#so the lesson of the day for me is obviously be more inclusive

[bilesproblems]

Hey uh, please don’t use “bi lesbian” to mean “mspec lesbian”, as UN umbrella term. That’s honestly *really* shitty. If you mean bi lesbians, talk about bi lesbians, and if you mean all mspec lesbians, say “mspec lesbian”. Signed, a pan lesbian.

Apologies. I used "bi lesbian" to talk about the larger community because it's a more well known term but you're right, not all mspec lesbians are bi lesbians and I should use mspec lesbian when talking about the whole community.

I didn't think about it before at all but I'll try to do better. I might mess up while I'm breaking the habit but I'll do my best to keep what you said in mind and make more of an effort to be inclusive of the entire community

And I'm sorry to anyone else who might've felt excluded or forgotten by me when I'd do this. I didn't mean to leave you out but I did and I'll do better, because all of you guys deserve better - the pan lesbians, the poly lesbians, the omni lesbians, the abro lesbians, the neptunic lesbians, and all other mspec lesbians.

Thank you for saying something - though it could have been more polite, I'm just as guilty if not more of being rude to people, and I did need it brought to my attention what I was doing wrong. Really. Thank you

[mams-is-my-will-to-live]

I can't sleep and Since my brain is filled with "A date with death here's a tiny fic??? On my brain mixing Obey me and A date with death Enjoy! A little background this is after the little stu t MC made with the candle in the Reaper's cave. Now it has been a whike since I played that lesson so forgive the timeline inaccuracies and any terms that are inaccurate. Also... probably ooc of the characters. MC's background is that they are the child of Grim/Casper and the MC of a date with death. I am aware that the game is inclusive when it came to preferred pronouns in a date with death so I tried to make it Gender neutral and as inclusive as possible to MC's other parent that is not Grim. So apologies if it flows wierdly. Spoilers for both obey me and a date with death I apologize.

Obey me!MC is the child of Grim/Casper from a date with death.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

After the whole event on the reaper cave MC huffs as they finally laid down to bed. Hugging the familiar plushy that their Father gave to them. The Plushie is well kept and looks fairly new at a glance.

MC sighs one more time as they snuggled the axolotl plushie. "Azrael... Dad's going to be so mad when he finds out about my stunt! He's going to say I'm took after my other parent too much!" MC whines into the soft plush of the stuffed toy. MC whule they didn't explain it to the brothers knew what theu were doing when they transferred their Candle's essence into Beel's own. However they were prepared for the consequences if any. Plus it's not like they were going to die not with how they obviously took after their other Mortal Parent.

A few days pass and all seems well the brothers and MC as well as the Royals and Angels plus Solomon had a little get together at the Demon King's castle. A little treat to wind down after all that has happened. However it seems that MC has gotten too complacent as someone suddenly appeared. Someone who is all too familiar with MC.

Diavolo while apprehensive about the sudden appearance of a reaper gave a friendly yet domineering aura befitting of his status as a Prince. "Greetings Reaper! To what do we owe you the pleasure for your visit?" He asked politely.

The Reaper wore black clothing and his Hair is white and long and he has striking red eyes. Similar to Lucifer's but dufferent still. Everyone is far too aware of the head on stare that he has with MC. Alarmed there is a look of anger towards MC.

Mammon ever MC's protector pulled them behind him as if to shield them from the Reaper's stare. Paying no heed to Diavolo's words he simply opemed his mouth and uttered words that confuses the immortals in the room.

"Soulbaby...You know what you did wrong yes?" MC despite themselves blushed at the familiar nickname given to them by what they knew sprouted from an inside Joke between their parents. Slowly they mobed from behind Mammon despite his blurts of protest and pouted.

"Dad... Please don't call me that in front of them!" Theu whined petulant like a child. As theu slowly moved towards the front from where the others are surrounding them like a wall seperating MC from their Parent.

"DAD!? MC WHAT?!" Mammon shouts to which there were other noises of agreement. Sheepishly MC smiles at them and weakly murmurs

"I um.. really wasn't supposed to tell about that little fact?" They heard a chuckle from their Dad amused at the reactions from everyone

"Yes MC here is my child. My soulbaby if you will." He added amused as MC's eyes widened and they whined again at their father's teasing.

"Fascinating however all the paperwork in the human realm and MC's very own soul shows that they are mortal and very much Human" Diavolo finally speaks.

"Yes. I'd much rather keep it that way" the reaper gave a pointed glance to MC who looks abashed as they looked away.

"So I assume you're not here to take MC's soul from what she did at the reaper's cave?" Asked Lucifer as he absorbs everything.

"Yes and No." Answers the reaper. "I suppose it is time for introductions" the reaper paused for a bit as he looks at MC and then to the Demons and Angels briefly pausing as he laid eyes on Solomon. He raised a brow at Solomon but paid it no mind.

"What a fascinating gaggle of... Friends you have accumulated Soulbaby" he says despite another sound of protest from MC.

"You take far too much after sunshine..." he added as MC blushed. He then clear his throat as he started introducing himself. "As you are well aware I am a reaper and My name is Casper and I am MC's father." despite the topic already being laid out in the open the others still couldn't help but gape.

Solomon chuckles "So MC definitely knows what they were doing when they poured their essence to Beel's candle" MC pointedly tried to ignore their Father's stare but caved.

"Yes... Dad I'm sorry but I couldn't watch Beel fade away! Plus My soul can-" MC was stopped from their tirade by Casper flicking their forehead fondly.

"You take far too much after Sunshine, Soulbaby..." he says with a tired fond smile.

"But!" Mc starts to protest.

"I understand however you know that there will be due punishment. Once your term here is over we will be talking about it." He says leveling mc wigh a pointed stare. MC gulped but nodded nonetheless.

"Now that is over... " he turned to the rest still staring at him. Meeting their stares head on "now that you are aware of MC being my child... One wrong move and well I'll leave that up to your interpretation" He then turns to MC again.

"Dad..." MC warns to which Casper chuckles goodnaturedly but not without a bite.

"Do be careful Soulbaby. Tell me if they hurt you and I will be after their soul" he smiles menacingly. MC shakes their head they watch Casper about to leave. "Do visit back home me and sunshine miss you terribly" He whispers one last time as he leaves.

"No problem Dad" MC giggles and hugs their father. As soon as Casper left MC faced the demons, Angels and Fellow Human. Looking expectingly at them MC sighs privately to themselves.

"So where should we start... This might take a while"

[mogai-sunflowers]

waaa my drivers ed class is two hours in the evening twice a week for the next month 1/2 /neg

at least most of it's online but it's still just ?? so much ? i am tired at 7 pm i don't want to be in a class.

anyway. how are you ? how's college ? any cool classes ? any classes at an awful time ? /lh are you planning to add to the bi lesbian + she-ra wall ?

yooo i remember drivers ed class. mine was legit three hours every day for a week it was terrible, good luck adfadfsaf!!!!!!!

so college is...... something. and i mean that in an overwhelmingly positive way, it's just been a major adjustment which is no surprise. i'm enjoying my classes and i've already made a really close friend group and i feel loved and supported and it's honestly great. i was just elected as the freshman representative of my school's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Board, and I have a lot of ideas for that. I've been working with my school's disability advocacy club to create image descriptions for social media posts and through that club i'm participating in leading an image description workshop in October! i'm having a bit of a problem (not a bad one) because i think i might have feelings for my roommate... who is my best friend.... but who is also dating my other good friend... and i feel terrible about it because i would obviously never do anything to jeopardize their relationship OR ours, but it's just sucky sometimes. she's the best roommate in the whole damn world though and i would never want to move out.

i have a professor who is the first openly queer professor i've ever had. they use they/them and are gay and trans and i thought i had a crush on them (turns out i was just so happy to finally have an openly queer teacher). they're great and make an otherwise difficult class very engaging.

ALSO one of my new friends is also a bigger GNC lesbian and they're going to be taking me suit shopping soon so we can both wear suits to my college's winter formal dance :))

i won't lie, going to an all-girl's college as a queer trans person is difficult. more than difficult actually, it's infuriating. but i know it wouldn't be much different anywhere else and there are still supportive people. so even though i'm surrounded by conservative christian trump-worshiping girls, i'm also surrounded by all my friends and some respectful professors (though ironically my sociology professor is kinda weird about trans ppl) and my music lessons are going well so it's a mixed bag ofc but it's been a good experience overall so far :)))

there's not much more room on my specific shera bi lesbian wall, but i have made other props that are going to go elsewhere and i'm also cosplaying shera for halloween using my sword as a prop :))

how are you? have you started your sophomore year yet? is everything goin alright?

[wool-f]

Wellness: Through & Through | Part Two: Pilates

If you subscribe to me, you’d know I posted a video on my channel not very long ago about my experience trying pilates for two months. It’s now been four months, and I can fully say that I am a member of the pilates cult that seems to be taking girl social media by storm.

I remember the first time I really began to see the rise in popularity of reformer, and it was just after an article where Lori Harvey said she loved pilates. After that, pilates was everywhere, and I really mean everywhere.

On TikTok, Instagram, Facebook even, my colleagues in the office were talking about how they were thinking of trying it, and my friends were signing up to expensive studios around Melbourne to get into the newest fad of fitness.

I say fad very loosely, because once I began classes at my local studio, I realised this trend was very quickly going to become a habit for me.

I’ll be honest, I was doubtful about whether pilates would do anything crazy to my body, and boy was I surprised! I had heard one of my friends talk about it previously but didn’t really think anything of it, until suddenly every second girl and their mother were achieving insane results from five 45 minute workouts a week.

I was flawed. I wish I’d listened to my friend sooner (take this as a lesson well learnt from me). So my friend and I decided to join a studio, and we got a pretty good starter deal. Pilates is quite expensive, it’s definitely not an affordable fitness method if you’re wanting to go to an actual studio, I will say that much.

Four months down the track, I can genuinely say I’ve never stuck to any fitness regime the way I have stuck to pilates, and I have never felt better. In the first two months of going to pilates consistently, I dropped FOUR KILOGRAMS without trying.

A disclaimer to this is that I never started this wellness adventure to lose weight - I don’t hate my body or myself, and I always wanted the focus to remain on how I feel about myself and my mental wellbeing, and what ways my physical health could assist with improving those aspects of my life. That being said, I can’t ignore the obvious difference in my body since beginning pilates.

Outside that, and now that I am well into my pilates obsession, I have a few notes on the difference it has made on my body.

I feel stronger in all ways, and I’m sleeping way better. I have gotten myself into the routine of getting up early to go to the studio and take a class before my work day begins and I notice that I have so much more mental clarity and motivation throughout my day. If I don’t get up and exercise before beginning my workday I often feel lethargic and foggy in my mind. I love the feeling of finishing a class and coming out of the heated room into the fresh air - my cheeks flushed and lungs breathing in the crisp smells of the early morning, and the satisfaction I feel when I finish a really tough class. I have increased my weight usage from 2kgs being my difficult weight to 4kg. I’m just happier as a person, obviously because any exercise creates endorphins.

If you’ve been looking for a sign to try out pilates, let it be this - it is honestly the best investment I’ve ever made in my health and fitness, and it’s an inclusive environment. It’s not necessarily price effective if you want to go to a studio, but there are so many free videos on YouTube you can use too - please try it if you’re even thinking about it.

If you are joining me on this group science experiment, investigating what wellness truly means and how I am achieving it, both physically and mentally, welcome! Comment below any suggestions or trends you are seeing to do with wellness that you’re too afraid to try yourself - I will try them. Also let me know if you tried pilates because of this post or my video! I’d love to hear your feedback :)

If you want to follow along with this experiment with me on a daily basis, please follow my Instagram and TikTok accounts, I am much more active on there and will have little updates throughout the weeks that I am posting the videos.

Leave any comments down below or in my questions box, and we can chat!

Until next week, all my love,

G xx

[florilegia-or-what-you-will]

Idiot Cringe Gawain Failing Upwards For More Than 2 Hours

Okay okay okay. I’m gonna write my very disorganized statement on why I don’t like The Green Knight. I’ve been putting it off because it makes me angry, and I have noticed from past experience trying to write essays about the 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation, that when I’m angry, I tend to rant and tangent. I’m going to avoid complaining about stuff that isn’t related to adaptation of the main plot and themes. I’m not going to talk about how annoying I found most of the acting, or how bad I thought the CG was. I’m also not going to nitpick all the little changes that do annoy me, but could be valid in a better movie, like the decision to make everyone in Camelot really old rather than really young. I am going to talk about Gawain’s failure in the book vs. his success in the movie, and I’m not going to edit at all once I’ve written it because I find thinking about this movie exhausting :)

In the original story Gawain is trying so hard, the entire time, to live up to a rigid and unachievable ideal. The story is so good because he doesn’t succeed because he’s only human. That his failure isn’t really a failure, but a part of humanity’s nature, and the fact that Gawain doesn’t take that lesson, and continues to beat himself up for it, is still a unique and interesting story now. I relate to the story as someone with social anxiety and a perfectionist streak. I always feel like I’m playing a game with rules I don’t fully understand.

What is The Green Knight but a really generic coming of age story, and a poorly paced and characterized one at that. It feels like the filmmakers were trying to make up for the weakness of the writing by making the visuals really trippy and the acting really unnatural, but that doesn’t manage to make movie Gawain an interesting character. He’s a mediocre guy who breaks his promises and doesn’t have a strong motivation. He gets into bar fights for no reason, has an extremely annoying manic pixie dream girlfriend (I despise Essel, I think her inclusion was so unnecessary except to make Gawain as boringly heterosexual as possible), immediately gets beat up and left for dead the second he leaves for his journey, actually does commit adultery with Bertilak’s wife, doesn’t manage even a single day of the second game, which was, you know, the main part of the original story, and still gets rewarded at the last minute for doing THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE DOES IN THE BOOK. I

’m sorry but I do not like this Gawain. He just sucks. Dev Patel could have played such a good Gawain in a good movie but, alas, this is what I get. I get that I’m kind of a purist. I am of the opinion that if you are going to adapt something, you should:

a) understand what’s good about it

b) only make changes for the sake of the new medium, or if it will improve on the original

That’s obviously not everyone’s idea of a good adaptation, but personally, I’d much rather read a subversive story where Gawain tries really hard to live up to the ideal and fails, and that’s okay, than watch a movie where Gawain runs away from his problems for most of it, refuses to acknowledge his flaws, at the last minute gets a super hetero normative happy ending that he doesn’t deserve and that kind of insults the original story.

[stitching-in-time]

Just finished watching season 2 of the Saved By The Bell reboot, and I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!! I hoped it would be good, but it exceeded my expectations in every way. It stays true to the heart of the original show while bringing something new and fresh to it. The tone and pacing remind me very much of another excellent high school comedy, Derry Girls, with it’s faced paced dialog and absurd humor, while still incorporating the original Saved By The Bell’s signature heartwarming life lessons in a way that’s more down to earth and realistic. Topics that would have been trotted out for a heavy-handed ‘very special episode’, or seen as too controversial for a sitcom in the 80s and 90s, are everyday facts of life that get talked about and dealt with by the new cast of teen characters in matter of fact and relatable ways, and with sharp, laugh out loud humor.

The new cast of kids are just as charming and lovable as the originals, and the inclusion of the original cast members is key to making it feel like a true continuation rather than a replacement. Even though the new show pokes gentle fun at the silliness of the original, it’s all done with affection by people who obviously know and love the show as much as we superfans do. The references to the original show add another layer of humor for the old school fans, but the show can still stand on it’s own merits for any newcomers to appreciate without needing to see the original.

The viewers who get the most out of the show are definitely those of us who grew up with the original though. Seeing the original characters again is like seeing old friends, and the updating and expanding of the world of Bayside feels like coming home and going to wonderland all at the same time. The continuation of the original gang’s journeys is a delight, particularly for series regulars Jessie and Slater. Their evolution as characters feels very real, and seeing Elizabeth Berkley and Mario Lopez bring their characters to a new show with a different tone after all these years, without losing the essence of those characters, underscores how talented (and underrated) of actors they really are.

This new Saved By the Bell has the perfect mix of brains, humor and heart that can make you laugh out loud and get a little teary from feels in the very same episode. Personally, I’ve been going through the hardest few months of my life while watching this show, and it’s been the only thing that could make me smile or laugh some days. Saved By the Bell was a big part of my childhood, and it’s always made me happy to revisit a rerun or two when I needed a mood boost. Having this new show now is like being wrapped in my happy place when I needed it the most. I’m so glad it’s continuing to live on and bring it’s goodhearted spirit to a new generation. I hope they make more seasons, because I could use more Bayside in my life.

[galaxy98]

With the recent confirmation that we'll get to see more of Yunan and Olivia in season 3, I thought it would be nice to give a little rundown of a certain idea I had for a story prior to the trailer. Will I ever go through it, maybe not. For one thing, I have so many ideas that I want to do on AO3 so some things may have to be sacrificed. Not only that, but despite the episodes having a limited runtime, thus having less depth, it's likely going to turn out better than what I put out. That and it would be less convoluted. So here's a bullet list of the idea:

The working title for the fanfic is called Lady and the Newt. I wanted to go with Lady and the Merc or Lady and the General, though the former didn't made sense since Yunan is not a Mercenary. Also since it's a Disney show, I thought it would be funny to make the title a tongue-and-cheek reference to Lady and the Tramp.

The best way to describe this story is 2 lesbians on the run. There's also a butch and her daughter but we're not there yet.

Obviously, this would take place after True Colors, but based on the clips I've seen, it would've been drastically different.

For starters, it would begin with Olivia and Yunan trying to find a way to escape Newtopia. While Yunan is more concerned about finding a way out, Olivia didn't want to leave Marcy behind. At the same time, Yunan is also reluctant, albeit in denial, of wanting to go back there since she felt betrayed by both Andrias and Marcy, despite the latter being a child who was just being manipulated.

However, Olivia feels like she's complacent in letting this all happened, so she wanted to back there for the sake of ridding herself of that guilt. In other words, the both are still shooken up about the whole revelation.

They would eventually escape, but it will be a hollow victory.

This would be the first time we get to see Yunan without her armor. She took most of it off when trying to save an unconscious Olivia from drowning. By the time they set up camp, she will chuck her medals into the river in anger. She does keep the claws since they might come in handy, but other than that, she's completely vulnerable.

The fanfic would explore on the aspect about the expectations and pressure that Newtopia places on its society and how Yunan and Olivia were both affected by this mentality. Yunan ran away from home when she was in her teens because of her strained relationship with her family (Something that I will get into later on) and how due to being found by Andrias was she able to show off her skills that would work her way up to the ranks and then eventually the youngest general in the army, Scourge of the Sand Wars, Defeater of Ragnar the Wretched, yada yada yada. However, you would see why her family relationship was dysfunctional due to the infighting with her sister and mother who just happened to be a famous artisan (hint hint). Prior to becoming general, she felt like she had nothing to show for and that being a part of the court made her felt like she was special. But the problem is that she feels like she's nothing without the rank. So while Yunan constantly introduces herself because it's effective, it's also because that's all she has.

Olivia, on the other hand, didn't want to be a part of the court. The only reason she has that title in the first place was because her family already had connections to Andrias's so she was basically forced into the role. Royalty never particularly interest her but because she was so ingrained into the role, she ended up living a very isolated life. It's why she has a very stoic demeanor. Only when there's nothing else to do does she masks off the whole facade after keeping appearances for a whole day. During the night after they escape, she would lament about where it all went wrong.

There would be a retcon where Olivia originally planned on running away from Newtopia and she wanted Yunan to come with her. But with the combination of Yunan's commitment to the general rank, taking care of Marcy Wu, and then the events that soon follow, it never came to be. Olivia wondered if going through with that decision would've only make things worse.

There would be flashback chapters where we get to see the dynamics between the newts and the 13 year old girl. Any one of them involving Yunan would be an explanation as to why she initially felt betrayed by Marcy's actions. It's only later on in the story did she reconcile with those feelings.

Most of the story consist of them trying to get far away from Newtopia as possible, all while the fear of Marcy's fate lingers. In tale of dramatic irony, they assume that she may have escaped along with the others. But once they found refuge at Wartwood, they notice that Sasha was the only that's still here. That's when they figured the out news. Again, dramatic irony.

So that thing I mention about how there's also a butch and her daughter in this story, well here's what I mean. Priscilla and Pearl are the additional characters in this journey. The reason for their inclusion is because I had a particular subplot in mind. I loved the headcanon of Priscilla being Yunan's older sister because the potential dynamic makes so much sense. During their childhood, they were both competing for their mother's love, despite the fact that she didn't want them to fight. So due to jealously and the strained sibling relationship, it prompted Yunan to run away.

On an unrelated note, you can check out my poem fanfic on AO3 called O' Sister Of Mine. It explores the dynamic between Priscilla and Yunan as siblings.

The entire subplot would be about Yunan and Priscilla trying to repair their sibling relationship after years of fighting and not seeing each other. When her and Olivia cross paths with the two of them, Priscilla initially rejected their offer of going together. Because of Yunan and Olivia's status, she was worried that it was not only going to put a target on her back, but also her daughter's, which is the last thing she wants. But since they can't stay in one spot, they have no choice but to go together.

I think by looking at the pattern of where this story is going, the entire lesson is about not taking things for granted and being the change you want to be. The three girls may be the main focus of the show, but this fanfic explores on the side characters who were affected by the events.

Well there you have it. This is mostly just a rough draft of ideas but it does get the main gist across. Like I said before, this likely isn't going to see the light of day, especially when Matt Braly's crew is going to come up with something better than I can. This is one of those big AO3 projects that I'll have to keep on the shelf, at least temporarily when I don't have a lot on my plate right now.

But if you want to express any interest in me doing this in the future, feel free to reblog or leave a comment in the notes.

[ackercrushing]

A Little Wager

Ok, I don't usually write. If I do, I rarely complete it. I either have grand ideas that just don't come out or I read something similar that scratches that itch and I don't have to write anymore. But this little fluff nugget has been my constant daydream for a while. There are no warnings for this. It's lighthearted and fun. I suck at writing smut so I doubt I'll continue it. If someone wanted to pick up where I left off and do a shower scene, I would LOVE that! Anyway, here it is. Be gentle :)

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It was mid afternoon when you and your squad made it to the training grounds.  Captain Levi’s squad was supposed to be done in the next half hour. You like to get your squad there early when the special forces are training to provide a little inspiration.

You choose Emily to lead the squad in stretches before they hit the course.  All the while, they’re watching Levi’s soldiers expertly soar through the air completing maneuvers it will take years for your squad to accomplish. While stretching, you hear the oohs and aaahs, sometimes shocked gasps as another soldier completes in flight stunts that look impossible.  You notice Levi, arms crossed, watching them intently.  He never has to yell out instruction or commands.  His squad is a well-oiled machine.

“Alright guys, what’s the bet today?” you ask your team, breaking their reverie.

“Isn’t it your turn to pick, Captain (y/l/n)?” asks the unofficial leader of the squad, Leo. “Besides, every time we come up with a bet, it’s almost guaranteed defeat.”

“I’m not stupid guys. The tasks get harder depending on what we bet.  If you bet I walk topless through the mess hall at dinner time, Malcolm (glancing over to the brave boy who dared make that wager), you better believe I’m giving you a nearly impossible task.” Malcolm blushes.

“It was worth a shot.” He says sheepishly. Amelia punches his arm playfully saying “That’s gross Malcolm, she’s our squad leader.”

“Anyway, I think you’ll like this offer.  How about you nail all your maneuvers I assigned last week and two more surprise tasks, and I’ll do all your laundry for a week?”  While this bet wasn’t as exciting as a topless Captain at dinnertime, it did get the squad’s full attention.  You knew some of them were wearing clothing for the second, maybe third time between washes and they stunk!  This bet was more for you than anyone.

The slight turn and side eye from Levi let you know he wasn’t watching his squad as intently as you thought. He was eavesdropping.

“But you have to land properly.  No biffing the landings!” You add, hearing groans from some of your soldiers.  More groans when you tell them the surprise maneuvers they are to complete.  They’re difficult but not impossible for their skill level.

“All right guys, I think this is doable.” Leo chimes in, pumping up his squad mates.  Some were already looking defeated, having the most difficulty with their landings. They all circled up and started motivating each other.  Levi might have the elite group, but no one could rival your squad in the heart department. These guys gave it their all every time, training or battle.

You had a way with these “kids” as you called them that few squad leaders did.  They loved your inclusiveness and your no-blame leadership style.  You made sure they knew they were a team.  Mistakes were learning opportunities, even the fatal ones. Those most of all.  And they did happen to all Scout squads.  It was just the nature of the job.

“OK Captain (y/l/n), we accept the bet!  Get the soap ready!  Let’s do this!”  The whole squad was pumped and ready.  You couldn’t help but grin and hope that you had a lot of laundry to do this week.

“Alright, it’s on.  Keep stretching and warming up!” you say as you walk over to join Levi and watch the last of his team’s maneuvers.

“Well, your team is certainly inspiring some young ones today.” You grin and bump his shoulder.

“Is that why you’re always early?”

“Yes sir, I’ll take all the motivation we can get.”

“So what’s up with that bet? Sounds like a recurring thing with you.” He asks, never taking his gaze from his flyers.

“All the motivation I can get, right?  They really respond well to the bets we make.”

“Did I hear mention of a bet that would have had you walk topless through the mess hall at dinner time?” This question did pull his gaze to you with raised eyebrows. You couldn't help the blush that stained your cheeks.

“That was never going to happen.” You outline the tasks you gave your squad that day.

“Yeah, that would be hard for my group to accomplish.” Levi smirks. “Would you like to join us during our next training session? Maybe my squad would like to try betting on something.”

“That would be amazing! Thank you!” You are beaming. Training with the elites will certainly boost your squad’s morale.

“Alright, day after tomorrow at 1pm.”

“It’s a date.” tumbles out of your mouth.  Levi briefly side eyes you with a slightly scrunched brow at your choice of phrase but continues walking to his squad for their debrief.  You are blushing thinking he might have taken that the wrong way.  Oh well, nothing to do now but show up at 1pm in two days.  Your squad was going to freak out!

------------

The joint training sessions became a regular once a week thing with the two squads.  The bets initially started out pretty tame.  Levi and you lost several but when they were “Do 100 push ups” or “Clean all the floors in the barracks”, it was ok.  Neither of you minded losing those.  But the soldiers started getting braver with their wagers.

You knew something interesting was in the works when you see Sasha Braus bouncing on her heels and clapping her hands before you both even make it over to them.

“Alright Sasha, what do you have for us today?” Asks Levi, arms crossed and one eyebrow raised.

“Ohhhh, this is a goooood one!”  Her voice quivers with excitement.  “If we complete all our maneuvers flawlessly, landings included, Captain (y/l/n) has to do 10 push ups.”  She’s so excited, she can hardly continue.

“Sasha, that’s not a challenge.” You add, knowing there has to be more to it. You notice Jean, Conny, and Eren look slightly uncomfortable.

“That’s not all!  With every push up, you and Captain Levi have to KISS!”  She literally squeals. Your eyes grow large.

“Sasha, that only works if both parties are consensual.”  You roll your eyes, knowing Levi will not agree to this.

“What do you mean Captain (y/l/n)?  You wouldn’t consent to that?”

The phrase you could hear a pin drop is very apropos in this moment as all eyes are on Levi with gaping mouths.  You could swear you heard the wind of heads turning.

“You mean to tell me YOU consent to that?” You ask incredulously.

Levi takes your arm and pulls you aside.  “The task fits the bet, right?  Here’s what we’ll have them do.”  He outlines his plan and the butterflies in your stomach still. But you’re not sure if you’re relived or disappointed knowing your squad will definitely not be able to pull this off. Were you hoping to lose this one?

“Perfect. Let’s tell them.” You grin.

You both walk back over, and Levi lays out the maneuvers they’ll have to perform in order to win the bet.

They are obviously shaken but the elites take the young ones aside, and after a 10-minute pep talk and possible strategy session, they return and accept your conditions. Is this task as difficult as Levi thought? They seem pretty confident. "We accept!" Sasha yells.

Levi looks at you and winks. “Alright, get going then.”  In pairs, the two squads enthusiastically enter the training arena.

The last teams are nearly finished.  You look over at Levi nervously.  All the pairs assigned to you were flawless.  How could that be?  The elites really were inspiring, but you realized you might have been going a little too easy on your team.  What a sight to behold.  And your squad was so proud of themselves.  You would have made a bet to kiss a titan for this!

Levi’s mouth is agape as he slowly turns his head to look at you.  You both just stare at each other in disbelief, his expression saying everything you needed to know.  His group was flawless as well.

“Holy shit.” You mumble under your breath, heat now creeping up your neck, your palms sweaty already.

Levi regains his composure, that cool mask of confidence back on his face and in his stance.  He strides toward you looking way more collected than you feel.

“Alright, new strategy.” He says, a sneaky glimmer in his eye. “They didn’t say what kind of kiss, right?”

You pause for a second, realizing what he’s saying and your breath that you didn’t know you were holding is released in a relieved sigh. Is relieved the right word?

“I know where you’re going with this.” You say shaking your head.

“Every time you lower yourself, I’ll turn my head and you kiss somewhere on my face.  Forehead, cheeks, nose.  We’ll keep them guessing.”

“They’re going to be so mad!”

“They should have thought of all the loopholes before they finalized the deal.” Levi stated coolly with a shrug.

Sasha, back to bouncing and clapping, yells “Ok you two!  Assume the position!”

"This is stupid.”-Conny

“I don’t think I can watch this.”-Eren

"Why does Captain Levi get to do the kissing?" -Jean

Meanwhile the girls are giggling messes of anticipation.

Levi lies on the ground, hands casually behind his head like he’s relaxed and getting ready for an afternoon nap. Huh, to feel that relaxed right now. You crawl up his body, your knees straddling his hips and your hands to either side of his neck. Hoots and hollers from the two squads do not help the blush on your face. You raise to plank position, then slowly lower yourself.

Levi’s head remains still until the last second, then turns to the right, offering his cheek for the first kiss.  You lightly feather his skin with your lips before returning to plank.

“Hey, that’s cheating!” Sasha sounds so defeated.

“You didn’t specify what kind of kiss Sasha.  Let this be a lesson to you.  Negotiate better next time.” Levi says smugly. “I want to hear you count!  That was 1, 9 to go!”

The next 4 kisses were met with increasingly under enthused counting as the cheek, nose, and forehead barely-there-pecks were administered.

At the start of the 6th, Levi says to you “My turn.”  Your eyes narrow in confusion and he clarifies “I’m going to kiss you now. Move however you prefer.”  You nod, really just wanting this to be over with. You agree with the squad that this is underwhelming.

You move your head so kisses land on both cheeks, your forehead, and your nose.  Time for the final kiss.  As you start to lower your body, Levi removes his hands from behind his head and places them on either side of your face.  Your eyes widen when he says “Let’s give them a little something more, huh?” You feel those butterflies again as you nod your head in agreement.  And time passes in slow motion.  You continue lowering until your lips meet Levi’s.  At first, the kiss is just a brushing of your lips together.  Levi gently pulls your face away just a bit to look you in the eyes, then lowers you again, this time kissing you properly.  You can’t feel anything else.  Your body feels weightless.  His lips part and his tongue grazes your bottom lip.  You open your lips to him and the kiss deepens, tongues swirling and gliding together.  There’s no one else here but the two of you.  The gasps and cheers from the combined squads don’t reach your ears. You have no idea how long this kiss lasts but you can honestly say you don’t want it to end.

The only thing to break the spell is Eren saying “Geez, are they going to come up for air?”  Levi reluctantly pulls away after a few more brief kisses.  You slowly raise your body, as your eyes open and lock with Levi’s.  “Damn” he mutters softly.  You can’t help but grin a little as you complete your final plank.  You blink your eyes a few times, trying to rid yourself of the spell Levi’s put you under.  You push up to your feet, face flushed and lips swollen.  You offer a hand to Levi, who takes it, even though he doesn’t really need it to get off the ground.  Once vertical, you expect him to release your hand, but instead, he intertwines his fingers with yours and says “Ok kids, show’s over.  Hit the showers.”  The soldiers don’t miss the fact that you’re still holding hands as they depart.  Sasha and Mikasa keep looking over their shoulders, hoping they won’t miss anything else.

Levi whispers in your ear “What do you say Captain?  Ready to hit the shower too?”

[hamliet]

The Girl Who Gets to Have It All: Buffy Summers

So with @linkspooky​‘s encouragement, I have binged Buffy the Vampire Slayer and relived my childhood culture. And, it's a 10/10 for me. Not that it doesn't have flaws, but it's genuinely one of the best stories I've seen, with consistent character arcs, powerful themes, and a beautiful message. It's also like... purportedly about vampires and demons and superpowered chosen ones, but it's actually all about humanity.

Buffy was able to be a teenage girl, allowed to like the things teen girls are scorned for (boys, shopping, etc), to be insecure about the thing teenage girls are insecure about (future careers, dating, school, parents), and to be a superhero with its good and its bad aspects. The story wasn’t afraid to call Buffy on her flaws (sometimes she got in a very ‘I am the righteous chosen one’ mode) and to respect and honor each of her desires (to be a good person, to be loved, and more). The story listened to what she wanted and respected her desires, giving her the challenges needed to overcome her flaws while also never teaching her a lesson about wanting bad boys or romance is silly or any manner of dark warnings stories like to throw at teenage girls. 

It respected teenage girls--nerdy girls like Willow, jocks like Buffy, lonely wallflowers with trauma like Dawn, and popular/snobby ones like Cordelia, girls gone wild like Faith. It never once reduced them to the stereotypes that were lurking right there: each character was fully rounded, human, flawed and yet with respected interests and goals. This is so rare for a story that I’m still in awe. 

The story as a whole follows Buffy from 15 to 21, of her as she grows from teenager to adult. She acts like a teenager and grows to act like a young adult, wrestling with loneliness and duty. The adults, like Giles, Joyce, and Jenny, are not perfect either, but neither are they “bad parents” or “bad mentors” necessarily. Joyce in particular says something terrible to Buffy, but she tries to do better, and it’s rare to see a parent in YA stories shown with such nuance. Basically, it wrote the long-lasting adult characters as human beings, too. 

Speaking of growing up, I appreciated how Buffy’s love interests mirrored this. Angel was someone Buffy loved and admired, wanted to be like, but who was always either extreme good or extreme bad, and combined with Buffy’s own tendencies towards black-white thinking, made for a beautiful relationship to help her grow, but didn’t necessarily form a foundation for a long-term partner. Spike, on the other hand... they both saw each other at their worst and were drawn to each other even then, and were inspired to become better because they couldn’t bear to be a person who treated the other person so wrongly. They pushed each other to become the best them they could be, and believed in each other. Also, Spuffy is an enemies to lovers ship for the ages. 

(Also, most of the other ships were well-done or at least can be understood. Riley was very obviously wrong for Buffy which paralleled Harmony and Spike in being 100% wrong for each other. Cordelia and Xander were a fun ship even if we all knew it would never last, and Willow and Oz were beautiful and cute. But Xander and Anya and Willow and Tara? OTPs. As were Giles and Jenny, the librarian and the computer teacher.) 

That said, it’s not a perfect series. No story is. All of the characters and ships had problematic aspects to them worthy of critique, and the writing is very 90s in a lot of ways. It’s a product of its time, and in many ways it’s good society has progressed beyond some of the tropes/metaphors used in the show. In other way, though, the show was ahead of its time, and in a good way it wasn’t bound by the fear of purity policing with its takes on redemption (many characters would never fly today). 

So, in order of seasons ranked from my very favorite to my “still enjoyed it very much” (no season was actually bad, imo), here’s my review. I’ll also review my top 10 villains in the show, because Buffy does villains very well in terms of the redeemable and irredeemable.  

Season 7:  Yep, the final season was my favorite. 

Overall Opinion: Buffy's finale is literally "f*ck them men, our power is ours" and while it seems cheesy it actually works (also, f*ck in both a literal and figurative sense). The series strongly hit all the themes: love as strength, and redemption. Buffy consistently shows love as her strength--*all* kinds of love. Friendship w Willow/Xander, familial with Joyce/Dawn, romantic with Spike/Angel. These types of love are also never pitted against each other as is so often the case in current-day media. It's beautiful. Also, Spike’s confrontation with Wood was so powerful in terms of exploring forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation: where they overlap and where they don't, and what it means to move forward. 

Unpopular Opinion: I have seen a lot didn’t like the inclusion of Potential Slayers, and while I agree they could have been better incorporated/characterized, it was a great way to show Buffy’s final stage of growing up to be ending her chosen one status and projecting/multiplying her powers over the world. 

Biggest Critique: Kennedy was female Riley--the anti-Tara to Riley’s anti-Angel (by ‘anti’ I mean opposite in every way). Kennedy was annoying and immature. Her role, like Riley’s, was less about exploring her as a character and more about her just being stamped as “love interest: lesbian.” 

Favorite Episodes: Beneath You, Lies My Parents Told Me, Touched, Chosen

Season 6: 

Overall Opinion: I said this on Twitter, but I felt like this was Buffy’s The Last Jedi or Empire Strikes Back moment. It is polarizing and dark, deconstructing the tropes it stands on--but by digging to the core of these tropes, it actually makes what’s good about them shine brighter. Everyone’s enemy was the worst versions of themselves. Giles left Buffy, Willow's struggle to relate to the world led to her trying to destroy it, Buffy hurt everyone through her anger, Xander abandoned Anya at the altar, Spike... yeah. It ages well as an integral part of the story, and the Trio were eerily prophetic. 

Unpopular Opinion: Dawn is a great character with a good arc. A traumatized teen acting out and struggling to come to terms with loss and identity? She wasn’t whiny; she was realistic. 

Biggest Critique: Willow’s addiction coding (I’ll discuss this below) and Seeing Red as an episode. I see the argument for both of its controversial scenes from a narrative perspective: Willow starts the season not grieving Buffy but instead being determined to fix it with magic and needs to learn to grieve, but. Still. Bury your gays is not a good look. For the Spike scene... he conflates sex/passion and violence (”love is blood, children” is something he said way back in season 3), but like Tara’s death, it had more to do with Spike (as Tara’s death did for Willow) than with Buffy’s arc, and as for the actual execution... they really botched that. Did it like... have to go on that long or go that far? No. Also, the framing was good, but inconsistent with the rest of the series (Xander to Buffy in the hyena episode, Faith to Xander and to Riley, etc.) 

Favorite Episodes: Once More With Feeling, Smashed, Grave

Season 3 (tied with Season 5):

Overall Opinion: The opening continuity of Buffy meeting Lily/Anne after saving her life in Season 2 was sweet. The Witchhunt episode had really powerful subtext: stories of deaths that aren’t even true are actually demons that possess the town and convince them to turn against their children in the name of protecting the children. It’s a good commentary on, oh, everything in society. Faith’s character arc was fantastic, and her chemistry with Buffy was off the charts (look, I may be Spuffy all the way, but Fuffy has rights). The finale was satisfying in so many ways, seeing the entire graduating class unite to destroy the Mayor and the school with it, symbolizing Buffy et al’s readiness to move on to college. Oz's relationship with Willow was very sweet and meaningful for a first romance for Willow. 

Unpopular Opinion: I actually don’t really have one. Maybe that the miracle in Amends was earned? I think you can make a decent case that Season 3 is the best written of the seasons, but can only truly be thematically appreciated to its full potential in the light of subsequent seasons (which finish Faith’s arc and deconstruct Buffy’s).  

Biggest Critique: It forgot Buffy killed the hyena guy in Season 1, making her continual insistence that she can’t kill people very ????? 

Favorite Episodes: Lovers Walk, Amends, Graduation Day Part 2 

Season 5, which ties with Season 3:

Overall Opinion: The entire season is about family and what it means, from Tara’s to Buffy’s to the Scoobies. I loved Glory aka Enoshima Junko as the Big Bad, I loved Dawn’s interesting meta commentary on retconning (like, the fact that she’s retconned in matters), and most of my ships are still alive. Joyce’s relationship with Spike is one of the most heartwarming aspects, and Spike’s arc’s desire is clearly highlighted: he wants to be seen as a person. The episodes after Joyce’s death are the most honest portrayals of grief I’ve ever seen, and absolutely brutal to watch. 

Unpopular Opinion: Buffy’s choice at the end seems a deliberate inversion of her choice at the end of Season 2 (sacrifice a loved one to save the world), but it actually isn’t: much like at the end of Season 2 where Buffy skips town because she’s devastated after killing Angel and doesn’t want to sort out being expelled, her mom knowing she’s the slayer, and her own trauma, Buffy’s sacrifice here was as much about her wanting the easy way out of relationships, family, college, etc. as it was about saving Dawn. Buffy’s death is coded as a suicide, which Season 6 emphasizes as well. 

Biggest Critique: Like Season 3, I don’t have a lot to critique here. I wish the suicidal coding had been a little more obvious in Season 5 itself, but also I’m not sure it could have been more obvious; it’s pretty apparent if you pay attention. Maybe also that Buffy and Riley’s relationship failing should have been more squarely blamed on Riley, you know, being insecure and cheating. 

Favorite Episodes: Family, Fool for Love, Intervention. 

Season 2:

Overall Opinion: Heartbreakingly tragic but exciting and revealing at the same time. It asked the viewer interesting questions about redemption and forgiveness and atonement through Angel being honest about his past, and then decided to show us his past now reenacted, challenging us. And still, we saw them save him in a parallel to saving Willow in Season 6 (but Season 2 was tragic because it wasn’t enough, while Season 6 was not). Jenny’s death was agonizing, and the scene were Angel watches Buffy, Willow, and Joyce get the news through the window was powerful. We didn’t have to hear them to get the grief. 

Unpopular Opinion: Jenny’s death isn’t a fridging; it works for her arc too when you consider her history. She worked to save the person whose life she was tasked to ruin, and it cost her her own--yet she still succeeded, because Jenny brought joy and wisdom to the show. Kendra’s death, on the other hand... was because they needed the stakes to be high--but we already knew that before she died. So, her death was useless. 

Biggest Critique: The subtext was Not It. It was essentially “do not have sex. Your older boyfriend will lose his soul, kill your friends, you’ll lose your family, your school, your home, and have to kill your true love or else hell will literally swallow earth.” 

Favorite Episodes: School Hard, Passion, Becoming Part 2.

Season 1:

Overall Opinion: I really liked it; it’s just lower on this list because the others are just better. It’s a great introduction to the series and to its characters, from Giles to Buffy to Willow to Jenny to Cordelia. It has great subtext a lot of the time (for example, Natalie French as She-Mantis is a literal predatory bug who engages in predatory behavior with students). Additionally, it subverts the typical YA trope of two guys and a girl, in which the girl is usually the least interesting character. Buffy and Willow were both fully fledged characters from the beginning with distinct strengths (even before Willow became a witch, as she wasn’t one in season 1 yet), while Xander was the more ordinary of the group. 

Unpopular Opinion/Biggest Critique: Xander’s arc showed its first flaws that unfortunately continued throughout the series: his writing was either very good or very indulgent in ways it never was for other characters.  (cough, the hyena episode, cough, in which he gets to skirt responsibility--and acknowledges that he is skirting it--for something the show will later hold others to account for). Xander’s just kind of inconsistent, which weakened his character over all. (Which is why both his love interests--Cordelia and then ultimately Anya--were good for him: they did not indulge him.) 

Favorite Episode: Witch, Nightmares. 

Season 4:

Overall Opinion: it’s still a good season. It’s a good portrayal of college and the growing pains of branching out, the strains of college growth on relationships (romantic and platonic). It shows us the first hints of Spuffy, giving us some serious Jungian symbolism between Spike and Buffy early on, and does well in establishing Xander/Anya and Willow/Tara as beautiful OTPs. Faith and Buffy’s foiling is fantastic. The Halloween episode was very fun as well. However, it suffers because its Big Bad, Adam, is not all that compelling thematically--yet, he could have been. See, the final battle pulls off the Power of Friendship in a really strong way but notably the season does not end there. Instead, it ends on dreams of each character’s worst fears, continuing what we saw in Nightmares in Season 1. Why? Because it shows us that the characters’ wars aren’t against monsters, but monsters of their own making: their flaws. Adam, as a literal Frankenstein, exemplifies this, but it wasn’t capitalized on as well as it could have been. 

Unpopular Opinion: Beer Bad isn’t a bad episode, at the very least because Buffy gets to punch Parker. It’s not one of the series’ best, obviously, but it does give Buffy an arc in that she gets her daydream of Parker begging her to come back, but she has overcome that desire and her desire for revenge. If we wanna talk about bad subtext in Season 4, Season 2′s Not It sex subtext continues in the Where the Wild Things Are episode in this season; it’s a powerful callout of abusive purity-culture churches, until the fact that the shame creates a literal curse undermines the progressive message it’s supposed to send. Also, the Thanksgiving episode (Pangs) is a nightmare of white guilt and Oh God Shut Up White People. 

Biggest Critique: Riley is awful. Like Kennedy, he had “love interest:normal” stamped on him and that was it. The thing is, he could have worked as an Angel foil, representative of the normal-life aspect of Buffy to Angel’s vampire/supernatural aspect, but the writers never explore this and seemed to even try to back away from that later on. They threw all the romantic cliches at the wall to see what sticks, from klutzy “I dropped my schoolbooks, that’s how we met” to cliché lines that had me rolling my eyes. Do you know how bad a romance has to be to make me dislike romantic tropes? 

Favorite Episodes: Fear Itself, Hush, Restless

Villain rankings: 

Dark Willow, the only villain to be truly sympathetic. While the addiction coding was insensitive and, while unsurprising for its time, aged extremely poorly. That said, Willow’s turn to the dark side after Tara’s death worked well for her character and the story: it was believable and paid off what had been building since Season 1's “Nightmares” episode (Willow’s inferiority complex). 

Glory managed to be genuinely terrifying, and humorous/enjoyable too. Her minions and their numerous nicknames for Glorificus were hilarious, as was her intense vanity. Her merging with Ben--a human being who genuinely wanted to be kind and good--added complexity and tragedy to her role. 

The First. A really good take on Satan. The seventh season as well as the First’s first appearance in season 3′s “Amends” had kind of blatant Christian symbolism, and so the First being essentially Satan works. Their disguising themselves as dead loved ones and the subtle manipulation they used to alienate people was really disturbing and well done. 

The Mayor, who was a terrible person but a truly good father. He provided an interesting contrast to the normal ‘bad dad’ bad guy character, in that he provided Faith exactly what the other characters refused to: he saw the best in her and offered her parental support, while the heroes didn’t and wound up pushing her away. 

The Trio, who were villains ahead of their time: whiny fanboy reddit dudebros, basically. The stakes seemed so much lower than fighting Glory, a literal god, the previous season. But that’s why they worked so well for Season 6′s human themes, and were especially disturbing because we all know people like them. I also appreciated the surprisingly sensitive takes on Jonathan and Andrew, who got to redeem themselves, but Warren did not, and I don’t think he should have either. 

Angelus + Drusilla. I’m ranking them below the Trio because Angelus was just sooooo different from Angel that it was difficult for me to feel the same way for him. He was still Angel, so it wasn’t possible to enjoy his villainy, but he also wasn’t nearly as sympathetic as Dark Willow, had no redeeming qualities like the Mayor, and wasn’t as disturbingly realistic as the Trio. However, the emotional stakes were excellently executed with him as the Big Bad, in that you were never quite sure how to feel and it just plain hurt. Also, Drusilla was a favorite recurring character. She was sympathetic and yet batsh*t enough to be enjoyable as a villain at the same time. 

The Master, who was just completely camp and really worked as an introductory villain. He was scary enough to believe he was a threat, and was funny enough to introduce the series’ humor as well. He was, like Glory, an enjoyable Big Bad. 

The Gentlemen, the one-off villains of Season 4′s Hush who were genuinely terrifying. It’s not as if they got a lot of explanation or any backstory, but they didn’t need it. 

Caleb, the misogynist priest. Fitting with the First’s Christian symbolism, Caleb serving as a spokesperson of all bad religious beliefs felt appropriate. He was also a good foil to Warren--being actually supernaturally powered instead of a wannabe--and to Tara’s family in being full-out evil. I despised him. 

Snyder. Okay Snyder is not a Big Bad like Adam is, but let’s face it: Adam is lame compared to the other villains. But Snyder as a principal? He was so irritating and yet really well used in the series to critique overly strict, hypocritical teachers. Like, we all know teachers like him. I loved to hate him, and his ending was so satisfying. 

[tekatonic]

About me and IDs

Hey uh if you thought you'd reblogged something recent of mine and it's gone, it's not just you, I deleted it. ( And if you saw me panic about it earlier... oof... but this is what that was about. )

Just thought I'd explain why.

Image descriptions are a real struggle for me, they've been extremely important for me to do since i started this blog, but I was self-sabotaging myself so bad over them. I just want to be inclusive, I feel like I HAVE to be, because "what if", right ? I know there's always a chance people that need IDs might come across my art posts. But I have pretty horrible emotional/energy/attention regulation and I'm also very unmotivated and lazy and I forget things. Because why would I want to agonize over writing long descriptive text when the next chapter of this fanfic seems so enticing ?

So the post I deleted was unfinished, I was working on describing the outfits yesterday but it was taking me so long and I thought I had the time today, which I did, but then i spent ALL DAY in bed reading a long fanfic ( which i still haven't finished ) on my phone. Obviously I kept forgetting about it until I let it post itself and realized how much I fucked up when i got my laptop out and checked my notes... abnormally large amount of them for something that was posted 30 minutes beforehand. The reblog tags made me painfully aware of people noting that it was unfinished. ( "no id?" has never made me feel more like a failure, i was/am in pain just remembering the tags existed )

It's not even the first time this has happened recently... well lesson learned : I am never scheduling an unfinished post ever again. My drafts are gonna get so crowded...

[sepublic]

Wing it like Witches!

           Let me tell you- I was WORRIED this episode would make me sad and angsty, but instead it just made me happy and all warm inside! I know that sounds super-corny but like…

           I LOVED this episode! I was worried from the promo pic that Boscha’s bullying would really get to Luz, Gus, and Willow, but… It didn’t! I mean, it still got to WILLOW hence the entire episode, but otherwise Luz and Gus were less “Wow I’m really being reminded of my insecurities from bullying” and more “I can’t believe she ACTUALLY did that. She wasted her entire school day doing that. This girl is NUTS, is she okay back home?”

           (The more I see of Boscha, the more I have to wonder if she IS okay back home… Obviously not crippled with self-loathing to the extent that Amity is, but never mind.)

           What’s really surprise to see though; LILITH IS A RED-HEAD!?!? I remember seeing that first pic of young Eda with two other classmates, one of whom was obscured and the other had glasses; And I thought, is THAT girl Lilith, could it be? Is the girl with the obscured face the one who stole Lilith’s lunch money, potentially that favorite character from Season 2 that Dana alluded to? My mind is racing, but either way young Eda and Lilith are utterly adorable! I do have to wonder if what Lilith had to say about Eda’s bad memory was just a jab, or something more… Given that the show has alluded to Eda possibly having amnesia with MORE than just her curse…!

           Speaking of which; LILITH AND EDA GETTING ALONG! Well, sort of- I mean they’re technically adversarial by the end of this episode, but only technically. Lilith knows where the Owl House is, finally; And we get to see in this episode just how capable Hooty really IS as a security system, surprisingly enough! He even manages to capture LILITH; Though to be fair, she may not have been super-invested in the mission given this was her sister we’re talking about, but still! Coupled with Hooty mercilessly tearing apart those toys in Adventures in the Elements, and I have to wonder if he’s ever, like… KILLED people before, y’know?

           …Maybe I don’t want that answer. Regardless, I love Luz’s little cheeky interference with Eda’s game, but Eda still manages to win by her last trick; Just pure, genuine skill and talent! That was a twist, I was expecting Eda to have another cheat or to be caught by Lilith, but as I said before… Eda isn’t humble, and for a GOOD reason! Lilith ain’t no slouch either, and I love that King willingly donned a cheerleader outfit just to offer support! I mean, maybe Eda MADE him, but otherwise he didn’t seem to have much of an issue so long as it was just at home!

           And… I LOVE the little small moments between Eda and Lilith, where… Lilith KNOWS she has to turn her sister in, she’s getting desperate, but it’s also low-key breaking her heart to do this! And when she loses the match and just… FALLS on her knees in despair, questioning herself, and Eda picking her up? Giving her that signature ring, just to make Lilith look better? I… I LOVE these sisters, why can’t they make up?! Lilith isn’t even aiming to imprison Eda, she just wants her to join the Emperor’s Coven and continue doing stuff alongside her, like old times!

           And Eda… Eda still needs her autonomy, but she knows that Lilith isn’t some cruel person. She knows that Lilith loves her sister and wants the best, that she’s in a terrible position; Eda knows how stifling the Coven System is, and while being beneath Belos provides a lot of power… It also provides a lot of PRESSURE as well! Sure, Lilith chose this… But Eda still believes that Lilith is deserving of kindness and compassion!

           (Let me tell you, considering I don’t think we’ve seen any Eda clips past this episode, I was LEGIT afraid she’d get captured by the end… thank goodness!)

           What’s also fascinating to note is that Emperor Belos was in charge since fiftyyears ago; Given the speculation that Eda isn’t as old as she looks, this indicates Belos is PRETTY old himself, by a large margin; Especially when one considers how long-lived Bump is! It’s a small moment telling us how he established the Coven Heads five decades ago, but I really appreciated it; And in general, this episode seems to be our final, light-hearted breather before we get into the REALLY heavy stuff… Keep in mind, our last two episodes were originally planned to air side-by-side, like a two-part season finale! On a lesser note, we see the Heximal System teacher giving a History lesson, confirming what I suspected earlier; That some subjects include students from all tracks, simply because the subject-matter applies across any and all covens, and History is one of them! Love the small world-building here!

           Given how we don’t see anything else of Willow and Gus past that scene in Belos’ treasury, I have to wonder… What if those two get captured, and only Luz can escape? Amidst King –and possibly Eda- being taken as well, Luz might be looking at a one-man operation here! Which just makes her all the more impressive… Like looking at her now, even if she DOES lose against Lilith; She’d still have been going toe-to-toe with the Head of the Emperor’s Coven, even if only briefly! Luz has come a far way away from where she started as just a powerless human, and has amassed FOUR glyphs; Light, Ice, Plant, and Fire!

           And BOY HOWDY is she good at them! Seriously, I bet she could’ve easily beaten Boscha in a Witch’s Duel if she wanted; Though it’s worth noting that according to Willow, Grudgby is apparently the only language she speaks… Given that shot of her room at the beginning, I have to wonder if that’s where her MAIN self-worth lies in! In the beginning Boscha acknowledges to herself that she’s hated, ‘so long as she is feared’; And her monologue low-key gives me, “Doesn’t know how to make friends so copes by putting herself above everybody else and overinflating her own self-importance under the impression that people are just secretly jealous!” vibes. (In some ways she’s like Grace from Infinity Train…)

That aside, I just get a sensation of pride from seeing how adept and adaptable Luz is, and the way she learned Fire from Boscha of all people –Which I called!- is both hilarious but goes to show what kind of a learner she is… I feel like Eda, like we’ve watched our kid grow and get stronger and I can’t WAIT to see what she pulls off next! Amidst her learning Magic and then defying the Coven System… you go Luz, YOU GO!

           And, it seems I’m not the only person who shares this sentiment! Even after Boscha’s bullying, we don’t see anybody beyond her gang make fun of Luz and co.! When Willow gets trashed poured on her, some students are watching, but… They seem kind of disturbed by it all? They’re not outright vouching on her behalf like Luz, possibly because Boscha is watching; But still! It is SO cathartic to see Willow being beloved by the entire school like that, even if she’s keeping her friend-circle to a select few; People LIKE her, and it’s what she deserves! Like Luz, I’m SO proud…!

           I’m still disappointed we didn’t get the names of Boscha’s other friends, but I really like their inclusion here! I liked how they all seemed rather uncomfortable with seeing Luz forfeit, only to be made Boscha’s target practice; And how Luz is so bright, bubbly, and infectiously-cheerful, spreading her good will to others! Like, this girl is TOO kind, and so loving… She has no bounds and I love how those other girls are even affected by Luz, genuinely enjoying her and wanting to be friends, alongside having Willow as a teammate! I have to wonder if they’ll ditch Boscha after this… Or at the very least, try to talk her down as friends of Boscha that she actually cares about and vice-versa (compared to Amity, who has always been cold towards Boscha, hence why her talking wouldn’t have made a difference)!

           Speaking of Amity… C’mon, girl. Your CRUSH is showing, the way you’re getting flustered, imagining seeing Luz in a ‘cute’ uniform and everything… Gus being utterly confused, but you can tell that the gears in Willow’s head are turning and honestly; She’s all for it, likely! I think this is the first time Amity has had an ACTUAL crush on someone she can talk to, instead of some distant figure or a fictional character! It’s so heartwarming seeing her navigate it, getting to actually deal with feelings like a kid is supposed to be allowed to do! And Luz being clueless… That, or she thinks Amity is into WILLOW, which makes a lot of sense too!

           (After all, Luz knows that her parents wouldn’t approve of her being Amity’s girlfriend… But Luz, you have NO idea how much she cares, she literally loves you more than she fears them! And Amity, knowing that her parents wouldn’t approve and struggling with this no doubt, but her love for Luz is really shining through over all of that!)

           To put it simply; Luz is FRIEND-shaped, she’s lovable, there’s no escaping liking her! Maybe Boscha will always be a bully, and I know one might call it ‘cliché’… But honestly I’d love to see Boscha eventually warm up to Luz and HER infectious positivity as well! Also, I saw that twist with the Rusty Smidge coming from a mile away, and I love how Luz low-key gets into a genuine rant over it! Although the loss doesn’t matter, as Luz’s team was clearly more adept and Boscha’s friends don’t seem interested in forcing Luz and her friends to do all of that other stuff…

           Anyhow, I love seeing Amity stand up for her friends, and when she says that her social life has improved because she’s with Luz, in spite of Boscha’s claims… I really CAN see her standing up to her parents, sometime later! I speculated a while back that depending on how her and Luz’s relationship in Enchanting Grom Fright goes, it’d really impact what Amity does later down the line, and I was right! But it IS worth noting that Amity may not yet know that Luz has to leave… King and Eda know, and the former mentioned this in front of Willow and Gus! It’s possible that Luz has laid out her plans to return every summer (and during winter break and whatnot), which would definitely lessen Amity’s angst by an infinite amount! And seeing as how she has instantaneous access to the Demon Realm, who’s to say she can’t pop in every day, after school! Sure she might not be actively living in the Owl House anymore, but otherwise…!

           On another note with Amity, I love her and Luz getting to geek out over The Good Witch Azura, and it’s funny to see the show confirm what I wondered about earlier; About Amity secretly making Azura references in public, under the knowledge that nobody would recognize them and realize she’s a nerd… But LUZ does now, and the two can bond! Also, Amity getting to have fun with Luz and co. at the end, being CARRIED by Luz, fully accepted into the home… I know you also have the library as a safe space Amity, but you’ve also got the Owl House as well! And it seems Hooty bears no grudges, either!

           Also, someone speculated recently that Amity has her goth-sense from Lilith… and given the implication that Lilith dyed her hair, I can REALLY SEE IT! I’m disappointed we didn’t get any interactions between the two… But the way it was set up, I feel like if Eda and Lilith were there they’d be too busy cheering on their kids respectively! Or not, we’ve seen them prioritize their feud in Covention… But back then Luz and Amity weren’t on the same team!

           Back to Amity, it’s interesting that she used to be on the Grudgby team, and was good at it, even being CAPTAIN when Boscha wasn’t; But then explicitly quit when she accidentally hurt some of her ‘friends’ merely once. Even if she never cared for them in the past, even if this was before she met Luz and learned to be kind and open again… She was ALWAYS someone who was self-conscious of her actions! And sure, the issue is that Amity is a LITTLE too self-conscious, constantly berating herself, holding herself accountable for every mistake… But regardless, it says a lot how guilty she feels to have hurt her teammates, even if it was an accident and a one-time incident that resulted in victory!

           I’ll probably do ANOTHER post about it later, but it says a lot; How Amity feels like she should step up as a Blight, and she DOES outshine the others… But because of that inherent guilt but also compassion, she actually quits Grudgby out of guilt! Which leads me to the idea that even if she tolerated Boscha and co., she wouldn’t have wanted to hurt them; Again, because she’s critical of herself, but also because Amity isn’t cruel and it may have reminded her of how she treated Willow! I have to respect and fear for Amity on quitting Grudgby after that…

           Again, I think she has the issue of being too overtly-critical of herself, and that it’s honestly THE issue that defines her problems; But on the other hand, I feel like Amity’s parents would’ve been displeased to see their star child quit the team, just for hurting some ‘lesser’ witches? I’m scared for what may have happened to Amity, but it also says a lot that she made a potentially defiant move simply because she didn’t want to hurt yet another friend…

           (That, or her parents wanted Amity to focus on Abominations and other studies, and coupled with Amity’s guilt, it was the perfect opportunity to get her off the team. Which would be sad, but not surprising.)

           Anyhow, I just think it’s interesting that Boscha and co. don’t ever seem to have any resentment towards Amity until recently. It’s possible Boscha DID dislike Amity up until she stepped down… But it makes me wonder if Boscha, like, looked up to Amity and wanted her approval and attention? Given how she’s always framed as following Amity… Perhaps Amity stepping down led to Boscha taking the spotlight, and so Boscha feels indebted towards Amity for her fame (and potential source of self-worth)?

           Last but DEFINITELY not least; Somebody else (I’m sorry I keep forgetting) alluded to how in Understanding Willow, there was the issue set up of Luz meaning the best for friends… But also sometimes invading their privacy, or overriding what they want, so she can live out her fantasies at the same time! And, like- A big part of her IS doing this for her friends, that much is clear… But Luz does have an issue sometimes with clearing fantasy from reality! It’s a more advanced lesson from the one she learned in Episode 2, continuing off of that, and I LOVE it!

           Like, I really do LOVE how Luz recognizes in this episode that even if a part of her is motivated in helping Willow, she’s also using this as a chance to live out her underdog Azura fantasies, and how Willow points this out to her… and Luz realizes that she’s right! She actively MAKES a change to her behavior, and makes up for it by fixing Willow’s hairclip and even forfeiting on Willow’s behalf and taking all the punishment… All because she doesn’t want her friend to be uncomfortable! Man, Luz is SO ridiculously kind, I keep saying she’s my favorite but she REALLY IS! What a lovable dork, no wonder Boscha and her friends are falling for her!

           (Also RIP Skara, you were the fourth one in a team of three. Although given how she helped carry Luz and Amity in the previous episode, amidst already having more screen time… I can see this as a way for the writers to give more of a spotlight to Boscha’s other friends, while subtly acknowledging that Skara likely has gotten over her bias towards Luz and the others. I wonder if Boscha also noticed and that’s why she was left out; That, or she’s the least-skilled? I dunno, but it was neat to see and I’ll overanalyze the moment regardless!)

           On a lesser note; Willow’s last name is Park, which is a Korean surname! Coupled with her VA’s ethnicity and Willow/Tati Gabrielle being listed amongst other Asian rep characters and VAs, and I think it’s safe to say that she’s the Boiling Isles equivalent to Asian; Which let me tell you, is VERY nice to see!

           Overall, this was an AMAZING episode! It was a heartwarming, feel-good episode that reaffirmed character relationships and love while still expanding on them, adding in more friends to the group… It was pretty much nothing but happy moments and revelations! Obviously things are setting up in the next two episodes to go REALLY crazy, especially with Luz potentially getting banned from Hexside for defying Lilith and Belos… But it’s clear to say that she’s left QUITE the good impression on the administration and students! And I can see some even vibing with Luz’s ideas even after she gets kicked out… Perhaps Luz will unknowingly start a rebellion of sorts?

[loveydoveyfrog]

fallingforyou pt.3

Sorry for not updating for a while but also I don’t think anyone is really reading this. If you are ily, let me know if I should keep going. 

If you spot any mistakes or ways in which I make this non inclusive please lmk!!

-            -               -              -              -                -

Pairing: Atsumu Miya x Reader  Words: 3.6k Warnings: None that i’m aware of Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4

It was Friday afternoon. For the past two days you’ve had the invitation you received on Wednesday replaying in your head. Sure, you didn’t have any specific details yet, but the plan was in motion, wasn’t it? You smiled at the prospect as you scanned the library shelves for a specific tome. The library was pleasantly quiet today. Your lessons were done for the day, but you stopped by the library for a book which wasn’t available online, much to your dismay. A46, A46, A46… you repeated to yourself, searching for the matching label on your desired book. You spotted it with a satisfied ah ha! And plucked it from the collection. Promptly checking out the book, you headed out to the small foyer preceding the library. Approaching the door, you spotted a familiar pair.

Bokuto was right by the door, eagerly discussing some topic with an equally ecstatic boy with a head full of mad ginger hair. The boy was extremely animated, gesticulating wildly as he rambled on about something. In comparison to this bundle of energy, Bokuto seemed tame, though more often than not, his intensity matched his, resulting in chaos. This chaos, however, was cut short when you caught Bokuto’s attention with a friendly wave as you passed the pair. His eyes brightened and stepped towards you, a thrilled grin on his face.

“Y/n! Hey!” he greeted you as if you were lifelong friends. You tried to match his enthusiasm with your hello, though that was hard to achieve on a slow Friday afternoon. Bokuto noticed his friend gawking at you upon hearing your name, much like he must have done when he first realised who you were. You were not oblivious to his stare either, offering him a small wave accompanied with a quiet hi. 

“Ah, this is Hinata, he’s on the volleyball team too,” Bokuto explained. The name rang a bell; you recalled his name being mentioned last Wednesday. You also remembered seeing him in the distance on the Monday morning when you first met Bokuto. You gave him a warm smile and extended your hand.

“Nice to meet you,” you said, happy to be getting familiar with the rest of the team. Hinata returned your smile tenfold, shaking your hand with a new found charge of energy. 

“He was right! You are pretty!” he said bluntly, stars in his eyes. You let out a surprised laugh and slipped your hand out of his, your eyes flicking between Hinata and Bokuto for any further explanation. You assumed ‘He’ referred to Atsumu, but Bokuto only scratched his neck with an awkward chuckle, knowing that should they let anything else slip, Atsumu would tear them to shreds. Well at least you had one thing confirmed, though you didn’t know how much credibility could be pinned to a statement like that. This should have been an obvious sign to you, but your thought process was blocked with doubt and denial. Yet, you couldn’t ignore the small flame of hope kindled in the pit of your chest.

“You should come to one of our games!” the ginger quipped, his excitement still bubbling. This lit a spark in Bokuto’s eyes.

“Oh yeah! Did Atsumu tell you any dates?” he inquired. You shook your head in response.

“No, I haven’t seen him since Wednesday,” you said. 

“We have a friendly game with our county rivals next Monday!” Hinata explained cheerfully. You nodded as if you understood what that meant; the words ‘friendly’ and ‘rivals’ didn’t make any sense to you when paired. Before Bokuto could follow up with any info, he felt a chilling presence behind him. Whipping around he saw the masked boy outside the window giving the group a stern glare. As if wordlessly communicating with the two boys, the pair spun around to face you apologetically.

“Sorry, y/n, we gotta go now,” explained Bokuto, dragging Hinata to the door, “see you on Monday?” he asked with an expectant look. You nodded and waved them goodbye, giving the mysterious masked boy a nervous glance. Bokuto saw your unease and laughed loudly. “That’s Sakusa by the way,” he said as he opened the door to step out into the cold Mid October air. The now named boy gave you a single nod and turned to walk away when he was sure the exuberant pair was following him to practice. You gave the group another wave goodbye as they walked past the window, Hinata bouncing along and returning your wave. 

Once they left your field of vision, you swiftly took out your phone to update your friend on the upcoming event, obviously including them in the plan. You couldn’t just go alone, you’d probably explode from the stress. Though who in their right mind gets stressed out about watching a volleyball game? You could already feel your stomach turning with anticipation. Your friend replied almost immediately. You smiled and tucked your phone away, as you’d much rather discuss this face to face. And so, you headed to your shared dorm. For the first time, you wanted to skip the weekend entirely. 

-  

Thankfully, the weekend seemed to zip past fast for you. Whilst your head was swimming in excitement, your stomach twisted with anxiety. You sat in your Monday morning class, hyper aware of the fact that the game was some time today, but you had no clue what time it was. Heck, you didn’t even know WHERE it was. You obviously haven’t seen Atsumu, or anyone else from the team for that matter, during the weekend, so you were completely lost as to where you were meant to go. Atsumu’s absence was something else your mind also stuck to; you haven’t seen or heard from him since Wednesday, did he even know you were coming today? What if he didn’t even want you there? As your mind was preoccupied with skipping over the possible outcomes that could play out today, you barely paid attention to the class for a second week in a row. You were once again torn out of your thoughts by your prodding friend, signalling that the class was over. 

You stepped outside your block, your eyes scanning the area for Atsumu, or even Bokuto, but you were left disappointed. Your friend watched you deflate. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t go…” you sighed, increasingly unsure about going to the match. Your friend gasped, as if betrayed.

“No way, y/n! We’re going, I don’t care what you say. I’ll drag you there myself if I have to,” they promised. You looked at them, clearly feeling defeated. 

“I don’t even know where it is. Or when it is. What if-” you began, only to be cut off by your friend’s shushing finger. 

“Stop. I bet it’s in the sports hall, where else would it be?” they explained. They sighed at your clueless expression. “It’s down the path behind our dorms. You know, the path to the left of the parking lot?” You blinked. Was it? You tried following the path in your mind, but it led you nowhere. You shrugged and set off in the direction of your dorms, not in the mood to stop by the cafe or library today. 

“Well either way, I don’t know what time to go,” you started again. “And I am not going to sit outside the hall all day like a freak,” you said before your friend could even suggest the idea. 

“I’m sure it’s online or something,” they offered. You hummed in response, taking out your phone to look anywhere that might give you the answer. As you scrolled, you didn’t look where you were going, and your friend didn’t give you any warning as you slammed into something solid and still, as if they placed themselves in your path deliberately (he did). You blinked up to look at your obstacle only to be met with a set of familiar, teasing eyes. 

“Ya gotta be more careful, Pumpkin,” he playfully advised, shaking his head with a click of his tongue. Your face burned with embarrassment and muttered out a bashful sorry. He laughed at the state you were in. He’d love to stick around to tease you some more, but he had to head to a meeting with his personal tutor. He turned to your amused friend who had a similar, mischievous glint in their eyes. They were definitely on the same brain waves. “Ya really gotta start keeping an eye on them! They could get seriously hurt one day!” He mockingly codesended your friend with his hands on his hips, knowing perfectly well that they didn’t warn you on purpose. They held back a laugh at this.

“Of course, it won’t happen again!” they returned with a similar, sarcastic tone, implying that it most definitely will happen again, even if they have to make it happen themselves. Atsumu seemed satisfied with this response and turned to leave, but not before locking eyes with you again.

“I’ll see ya later today, yeah?” he started walking away, taking your answer for granted. “Come at 7:30, ok?” he said, but it sounded more like a command than a question. He smiled when you confirmed with a nod, and with that, he was gone. Well, that answered a few things. You couldn’t help but smile to yourself.

 - 

In no less than 3 minutes, you were regretting your decision to not bring a jacket. You rubbed your forearms in an attempt to warm up, thanking the heavens that you were at least half way down the path already. You were too stubborn to turn around to get something warmer than your button up sweater, and besides, it was 7:25 already. Your friend seemed significantly cosier than you in their thick black crewneck. You told yourself that the sports hall was right behind your dorm block and you wouldn’t need it seeing as it was a quick walk away. Besides, you didn’t want to deal with the hassle of a large coat later on. Whilst, yes, you could see the lights from the sports hall already and you were nearly there, you couldn’t ignore the fact that the chill had a sharp bite tonight. 

You heard the squeaks of sneakers and random shouts as you heard the teams inside warming up for their upcoming game. You and your friend peered inside, blinking against the bright lights to look at the boys inside. The tone of the room didn’t appear to be as tense as you would have expected it to be; some boys were doing random warm ups and some even chatted casually with members of the opposite team. Hinata did say it would be a friendly game after all, so perhaps you shouldn’t be surprised. Little did you know how the atmosphere would shift once the first set was in motion. You quickly recognised Bokuto and Hinata, the pair absolutely buzzing with energy and excitement doing quick training exercises. Atsumu sensed your presence the second you appeared at the open door, but he let your eyes find him before his gaze drifted to catch your full attention. He gave you a big smile and happy wave. You wanted to wish him good luck, though you remembered that in theatre that superstitiously meant bad luck. Not knowing if the same rule applied to sport, you settled on a small wave in return. Not wanting to distract him or get him out of the zone, you followed your friend to find a seat. 

Soon enough the game began and you found yourself in the front row on the upper level of the bleachers. Despite it only being a friendly match, you were surprised by how many people from both universities attended the game. Atsumu was the first to serve, and you paid extra attention to stay silent, Sakusa’s warning still ringing clearly in your mind. The ball flew cleanly over the net and you let out a breath you didn’t realise you were holding. To be perfectly honest, you didn’t know much about the game, and it didn’t occur to you to maybe learn the rules beforehand. As a result you didn’t fully understand the etiquette either; you weren’t sure when to cheer and when to stay silent. You knew that some games required silence, such as golf or tennis, whilst others encouraged a constant roar of applause. You mimicked the general reactions of the rest of the crowd, and sooner or later you caught onto the general rhythm, even if your reactions were slightly subdued. Not to mention, everything was going so fast it was hard to track what was going on. At times, a play seemed to end in the blink of an eye.

You tracked Atsumu the best you could despite the almost overwhelming speed of the game. You noticed how much his demeanour changed whenever he got particularly invested. Even at this distance you could swear his eyes got darker, the light catching a dangerous glint whenever he saw the perfect opportunity to set up a winning spike. This tone would occasionally wash away when exchanging playful comments with his team mates, but you could tell by his body language how easily he shifted back into that dark, competitive mode. As you watched him, you couldn’t imagine being in his shoes. How could he play so well when he was being watched by so many people? You’d probably trip over your own legs from the pressure, and this wasn’t even a super important game. Unbeknownst to you, Atsumu felt a new kind of thrill knowing you were watching him, like a shock of electricity jolted through his whole system as he was ever  aware of your presence and watching eyes. Atsumu was beyond ecstatic to see your passion and energy when you got into the pace of the game, feeling every bit of encouragement spur him on. This effect seemed to seep through to the rest of the team, particularly Bokuto and Hinata. After securing the first set, he easily found you in the crowd, giving you an excited wave, almost as if seeking your approval. You laughed gleefully and gave him a round of applause. You were certain your praise was drowned out by the rest of the audience, but to Atsumu, your cheers rang out like a blessing. Little did you know, a handful of jealous and sharp glares were scattered among the crowd, all trained on you and the attention you were receiving. 

-

By the end of the game, you and your friend have gotten more than invested in the match, standing up to cheer and clap whenever your team scored a point. The game was tough but your team pulled through the final set with a slamming victory. The boys cried out, basking in their winning glow. Bokuto, Atsumu and Hinata exchanged multiple high fives and what appeared to be a special victorious handshake, meanwhile you and your friend held each other as you jumped and cheered for your team. Atsumu’s sparkling eyes found yours, his smile somehow even wider despite his already ecstatic state. He gave you a quick wave and held up one finger, as if asking you to wait before dashing into the changing rooms with the rest of the team. You barely had the time to register his request, but your brain clicked in time before he disappeared. 

You waited by the open doors, arms wrapped around yourself, shivering from the cold, biting wind. Though the excitement and rush of the game had kept you warm during the match, that heat was quickly dissipating as you stood in the open doors. Outside a small gathering of girls also waited, though at a distance, obnoxiously squealing about something you didn’t bother to catch. Your friend had left you alone, claiming they had a last minute assignment due that they completely forgot about. You wondered what assignment that might be, since you both took almost identical classes. Atsumu rushed out soon enough, pulling you out of your thoughts. He spotted you immediately and briskly walked over with an excited smile. You noticed his hair was still damp from the shower. 

“So?” He asked expectantly, “whatcha think?” He looked like a child ready for praise. His energy seeped into you, your smile blazing as you recalled that buzz of adrenaline you felt no less than a few minutes ago.

“It was SO COOL!” you expressed clenching your fists, eyes dazzled. “You were so fast!” Atsumu had a proud grin on his face. He knew he was good, but your words of affirmation were like honey. “I must admit, I didn’t quite understand what was going on, and everything was so fast that it was a bit hard to follow, but I got the hang of it! I think…” your confidence dwindled slightly by the time you got to the end of your statement. Atsumu blinked, then let out a laugh. 

“Of course, I shoulda explained the rules to ya first,” he said, rubbing the back of his head, acting as if he hadn’t hoped you’d be at least a bit confused. “If ya still don’t get anything I can explain later,” he offered. 

Later. That word seemed to hang in the air. You’d definitely like to see him later, no matter the circumstance. You nodded eagerly.

“Yes please,” you replied. 

The pair of you were oblivious to the fact that the rest of the team had emerged from the changing rooms. Bokuto and Hintata were witness to the scene, and they almost yelled out words of encouragement before the captain bonked them on the heads, keeping them quiet before they said anything stupid and scared you off; you looked like an enamoured deer in the headlights. The captain eyed the pair. He was aware of Atsumu’s improved performance today; he didn’t seem as distracted and mouthy, and hit every serve perfectly, except for the one which hit the net, but still dropped into the opposing court. Could you be the reason?

Atsumu took in your appearance almost tenderly. He noticed you were dressed in varsity colours. So cute, he thought to himself. Whilst doing so, he also noticed you were shivering. Without thinking, he took off his team jacket and extended it to you. He did it so fast he almost surprised himself, the smallest dusting of a blush present on his cheeks. Both of you blinked at each other, however yours was more due to confusion.

“Ya look cold,” he said uncharacteristically bluntly. He quickly recomposed himself and carried on. “Can’t have ya getting sick now, can we?” he explained. You only continued to look from the offered jacket to his seemingly calm eyes. 

“Are you sure? But what if you get sick? That’ll be way worse!” you babbled, “and your hair is still wet!” you continued, almost reaching out to confirm your statement. Atsumu only looked entertained by your blushing face and stream of excuses. 

“I’m fine, really, I’m still feeling hot from the game,” he lied expertly. You looked at him for a few more uncertain seconds. By your judgement, he seemed sincere.  

“If you say so,” you said, reluctantly taking the jacket. His eyes brightened immediately. You shrugged it on; it was too big for you, obviously, the sleeves ending just at your fingertips. The sight made Atsumu’s heart flutter in a new kind of way. So warm… you had to stop yourself from sighing in comfort, finally protected from the relentless cold. You were enveloped in a cool yet surprisingly floral scent. Must be his body wash… You blushed at the thought, snapping yourself out of it. “Thank you,” you stuttered out in your dazzled state. 

“No problem,” he replied, very pleased that his spontaneous decision paid off. 

“When do you want it back?” you questioned, playing with the ends of the sleeves absentmindedly. 

“Hmm,” he hummed, “how about you come by here on Thursday? I can teach you some stuff whilst we’re at it,” he suggested. You nodded in agreement, happy with the plan. Before you could respond, the coach called Atsumu with an impatient tone of voice. Atsumu looked at you with an apologetic smile. 

“So Thursday?” he asked for confirmation. 

“Thursday.” you agreed. And with that, Atsumu gave you his signature wave and headed back to the team, greeted by Bokuto and Hinata who immediately grabbed his entire body and shook him with a feral and fired up energy. 

You headed back to your dorm, holding the jacket closer to your body. You passed the group of girls, who’s discussion died down when you walked past, but you took no care to notice. You now wished that the walk back was longer, just so you could enjoy this moment a little more. You don’t know what made him take such a bold step. You barely knew one another. But you weren’t one to complain, and you had another day to look forward to. Much to your disappointment, your walk to the dorm block came to an end as you rounded the last curve of the path. 

You walked up to the door of your dorm room, slamming the door open with a wild fire of a blush on your face. Your friend looked up from their laptop, startled by your dramatic entrance. You wordlessly turned around, revealing Atsumu’s name on the jacket he gave you. Your friend flew out of their seat, screaming wildly as they shook you with the same rigor as Bokuto and Hinata when they shook Atsumu. You held onto your friend screamed, though with a tone that connoted confusion more than anything. 

*Meanwhile* 

Atsumu shivered and sniffled as he walked back to his dorm with Sakusa. The masked boy looked disapprovingly at his roommate, praying he didn’t catch a cold. 

“That was silly. Was it worth it?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Atsumu replied, shoving his hands in his pockets. “And yes it was.”

[thebisexualdogdad]

Malec, Clizzy and Jimon as parents AU

Co written with @inhumanshadows

· So Alec and Magnus have 2 boys (Rafael and Max), Simon and Jace only have 1 child (Stephen) And Clary and Izzy have 3 kids (twins Cora and Iris, Liam)

· Magnus and Alec are the first to start their family so their son's are the oldest, then Clary and Izzy's twin girls and their son is a year younger than Jace and Simon's son

· Malec's sons are personality wise just like their dads

· Very smart, very stubborn and very sassy

· Clary and Izzy's daughters are a force to be reckon with and they can kick the boy's asses any day of the week

· And they protect their little brother.

· Jace and Simon's son is just a little shit who's always playing pranks on people

· He loves pulling pranks. 

· All the clizzy kids can cook. (Isabelle finally admitting she’s not best around a kitchen)

· And the Lightwood-Bane boys are so freaking smart, Rafael is already on track to taking over as the head of the Institute from Alec when he's old enough

· Maryse has her hands full with all these grandkids and she spoils all of them

· Oh the sheer amount of spoiling from her alone

· Malec have the strictest household, Clizzy are in the healthy balance and Jimon have literally no rules

· Jimon has rules put in place by Clizzy and Malec

· Stephen is not afraid of Alec at all and Jace is all proud like that's my boy

· Alec has a realization of terror that Stephen is very much like Jace

· And Izzy thinks it's hilarious

· She has a framed picture of Alec’s face

· All the couples switch off taking care of the kids for date night once a week

· Jimon babysitting means sugar crashes. 

· Clizzy babysitting ends up with simple cooking lessons or art projects or more likely both.

· Malec babysitting means awesome bedtime stories with added magic cause of Uncle Magnus

· One time Stephen got into a little trouble with some graffiti he did on the subway walls so Clary called in retired cop Grandpa Luke to set him straight

· Clary is stern and responsible on the outside but after she pulls her nephew aside and gushes over the art

· And both Simon and Jace are like oh thank god we don't have to discipline him ourselves

· Clary: “bitch you thought....” and hands them parenting books

· Cora and Iris are fascinated by the mundane world and have snuck out a few times to go dance at clubs

· They end up at pandemonium a lot. And Uncle Magnus has the place spelled to let him know.

· Magnus may be the cool uncle but he does give them the ultimatum to tell their moms themselves before he does 

· Liam is 100% like Clary. Covered in paint or chalk pastels.

· The boy is a total artist prodigy

· Izzy is a bit worried when she thinks he hasn’t inherited much from her. But Liam is killer at darts and takes up archery. Uncle Alec sheds a tear

· Cora and Iris also take after Izzy in been highly knowledgeable with weapons which the boys are all terrified of

· They pray for whomever messes with them

· Rafael and Max are more inherently book smart than physically inept but Alec trains with them everyday

· Clizzy’s children all argue over possession of Izzy’s electrum whip.

· The amount of times any of the kids have broken into Magnus' apothecary supplies and accidently blew stuff up or drugged themselves

· He has to put non lethal magic to keep them out of it. Stephen isn’t the bravest but does his best. And Jace is so the overprotective parent

· Everyone is shocked at how protective Jace ended up being, even Simon is more relaxed than he is 

· "They're so fragile! Do you know how easy it is to break a kid?"

· Simon tells Stephen to keep an eye on Jace when he babysits and Simon has to work.

· Simon "babe please don't feed them pizza and ice cream again Alec's gonna be so mad"

· Birthday parties are always awesome.

· Even Alec enjoys them as well as family barbecues

· The kids get really spoiled by Grandma Jocelyn and Grandpa luke.

· Luke is the grill master at barbecues and Jocelyn slips every kid some money for candy and junk food

· Jocelyn teaches the kids about the old days of the shadowhunters.

· Rafael and Max speak multiple languages and will speak in another language around Stephens to make him mad

· He gets back at them by making references they don’t get

· Rafael and Max are just as clueless about pop culture as their dad's meanwhile Stephen lives off it

· When the kids are old enough to start dating Clizzy are excited, Malec are worried and Jimon are 50/50 

· The twins have a very open relationship with their moms so they can talk about the people they have crushes on

· Alec on the other hand is like oh no i didn't sign up for this

· Alec: “I didn’t sign up for emotions and relationship talk.”

· Magnus: “just wait till the sex talk

· "nope, Jace can handle that" 

· "you really want Jace to give our kids the sex talk?" 

· "well he gave me the talk when we were they're age"

· Magnus is like 😑 Or *looks into camera* “this boi...”

· there’s conflicts about the kids going to school in the mundane vs the shadow world

· Clary and Simon obviously want them to experience the mundane world like they did, Alec, Izzy and Jace want homeschool like they did and Magnus is like why do they need school again?

· This leads to immense arguing. Until Jocelyn to the rescue: “they go to mundane school and learn about the shadow world at night like Clary”

· You can’t tell me that Clizzy didn’t start their own inclusive fashion label

· The kids of course designed some of the fashion labels clothing and happily promote the label.

· Cora and Iris are some of the most popular kids at school so everyone wants to wear Clizzy's stuff because they are

· Liam is popular in his own circles. He’s one of the top artists at the school.

· Stephen is the “bad influence”

· Rafael and Max get straight A's and are at the top of their classes

· The others have subjects they excel in and ones they help each other in. Although Stephen while a smart kid has some focusing problems

· All the pta mom's have a crush on Jace

· They all end up going to colleges in New York to stay close to the Institute

· They all live in a shared loft which, thanks to magic fits them all. And they have to periodically make sure the other eats

· Of course Rafael make a chore chart which Stephen doesn't follow at all

· Rafael's like: “guys chore wheel!!”

·Stephen: “fuck ya chore wheel!”

· One night the twins come home from class and the boys had stolen their face masks and were having a spa night

· They’re like: “we should be mad... but they’re taking care of themselves...” 

· They then take the boys shopping for spa day supplies tailored to each of them. They all get together and relax after stressful weeks

· And all the couples gush about how cute their kids are

· So many baby pictures

· And they all embarrass the kids on social medias

· Sole reason any of the parents have social media

· Clary, Izzy and Simon all leave supportive and loving comments on the kids posts, Magnus leaves historical facts retaining to whatever they posted about, Alec leaves the randomest comments that no one understands and Jace just leave troll comments

· And clary’s Insta is full of candids of the kids and the fam

· Alec posts once every 6 months and it's usually of the kids training

· Magnus has a lot of photos with the kids and the chairman. As well as local visits to cat shelters

· Izzy's Insta has a theme and is organized and model style photos

· Simon posts very artsy hipster pictures of New York and inspirational quotes

· He also has pics of his boys at amusement parks. And the first big family trip to Disney was a sight

· Meanwhile Jace's insta is an actual disaster and doesn't even put captions on most his posts

· Simon and Stephen give Jace a crash course on insta

· One time Alec saw a beer bottle in a story and freaked out, Magnus had to stop him from going to the loft to scold them

· “Alec... they’re grown ups... as much as you don’t want to admit it.”

[qqueenofhades]

How was yellow journalism at the turn of the 19th century different then the fake news and media insanity we see today? Do you know? It seems like this has been going on for a really long time.

And you would be correct, because this has in fact been going on for a very long time (indeed, much further back than the 19th century) and is essentially the basic practice of history: figuring out how to understand, vet, classify, believe, and treat the stories that humans tell about themselves. Or as that musical that came out the other day put it: “you have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” We’re all just telling stories about things constantly, and we all want people to believe our story and treat it as the best version. Some of these stories are more fictional (and more harmful) than others, but it’s been going on for as long as there have been people.

(Or: “A Brief History of Fake News” follows below. If it doesn’t make sense, blame the fact that I had to rewrite half of it after Tumblr ate it.)

Globalization and the 24-hour news media has made it possible for “fake news” narratives to become transnational: in other words, no matter where you are in the world or what country you’re originally from, you can use some of the same content, techniques, arguments, or beliefs. For example, coronavirus deniers, no matter where they are in the world, can use the same stable of arguments: it’s fake, it’s a Chinese lab conspiracy, it’s a political stunt, it’s not that bad, you shouldn’t wear a mask, etc. They are drawing from the same essential pool of content and replicating the same themes in their particular contexts. Obviously, everyone has instant access to these narratives now and we are seeing the large-scale and damaging effects, because they can be amplified to a degree unheard-of in human history thanks to social media, TV, phones, etc, but also: it’s what humans have been doing since, well, forever.

A caveat I often have to give undergraduate students, when introducing them to medieval chronicle sources, is that they’re subjective -- that is, they’re more interested in promoting one individual, kingdom, religious viewpoint, version of events, etc, rather than aiming for an inclusive and “real” version of how things went by taking into account the experiences and arguments of all sides. This is obviously disingenuous, because it suggests that modern historians don’t do this, that they just objectively report “real facts” and there is no human bias or agenda at work in producing the result. This reflects the influence of Leopold von Ranke, a 19th-century German historian who is often viewed as the founder of the modern critical source-based historiographical method. He was a proponent of the idea that historians had to “describe the past as it actually happened,” i.e. they had to select the correct facts and build an objective narrative so that people could discover the One True Version of reality. Of course, you may realize that you.... can’t actually do that.

Historians still have to select which facts they report, how a “fact” is constructed to start with, what methodology they use, what conclusions they draw, what they focus on, what moral lessons or overall takeaways they present for their audience, etc. This reflects the 19th century’s effort to make history similar to hard science: they liked the idea that there was one single methodology that would reveal an empirically provable single ideal, that there was no human agency or bias that would influence this narrative, and the facts would magically assemble themselves into one central version that everyone would agree upon. Except this still isn’t and has never been the way it works. Historians, as human agents, mediate and manage and influence the facts they use and the conclusions they draw from sources, and it’s our job to figure out which ones are more valid and which ones are not. It’s a system of collective memory, and as I’ve said before, that collective memory is always particularly susceptible to what people (especially the rich and powerful people, who install the version of history that the rest of us learn) want to remember. This rarely includes their flaws, or things that show them to be wrong, or any challenge to their status.

Prior to the invention of film/TV/audiovisual methods in the 19th century (and since they didn’t become commercial or widespread until the 20th), everything we know about human history before that, we know because someone wrote it down. In the Western tradition, the ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides are often viewed as the “fathers” of history, because they deliberately assembled a curation of (allegedly) empirical facts in a constructed narrative with a self-stated historiographical purpose. They also make use of what, in fancy academic-speak, we might call the “topos of authority.” Every single historian has been aware that they have to provide some way for their reader to independently verify their content, or decide to believe what they’re saying against a competing version. In the olden days, they often did this by self-certifying: “I swear that everything I write here is true/I heard only from wise and trustworthy people/I spoke to an eyewitness of these events/I read a book by such-and-such authority.” But just because they SAY these things doesn’t mean they’re true, and no modern historian can take this at face value: they can’t just say, “well, my source said they were telling the truth, so that’s good enough for me.” They have to supplant with other accounts, they have to perform textual criticism and close reading, they have to find other pieces of evidence to compare. Because in a sense, all of history might be fake news. We just have to figure out which parts those are, and sometimes that’s not even the point, because it’s impossible.

For example: take the sixth-century Byzantine court historian Procopius, who wrote about the reigns of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian (r. 527-65) and Empress Theodora (r. 527-48). All of his official accounts of them are largely positive and flattering. But Procopius is probably best known for a work called the Secret History, where he rips into them as horrible awful people, relates lurid sexual scandals (especially about Theodora), dishes on all the bad things they did behind the scenes, so on and etc. This means that historians have been arguing ever since about which versions of Justinian and Theodora -- indeed, Procopius’s own versions of them -- we’re supposed to believe. If you want to read the Secret History, which you can do at the link above and which you should because it has amusing chapter titles like “Proving That Justinian and Theodora Were Actually Fiends in Human Form” and “How Justinian Killed a Trillion People,” you’ll come across this unrelentingly negative depiction of them, and... what? Is this a (somewhat) accurate account of the darker side of Justinian and Theodora’s bad behavior, written by an embittered Procopius after he fell out of royal favor? Is it just a total hatchet job? Was it written purely in case there was a palace coup, so Procopius could hand it to the new emperor and be like “see, I totally didn’t like those losers either, you can rely on me” and didn’t represent his actual views on the imperial couple at all? You can  already see the problem if the idea is, a la von Ranke, to prove “what really happened.” Almost nobody treats the Secret History as a straightforward factual document, but they also disagree about how truthful it is, why, for what reasons, and whether it is, in fact, even a History per se.

To return (belatedly) to the idea of newspapers and yellow journalism particularly. I would say that there was no more significant event in all of human history (well, maybe a few, but not many) than the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. It instantly and permanently transformed the way humans acquired, stored, recalled, and learned knowledge, and it lasted (and is still lasting) even in the face of smartphones and internet. Once books were no longer rare, labor-intensive, and expensive, their use exploded, it became standard practice to publish your research (by the sixteenth century, this was already happening), to learn from a book, to use other books in constructing your knowledge, and thus to encounter these narratives. The other architecture of a culture of public and general literacy developed along with it, until it was the primary medium in which all people, not just the rich and educated, learned about things. Newspapers and books and pamphlets and other printed material intensely drove the revolutions of the eighteenth century, both in America and in Europe. And obviously, these weren’t trying to tell “both sides of the story.” It became standard practice to publish your manifestos, your papers, your essays and arguments, all your supporting documents, and you were trying to convince people to your side for concrete political reasons.

So by the time you get to the 19th century, you’ve had literal CENTURIES of people deciding what they want to believe, what’s beneficial for them to believe, their viewpoint on the world, etc. Except as we discussed above re: our friend Leopold von Ranke, the 19th century develops the idea of “scientific objectivity.” Of course, in the social sciences, this often gets applied (pause for sighing) to support the idea that there is a real racial hierarchy, that western European white men are the best not because they said so, but because it’s science, it’s provable, it’s not just an opinion, It Is Trufax. Newspapers, books, and other printed material are widely available to everyone, and the 19th century is making claims to universal truth that can be discovered and applied in all disciplines, but which is just a continuation of the same subjective storytelling as before, now elevated to the status of Unimpeachable Truth. Yellow journalism isn’t really that different from what humans have always done in crafting a narrative that supports their purposes and the story they want to tell (or that they think will sell papers, because people have an endless appetite for secrets, scandals, and drama, especially if they think there is a conspiracy, real or fake, to hide it from them). They just have different tools for doing it. Of course in the 21st century, we now have journalistic ethics and a set of standards and codes of conduct for how you’re supposed to write these things, and we have respected publications that do all that, but we also still have tabloid media, when the relationship with the facts is... tenuous, at best. These institutions and tendencies never go away. They just evolve.

I realize that this was a long and rather dull ramble about the origins of historiography, but the point is this: “fake news” is literally as old as humanity and history itself, and humans have always been predisposed to select and believe the narrative that personally benefits them, fits with their ideology, makes sense of events in the way they feel is most compelling, and so on. It’s just now in the hyperconnected 21st century, “fake news” can go instantly around the globe and be exposed to anyone with an internet connection. This is not helped, as I talked about in my “death of expertise” ask, by a public forum where everybody’s contributions supposedly have to be treated “equally,” in the name of “fairness,” no matter whether someone knows anything about the topic or not. So the impact of this tendency to believe whatever the hell anyone wants has been magnified far past what has ever been the case in history before, because no matter what someone wrote or believed in the pre-internet era, they didn’t have the multi-million-exponential ability to reach absolutely everybody at once. Even print books have to be printed, circulated, purchased, read, etc, and that takes time and money, rather than just instantly having it appear on your smartphone. And we are obviously seeing the real-world consequences of that as a result.

[a-student-out-of-time]

Connections Review Part 3

Storm Maverick- Category 5

And we return! This will be the final part of the Connections Arc. I had initial plans for this to be 2 parts but sadly Maverick got too big and therefore he required his own part. This is by far the most divisive part of the Arc as everyone seems to be content with the time travel and harems, but as soon as Maverick ‘Motherfucker Hellspawn’ Storm got relevant it all went downhill for some. So, what do I think?

So, this is part is less ‘What is Maverick doing’ and more of what I think of Maverick. As you guys know, I am aware that Maverick is a lot older than people seem to recognize as he has his origins in Askthedespairkids. And in the context of that blog, Maverick is actually a pretty good character. You have to remember that the blog was saturated with OCs and a lot of them suffered from severe sueness or edgy syndrome. I will not make names and I will not say who made the worst OCs because that’s the easiest way to start an internet war, but the two big reasons I got bored of Askthedespairkids and quit reading is due to how poorly written a lot of these OCs were and they hogged a lot of the spotlight, and the canon characters ended up being regulated to the side-lines, which didn’t tickle my fancy at all. True, Maverick was very over the top and what he ultimately ended up doing to his former classmates in Class 75 is incredibly graphic and probably worse than some of the executions and murders canonically, but I would rather blame the general OPness of that blog. Now this is on the Mod’s terms Maverick can hopefully be hit with the nerf hammer a bit more so he isn’t as ridiculous as he was in Askthedespairkids. Furthermore, you can’t call Maverick a Villain Sue and not apply that to Junko Enoshima, because yeah, she is a Villain Sue, that’s why I don’t like her.

But things are different now. Maverick is standing on his own, against only a couple of other OCs and canon characters. Furthermore, the Mod’s writing skills have improved since the Askthedespairkids days so there’s a bit more pressure on Maverick. I think there are two issues I find with Maverick. The first is that I didn’t like him making a move during this arc. The arc was fine just focusing on time travel and the various harems and relationships of the characters, adding Storm just bloated the arc and made it much longer then needed, I feel like Maverick could have been revealed next arc and the next next arc would be the next arc we are currently getting into. This gives me serious Oncoming Storm vibes where an Arc is ridiculously long and a build up to a (hopefully) big payload. Now let me make this straight, this Arc is a million times better then Oncoming Storm, I don’t think any future Arc would be as bad as Oncoming Storm, as that was long and boring whereas the previous stuff was interesting, its just that adding Storm made the Arc very bloated and artificially extended the length of the arc making it tedious. Perhaps a forewarning to the Mod when they decide to include someone like Mikado and Junko into the story. The second issue with Maverick is…he’s basically a poor man’s Junko. At the moment I’m really struggling to find any meaningful differences between Maverick and Junko. With Juu being around we already have our big bad villain for the second Session and if I’m right, Session 3’s main villain is going to be Mikado and Session 4’s villain is Junko. I know Maverick is important to the backstories of Umeko and Kyoji, especially Kyoji, but aside from tying up those loose ends, what is the point of Maverick? Does he exist to give the Quantum Crew a practise run against Junko? And yes, his threat level is higher as he’s kidnapping an obscene amount of people and is able to block us Anons, but Maverick shouldn’t know we exist. I really, REALLLLY hope there’s a logical explanation for that because if Maverick is somehow able to sense the Anons and see how much of a threat we are, then the accusations of Maverick being a Villain Sue do hold water.

Overall, I will be more critical of Maverick now then I was back then because he enjoyed being next to poorly written characters but that safety net no longer exists and there’s too many glaring similarities between him and Junko. Now for his actions yeahhh…. I did warn you guys that Maverick is that special kind of evil but I don’t think it was until Nikei revealed about all his foster families committing suicide that it really hammered home. It’s basically vindication of what I said before. The stakes are a lot higher now because previously yes there was all the girls being kidnapped but it was just Tokyo and one demographic, but here lots of people all across Japan are vanishing and being brainwashed by Storm, so the pressure is on for the Quantum Crew to stop him. And some familiar names as well as Damian, Aiko’s pen pal and Hiroyuki, Kiroko’s younger brother have gone missing alongside Kanon. Kanon vanishing means I think Leon is going to be important next arc because we did promise Leon that Hajime & friends would help her and he’ll be willing to throw his lot in to save his cousin. And the pressure is even more on because Yuki’s been taken as well, having traded Mikado for Storm. This is going be big, especially for Sora as she’s been struggling with how much she cares for Yuki and this will be a real test to see where her allegiances lie. Especially as its unknown what happens if either Yoruko or Sora dies, because if Hajime dies, time rewinds and he uses a life but what if Yoruko and Sora get offed? They don’t have lifelines so what happens if Hajime resets, does Yoruko revert to her old self or does Sora get erased from existence as she isn’t supposed to be ‘born’ yet?

Kyoji also got some development as we see him bonding with Monaca and the newly reformed Kanade, and it’s a very ironic twist that the two characters who are often nicknamed as ‘Satan’ in the fandom are now more or less siblings. As good as a caretaker he is for them though, his recklessness and self-loathing issues are still there as it prevents him from seeing Miaya despite a meeting between them being sorely needed and thinking she won’t want to see him again even if that may not be the case, and wanting to deal with Storm ASAP despite legit concerns that it could be a trap. Thankfully Chisa and Chiaki were able to talk some sense into him and rein in some of his more destructive behaviour. Given how manipulative Storm is and we have not one but two characters who are willing to go off the handle, possibly three if Nikei jumps the gun again, its going to be a very intense arc coming up as not only do the Quantum Crew have to fight against Storm and his backers, but also keep some of the more hot-headed members of the team from being reckless. The new members of the Quantum Crew are pulling their weight though as Kazuichi offered insight into the tech that Storm could use, Chisa obviously helping to keep sanity in check and Ibuki had one of her lucid ideas and managed to suggest how Storm delivered all the VPN password codes to his victims in a way that isn’t unnoticeable which is just mailing them a vacation brochure. I’ll admit, this was really clever by the Mod as that went over my head when it was delivered, but I should know about Chekhov’s Gun, which is don’t include something if its not going to be relevant later. Lesson learnt and I need to be more alert to detail now.

And that concludes the Connections Arc as the QR Code was scanned and they saw the welcome message from Maverick and Kyoji cursing Storm’s name. And my ranking shall be a C-. It would be a solid C but the inclusion of Maverick bloating the arc out and the fact that now he’s not being propped up by terrible OCs means the writing flaws of the character are starting to become more apparent and his similarities with Junko makes me question if he is a necessary character in the story or not. I will withhold too much judgement until the next Arc concludes but I did enjoy the Arc until the Storm part so its not enough to drop into D territory so C- it is. Either way, I’ll be watching the next arc with great interest and hopefully my new method of cutting down on needless wavering is making this easier to read. See you once the Storm calms down! -Review Anon

//Once again, thank you for the reviews. And admittedly, yes, I do wish I’d held off on introducing Storm’s plans until the ongoing plot threads were resolved and everyone came home. I can see all this being the beginning of the current arc and it probably would’ve worked better. That’s definitely the biggest flaw I can see with the last arc, though it’s important for setting stuff up and my desire is not for preparations to drag out, but for us to get to what’s important.

//After the Oncoming Storm, I’m wary of writing any more long preparation arcs, especially when I’m stuck in a long depressive episode ^^;

//I’ve never claimed to be a perfect writer or even a good one, but I’ve tried to improve on my writing since my early days. I had very little idea of what I was doing back then and it really does show. I only ask that you all go into the next arc with an open mind and not let past experiences of bad writing color your opinions, which I’m sure you won’t.

//I won’t spoil anything, but this upcoming arc has what’s probably my hardest decision as a writer to date and I’ve decided to committed to it, even if it hurts to think about. 

//I do hope you look forward to what comes next ^^

[babyfloors]

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, Chapter 2: Infrastructure, with words!

July 21, 12021

books

,

Coop

4Freedoms

,

health

,

mywritings

,

PublicDomainInfrastructure

,

writing

This post starts the rough draft of  Chapter 2 of my non-fiction WiP, Baby Acres.  

This chapter will have about 2500 words, (hopefully educational words!!)  500 of which have already been written as the Introduction, but will quite likely have to be thrown out and refitted with the new evolution of the book.  We shall see.

And  again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind.  

Chapter Two:

( Chapter 2’s outline was last week…)

Chapter 2 Introduction:

The first stage of this project involves building empathy, and bringing each one of us to see each one of our fellow human beings as … a human being. Each one meriting humane treatment, and human dignity.

That empathy building phase was Phase 0 (yes, I’m a computer scientist by first training, so I start with 0…).  Phase I is meant to go for fifteen years, potentially from the years 2022 to 2037, building a movement to strengthen some of our most crucial and obviously key pieces of our social infrastructure, which are in the public domain. During this period, one of the ways that we can both build conceptual support and also literally build our physical infrastructure that needs support, is by borrowing an idea from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which worked during the Great Depression to create jobs while educating young (white) men at the same time. What we want to do now, is to educate, facilitate service, and build a community-service frame of reference, while also upgrading our public infrastructure, just as FDR did in the 1930’s via his program.

Bringing back an updated version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), or Roosevelt’s Tree Army, as it was popularly known, could provide a stepping stone between the empathy- building work that must always be on-going, and the support-building work of bringing our society to a consensus on the needed support for the most basic of our public social infrastructure institutions, like Public Libraries, Public Transportation, Public Education (especially in the financial and legal areas, where so many consumers fall prey to financial predators, and end up in debt due to lack of knowledge),  and Public Health. These four systems under gird our entire societal structure, and need support perhaps the most urgently, in return for which we potentially get the most payback for all members of society. While we do the difficult work of building the necessary consensus to get there from here, a simpler step might be to bring back some form of the CCC, updated to be far more inclusive, and used as both a means of providing employment to young people, and also to educate them, much like the Gap Year in Europe.

But instead of having our new high school graduates backpack around the country, they could be sent to work in urban public library branches, light-rail and subway/Metro stations, local urban public schools, or inner city health clinics. As they rotate from one part of the country to another, say, monthly, they learn first-hand of the conditions in places they are not from and have not lived, while serving communities they have never met, working alongside peers from different walks of life, and seeing a side of their native land that they did not grow up with. In short, learning the realities, and different perspectives, of this large and diverse nation of ours.

— (Next Wednesday: Chapter 2, section I …)

I’m considering this Rough Draft as the block of clay from which my book will eventually emerge, obviously, and some ideas for phases III and IV are still becoming more  fixed in my mind as I write, so the final version will likely look pretty different from this Rough Draft, and will need updating once I get to the very end.

And once again, yeayyy( !!)with regard to audience, I may have at least a couple of comps:  Walden Two meets The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective (by Dr.s Jean and Edgar Cahn, 1964).  I know that lots of people consider Skinner’s writing to be stilted, but I like the tilt of most reviewers, in that the idea is that a community should keep trying policies that members agree upon until they find what works for all of them.

As for genre, I’m still wondering:  Non-fiction,   System Change, Causes, maybe even Inspirational, but I doubt it.

Last week’s installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Consider some ideas you may have on how our society can solve the problem infrastructure upgrades in the next 15 years,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19: 1. #PublicLibraries, 2. #ProBono legal aid and Education, 3. #UniversalHealthCare, and 4. good #publictransport Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GoodReads button: ,

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plan Book)!

and my

Babylon 5 review posts

, if you like Science Fiction, and a proposed

Vision

on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…  

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

(Day 1 … Day 5)

Stayed on Freedom’s Call (free copies at: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…) includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the GoodReads page.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.