe if we get to a more open area your boss will be able to see us better?"

"Just keep walking," he muttered so you did, making your slow way west. It took you a moment to figure out that the little thump at the edge of your ribs was probably what you'd feel getting hit by a little wagging tail.

Pakkun was right. It was easier to simply head in the right direction without having to decide which exact path was right.

It also so happened that you could head west and south a bit and end up passing the hospital, which is probably where you would look if you ever lost a teeny tiny ninken after he'd tumbled off a roof.

A cold nose touched the tip of your finger as you neared the end of a wood area.

"Wait."

The rest of Pakkun's adorable head followed, his soft puppy fur brushing your wrist.

Kidnapping, erm dognapping, wasn't exactly a crime in the ninja world as long as you didn't get caught and the dog was willing, right? If you told Pakkun how adorable he was maybe he'd let you dognap him just once a month... you and your teammate stole things from one another all the time. It was good training in tracking.

Light as air, a boy with grey hair and a mask landed in front of you, hands in his pockets.

Your eyes widened in surprise and you leaned back a bit on your crutches, stabilizing Pakkun with a hand on his very soft chest when he nearly leaned out of the sling.

The boy glanced at you with a dark, unreadable eyes before looking back down at the dog.

"Hey boss," the pug said, half sheepish, half grumble, but you could feel his curly little tail again.

A second later, a girl with short brown hair landed behind the boy.

"Pakkun!" she exclaimed, "what a relief."

He grunted. "This," he looked up at you, half lidded eyes still skeptical as he said your name, "found me."

This?

The girl came forward, which seemed weird since the dog clearly belonged with the boy, but she was also more patient as you rearranged the crutches and lifted the sling over your head.

"I found him limping, so I bound the leg, but I think he needs a healer."

Pakkun glared at you and you shrugged sheepishly. Just because ninja were trained to hide injuries in the field didn't mean you should hide them among allies.

"Pakkun! You should have gone directly here. What's with the trail we picked up behind the west side scrap iron shop?" The girl scolded, already unwrapping your jacket, her hands burning green.

You blinked in surprise, "You're a healer?"

"Mhm," she said, immediately distracted. You looked up at the boy to see him standing in a way that seemed a guarding position and then stepped back to look at the scene properly.

Both of them had their hitae-ate, so they'd probably seen battle already.

Pakkun had his leg extended as the girl moved her hand around it. Even though you wouldn't exactly be able to fight like you were used to with your leg the way it was, or really needed to in the village, you sharpened your awareness too, paying attention to what was going on around you instead of with her healing, even though you would have preferred to watch.

Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the boy glance at you and one shoulder sag back into a more relaxed position.

"Okay," the girl stood up, wiping sweat from her brow. She picked Pakkun up with one arm and offered him to the boy, who finally took back the dog with what seemed an intentional lack of expression, and then gave back your jacket.

"Thank you for finding him," she said. "We were getting really worried."

The boy turned his body away in a way you were sure was meant to convey that he was both done with this conversation and had not been worried, but his fingers were already buried in Pakkun's short fur, checking over the girl's work.

"Ka-"

A boy with orange goggles and spiky black hair all but fell from the tree behind you.

You tumbled back, wincing from the noise, although the girl seemed unperturbed.

"Where were you," she immediately changed tack to launch into the familiar chiding tones of someone who had said this exact same thing before. "We already found Pakkun."

The new boy rubbed the back of his head, "I think I followed that weird trail through the alleyways. You know they took three lefts?"

You barely covered a cough of laughter but the ninken's sharp ears, and apparently the grey haired kid's too, picked it up enough for Pakkun to send you another twist-eared look. The boy, you thought, might be similarly embarrassed, although he stood so stiffly he was doing a decent job of hiding it.

The dark haired boy and the girl were standing shoulder to shoulder, the way old friends often did. She glanced once at the other boy and then seemed to somehow resign herself.

"Anyways, thank you," she said with a kind smile. "See you around sometime."

And then they were turning away, bantering back and forth in a familiar rhythm as they took to the trees and were gone.

"I'm want to go through a few of the boxes today, is that okay?"

Kakashi clearly didn't want to leave your still-new home and you didn't want him to go, but he had some sort of clan meeting to go to. And Tsunade had been on your ass about making him.

Unfortunately, this was the kind of thing he couldn't be late for.

He sagged further into his flak jacket collar, which for someone so tall shouldn't make him appear cute but it did.

"It's fine," he murmured, looking around at the scattered boxes of stuff you'd dragged from his home when he'd made it clear that he wanted to start doing something about the mess of his clan's records. He really had let it pile up over the years. "Are you sure you don't mind?"

You grinned, showing just a little too much teeth, "I keep hoping to find some more pictures of you as a kid. I want to have evidence so you'll believe me when I say how adorable you are."

He looked down at the ground and sighed. "Well good luck. There weren't many of those to begin with."

Carefully, so he had time to pull away, you wrapped your arms around him. He didn't return the embrace but he did nuzzle against the scent gland under your jaw and seemed brighter when he straightened up.

"Well I'm off. Have... fun."

There was no intentionally audible sound of his stepping away so you figured he had probably used a shunshin. He had been understandably territorial after the move, taking circuitous routes to get here and back and concealing himself more than usual until the new space had finally started to smell of the two of you again.

You moved toward a promising looking box, Guruko padding through the maze behind you.

It wasn't Kakashi's fault really. A lot of the village's smaller clan records had been made into an absolute chaos when the Kyubi had attacked and fairly interval attempts on the village infrastructure hadn't really slowed down from there. The fact that Kakashi had mostly kept things from his old house packed away in boxes had likely been what kept it from being literally tangled into a hopeless mess.

The box you chose had worn edges, more than some of the others, and you sat down cross legged to slowly sort through the documents.

In a corner, about halfway down, was another smaller box. It was also half-squashed given that it wasn't all the way full, but all that padding had kept the treasure inside near pristine.

You purred to the empty room with delight when your mate's face, younger than even in his genin photo, appeared at the top of the stack.

There were a lot of shinobi in the village and there was a lot of your mate that you would never know because for a long time you hadn't known him. In that way you envied Asuma and Kurenai. Theirs was the kind of romance you'd dreamed of as a kid. They knew everything about one another because they'd lived so much of it.

Kakashi told you things, if you asked, but he was used to keeping his silence, pushing the past as far into the dark as possible, and you didn't often know what to ask about. He preferred to talk about you, but you adored him and wanted to reciprocate that interest.

It made you proud how far he'd come since you first started sharing glances across the room, back when you were the new person being pulled into the orbit of people Kakashi associated with over dango and stories of stupid choices made during promotion tests.

At least one of the photos was obviously an academy school photo, plane background and your mate in an incredibly nerdy little scarf.

A lot of the other photos were later, and equally cutely, of the pack as puppies.

Some of them had clearly been captured by an inexpert hand, the picture blurred with laughter as Kakashi tried not to trip on a very excited young Shiba, and a cute girl, Rin you knew, carefully wrapping Uhei's paw while Pakkun watched.

You frowned at the photo, something tickling the back of your memories.

A few more pictures gave you that same feeling, including a picture of Kakashi and Pakkun alone, looking comically similar with their half-lidded expressions and awkward postures, clearly being forced to try and pose.

You knew Pakkun now of course and it was obviously him, but something about that picture seemed awfully familiar.

Guruko wagged his tail when he asked you to find one of him and you couldn't refuse so together you dug through the box. There were even the dogs' first collars in a sturdier wooden box under a few old papers that looked like academy assignments.

You were still in it, Guruko rolling around and telling you stories about training as pups, when Kakashi came back home.

Kakashi smiled fondly when both you and Guruko immediately rolled upright and went to him.

"Look what I found," you tugged his sleeve in excitement and pulled him to the couch and coffee table where you had carefully place the pictures. "I'm so glad these survived. Look at how little the ninken were. Look at you," you pointed to another slightly shaky picture that showed Bull and Uhei "playing" a game of tug of war where Bull had to do very little to win while Kakashi was clearly laughing in the background.

You didn't miss the slightly sad scent that began to cling to your mate or the way his fingers shook when you handed him the photo.

You leaned shoulder to shoulder and went quiet while he sifted through the pictures. Stored in the box as they had been, they didn't look nearly as old as they clearly were.

"Obito took these," he finally said, softly.

You should have guessed you suppose. There were far fewer pictures with the dark haired boy in it, and of those most were selfie like and cut off part of the person he was with or his own brightly smiling face.

They were youthful photos of a much different time.

You pressed a kiss to the back of your mate's hand and tried to hold onto some of the weight that settled all too easily on his shoulders.

You pressed gently on the scent gland at his wrist when he'd hit the vague edge of the limit you'd sort of agreed on for guilty pining, in the event you found some new memory of his he'd never shared before. You let a whine build in your chest, just enough to let him know you were getting worried, and he slumped over on you, pressing you into the couch with his whole weight.

It was a funny little thing he did that you weren't sure if he had learned from Bull or Bull from him. Usually it meant he was redirecting his stress into literally using his body to protect yours.

For now, you allowed it. You didn't like the implication of value there, but you also knew it soothed your mate in an important way. And he did let you gently tug him so he was more just laying on top of you and he could feel the rumbling purr you were making.

You rubbed circles into his back while he opened his one sharingan and perused the photos again.

When he got to the one that had stopped you before, you finally spoke, keeping your words to a low murmur.

"There's something weirdly familiar about that one, like I've seen it before."

You allowed yourself a little snicker when Kakashi held it up and that expression, which he still made but in a slightly less petulant way that still mirrored Pakkun's more committed sulks, came back into full view.

Your mate's mask had slipped as he sometimes rubbed his face against the juncture of your neck and shoulder and you could feel the tired quirk of his smile against your skin, the way he huffed a faint laugh.

He even gifted you with a little purr when you tugged your fingers through his thick, soft hair.

"He does still make that face."

You snorted and felt like the sun had lit up your chest when Kakashi chuckled.

Kakashi would have happily fallen into a doze like this, but neither of you were in the particular habit of napping, unfortunately. There were dogs to feed and yourself to feed, clothing to unpack, bedding to air out.

He swiped the photos off the table and back into their box, to be stowed away for now, but a few days later he gifted you the one of him and Pakkun in a new protective frame.

The others ninken of course saw it and slowly, gently, demanded that Kakashi find some of them too, claiming that the captain couldn't be the only one with a photo around the house.

Pakkun gave you a weird look when he caught sight of your staring at the photo one day, grinning to yourself and pushing away again that feeling like you were missing some detail in looking at it.

It hit you a week or so later when you were alone again, trying not to fret about your mate being out on what should be a relatively safe information retrieval mission. Others were busy and he'd wanted to go out for a while, so he'd gone and left Pakkun with you.

This reassured you he didn't think the mission would be that tough, but it also had the downside of having the little pug's judgemental little face watching you find things to do to distract yourself after your own work was already done for the day.

"What?" you finally asked him, after trying and failing to read a book. "You've been staring at me for days. Is there something I should know?"

"Do you really not remember?" Pakkun asked, skeptical and gruff.

You frowned and looked where he did, at the shelf where the photo was leaning.

"I--"

"I never forget a scent," Pakkun said somewhat haughtily.

You had all but memorized the picture yourself by now. Pakkun's wrinkled baby face. "No way."

One of his adorable little eyebrows raised.

You looked back at the photo.

"It was his decision start courting you-"

You amusedly decided not to bring up the reality which was less like courting and more like the local tomcat adopting you via a series of birds brought to your door.

"-so we didn't say anything, but I told them all you remembered."

"I've met you before!"

Pakkun's adorable little tail was starting to wag.

"But I don't remember where."

He slumped into a sulk.

"Sorry," you said, patting his head in apology and going into the kitchen to get him some ham.

"Hmph." He followed you anyways, toenails clicking on the wooden floor.

"It was a long time ago though. Maybe it'll come back to me."

He leapt onto the counter and grumbled some kind of vague agreement, taking the meat delicately from your fingers.

You leaned against the counter while he ate, looking around the apartment. Kakashi's discomfort was shared. Your mate could be away for days or weeks at a time when things were busy or something bad came to the mission desk.

Having a space you owned, that wouldn't be subject to change every few years, somewhere for him to come back to, had seemed like the right call.

It was the right call, you reminded yourself firmly. Both of you needed some kind of stability, if only to help Kakashi start to unravel years and years of avoiding a majority of physical and emotional attachments.

But the time it was taking to really make the apartment feel like home could be frustrating. You missed having Kakashi's scent just being around as a consequence of his frequent presence.

"Don't worry too much," Pakkun said, gnawing on the little bone in the center of the ham. "The Boss will be back before you know it."

Boss. Hmm.

You shook your head, "I suppose finally putting together some of the cabinets will make it easier to put things away. Want to learn how to use a hammer?"

Pakkun licked his lips and looked up at you. His steps were so light you almost couldn't feel them when he sprang up to drape on your shoulder.

"You know dogs don't have thumbs right?"

"That hasn't stopped you before."

Pakkun just huffed ham-scented breath into your face as you went into the bedroom.

[sisterdivinium]

(One thing I find peculiar and unfortunate in current fandom business is the seeming lack of pointed discussion, so here is a humble attempt to spark a conversation and I more than welcome commentary.)

I came across someone in the notes to a post somewhere talking of how Jillian had been better styled in season two than in season one and I agreed, already seeking the justification for it in my mind. My observations are as follows:

S1 Jillian is Arq-Tech's mastermind and public face. Even though we first meet her in Morocco, in her explorer, Indiana Jones-like garb, it's the image of her running her company that sticks with us, her statements to the press, her corporate persona opening metaphorical fire upon the Church. A "powerful woman" as mainstream media constructs for us everyday, in subtle but visible makeup so as to diminish the effects of age on her face, in heels so as to peek at the rest of humanity from above, with controlled gestures meant for the inherent theatricality that comes with introducing life-changing technology to society. It is a role she plays—well, but a role nonetheless.

The scene she shares with father Vincent is worthy of mention, for while he sits without taking up much space, his body restrained to the side of a couch, his legs crossed in what is deemed a more "feminine" posture, Jillian takes up the traditional "masculine" attitude: she commands the room, her body expanding upon her seat, in the broad pose where an ankle rests upon a knee, complete with a generous glass of alcohol in hand and talon on foot. Yet this is also for show­—it's a little too calculated, a dance that was so perfected in exhaustive practice that it lost its dynamic.

Our glimpses into the more authentic Jillian come in the scenes with Michael—not only because (coded in white and blue as the Virgin Mary of immaculate conception) she plays the part of mother, but because, in her intimacy, far from journalists and employees and the public's prying eyes, she can be more herself within the areas where she conducts her studies. Starting from when Ava asks Jillian to "science her", we never see the doctor in uncomfortable shoes again, as she retreats from entrepreneurial life and into the lab.

This is clearer in season two, for, as Kristian says, she is on sabbatical, thus isolated from general view; S2 Jillian has nobody around her, nobody to impress. Locked away in her Spanish villa, consumed by her son's disappearance, she need not wear a mask. There are no more tellingly feminine accessories, no staged stunts; her clothes and footwear are even more practical, her movements less grand but more human, more expressive (here, of course, we owe it to Thekla Reuten's underrated range). Even as the OCS invites itself into her house, making it a makeshift HQ, she doesn't fall back on the act we saw in the first season.

Jillian's stepping back from the head of her company is not just in name and contract, but in body, too; she leaves the CEO role in her office and comes home to her science and her cause, to her limited inner circle of which only Michael was privy to and into which the OCS nuns end up finding their way.

Colours also indicate a shift—we begin the series seeing her associated with light hues such as white, beige and baby blues, but when season two comes in, Jillian's striking all-white attire is nowhere to be found. The Holy Mother parallel is in shambles after Michael has gone through the ark's portal, the intangibility of this "saintly", aseptic rich genius broken down, her person brought back to Earth after flights of fancy trying to open a gate to Heaven.

We see her in a darker palette, in greys with dashes of white, yes, but never again in full white. It is not just the authorisation to be herself rather than her company's face while in her private world, but also the reflection of her inner darkness and her loss upon her very appearance.

What a more definite loss could mean, now that her son is gone for good, remains a mystery.

For instance, unlike the nun who served as her superior, our Suzanne rejects the characteristic blues of the Order of the Cruciform Sword to don a heavy all-black outfit, more reminiscent of Orthodox priests than it is Roman Catholic nuns; her resurrection through Ava does not lighten her habit, if it does lighten her burden, so we can only assume, going forward, should there be any relation between how each character expresses their inner workings through clothing, that Jillian Salvius would keep the mixture of white and grey that season two brought along... Or go darker still.

[fairybluedreams]

Hi y'all! Here is my finals campaign on why you should vote for Nani Pelekai in the @eldest-sibling-tournament today!!

Edited to add***

Poll just dropped vote Nani today!

https://www.tumblr.com/eldest-sibling-tournament/712608371217481728/eldest-sister-tournament-final-round

[unproduciblesmackdown]

truly something that, amidst facing / going through a dramatic Life Change ft. unavoidable emotional effects of that, there are instances where i can't conceal any & all degrees of being distressed / upset, & repeatedly getting "it's hard for me too" as a Direct Response to that: really something & a half how the asserted theoretical Sympathy of [i feel similarly!] is invoked so as to, oh you know, preclude sympathetic Treatment. such as that what would be More sympathetic in these instances would be to say Nothing, "if there's nothing but dismissal / making it first & foremost about someone else's feelings to say, don't say it at all" style

[letsmcfreackingloseit]

I JUST SAW MATPAT IN THEATERS AND IT WAS AWESOME AND I'M SO HAPPY

[asterdeer]

video called "pirate shirt tutorial that actually makes sense" with a thumbnail clickbaitingly copying bernadette banner's style, which does the exact same thing as bernadette banner's video but more confusingly and without a diagram in the video itself, also failing to understand that bernadette banner's channel is primarily a history channel and not a sewing tutorial channel so telling people they don't have to hand-sew the pirate shirt or they don't have to thread-pull is unnecessary because bernadette banner literally said "do this however you want, i just do it this way because it's how i learn about historical dress practices" in her own video. couldn't ask for better youtube entertainment

[bibiana112]

I too wish that the medical hack that made me grow up in a purgatory like state of existence would rot in prison Akane was so real for this

[rabbithub]

You know the line, 'to be loved is to be changed'? I think that would work for Fallen Angel!AU.