#somehow he still wanted to become bff with this disaster

[themonkeycabal]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ep 2

Spoilers!

Last week Bucky was a terrible patient and his new BFF is the father of a guy he killed while he was the Winter Soldier (so super healthy), Sam gave up Cap's shield and returned home to try to help salvage the family business (that went poorly), and some — I guess he must be from the Defense Department — dick made a big speech about needing heroes and he gave the shield to some goober (John Walker, but he'll always be Goober to me) in a Cap suit who strongly reminded me of Langly from the Lone Gunmen. (I'm not familiar with the actor, so I don't know what he actually looks like, but the helmet and the camera angle did him no favors at all, I'm just saying. Super punchable.)

Oh, and Sam has an adorable little minion named Lt. Torres who is getting himself into trouble with some weirdass terrorist group who like to slap red handprints on everything.

Zemo's out there lurking, too, but we haven't seen him yet.

I'm still slightly dazed that this show is real and we get to watch it.

Ep2: The Star-Spangled Man

Weird slow-mo opening shot of a close up of somebody unzipping their jacket. I mean. Okay. (Ohhh, it's the garment bag the Cap suit is in.)

And then we're on to Goober, he's wearing BDUs and he's in a football locker room (maybe high school?), fondling the lockers. He peels a name sticker off one, and underneath it says JW 10. A woman comes in and asks if he's reliving his glory days. They yada yada I don't care.

Now I guess they're talking about him becoming Captain America. "Everybody in the world expects me to be … something. And I don't want to fail them." She tells him to be himself and that they're gonna love him. Well, I've already decided he's a goober. I mean, he might not be, but he's got a hill to climb with me.

He spends a few seconds trying out his Captain America voice, then his buddy Hoskins comes in to talk him through it and give us some exposition. "Two weeks ago we were prepping for a special ops mission to Chile and now this."

Goober whines about how it's been handshakes and meetings and senators and whatnot and he just wants to get to it. But his buddy is all, that's part of the job man. Gotta glad-hand, too. You big baby (he doesn't say that part).

"You can't just punch your way out of problems anymore." Well, I mean, I think that was Steve's MO, mostly. That and 'hit it with the shield until it stops moving'.

Nu Cap is making a big showy thing at a rally at his old high school (Custer's Grove HS, GA) stadium for Good Morning America. He's still looking punchable in that helmet. But, they do bring out a kicking marching band, so there's that. It's a boring GMA interview. I don't care.

"John Walker, first person in American history to receive three Medals of Honor. Ran RS-One missions in counter-terrorism and hostage rescue. The government did a study of your body at MIT and you tested off the charts in every measurable category — speed, endurance, intelligence." (I legit laughed out loud. Lookit Captain Gary Stu over here)

Blah blah super humble yada yada. Just wants to make people feel safe, he has sooooo much respect for Steve Rogers, yada. Look, he could be a great guy and maybe I'll warm to him. But not yet!

Back in Brooklyn, Bucky's watching this and his face is all "No! No? What the shit is this? NO! NO? WHU NO?! No." Also, Bucky, I know you have a couch, why are you sitting on the floor? Love yourself just a little bit, dude.

In Louisiana Sam is in an Air Force hanger, staring at a garish 'Cap is Back' poster and looking a little queasy. Rhodey told you, subtly and not really directly, to not give up the shield, buddy. I hope when Bucky gets there the first thing he says is "He gave the shield to *you*, dummy. Not Captain Gary Poppins over there."

Torres says Nu Cap seems like a good guy. Sam's like, uh-huh, sure, so anyway. There's another "cap is back" poster and Sam's like 'ugh'. And they're off to Munich. I guess for the Flag Bros. Hey! There's Bucky! Finally, they're in the same scene. It's been nearly sixty minutes of screen time to get to this moment, Marvel. No, I wasn't counting.

"Shouldn't have given up the shield." lol. Hi Bucky! You forgot to call him a dummy.

Sam's like I haven't got time for this. And Bucky points to the umpteenth Cap is Back poster (seriously? Good lord.) "You didn't know that was going to happen?"

  Sam did not know that was going to happen. "You think it didn't break my heart to see them march him out there and call him the new Captain America?"

Bucky will not let this go. "You had no right to give up the shield, Sam." You tell him!

But, Sam's kind of not in the mood. Look, I get it Sam, you didn't feel equal to the shield, but Steve gave it to you because he knows, my dude. Trust him. Come on.

But, he's feeling very raw about this, right now. "This is what you're not gonna do. You're not gonna come here in your overextended life and tell me about my rights." Well, ouch. 

He says he's got bigger things to worry about, but that seems unpossible to Bucky "What could be bigger than this?" Terrorist douchebags wearing funny masks in Eastern and Central Europe. Well, fine, Sam; be all puts-things-in-perspective guy.

Redwing traced the far-too-strong maybe leader to a place in Munich. For some reason Bucky does not have good feelings about Redwing. Uh-oh, Bucky, you're going to extra hurt Sam's feelings.

Oh lol, it's the "Big Three" convo. "What big three?" "Androids, aliens, and wizards." Still funny. Sam's so proud of himself.

"I'm coming with you." "No, you're not." Bucky went with him.

Did they glare at each other the whole way to Munich? lol. I love this show so much already.

"Enjoy the ride, Buck." "No, you can't call me that." "Why not? That's what Steve called you." "Steve knew me longer. And Steve had a plan." lol, Steve Rogers never had a plan a day in his life.

Bucky wants a chute, but Torres who wisely stayed out of all of that, is like we're way too low for a chute. "I don't need it anyway." Then Bucky drama school bitch rips off the left sleeve of his jacket and jumps out while yelling like the dumbass he is. And he hits every branch of the dumbass tree on his way to the ground.

"I have all of that on camera, you know that right?" And Redwing zooms by to hovers over Bucky. So, maybe it's not a mystery why he doesn't like Redwing. lol.

Bucky and Sam meet up at a dilapidated warehouse in the middle of the forest. Only good things ever happen in dilapidated warehouses in forests. Like extra shady weapons smuggling. Bucky's gonna stalk after them. Sam messes with him a bit.

"Look at you all stealthy. A little time in Wakanda and you come out White Panther." lol. ilu Sam. "It's actually White Wolf." "Huh?" heh. What he won’t tell you, Sam, is that he earned the name from the kids near his goat farm who liked to spy on and giggle at the grumpy growly white guy. 

"Hello. How are you?" "Great. What did I miss?" They're a delightful disaster! And they bicker and bicker and ahh, finally.

Also the people they're stalking are hella strong. And then these two idiots knock into an old bit of metal and make some noise. The shady people stop for a mo' but then move on. Sam scans one of the trucks the shady folks were loading (there are two), there's a figure sitting in the back. "There's an eighth person. I think they have a hostage." And Bucky zooms off! And Sam after him.

Bucky jumps onto the lead truck and then just like wanders around inside. I'm pretty sure the truck behind you noticed you, dummy. Anyway, it's loaded with crates marked "keep frozen." "They're stealing medicine. Vaccines." Those utter bastards. He spots a girl peeking out between containers. "Hi." lol, idiot.

He thinks it's the hostage, but I'm waiting for her to kick his butt out the door. She's not, you know, tied up in anyway. So … Also, again, does the second truck not have a radio to the first truck? Like was the driver texting while Bucky climbed up the back of the truck right in front of him? Now he's strangely incurious about the open door?

And, then she smiles at him and kicks him out the door, he hits the windshield of the second truck (maybe they've finally noticed you, Bucky!) and she puts on a mask with a red handprint. As you do. Two guys on the roof of truck 2, pull Bucky up ready to beat him silly.

Super strong girl, jumps over to truck two and punches Bucky some more. The Redwing zooms over and she jumps up, grabs it, and smashes it over her knee.

"I always wanted to do that," Bucky says, sad he didn't get the chance.

Sam shows up, there are more guys on the roof of the other truck. And there's fighting and fighting and then Sam is pinned down and the bad guy gets plonked with the shield and here comes Captain Poppins dropping down out of a helicopter. What timing. The CGI and green screen for this whole sequence are pretty dire. I'm sorry but it's true.

Captain Poppins is joined by his buddy Hoskins. "Sam. John Walker, Captain America." They know who you are, goober. Though, pausing to introduce yourself in the middle of the fight is a very Steve Rogers move, so points for that, Goober.

Lol, the look on Bucky's face when he catches the shield and Goober takes it from him. He's like 'rule two, rule two, rule two, remember rule two.'

Lots of fighting lots of fighting. Bucky is knocked off the side of the truck, he digs in and sort of zippers down the side, and then hangs off the bottom, his head inches from a tire, clinging to the underside by his vibranium arm. A bad guy stomps on it. Um, it's vibranium, guy. Like … though, somehow it works? and Bucky's arm sort of flops onto the road, sending up sparks. Sam does a neat little move, flies under the two trucks, grabbing Bucky as he goes, and knocking them both free.  None of that worked out particularly well, guys.

"Could have used that shield," Bucky says helpfully. lol. "Those were all super soldiers, Sam." Well, bummer.

Back on the trucks, I think Hoskins is in trouble. Cap Goober is pulling himself back up. Hoskins is thrown from the truck, but Cap Goober tosses the shield and Hoskins lands on that. Now Goober squares off against super soldier chick. He does not fare well. And he's thrown from the truck to land on the windshield of a following car. You know, if I'm driving down the road and I see people fighting on a pair of big rigs, I don't follow close. You know what I'm saying? I maybe pull over and let them get way far away from me. Anyway, sorry for your body damage.

Bucky and Sam walk along the road, a pair of sad sad heroes who did not have a plan.

"I'm sorry about Redwing." "No, you're not."

Cap Goober turns up in a sorry looking vehicle of some sort. "So that didn't go as planned." Bucky and Sam keep walking. lol

So Goober's vehicle keeps pace with the disaster duo. "We're pretty sure it's one of the Big Three."

Bucky: "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS WIZARDS!" That's his hill, he'll die on it.

Since it's super soldiers, and that's bad news, Cap Goober thinks they should work together. Sam's quiet but not thrilled. Bucky is not quiet. "Just 'cause you carry that shield, it doesn't mean you're Captain America."

Cap Goober has apparently jumped on a grenade 4 times. "It's a thing I do with my helmet. It's reinforced." Okay, I laughed.

He persuades them to ride with him, because it's like 20 miles to the airport. It's probably for the best, since I'm pretty sure they might try to strangle each other in five.

"They (Flag Haters Anonymous) say their mission is to get things back to the way they were during the blip." This group's goals are so hazy and weird.

oh, lol. Sam wanted to know how they tracked the Flag Smashers, and Hoskins is like, um, actually, we tracked redwing. "It's not exactly hacking," Captain Goober explains, "it's government property. We're kind of the government." Not winning any points, Goober.

Bucky's just glaring at him.  "Does he always just stare like that?" lol

We get a bit of exposition about a group called the GRC, the Global Repatriation Council, which is tasked with helping the previously blipped reintegrate. Sam's like, okay, and? Hoskins explains "they provide the resources, and we keep things stable." The GRC sounds even more make believe than super soldiers, to be honest. But, whatever. Not here to analyze the bizarre and unlikely geopolitics of the MCU. Cap Goober makes a pitch for Sam and Bucky to sign up but Bucky is very firm about his "No".

Hoskins insists he has mad respect for them, but they were getting their asses kicked until he and goober showed up. Um, Hoskins, my dude, you also got your ass kicked.

Bucky stares for a second. "Who are you?" "Lamar Hoskins." Sam insists he needs more than that. "I'm Battlestar. John's partner."

Bucky says Mm hmm. Stop the car. And he's gone.

Cap Goober gives a pitch to Sam about how he's not trying to be Steve, or replace him, he's just trying to do his best and be the best Captain America he can, and it'd be great to have Cap's 'wingmen' on his side. I sense sincerity, but you're still punchable, goober. And Sam isn't buying it either. He shakes his head and laughs bitterly, "It's always that last line." He hops out and follows Bucky.

Elsewhere, the super terrorists have reached a safe house with a way too chatty dude who is trying to make them at home in his dicey looking shopfront. He rattles on about how they're becoming legends and the people love them because they're pushing back! Against … the GRC? I guess?

Super soldier girl (Karli) gets a hate text. "You took what is mine. I'm going to find you and kill you." Well, sleep tight, sister!

One of the other guys has already logged into a computer system and he starts hacking and wiping their info off the internets and interpol, I guess.

"Six months ago would you have imagined people supporting a cause like this?" I'm still very unclear on what your cause is.

Maybe I'm overthinking the silly superhero universe, but I can't imagine the blip world was wonderful. You're missing half the people. So half of everybody who'd do various jobs. So half of the knowledge base of humanity on earth. Half of the experience base of humanity on earth. Half of the farmers, half of the engineers, half of the doctors, half of the people who maintain any system you can imagine, half of the people who build those systems, half of the teachers, half of the factory workers, half of the grandparents who pass down stories and community knowledge, half of the animals, half of the fish, half of the insects and so half of the plants. Ecosystems could easily collapse. Certainly infrastructure did, with half of the people needed to maintain it gone. Cities would have started to crumble, since half of the sources of goods, food, and services were gone. (we did have something of a real-world equivalent in Europe during the Black Death. Things were not nice for quite a long while after the worst years of the plague.)

I'm sure there would be areas that did better than others. But, half of any government gone, half of any police, half of any military. There would be power vacuums and probably shitheads to fill them. I don't see any particular utopia in a blip-ified world.

And that's not even taking into account the psychological damage to all the unblipped. The pure existential horror of half of everything suddenly gone.

But, that aside. I like genuinely do not know what they're trying to achieve.  

"We're not playing no more," announces Karli. "We can't let the same assholes who were put back in power after the Blip win." Literally do not know what that means. "The GRC care more about the people who came back than the ones who never left." I mean … isn't that literally what they're for? "We got a glimpse of how things could be." Chaotic and apocalyptic? In fairness, I guess if you could carve out your own thing in that, and maybe it could even be good, then you'd be bitter if everybody came back all of a sudden and messed that up. I'm sure the power struggles are real.

"One world! One people!" Okaly-dokaly. Fascinated to see how you eight will achieve that.

Bucky's brooding on a plane, Sam's trying to sleep but the brooding is too much to ignore.

"You alright?" "Let's take the shield, Sam. Let's take the shield and do this ourselves." He's using his almost scary Winter Soldier voice. And staring into the void. Sam, call his doctor. She needs to remind him of rules one and two. "We can't just run up on a man, beat him up, and take it." Good point, Sam. For real, call Bucky's doctor. He's going to the scary illegal place.

"Do you remember what happened the last time we stole it?" "Maybe." lol such a petulant little grumpus you are, Bucky. "I'll help you in case you forgot. Sharon was branded an enemy of the state and Steve and I were on the run for two years." Not everybody was lucky enough to have a goat farm during all that, Bucky. That's what the man's saying.

"We just got our ass handed to us by super soldiers and we got nothing." "That's not entirely true," Bucky says mysteriously. And he jumps down off his brooding crate to go sit next to Sam. "There is someone that you should meet."

Baltimore, Maryland

Sam has a cute aside with a neighborhood kid, then Bucky leads him up to a house that has seen better days. Somebody answers the door and Bucky says they're there to see Isaiah. But, the young guy who answers the door insists there's no Isaiah there. He's not very welcoming. Bucky says "tell him the guy from the bar in Goyang is here." The things you got up to, Bucky. I do wonder. "We had a skirmish during the Korean war." oh, lol. I mean, I'm sure it's a horrible story, but lol, Bucky you disaster.

Oh hey, Carl Lumbly! Gosh, I haven't seen him in an age. I almost didn't recognize him.

"He was a hero. One of the ones that Hydra feared the most. Like Steve. We met in '51." "If by met, you mean I whupped your ass, then, yeah." lol

Isaiah says he took part of Bucky's arm in Goyang and he just wanted to see if it grew back. And if Bucky was there to kill him. Bucky says he's not a killer anymore.

"You think you can wake up one day and decide who you wanna be?" Well, sure. "It doesn't work like that." Oh, but it must, or else what's the point? Isaiah has a lot of reasons to be bitter, though. 

"Isaiah, the reason we're here, is because there's more of you and me out there. And we need to know how."

This does not please Isaiah, who doesn't want to talk and throws a can of sardines (or something, I don't know what that was) through the wall. Old but still super solidery.

"You know what they did to me for being a hero? They put my ass in jail for 30 years." Um, wow. "People running tests, taking my blood, coming into my cell. Even your people weren't done with me." Well, that's deeply uncool. He very much wants his unwelcome guests to GFO, and I can't say I blame him.  

Sam is super pissed once they get out onto the street. "Why didn't you tell me about Isaiah?" Bucky doesn't answer. "I asked you a question, Bucky." Yikes.

And no, Steve never knew, because Bucky never told him. "So you're telling me there was a black super soldier decades ago and nobody knew about it?" I guess so.

And we're interrupted by a bizarre random encounter with presumably racist cops. They stop them in the street, get weird about asking for ID, and then ask Bucky, "is this guy bothering you?" And Bucky's like what in the actual fuck, he looks like a high school chem teacher and I look like the muscle for a loan shark, "no he's not bothering me. Do you know who he is?" Oh to be the Winter Soldier again for just a moment, eh? Anyway, one of the dipshits recognizes Sam and they get all dipshitty apologetic. "oh, Mr. Wilson, we're so sorry."

Oh, lol, they're going to arrest Bucky. There's a warrant out for him, because he missed his therapy session. I told somebody to call his therapist! I want to know which of those dipshits ran Sam and Bucky for wants. Because that’s not automatic or some shit, somebody’s got to call it in. 

Sam's like 'well that took a weird turn.'

Sam and Dr Raynor meet at whatever facility they’re holding Bucky. "Thanks for getting him out." "That was not me," the doctor assures him. Nope, it was Captain Goober, who greets the doctor with a wave. "Christina! It's great to see you again." lol. And Sam's day gets worse.

"I heard you were working with Bucky and thought I'd step in. Bucky's not going to be working on a strict schedule any longer." 

She's like, uh what? Says who? And he points at himself. okay, again, lol. Though, it’s weird to me how he insists on calling Bucky ‘Bucky’, like they’re buddies. They’re not buddies. Bucky's going to punch him in the face. 

"He's too valuable an asset to have him tied up. So just do whatever you've got to do with him, then send him off to me." Will Bucky turn around and go right back into his holding cell?

Dr's not going to let him. "James, condition of your release, session now. You too, Sam." "That's okay. I'll be out here with…" "That wasn't a request." Poor Sam. He has had THE WORST DAY.

I love Bucky slouching against the sergeant's desk all surly, like a 16 year old who got busted for boosting his grandmother's car.

Dr Raynor settles them all in what I assume is an interrogation room. She tells Bucky she just wants to help him get over whatever is eating at him. I guess she figures Sam could help with that, too?

"We're going to do an exercise. It's something I use with couples when they are trying to figure out what kind of life they want to build together." lol. but of course. a million fic writers deliriously rush to their keyboards.  

"Are you familiar with the miracle question?" "Absolutely not." "Of course not." heh "Okay, it goes like this. Suppose that while you're sleeping, a miracle occurs. When you wake up, what is something that you would like to see that would make your life better?"

Bucky says his miracle would be Sam talking less. Sam says that's what he was going to say. Dr Raynor is writing fic of her own. "You guys are leaving me no choice. It's time for the soul-gazing exercise." This is the weirdest therapy session ever.

Bucky is very on board. Sam's like 'what have you done? staring? that's his thing!'

"Let's do it. Let's stare. This is a good exercise. Thanks, doc." Bucky, you little asshole. lol

How many takes to do this scene? I can tell they're trying not to laugh. "Take 57. It's 1:30 am, guys. Please, can we get it this time?"

"Wait, what are you doing? Are you having a staring contest?" What about these two men's attitudes walking into the room suggested they were going to be at all mature about this, Doc?

"James, why does Sam aggravate you? And don't say something childish." She knows you too well, Buck.

Oh, Bucky. He wants to know why Sam gave up the shield, because Steve believed in him, gave him the shield for a reason. But, maybe Steve was wrong about Sam and if he was wrong about Sam, then he was wrong about Bucky.

Sam, has his reasons. He says maybe Bucky and Steve can't understand, but he wants to know if Bucky can accept that he did what he thought was right. Poor Sam.

And Sam's had enough. He says they've got bigger shit going on and he'll put whatever this issue is aside for now, and they'll go take care of that, and then he and Bucky can never see each other again. "Thanks doc, for making it weird. I feel much better."

She's like, well shit.

Bucky leaves as well, but she stops him. "I know that look. What's wrong?" "What was rule two again?" "Don't hurt anyone." "Goodbye, doc."

I think maybe she miscalculated a tiny bit.

"I feel better," Sam grumbles. "I feel awful," Bucky sighs.

And down the street Captain Goober and Hoskins starts chirping a police siren at them and they wave them over. "Gentlemen!" I really want Bucky to punch him just once.

Goober wants them to join forces. They're tracking Karli through various displaced communities in Europe.  She's the flag stompers leader, I guess? She's like … 16. DOUBT.

Anyway, she's do-goodering by stealing medicine and taking it to the displaced camps. I'm confused. So, post-blip, people who'd not blipped are now suddenly being displaced? I thought the displaced where the blipped trying to reintegrate. But, she was mad at the GRC for only caring about the blipped not the unblipped (which, again is the GRC's raison d'être, so yes?). I feel like I'm missing something.

Bucky snarks at Goober a bit. He's not a fan at all. "Things are really intense for you, aren't they, Walker?" 

Sam's like okay, let's all simmer down. "It is imperative that we find them and stop them." But, also, though, he and Bucky are free agents, so they're more flexible than mister "i'm the government" over there.

Captain Goober doesn't care for that. "Word of advice, then. Stay the hell out of my way." Don't push your luck, goober.

Bratislava, Slovakia

Flag Stompers loading a small plane. Uh oh, they've been found out! Karli asks how much time they have. "None. It's the Power Broker's men." The Power Broker. See, that's the kind of jackassery you get in a Blip scenario. That's what I'm talking about. Did you steal super soldier serum from this guy, Karli? Hmmm? One noble Flag Stomper offers to stay behind and hold them off while they make their escape, for One World! One People! Dream big, kid.

He knocks down a power pole to block the road but then he runs at the badder guys? And gets himself shot a zillionty times. I … he'd already blocked the road? Why not just … you know what? Never mind.

Back to Bucky and Sam and Bucky with an idea that might just be worse than the self-sacrificing Flag Stomper's run-at-the-badder-guys-for-great-justice idea. He suggests that perhaps somebody who knows all of Hydra's secrets can give them the answers they need. 

"So you're just going to go sit in a room with this guy?" "Ye-… yes," Bucky says, absolutely oozing with confidence.

Off to see Zemo! I'm sure that will go terribly! Can't wait!

And Credits!

Not gonna lie. I'm not sure how I feel about this episode. It felt a little disjointed.

I don't get the Flag Munchers, but I'm thinking they're just a red herring. Because they're basically utopian idealist twelve-year olds with nice but vague goals and vague iffy means to achieve those goals. I don't feel they're a whole lot more than some misguided kids who grew up in a blipped world and change is difficult and scary (and I’m sure it’s probably managed poorly. I can’t think of anything less efficient than a global council for anything. you could have a global council for dirt and it would be a bureaucratic nightmare). And they probably stole super soldier serum from somebody way scarier. Dummies. I think they're going to need to be rescued at some point. Probably soonish.

As for that other guy. There's moments where I like John Walker a little bit, and moments where I find him really aggravating. I get they want to make him the super-duper bestest perfectest hero, or that’s why he was chosen by the DoD or whatever, but part of Steve's charm was he wasn't perfect. He wasn't Captain America because he won a million awards, he was Cap because he had a good heart. That's the point. THAT'S WHY YOU SHOULD BE CAP, SAM!

Also, I don't like hard feelings between Sam and Bucky. Though, nothing about their history would suggest an easy friendship (one time Sam was driving in his car and Bucky ripped the damn steering wheel out), so that's not a complaint, it just makes me sad. They really only have a connection because of Steve and he's gone. Be friends, guys!

And finally, when will Sharon Carter return from being an enemy of the state?

[tellywoodtrash]

Hi TTji, here I am with more TV digest. SP: MHRW - Amma replaced by new actor with HECK LOT foundation to 'darken' her and Raghav is TPDBD. Same plot (luck again FL, ML taking badla, FL turns innocent, ML being savior) in a loop. YRKKH - Sensible for time being. Sirat's ex is in picture. Kartik & Sirat have healthy convos. Obv Rhea is dying to break the marriage and grab most wanted Munda for herself. SNS - Most sensible leads as of yet? The show still remembers she wants education??? [1/4]

Aksjdlsakjdlskajdlskajldkjslj TPDBD has truly entered myyyyy daily vocabulary as well. It’s such an amazingggggg acronymmmm. Fitteh muh on these fucking ppl who can’t just hire one actual dark skinned actress. I hate this show without even watching it because of everything it stands for. It offends me on a personal level. 🤬🤬🤬

Ofc YRKKH mein abhi bhi shaadi ka silsila jaari hi hai. Ouff, India ke wedding industry ko iss ek hi couple ne kaayam rakha hua hai. 🤑🤑🤑

SNS ke baare mein I never cared, and I never will. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️

YHC - Not Chaahat, only mystery and horror like Aahat. FL attempting to expose villains but ML blind cuz it's his true mum and step bro. Anu - Overdramatically yet sensibly depicting divorce and it's ripple effects on fam (kisses for healthy maa-beta & saas-bahu jodi). SM - Preeti is replaced by Nupur from MJHT.  KT pretends to be good friend Keertan and shitty rich dude KT to Nu-*cough* Mohi/Preeti. Idk abt the kids. Imlie - Malini reacts normally seeing Imlie wear her sindoor. Finally [2/4] 

NO CHAAHAT, ONLY AAHAT 🤣🤣🤣

Anupama, SM, aur Imlie reiterating the life lesson ki pyaari beheno, zindagi mein kuch bhi karo, parrr shaadi mat karo, saaaaalon tak siyaapa hi siyaapa hai. Just be single, have awesome friends and pets, aur mazze ke life jiyo.

SAAKK - FL thinks ML in love with ex. ML clears the air, tells *cough* yells I LOVE YOU DAMNIT *oh wait that was another show* but same and FL is like WOAH. PANDYA - No one realises the DISASTER getting FL forcibly married to her beloved's brother (who marries his own lover) cuz now she gotta live in the same house with her beloved but as his bhabhi? ANNS - The  blind ML has been the most aware ML in ITV history. Understands to-be-wife being slighted and flips shit! Next is Zee, Sony & Colors 

SAAKK ki incredibly cute FL is stuck in such a michmichi-inducing (for me) show ke mera dillllllllllllll dukhta hai. Koi isko aur GHKPM ke Sai ko bas foreign bhej do where they can do padhaai and become their best selves without being distracted by boy troubles. Sahi kehte hain desi maa-baap, padhai ke waqt ladkon ke chakkaron mein nahi padna chahiye, warna poori zindagi kharaab ho jaati hai. Abhi dekh bhi liya.

Pandya mein seeing Sonakshi from KHKT ki bitchy choti behen be one abla bechaari, and Nazar show waali achchi behen being a hellraising chantomayi is giving me whiplash. Beech mein bechaare bhaiyya-bhaabi jabaran phasein, who kinda deserve it coz honestly wtf were they thinking forcing this bloody shaadi no one wanted. 🙄🙄🙄

ANNS ka hero is wholesome bean but ouff the FL’s family (???? is it even her family? Or her sister’s sasuraal or some shit in which case, phew.) Anyway kaafi off-brand Gauri Kumari Sharma vibes mil rahe mujhe FL se toh I can’t somehow get into it yet. 😐😐😐

ZEE. Kumkum - Pragya asking fam members to help her (Abhi in jail) Rhea (the twin who hates Pragya) agrees. Kundali - Preeta has her hair perfect in jail while ML tries to fix shit. Jindri - Locking wife in room is the new way of showing love. Katti Batti - shit show from promo so no info (total biwi#1 when she should be dumping his dumb ass). Rest IDK, the plots above my head. SONY. 7 1/2 - The show has bad prod quality for some reason. Not watching. (need more space for next so see you in #5) 

Yeh poora ka poora ZEE channel hi nahi chahiye mereko. Nothing on it has appealed to me since Qubool Hai and I highly doubt anything ever will. Bleargh. 🤢🤢🤢

Yeh 7 1/2 kaunsa show hai Sony pe??????? 🤔🤔🤔

KUDCA - FL runs away from marrying Veer. He hires fake bride (turns out it is FL who was briefly reunited with her bff who is now kothewaali). COLORS. Namak - Always abusive ML (can't act) now in love with FL (can act) and his family is shitty, as usual. Pinjra - Makers pulled a Main Na Bhoolungi. SSK - archaic shit is back. Shakti - ML post plastic surgery trying to convince FL that he is ML. Fans hate new actor btw. BB - Kid topped, so going to hostel? Bawara Dil - TOXIC SHIT!!! Love, Baby J

KUDCA ka main kya hi boloon, whole thing sounds like a clusterfuck.

Namak is such a weird mindfuck of a show, beech mein kuch kaala jaadoo type bhi hain. ML nafrat se pyaar tak pohunch gaya lekin majaal ho jo uske chehre pe shikan tak aaye. Someone explain to me why that Nazar waali daayan ki character is the mom to two of the ladies (who are easily in their 30s, yet mummy looks younger......... Must be all the kaala jaadoo), but everyone calls her didi, including her daughters??? Also why do these two families live together???? Why does this show exist in general??????////

Pinjra waali shaayad na bhoolegi but I sure forgot this show exists. Thank god for my brain just filtering out the info it doesn’t want and being like sorry 404, page not found. Saves me a lot of rage.

SSK mein I just need to know what new species Simar (or choti Simar, or whoever) is gonna metamorphize  into. May I suggest a cow, since that’s the only animal that gets any respect and protection in this country these days.

The way I gaspeddddddddddddddd when I saw OG Anurag Basu backkkkkkkkkk??????// Bhai is on what virgin-blood-drinking regimen ki he still looks exact same???? Sir pls to share sekrits.

Bawara Dil - First I’m ever hearing of this show, and thus, I really dgaf.

[tosikoarts]

SFW Alphabet | Shiraishi Yoshitake

Long live the King! You can check tosikowrites tag for more. Warning: there’s a lot under the cut.

A = Affection (How affectionate are they? How do they show affection?)

Relationship for Shiraishi is more about friendship with intimacy than a long tradition-based order of courtship and conventions. His affection does not manifest in standard gestures like buying flowers or singing serenades, acting all gentlemanly and saving the day pompously like a romantic novel protagonist. If he ever does anything from list above, it is his daydreaming that he doesn’t try to bring to life.

One of Shiraishi’s main goal in the relationship is to keep his partner happy, and the main sign that they are happy is their shrill laughter. It doesn’t matter if they are laughing because stray toothy animal bit his head or because the joke was funny (yay!), mission accomplished and he is satisfied.  Seeing them cry is worse than being hit hundred times with a baton.

Every single soul in the one kilometer radius know whom Shiraishi loves and why he loves them and how amazing, adorable, lovely, cool they are. Sugimoto and Asirpa are making earplugs because Shiraishi can’t shut the hell up. He managed to piss off the men who kidnapped him with bragging about his loved one. Kiroranke puts maximum effort not to bury him in the nearest snowdrift. His admiration doesn’t die down through years.

B = Best friend (What would they be like as a best friend? How would the friendship start?)

The best friend to get dumb with. Sing inappropriate songs, prank others, annoy boring elders and all this jazz. His jokes are never offensive because Shiraishi wants to have good time only but they are unpredictable and never repetitive. His instinct of self-preservation goes m.i.a. in the process so it’s literally life-saving to have a reliable person by the side.

If you need a friend to gossip with Shiraishi is you best choice. He got hot tea on everyone, I mean e v e r y o n e, from old man Hijikata to naïve Koito and he needs best friend to spill it. Damn, Shiraishi is definitely that bih with neon acrylics and golden hoops.

Probably the friend that introduce you to people and brings you into new circles. Wide range of characters, social statuses, affiliations gives a chance to meet potential partners. There is one unspoken rule though: you come here as Shiraishi’s bff, you leave this place as Shiraishi’s bff.

Speaking of which, he comes across as possessive friend. Restriction of other’s social circle and constant need in validation aren’t his behavior traits, but Shiraishi is sensitive to subtle changes in communication. Sole possibility of losing the established connection gives him extreme anxiety. To avoid it he can make concessions and sacrifice his own interests for them.

C = Cuddles (Do they like to cuddle? How would they cuddle?)

Eeh, indifferent? He doesn’t seem like a big fan of cuddling but will do it on occasions. When lights are down and they are in a private of the room, Shiraishi may spoon them to feel the comfort of another person and a little bit of safety he finds in their touch. He doesn’t have a preferred position as well: whatever his loved one wants he will do without hesitation.

D = Domestic (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

The closest home equivalent that Shiraishi knows is a dark prison cell and this is how he sees the stability in its best light. Yep, same food every day, funny inadequacies behind the adjacent wall, and a guy in not-so-sexy uniform who checks his asshole now and then. What a paradise. Seriously, he needs time to get used to concept of comfort zone. Maybe, after few years Shiraishi himself will offer to find a cozy place for both of them. Average cook. Doesn’t know how to hold a broom.

E = Ending (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

Breaking up with Shiraishi is a whole three-ring circus because he is hot and then cold, yes and then no. Get ready to prepare sad clown look for both you and him because it will be a long story: as soon as the idea settles in his head, Shiraishi will turn into giant wreck. Everybody around notices him walking in circles as well as asking Sugimoto how to properly show person that he is not interested. Of course, he ignores rational “just tell them, set a record straight”. Of course, Shiraishi plays dumb and tries to distance himself in all ways possible and impossible. The only way to end this agony is to break the relationship yourself before the mutual sympathy and respect turn into disgust and tension.

F = Fiance(e) (How do they feel about commitment? How quick would they want to get married?)

Doesn’t experience a burning passion to get married but doesn’t completely discards this possibility either. If person seems to be the only one, the meant one, Shiraishi will pop a question after 3-4 years of stable relationship. Cruel push and pull game, sudden break ups and get backs together kill his will to settle down. He may stay with them but Shiraishi will never bring up thought of marriage, wedding bells, and family.

G = Gentle (How gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Even the prison could not knock softness out of Shiraishi: he is utterly gentle with his partner, dreading hurting them or jeopardize their life with the hunt of tattooed skins. Choosing the right words is a little more complicated so translation of an emotional mess in his head does not always convey implied sentiment. That’s the reason why Shiraishi may be unintentionally harsh when it comes to serious conversations: he is torn between being tender and showing firm character.

H = Hugs (Do they like hugs? How often do they do it? What are their hugs like?)

Somehow, loves hugs but rarely initiate them. He is almost always cold, his skin feels cold and rough like papyrus paper, therefore, his partner frequently serves as a living heater. When they are busy with work or chores, Shiraishi catches their hand and embraces their arm, practically immobilizing it. Hints fly left and right when Shiraishi wants a hug: he really comes to the partner with puppy eyes and  index finger pointing towards one another because no, he won’t go for it himself, he want his loved one to do it.

I = I love you (How fast do they say the L-word?)

Mentally, he already did it when they met for first time but it takes at least a month for Shiraishi to say three magic words aloud. Two would be even better. He's not serious enough to wait for the friendly phase of a romantic relationship when people have already got used to each other. The longer the relationship lasts, the more serious Shiraishi gets though. You can hear it in the changing of his voice when his playful “I love you so so much” shifts to calm and earnest confession.

J = Jealousy (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they’re jealous?)

Easily jealoused walking disaster that will follow his partner like a poodle if they give him a reason to doubt their faithfulness. Sometimes Shiraishi overreacts, he even thought Sugimoto was looking at his loved one somehow weirdly but quickly brushed this idea off just for it to come back to him next day. Shiraishi gets extremely needy and tries to show everybody that this is HIS person. He is NOT sharing. They love ME. He gives them extra kisses, hugs, grabs their hand and squeezes it few times, smiles at them as much as he physically can.

If his loved one is the one being overly flirtatious, Shiraishi feels awful. Wave of insecurity knocks him off the feet and he doesn’t know what to do. He is overthinker so without proper explanation Shiraishi comes up with the worst scenarios possible. In this case he distance himself until person reassures him in their relationship.

K = Kisses (What are their kisses like? Where do they like to kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

In the beginning, Shiraishi seems the worst kisser in the world. He has little experience, almost no experience to be honest: yujo do not have time to teach clients the art of kissing. So, yeah, he is pretty average, goofy, sloppy and eager. Wants to kiss everywhere anyhow.  

After a little bit of training his kisses become more sophisticated, and Shiraishi himself doesn’t try to jump on his partner with smooches. He is still impatient when they put their hands on him and tends to get touchy even in public places. When Shiraishi gets in the mood for kissing session, he is unstoppable.

There is a sweet spot right under the earlobe kissing which send Shiraishi on the cloud nine. One kiss and he surrounds to the will of the partner. Ask whatever you want. Besides that he doesn’t care where to be kissed. Likes to give his partner gentle pecks on the nose and cheeks.

L = Little ones (How are they around children?)

If you remember chart going around the Tumblr with categories like “wine aunt, great at babysitting, mediocre at babysitting” Shiraishi would fall both in “God is dead, house is on fire” and “Is a baby”. Kids absolutely love him because they are on the same level *cough cough* and he is overall funny guy unlike the most adults around. Shiraishi likes active games and never sits still. For every crying child he got a candy and few tricks in his sleeve. He would love to be a father one day so he has few more minions to annoy grumpy people.

M = Morning (How are mornings spent with them?)

People who sleep in together stay together. This is the rule of Yoshitake house. No matter what time his partner wakes up Shiraishi wakes up later. Nine in the morning? He is in the bed until noon. Three in the afternoon? He is still sleeping, squeezing his partner tightly in his arms. Even after waking up Shiraishi stays under the blanket. He playfully asks the loved one if they want to keep him company and cuddle too but if they are in hurry, he will lazily crawl out of bed and cook something for them.

N = Night (How are nights spent with them?)

Prefers to spend night outside gambling or drinking, skinny-dipping, lying in the grass and telling fables with varying percentage of truth. In the cold season Shiraishi still likes to go downtown but mainly to meet old friends and have dinner with them and his loved one. Rarely he chooses to stay in the comfort of home. Shiraishi teaches his partner different board games, and soon playing turns into a competition. From time to time Shiraishi loses on purpose, gifting sweet victory in shogi/igo/karuta to the most significant person in his life.

O = Open (When would they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything all at once or wait a while to reveal things slowly?)

You don’t have to ask anything unless you want to spend next hour listening to Shiraishi’s biography. He will tell you about the relationship with parents, about childhood scar on the knee, about search of Sister Miyazawa, and what a bastards his cellmates were. The list is endless, and every day Shiraishi remembers one more story he forgot to tell. There are only two things that can stop him: firm “no, not now, Shiraishi” from the partner and lack of mutual openness on their part.

P = Patience (How easily angered are they?)

It is impossible to piss Shiraishi off. His ability to reduce everything to a joke does not help only in advanced cases where person wanted to break his neck from the beginning. Even when his patience runs out, Shiraishi cannot explode in anger, he just grimaces, stomps, and spits sarcasm. In everyday life, he avoids conflicts as much as possible and does everything to find a convenient compromise so you won’t catch him slipping. He would rather go for a walk and leave another person to cool down than get involved in heated argument.

Q = Quizzes (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

He doesn’t remember shit if his partner doesn’t indicate that it is important information. Worth remembering. Shiraishi, please, listen. At the same time he notices slight changes in their appearance, from new haircut to ring, and keeps in mind such details like eye color, favorite clothes, maybe, particular qualities like never buttoning shirt up completely or writing notes on the wrist. Anniversaries? Baby, he doesn’t remember what day it is today. Just give up.

R = Remember (What is their favorite moment in your relationship?)

The first kiss. Not only did it happen completely by accident due to a bet, but it was so awkward and unexpected that Shiraishi forgot how kissing works. Yep, he froze feeling their warm lips on his, only eyebrows slightly raised up in disbelief. After this incident, Shiraishi could not stop thinking about them. God, he is disgrace, to embarrass yourself in front of the person you like. It could not be otherwise. To remedy the situation, Shiraishi pulled himself together, remembered the cheesiest lines in the reserve, and suggested to try again because he was astonished by their daring attitude. He has no idea what happened after that but that spontaneous kiss with a touch of childishness and innocence stayed with him forever.

Oh, one more moment! Meeting them after coming back from Karafuto. Honestly, Shiraishi didn’t believe he will make it out alive. Ogata or Kiroranke could slice his throat, hide the body, and tell Asirpa he left with his tail between his legs. Therefore, it is miracle to see their adorable face again.

S = Security (How protective are they? How would they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Let’s be real, he is the one who needs protection. He also needs some ass-whooping for getting in troubles regularly too but that is not the point. Shiraishi rarely stands up against obviously strong opponents and chooses famous Joestar backup plan – run for his life with loved one under his arm. Another option includes involvement of threatening allies, mostly Sugimoto, to save them both. Sometimes courage overwhelms him, and Shiraishi comes up with risky but bold plan how to save them without outside help but it happens much less often.

T = Try (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

Most of the time, Shiraishi hopes that everything will be fine by itself, every event will run like clockwork without excessive effort. Dates are unpretentious: no fancy restaurants, exquisite gifts, long intricate confessions of endless love, etc. To his credit, Shiraishi takes chores more or less seriously and does his best. For the anniversaries he transforms in person you've never seen before: dressed immaculately Shiraishi holds a small bouquet of bright moss phlox and box of sweet sakuramochis, his face glows with happiness and love, however, you can sense a nervousness behind the wide smile. On days so special, he is afraid to ruin the mood with usual tomfoolery.

U = Ugly (What would be some bad habits of theirs?)

Canonically, Shiraishi is not the tidiest person around. For some it may be stumbling block because constant battle with desire to throw him in hot springs and scrub ingrained dirt with the hardest sponge can be too tiresome. Also Shiraishi bites his nails until they bleed as well as pulls the hangnails until his fingers start to hurt.

A sense of proportion leaves Shiraishi as soon as a bottle of sake appears on the horizon. Even though he is funny and harmless drinker, he goes overboard with alcohol to end up throwing out behind the nearest pine.

Little lies always slip through the conversation no matter what it is about. When the truth is revealed, it is too late to blame him.

V = Vanity (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Shiraishi doesn’t care about his appearance but likes to get compliments on it. He knows bunch of tricks how to remove different stains from clothes in the wild and doesn't know how to avoid them. One look is enough for Shiraishi: he could wear his old prison uniform for life time because it is strangely comfortable and universal for any event. Except the pursuit by guards, of course.

Has mixed feelings about his tattoos. Living with them is to sit on a powder keg: you never know when the new man with the gold rush will try to scalp you alive.

W = Whole (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Gets very, very attached to the friends and loved ones so break up feels like punch in the gut. Unlike the rest, Shiraishi basically refuses to let go. He gets clingy, keeps acting like nothing happened, like they are still the best friends, just to cover up growing emptiness inside. No matter how hard he ignores it, Shiraishi can feel how part of him fades. Sometimes even abrupt refusal doesn’t work, but it’s simply his way to deal with sadness.  After few weeks, he has an insight that things will never be the same and that when it hits him. Shiraishi tries to distance himself and it takes all of his strength since by this time he becomes easily distracted, irritated, and whiny. He needs months to get over it.

If they died or were killed, Shiraishi puts effort to maintain his clown image. Only closest people can notice small detail that give away his sorrow and melancholy. Doesn't attempt to get revenge. The time to recover increases to year.

X = Xtra (A random headcanon for them.)

Do you think Shiraishi went to jail so often because of negligence? Partially, yes. Besides the fact Shiraishi is being hopeless fool, he finds prison cell a great place to take a break from fleeting life. If you think about it time slows down behind bars. There’s no point to worry what tomorrow will bring, how to survive and make it through another scuffle, and his impressive skills guarantee him easy escape.

Shiraishi has joint hypermobility syndrome which helps him bend joints at unusual angles and even pull bones out of the fossae. Prolonged arthralgia is a side effect that Shiraishi had to deal with from the first conscious days. There are days when the pain becomes so excruciating that he just wants to lie still and stare at the sky for 24 hours.

Y = Yuck (What are some things they wouldn’t like, either in general or in a partner?)

Continuous scolding when there is a reason and when there is not. Yes, with his behavior it is difficult to resist the urge to say a couple of strong words or raise your voice, and Shiraishi is totally okay with it until rebuke becomes daily tradition.

Shiraishi's thoughts are always in motion, usually Brownian motion, his body twitches even when he tries to sit calmly in one place so stagnation in any form would be the death of him. This includes repetitive thoughts, boring behavior, and general passivity.

Shiraishi is genuinely upset if his partner doesn't like children. This is an inexplicable feeling, he really hurts if they ignore little ones or, worse, openly express dislike for kids.

Z = Zzz (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Prepare yourself to unexpected awakening in the middle of the night, you will have a lot of them. Shiraishi keeps running from guardians of the law even in his sleep: he kicks, turns, throws his arms out to the sides for the most part of the night. Accidental elbow blow to the nose is not uncommon either. Worst of all, he does not wake up after that!

In the morning Shiraishi likes to sneak closer to his loved one and just presses him onto them. Like, completely. He throws his leg over them, hugs them, presses his cheek to their back, and if it feels just right in winter, in summer such cuddle can be a real test.

Abrupt sleep schedule changes do not bother Shiraishi at all. His organism is so adapted to the crazy lifestyle that he stays fresh even after sleepless night, after waking up at 3 a.m. and going to bed at 3 p.m.

[marinetteplztakeabreak]

You know the Marichat bff trope? The thing that’s become super common in a lot of fics, where Chat Noir for whatever reason starts habitually visiting Marinette’s house and they just talk about their feelings and eat baked goods and relax and they become super comfortable together and it’s great? I love that trope, please don’t stop making fics like that, however, please also consider: doing that same thing but with Ladrien.

 

Imagine Ladybug ending up at Adrien’s house for whatever reason and she’s super awkward but she wants to check in after an akuma targeted him or whatever, and they’re both just lovestruck idiots stumbling through a conversation at first, but it keeps happening and Marinette can’t stop herself from talking to Adrien (at first because of her crush) and she doesn’t think much of it but then she realizes that she actually really loves her friendship with  him, and she keeps bumping into him right after akuma battles, so of course she offers to take him home, and then all of a sudden before they know it somehow they have inside jokes and secret meeting spots and consider the other as practically their bff and they don’t know how they could’ve been so awkward around each other before because, yeah, they’re still a little weird together, but it’s also super comfortable, and Ladybug at this point can just zoom through Adrien’s window at 2am and be like “Ughhhhhh paparazzi sucks” and Adrien will just be like “big mood, wanna hide out and watch vine compilations” and she’s like “yes plz” and they practice fencing together a little bit because Ladybug says she wants to learn it for fighting reasons and Ladybug also happens to stop by the Dupain-Chengs before she visits to pick up cookies to share and she lets Adrien know that his friend Marinette says hi

and Adrien actually gets a friend who comes over sometimes and they’re both good at hiding it from Adrien’s parent and Marinette has a way to talk to Adrien when she knows his dad won’t let him out and Adrien has an way to talk to his superhero partner now, because she’s always in a rush after battles l, and now he can finally get to know her as a person and Marinette can finally confide in someone about Ladybug related stuff and she knows Adrien doesn’t understand completely, but he understands the pressure and the crowds and the media, and she actually has a whole lot of fun being able to just ramble to someone

And then all of a sudden, neither of them knows when it happened, but it’s not awkward at all anymore. They just see the other as a bff before anything else, and it’s impossible to be intimidated by someone who you once saw cry over a picture of a baby sloth or ramble about cheese at 4am

 

But then also all of a sudden, whoops it’s feelings, and now that Adrien isn’t constantly distracted by Ladybug he’s completely willing to admit that he’s head over heels in love with Marinette, especially now that she seems to not hate him anymore, because she’s actually able to get through conversations with him without instantly trying to run away and he loves her so much it physically hurts and oh god he!was blind. And he still really really likes Ladybug but it’s not in a blinding way, he’s able to accept that they just platonically like each other, maybe, and sure he’ll never be over her but the thought of dating someone else isn’t painful anymore now that he knows for sure that Ladybug can’t be with Chat Noir, because she’s talked to him about it

 

And meanwhile Marinette can now function around Adrien and okay, yeah, she’s definitely not over him, but she can absolutely accept just being his friend, it doesn’t feel like a “just” anymore, his friendship is one of the most valuble things she has and it makes her so so happy when he calls her his friend, and she knows it’s what he needs,

except now that she’s willing to not be with Adrien, a certain flirty cat starts to catch her attention more and morea and she can’t Not notice him because he’s so amazing and his eyes are actually really pretty and distracting and oh no what’s happening.

 

So long story short you get Ladynoir and Adrienette that have almost exactly the same dynamics, but the reverse crush is going a little stronger and everyone is a little more honest with themselves about their feelings now, but you also have Ladrien and Marichat switching dynamics completely,

Ladybug will bump into Adrien and they’ll just be spouting memes at each other and chilling, but Marinette and Chat Noir make eye contact and it’s just pining disaster city for miles.

 

Please imagine the potential with me because it’s amazing and it needs to be considered

[clunelover]

I’m going to attempt a cut because this may be my longest ever post

Okay here is the long post I’ve been writing and rewriting and adding to in my head:

I love my BFF. She’s wonderful and giving and insightful and funny and we’ve been through some Real Shit together, such as me getting evicted from our college apartment and dropping out of school due to my then-blossoming mental illness. Her realizing she is bisexual and trying to figure out what that meant for her life going forward, and then finding her now husband and planning a wedding while he had a mental health crisis and had to go to treatment (same as what I did but like up a level in intensity). At times she and I have been possibly too enmeshed. Okay. So, current challenges are based on a lot of backstory, some of which I’ve posted about on here before but not all:

Her now husband has been in treatment for mental health twice. Once around Thanksgiving before last, and he is there again now. Last week he stepped down after like four weeks inpatient, and now is onto the day program like I did, only currently it’s all from home on video.

When this was all going down the first time, their wedding was 6 months away. I struggled a lot over how much to say, and ultimately told her I thought she should at least postpone, maybe cancel. And when he came out of treatment that first time, he even said he wanted to postpone! She declined, citing social pressure and embarrassment and save the dates having gone out. I think an unspoken part of it was that she wants a baby real bad, so she thought they should just push through, get to baby making, deal with whatever fallout later?

But in between finishing treatment and the wedding, he continued to mess up - he does a lot of avoiding (including of work) and when he’s ashamed, his first instinct is to lie. So she kept having incident after incident of “discovering” that he’d been lying about going to work. Or hiding some additional debt (and also not paying on it). At this point I think I told her, just financially speaking, you should not tie yourself to this person. She did not like me saying that, and eventually I said I could not hear any more about his fuckups. Because she kept giving him ultimatums, but never followed through on them, and I just could not go on that roller coaster. That was a tough moment in our friendship. Conversation became very strained because so much was happening that I had opted out of hearing about. I still don’t know if that was the right thing to do. I tried to support her emotionally but that was difficult under that boundary I set.

Then they got married last May. After lots of talk with my therapist I decided that I should still go to the wedding and be matron of honor and stuff, because I was doing it out of love for her. And I do actually like him a lot too! Just had and have a lot of concerns.

After the wedding things seemed pretty good, he got a job at a dog daycare and seemed to really love that (or maybe before wedding, who can recall).

BFF was officially game on, full court press for baby. I’m 34 which means I think she’s 35 and turning 36 soon.

Sometime in fall he got fired from dog daycare for badmouthing the owner and then getting into a shouting match (!) with them. In January he got a new job, as an assistant manager at a grocery store. I did not say this to BFF but my initial thought was “if he can’t hack dog daycare how can he assistant manage a busy grocery store?”

I think he lasted a month at grocery store. Then he started punking out and calling in because his “feet hurt.” BFF freaked out because she assumed he was going to lose another job. She apparently had some very firm conversation with him about how she wasn’t happy and almost none of her needs were being met. A couple days later he told her he’d been feeling suicidal and needs to go back to treatment. OH and somewhere in there things also went off the rails with trying for baby. I think he has performance issues in addition to low libido, AND the thought of becoming a dad was triggering. For instance, he was supposed to give a semen sample for analysis but freaked out just being in the clinic for it and left. When BFF told me all this she kept asking “is this okay” and “is this too triggering for you to hear” and at first I thought she meant because of how I also was having a flare up in mental health symptoms due to stressful job, but then later I realized it was because of my previous “can’t hear this stuff anymore” edict. But honestly, I feel totally different about that now! They’re married. The disaster (in my view at least) that I was trying to prevent did happen. So nothing feels urgent or painful to me now, other than sadness for her.

While he was inpatient, BFF had been driving his car because it’s nicer than hers, and then it got reposssed so like she came out one morning and it just wasn’t in the driveway. She knew he’d been very behind on payments, like to the point he had a small claim against him, but she thought he’d finally dealt with that and set up a payment plan. When she called him to say what was going on his inclination was to drop out of treatment and come home early to “deal with it,” which he was eventually talked out of.

So THAT is just to get caught up on past events! Sheesh, this is so long. So my current agitations (some of which are serious and some petty) are:

I’m worried that when his back is against the wall he claims mental breakdown to evade responsibility. This feels very mean of me to think, and also he’s been assessed by experts who presumably can tell when someone is making it up, so...I know he really must not be! But this still feels like the pattern.

Another petty thought is that I too have some heavy duty diagnoses and childhood trauma, but I’ve got it together and manage my mental health very avidly to stay as healthy as possible, so why can’t he. ALSO NOT FAIR! I know that. But it keeps popping into my head. It’s shitty that I can relate to him so well and yet it almost makes me LESS sympathetic. Something for me to work on.

I also worry that the instinct to lie is something that’s hard to get rid of. I know because I have it! I think I have stopped listening to it but it still comes up. And how can you have a good marriage with someone who regularly lies about important things. I don’t think you can.

BFF’s current line is that she’s going to wait til he finishes treatment but then she wants to go back to intense trying for baby. And that if he doesn’t want to, or says he needs to wait, she might want to get divorced. She says she’s put a lot on hold for him and can’t wait anymore. So, yes, she has. And there is the matter of age that is also a consideration. But this feels so mixed up to me! Like, the time for strict ultimatums and maybe splitting up was a couple years ago! Now he is working on some serious mental health stuff and it seems unfair, and possibly undermining of his progress, to say “well I’ve waited long enough so impregnate me now or else”...but also I do think it seems likely and possibly for the best that they’d end up divorced, so what do I care if she rushes that process along?

Big picture though, I don’t think he’s ready to be a dad or maybe doesn’t even want to be. I feel so sad for BFF because he was her first real boyfriend and she was kind of desperate for this to work, so she has just always grilled him about his desire for marriage and kids or what his timeline is, and has taken any vague affirmative response as total agreement. Like they were at the mall and Gymboree was going out of business so he suggested going in and buying a onesie. So, you know, proof positive that he really wants a baby ASAP too!! 😞 ...so, again, even though it feels somehow unfair to me that she’d start pushing on him now, I suppose it’s better that it come out sooner rather than later if that is the case

She also just totally steamrolls him, see getting married even though he asked to postpone, so I really hope she doesn’t steamroll him into having a baby if he doesn’t want one...

She’d never say it, but I get the sense that deep down she thinks let’s just have the baby and if he’s in a bad way I’ll just do all the work. She’s kind of a control freak so she may feel like she’d prefer that! But I think she overestimates how much harder it would be to have a baby while the other adult in the house can’t help you, won’t get a job, etc. than to just DO it alone for real.

I think she is also glossing over how having a baby and the attendant sleep deprivation can make mental health issues get much worse. Like when I was pregnant with Edie, my psychiatrist strongly recommended I just not even try to breastfeed, so that Jeremy could take night feedings because of how crazy I could go without enough sleep. I did not listen but she may have been right! I did go pretty fucking crazy, with both kids.

Oh! And she also has this big plan that he’s going to get on disability. I have all kinds of feelings and opinions about this. Like, rightly or wrongly, I don’t think he’d meet the criteria for this. Also she keeps saying “well he lost his last three jobs due to mental illness” but...does getting fired for screaming at your boss and telling them “you’re terrible” count as losing job due to mental illness?? But she’s so sure this will work and I have trouble engaging with it and being supportive because it feels delusional to me. It’s also making her view all issues of disability through this lens. Like, my stepmom is anxious and as a result very scatterbrained and inarticulate, and she’s also not worked in a few years partly due to health concerns (but like, complications from gastric bypass...not a disability) and BFF keeps saying “why doesn’t stepmom get on disability?” And I’m like “UMMMM because she’s not disabled??” I did finally tell her to stop saying that to me. But yeah, it’s just hard because again, it feels delusional, but she’s going ahead with it so what’s the point of me being harsh about how much I don’t think it’ll work?

Okay last one - she likes to source opinions and experiences from other people to help her think things through. She’s always been close to my stepmom, who had to divorce my dad because of how bad his drinking got, and my dad is also disabled (for real!) so she spent a lot of time as a caregiver. So BFF has had a lot of long phone conversations with stepmom about all that. I also have another friend whose husband is too mentally ill to work (but not on disability! Which BFF also keeps bringing up). He’s been out of work for years and they have two kids and to be fair, their life does seem crazy to me from the outside, but that friend seems to have her eyes open about everything and feels it’s working for her for now. Anyway, that husband has ALSO done the program that BFF’s husband and I have done, so when he first went in BFF wanted to have a chat with this friend about her experience, so we all met up to chat. She was very up front and blunt - “if we didn’t have kids we’d be divorced” and “we haven’t had sex in years”...but now, BFF basically uses this friend and my stepmom’s relationship with my dad as sort of justifications in her mind - “well I’m not THAT bad!” which I hate. Especially wrt to friend whose husband doesn’t work - “I’d never let it get that bad. I’d have left before now. I’d say he had to get a job or get on disability” etc etc. This drives me craaaaazy. Like, remind me not to introduce you to people to have a heart-to-heart if you’re just going to use them as your mental worst case scenario. Also, bitch, you wouldn’t “let it get that bad?” YOU ARE ON THE ROAD TO “THAT BAD” RIGHT NOW! Your husband lost three jobs in as many years. You also don’t currently have sex. How do you get to years? You start with weeks and months.

Okay, that’s it. It’s just been building and rolling around in my head. If you read it all, um, congrats? Also, this maybe makes our friendship sound bad, but other than most aspects of her marriage I have no issues with her and we get along great!! It’s been hard because prior to me telling her not to get married we’ve seen eye to eye, or close to, on everything important.

[sobdasha]

some (very long) Hiro metas and a Kisa-n-Tohru tangent

seeing the "Hiro is a brat!" "Hiro just has trauma!" debate has made me ponder…

Like, not to compare trauma and argue who had what worse and invalidate suffering, but my immediate reaction was kind of, "Wait, what? I mean, okay, I guess Hiro did just have some trauma re: Kisa, but like, overall…???"

So it's time for some scrutiny!

I’mma talk myself through this in a post.

Here we have Hiro. He's a Souma, which is pretty damn traumatic in its own right, and possessed by a Zodiac spirit, which is even worse. He's part of an elite inner circle, privileged with status and wealth; but on the flip side, there's still people in the family who look down on the Zodiac, and Hiro's looking at a future of isolation (afraid of looking like a monster, afraid to betray the family secret, not properly free to pick his own job, may or may not be able to live outside the estate, love life is gonna be a disaster when puberty hits). And Akito, whom the possessed part of him loves deeply and desperately, tends to weaponize his own love and withhold it when someone displeases him, or turn hurtful when someone needs punishment.

Okay, so that's bad. But Hiro shares that with all of the Zodiac members, that's just the baseline trauma, and there's some compounding issues at play that Hiro lacks:

- Hiro, as the Sheep, isn't especially hated. Kyou, for instance, has a bad attitude that's partly due to the entire clan ragging on him for being a horrible abomination of a monster, comparing him unfavorably to Idealized Yuki, and telling him he's gonna be locked up in a one-room house on the estate to suffer out his life--and that's not even counting how being the Cat affected how his immediate family treated him. Haru, as the Ox, got ~harmlessly teased~ about being a big dumb slow stupid ox by the family so much that he started flipping over to a Black personality to violently vent his feelings.

- Hiro's family life is, as far as I can tell, actually ideal. His parents didn't reject him (Momiji, Kyou re: his sperm donor, Rin), split up over him (I suspect this is what happened for Kagura, because her parents argued a lot when she was young, and I wonder about the fact that Ritsu's dad isn't at the onsen? And there's no mention of Kisa's dad? But then again, we're told repeatedly that Yuki and Ayame have a father and he lives in the same house as their mother and I've never seen proof of this man's existence), be coolly indifferent to him (Ayame after Yuki was born and he got off the hook but honestly I think that was a blessing to him, Yuki, Hatori), or get extremely overprotective (Kyou re: his mom, I'd argue this is partly why Ritsu's mom is so stressed out, and also I'd argue this may be why Kisa's mom hits her limit). In fact, Hiro's the only one who we can definitely say has two parents, who live together, and have a good relationship, and actively enjoy nurturing their child. Also Satsuki's completely adorkable. (This puts strain on Hiro in other ways, lol, but at least he shares that feeling with his dad.)

- Hiro, as the Sheep, probably doesn't particularly stand out. I'm guessing his hair color isn't particularly notable? So he probably hasn't been singled out for teasing from people who don't even know about the curse, like Kyou and Haru and Kisa. (No one's not-thirsty enough to have teased Ayame or Yuki for their looks, I'm pretty sure, and Momiji can pull the biracial card, even if that wouldn't stop people, and went to international school, where people probably found other ways to pick on you.)

So where, for Hiro, does his particular extremely combative, condescending, scathing, sarcastic attitude come from?

That's not to say none of those things above could be factors. It's extremely possible that the family found dumb things to say to him because, y'know, clearly it's impossible to hurt a kid's feelings if you're arrogant enough about it. And like Kyouko says, you can't really judge someone's family situation based on their behavior, and vice versa. I'd expect Hiro to be super well-adjusted, coming from a loving nuclear family, but kids are people and they will turn out how they turn out both because of and in spite of how they're raised. And maybe Hiro's experienced some bullying about whatever, and his instant sharp-tongued retorts became the default in response to that. Hiro didn't tell us any of this, but who knows!

Or maybe Hiro's difficult phase is just a phase. Maybe that's how all his classmates talk to each other?? I can easily see that being a thing, especially with boys, both friendly with friends or aggressive with people you want to treat badly, and maybe Hiro's so much in the habit of it that he doesn't think first (and doesn't care enough about Tohru and her feelings to exercise a little self-control). Like this post that points out how it's a Definite Thing that part of Hiro's lording-little-brat arrogance is because he's in his final year of elementary school and he's everyone's senpai and that sort of thing is indulged because adults know he'll get cruelly humbled next year when he's a baby kouhai.

But I think maybe, what's most relevant with Hiro, is that because of his lack of obvious outside factors to fight against for personal growth, his growing pains as a character are internal. He's fighting against himself. AKA, it's only logical that he's a tiny little shit and his character arc is about growing into someone who isn't a jerkface. Which can be just as difficult and traumatic as standing up to your parents, or Akito, or society, or your classmates. Hiro has to assert himself against himself, and himself won't punch him in the face or lock him in his room but it's so easy to just put the blame elsewhere and let himself get away with it and give him a pass and stop trying to improve.

Now I wanna analyze the timeline!

Aside from a few select Zodiac members, Akito hasn't really done anything super terrible that we've heard about until Hiro's in 3rd grade. That's when Hatori and Kana ask to get married, and Hatori gets injured. Akito has been a jerk before, and Akito is very clearly in favor of a hierarchy that puts God at the top getting all the love. But Shigure and Ayame have talked about their sexcapades with no issue, and Kagura's always going on about her undying love for and future marriage with Kyou, and this is the first incident that says those things aren't allowed.

Sometime not terribly long after that, Shigure gets kicked out of the Main House. This ramps up Akito's hatred of women, though Hiro wouldn't know the betrayal behind it and might not have a clue about Akito's vendetta.

Right about the time Hiro starts 6th grade, he feels compelled to tell Akito that he has feelings for Kisa. (I'm pulling this from the Collector's Edition timeline. In the actual story I keep seeing the English being like "I always thought Hiro hated me / I thought Hiro hated me for a long time" with Kisa then immediately turning around and saying "We were bffs all through my elementary school years / Hiro always played with me until this year", so I heavily suspect the translators keep getting a modifier in the wrong place or something because wtf.) Akito kicks Kisa's ass and Kisa takes two weeks to heal. (This isn't Akito's fault. It's also not Kisa's fault, obviously, because Hiro didn't even tell her yet that he liked her. So that means it's all Hiro's fault.) Hiro's horrified, because he could have had an idea this would be bad but he probably didn't expect it to all be taken out on Kisa. After all, Hatori got hurt, not Kana, and Rin hasn't been pushed out a window yet.

Hiro abruptly cuts off his interaction with Kisa, to protect her from getting punished by Akito again. Kisa goes back to 7th grade, where she's just transitioned from Top Of The Heap Senpai and Just A Child So We Can Let Things Slide to Lowly Kouhai Who Needs To Learn Proper Social Behaviors, and she's being bullied, and her bff won't talk to her, and her Talking Things Out skills are having zero effect, so she just stops talking, and now her mom is upset, and then she starts skipping school, and now her mom is really upset. And Hiro was probably unaware of a lot of this, until it got really bad several months in, since he stopped seeing his bff.

And Hiro's agonizing and worrying about it, when suddenly Tohru swoops in and magically saves the day, bringing hope where there was none and erasing suffering, right when Hiro was probably nerving himself up to try to help somehow without bringing Akito's wrath back down on Kisa.

Oh I wanna have a tangent about Kisa!

Timeline again, but from Kisa's point of view:

Kisa and Hiro are only a year apart, so they've always been super close. Hiro is her bff.

Now Kisa is starting 7th grade.

Kisa does something Bad. It's not clear what, but it's Bad Enough to make Akito hate her and also seriously beat her up, so that's Pretty Bad.

Actually it's Really Very Bad, because after that Hiro hates her too.

Anyway Kisa's starting 7th grade! Yay! New school, new girls, new pressures. In my personal experience, middle school is when girls are at their nastiest (after they hit high school, they start to chill out. Obviously you still get jerks, because people, but there was a little more "live and let live" attitude), so I always assume this is part of the problem. Kisa's classmates start to bully her. Kisa tries out her conflict resolution skills, like the adult she's expected to be becoming, and it only causes the situation to escalate. Her self-esteem has already had the crap kicked out of it, and hasn't healed in 2+ weeks. Her bff hates her and won't talk to her.

And then Kisa just gives up without telling anyone why.

Tohru's got a very valid point, that it's hard to talk about the things that actually bother you. It's hard to ask for help. I can complain all day long about little things, but I can't put big issues into words without spontaneously bawling? Which is really fricken embarrassing???

But I think the reason Tohru strikes such a chord with Kisa, and is able to instantly win her over, is because she talks with such quiet feeling about being scared her mom wouldn't love her anymore. Because that feeling was very, very real for Tohru--grounded in the fact that Kyouko actually did abandon her once.

And Kisa recognized that, and realized that Tohru--unlike everyone else--actually got it, because that's exactly what Kisa's feeling. Because Kisa's gotten along with her mother very well all her life, if what we see of her with Hiro is any indication. Except that suddenly Akito hates her. Suddenly Hiro hates her. It's a very real fear, once Kisa's mom starts getting stressed about the not-talking, that Kisa's mom is going to stop loving her just like everyone else is suddenly doing. Because that's literally what's happening to Kisa.

Tohru's not just a warm, loving, accepting, motherly presence. Tohru's someone who can very viscerally relate to Kisa's terror. Of course Kisa clings to her.

Back to Hiro though!

I think we could also stand to apply to Hiro the tried-and-true, "The things you hate most in other people are the things you hate most about yourself," because it is both true in general and a definite thing Fruits Basket does (for a quick example, see Yuki saying he hates dependent people [while Kyou's like "that's you tho"] and Rin hating Yuki [because he's dependent on Haru the way she is guiltly dependent on Haru]).

I went to rewatch the episode to look at all the specific things Hiro says about Tohru and other people, only to realize the obvious flaw that like everything he says is an insult and there's too much there for me to unpack here, so I chose just a few statements that were really specifically phrased (I can't stand people who X).

I can't stand people who let themselves be pushed around so easily

Hiro also talks a couple times about Tohru having no sense of identity or agency, or not having thoughts of her own. So this reveals Hiro's inner struggle with his own complacency. He's got that bond with Akito, he's got a life that's at least partly set in stone already for him, and he's not doing anything to fight it. He didn't hide his feelings for Kisa from Akito, and then when Kisa got hurt Hiro never told her why ("It's my fault because I told Akito I like you and that made him mad, it's nothing you did") and never called Akito out on it (he can't blame Akito but when he talks about it you can tell he also knows he should blame Akito because Hiro can figure out that that was wrong. Maybe because, unlike so many others of the Zodiac, he was raised in a sensible and loving family and he knows that Akito's behavior isn't normal, isn't right, isn't acceptable).

This is probably why, even while using "I'm just a kid" to get away with his behavior, he's so frustrated with not being an adult. Because, to him, an adult wouldn't just let these things happen. He's wrong, on one hand, but on the other hand the maturity that will come with his personal growth will let him be the kind of adult he envisions.

I can't stand inconsiderate people

Hiro knows he's a jerk. He knows his snappy retorts piss people off--he enjoys that. He's super jealous about Tohru and doesn't care about her feelings, and him taking his anger out on Tohru has been hurting Kisa's feelings and that hasn't caused Hiro to check himself yet either.

He knows this, he hates this, he's not ready to deal with it yet and exercise self-control, so he's the niceness police about other people being rude.

(I think it's interesting that, when Hiro starts maturing, even though he still has that tendency to rudeness, there's also a hint that it will one day turn into a frankness that isn't just "a blunt insult is the same as honesty right?" That time when Hiro realizes that Kyou and Tohru have Feelings and he's like "Um, wait, is that okay? Are we just not going to talk about the fact that Kyou is going to be locked up alone in a room for the rest of his life???" He asks the tough questions lol. I won't give him credit for bringing up Tohru's dad issues because he was just doing that to be a dick, there was zero maturity there. In another world, though, he would've been the only other person besides Kyou [who already knew the details] to think to question Tohru about it.)

People who whine about their situation while accepting no responsibility are so irritating

Again...Hiro hates the whole situation that happened with Kisa, and hates his part in it, and didn't do anything to fix it before Tohru came along. And even then, he still hasn't fessed up to Kisa about the real circumstances. He knows he owes Kisa that, and he hasn't taken responsibility yet.

This ties into the complacency issue, but with the added fact that Hiro's said it's shitty and unfair but still is going along with it without trying to stop it. So he's an extra jerk, but he still hasn't stepped up yet.

I think maybe this is why Tohru's speech touches him, even after he just called her out on magical Mary Sue emotional healing powers. He's been nothing but his worst self around Tohru--bad enough that it's not only just Tohru but Kisa he's been upsetting as well--he's been bratty and insulting and pushed Tohru around and stolen her property and treated her like shit and--

And instead of rolling her eyes, or getting fed up and firing back, or any other response that show her low expectations for Hiro…

Tohru just stands there and says it's brave, to admit you have flaws, and that she has faith that he can and will make good on his responsibilities. Even though nothing at all that Hiro's done--and he's very well aware of this--gives any indication that he would even try. Let alone succeed.

The way that Hiro, when people call him a brat, tends to then embrace it and get even brattier--this makes me think he's the kind of kid who lives down to people's expectations, rather than trying to prove them wrong. So when Tohru without hesitation sets the bar high like that, and it pisses Hiro off--

He's gonna show you, stupid woman. You think he's a prince? You're gonna be floored at the kind of prince he'll be.

(Eventually. Much later.)

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

I would like to request some Quark, because somehow this slimeball has become my favorite. Odd friendship between him and reader, with them being a complete sweetheart and a bit of a pushover, which everyone thinks should spell disaster waiting to happen, but for some reason it actually WORKS ? Vague request, but I am down and I like to cheer myself up by imagining that my favs would like to hang with me. Please and thank you. Bonus points for Quark actually encouraging reader to grow a spine

{ Ah, everyone loves Quark but they can’t admit it xD }

💰 QUARK 💰

Quark is the King of the cheaters and he’s very proud of it. This is hisjob after all.

He is not the kind of person you could trust, it’s not because he is abad guy but he just puts profit above everything. Gold and money are the mostimportant thing for him and he realizes his mistakes when it’s too late. Well,he’s the master of turning things around.

Yes, your friendship with him is truly weird and nobody understands howyou could consider him as your BFF. Something is totally wrong here and peoplesee your friendship with Quark suspiciously.

Maybe you are hiding something or maybe he’s hiding something and youdon’t want to confess his misdeed, you are his partner in crime.

At first, you were one of his many clients to ruin and he did not care alot about you, he only cared about the money you spent in his game and drinks.When he sees people, he sees wallets and pieces of gold and not actuallypeople, it’s quite funny, but he’s a Ferengi and so you don’t take hisbehaviour as rude or evil, this is his way to be.

You found him so amusing and so you were not offended when he triedforcing you to buy some other drink or try your luck to Dabo.

With time, you and Quark become friends and you learns to appreciate him.He also learns seeing you like a friend and not like a walking wallet and thenyour friendship becomes stronger. People still don’t understand what you see inQuark, but you just don’t care and he’s cool in his way.

You are his friend and you have a special treatment, sometimes he evenoffers you some drink and then he says it’s not a big deal but don’t get usedto it. Next time, when he asks you a favour you can’t say no. Friends help eachother in every situation especially in the bad ones or when debts must be paid andmaybe he does not want to pay them all alone. Then friends go into action!

Sometimes, he can also be wise and he often listens to your problems, heis a barman and so he’s used to listen to people and give some random advice (itencourages them to spend more) and then Quark likes gossips, he likes snoopingaround and knowing everyone’s business. Other than the king of profit, he’salso the king of gossip and you like listening to his new gossips. He’s betterthan a magazine.

Other times, you and Quark make bets about everything. For example, betsabout the winners of Dabo or about who will be the next crush of Julian Bashirand other things. It’s always entertaining! And he wins most of the times becausehis lobes never fail but, since you are his friend, he will give you a discountand won’t make you pay a lot.

We can say it’s an odd friendship but it’s also a fun, special and truefriendship. Something you can’t buy and even Quark is surprised. How can it bepossible? He could never buy a fantastic friendship like this.

[wouldadepressedpersonmakethis]

phone wars

STORE 1: “Mobicity”

IDRIS ELBA (45, reserved by kate aa) - store manager: super intense!!!!! runs his store like he’s running an army!!!! treats every sale like a life or death situation!!! has some raymond holt vibes too??? like this, this, this, and this are all him! expects peRFECTION from his employees!!!! the interview process is inSANE!!!!!! definitely treats the other stores and their employees like mortal enemies!!!!! his office is conveniently located so that he can spy on the store two stores. also has some john mulaney’s dad vibes. “you have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair” “god can’t hear you” “how are you better than a nazi?” “let’s change the subject” “1 black coffee”

MICHEAL B. JORDAN (31 , reserved by kate aa) - didn’t believe that IDRIS ELBA was a real person but heard stories from his sister. forged an impressive resume and got a job as his assistant manager. got the job just so he could mess w/ idris for fun???? super talented at pretending like he’s got his shit together when in reality he’s super lazy (except when it comes to playing elaborate pranks). secretly dating melissa benoist

RICHARD AYOADE (41) - salesperson, always nervous!!! brilliant but no social skills, terrified of idris, talks fast, throws up when he gets nervous, “i’m okay as long as i don’t think about it!” you could spill soup on him and he’d probably apologize to you

KATIE MCGRATH (35) - idris’s assistant; once dated chris pine; may or may not have gotten this job just to desTROY him; super ambitious/intelligent; could be doing any number of things w/ her life but she’s also kind of petty; has a lot of meryl streep in the devil wears prada vibes, does have a lot of respect for idris but also has plans to over-throw him; can be intense?????? only cares about 1 person (her sister/cousin/bff???) still attracted to chris pine but u won’t hear her say that

ZOEY DEUTCH (23) - katie’s assistant; STRESS LEVEL IS CONSTANTLY A 11/10; def has anne hathaway’s job in tdwp; got this job by mistake; is the furthest thing from organized; applied for a janitor position b/c that’s all she’s qualified to do here but somehow her resume got mixed up??? *** she thinks it was a mistake but it was actually just a prank that MBJ played*** faking it until she makes it??? or rather until she gets fired heh. pretending to be an uptight harvard grad but instead hardly graduated hs and doesn’t know how to adult; may or may not have spent her entire first pay check on fuzzy socks and mozzarella sticks.

??? another lady 

STORE 2: “What’s App”

CHARLIE DAY (42) -- an idiot, super chill and laid back, somehow always accidentally thwarts the others’ plans to destroy him! a human disaster but somehow everything just works out for him. his store is a mess tbh??? very unorganized but somehow the most successful of the three??

DYLAN O’BRIEN (26) -- wanted to work for store #1 with a deep passion and intensity!! looks @ idris elba as his idol??? potentially calls him dad accidentally a lot??? idk its weird and IDRIS ELBA got super annoyed with him constantly applying to work for him so instead he sent him to work at store 2 as a “spy”. he takes this role suPER seriously and basically thinks he’s james bond. never gets anything at all helpful for idris elba. has a weird and elaborate fake back story for going undercover. most people can tell he is a “spy”?

ZENDAYA (21) (reserved by lizzy) - younger sister to MBJ and GMR. college student. this is 100% the best summer job she’s ever had. super unmotivated to do well most of the time and just tricks #2 to do all of her work for her. loves just to sit back and watch the chaos unfold.

KRYSTEN RITTER (36 , reserved by kate aa) - IT, monotone voice, always wears black, likes to pretend that she’s a satanist to fuck with people, surrounded by idiots, hates everyone, do not engage her in psychological warfare b/cs she will deSTROY you

BLAKE LIVELY (30 , reserved by kate aa) - heavy beatrice/eugenie vibes~ under skills she listed: i know how to do makeup and have an iphone, only got and has kept this job b/c her manager is as clueless as she is???? does try to be helpful but honestly makes things worse, doesn’t understand you have to put in a full eight hours a day??? often leaves for several hours at at time for lunch??? sometimes just doesn’t come back??? grew up super wealthy and was recently disinherited by her parents after she got into a huge fight w/ them over something stupid?? too proud to go crawling back but tbh she is def drowning in the real world.

MAX GREENFIELD (37) LOUD, yells a LOT, hired as the new brand manager. is grossed out 24/7 by the state of the store; sUPER dramatic; always saying how he’s going to have a heart attack working here (probably will tbh), also says he’s going to die of a rare disease working w/ charlie day (also probably true), has goals to rebrand this as a luxury phone store (closer in style to Oasis vs. a garbage). has his work cut out for him 

STORE 3: “Oasis”

CHRIS PINE (37, reserved by lizzy) -- super wealthy!!!, spoiled!!!! a huge ass!!!!! his father is the CEO but he wanted his son to work his way up the ranks on his own vs. just handing the business over to him. has become manager here but that’s as far as he’s gotten. will do whatever it takes to make his branch the most successful!!!! soooo dramatic!!!!! the level of bitchiness in him is absurd!!! definitely considers IDRIS ELBA to his his (1) true enemy!!!!!! def considers manager #2 to be worthless and beneath his notice (don’t mention that he’s actually his biggest competition)!!! has probably won the shithead of the year award. hits on his assistant 24/7 has anger management issues

GUGU MBATHA-RAW (35) - michael b. jordan’s older sister. chris pine’s secretary. the sweetest person in the world!!!!!!! does NOT deserve to work for someone like chris pine. doesn’t realize how much of an awful person he is just because she can’t believe anyone could be that awful???? would come home and tell her siblings about work and the rivalry and neither of them could believe it but then they all got jobs at the other two stores just to see if it was what gugu had said ... turns out its even better.

TIMOTHY OLYPHANT (50, reserved by lizzy) - hired by chris pine’s dad to keep him in line and make sure that he doesn’t do anything to harm the family’s or the company’s reputation. it is a fulltime job!!!! constantly stressed!!!! constantly like: idk what i expected!?!?!? keeps trying to talk sense to chris pine but that’s like talking to a brick wall??? sometimes tries to tell him not to do something in the hopes that he will actually do it ... but that never works either ... will probably die from a heart attack soon. spends his days apologizing to everyone  

MELISSA BENOIST (29, reserved by lizzy) - secretly dating michael b. jordan, her job is basically to keep everyone she knows alive???? helP, loves MBJ a lot but he does stress her out sometimes, kind of OCD, works too hard, super driven, just needs to relax, honestly hates this job but just holding it while she finishes up med school, bffs w/ zoey, somehow emily thinks they are bffs??? but melissa doesn’t have the heart to tell her that they aren’t

EMILY BLUNT (35, taken by kate aa) mary eileen vibes~ An Author™ (but not really) trolls her amazon reviews and obsesses over every bad one, hardly does any work? is “in love” with TIMOTHY and is convinced that he is in love with her too even though he’s blatantly told her that he is not, thinks they can’t be together b/c they are co-workers and that they are involved in some kind of forbidden romance???? is the office manager and has def put a lot of personal expenses on it w/ shaky, at best, justifications for why they needed to be charged to the company

JERMAINE CLEMENT (?) method actor. currently is trying to get a role as a vampire. never breaks character. it gets weird. 

STORE 4: a fro-yo shop that’s stuck in the middle of the war zone “Sprinkles on Top”

DREAMA WALKER (32) - believes all you need is a hug and some frozen yogurt to have a good day!!!! but the arrival of the three competing phone stores is testing everything she thinks she knows!!!!! her shop has now become hostile territory b/c all of her customers are mostly just the workers on break and they all just stare each other down!!!!!!! has become super aggressive in her attempts to try to get everyone to just get along and be happy!!!

CHRIS O’DOWD? JAKE JOHNSON (38-40 reserved by lizzy) - watched too many nature documentaries on netflix, feels like he morally needs to be a vegetarian now but can’t stop eating meat, so instead he justifies himself by making up elaborate stories about how the chicken he’s eating has unforgivable character flaws, talks at length about this to the customers? doesn’t have great social skills,has conversations with his cat more than w/ actual people; calls himself the alchemist b/c he once managed to burn his laundry, “i didn’t even know you could do that!”

NICK ROBINSON (23 , reserved by kate aa) - has a mild peanut allergy but took this job anyway. “i live life on the edge” ~ nick “you don’t” ~everyone else, has had a crush on ZENDAYA, got this job to be close to her after they went to different colleges? loves bad jokes, a Nerd, writes fanfiction, has won employee of the month every month since he was hired but tbh his competition isn’t that hard to beat, both proud and embarrassed to see his picture up on (the wall) so many times,

JON BERNTHAL? BEN BARNES?  (reserved by kate aa)- actually a hitman and this job is just a cover, honestly a terrible liar and everyone can tell what he actually does but pretend they don’t??? inSANELY good at his hitman job ... not so good at serving frozen yogurt? doesn’t have any customer service skills tbh, honestly comes off as pretty terrifying? looks @  everyone like he might just kill you, tbh dreama is a little afraid to fire him?? doesn’t look like he works here???

ANNA KENDRICK (33, reserved by lizzy) - always come to work hungover, the queen of TMI, hits on everything and anything that moves, tbh a sexual harassment situation just waiting to happen, dreama’s younger sister/cousin and was only given this job as a favor, tbh is not working out as well as dreama had hoped.

AWKWAFINA (29) has killed every plant she has ever owned (doesn’t stop her from getting more!), dumps all the toppings on her fro yo. constantly is eating ~free~ frozen yogurt and doesn’t realize that after her 1 cup a day limit, the rest comes out of her paycheck. still lives with her parents. lOUD. ZERO FILTER. will say whatever is on her mind at any time. is TERRIBLE with secrets and is pretty sure she’s gonna drop to someone that melissa and michael are dating and get them both fired! yay! bffs w/ melissa benoist, 

[lemoncupcake]

12&24!!!! ty! :D

ty for sending this!! :)

12. roommate au & 24. soulmate au

under the cut because it got long haha

ok, so, obviously, what happens is that beth and ruby are bffs and decide to live together during college. and that goes super well!! besides being her best friend, ruby is also the nicest, cleanest roommate a person could possibly ask for and it's clear that the thought of telling beth that no, her 10 yo little sister can't live with them in the crappy college apartment they can barely afford even though it's rent-controlled and cheap as dirt doesn't even so much as cross her mind when things come to a head with beth's mother halfway through their sophomore year. all this to say, there are no problems between them, beth loves that girl to the ends of the earth and back!! the only problem is that ruby fell head over heels in love with their neighbor approximately one week after they moved into the apartment. and ruby being the amazing person she is and said boy having good taste, he fell in love with her too. and of course only 2 months into dating they said each other's words because they're just that perfect of a couple. and now that college is over and they're all getting real jobs that pay them more than just barely enough for rent and a pack of noodles for every night of the month, they wanna move in together. which leaves beth in a bit of a bind.

ruby and stan are incredibly kind people, so of course they say beth can take her time trying to find a new place, they're not in a rush, but that doesn't make things feel like any less of a ticking time bomb for her. beth knows she can't afford a place for her and annie all by herself and she can't think of a single person who'd be willing to room with a tween not related to them, outside of dean. but as much as beth loves dean, she wants to put off moving in together as much as possible - she's seen his disaster-zone of room, seen how judith runs around cleaning up after him. beth doesn't want that - she can't do that, she's already running around cleaning up after annie, she doesn't have the energy or time to do the same for him. moving in with dean will just have to wait until annie is a little older, is all.

still, with no other option, beth almost gives in. and then she remembers rio. rio is stan's best friend and roommate of five years and he's almost in as much of a bind as her, if beth's not wrong. he doesn't have a serious partner or another close friend he could move in with, as far as she knows. he could probably afford a studio by himself if need be, but he'd need to cut down his hours at the ring to work more shifts and beth knows that's the last thing he wants to do. he is also... not beth's favorite person, to put it mildly. their bedrooms share a wall - a very thin wall - through which she can hear him fuck every one of his not-serious partners. she'd tried to talk to him about it, but that had just seemed to make him more determined to pound his bedpost into the wall as often and with as much force as possible. the whole thing had just left her embarrassed. and angry. which had made her decide she should give him some of his own medicine. she'd finally had sex with dean in her room, as opposed to going over to his house. but things hadn't gone as she envisioned and she'd been left having to fake it as loudly and dramatically as possible to make her point. it'd fooled dean, but not rio. the look in his eyes when they'd rode the elevator down together the next morning had made her want to hit him.

how infuriating he is aside, though, rio seems to be a decent guy. stan loves him, so that's a point in his favor. and he's always nice to annie, doesn't treat her like he's annoyed by her very existence whenever beth has to bring her over with her for their friend group hang-outs. she even thinks she could get him to take the one-night-stands down a notch if they moved in together, what with there being a child in the apartment.

so, unhappy but resigned, beth proposes they move in together. stan and beth will just trade places, easy as pie. and his place is a three-bedroom instead of a two-bedroom, so she can finally stop sharing with her sister! and yeah he'll have to dismantle the gaming room he shared with stan so the third bedroom can actually function as a bedroom, but he already would have to do that anyways and everything else will stay the same. she even offers to pay a bigger share of the rent, since she's responsible for the third roommate. and yeah, that leaves her paying almost as much as she would if it was just her and annie, but the difference is just enough to make it worth it - plus, she'd still be only a 10-minute walk away from annie's school and a 20-minute walk away from her job and she gets to keep living only one wall removed from ruby! it's the perfect arrangement! rio takes pride in being an asshole, though, so he says no right away. beth knows he's going to say yes eventually. her proposition lets him stay close to stan and pay less rent, no fucking way he doesn't actually want that - no, he just wants to hear her beg first. and beth won't do that. she'd rather work herself to the bone to afford a studio or give in to moving in with dean than beg him. she's about to tell him to fuck himself when he grins, that really wide smile that makes him look like a little boy on christmas day spreading across his face, and tells her to chill, he's just kidding.

and that's how beth ends up moving in with rio. dean isn't happy, says his girl shouldn't be moving in with some random guy instead of him, it'll look bad. but he's heard many a rant about how much of an asshole rio is, so beth at least manages to convince him nothing's going on, she just wants to stay closer to annie's school and her job.

if she's honest, living with rio isn't bad. for the first couple of months, their schedules are almost completely opposite - she basically only sees him during the saturday hang-outs they can both make it to and late at night when he comes home from work while she's watching tv in the living room and they exchange empty pleasantries. and she'd gotten glimpses of his room before, so she knew he wasn't exactly living in a pigsty, but his level of organization and cleanliness surprises her. so much so that she even asks him if he's hired a maid once. he just looks at her with the most disgusted look she's ever seen on his face before he shakes his head and says "you think i can afford that?" which, yeah, he has a point.

and then beth finds dean cheating on her. not finds out, no, finds. she drops annie off at a sleep-over and decides to surprise her boyfriend with a drop-by since he's been complaining she doesn't have time for him anymore. only, when she opens the door to his place (with the key he gave her!) she sees him fucking his secretary on the couch. he was so lost in it that she doesn't even think he noticed her there on the doorway, staring. if he did see her, he certainly didn't show any signs of it.

so that night when rio comes home, it's to find beth sobbing and eating ice cream on the couch. and, see, like beth said, he's a decent guy - so instead of pretending like he doesn't notice her, he sits down next to her and lets her cry on his shoulder. and then somehow eating ice cream on the couch turns into doing shots in the kitchen which turns into sex in his room - really great sex in his room.

the next morning she tells rio to forget the previous night ever happened and dumps dean. she's surprised at how good it feels.

honestly, she doesn't think much of her hook-up with rio. yes, it was good, and yes, maybe she keeps thinking about it when she's alone in bed at night, but she's got more serious things to worry about and so planning a repeat just isn't on her mind.

and then they go out to bar with ruby and stan one saturday, and they both get just the right amount of tipsy and the house is empty because annie is over at a friend's house and maybe they end up in bed together again. and it's not that it becomes a habit or anything close to it after that, but sometimes when they're both in the mood and there's no better option, they have sex with each other. and maybe rio will kiss her cheek good mourning and make her and annie breakfast before he leaves for work, maybe beth makes him dinner because cooking for 3 is basically the same as cooking for 2, maybe they cuddle on the couch watching crappy reality tv once annie's gone to bed. but it still means nothing. it means nothing that she misses the warm weight of him next to her in bed when she sleeps alone, it means nothing that she wants to kiss him every time she sees him. it means nothing.

and then he says her words. one morning, in between kisses, he offers to make her breakfast. blueberry pancakes, your favorites. and the words on her hip burn. she spirals a bit after that, she'll admit. she just expected someone different - more like dean, if she's honest, but also just less like rio. someone more boring, someone with a mark. but, really, it checks out that the universe hates her enough to do this to her. still, the next time they have sex, she makes sure. maybe it's on his neck or the bottom of his foot or something. but no, he's completely mark-free. she dumps him while he's still in the afterglow, as much as you can dump someone who only thinks of you as a booty-call.

things are tense and awkward after. and they become even more so when he beings bringing his hook-ups to the house again. she lets the first couple of them slide, figuring he'll get his petty revenge and move one, but after a week straight of bringing a new person home each night, she decides to talk to him. beth isn't the only one who knows exactly why he has people over, annie isn't dumb, she knows it too. he can't do this in the apartment.

the talk doesn't go well. it's more of a screaming match than anything else. it ends when he storms out, slamming the door behind him. he comes home hours later, clearly drunk but thankfully alone. instead of ignoring her and going directly to his room, he lays down on the couch where she's sitting watching the bachelor, resting his head on her lap. they've been in this exact position many times. out of habit, beth scratches his scalp. as they watch josh give racquel a rose, rio blurts out why'd you leave. she tries to answer, but all she can do is stutter out gibberish. come back, he whispers against her thigh when she's done. beth laughs, i'm right here. 's not the same, he tells her, pouting like a petulant child. then he moves so he can look straight up at her face and his big hand comes up to push her hair out of her face in the way he used to before and she melts. they kiss on the couch for what feels like an eternity. there's words whispered in between their kisses, come back and i missed you and i like you so much. that last one gives rio pause. say that again, he asks. beth does, whispers it against his lips before moving in for another kiss. he pushes her off gently, and she'd be scared that he was rejecting her if it wasn't for the huge smile on his face. and that's how beth finds out exactly why rio got that stupid bird on his neck. and if it wasn't her favorite tattoo of his before, it starts being then.

[cerealmonster15]

ddadds kids....

i like thinking about them as one big extended cul-de-sac family... [headcanons and stuff!]

imagine all the families spending the holidays together! i’m sure some celebrate things that the rest dont but theyd probs have one big generic get together during The Holiday Season

all of the kids are crammed together on one big “kid’s table” even tho like half of them are teenagers and there are more offspring than parents

someone always ends up starting a food fight,, usually ernest and lucien, or the twins [either pair. both pairs?? christie and christian vs hazel and briar??]

this was referenced in game once so amanda probs ends up babysitting a lot when she’s home from college for breaks+ during that short time shes still around before she leaves! she’d be  a cool fun babysitter, but tough enough to keep some of the more rambunctious kids in check ;p

[ernest voice] dad i dont NEED a babysitter!!! [hugo voice] son i want to know that i can be away for the weekend and come home to a house that isn’t on fire

ernest is probs really snarky to amanda when she babysits like “youre not the boss of me” and going out of his way to cause trouble, but amanda is Cool and probs gives him a run for his money with snark and idk shenanigans ensue and he probs secretly admires her and thinks she’s awesome but would rather die than let anyone ever find out

lucien looks like he might be fairly close to amanda’s age? they probs dont have all that much in common, but damien’s date revealed that lucien listens to mcr, and amanda made her dad listen to black parade, so I bet they could bond over some music tastes here and there

LET LUCIEN GIVE AMANDA A COOL GOTH MAKEOVER

amanda: pleeeeeaaaaassseeeeeee ;D??? lucien: no way. the goth lifestyle isnt for posers i think with enough pestering she’d get him to cave. he’d take great time and care while painting her nails to make sure he does it Right

amanda probs comments on how careful and skilled he does it like “wow you really take this stuff seriously” “uh obviously??”

once he finishes, amanda takes a pic, and then all the other neighbors see her and are bothering lucien to make them look cool too. he pretends to hate it but actually has a lot of fun and is secretly really happy that they think he’s good at what he does

amanda convinces lucien to do like, cool goth makeup videos and put them on youtube/instagram. she helps him with filming and doing photography of final looks and together they get a lot of followers. sometimes she’ll guest star in his videos if he needs a face model other than his own

amanda’s kinda freaked out by christie and christian at first but over time gets used to and sees past their “creepy twin shtick” and, much like her dad [in the joseph brownie date] learns to use it to mess with them and possibly other people

at first chris probably doesnt talk to amanda a lot and keeps to himself when she’s over, but maybe over time she’d adapt to him and learn a few things hes interested in and express gentle interest in those things to kind of help him open up to her more

chris gets quietly attached to her like shes an older sister

everyone in the cul de sac does. they love amanda

AND EACH OTHER

i want daisy to be involved with the carmensita and amanda girl band thing mentioned briefly during one of mat’s dates. that’d be adorable

you know what else would be adorable? allllll the cul de sac kids coming to briar and hazel’s softball games to support them. 

the kids going to each others’ anything to support them!! when theyre in clubs and activities that put on shows or performances or other sports games, as many of the neighbors that can make it are there

when they get older, they try to be more and more obnoxious to embarrass their neighbors in front of everyone, like making huge support signs and banners with glitter with a stupid yet supportive pun that one of their dads helped come up with, or printing their neighbor’s face on a tshirt or a giant cutout on a popsicle stick, shouting as loud as possible 

they def went to amanda’s actual graduation and PROBABLY ALL CRIED

a lot of this has amanda centric bc i Love Her, but also,,

maybe hugo and craig start going to wrestling matches together [+dadsona] so ernest sees a lot of the cahn kids. if amanda’s in town, she’s with them and in charge. if not, ernest is technically in charge, but secretly [not so secretly probably] the dads are counting on briar and hazel [briar, mostly] to keep things from falling to disaster for the few hours theyre out

they all like to take turns riding on the Giant Dog that ernest got in damien’s route [duchess something i think?] [a good component that should be canon in all universes]

“lets put river on him” “no she’ll fall off” “wheres the duct tape” “n o”

if enough disaster happens leaving these kids alone together, they probably get dropped off at another dad’s house to be looked after for a while. joseph volunteers to look after them but since he and mary are already looking after 4 and KEEP LOSING CRISH, they tend to try and ask literally anyone else

[not that theyre bad parents lmao but it’d be easier for all the other parents that just have One Kid]

i bet christian and christie love robert’s wild spooky stories. he probably makes up so much bullshit to fuck with any kid that’s listening

they’d carpool if they could fit enough kids in one car. it’s probably a 2-3 car carpool depending on who’s driving what size car and who needs to go where at what time

there are probably so many inside jokes[CUL DE SAC MEMES......] that are born at every cul de sac gathering. 

when amanda’s home from college, all the kids wanna be the first to tell her all about the SHENANIGANS she’s missed out on

river and crish are bffs once theyre old enough for human interaction. they Have To Be.

pranking each other in the school hallways plz, or just all around chaos. god help the teachers that somehow end up with 2+ of the cul de sac kids in the same class

ernest definitely sends his dog to poop on damien’s lawn outside lucien’s bedroom window / probably does the flaming bag of dog poop ding dong ditch when he knows lucien’s home alone and will be the one to answer the door

christie and chris like when briar and hazel pretend to be each other, so they get their hands on a pair of scissors and chris gives christie a terrible haircut. possibly briar and hazel try and help with the scheme and things just get Worse and joseph has to take his daughter to a Professional [or maybe one of the dads is really good with hair/has had their child do the same thing and is good with fixing a bad haircut ;p]

carmensita goes through a goth phase after she goes over to lucien’s to be babysat one day. mat does not know how to Deal bc this isnt the type of music hes used to playing but he loves and supports his daughter regardless and likes to hear her singing all kinds of music to broaden her horizons and strengthen her talent

G R O U P  T E X T between all the kids old enough to have phones

there are lots of memes. lots. of memes.

they take candid shitty photos of each other all the time and send them in the chat, and particularly amusing ones end up reused as reaction photos

lucien: [sends photo of ernest having just spilled cereal on himself with duchess in the background making off with a piece of pizza] ernest: fuck u carmensita: mood daisy: why are you having pizza and cereal for breakfast? ernest: dont tell me how to live my life amanda: lol tag urself i’m duchess

this is just something i like to do w/ my friends but they’d probs also stealthily take pictures  of each other when theyre out and about and send them to each other in secret like amanda’s out with her dad at the grocery store and spots lucien and damien in the dairy isle and is like FUCK,, she hides behind a stand of donuts or w/e and takes a pic of them and sends it to lucien w/ no context or like “lol hey” 

it becomes a war of sending pics of each other to each other/the group without getting caught. lucien and ernest probably act like they think it’s stupid but get so competitive about it

they all keep score and it probably also would extend to taking stealthy pics of cul de sac dads too Just Because

the dads find out about the competition somehow and like,,, secretly are so into who’s winning. especially brian and dadsona. sometimes they’ll try and serve as a distraction for their child to get a sneaky pic so they can win, but usually the kids prefer the solo missions

val comes and visits sometimes with cool stories. sometimes she brings her girlfriend, and amanda especially looks up to them like two cool older sisters [i dont remember if it was jacket pins or photography that val said her gf is into, but whatever it is i’m sure amanda would geek out about it with her]

christie and christian eventually grow out of their “creepy twin” thing but still have a more unique brand of humor/personality. the cul de sac kids are used to them by then, and will THROW DOWN with anyone that bullies them/ calls them freaks or anything like that, or anyone that picks on chis [and eventually crish] by association or for any other reason

THESE KIDS MAY ARGUE AND FIGHT AND STUFF SOMETIMES BUT THEY’LL STICK UP FOR EACH OTHER IF ANYONE OUTSIDE THE CUL DE SAC TRIES TO START SOMETHING W/ ONE OF THEIR OWN

i could go on forever making up headcanons or scenarios for these kids bc i love them and constantly crave more content about them but imma stop here bc it’s been over an hour and this is Long but anyway plz talk to me about these kids + the cul de sac as a whole. share ur headcanons,,,,, i l o v e the m ,,

[fionatlux]

The parody recaps continue! I meant to watch Episode 4 last night but got distracted by reading Kingfisher by Patricia McKillip. Arthuriana! Motorcycles! Quests! Lady knights! Evil molecular gastronomy!

Anyway.

Episode 1

Episode 2

STILL STAR-CROSSED, EPISODE 3

[The one where things are finally funny on purpose!]

 A Tasteful Ladybrunch, The Palace

ISABELLA: I am so happy that it is socially acceptable to brunch with my BFF again!

ROSALINE: I am so happy to be marrying Benvolio!

ISABELLA: Boy, are you a rotten liar.

ROSALINE: He is witty! handsome! not a blackmailing jerkface!

ESCALUS: Good, because I just popped in to say I moved up the wedding.

ROSALINE: SO HAPPY.

[Escalus and Isabella have somehow contrived to match their outfits to their respective backdrop wall colors. Both their outfits are beautiful, actually, well done costume designer. I have no idea what period they’re meant to be from—I have accepted that the show takes a Reign approach to historical accuracy—but they’re stunning.]

ROSALINE: I hope these mimosas are bottomless because I am definitely going to need more than one drink.

  The Throne Room, The Palace

CAPULET: Forty thousand ducats in exchange for my niece or we walk!

MONTAGUE: Forty thousand? You can take your forty thousand and shove it up your—

ISABELLA: Amazing. If you ordered them to jump off the Ponte Pietra, they’d argue about who got to go first.

ESCALUS: Don’t tempt me.

ESCALUS: Pay up, Montague, I don’t want to look poor in front of the other city-states!

[Capulet: 1, Montague: 0]

CAPULET: Oh yeah, also my architect fell off a scaffold so we can’t have the wedding and betrothal there. It is very tragic, no one regrets more than I, etc., etc.

[Montague actually looks impressed at Capulet’s performance.]

MONTAGUE: Uh-huh, sure. Also your cathedral is an eyesore.

ISABELLA: No problem! Let’s hold the betrothal in Execution Square! I’m sure this will totally work!

[Isabella is a superb frustrated tyrant but a terrible wedding planner.]

  Sister Time, The Room Formerly Known as Juliet’s Room, Casa Capulet

[For once, we do not CGI-zoom but enjoy several shots of the magnificent exterior location!]

LIVIA: I still say it’s better than going to a nunnery. You’re not even religious!

ROSALINE: I just want to live my own life!

[Mail call!]

LIVIA: It’s a three-page invitation to a picnic! And also Sonnet 18! “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more… temperate…”

THE NURSE: Not very good, is it?

[Rosaline is likewise unimpressed. Even Livia is underwhelmed. I suspect she thinks “temperate” in this context refers to Rosaline’s drinking habits. Hilariously, nobody in Verona thinks this is a good poem, except possibly Montague. Speaking of whom…]

  Maison Montague

[Montague punctuates his statements by using his nephew for moving crossbow target practice. He has surprisingly good comedic timing.]

BENVOLIO: You sent her a sonnet?!?!

MONTAGUE: You bet I did! And I paid the town crier to shout it from the rooftops! [Montague: 1, Benvolio: 0]

BENVOLIO: This is a stupid plan.

MONTAGUE: And you’re going on a picnic! [Montague: 2, Benvolio: 0.]

BENVOLIO: You know, you could have had this alliance without the bride-price or stupid poetry if only Romeo and Juliet had not died.

[Montague: 2, Benvolio: 1. This is clearly a hit, a palpable hit. Low blow, B.]

  Casa Capulet

[Giles Capulet is haunted by the murder of the architect, visions of his dead daughter, and also by the moneylender, who keeps sending him reminder notes. His evident pain is a nice parallel to Montague’s in the previous scene.]

 Some Tavern

[The show has suddenly remembered that Mercutio, Romeo, and Benvolio were inseparable BFFs, and they should probably show Benvolio being broody about this.]

SOME DRUNKARD: *reads Sonnet 18*

SOME OTHER DRUNKARD: *makes a crude joke about Romeo, tongues, and Capulets*

BENVOLIO: *flips table*

  Casa Capulet

[In the wake of his ghost sighting, Capulet is disturbed by the shrine The Nurse and Lady Capulet have set up.]

THE NURSE: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy!

CAPULET: Can you just… not?

  Maison Montague

BENVOLIO: Everybody thinks I wrote that clichéd, stupid poem! This is intolerable!

MONTAGUE: Too bad. Ready to pick out wedding invitations?

[Montague: 3, Benvolio: 1. Get it together, B.!]

  Picnic Time, Some Ridiculously Beautiful Pavilion Right On the Water

[Seriously, this location is absurdly beautiful. Probably gets mosquitoes, though.]

ROSALINE: I hate picnics and lying.

BENVOLIO: You wanted to be a nun, right?

ROSALINE: You… were actually listening?

BENVOLIO: I am sensitive. Don’t worry, I have a plan! See, I know this abbess...

[I have SO MANY QUESTIONS, starting with: How does Benvolio know this abbess? And, given his reputation, how does Benvolio know this abbess, if you know what I mean?]

  ESCALUS: I am here to check on you two lovebirds and your giant croquembouche!

ESCALUS: I also brought all the ambassadors. To show off your love. Which symbolizes civic harmony and imperviousness to invasion.

ISABELLA: Well, shall we go talk about important international news?

ESCALUS: Let the men talk first, Izzy, your ladygossip can wait!

[Escalus, you are a terrible politician and not much of a brother. Somebody give Isabella a city to rule.]

  The Palace

[Dramatic zoom on the back of Isabella’s well-coiffed head!]

MONTAGUE: I have noticed that you are a lady of intelligence and ambition. I have also noticed that Capulet’s cathedral would look great with my name on it. Finally, I have noticed that you like the arts.

ISABELLA: Put up a big fresco of a lady saint being badass, and we’re in business.

MONTAGUE: Done!

ISABELLA: AW YISS.

[Capulet: 1, Montague: 4, Isabella: POWERSTRUT that looks suspiciously like a nascent MURDERWALK.]

  The Slytherin Dormitories Lady Capulet’s Room, Casa Capulet

CAPULET: Do you think our daughter is truly gone?

LADY CAPULET: I think I’m going to ominously clutch my rosary and vow revenge on Montague!

  The Garden of Moonlit Walks and Exposition, Casa Capulet

PARIS: What a lovely spot for some midnight romance!

LIVIA: Unfortunately I must decline. I am a servant but also a lady.

PARIS: But my eyes are super blue in this light! You hardly notice that my hair is too short for the ‘90s floppy look!

LIVIA: Compelling point, but no. To my great regret.

  The Brothel

BENVOLIO: Let’s run away to Milan! I will be a blacksmith and you can open your own brothel!

STELLA THE KINDLY PROSTITUTE: Baby, this is a stupid plan, but I will let you down easy because I am a nice person.

  The Palace

ESCALUS: I sound like I’m questioning the whole idea of rulership by divine right, but actually I just feel bad about making Rosaline marry a Montague.

ISABELLA: I’m questioning the whole idea of male primogeniture, myself.

  Casa Capulet

[Rosaline is all ready to sneak out to the convent, as per Benvolio’s plan, but then she gets a better idea.]

ROSALINE: Restore my sister to her rightful status and I will somehow become good at lying! I will pretend the shit out of this betrothal!

CAPULET: Deal!

  Livia’s Room, Casa Capulet

ROSALINE: So I stayed and made a deal so that you can be a lady and get married!

LIVIA: You… really didn’t have to do that?

ROSALINE: Besides, I would miss you if I ran away to a nunnery!

LIVIA: I’m thinking you should have reversed the order of those two points. But I would miss you also.

  Betrothal Day, Some Oddly Smallish Public Square (Which May or May Not Be Execution Square, It’s Not Clear)

[Rosaline and Benvolio are all smiles and fancy clothes. Congratulations on looking gorgeous, you two!]

ESCALUS: Do you take delight in torturing me?

ROSALINE: Well, you did break my heart and force me to marry into the family that murdered my father, so… you really don’t have any room to talk, here.

ISABELLA: I am a PR genius!

[Stella the Kindly Prostitute shows up to view the betrothal, and because I have read the book, I have a very bad feeling about the probability of her continued good health. But no, actually she is just here to exchange sad looks with Benvolio.]

[Benvolio and Rosaline get mostly betrothed, but suddenly a cart trundles into the square bearing them in effigy! Some masked dude shoots a fire arrow! All is chaos! Then, explosions!]

ESCALUS: To the river! We don’t have an organized fire service! Get the Princess to safety!

ISABELLA: No, I must stay with the people! And the badly injured Venetian ambassador!

ROSALINE: Quick, he went that way, across the rooftops!

BENVOLIO: I like a woman with your crime-fighting instincts! Let’s go!

[Benvolio severs the betrothal ribbon tying their hands together, so they can run better. It is highly symbolic! It is also ironic, because this is the beginning of a beautiful partnership.]

  Some Precarious Rooftop

[They catch the dude. They duel! The dude is unmasked! It is he who assaulted Rosaline in Episode 1, which Benvolio helpfully reminds us of, who was also Some Other Drunken Dude from the tavern earlier, who is also vaguely affiliated with House Montague. They struggle! The dude falls to his death!]

ROSALINE: Well, crap.

  The Secret Sickroom, Casa Capulet

LIVIA: I am, not unreasonably, traumatized by what just happened!

PARIS: Say what you will about my hair, I am amazing at hugs.

  Some Alleyway, Verona

ROSALINE: The explosion was directed at everybody, not just one house…

BENVOLIO: And this dude was an illiterate peasant, not a mastermind, so if we can figure out who is behind it…

ROSALINE: …that will stop the fighting and we won’t have to get married!

BOTH: WE ARE GENIUSES. Gorgeous, athletic geniuses. Things are finally looking up for Team Not Getting Married!

  The Badly Injured Venetian Ambassador’s Deathbed, The Palace

ISABELLA: This is a PR disaster!

  Juliet’s Tomb, Casa Capulet

CAPULET: My poor, dead baby girl!

JULIET’S GHOST? SPECTER? HALLUCINATION?: Beware!

[DUN DUN DUN!]

Next Episode

[natg1rl-blog]

Unlucky in Love

“Little Black Book” - Chapter 1 Continued.

They say that time passes faster the older you get, and to me it felt as though that had already started to happen at the tender age of Thirteen. It had already been a month since starting High School, meaning that I was already four weeks into the first semester of the new chapter of my life. Unfortunately the situation between Millee and her friends weren’t any better, and I still couldn’t fathom what was said for her to turn her back on me so suddenly, but at the same time I felt as though I had been given a unique opportunity to break away from my comfort zone within the popular girl group, and in turn meet a different type of people. Not to say the back-stabbing didn’t hurt, it hurt like a bitch. The first new friend I made at Varlem Tophett was a girl called Marley. It surprised me that Marley wasn’t part of the popular clique – she was absolutely gorgeous! Blue eyes, blonde hair, olive skin… her entire physique made me envious. To go with her looks she also had an infectious personality. She was nice. Most of the girls who looked like Marley were straight-up bitches, but not her. She was, for lack of a better word, different. The second friend I made was a girl named Sarah. She and Marley were practically attached at the hip. The two of them were best friends, kind of like Renee and I. Both girls knew one another from Primary School. Sarah was tom-boyish and very plain. Mousy brown hair, dark brown eyes and no stand-out physical features, but she did have the ability to float from group to group and fit into whatever social circle was necessary at the time, and I envied that about her. Finally there was Becca. Becca didn’t really have much of her own social circle, and to be quite honest she didn’t seem to care. That’s probably the reason she fit in so easily with mine. Becca was a tall girl, unusually tall. She had curly brown hair, brown eyes and a very noticeable big Italian nose. Becca wasn’t a trim girl but looks didn’t seem to be a concern for her. Becca was very friendly, but also quite forward which came in handy every now and again. She also knew how to rival Pamela, and this I liked. I needed someone like that in my corner; this was a girl I could get used to having around. I suppose this is a good time to mention that I had a crush. 

Boys were always on my radar in Primary School. There was one boy in particular I crushed on probably the entire time I was at XP. His name was Randie Tomns and he was the most attractive boy I had ever met. He had dark hair and dark eyes to suit, but his smile was what reeled me in. He was also friendly, not your typical stuck up ass hat, which I was learning were tones-a-plenty in High School! Unfortunately Randie had eyes for anyone who wasn’t me. In the two years I knew him he went out with two of my best friends and hooked up with my sister… suffice it to say I was unlucky in love. I used to hook up with his friend Gibsen, but if I’m being completely honest it was really just a reason to stay within Randie’s social circle. Even if I couldn’t be with him, I wanted him to be in my life.

Scott Trofs was my first High School crush. Scott was also a very friendly guy so I guess I had a type. He didn’t hang out with the popular group; he kind of did his own thing which was attractive in itself. Scott got along really well with everyone in my friend group and I could see potential boyfriend material in him. He had never given any real indication that he was interested, but he did tend to flirt a bit and I took from that what I wanted to. All of the girls knew about my feelings for Scott but I swore them all to secrecy because I didn’t want to ruin the friendship between the two of us. I was worried that Becca would one day spill the beans because she had a big mouth, maybe even bigger than Pamela’s, but as far as I knew Scott was oblivious to it all. On one of the nights I stayed over at Renee’s we toyed with the idea of calling him on the phone. Renee knew Scott before high school because their dad’s were friends, so it wasn’t so weird and considering Renee had his phone number, it was just too good not to take the opportunity. In no time Renee and I found ourselves down at the phone-box, Scott’s number in hand. It was a busy main-road so I felt as though I was being put under public scrutiny, as though every person who drove past me could see right into my soul. I was standing there bare naked. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say to the guy, it’s not like I had planned to be in this situation. Before I had a chance to stew on it, Renee had already dialed the number. My heart pounded in my chest, hard!

‘Hi, is Scott there?’ I heard her ask in her very polite manner.

All of a sudden I felt sick in my stomach. I wanted to reach inside and squash all of the butterflies that were invading my intestines. Renee found my anxiety hilarious, so hilarious that she was unable to wipe the grin off her face. She giggled like a school girl whilst I continued to wipe my sweaty palms on my flare leg jeans.

‘Scott? Hi… it’s Renee.’

I couldn’t believe she was talking to him.

‘I’m good,’ she giggled to herself, ‘how are you?’ ‘Mmm hmm. Not much actually, Bella’s staying at my house tonight so we’re just killing time. Did you want to speak with her?’

My heart suddenly dropped into my stomach, murdering every last butterfly that was still fluttering about. Renee handed me the phone. I reached for it with a shaky hand.

‘Hello?’ I could barely manage my words.

‘Hey Bella, how are ya?’ He asked in his ridiculously gorgeous voice.

My heart melted a little.

‘Good and you?’ I felt like it was someone else speaking, I barely even recognized my own voice.

‘I’m okay.’

Cue the awkward silence.

Oh no, I thought to myself. We only just started chatting, how could we have possibly run out of things to say? I could feel my face burning up and I struggled to hold the phone amidst my still sweaty hands. This was becoming a disaster.

‘Say something!’ I demanded with an anxious laugh.

‘Oh,’ he said taken aback, ‘Hi....’?

Laughter filled the connection. Somehow the rest of the conversation flew naturally and was spent talking about Soccer, which bored the absolute crap out of me, and also our mutual annoyance for Pamela, which I quite enjoyed. There were other things too but they all seem trivial now. Scott didn’t want to end our conversation, despite some random impatient lady giving me an icy glare whilst she stood in line for the phone. I felt as though if Scott didn’t know of my feelings for him before, he did now. The glimmer of hope that I had which indicated there could be something between us was officially ignited and I was smitten. I knew there was a chance between us; I just had to work up the courage to do something about it. 

By week eight almost everything had changed. Millee and her group of friends were officially my rivals, my Popularity was a moot point, and Scott was dating Pamela! High school was very different and not at all how I expected it to be. About thirty five days in I received my first slap across the face – that was an interesting experience. There was another girl in my home room who technically fell into the ‘Millee’ crowd, even though for some reason Millee didn’t strike me as the leader of that group. Her name was Hanna and she seemed different to the other girls, she was... nice. Millee had never been the same since the very first day she ditched me out of loyalty toward her awful friends. She would barely even acknowledge my existence which I guess made it easier for her to live with herself. Her BFF Nel was friendly to me, but only when she had to be, and the other girls who ran in their circle followed suit. Hanna was a floater though so it didn’t seem to faze her being part of any social circle that she wanted to, kind of like Sarah. I got along with Hanna, enough to be able to have actual conversations with her that weren’t forced by a teacher or a superior. I saw her at a few Blue Light Discos and she was never too shy to come and have a dance with me and my crowd. None of this stopped her from slapping me in the face though. It was a very early lesson in life that girls can be horrible. So many different rumours went around about me; I often found it hard to keep up with them all. I almost had to adapt to the, ’people are always going to talk about you so you might as well give them something to talk about’ term of phrase. But that wasn’t who I was. I cared too much what people thought of me. Luckily not all of the rumours were targeted at me; quite a few of the Year Eight class had a rumour or two spread about them at some point. Unfortunately for me there was a rumour floating around about Hanna being pregnant. I suspected the rumour probably wasn’t true, I mean rumours generally aren’t, but Hanna was the type of girl to flaunt what her mumma gave her if you know what I mean. Outside of school I don’t think I ever saw her without her boobs out or her midriff showing. A lot of people have the opinion, if you’ve got it – flaunt it, but not so much when you’re a Thirteen year old girl. Ever so joyously someone from my rival group told Hanna that I was the one who started the rumour. Without hesitation Hanna decided to act before even asking me the question. Even after I swore that it wasn’t me who started the rumour, Hanna was accusatory and we never came back from it. She was officially no longer a floater and 100% on the side of the rivals. They had claimed another one. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, I was essentially heartbroken when I learned of the romance between Pamela and Scott. Their relationship made no sense to me whatsoever, not when the two of us got along so well… and I know flirting when I see it. It reconfirmed why I disliked Pamela from the get-go. She knew how I felt about Scott and yet apparently he was more important to her than our friendship. I had to be thankful for the friends who had my back. As soon as the two of them became an item, Becca went out of her way to try and break them up. Not because I still wanted to be with Scott, just out of principle. Now that was a real friend.

[ethicaltreatmentofcowplants]

Juniper versus the Greenberg family maker - again.

"Images taken moments before disaster," I have a contender.

In the meantime Daddy Kristopher had shown up wanting to be BFFs. So he got to firsthand witness her humiliation.

Oops, there goes gravity...

"Are you hurt?" "Nothing but my pride. ('Please let the ground swallow me now...')

Close up of his face. He's embarrassed for her.