#there was always a bit of a meme around them but it’s definitely spiked hard fairly recently

[lesbx]

having to get a grip on myself stopping myself from getting strangely defensive thinking like “well i liked weezer before before it became a huge meme to reference them nowadays” bc liking weezer before there was a mainstream mass appeal reason to like them is not an achievement whatsoever. Opposite of one in fact

[glowinggator]

Cuddles - All Turtles

Request: Hi I really like you writes! keep up the good work, I was wondering if you could do a rottmnt cuddle Imagines? If that's fine?

Pairing: All Turtles! (Non-Poly) 

Content: Fluffy as FUCK. Brush your teeth after you read this, cause it’s sweet as hell. 

Raphael: 

He loves to cuddle! But...he’s nervous. He doesn’t want to prick you with one of his spikes, or...worse. With his brothers, it’s different! They’ve got hard shells and plastrons, but you’re so... squishy! What if he hurts you? 

He gets so happy about casual touch. Putting you on his shoulders? Throwing his arm around your shoulders? Affectionate hair ruffle? He’s the physical embodiment of :) 

If you want full cuddles, though, you’re gonna have to be the one to initiate it the first few times. He’s just too nervous, otherwise. 

Rest your head on his plastron when you’re watching a movie and he’ll melt. 

Seeing how your arms maneuver around his spikes to embrace him, how gingerly you hold him...Maybe it’s possible. Maybe you two can cuddle without getting any boo boos.

He can’t really lay on his back because of his spikes. He’ll either get stuck that way when his spikes inevitably get embedded into the material, or he’ll shred up whatever he’s laying on.

(He’s banned from the beanbag chairs.)

He wants to be the little spoon so bad, but it’s physically impossible. He’s forever bound to big spoon duty. He’s okay with that, though. 

(One time you showed up wrapped in mattress foam and bubble wrap to try and be the big spoon. It's a very fond memory, even if you were padded too stiffly to actually hold him.) 

He likes to rest his head in your lap. Run your nails along his head or shell and he’ll be asleep in no time.

He won’t lay on your stomach or chest though. He really wants to, but he’s afraid he’ll crush you. There’s no debate with that topic, unfortunately. 

He’s such a good big spoon!! He’s so strong, and he cradles you like you’re the entire world. Because you are! 

He likes to rest one hand on your stomach and tangle his other hand with yours. It’s so cool to look down and see how his spikes cradle you. Almost as though you were a treasure encased in barbed wire, protected from the outside world. 

You always feel so safe when you cuddle. I mean, it’s hard not to when you’re cocooned in 1000lbs of muscle and spikes!

His hold is firm, but noticeably gentle. 

He runs pretty warm, compared to the rest of the turtles. Great in the winter time, not so great in the summer.  

He traces little doodles on the back of your hand. You can never tell what they are, though. And he won’t tell you what they are, if you ask.  

(They’re dogs.) 

He’s not coldblooded, due to the way he was mutated. As such, he doesn’t really have any issues regulating his body temperature. He does find himself seeking out heat sources, however! Donnie calls it a vestigial response. Raph absolutely does not care about no scientific names or explanations: he just knows that he likes to sit under the heat lamp in the morning.

Prepare to be his next heat lamp. 

If you come over in the mornings, prepare to be greeted with a very sleepy Raph the instant your feet hit the lair concrete.

He’s never on his phone when you cuddle.

He is a talker, though. He doesn’t quite whisper, but he definitely invokes the gentle voice. 

He falls asleep very quickly if he doesn’t keep himself talking. Your presence is just so calming to him, he can’t help it! 

He’s a very deep breather, and it’s really calming to listen to!

Unfortunately, he starts to snore about 15 minutes after he falls asleep. And he’s loud. 

You’ll get used to it, eventually. 

Donatello

He doesn’t sleep consistently, so full cuddle sessions are far and few between.

He read that fake rumor that Albert Einstein only slept for five hours a year: while it’s since been debunked, it’s stuck with him. He started training himself when he was little to power nap instead, and now it’s hard for him to get out of the habit.  

But..you’re a good motivator.

He’s a little nervous around the concept of cuddling, at first. He’s very touch-starved, and once you warm him up to the idea, it’ll be hard to pull him off you! But he’s incredibly nervous about it at first.

It’s...intimate, you know? He’s vulnerable, and that freaks him out.

His shell is super sensitive. Partially because it’s soft, but wearing his battle shell all the time has removed a lot of stimuli that would have made it less sensitive.

He reflexively rolls his shoulders when you run your hands along his exposed shell. At least, for the first few times. If you do it enough, it’ll quickly become a way for him to relax.

Likes to pull you to his chest and hold you like that. He usually has your head under his chin so he can scroll through his phone while you cuddle. He doesn’t move his arms much though, so it’s okay.

(He also likes it when you’re facing him so he can steal glances at you once you fall asleep. He thinks you’re even prettier when you’re completely relaxed.)

You’ll rarely see it for yourself, but his eyes get all soft while you’re cuddling together. The quietest, calmest smile graces his features when you’re in his arms.

However, you do notice how all the tension fades from his body, and how his breathing seems to slow down.

He’ll run his free hand along your back every now and then, pressing a quiet kiss to the top of your head.

He runs fairly cold, which is awesome in the summertime. He always lets you borrow his hoodies when you cuddle. If you ask nicely, he’ll let you keep ‘em, just so long as he has one or two in the closet.

His bed has super soft blankets, and they’re so nice to curl up in. You’ll probably stay there for a little while after he gets up, honestly.

He’s not a talker, surprisingly. Every now and then he’ll pull his arm back to show you some meme on his phone, but that’s about it. He’ll listen to you though! He actually really likes it when you mutter about whatever's on your mind while you cuddle.

King of “Uh huh,” “Wow,” “Mmhm,” and “Damn that’s crazy.”

He really is listening, though. He just likes to tease you a little bit.

His grip is either iron-tight or loose as hell.

On bad days he’ll curl up as the little spoon, and not even the gods could convince him to let go of you.

It takes him a while to warm up to the idea of being a little spoon. Both because his shell is hyper-sensitive, but it also kind of erodes that “bad boy” persona he’s got going on.

Once he’s more comfortable with it, he’s about 50/50 on it. He’s more likely to indulge himself on bad days, but it honestly just depends on his mood.

If you pull him away from work, you can bet that he’ll pull you to his chest while he’s sitting on the bed. He’ll lean forward to rest his chin on your shoulder as he explains his latest breakthrough. He shakes a little bit when he’s excited, and you can feel it as he holds you.  

He panics a little bit when he’s on his back, but he really likes it when you lay on his plastron, so...Chair cuddles!

He likes to have you in his lap while he works.

He also likes to kick his legs up onto your lap when watching TV. If you guys have the couch to yourselves, he’ll also lay all the way on your lap. If anyone sees you guys, or if anyone comments on it he’ll just hit ‘em with a very snarky quip.

“Okay, and? At least I actually have a partner :)”

You don’t know how he said “:)” outloud.

Leonardo 

He thinks he’s so smooth, but honestly? He’s such a dork.

He’s huge on touch. But cuddling? It’s a whole ‘nother ball game. He loves it a lot, but...he’s so vulnerable! It’s so intimate to him. He’s not adverse to it in the slightest; in fact, it’s the exact opposite! He’s super excited when the topic comes up.

You can tell that the idea of fully cuddling affects him more than he lets on, because he won’t stop talking when you bring up the subject for the first time. He rambles when he’s nervous.

(He talks with his hands a lot, and it’s really cute how he rambles and rubs the back of his neck.)

He’s actually a great cuddler, though.

Big spoon? Hell yeah. Little spoon? Awesome. Horrific entanglement of limbs that would put eldritch horrors to shame? Sweet! He’s just happy to be close to you.

He can go 50/50 on having his phone with him. If he does, he’s usually either watching memes with you or playing a mobile game.

(Kind of unrelated, but he was very excited about that weird, Subway Surfers revival that happened earlier this year. It was all he played for a while, and now you have the tune lodged in your brain forever.)

He’ll talk for a little while if he doesn’t have his phone, before you settle into a comfortable silence.

He’s either ranting about something shitty that happened that day, or shitposting. There’s no inbetween.

“If I shot someone from Texas while I was on the moon, would that fall under Texas’ jurisdiction or the moon’s?”

He also likes to trace little patterns on your hands, if he has access to them that day! You can usually tell what they are. Other times, it just seems like he’s finding an excuse to hold your hand. It’s really cute.

(If you ask him what he’s drawing, he’ll say he’s reading your palms before dropping a sweet little line about how he’s in your future.)

(He does NOT know how to read palms but it’s the thought that counts <3)

Not ashamed about cuddling in public. Hell, if you’re fine with it, he’s more than happy to cuddle during movie night. In fact, it’s kind of a source of pride for him!

He looks so cocky about it that Donatello has to make a physical effort to NOT hit him.

Please run your palms over his shell, he’ll melt.

If he’s the big spoon, squeeze his biceps. He might not say it out loud, but he’s melting internally. It sticks in his head for at least a few weeks afterwards. Ego Boost 100

If you’re ticklish, prepare yourself for tickles. He strikes without a pattern, and without warning. He doesn’t always do it, though. Maybe about one in ten times. He just likes to hear you laugh :)

He’s very nice to cuddle with overall. He’s the best cuddler in the lair, hands down.

Michelangelo

Literally the only one in the lair who isn’t embarrassed when you bring up the topic.

He’s been WAITING for this moment, actually.

Doesn’t care about whether he’s the big or little spoon.

He’s super talkative when he cuddles, it’s cute. He usually likes to spend this time talking about one another’s day. He’s a great listener too!

He’s always 100% engaged in what you have to say.

He has trouble settling down outside of his normal schedule, so it’s rare that he’ll fall asleep while cuddling.

If you’re in a position that gives his arms a lot of mobility, he’ll draw on you. Not just tracing patterns, but he’ll actually bring out his markers and draw on your arms, back, or just any exposed piece of skin.

He always manages to find the prettiest colors to compliment your skin tone. You never want to wash it off, honestly.

He HAS to keep himself busy with something, or else he’ll explode. At least, that’s how he describes it. If you try and get him to lay down and fall asleep...well, he’ll try! But he’ll be squirming the whole time.

It’s best to throw on a Jupiter Jim movie if you want him to stay still.

He likes to tangle his legs with yours while you cuddle. Whether he’s taller or shorter than you, he WILL find a way.

He’s the lightest out of all the turtles, so there’s a possibility of letting him (partially) lay on you without shattering your sternum! Congratulations!

(He’s around 525 lbs. He’s only half of what Raph weighs, but he still has to be careful about how he lays on you. It’s crazy to think that you’re so small compared to him.)

His hands are so cold, and he’ll absolutely use that to his advantage. If he gets bored, or if he just wants to make you laugh, he’ll grab your waist with his cold fucking hands. Hope you’re a northerner <3

He also likes to tickle you, way more than Leo.

Don’t try and tickle him though, he HATES it. He’s absolutely the type of person to just Scream if you try.

Like I said, he gets bored really quickly. He also just likes to make you laugh.

If you’re cuddling in bed though, like right before he falls asleep? It’s so nice.

He’ll still tangle his legs with yours, but he moves so much slower. He loves to let his hands lazily roam across your form as he pulls you closer to him, savoring the comfort and heat that you bring. If he talks, it’s in drowsy whispers that only you two can hear.

[saffron-nova21]

Whipped Cream: Iwaizumi's Bonus Scene

The Next Chapter Masterlist

< Previous Chapter • You Are Here • Next Chapter >

Warnings: Reader is a little flirty, Iwa-chan busts his lip, Kuroo is conniving, Strong language

Everyone had finished their meals about five minutes prior, now just working on finishing your drinks before the checks were brought out. And in this time, Kuroo had managed to get under your skin, as he was so well adept in. At this point, it was a game to him, to see how quickly he could get you to retaliate. He never went too far, mainly just making statements that he knew you would fight him on.

Laughter bubbles from Kuroo's lips as his eyes scan over you. "In what world? You might have played volleyball in high school, but you haven't lifted anything heavier than a couch cushion, since."

His words held some truth, though not as much as he thought. Though you weren't a health nut and you were out of practice, some of your closest friends were Bokuto, and by extension Hinata. You had been pretty adaptable with positions, in high school. Your brother was the Captain, your ex-boyfriend a middle blocker, and your former best friend a setter. Practicing with each of them, throughout your life had made you pretty talented.

In high school you'd had the opportunity to go to multiple of Japan's sponsored training camps. You'd never gone, but that was only because you had too much going on at home, at the time. You'd also been looked at by multiple universities for scholarships. At the end of the day, though, you chose the same path as your best friend.

You could still spike a volleyball with the best of them, if you did say so yourself. So, with narrowed, challenging eyes, you speak up. "You really think so? I hardly go outside and I'd still win a practice run against you, Tetsu."

Kenma shrugs, briefly looking up from his phone to eye you both, "I believe it. After all, Bokuto does drag them off to help he and Hinata practice a lot."

As his eyes travel back to his phone, you look from him back towards Kuroo. "Exactly, so suck my dick."

Kuroo, though, only seemed to grin. And his grin was one you were all too familiar with: he knew something you didn't.

"Great. So then you'll really be an asset to the volleyball team, being so skilled and all?"

Iwaizumi looks towards you with raised eyebrows, "You played in high school?"

"That's the only part of that conversation you decide to comment on?" Kuroo rolls his eyes, placing his head against his fist, his elbow resting on the table.

Holding up your right hand to Kuroo, you flash him the sweetest smile you can possibly muster, before raising your middle finger to flip him off. Though as you do, his hand shoots out to catch yours, a smirk stretching over his features as he catches your hand before you can withdraw it. "You asshole." You hiss as you try to pull your hand back, mistakenly pushing your body into Iwaizumi. Kuroo, however, just holds his grip on your wrist, until you end up attempting to put all of your weight into jerking your hand back. That's when he finally decided to let go, allowing your body to jerk into Iwaizumi's.

Iwaizumi, who'd been sipping on his hot chocolate, tried to prepare for things, though he wasn't as prepared as he might've wished as the mug hit his lower lip, not only busting it, but also smearing whipped cream along his top lip and nose. With a glare directed towards you, he attempted to reach across you for the napkins, but you beat him to it, "Thanks, Kuroo, my boss hates me now."

You then turn towards Iwaizumi with a hand full of napkins, grabbing his jaw to turn his head towards you so you could help him. But holy shit, how had you not noticed that jawline beforehand? Bringing your hand up, you begin to wipe the whipped cream from his face, while Kuroo flags someone down, between his cackles, to get some ice for them.

"You certainly cause a lot of trouble, don't you?" Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, trying to draw attention away from the fact that his cheeks had a slow-growing blush dusting them. "We split them up to prevent disaster, but you seem to be the source of most of it."

You turn up your nose, "And to think that I thought you were hot -"

"If anything, you find him hotter now. You've always had a thing for douchebags." Kenma flashes you a smirk, before returning his eyes to his phone.

You let out a quiet huff, face warming in embarrassment, "Kenma, I don't wanna hear it from you. You're just jealous because I'm paying more attention to Iwa, here." Sticking your tongue out at him, you pull the napkins away from his face, placing them on your empty plate. "There you go." Bringing your hand to his cheek, you pat it with amusement flitting across your features.

Iwaizumi only rolls his eyes at you, "You remind me a little too much of a friend of mine."

Everyone looks over as a waitress comes over with a few ice cubes in a cup, Iwaizumi thanking her as he takes the cup, before plucking an ice cube from it and wrapping it in a paper towel to place against his slightly-swollen lip.

"Speaking of your friends," the way your tone changes makes both Kenma and Kuroo collectively roll their eyes, knowing exactly what - or rather, who you're going to bring up. Though, you ignore them to continue your conversation with Iwaizumi, "You know Oikawa, right? Like personally?" A frown crosses his face as he raises an eyebrow, prompting you to continue. "I don't want anything. I'm not going to ask for his number, or some shit. I've got Bokuto and Hinata wrapped around my finger, if I'm looking for a volleyball player."

"Y/N, you can't just say things like that." Kuroo brings a hand up to massage his temple.

The Athletic Trainer blinks, "So, what are you asking for?"

Looking back up at him, you tilt your head, "Nothing, I just wanted to see if Kuroo was telling the truth. I can't even lie, though, I use to watch Seijoh's games, to see his service ace. It was fucking killer. Hell, he was the reason I taught myself how to do it. And I do pride myself on my jump-serves. I use to be able to do jump-floats, as well, but that's a little iffy, now, I'm not going to lie.

"Now that I think about it, Seijoh had some cute players. Especially when I was in... My second year of high-school, there was this number four. God, he was fucking amazing. I loved watching him play. Plus those biceps were to -... Kuroo, shut up, your laughter makes it so hard to concentrate." You stop to look at Kuroo, who is doubling over in laughter, while Kenma shakes his head at your misfortune.

"Y/N, do you know what team Iwaizumi used to play for?" Kenma looks at you with a ghost of a smile.

From there, you can piece things together, cringing a bit as you look back at Iwaizumi, "Would you believe me if I said that I meant... Number... Sixteen..?"

Iwaizumi lets an amused smirk grace his lips as he looks at you, "That's cute. Good to know that you actually have some taste. I nearly lost faith with your adoration for Loserkawa." He brings his mug back to his lips, fingers grasping your wrist so he can tug your hand away from where it was holding ice on his lip, proceeding to finish off what was left in his mug, obviously getting ready to leave.

You didn't respond, instead looking at his upper lip, where whipped cream rested. You were so used to the comfort you had between you and your close friends, like Kenma and Kuroo, that you didn't hesitate to just reach out and wipe the excess away, Reaching out, you place your fingers on his cheek to steady your hand, while your thumb swipes across his upper lip, movements fleeting, before you withdraw your hand. It isn't until you're wiping your thumb on the napkins that you realize what you did, face and neck warming in embarrassment. Though, you weren't the only one, as the porcupine-haired man brought a hand up to attempt to hid his flushed cheeks.

"I've got to... Uh- Get the boys some stretches for their day off. See you on Monday," he excuses himself to stand, retrieving his ticket so he'd be able to pay at the front of the restaurant.

"See you on Monday, Iwa," your cooed words make Iwaizumi flush a bit darker, mumbling something under his breath before bidding you all goodbye as he attempts to rush out, in embarrassment.

With a sheepish look directed towards Kuroo and Kenma, the two watch you in amusement. "Whoops," you rub the back of your neck with a sheepish grin crossing your lips.

Iwaizumi was friends with Oikawa for years, so while he did get use to some of the near flirty teasing from his best friend and learn how to counteract it, sometimes his is caught off guard.

You found out about Oikawa and Seijoh's team, after seeing him in a magazine. (And yes, you do see more about this, later.)

You also rooted for them to make it to Nationals so that you could plays against them.

I'm really sorry guys, the past few days have been chaos, but there will be two more parts coming your way to make up for it, tonight and tomorrow. I hope you're all doing well. You all most definitely better be taking care of yourselves. I'm rooting for you and I'm proud of you. Remember to eat and drink some water, and get some rest. You deserve it.

General Taglist:

@kookie-doughs @halesandy @ermahgerd-larry-and-ziam @its-the-aerieljeane @onlyonew @kac-chowsballs @saltylettuce @thathoneybee3 @daninaninani @akkeyomi @vintagexparker

The Next Chapter Taglist:

@bnha-meme-sanctuary @nachotrash @haijkk @maadaaaa @prettyinblack231 @sakusasimpbot @kellesvt @bebetiny @ash-levi @calumsfringe @z3ld4 @erinoikawa @bandaged-despair @chaseyui @atria-avior @just-that-bi-girl @magical-fandoms @one-simp-more

[sugar-petals]

Cuddling With SuperM

↳ ❤︎ CARO’S NOTE: their concept is all about badassery i know but we’re dealing with seven angels so let’s talk about that shall we

warnings ⚠️ some light teasing, innuendo

length: 1.5k

taeyong

am i really telling you something ground-breaking with this:

so this guy’s truly adorable

turns into a baby what else is new

draws his knees to his chest and just enjoys the ride with his eyes closed

you can do whatever the hell you want

back rubs, head pats, foot massages, caressing the neck or underneath the chin which is particularly sweet

and a whole lot of tickling he’s kinda obsessed with this

excellent chef he is, taeyong enjoys preparing snacks for a set cuddling time or movie night

so what if this turns into feeding each other basically are you ready for that

this guy’s impossible face up close is hard to bear for the faint-hearted just mentioning that in passing here

because… he has that one yearning expression and his eye contact is very steady

bit of a duality here huh

but worry not because taeyong’s tiger inside is more of a cat actually, tyongkitty behavior guaranteed right there

he does do friendly head buts and yeah the eye contact is also a cat thing now that i think about it… it all makes sense now

ten, baekhyun, lucas and taemin are pretty cocky types of cuddlers, taeyong leads the more subdued fraction in super m

it’s the kind of cuddling that needs rainy weather and a cup of tea

ten

quality time right here

banter is always included ofc

or at least a lot of talk because with ten, conversation and cuddles go together

likes pets joining, three’s a party, a cat can always make a snuggly contribution

add a ball of wool to play around

like. a-you, a-me, and a cat right in between ya see

music is always playing in the background, always

ten’s body is very sensual… you can tell he’s a dancer by the way he’s adapting, how he’s feeling it, how he moves in general

the reflexes are just so different he has great feeling for what you wanna do next it’s his bodily intuition and he just goes along with it

what you gotta tell him though is to keep it lowkey with keeping his jazzy outfits on

a hoodie cuddles better than high fashion and spiked jackets

plus he looks adorably small in it so two birds with one stone

never forget ten is really tiny that sure makes a difference

reluctant little spoon, he keeps it face-to-face or sleeps on his back

ten is glad to be approached with hugs he’s not always doing the initiative

shy thailand angel ikr

but don’t complain if he farts because he absolutely will

goddammit chittaphon

kai

if it’s without a plushie something’s going wrong it always needs one

his favorite teddy’s gotta participate y’know he’s a social creature

in this home we don’t discriminate against plush bears

and yeah, his bear ear hoodie likewise he is sure to put it on

jongin tends to be rather taciturn because he wants to enjoy the body-to-body sensations

meaning, don’t interpret his frequent silence as awkwardness he’s just observing

is not above teasing… if his outfit is showing some skin he’ll invite you to touch the area

also enjoys you putting your hands under his sweater

he’s laughing like crazy and kicking his legs all giggly if you put your head underneath it and let it roam oh la la

yeah nini likes some wit to it for sure, and some steaminess in the mix it’s just a natural byproduct if we’re honest

dim the lights down low for this one…

but also light the candles alright

cuddling is more of a soft and steady thing there’s not much position changes going on

this is the couch not the dancefloor your honor

while we’re talking about that: jongin is a buff biatch my god

prep a water bottle to chug when you’re cuddling this guy is effortlessly hot

also know that kai will almost definitely snap a picture of you huddled together for the memory of it

baekhyun

unlike his memes, baekhyun’s cuddling behaviour is entirely predictable

will snuggle against your shoulder by default pretty much that’s his favorite area

stays glued there for two hours if you’re not busy

im not kidding

needless to say he needs a partner who can handle this level of clinginess

baekhyun can’t keep his hands to himself in general

neither can you

it’s groping x cuddling these two are a dead sure combination

keen to snuggle casually while he’s gaming, cross-legged on the ground with you massaging his back

likes to lay his head into your lap, too.

baekhug i mean back hug enthusiast. something inside his face has an inbuilt magnet that sucks him into the space between your collar bones

especially when you’re at the stove cooking

caution: love bites. lots of them. does this count as cuddles? probably. it’s not like he’s eating you or is he. oop—

what am i saying all he does is nibble alright

and oh yeah bring on the sweater weather. he can’t stay still in bed it’s gonna be a pillowfort building session though

you gotta exhaust him until he naps off lmao!

energizer bunny bf

mark

enjoys being fed watermelon during the process how else could it be

wait until this guy hears what harry styles’ watermelon sugar is all about his world will never be the same again

anyway

he’ll look so cute in his striped shirt and his round glasses awh

cuddling is his favorite way to show his trust and affection before all else

his favorite time to cuddle is before going to sleep

he usually hugs pillows so you can tell how clingy he winds up as

mark really sleeps and dreams better if you do that it has an astounding effect. cuddles are his perfect recharging if you will it’s just that he’s actually calming down through it whereas he can be nervous throughout the day so he needs that downtime

spooning is a given

what he enjoys the most about it is the warmth

markie easily gets cold sometimes he just needs that tune-up with you he’s like blink blink there goes my dose of daily heat beep beep

what the fuck

anyway again

talk about tune

just like ten he’s very talkative all the way verbal stimulation and mark lee just go together

if you compare him to taeyong there’s not much of a transformation going on mark lee on two legs is the same mark lee during cuddles it’s all copy paste

all in all a delectable experience, extremely cute and heart-melting, super m truly has a super mark

taemin

much like xuxi he has that permanent smile on his lips that tries to make you laugh

in fact taemin is hard to stop with his puns and his humor

ffs he is a true brat

taems can’t help but try to escalate this into a playfight every time

not that he doesn’t enjoy the calmer types of cuddling but he needs some action in the sack

enjoys praise along the way who are we kidding

the clothes you both cuddle in are very important alright, the fabric in particular

taemin keeps it expensive here it’s just the way he rolls

satin my dear

it’s just so satisfying to the touch

but also beware of his most lethal clothing choice which brings out his innate maknae charm the most

THE FLUFFY TURTLENECK

gyeahh

which he will use during special occasions to turn you into a cuddle monster ready to pounce him

give it up for shinee my loves they taught him well and sent him out to fluff up the world

what else is there okay we also gotta mention that cuddling consists of many little kisses here and there

taemin wants to get absolutely peppered

he is and stays a prince

lucas

ideal body type for cuddling except that it needs the right place, not the environment but the spot i mean, you can imagine

lucas can explode any smol-size couch or bed

don’t even think about trying to cuddle on regular chairs my god why would you live so dangerously

king size por favor

there is a lot to cuddle against it’s really a whole wonderland

those big ole thighs are practical cushions for anything really.

and his face is just so amicable it has to be kithed

his hands… his hands! you will feel maximum protection with those giant baby fingers around your hips i’m telling you

admittedly yukhei is hard to properly hug around the shoulders obviously that’s a drawback but hey his waist is lithe and tiny so hello there, very inviting

oh, that infectious smile.

serious cuddling: 0 — funny cuddles: over 9,000

and tasty cuddles because foodcas brings some fried rice every time oh yum

hates to go to work he really prioritizes you and cuddles go on for long long hours especially when you watch your favorite series

xuxi goes the extra mile, he will touch your hair a lot, just gently combing through it

and he doesn’t mind it when you do the same, he’s got the most angelic blonde locks after all

lu calls you beautiful all the time the cheesy mf is really pulling the standard compliment alright

cue jonas brothers sucker for you

ugh, boyfriend

mlist

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 49: How translators approach a text

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Lauren: I don’t think you’ve been this excited about a translated text since Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey. I’m pretty sure that’s what motivated our 18th episode on word translation.

Gretchen: You are not wrong about this. I think there’s a similar excitement that I have which is old texts – texts that are a thousand-plus years old that have been translated so many different times by so many different people – it feels like it’s hard for someone to do something new with a translation of them. And yet, here people are doing that, which is exciting to me. This is the new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley. She’s done some really cool things with translating Beowulf as a feminist text. It’s a text that uses very modern style language in this thousand-year-old epic poem of Old English literature.

Lauren: I feel like when it comes to translating, before you even translate one single word, there’s all these decisions that a translator has to make. In Episode 18, we looked at translation, but we looked at word-to-word translation. And that’s definitely one part of a translator’s job, but they have so many more decisions to make. It is such an impressive job, and it’s why it’s as much an art form as it is a technical skill to translate something well. So, what are some of the big decisions that Headley made before even starting to translate Beowulf?

Gretchen: One of the things about Beowulf is, as an oral poem, it has this intricate rhyme scheme. The Old English rhyme scheme is based on half lines. Each line has two halves and there needs to be an alliterative bit in one half that is repeated in the second half.

Lauren: So, Old English is way more interested in alliteration compared to our modern English obsession with rhyming. That’s one of the stylistic features you find in Old English.

Gretchen: It’s all about the beginning of the words rather than the ends. Trying to figure out, okay, how much am I gonna use alliteration? How much am I gonna try to represent – because we can do alliteration in modern English – how much am I gonna try to represent the existing rhyme scheme? Where am I gonna try to put it in actual rhymes like you would do in modern English – if you’re writing a poem, you might rhyme it? What am I gonna do with the metre? She’s produced this really oral text that uses a certain amount of modern slang as well in ways that are really effective. One example is there’s a dragon in Beowulf, and the dragon at one point is described as “Putting the world on blast.”

Lauren: Nice.

Gretchen: To some extent, this is modern slang, but it’s also a very literal thing that a dragon can do. It’s not using modern slang for gratuitous – like, there’s no “lols” or “omgs” in this text. It’s not like here’s this facile text-speak version of Beowulf. It’s what are the bits here that actually work with the metre and the rhyme scheme but also not shying away from using a modern idiom where a modern idiom really works.

Lauren: It’s interesting to put this in contrast to the other most famous version of Beowulf in translation that I know of which is Seamus Heaney’s from somewhere in the middle of the 20th Century where I feel like he tried to capture the mythical grandeur of Old English and chose very stoic, solid sounding Old English words. I don’t think he would’ve had the dragon “putting the world on blast.”

Gretchen: Well, I don’t think he would’ve – I think it came out in 1999, this translation. In some ways his translation is fairly vernacular, but he tries to do that in a different sense. Can I read you the first bit of the Headley translation and the Heaney translation?

Lauren: Yeah. This is super fun.

Gretchen: Okay. A big thing about Beowulf translations is the first word which in Old English is “Hwaet.” That has gotten repurposed as a meme, which we’re not gonna get into much detail about. Some people translate that as like, “Lo!” or “Hark!” or “Listen!” or something like this. Heaney translates that as “So,” which has already got a certain level of vernacularity to it. His first three lines go, “So, the Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.” This is very stately and like, “Here’s this thing you’re gonna do.” If you compare that with the first three lines of the Headley translation, the new one, she translates this “Hwaet” as “Bro.”

Lauren: Hm, that’s a very different tone.

Gretchen: It’s a very modern tone. I mean, you could pick a whole bunch of very modern things like “Yo” or “Hey all,” but specifically the reason she picks “Bro” is because she wants to highlight the bro culture-ness of this entire story. You can see that in the next couple lines which is, “Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were – brave, bold, glory bound. Only stories now, but all sound the Spear-Dane song, hoarded for hungry times.” It just leaps off the page in a way that really excites me.

Lauren: Yeah, no “princes” there.

Gretchen: Right. “Kings who ruled had courage and greatness” – “The men were bold.”

Lauren: The thing I always love about Beowulf is that it’s a millennium-old oral poem that happened to be written down, and a millennium ago people were like, “Let me tell you about the olden days.” [Laughter]

Gretchen: Right, it still takes place in this semi-mythic space, and it uses a certain stylised language that we even think was stylised at the time. You’re always picking between some kind of stylisation. There’s no neutral choice that exists. All of the choices are recreations at some level.

Lauren: I mean, it is kind of weird to think you’re translating from English into English, but it just shows how much the language has moved on because reading Beowulf if you don’t know Old English is an incredibly uncomfortable attempt to just guess some words that have retained some familiarity. I always find it interesting that you have to translate. And then because English went through enough changes by Shakespeare, we kind of put up with all of the features of Shakespeare that aren’t immediately obvious to us.

Gretchen: Right. But Beowulf is really this alien text. Like, “Hwaet. We Gardena” – and “Gardena” is “Spear-Danes,” but we don’t have “Spear-Danes,” and “Gardena” is not obviously related to those. There’s this great miniseries from The History of English Podcast that does a very in-depth line-by-line reading of Beowulf which I enjoyed a while back.

Lauren: My one semantic anecdote from that series is “Gar-Danes” as in “Spear-Danes” – garlic is the “spear-leek.”

Gretchen: Yes, it is!

Lauren: Because it’s like a little spear.

Gretchen: It’s like a little spear-leek. I love that anecdote. It’s interesting to be reading Beowulf at the same time that my book club is actually reading The Tale of Genji.

Lauren: Ah, from like a similar – Genji’s also a millennium old, yeah?

Gretchen: Yeah! In some sense it’s like Beowulf and Genji are kind of contemporaries.

Lauren: But they’re very much not contemporaries. Beowulf is about warrior bro culture in the Old English setting, whereas Genji is a Japanese court drama.

Gretchen: I don’t think they would’ve gotten along. I think they would’ve just found each other completely incomprehensible. Genji’s also one of those classic texts that’s been translated a whole bunch of different times in a whole bunch of different ways. For one thing, you’re translating from a much older version of Japanese. There are modern Japanese translations of The Tale of Genji as well. And then you’re also translating into a different cultural context. But the cultural context for Beowulf is also very weird. Like, I don’t do going and fighting monsters under lakes any more than I do writing haikus about the moon. In fact, I’m probably more likely to write a haiku about the moon than I am to go fight a monster under a lake if we wanna talk about relatability.

Lauren: Everything I know about Genji is because one of my colleagues in the Languages Department at La Trobe is a Genji studies scholar. It’s one of those pieces of work that is so big and so canonical that it has its own literary studies tradition associated with it. I also really love my colleague because the other part of her expertise is cosplay studies. I think it’s such a great combination of Japanese cultural experience there – Genji and cosplay.

Gretchen: I mean, what more do you want? The neat thing about reading Tale of Genji at the moment is because I’m reading it as part of a book club through Argo Bookshop – which is a bookstore that did the book launch party for Because Internet and I really like them – they’re having this Tale of Genji book club, and we’ve been reading it throughout the year a few chapters at a time because it’s over 1,000 pages. It’s huge. So, we’ve been reading it section by section, and different members of the book club have picked different translations into English of the same work.

Lauren: Ah, cool! Are there radical differences between the translations? Or do they all try and go for a literal approach?

Gretchen: They’re really different. One of the big things with Genji is at the time in 11th Century Japan it was considered very rude in the court to refer to people by their actual names. None of the characters in the original Tale of Genji manuscript have names, except for maybe Genji. So, you can imagine reading a thousand-page book where none of the characters have names is a bit of a feat of the imagination.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Different translations – and a lot of them have conventional names that literary scholars have used to talk about the characters. For example, Lady Fujitsubo lives in the Fujitsubo, which is the western pavilion, and so she gets called in the tradition “Fujitsubo” because that’s where she lives, and this kind of stuff. Or Murasaki gets called that after a flower, I think, the character. In some translations, they just use these conventional use names as if they’re the actual names of the characters. In some translations, they just use descriptions like the original text did, and they don’t really refer to characters by even pretend names or use names.

Lauren: So, one of them is trying to strive for cultural authenticity, and the other one is trying to just help the poor confused reader a little bit more, and that’s choices that each translator has decided to make.

Gretchen: Exactly. You also have other types of decisions like, “Are you going to try to” – because it’s a court drama, you have all these court positions. Are you going try to map those positions onto a western court so that people understand what a chancellor is? Or are you going to try to use those as a more direct translation of what the specific terms were at the time? That’s just different decisions that different translations can use.

Lauren: When you meet as a book club, is everyone following along, or is there a lot of clarifying across translations? Such an interesting little exercise.

Gretchen: Well, the nice thing is, is the division into different chapters is very constant, so we can be like, “Okay, we’re reading Chapters 6 to 10 now. We’re gonna talk about what happens in those.” But sometimes you do pull something up, and you’re like, “Okay, so this bit where this thing was said, do we think Genji is kinda misogynistic here?” And somebody will say, “Well, in my translation, it doesn’t actually seem like he’s misogynistic.” And here’s what’s going on in this particular translation versus that particular translation. And how much of it is the translator bringing their own preconceived notions of how people relate to each other? Because some of these translations are from the 1920s or something. People may have had different politics there. And how much of that is in the original text which was composed by a woman who we don’t know that much about? But it’s the first modern novel. It’s an interesting like, “How much are you going to try to westernise this book for a western audience?” Which some of the older translations do a bit more with the westernisation adaptation because people in the west hadn’t heard of Genji very much before. You do all this adaptation for your English-speaking readers. Whereas, more recent translators, people tend to have a higher degree of expectations of fidelity when it comes to a more modern translation. Sometimes they try to do that. And, you know, how many footnotes do you have? How much do you try to explain additionally? How much do you try to just make the text stand on its own as a story?

Lauren: So many choices to make as a translator. I’m eternally grateful to people who do this and make it appear so effortless while doing so much work bringing all of this context together.

Gretchen: It’s really neat. I’m not gonna read this 1,000-page book five different times in five different translations, but being able to experience portions of those translations vicariously through other people talking about, “Oh, here’s what happened in this one, here’s what happened in this one,” it does let you do this interesting comparative textual study.

Lauren: I’ve been thinking about translation in practice a lot lately because having worked with P. M. Freestone on their Shadowscent books, “The Darkets Bloom” and “Crown of Smoke,” these books have gone into translation in a whole bunch of languages, mostly European languages to date – Spanish, German, French, Russian, and Polish. I’m very excited about the upcoming Hungarian translation which will the first outside of the Indo-European language. But these translations involve a couple of things that are really interesting in that, in these books, I worked on creating the Aramteskan language, and for this language to work across different languages, sometimes it gets technically transliterated, or you need to add a different type of plural. For example, Russian has a different alphabet to English and so you need to fit this language into the Russian Cyrillic alphabet.

Gretchen: You’re not trying to pretend that Aramteskan is always written with the Latin alphabet. Even when the book itself is in Russian, you’re like, we’re gonna transliterate it into Cyrillic?

Lauren: No, translators have very much done what they think is most appropriate. I have a habit of buying these translations now and checking out what they’ve done because they’re not just translating from English into another language, they also have to translate this completely fictional language and this fictional world into that language as well. It’s one thing to maybe study in-depth Old English warrior culture or Japanese court culture and decide what to bring across, but with a fantasy world, there’s all kinds of choices you have to make as a translator as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, like what are you gonna do with the magic system? Or if you’ve invented all of these words for different scents or something, then they have to figure out some sort of equivalent of inventing those words for the other language.

Lauren: There’s a lot of scent vocabulary even in the English that P. M. Freestone has written in, so really taxing that part of the translator’s repertoire. One thing that’s been particularly interesting and that there’s been some discussion on how to manage is that in this world, both in the historical part of the world and the contemporary part of the world, the culture and the grammar allow for gender neutral third person like the English modern use of “they,” which Kirby Conrod gave a great interview about how that works in contemporary English. In fact, I did a little historical evolution of the pronoun system that fits with the story of the world where originally there was no gender distinction in the pronoun system, which fits with the old religious system of the world. And the religious system evolved younger gods that are all gendered, and the pronoun system evolved genders at the same time while still having that scope for gender neutral. Without spoiling too much, but a character that pops up in Book One and is much more a part of Book Two is gender fluid within the world. That works for current English because we have gender neutral singular they, but there are some languages like Czech or like Russian that the book’s being translated into where there isn’t that flexibility in the linguistic system. So, decisions have to be made about how that is negotiated in the translation.

Gretchen: Do you know what they did?

Lauren: I don’t know what they did for Russian yet, but I believe the solution in Czech is at various times this character is overtly identified using masculine and at other times using feminine – being much more flexible about the duality of their relationship with gender.

Gretchen: This reminds me of a thing that I heard Ada Palmer talk about at a conference panel with her book “Too Like the Lightning” and the sequels, which are set in this far future of English – well, far future and they’re written in English – in which singular they is used for everybody except when you’re writing in this faux-archaic style with “thous” and “thees” and “hes” and “shes.” It’s very marked at that point. Ada Palmer was talking about how this was translated into French where in modern English the progressive thing that people do is like, “Oh, we can use singular they. That’s very progressive.” In modern French, the progressive thing that people do is they make feminine versions of all of the professions.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: You have feminine versions of “professor” or “doctor” or these kinds of things to try and make the gender more visible. And so erase the gender in the French version wouldn’t have the same effect – where you’d end up using the default masculine or something in the French version – it wouldn’t have the same effect as using singular they all the time in the English version. There are modern French pronouns like “iel” that have been coined to solve this problem of using a gender neutral third person pronoun, but it wouldn’t work to use them in this particular case because the style is supposed to be faux-archaic. What the translator ended up doing was digging out this French pronoun “on,” which in the modern form “on” is used like “we” or like “one does this.” It’s related to like, “One does this.” There’s an older usage of “on” which is like a non-specific third person pronoun as well that – I speak French, but I didn’t know about this archaic form. And the translator went and looked for what other historic pronoun things could I do and ended up doing with “on” thing, which is a really interesting adaptation.

Lauren: The thing I find interesting is if you were – 50 years ago, you didn’t have the grammatical resources in English to use singular they for a specific person. It’s something that’s really only emerged in the last couple of decades. I think the translator has felt frustrated to not have – you know, you sometimes feel like you’ve got this road block because you don’t have resources in one language that you have in another and you have to innovate. I did have a colleague in Italian studies tell me that they read a whole novel once where the gender of one of the characters was deliberately written around and avoided in a way that was an incredibly artful, thoughtful translation. It is possible that you could maybe do this with this character in the Shadowscent books, but it would be such –

Gretchen: But you couldn’t do it with the whole world in the Terra Ignota books because all of the characters would have to have that.

Lauren: Yeah. And you could do that amount of heavy lifting at the cost of some other things, but when you’re doing an efficient translation for a commercial novel, you don’t have the resources to really max out your art and strategy in that way. It’s interesting that, you know, translation is a really resource-intensive activity even to just do a good translation, let alone an incredibly strategic and thoughtful translation.

Gretchen: Even translating one word, like that word at the beginning of Beowulf, involves thinking about, “Okay, what kind of relationship do I want this word to have to the rest of the text? What am I trying to set up here in relationship to the whole text? Where do I see this attention-getting word as going?” Like, what the text as a whole is doing, which is this interesting question. I should say, speaking of translation news, this is very hot off the presses, but I have received news that there are gonna be translations of Because Internet into Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. So, all – well, Persian is an Indo-European language, but it has a different writing system, and then two non-Indo-European languages. I don’t know anything else about the details yet.

Lauren: This is news that I didn’t even know. This is very exciting.

Gretchen: It’s very recent, yes. It’s not – I dunno. I will have official links when they exist. They won’t exist for, I dunno, probably a couple years. I dunno how long it’ll take them to do. I know nothing.

Gretchen: The surreal thing about translation means that you will see you work and not be able to read it. There’s something so amazing and magical about that, that words you have created are finding new audiences – you know, there’s a lot of trust in the translator in those contexts.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I don’t know if I’m gonna get to have any say in who they get to translate it and how much they know about the internet or things like that.

Lauren: Translating non-fiction is an entirely different process because you’re not translating an internal narrative world as much as you are potentially translating something that explains how this world that we live in right now exists, or how a set of historical realities existed. That also takes deftness and skill.

Gretchen: And you’re potentially trying to translate technical vocabulary between one language or another, which isn’t necessarily the same as, “Okay, we need to keep the characters’ names consistent. It’s like, “We need to use this word that has a technical meaning in its technical sense.” Speaking of non-fiction translation, I dunno if you’ve been following in translation news relatively recently, there’s been a lot of things going on with the Scots language Wikipedia.

Lauren: Yes, I did read about this. So, Scots language is a language in the same family as English. It has a lot of similarities with English but is considered its own “variety,” using that very deliberate linguist term where you don’t commit to just how much it’s a dialect or its mutual intelligibility with other varieties that its related to. And it has its own Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Scots is kind of like, as an English speaker, I’ve always been kind of jealous of people who speak Dutch or German or something because they can kind of understand each other a bit. Or Spanish and Portuguese and Italian because they can kind of approximate understanding each other to some extent even if they haven’t formally learned the languages. I’ve always been like, “Why doesn’t English have some closer neighbours?” But I hadn’t been thinking about Scots when I was thinking that. Scots is probably English’s closest neighbour but is still a distinct language and, especially, there are grammatical differences and there are a lot of political reasons as well why people consider it its own language. However, [laughs] the Scots language Wikipedia, which has all of these articles written in Scots, had apparently been being edited for the last seven years by an American teenager who didn’t know any Scots and was just looking up the English articles in a Scots-English dictionary word-by-word and just picking the first word of the translation and subbing that in for the Scots word.

Lauren: This has been such a difficult story to read because everyone throughout this process has acted in the best faith. This teenager wasn’t doing this for any reason other than a passion for sharing knowledge on Wikipedia and a passion for seeing the Scots Wikipedia grow but with a really uncritical approach to translation. You can see where translation really does require this understanding of vocabulary choice and style choice and how it can all go really, really wrong.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really painful because this person started when they were, like, 12, and we have all believed very foolish things about the world when we were 12. It’s just many of us didn’t write thousands of Wikipedia articles in a language that is just really not the way anybody who actually speaks this language actually writes because it’s cobbled together badly from a dictionary. It’s this very painful, “Oh, no! You thought you were helping.” And yet Wikipedia is used as the basis of a lot of machine translation, and language detection, various natural language processing tools, and so this has been potentially sabotaging the efforts to try to create other machine tools in Scots because they’ve all been in this weird dictionary-a-fied version of English.

Lauren: It’s been really heartening to see the Scots language community and the Scottish Wikipedia community come together to figure out a strategy for how to approach cleaning house – I guess it’s the biggest spring clean ever, right – how to approach this, like, thousands and thousands of articles with this very strange approach to translation.

Gretchen: It illuminates one of the issues with smaller language Wikipedias in general which is that they may only have a few active editors because to be a Wikipedia editor is to be a volunteer. It takes a long time to translate things or to write articles. If you’re a language like English, you can have tens of thousands of editors. But if you’re a language like Scots which has many fewer speakers, you may only have a dozen active editors of which maybe one of them is a well-meaning but very clueless American teenager.

Lauren: We’ve both done lots of Wikipedia editing. We have run LingWiki events to improve linguistics content on Wikipedia. It’s challenging enough to write these articles in one language that I am proficient in. I’m always in awe of people who choose to translate and support content in their second or third languages because it is a non-trivial task to translate really complicated information in a way that is really clear.

Gretchen: Translation is a technical task that is one of those things that looks at all of the different levels of language where you have some things at the individual word, or even sound, or if you’re trying to translate poetry and you wanna make it beautiful in a very aesthetic sense with the physical properties of language, all the way up to words and sentences and structure and these discourse-y particles like “Hwaet” at the beginning where you’re trying to picture a whole framing device for the structure of an entire tone of a narrative. Or if you’re trying to pick, “Okay, how are we going to treat technical vocabulary that maybe has been borrowed from English?” because its scientific vocabulary that was invented from English, how are you gonna treat that when it gets borrowed into Scots? Trying to figure out how to make these technical decisions is non-trivial. It’s this very interesting train wreck. It can go spectacularly right when you have this very clever decision for a dragon to put the world on blast, and it can also go spectacularly wrong when you just say, “Okay, I’m gonna look through a dictionary and then pick the first word I encounter.”

Lauren: One of the great things about appreciating a good translation is that language never takes a break. Culture continues to change, and we move further away from the era of Beowulf. We move into new cultural settings and new cultural expectations. It means that there is space for new translations that bring new approaches, or try something different, or aim for really capturing something about the language of the era it was created in, or set an old story in a radically new setting. Even when you find a really satisfying translation, you know there’s still possibilities for finding other interesting ways to engage with the text.

Gretchen: I think that’s a thing that’s exciting about both the translations of these thousand-year-old texts, whether Beowulf or Tale of Genji, where they go through lots of different authors who put their own spin on the translation. And also thinking of Wikipedia as a place for translation where you have multiple authors working together on the same shared text, and a bunch of different people – like Scots Wikipedia has been having these Wikipedia edit-a-thons to try to clean the place up. You have a whole bunch of contributors that are finding out about this need because of this story and coming in and working on the text together and contributing to the shared text. In many ways, even though each of these editions of the translations are published as their own book for book-length ones, it’s this very intimate relationship that you can have with a text when you’re trying to render it in a different language or in a different textual interpretation.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 44 bonus episodes right now to listen to at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patron also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards as well as helping to keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include pangrams, honorifics, and linguistics with kids. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life, especially as it’s the anniversary month.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[pokemonswshbutionlyplayedsword]

How about headcanons on the galar gym leaders' teams?

This is gonna take a while bc there are so many pokemon in the League. I’m gonna make one headcanon for each pokemon. Hope that’s okay. And also only the team when you challenge the gym because that would be too many pokemon otherwise.

Here’s a quick overall headcanon:

Gym Leader’s teams are officially documented as battle pokemon. They are rotated out all the time. And almost every gym leader has pokemon outside of their teams that they train for events that allow them to use different teams than their official gym team.

Milo:

-Gossifluer is a bit of a brat. He’s picky and will throw a tantrum when Milo changes his food.

-Eldegoss is a very nurturing pokemon. He likes to wrap his cape around people he likes.

Nessa:

-Goldeen is Nessa’s favorite pokemon to model with that’s on her team. Very arrogant.

-Arrokuda is constantly in trouble with Nessa because she likes to chew on Nessa’s shoes and hair.

-Drednaw, as well all know, is a big baby. But they also consider themselves the protector of the team. If the other pokemon is in danger (outside of battle obviously), Drednaw will step in to help.

Kabu:

-Ninetails is a pretty girl and much smarter than Kabu’s other pokemon. She likes to mess with them and look good while doing it.

-Arcanine is a ball of energy and loves anything that will pet him, play with him or feed him. If he hates you, give him a treat and he will be your best friend immediately.

-Centiskorch is constantly a meme. He always looks weird on camera, which means that there’s a new meme of him every month. And they’re all hilarious.

Bea:

-Hitmontop is actually a new addition to Bea’s team. He was added to Bea’s gym team only a few months ago.

-Pangoro actually came from Spikemuth. He was causing problems in the town and Piers was struggling to handle the situation so he called Bea in. As a reward, he let her keep him, and Bea saw a lot of potential, so she started to train him, asking Piers for advice because its a dark type.

-Sirfetch’d spent a looooong time being trained by Bea before he became a part of the gym team. He struggled when he was younger to keep up with Bea’s other pokemon, but eventually he got it and is now basking in the glory of being a battle ready pokemon.

-Machamp is Bea’s assistant pokemon as well as her ace. She uses her to help train her other pokemon. Sometimes, Bea will send them all out on their own and Machamp can train them herself.

Allister:

-Yamask is a very young, yet overly powerful pokemon. Allister doesn’t usually use first evolution pokemon on his team, but this Yamask is oddly strong and he hasn’t gotten the chance to evolve him yet.

-Mimikyu is Allister’s first pokemon. He has been by Allister’s side for years.

-Cursola is the only pokemon that Allister actively sought out. They’re rare in Galar and Allister was fascinated when he read about it, so he went looking for one. It took a while, but he managed to get her and he’s glad he went through the effort.

-Gengar was originally going to attack Allister when they first met in a graveyard. It wasn’t until Allister confronted him that Gengar was like “oh wait I like this kid.” And he was a Ghastly at the time.

Opal:

-Opal’s Weezing is pretty old and grumpy. She bites anyone who’s not Opal. Not hard, though.

-Mawile was not very well known until Opal added her to her team. Then they spiked in popularity around Galar.

-Togekiss was a gift from an old friend. For a long time, Opal didn’t plan on training her for battle, but things changed when a pokemon from Opal’s past team had to retire.

-Alcreamie was Opal’s first pokemon, back when she was a Milcery. Opal spent a long times reasearching Alcreamies to make sure she got the variant she wanted. Also, because she wasn’t allowed to train pokemon due to being a girl when she was a kid, she snuck out into the woods and just found Milcery. It was a long time before she got a chance to catch her.

Melony:

-Frosmoth was a new-ish addition. Melony was peer pressured into adding a really strong Snom to her team as a meme, but then she evolved live on TV, which was wild.

-Melony was really unsure about Darmanitan. She didn’t think she wanted a pokemon that was so volatile and able to become a fire type. However, she was proven wrong, and with Kabu’s help, she’s able to train Darmanitan really well.

-Melony only chose to train an Eiscue because she’s funny looking. She never intended to add Eiscue to her team, but she proved to be a very powerful battle pokemon.

-Lapras met Melony when Gordie was very young. They took a vacation to a nearby warm beach once, and Gordie was swept away by the waves. While Melony was scrambling to get to Gordie, Lapras found him and brought him back to Melony. Lapras followed them around the rest of the day, so Melony decided to add her to the team.

Gordie:

-Barbaracle makes Gordie nervous still. He’s not used to working with him and he’s a bit scared of all the hands. But there’s no denying that Barbaracle is very strong.

-Shuckle, of course, is only there for the meme. He’s also a bit of a secret weapon, though, to Gordie. He has trained this little guy so much that he’s actually one of the strongest pokemon Gordie owns. He uses the power of underestimation against his opponents.

-Stonejourner is a gift from Milo. Who knew he would be so strong? Milo’s very happy that Gordie uses his pokemon on his Gym Team.

-Coalossal was a pokemon that made Gordie realize he wanted to be a rock specialist. He appreciates that it’s also fire type, because it’s a little extra push against being an ice type specialist.

Piers:

-Scrafty hoards Piers’ pillows. Anything soft he can find, he makes a pile on his bed and keeps them. Piers has to wrestle them away from him, and no matter how many pillows he buys for Scrafty, he just wants more.

-Malamar is definitely the ring leader. He’s a psychic type and a lot smarter than the rest of Piers’ team. He likes to use this influence for evil. He’s a jerk, but Piers still gives him scratches under his beak (his favorite <3)

-Skuntank is pretty much a cat. He climbs on Piers whenever he gets the chance. Easily found asleep on Piers’ lap while Piers is idly petting him. Good thing Skuntanks only smell when they’re distressed.

-As well all know based on my fic (shameless self promotion, what about it?), Piers met Obstagoon when he was very young in a dumpster. However, something I haven’t mentioned yet is that when he was a Linoone, he would constantly try to be Piers’ neck pillow.

Raihan:

-Torkoal has bad eyesight. Raihan often has to pick him up and carry him places because he can’t see well and he moves slowly.

-Raihan uses Goodra to present to kids. He does educational presentations about dragon types, pokemon training, and pokemon safety to students in schools. Goodra, because she’s so friendly, is Raihan’s go to for this task.

-Turtonator is actually very shy. He likes to hide in his shell whenever he can. The only time he’s confident is when he’s in battle or training.

-Flygon is Raihan’s personal transport. Faster than any Corviknight. Also makes for a really cool entrance.

-Duraludon loves attention. He loves being Raihan’s Ace and he loves being given all that love. Raihan shows him fan content of people loving him and it makes Duraludon stamp around and make happy building noises.

Leon: (And I chose Sobble so he has Rillaboom, I do make the rules and you cannot change them)

-Aegislash was a gift from Rose when he became Champion. Rose said that Leon needed a pokemon fitting of his title.

-Raihan and Leon were rivals since they were kids. Leon got Dragapult simply to compete with Raihan at first, but they now have a very strong bond.

-Haxorus actually came from a distant friend from another region. He’s also very hot-headed, which makes it risky but rewarding to train him.

-Rhyperior came from the Isle of Armor. Leon caught him while training at the Dojo. One time, while at the Isle of Armor, Hop got in trouble with some Wild pokemon. Rhyperior broke out of Leon’s pokeball and saved him before Leon could react.

-Rillaboom, as well as the other starters, came from Leon’s status. They’re only available in captivity and are very hard to come by. Luckily, Leon is the Champion, so they were the perfect gift for his brother. He was secretly hoping he’d get to keep Rillaboom, so he’s happy with the outcome.

-Charizard came from Mustard, of course, but Leon was originally going to pick Bulbasaur. Right before he made the choice, though, he left to think about it and ended up lost and in trouble. He didn’t have his pokemon with him. It was Charmander that wandered off and found him. After that, Leon had no choice but to pick him.

[aki-draws-things]

Fic title Meme: People Pleaser

OK, that was fun, and I can see clint agreeing on everything everyone may ask, except the don't consider this as a "payback" for the brainwashed betrayal time. They simply ask and are genuinely happy that Clint agrees to help.

I'm still trying to get in the right set to wrote them so.. I hope it's okay~

@captainjimothycarter

Anyone has other titles??? 💖

Title: People pleaser

Ship: Winterhawk

Tag: light angst, guilty clint, pre-relationship, first kiss

At first Bucky didn’t think much of it; he was still wrapping his own head around the idea of staying at the Tower, the idea that the rest of them were being almost friendly with him, the idea, for the first time in years, that he belonged somewhere. He didn’t have time to think of other things, but if he did, he thought back some time later, he would have seen it much sooner.

The Tower was chaotic, but in a good, functional way, with Stark constant chatters and babbles, Steve begging for him to “Just close your mouth as you eat breakfast Tony, for the love of God.” . Dr Banner with his calm aura always surrounding him, Bucky saw him angry, he saw the Hulk, he’d like not to see him around the Tower during fine mornings, thank you very much. Thor… Well, he wasn’t used to Thor honestly, and he wasn’t sure he liked his straightforwardness, but Steve always said he meant well so he could try a bit harder next time he was around. Natasha-- Natalia-- Natasha was the easiest to have around, more than once he found himself getting drawn toward her, her familiarity, her understanding; he could mutter in russian and she wouldn't need to ask for a translation, she wouldn’t tell him that he didn’t need to use that language anymore now that he wasn’t the Winter Soldier, Natasha would simply answer him.

And then, right when Bucky thought that maybe leaning on Natasha was the best choice if he didn’t want to worry Steve, Barton changed the cards on the table.

At first Bucky thought nothing of it, being around Barton was just as easy, something in his smile, something in his easy going way, something in how he seemed to understand his mood when not even Bucky fully understood them. He was always around, always close, hands hovering by but never touching unless someone started a contact, like he was afraid, craving the touch but afraid of it. Of asking.

He was different around Natasha, and Bucky thought that this was the reason he felt himself converging toward him in the end. Around Natasha he was physical, never asking, never waiting, he would flop down beside her and wrap himself around her one limb at time, and Natasha, scary, deadly Natasha, would lay there, perfectly comfortable with the archer turned octopus wrapped around her and lift a hand to scratch his head.

So Bucky took a step back, quietly, unconsciously; he didn’t want to intrude in that level of intimacy just because Natasha could understand him, it felt wrong toward someone who had been there earlier than him.

That was when he noticed it, one day when Natasha was away for a mission.

he walked, shuffled, okay, he dragged his feet inside the common room after a sleepless night filled with memories, and nightmares, and more nightmarish memories, his mind screamed at him to stay in bed, his stomach had a different idea and an empty, growling stomach in a time and place where he could fill it with anything he preferred was very hard to ignore. The compromise was to get back into bed after breakfast and call it a day, or a morning, depending on how fast he would get hungry again. no training, no walks in a park, no nothing.

Clint was there, he heard him before even entering the room, talking with Steve in the usual cheerful voice, agreeing with something Steve asked, Bucky didn't know what. When he walked inside Steve was leaving the table, positively glowing, he clapped a hand over Bucky's shoulder not seeing the light flinch and walked out. Clint chuckled and pushed a mug of coffee toward him before he even decided if he wanted coffee, he could as well accept it at this point.

"too physical, right? - he nodded toward the door Steve disappeared out. - he's like an overgrown puppy, unconcealed excitement and all."

Bucky just smiled quickly and sipped from the mug, coffee just as sweet as he liked. He watched as the archer drowned his mug empty and left it in the sink before sighing and stretching.

"better get going or I'll be late." without another word he waved at him before leaving the common room.

By nightfall when he met the archer again he looked tired to the bones, absolutely worn out, still he smiled as Bruce thanked him for something bucky wasn't paying attention to.

At first he thought nothing of it, until he saw his smile falter just slightly, the usual light in his eyes dimmed as he told Stark about a little inconvenience , or so he called it, he had with the hearing aids during the mission. Little inconvenience being the high pitched sound that left him swaying dizzily when Sam's new drone flew too close.

Stark grabbed the aids as soon as Clint took them out, muttering fast under his breath and searching for the problem dismissing with a wave of the hand Clint's quiet "I probably set them wrong, there's nothing wrong with them, sorry to bother.", like it had been his fault.

"it could use a bit more sugar…"

Steve looked at the cookies in front of him, the sugar, in bucky's opinion, was the least problem, they should resemble falcon's wings as Steve explained, and instead it looked more like a… bucky wasn't sure honestly. Not wings anyway.

"but I'm used to very very sweet things, that's just my mouth!"

Bucky blinked as Clint flashed an encouraging smile at the captain. He took a cookie. They definitely needed more sugar, on top of a better shape. Bucky almost doubted Steve put sugar in them at all.

The smile over clint's lips was real, he knew it, and yet it looked stretched, strained, painful, like he felt bad for saying something was off about Steve's cooking, like he offended Steve somehow. Steve simply took note of the sugar, "and the shape, Steve. I don't want to be the one explaining these are supposed to be wings." bucky added, and went to try and make the cookies again. They would eat cookies for a week, at that rate.

It took bucky almost a year to figure out a pattern, a whole year of clint's smiles that one after the next bucky wanted to steal from the rest of the team because they failed to see behind them. He loved the way Clint smiled, how the room seemed brighter when he was around. Maybe it was just bucky feeling that, maybe he was… was it love? He couldn't exactly go up to Steve and ask him, he couldn't be so blunt with Natasha either. Not to mention Clint.

The mission had been hard, flying aliens covered in spikes caused more damage than they thought, Clint joined when the fight had started already, coming from a completely different mission, bucky heard him talk to Natasha a week before.

He scratched his head, made up some kind of weak excuse when stark asked what took him so long, he apologized and bucky made a quick mental note to confront him on that, he had nothing to apologize for. He would definitely tell him that as soon as the spiky aliens were gone.

"fuck. I'm sorry Buck. I'm--"

Clint hung his head low, bucky barely managed to convince Steve not to feel guilty that one of the aliens stabbed him through the side, and it was hard to deal with the sad puppy eyes Rogers could make, he was too tired to deal with clint's guilt too.

"you've done nothing." he said and saw his shoulders drop even lower. "Nothing wrong." he quickly added.

"I was supposed to have your six."

Yeah, that was his position and bucky would be damned if he said he didn't trust him with his life.

"you saved a group of civilians stuck in a building. 7 people? Against one super soldier who will be up in a couple more hours."

Still that didn't ease the pain he saw in clint's eyes.

"okay. - bucky knew he didn't mean it, he didn't believe him. - okay, tell me what I can do to make it better. Serum or no you've been stabbed, because of me. Tell me how I can have your forgiveness."

That was… what? Bucky blinked, confused. Forgiveness? Was guilt so deep in his mind? Was that why he--

Oh, fuck.

Bucky sighed.

"a smile. - sap. He knew stark, and Natasha would say that upon hearing his request. - a smile and you're forgiven."

"it's a bit small. You can ask me anything you want. I can spar with you when you're up. I can… really, Barnes, anything. You got wounded because of m--"

"is that why you're always so compliant? Something happened and you try to.. Don't know, make up for that?"

He trembled, and bucky wanted to wrap around him and hold him.

"they shouldn't trust me. They probably don't but they try. So maybe one day I will have their trust back, like before my mind got fucked up by that crazy God." he blurted out and bucky couldn't help but stare.

"but really, tell me how I can--" Clint tried to change the topic again and bucky acted on pure impulse.

"if a smile is too little, then I want a kiss."

[jemfisch]

⌠ MASON GOODING, 21, CISMALE, HE/HIM ⌡ welcome back to gallagher academy, JEREMY “JEM” FISCHMAN II! according to their records, they’re a SECOND YEAR year, specializing in ADVANCED ENCRYPTION & “MACGUYVER” SURVIVAL SKILLS AND NAVIGATION; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (old hip hop blaring from headphones, a broken crtv with the cords ripped out and repurposed, the smell of spray paint graffiti, brightly colored shirts with 80s patterns). when it’s the (cancer)’s birthday on 06/23/99, they always request their ICE CREAM SANDWICHES from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation. ⌿ kati, 24, she/her, est ⍀ @gallagherintro

STATS / PINTEREST / CONNECTIONS / CLASSES

INSPIRATION

fox mulder (the x files)

hogarth hughes (the iron giant)

will turner (pirates of the carribean)

robin hood

george weasley (harry potter)

aladdin

spike spiegel (cowboy bebop)

mark watney (the martian)

BACKGROUND + CLICK FOR BIO

his parents were high school sweethearts and married just before they attended college at harvard together, securing careers at the kennedy space center. 

jeremy fischman sr dies under mysterious circumstances in a lab accident and ellen is twenty-eight and left alone to raise baby jem. things only go downhill from here. jeremy was the love of her life and she becomes obsessed with his disappearance and all kinds of conspiracy theories, blows a bunch of her money. it doesn’t take long for her to be fired, savings blown on expensive equipment or sunk into internet hoaxes

they move to a rough neighborhood in gainesville where jem grows up. he likes jem, not jeremy, jeremy is his father. he’s never experienced the perfect life his parents used to live, the white picket fence, the shiny space shuttles. he’s only got this, and honestly, he doesn’t hate it. 

the neighborhood’s rough, but there’s a lot of fun characters, and his mom is practically his best friend – aside from his next-door neighbor, NOAH WARD.

jem’s mom does odd hacking jobs from the comfort of their home. some of them are shadier than others, she makes connections with a lot of private investigators in town and looks into people’s cheating husbands and tracks down birth parents and missing people. she does pro bono work too, a kindhearted woman, she can never say no to those in need, even if she’s not so fortunate herself. as jem gets older, he learns everything that he knows from her

every summer vacation growing up, jem and his mom would pack their bags and make home in a camper van, traveling across the country. in some ways, this was great mother-son bonding, but this wasn’t why they did it. his mom never gave up looking for the truth about her husband,  but hacking into secure, top-secret government databases is nothing like hacking into the gainesville city hall, it’s hard work, and they travel around the country methodically so that their signal cannot be traced. every summer they get close, but never close enough.

when noah moves away for college, jem stays home. he’s not comfortable leaving his mom. 

he keeps up with hacking jobs and keeping up with looking for his dad on the side. he doesn’t think they’ll ever find him, his mom holds out hope but jem is eighteen years old and a bit more jaded now, he figures the guy’s just really dead and well, the conspiracy of it all matters less and less when he knows that either way, he’s still grown up without him. 

a lot of jem’s social life is online, whether it’s friends from hacking forums or via soundcloud.

when he’s not hacking, he’s making music. his passions of technology and music mix and he creates his own beats and soundcloud, mashing together songs, and even putting together a popular meme track or two used on tiktok. 

it’s actually a bit lucrative, but that’s not why he does it. doesn’t even really use his name, catch him on soundcloud…username? uncutjems.

every time he and his mom get close to finding his dad, there’s just more to do, and it’s almost like someone KNOWS what they’re doing. 

jem’s right about that – he is being watched. since noah’s admission to gallagher, recruiters have been aware of the boy who taught her everything she knew. 

when gallagher makes the choice to start allowing male students, an agent shows up at his door offering him a once in a lifetime chance at a free education. 

jem doesn’t have any strong ambition to go into espionage, per say, but he won’t say no to advanced classes taught by some of the world’s brightest minds – and a chance to reunite with his best friend. however, he hasn’t stopped trying to get into the government’s records and still has ambitions of going into music production.

PERSONALITY. 

INTUITIVE. jem has a natural intuition about things and he trusts himself and his own opinions about things. i suppose you could perceive this as confidence, but honestly he’s just really SMART, good at absorbing facts even subconsciously and putting things together about people or situations. in a sense, he has a habit of being correct – he definitely comes off as intelligent, even though his grades in school have never been very good. he just has different priorities. 

LOYAL. make a friend out of jem and you have a friend for life, he’ll take your secrets to the grade and he’s pretty trustworthy. he’s the type of guy that gets along with pretty much everyone but he has a few select, close friends because he is somewhat intentional about the company that he keeps. he’s friendly and kind, but he keeps his inner circle of people he trusts close and somewhat exclusive. 

PROTECTIVE. kind of has papa bear energy, you know ? maybe the dad friend of your friend group, but in a laid back way, he might not seem like he’s the type to spring into action but call someone close to him a rude name and you’ll see his fist coming at your face. he’s protective but not possessive, i guess is how i would describe it, but i think he gives pretty good advice as well because he’s really hoping the best for ppl. 

MALINGERING. jem is kind of a SLACKER! at least, that’s what teachers have called him in the past, he simply does not dream of labor. he’s just kind of doing his own thing, will fake sick to skip a class, whatever else, even though he likes producing music he doesn’t really have a great ambition for anything, spy or otherwise. as long as he has a good computer setup, then he’s fucking chilling. 

MOODY. he’s laid back to the umpteenth degree when it comes to work or obligations, but he does have sort of mood swings, i guess he’s the sort of person that you would describe as grumpy at times ? definitely NOT a morning person and when he’s in an off mood, he can be hard to interact with or snap out of. 

DISORGANIZED. the sort of person to throw his stuff across the bed or leave piles of clothes on the floor to deal with later, maybe he’s not your favorite roommate for this reason. he has a habit of losing things that he just set down or whatever, things like that. 

HEADCANONS.

tbh you can think of him like...beca in pitch perfect ! he’s here bc he was offered a free education and he’s cool with that, but he’d rather be pursuing a future in music. a damn good hacker, though, and the gallagher recruiters are hoping that with some ‘ambition’ he’ll want to work for the government someday. 

played baseball throughout middle and high school and he’s fairly athletic – he can get pretty competitive when he plays, it kind of brings out a side in him that most people don’t expect to see because he’s fairly chilled out most of the time 

a boss with a slingshot. there is no reason for this, but he had one as a kid and he used to chase squirrels away from the bird feeders outside their home. he has great eyesight and his aim is great, but it’s literally the only weapon he’s proficient in

he’s not tiktok famous for his face, but he has two tiktok famous songs...he’s made like 12k in record deals for selling the rights, it’s just the kind of shit that he does goofing around in music software and he has a good ear for what is going to be catchy

he’s NOT a morning person, definitely a late night kind of guy, will stay up until all hours just fucking around on the computer and then he’ll sleep until 1 or 2pm, at least. getting up for morning classes is a struggle for them and he has slept through them on occasion.

funky sweaters, crazy socks, fun-patterned shirts, he dresses a bit like a circus tent at times, but you can’t say that he doesn’t have style – he dresses well, but it’s like he’s stepped out of a 90s cartoon or something

if he makes u a playlist he either wants to be ur friend so fucking bad or he’s head over heels in love with u

really likes making new things with old technology, he loves taking the macguyver courses and learning new things and he’s actually built his own computer and a lot of his own musical instruments 

usually has a couple bandaids because he’s a bit accident prone or can lose his focus when working in the lab. when he gets in his own head while working on a project, he literally cannot hear anything else – sort of selective hearing

likes fucking around with spray paint, if he can, he’s got a bit of an artistic streak and he doodles stickers on sticker paper sometimes. you can probably catch his tag around campus or even stuck to the latops of his close friends, it’s just a little man with a tv for a head. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

HACKING JOBS – if you STILL need a hacker for any of your wild backstory connections, jem is a great bet. he’s been doing paid jobs for people professionally since he could type, and he’s sort of an ace at getting in and out without leaving a trace...and he’s no gossip. so, your secrets would be safe with him. 

SMOKING BUDDIES – people that he can smoke up with, talk about life, talk about the bullshit of gallagher, but also people he can laugh with that don’t make him feel stressed or concerned about the future. 

MUSIC MAKING BUDDIES – if your character makes music, maybe they can collaborate on something...we’re about to drop the hottest mixtape of all time right here at gallagher academy i will teach myself garageband for this shit...jk but maybe

EX ON BAD TERMS – someone he dated last year...i’m imagining it was their first year and things were really great for the first semester, but shit fell apart second semester along with the school. maybe all the drama on campus caused distance, maybe he wasn’t there for them when they needed it, or maybe they got jealous of the way he always prioritizes noah ? a combination of things, we can hash out the details since i know some of you had some pretty angsty things going on second sem, and maybe it’s awkward now because it feels like there’s unfinished biz. 

EX ON GOOD TERMS / LOVERS TO FRIENDS – maybe someone that was a rebound and things didn’t really work and they saw that, maybe he wasn’t over his ex or whatever but they were able to stay friends ? it’s up to you how your muse feels about it but i want an ex that jem also has no hard feels about and actually is maybe sort of protective of them and cares a lot about them finding happiness, they bonded hardcore. 

EX-FLING – idk maybe they were hooking up for a while and then one of them started seeing someone else or one of them caught feels so they don’t hook up any more but it was super fun when they did !! also down for it to have been like a summer fling and once the summer ended. 

BROS – idk i would like for him to have a squad or something for him to just fuck around with <3 but it’s wholesome and they respect women

ONLINE FRIEND (ANONYMOUS) – he spent a lot of time on forums online and stuff so i’d love for him to have an online friend !! maybe cute if they just know each other by their screen names rn and we can do a bunch of text chats and maybe they both know they go to gallagher but they simply. haven’t met idk

ONLINE FRIENDS – also friends he met online that aren’t anonymous they could’ve met through any number of forums but probably have similar interests like music or hacking so they’re long time homies , someone he’s known almost as long as noah

ONE NIGHT STAND – self explanatory. maybe they’re super good friends and now it’s kind of awkward now and they want to get back to a place of normalcy but it’s simply not normal, maybe they fucked things up by breakin the tension on like. halloween or some shit. 

FRIENDZONED – someone jem accidentally friendzoned and maybe he doesn’t even realize it himself but they had a thing for him and he really just didn’t realize it bc he can’t tell unless you spell it out for him.

CLASS RIVALS – someone who tries really hard and cares about class a bunch vs. jem who doesn’t give a fuck but he keeps making the grade without really trying, so they’re ? bitter about it ? and so the two really do not hit it off because of that and they go back and forth , i just rly want a classroom rivalry. maybe even this rivalry and them nagging him actually motivates to try in the class just to piss them off 

 ENEMY – this person shared a secret with jem and then it somehow got out on the gossip blog idk ! they think jem told and now they hate him. 

anything pls let’s chat !

[depressedoverdrawings]

Can you hear the tumult of our youth?

KazeKi is the first romance I’ve ever enjoyed, or rather, that I emotionally connected with, as “enjoy” is a funny word choice for a work that made me feel so miserable. Personally, I’ve never enjoyed media that focuses on relationships and love, were they movies, TV, or literature.

But after I discovered KazeKi, I found myself drawn to it, almost involuntarily so. It was as if a spell had been cast. I suppose what superficially drew me in, at first, was the art. It had the charm of retro manga (I absolutely love retro manga/anime looks, IMO they have so much more character than most modern anime and manga), the nostalgic elegance of the idealized upper-class XIX century, and the unrelenting beauty and cuteness of all the boys.

It was mildly surreal and highly entertaining to witness the seed of so many shounen-ai visual tropes: The flower motifs, the flowery poetry, the impossibly pretty boys in dramatic embraces and breathy kisses, the aggressive frenchness of it all. Even it was shocking to me how these elements, instead of striking me as the tired, sappy tropes I saw them as, were now all genuine and beautiful, somehow. Even those silly sparkles around pretty boys seemed fitting. I realized these weren’t tropes back then, but elements of a sincere artistc vision. However, while the art was mesmerizing to me, I came to realize that what drew me in deeper, and kept me anchored to KazeKi, were the themes explored, and the character-based drama, the very stuff I had always avoided.

Without getting far too personal about it, Kaze to Ki no Uta was the first romance that struck something within me, somewhere personal. Now, I certainly have never faced trauma and pain anywhere near to what poor Gilbert and Serge face in their absurdly depressing story, but I definitely wouldn’t call myself emotionally and sexually resolved and healthy, and once upon a time I was a closeted boy in a catholic school, so I guess there’s space for a little bit of self-identification. My coping mechanism to my personal woes had always been to just bottle them up and distract myself with entertainment and art. And that was exactly what I was doing, browsing music on YouTube, when I stumbled upon the KazeKi OVA’s soundtrack.

I found myself listening to this gorgeous arrangement of a Chopin piece, and thought to myself, staring at the angelic figure looking back at me, across the screen: “Gee whilikers, that’s sure is a pretty drawing of a pretty girl”. Then, after reading the comments, I found out that was a boy. As much as the “draw a girl, call it a boy” school of drawing pretty boys makes me groan, I could still feel it, that first hook of interest, stabbing me. As the slideshow enticed me with pictures of Keiko Takemiya’s gorgeous art, I found myself enamoured by it. It was a particular drawing that made KazeKi finally snatch me: that same boy, lounging angelically on some sort of abstract architectural design; in the background, a neoclassical vase flanked by two neoclassical girls, and, above and below, this stunningly beautiful vegetation. So much care, skill, and good taste, concentrated in just one image! I’d have it as a poster, if I could. So, I googled “Kaze to Ki no Uta”, unwittingly throwing myself in a rabbit hole I could not have prepared myself for. Trying to read it was in itself a journey, but, to sum it up: I managed to read it about as well as one can, if they don’t speak japanese and have no access to the spanish and italian translations.

It had been years since I had started feeling emotionally numb. My most extreme displays of emotion came in the form of quiet, teary eyes, reserved for those rare, impactful pieces of art, and those rarer moments of despair-inducing introspection that I couldn’t manage to suppress, but even those lasted little, as I fought to recover my composure. By the end of Kaze to Ki no Uta, I was a sobbing wreck, doing my best (and failing) to contain my ugly crying. Ugly crying, for god’s sake. I was ugly crying, actually sobbing like a kid, because of an yaoi manga. Crying in the shower, even! What kind of weeb had I degenerated into? It hurt. It deeply hurt, in a way I hadn’t been made to hurt in a long, long while. KazeKi had impacted me to the point that I wasn’t just sad, I was scared too, as the waterfall of emotion opened the path for that deeper, personal darkness to come out. And it did.

Now, I admit I’d been a little bit more emotionally fragile than usual right before I read it, due to the effects of the quarantine and the previous consumption of a highly depressing piece of media: Les Amitiés Particulières, which is probably even more depressing than KazeKi as it deals with a much more grounded homophobia-induced tragedy based in real life. Somehow, it didn’t impact me as much as KazeKi, however. Also, it was definitely what influenced my personal YouTube algorithm to recommend me the KazeKi soundtrack, so I wouldn’t know of KazeKi if it weren’t for Amitiés. But even then, it felt unnatural to, well, feel so much. I hadn’t felt this invested in and attached to fictional characters ever since I was a little kid, too young to realize those people in the TV weren’t real. In the following couple of weeks, I was crying over these boys, spending whole days feeling like trash, feeling mild anxiety spikes whenever I remembered about KazeKi, having (even more) difficulty falling asleep, and utterly failing to avoid thinking about my deep-seated intimate issues, all because of these dumb, pretty anime boys. Not even my trusty prayer of “they’re not real people, stop being stupid” worked. In an attempt to stop wallowing in this shounen-ai hell, I decided to consume a whole lot of escapist media while I deliberately avoided any activity related to KazeKi, be it reading the manga, listening to the OVA’s soundtrack, looking at fanart, or even just thinking about it. It “worked” for a month or so, but now I’m back here, wallowing in KazeKi’s painful beauty again, stalking the other seven people in the western world that seem to care about KazeKi, and distilling my thoughts in this bizarre textwall, in an attempt to work it out. If you’re one of those seven people, please don’t refrain from talking to me, if you feel like it! I’ve had just one opportunity to have a conversation about KazeKi, and it was in YouTube comments, for heaven’s sake. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m this afflicted by KazeKi due to its unrelenting, merciless, cruel beauty. Everything about it is presented in this assembly of pure beauty and lost perfection, this painful nostalgia that is present in its aesthetics of an idealized Europe which lives only in its surviving art, that is present in the story which ultimately tells us of the loss of love, and is present in the fact that the whole story is a broken man’s reverie about the past. Tragedy might make me sad, but tragedy with beauty will destroy me. Bittersweetness is just so more cruel than bitterness. And it was this masterpiece of sadistic bittersweetness that permanently broke something in how I deal with my emotions. Kaze to Ki no Uta touched me deeply, to the point of leaving a permanent impression, I’m afraid. I can count in one hand the pieces of art that have punched my soul in the face like KazeKi did. I am honestly flabbergasted over the effect it had over me. At first I felt embarrassed over being emotionally obliterated by a freaking shounen-ai, but I’ve since come to the conclusion that KazeKi is a work of art, a genuine, sincere work of art, deserving of the title. Now I just hope I’m not alone in being emotionally obliterated by this freaking shounen-ai. After everything they went through, the personal fights, the shaky development of their relationship, the undeserved ostracism at Lacombrade, Auguste’s demonic persecution, the escape; how could it be that Gilbert’s life would end in such a horrible way, and that Serge would be left alone to face the full, unbearable weight of his grief! Why?! Keiko Takemiya, you’re a vile sadist. You’re a genius, too, of course. But you’re a vile sadist.

I knew that a happy ending wasn’t going to happen. The horrible ending was a pretty early spoiler, really. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t stop myself from reading on anyway, and I couldn’t stop myself from having an inkling of illogical hope. Even if my logical self knew a happy ending wasn’t gonna happen, it couldn’t prepare me for just how tragically their love would end, and how awful it all would feel, once I knew their full story.

It’s all the more bitter because of how close Serge came to saving him, too. Having escaped together to a place where they could’ve built the nearest thing to a normal life a gay couple could have, back then. But in the end, not even Serge’s love could mend Gilbert’s mutilated soul. Those boys deserved so much better, especially Serge. Serge, you sweet angel! You were created to suffer.

KazeKi really is a masterpiece in how it explores its extremely heavy themes and the minds of its characters, and how it flawlessly meshes that with perfect art. There are many moments in KazeKi that haunt me: Serge letting that bird go, Serge’s vision of Gilbert at the Lacombrade grounds, Gilbert running into the carriage, angel wings behind him; Serge laying alone on the bed in Room 17. I cannot look at those pages without tearing up and feeling this horrible feeling in my heart, and this feeling is literal: My heart actually feels heavy and constricted when I think about it, it can’t be healthy. Up until now, I thought “cri evrytiem” was just a meme. KazeKi has woken me up to the fact that bottling up one’s own personal issues will inevitably end with them exploding out, leading to something much, much worse. I am scared by the prospect of facing my personal issues. To me, they are horribly strong, and seem incredibly hard to solve, if they’re even solvable at all. I’m horrified by the prospect of facing them, working to solve them. I’m so scared, that simply thinking about it, right now, gives me this awful weight in my chest, and makes me want to cry, again. But I know now that I have no choice in this matter, as the only alternative is that abyss I dare not speak of, and one cannot return from. Melodramatic? Yes. But I did just read Kaze to Ki no Uta.

Thank you for getting this far, whoever you are.

I’m forever haunted by Serge’s words to his long-gone Gilbert, right at the beginning:

“Gilbert Cocteau, you were the greatest flower to ever bloom in my life. In the faraway dreams of youth, you were a bright red flame, blazing so fiercely… You were the wind that stirred my branches. Can you hear the poem of the wind and trees? Can you hear the tumult of our youth? Oh, there must be others who so remember their own days of youth…”

[altumvidetur]

MCU Daredevil: MattFoggy Fic Recs

MCU Fic Recs Masterpost

So, I was thinking about the coronavirus pandemic and what I could do to help people out. I’m isolated because I’m at higher risk, so I can’t really offer to go out for my elderly neighbors or my family… but I thought I could try to help keep people entertained.

Because I don’t have an AO3 account right now, I’ve been compiling fic recs for my own amusement for a year or so. And I thought – maybe that’s the time to share these with everyone? So everyone will have plenty of things to read while they have to stay at home, or even to escape anxiety a little bit if you’re forced to go out.

Of course, these cater to my own tastes, so you may find stuff you don’t like around here. I never include works in progress. The Mature and Explicit works will be in italic. I ask you to READ THE WORK’S TAGS before continuing, so you won’t find anything that makes you uncomfortable.

I didn’t actually watch season 3 of Daredevil, so my recs are all from before that. I still plan to watch, so please take that into account when interacting with this post!

Fitter. Happier. More Productive., by what_alchemy

Matt tries to let go. He's not too good at it.

through the bookcase, imagining a scene, by returnsandreturns

“He’s back,” Karen says, making Foggy jump and drop his armful of books. She winces and drops down immediately to help him pick them up.

“Matt?” Foggy asks. It’s an optimistic guess—there are a lot of guys who could be back, like the guy who sits in a study carrel and eats peanut butter out of a jar with his hands and Uncomfortable Religious Missionary Guy, who is actually three different guys.

“Yep,” she replies, nodding and widening her eyes when she grins. “He’s flirting with the circulation ladies, which means you’ve got just enough time to steal my shift at the reference desk before he gets there.”

The Constellation of Touch, by what_alchemy

Months after Fisk is put away, nothing's right between the partners at Nelson and Murdock. But Christmas is here, and Matt is still expected at the Nelson house.

you won’t get better till you’re worse, by annperkinsface

The road to forgiveness has a lot of vodka.

my name on your lips, by unnecessary

It starts when Matt and Marci have coffee. Then Foggy and Claire have coffee. Then Claire throws a Christmas party, and really, it isn't like Foggy means to keep almost confessing to Matt, but can anyone really blame him? 

I Decided This, by patster223

“I’m contributing yet another lovely sign to our office,” Foggy says, brandishing the finished product with a flourish. Matt can’t see the sign, but he can probably sense the flourish, which is what matters. “It says, ‘It has been ‘0’ days since Matt made an idiotic decision.’”

“Doesn’t seem like it will inspire much trust from our clients.”

What the sign instead inspires: debates, understanding, a patented Murdock-level guilt trip, ice cream celebrations, a kiss, and perhaps even a way to finally move forward.

We Just Lost the Beat, by knight_tracer and lady_ragnell

Matt hears a lot in the city at night, sirens and crime--and the late-night radio show Foggy With a Chance, which sometimes runs a Daredevil Watch if he's been particularly active, but which mostly plays music. He probably shouldn't call in and request a song, but he does it anyway.

I’ll Most Likely Kill You in the Morning, by inkfingers_mcgee

Foggy and Matt never met at school. They cross paths for the first time while working opposite sides of a case, and Matt doesn't leave an impression beyond the superficial: a blind, pro-bono crusader who Foggy will feel really guilty about having to oppose in court one of these days. Seemed like a nice guy, but no one Foggy will worry about a week later.

He has more important things on his mind, like the masked vigilante who keeps cornering him in dark alleys to threaten him for information.

Touch Me, Don’t Feel Me, by fabella

Foggy struggles to navigate a casual sexual relationship with Matt after the events of season two. It's predictably complicated.

Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not, by lady_ragnell

Something in New York has everyone walking around with iron in their pockets, and it seems like the vigilante they're calling the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is at the center of it all. Foggy knows how to steer clear of that kind of trouble, but when the Devil seeks him out, he ends up in the middle of it with him.

A Janet and Tam Lin AU.

jump, check parachute, by augustbird

Foggy Nelson: good at law, terrible at feelings.

Just Wanna Take Him Home, by lady_ragnell

Foggy mostly takes little old ladies to parties doing escort jobs, which he's fine with.

Getting hired to spend two hours hugging a lawyer is kind of a departure. He should have known it would all get complicated fast.

Daredevils Don’t Drink Decaf, by ChuckleVoodoos

“I really, really want to make a joke about bats and blindness. Will you punch me if I make a joke about bats and blindness?” Matt shakes his head, grinning. “Okay, so we’re Superspud and Blind-As-A-Batman.”

In which Foggy uses his law degree to peddle coffee to unsuspecting caffeine junkies, and Matt is his favorite customer. Who may or may not be Batman.

Say You’ll Still Be By My Side, by lady_ragnell

Bless me, Foggy, for I have sinned.  

Eres Mi Grande Avocado, by ChuckleVoodoos

Matt's got this way of speaking in Spanish that's just a little different than his way of speaking in English. In English, all of Matt's words are carefully weighed and measured and cut like crystal. They're precious but planned. With Spanish, the words seem to fall like drops of liquid gold, hot and rich and wild, and it makes Foggy want to gather them to himself and finally be warm.

Gazelle, Lion, Gun, by ChuckleVoodoos

The Devil of Hell's Kitchen has got some competition. Sassy sharpshooters do not make good crime-fighting partners, except that they really do.

Dream Catcher, by ChuckleVoodoos

When Matt has nightmares, so does Foggy. Unfortunately, Matt has a lot of nightmares. Even when he's not asleep.

Or: Matt visits Foggy after the bombings, and it doesn't go well.

Red Cross, by ChuckleVoodoos

Foggy is perfectly happy being a law-abiding physician with a weakness for cupcakes.

No one else seems to understand this.

Rocky Horror Pancake Show, by ChuckleVoodoos

Foggy falls asleep at exactly 12:00 AM, and he’s making a wish. He wakes up at 12:00 AM too—twenty-four hours before he fell asleep.

"Let's do the time warp again!"

The Boxer-Puncher, by one_flying_ace

“Matt, you’re my best friend, but you’re a goddamn idiot sometimes. It’s not about you. I’m not training, I’m not looking to get in a ring or do what you do. I just wanted to know a little more.” He says it fiercely, strongly, right into Matt’s ear like that’ll get it through to him any easier. “It’s not like I’m any good at it,” he adds, which is probably a mistake.

His heartbeat definitely spikes on the lie, because Matt flinches.

if ever joy surrounds you (you have to let it), by KiaraSayre

"I mean, I did think that maybe vigilantism is actually good for you in terms of, like, self-actualization or whatever, but - have you been seeing a therapist or something? Good talks with your priest?"

(Or, it's weird how weird things aren't between Matt and Foggy. Particularly when they're talking about boners.)

That Spin I’m In, by Werelibrarian and poisonivory

"What does that mean?" Matt asks Strange.

"Well, that depends," Strange says, unfolding his legs and letting his feet touch the floor again. Matt gets the distinct impression Strange is hedging. "Are you currently suffering heartbreak?"

Matt very carefully doesn't think about Elektra. Or Karen. Or Foggy. "Let's leave my personal life out of this."

Strange clears his throat. "Yes, well, that option may no longer be on the table."

Matt really hates magic.

How Your Heart Pounds Inside Me, by poisonivory

Hiring a surrogate alpha is supposed to be the simplest way to get through a heat - and Matt doesn't want to risk his heart again, not after the last time. But nothing in Matt's life is ever simple, and when his surrogate turns up again to oppose both Matt Murdock, Attorney-at-Law and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, it's more than just Matt's heart at risk.

Just Our Hands Clasped So Tight, by poisonivory

If there's one thing Foggy Nelson knows about Matt Murdock, it's how tactile he is.

Will You, by poisonivory

Foggy's always joking when he asks Matt to marry him. Matt's always serious when he says yes.

- OR -

Five proposals Foggy forgot, and one Matt makes sure he'll remember.

Stay In My Arms (If You Dare), by poisonivory

The Defenders are the most elite bodyguard agency in the world. When Wilson Fisk's personal attorney Foggy Nelson walks in looking for protection from a mysterious man in black, Matt Murdock is more than happy to take Mr. Nelson's safety in hand. But Nelson's guilt is hard to prove, and Matt may have gotten himself in too deep - especially once someone besides the man in black starts gunning for his client.

I Would Know You by Touch Alone, by unnecessary

It doesn’t matter if Matt has a soulmate, because if he does, it’s not Foggy.

Written for this prompt on the kink meme: “Foggy’s soulmate mark is raised birthmarks that read ‘Matt’ in Braille.”

...Aaaaaand a series within the Spider-Gwen universe:

The Lawyer All the Wickedness, by poisonivory

(Summary by me: in which Foggy is, at turns, angered, baffled and aroused by scumbag defense attorney Matt Murdock.)

[drawlfoy]

Faux Diplomacy p.2

pairing: draco x mugglebornslytherinilvernmornyfem!reader (a mouthful i’m so sorry)

request: nah i’ve always always wanted to write this

warnings: draco malfoy being a class A dickwad, swearing

summary: reader is an ilvermorny student who was given an opportunity to travel abroad and spend a year at Hogwarts. At first she’s thrilled, but things start to get weird--why is everyone on the trip muggleborn? why were they all put into slytherin, no questions asked? and what is that draco malfoy kid doing? takes place during 6th year so peak angst

a/n: i apologize for the fact that i’m clearly favoring this story over Sound of....Magic? but it’s mostly because i’m writing what i know and i don’t know how to adult lol. also i hope you’re enjoying the slowburn! we might hate draco a little bit but i swear i’ll mend it soon!

music recs: i have a writing playlist specifically for this fic that i might share one day

word count: 2,240

The door was hard under Y/N’s fist, something that she should’ve guessed but the fact of which still managed to surprise her. Maybe she was more intoxicated than she originally assumed.

She knocked four times, slowly but loudly enough for anyone awake to hear her. The last thing she wanted to deal with was an angry racist. 

Three seconds passed by, each little mississippi begging her to run the other way before the door opened. She prayed that he was gone or at least deep in sleep. There was no telling what he’d do if he saw her. He couldn’t kill her, at least, but there were hundreds of other things that could happen to her if he was evil enough.

Her worst fear came true as the door flung open, revealing a very disgruntled and very pissed Draco. His pale hair was tousled with some pieces hanging in front of his forehead, breaking Y/N’s conception of his perfectly kept hair.

“What on earth do you want?” He hissed, his eyes burning with an intense emotion that Y/N couldn’t quite put a finger on. 

Y/N suddenly felt very silly standing outside his room with an outfit to rival Cher from Clueless as she took in his slightly rumpled silk suit. He was doing whatever important job he seemed so focused on while she was trying to get him to come out and join a party he was so clearly avoiding.

“Um,” she began rather lamely.

“Um,” Draco repeated back in a nasal voice clearly meant to mock her accent.

“Pansy uh..she wanted you to come out. It was a stupid game of truth or dare and she slipped Veritaserum into my drink so I can’t lie and say I did it when I didn’t-”

“You do realize that’s complete bullshit, right?” Draco interrupted. “The Veritaserum? Do you seriously believe that Snape would let us get out hands on that? First years fall for that every year. First time I’ve seen anyone over 12 believe it, though.”

Y/N’s cheeks grew hot as she realized he was probably completely right. Now that she actually thought about it, she couldn’t guess how Pansy could get her hands on something that dangerous much less spike drinks with it. 

“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

Draco nodded with an “uh, yeah” look in his eyes and made his way to slam the door in his face when a glimmer caught her eye.

In her inebriated state, she told him point-blank, “Cool necklace. Who’s it for?”

Draco froze as he turned to look at his bed, the same one that had a very ornate necklace laying on it. He slowly turned back to Y/N with a terrifying expression on his face. 

Uh oh.

He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and dragged her inside his room, slamming the door shut behind her and shoving her against the wall.

“What the fuck dude-”

“What’s your allegiance?” he hissed, stepping in her eyeline so she couldn’t see the necklace anymore. Their proximity was uncomfortably close. Y/N could smell peppermint on his breath, no doubt remnants of a cup of tea he’d had earlier.

“My allegiance.....sheesh, I don’t know, I don’t know where I fall on the political spectrum, but I am really frustrated with the Senate for impeding any type of impeachment proceed-”

“No, you bloody idiot!” He cut in again. “I mean in the wizarding world. Not.. whatever the fuck you’re going on about.”

“Oh, you mean like... the issue with Death Eaters and everything? I dunno, I haven’t read enough about British politics to know but it’s so ridiculous, y’know? Like, someday all of them are gonna wake up and realize they’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid and that they’re never gonna get rewarded the way the think. It’s really sad, they’re basically in a cult.”

Draco stared at her with wide eyes and a defensive expression on his face. He was still gripping both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them above Y/N’s head and making it impossible for her to weasel out of his grasp.

“I mean, pretty general stuff. American wizarding media is always like, ‘look at these idiots thinking that they’re gonna restore blood purity, aren’t they crazy? BLESS the fact that we left in 1776’ and whatnot. I don’t know, we all kind of chuckle at it and make memes about the fact that there’s even people out there that still buy into that shi...”

Y/N’s eyes managed to catch a quidditch uniform hung up on the bedpost with the name MALFOY printed across the back in silver letters. Suddenly it all made sense--she had just read about his father being incarcerated for being a Death Eater. She trailed off when the realization set in.

Oh no. 

“You know, with that thought, I think I’m just gonna go back to the party...I normally don’t get this political. Forget I said anything. Please!”

Draco’s face was the definition of fury. Now that Y/N knew he was Lucius Malfoy’s son, she had no clue what he could be capable of. She briefly wondered if he would kill her before immediately casting the thought aside.

That’d be absurd she reminded herself. He’s still just a teenager, just like you. He’s not gonna kill you.

He took a few moments to glare down at her before opening the door and pushing her out.

“You’re never speaking of this to anyone,” he snapped. “Go back to your party and fall for more of the pranks we like to pull on 11 year olds. Just don’t ever come back here. I mean it. Don’t ever.”

With that, Draco slammed the door in her face. Y/N stood in front of it for a few seconds as she regained her bearings. What had just happened? She was very tired, she realized suddenly. 

She was just turning around and walking away when his door cracked open just an inch. 

“Are you deaf? I said, go!”

Y/N turned to send Draco a dirty look before walking away for real. 

♥♥♥♥

Professor McGonagall was a complete sweetheart and the embodiment of what an empowered witch ought to be, but she had messed up one crucial point when it came to just how dining space would be available for the Slytherin table.

With all the new students, there was rarely a portion of the table empty enough to sit alone or even with a respectable amount of space between oneself and another person. 

Y/N suffered the consequences of this the most out of her classmates considering the fact that she was always late. By the time that she got to the Dining Hall for any meal, there was only one part of the table that was consistently open--spots next to Draco and his goons.

The rest of the house was wise enough to know to avoid them and did so well, but Y/N was not so lucky. Nearly every day she was forced to squeeze in next to either Draco, Pansy, or Blaise and was subject to listening to whatever drabble they wanted to discuss each day.

However annoyed she was, she couldn’t help but notice some interesting changes. As the fall days grew shorter, Draco’s appetite seemed to grow smaller. At one point, Y/N was taking portions nearly twice the size of his, and she was a rather light eater to begin with. She heard his irritatingly posh accent less and less, and slowly meals turned into conversations between Blaise and Pansy while Draco stared off into space. 

One of these days, Blaise turned to look Y/N straight in the eye, startling her enough to near drop her fork. They never looked at her.

“So,” he began awkwardly. “I hear that you played Quidditch as a seeker while you were at Ilvermorny.”

“Yeah, and what about it?” 

Y/N was not about to take any shit.

“Well, you see,” Blaise told her, a sincere look in his eyes, “Draco here is our seeker, and he’s a little busy, so he won’t be joining us this season.”

“Tragic.”

“And you were good, right? Like, really good? I saw your record. It was impressive.”

“Thanks. I didn’t suck.”

A tiny smile cracked on Pansy’s face. Had Y/N actually amused her?

“Okay, enough of the niceties,” she cut in. “Blaise wants you to play for us. Please?”

She batted her eyelashes in a way that Y/N prayed was ironic. 

“Well, I suppose,” Y/N answered. “What’s in it for me?”

“For starters,” Blaise told her, “Instant status. People like you if you play Quidditch.”

“So I’ve heard. Is that why Draco dropped out? People didn’t like him enough anymore?”

“You shut up,” Draco grumbled, refusing to look her in the eye.

“So you’re in?”

“Yeah, whatever. I’m dropping out the second either of you mess with me, though.”

Blaise grinned and Pansy kicked his foot under the table. Y/N immediately felt like she was witnessing something that she was not supposed to see.

“Get a room, you two,” Draco reprimanded them, rolling his eyes as he pushed his food around on his plate. 

♥♥♥♥

Y/N’s first Quidditch match came and went. The Slytherin team creamed the Hufflepuffs so badly that Y/N probably didn’t need to do any work at all, but regardless, she still caught the snitch. 

In Slytherin fashion, her team decided to throw a giant party in the common room. Everyone was permitted a plus one, which was ridiculous since Y/N wasn’t friends with anyone from any other houses. She jokingly extended the invite to Bella in a very dramatic gesture with roses and everything, and her best friend just as dramatically accepted, leaping into Y/N’s arms and requesting that she be carried away.

It was the biggest scene the dining hall had witnessed all year, enough so that when the news of Katie Bell being cursed and nearly killed broke, it took the dining hall a few moments to calm down. 

Everyone stared as Dumbledore addressed the student body.

“Students.” He cleared his throat wearily. “If you are not already aware, one of your fellow scholars has been cursed, presumably by a necklace that was gifted to her. Please do practice caution as you accept gifts going into the holiday season. These are dark times indeed.”

Nervous chatter filled the room back up with noise but did not distract Y/N from her pondering.

A cursed...necklace? Where had she heard that before?

♥♥♥♥

Y/N was never a perfect student, but she did enjoy potions and especially appreciated Slughorn’s teachings, so much so in fact that she was invited to join the Slug Club after a few weeks of classes.

Blaise was also there, and the two often sat together and joked about the overenthusiastic Gryffindors and the unresolved sexual tension between Harry and Ginny. It was hardly a secret that the two were into each other, but it seemed that the only people who weren’t aware of it were Ginny and Harry themselves.

“Pray for Dean, Y/N,” Blaise would often whisper to her as they observed the two flirt awkwardly with each other. 

The budding friendship between them was odd, but very platonic. Y/N knew he had no trouble excusing prejudice considering the fact that he put up with Draco’s nonsense, but he seemed to see some flaws in the practice.

The most shocking part of their newfound connection happened to be what Blaise confided in her about Draco. 

“He’s hardly sleeping anymore,” he told her one cold winter day. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s lost weight and he’s not talking to me. Have you heard anything?”

“No,” Y/N had told him. “Draco doesn’t particularly like me.”

♥♥♥♥

After a particularly energetic Quidditch party in December, Y/N exited the common room and decided she wanted to take a walk about the castle to clear her head.

The snow fell softly outside the window, flurrying about and blanketing the ground in a gentle pristine white. She climbed the stairs of a random tower slowly, savoring the brisk air and relishing the silence that came along with it. 

Y/N wasn’t the least bit afraid of getting reprimanded for curfew--she deserved a break, and she was nearly an adult, for Christ’s sake. There was less underage drinking outside than there was inside her current common room, so she could always pull that argument.

She prayed that the top of the tower would be one with an open side so she could be closer to the snowstorm, and as she climbed  higher, her desires seemed to be more likely. The breeze was becoming chillier by the second.

Reaching the top of the staircase, she was overjoyed to see a railing overlooking the campus. Y/N jogged up to the barrier, leaning over the edge and taking solace in the freezing air and the cold snowflakes coating her hair. 

“What’s it with you and your insistence on interrupting my alone time?”

Y/N turned to see Draco Malfoy curled up in the corner of the tower. His hair was slightly mussed from the wind and his suit crinkled from sitting down, and as Y/N drew closer to him, she came to the most shocking revelation.

His silver eyes were pools of salty liquid, rimmed red at the edges and puffier than she had ever seen them before. His cheeks were shining with dampness, doing nothing to hide the dark bags under his eyes.

Draco was crying. 

final a/n: i swear a new update will come soon! i’m sorry that it seems like i might be rushing it. i promise im gonna slow it down a little and focus on the *subtle* fluff

[princiere]

hfdjghkjdfhkg ok so I’m gonna answer the rest of that ask list I rb’ed earlier bc a lot of those questions made me uwu super hard so here we go

to literally no one’s surprise these questions are abt Akira hdkghkj

Aborted Declaration of Love: How long did it take for you to finally confess to your F/O? How did it go? Were there several attempts, or was it just The One?

Knowing me, my feelings will get so out of control that I end up confessing to him about a month after realizing my feelings. We’ve been friends for a couple years, so he can tell that something’s up but won’t push for me to say unless he can tell that whatever I’m hiding could put me or anyone in danger.

I kept putting it off, saying I’ll “do it eventually”, but it isn’t until Akira goes through the interrogation that I realize…I have to tell him. Despite how him being “killed” was part of the plan, what if he didn’t really make it?

It took…a few attempts to get the message across, admittedly. It isn’t until everyone else left Leblanc after Sae brings him back that I tell him. I couldn’t stop stuttering and fidgeting, but once Akira understands what I’m trying to say, he smiles and explains that he’s felt the same for…a while. He won’t admit how long exactly, but Ryuji and the others will tell me it’s been at least a year and a half since he first confided in them about his feelings for me.

Accidental Hand Hold: When did you first hold hands with your F/O?

The very first time was when we were still friends, and during one hangout with him, the subway suddenly became super crowded. He grabbed my hand, explaining that he doesn’t wanna lose me in the crowd. (I already went off abt this scenario though hgkdjfg)

The first time we hold hands as a couple, however, felt much different than when we were just friends. It was only a few days into dating, and he initially held my hand very loosely, like how he would when we were friends. But after a few moments, he’ll carefully squeeze my hand, grazing his thumb along my skin. He wouldn’t look at me, but it was hard to deny the pink on his cheeks.

After-Action Patch-Up: How does your F/O react when they see you got hurt? How do they tend to your injury?

In the Metaverse, he isn’t too concerned. He’s got all kinds of medicine that instantly heals his teammates, so he’ll use whatever is needed until I’m better.

In the real world, though, he’ll get angry, but won’t express his emotions any further than a scowl. The one time, the one time he doesn’t come with me, and I end up getting hurt with no way to instantly fix it or track down the culprit? He wants to put the blame on himself and come with me wherever I go now, but won’t admit these feelings until later. He knows and respects my desire for privacy, however, but…he can’t help but feel a little overprotective in the moment.

Akira will quietly tend to where I’m hurt, asking every now and then if I got a good look at whoever did this to me. Did I hear any names, did they have anyone else with them, etc. Whether I can give any good answers or not, he’ll still comfort me, and holds me a little more than usual for the rest of the night.

Almost Kiss: What was your first kiss with your F/O like?

It was about a few weeks into us dating, and after our weekly date, he’ll take me to Leblanc under the excuse that he “wanted to surprise me with something”. Turns out, he’d been working on making a special dessert, with the help of Sojiro, and wanted me to be the first to try it. Unsurprisingly, it tasted amazing, and after expressing how sweet it was, Akira smiled and said, “Not as sweet as you.”

He watched as I laughed, before asking rather bluntly, “Hey…can I kiss you?”

It took me a moment to register what he said, and when I did, he tried not to laugh at how red I suddenly turned. “…Yea.”

The kiss didn’t exactly feel like “fireworks were going off” or anything like that. It was…quiet, but more than peaceful and calming. Akira tasted like coffee, unsurprisingly. Without pulling away very far, he said I tasted like the dessert I’d just finished eating, and that yes, it was sweet after all.

Beautiful Dreamer: Who’s usually the first to fall asleep while the other stares and admires?

Absolutely me. Akira can fall asleep within minutes, but it can take me at least an hour to get to sleep. In the meantime, though, I got something nice to look at~

Bodyguard Crush: How does your F/O make you feel safe?

In the Metaverse, he tends to use himself as a shield if he feels I’ll be too hurt by any enemies. He knows I hate when he does that, but he still does it.

In the real world, he’ll usually hold my hand as a way of comforting me and making sure my anxiety doesn’t randomly spike like it loves to do. In any confrontation, he either gets in front of me (human shield again smh) or escorts me away.

Grow Old With Me: How long have you and your F/O been together?

A couple months, give or take. It’s only been so short because 1) I only recently realized my feelings for him, and 2) I change f/os a lot but…it feels different with him, so I’m hoping it lasts a lot longer.

Laugh Of Love: What are some things your F/O does to make you laugh?

Memes. That, or his snarky comments that piss his friends off or stupid puns that physically hurt.

Love Epiphany: When and how did you realize you loved your F/O? When and how did they realize they loved you?

For me, it just sort of came out of nowhere a few months ago. I looked at someone that I’ve known for years, and thought about all the things he’s done, both for me and everyone he cares about, and the next thing I knew…I was in love.

Akira realized much sooner, but it hit just as hard. About half a year into being friends with me, he noticed how much I’d change when I’m around him. I become much more open and happy, whereas I’d usually be extremely quiet and reserved. It didn’t help when he learned about my past relationships and realizing that, despite the trauma I was put through, I was still willing to push through and be happy again.

It then wasn’t until he was subconsciously thinking about how he wanted to be the guy that’ll treat me right that he realized his feelings.

Marry For Love: Are you and your F/O married? If so, how was the wedding like? If you aren’t, do you plan on getting married, and if so, how would you like it to be like?

We’re not married, and…honestly I don’t know if I want to be? Not that I have non-committal issues or anything, but it just feels…overrated? Too expected of me?

However, I’m not against the idea, so if we did get married, we’d definitely just want to keep the wedding amongst a small group of our loved ones. It wouldn’t be too fancy or anything, and we’d have the actual wedding at a nearby park before having the reception at Leblanc. 

Post-Kiss Catatonia: How did you and your F/O react to your first kiss together?

I’ve done this every time I have a first kiss with someone so I’ll say it here: I get weak in the knees and almost collapse. Thankfully, Akira and I were already sitting at the counter of Leblanc when we first kissed, but I’m definitely shaking and flushing.

Akira was initially worried that maybe he pushed things too fast for me, but after some reassurance, he’ll start to feel better, knowing that it’s just intense jitters from having a first kiss. Later that night, though, after returning from taking me home, he’ll have some trouble sleeping that night, constantly touching his lips and reliving that moment.

Sickeningly Sweethearts: Do you and your F/O engage in PDA? If yes, how do the surrounding people react?

For the most part, he wants to keep it to a minimum. Mostly just holding hands, with maybe some holding from the side, and a kiss here and there. He doesn’t want to garner a lot of attention if he can avoid it.

Around friends, though? He’s a bit less reserved, prompting to tuck his face in my shoulder/neck if he isn’t up for talking much, and asking for a kiss every few minutes. He’ll try to casually cuddle, to which Ryuji and Futaba usually tease him for “being so clingy with me”. He always gives some cheeky comment in response.

Zip Me Up: Does your F/O help you get dressed for the day? Do you help them?

Me getting dressed is one of the times Akira will turn the other way. We both know of my dysphoria, and as much as he wants to help and compliment me the whole time, he knows that bringing attention could just make it worse. Though he’ll help in the blink of an eye if I ask for assistance.

Akira typically doesn’t need help getting dressed, but moreso asks how anything looks on him. He knows I’ll be upfront on what I think though honestly I’m kinda biased but isn’t that a given with your boyfriend? cmon

[dvp95]

can’t breathe when you touch my sleeve - chapter 9

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: e

warnings: none

tags: alternate universe, slow burn, fluff & humour, tiny bit of inner turmoil wrt sexuality but trust me it’s not that deep, deeper than anticipated but still not that deep y'all this is primarily silly, eventual smut, idiots in love

word count: 6,538 for this chapter (41,509 total)

summary: Dan keeps making a fool of himself in interviews, to the point where it’s basically a meme. Now he’s got to sit down for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the YouTuber he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

read from the beginning on ao3 or on tumblr!

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

Dan wakes up alone. He's stretched out on Phil's sheets, mostly on his stomach, and he buries his face in a pillow to hide from the afternoon sunlight streaming through Phil's small windows. He listens carefully, but he can't hear Phil shuffling around the room or anything.

He's not overly worried, really. This is Phil's place. It would be next level weird for him to cut and run.

Sure enough, when Dan blinks away the spots in his vision and looks around the flat, he sees a sticky note on Phil's headboard. Had to go to work! Won't say your name on the radio lol, it says, and Dan feels a surge of fondness and embarrassment.

He rolls onto his back and rubs at his face, trying to wipe the stupid grin off even though nobody's here to see it. He grins wider when he remembers that someone else is here, actually.

"Thor," he calls out, not bothering to sit up. "C'mere, buddy!"

The jangling of Thor's collar and the rapid taps of his claws on the hardwood floor let him know that the dog is approaching.

Dan looks over and sees Thor sitting at the side of the bed, head cocked and ears perked. He might actually start to cry; he is obsessed with this dog.

"Hey there," he coos, patting the bed next to him in invitation. Thor just keeps looking at him. If Dan were to assign a human emotion to Thor's vibe right now, he'd say the dog looked dubious. "C'mon up, little guy, I won't bite."

Thor jumps up with his stumpy legs and Dan laughs delightedly at the height he can manage when he's got a running start. He snuffles into Dan's borrowed shirt and gives him a bunch of sloppy kisses.

Truly, there is no better way to wake up. Dan is in heaven right now.

He gives Thor a bunch of pats and coos nonsense at him for a little while. He's not really in a hurry to go anywhere. In fact, he wouldn't get out of bed at all if it weren't for his bladder starting to get angry with him. Dan sighs and gives Thor a kiss on his tiny forehead.

"I gotta get up," he laments. He blinks at Thor.

Thor blinks back.

"You need to get up, too," he informs the dog very solemnly.

Thor puts his front paws down like he's getting ready to play and lolls his tongue out, smiling at Dan.

Dan clutches at his chest dramatically and fumbles around for his phone. He needs to capture this moment. He notices that he's got missed texts, missed calls, but he shoves the spike of anxiety to the side in order to focus on getting cute photos and videos of Thor. He takes a bunch of the corgi alone, giggling to himself the whole time, and then pulls Thor close to him to take a few selfies as well.

After brushing his teeth and taking a quick piss, Dan lies back down and looks through the camera roll. He's smiling at his phone and petting one of Thor's soft ears. They're all super cute pictures, good enough to post if they weren't so laden in implications.

Two photos - one of them grinning wide at the camera and a follow-up where Dan's face is scrunched in laughter as Thor gives him a surprise kiss to his nose - get messaged to Phil instead of posted.

It's almost as good, really. After a beat, he sends the photos to Jaime and Patrick as well. He's already talked to them about everything, more or less, and he just wants to share the joy he's feeling right now to people who get it. His thumb hesitates. After a moment of consideration, he sends just the silly picture to Adrian.

Adrian responds with a knife emoji, followed by a heart eyes emoji.

They're never going to be like Phil and his brother, working together and razzing each other over dinner, but that's okay. Dan feels a little bit of softness in his chest, easing some of that decades-old guilt. Maybe they can, at least, be more than the strangers they are now.

Spurred on by something as simple as his brother replying immediately, Dan holds his breath and opens the text chain with his mum.

Blimey dear that must be a load off after all this time! Of course I still want to see you on Saturday... I love you with my whole heart and always will xx.

Fuck. He's not going to cry. He won't cry. Not here. Dan inhales lungfuls of air in gasps, trying not to let them turn into raspy sobs. Thor makes an inquisitive noise and noses at Dan's hand.

"I'm okay," he whispers, even if he isn't quite sure that's true. He makes a bunch of typos as he replies to her, just a short love you too that takes him an entire minute to get right. He doesn't want to make a big deal over this, even though it is a big deal, so he just adds a heart emoji and buries his face in Thor's soft fur.

His phone buzzes a few times, but Dan ignores it for a little while. He feels safe in Phil's bed, Thor in his arms, and he doesn't want to face the world again until he feels a bit less fragile. Eventually, though, Thor wiggles out of his grasp and bounds off the bed in search of a toy.

Jaime and Patrick have both responded to the dog selfies, Jaime with a string of barely-comprehensible emotional texts and Patrick with a single exclamation point iMessage reaction.

Phil has sent him a selfie in return, wearing radio headphones and a pout. Hate that I'm at work!!!!!!!!, he captions it. Dan hates that, too. He sends a quick shot of Thor on the other side of the flat with the caption, abandoned by both of u.

By the time he circles back to his mum, he isn't really sure what to expect. She isn't the type to wax poetic about her feelings, none of them are, so he doesn't anticipate another round of affection and love and pride right this second. Maybe in her goodbye text when he heads to the continent. Not right away.

Sure enough, she's said, Why don't you & I grab lunch in the city on Saturday? I've been meaning to try this new sushi bar... xx. Dan's heart sinks.

It's okay, he reminds himself. His mum loves him. Adrian loves him. They both said so.

His mum not wanting him to come to the house anymore speaks volumes to Dan. He expected this, anyway - his dad barely wanted to see him before this, Dan's always been nothing but a physical reminder of his wasted youth, and it isn't shocking that he doesn't want to see Dan now.

Dan lies back down and covers his head with Phil's duvet. He'll let himself be sad, just for a minute, for the loss. This is the first relationship he has to cut off if he wants to live authentically, move forward as a gay man who doesn't hate himself, and it hits hard. Maybe he'll let himself be angry, after this. Then, he'll get out of bed and start living the authentic, quietly proud life that he's only ever dreamed of.

It's okay. But, right now, it stings a bit.

--

By the time Thor's ears perk up and he runs to the door, a clear indication that Phil is home, Dan has well and truly gone through some stages of grief and landed on repression. He's been playing Guild Wars and idly tidying Phil's flat throughout the day, lazy with the impromptu day off as he is. Thor follows him around and Dan plies him with more treats than he thinks Phil would approve of.

Dan feels a little sheepish when Phil comes in and he's just lounging on the sofa with his laptop and a pair of Phil's ridiculous slippers on his feet. The flat looks better than it had last night, but Dan has done fuck all with himself. He could have at least showered, he supposes.

"Hey," he says, tugging an earphone out and giving Phil a quick glance. "Sorry, I'm raiding, I'll give you attention in a second."

"Hi, Dan, my day was good," Phil says dryly. "Thanks for asking."

"You signed up for this," Dan informs him, not taking his eyes off the screen again. He can hear Phil enthusiastically greeting Thor, which makes him smile. "I did make dinner, 's in the oven."

"You cook?" Phil sounds far too surprised, in Dan's opinion.

Dan's character gets murked, and he shuts his laptop with a little huff of a noise. Normally he'd wait out the respawn and keep playing, but he's got more important things to focus on. "No, not really. I know how to throw a bunch of stuff in a pot or dish until it's food."

He gets a proper look at Phil while he peeks in the oven and feels even more like maybe he should have gotten dressed.

It's not like he's dressed up nicely or anything - he's wearing the corgi jumper that he interviewed Dan in and a pair of Vans that are surely on their last legs - but the fact that he is dressed gives him a head start on Dan. He looks a little tired, and Dan wonders if it's comfort or a distinct lack of it that has Phil's shoulders hunched forward more than usual.

"It smells good," Phil informs him, smiling a bit. "You didn't have to do that, y'know."

"Shut up, I wanted to," says Dan.

"I don't think I've come home to food cooking since I lived with my parents," Phil says, his hands inside out in his jean pockets. "I, uh, better not get used to it, huh?"

That definitely is a problem. The elephant in the room, that Dan can't just stay here forever. Dan sighs and stands, carefully stepping around the sofa so he doesn't trip on Thor. He comes close to wrap his arms around Phil's shoulders, smiling when Phil immediately takes hold of his waist like they're dancing.

"Hi, Phil," Dan mocks softly. "Good to see you, how was your day?"

Phil laughs. "Alright. Better now."

"Good," says Dan, and then he kisses Phil. It hasn't even been a full day since he did it last, but he hums and arches into it like it's been months.

They're making up for preemptive lost time. Dan is distracted, though, even when Phil licks into his mouth and pulls him closer. He can't stop thinking about the call he'd made to Amy earlier, the things his agent had said to him.

Netflix announces renewals and cancellations whenever it pleases, not on any sort of set schedule, so Dan will have to live in limbo for a little while. Amy doesn't know how long, exactly, but she promised him to at least find him a British film or series to do in the space between seasons. She called him an idiot, but she agreed to it.

Dan is wondering if he should tell Phil about that conversation. He spends half a minute tossing the possibilities around in his head while Phil sucks on his tongue, his lip.

This is so stupid. Dan pulls back from the kiss. He laughs a bit and puts a palm on Phil's chest to stop him from coming back for more. It warms Dan, knowing that Phil doesn't want to stop kissing him.

"Down, boy," he jokes, and Phil rolls his eyes.

"I don't like this habit you have of interrupting us," says Phil. His cool hands slip under Dan's borrowed Friends shirt. His thumbs trace mirroring shapes just under Dan's ribcage. Now that is distracting. "You could just let me keep kissing you."

"I could," Dan agrees. "But I've got shit to say, y'know?"

Phil grins at him, exasperated in a way that Dan thinks he could get used to. "I've noticed, Dan, that you always have shit to say. And I'd love to listen. Any other time."

"Rude," says Dan. There's no real heat to it, since Phil is right. "It's just that I almost didn't tell you something important because I didn't want to get your hopes up or sound like a freak, and then I remembered the disaster that not talking became last time, so, fuck it."

Even though he's already had experience with watching Phil's eyes go neutral and guarded, it's still a bit of a weird thing to watch happen up close.

It's not even that Phil is a particularly good actor, it's just that he's clearly so practiced in hiding his reactions to things that he can switch it on in an instant. Dan huffs a bit and pokes at Phil's cheek.

"None of that," he scolds.

"None of what?" Phil asks. He's smiling now, though. "What's so important?"

"I talked to my agent," says Dan. "Things are up in the air until we know if we're getting a fourth season, but. I'm thinking about moving to London if we aren't."

Phil's smile goes absolutely blinding, but he sounds suspicious when he says, "Really? That's something you want?"

"I always wanted to live here," Dan says with a little shrug. "Just got lucky in America and ended up staying. Nothing specific was really drawing me back here, I just knew London was always a 'someday' thing. Every time I come back for Christmas I remember how much I like it here." Dan pauses, then jokes, "It's not all about you, y'know."

It kind of is. The timing of it, at least, but Phil doesn't have to know that.

"Yeah, alright," Phil says, outright beaming at Dan now. "Makes sense to me, it's a way better place to live than Atlanta."

Dan laughs. "Atlanta is fine, you jealous bitch."

"I guess," says Phil. He presses a couple of soft kisses to Dan's jaw. Dan is ready to get carried away again before he adds, "It must be hard being so far from your family, as well. You'll get to see them more."

He knows that Phil is only trying to motivate him into staying without actively using himself as a reason, but Dan still grimaces.

"I'll probably see them about the same amount, honestly," he says. "Except my grandma, I'm sure I'll have tea with her every once in a while."

"Don't be silly, I'm sure they'd be excited," says Phil.

That's a very easy thing for Phil to say. Dan can't help the face he pulls at the idea of his family being excited that he's nearby. "They really won't. My parents aren't like yours, Phil, and my brother definitely isn't."

Phil cocks his head and blinks. Dan almost laughs at how eerily similar the action looks to Thor's confusion.

"Well, I know nobody's family is perfect," Phil says, squeezing Dan's waist. "I just figured you'd like to be closer to them."

"No," Dan says honestly. "I mean, it's not like it's a reason not to live in London. Where I am in relation to my family doesn't really affect my decision either way, TBH."

He kind of expects Phil to keep arguing with him about it. Dan only reached out to his mum about getting together in the first place after Phil got all disapproving about how little Dan sees them. Maybe he just takes Dan's word for it this time, though, because all he says is an easy, "Okay."

That's all it takes, really. Phil's agreement, even if he doesn't understand. Dan has already told this guy more about himself than anyone else he knows, and he can feel the words bubbling uncomfortably in his throat.

"I don't actually want to talk about this," says Dan, "but, like, okay, I came out to my family and only some of them are handling it well."

Actual understanding dawns on Phil's face, and he just nods.

"We won't talk about it, then," he says. Like it's that simple. "Let's eat. I'm gonna take Thor to the park afterwards if you want to come with us."

Dan leans in for a grateful kiss that lingers a bit too long. Phil's hands travel further up his shirt, tracing along Dan's ribs and making him shiver. "Thanks," he murmurs into the barely-there space between their mouths. "I'll come with you guys."

For as long as Dan has known about commitment issues, he's known that he has them. With personal projects, with schoolwork, with his own sense of self. It's hard for him to settle on something, harder still to follow through. He's felt it with the women he's dated, too, but he'd already known there was an underlying issue that made it impossible for him to say, 'yeah, okay, this could be something I do long-term'.

Now he's making out with a man who he's pretty sure is his boyfriend, even if they hadn't actually said that word, talking about sharing dinner and dog walks and clothes, and Dan has never done this before, and he knows that he's committing to something just by being here right now.

He waits for that moment of panic so he can whack it aside with some logic, but. It never comes.

Huh.

--

When they head to bed later that night, it isn't because Phil has almost passed out on the sofa again. They'd been ignoring a film for about an hour to snog, and Phil's perpetually cold hands had started wandering about five minutes into that.

Dan had managed to handle Phil's hands under his shirt, in his hair, on his thighs, even brushing the side of his neck, all without major issues. When Phil had decided to outright grope his ass through his too-tight jeans, though, Dan's brain had short circuited. So he'd dragged Phil across the room and pulled him down in a tangle of limbs and laughter as they accidentally elbowed and kneed at each other.

They're not exactly graceful people, but Dan can't complain much with Phil's hands in his back pockets and Phil's mouth on his jaw.

Dan's breathing already feels too loud in the softly lit room, small windows not letting much background noise through at all, and Phil isn't even doing much of anything to him yet.

The part of Dan's brain that exists only to remind him that he's attracted to men has literally never been so loud. He'd foolishly assumed that admitting it to himself and other people would shut it the fuck up, but instead it is outright screaming at him.

You're so fucking gay! it reminds him, as if it's yodeling from the top of a mountain.

Yeah, Dan thinks, he is, he's aware, he's currently straddling a guy he really likes and mouthing at his neck to try and get his breathing as ragged as Dan's is. He doesn't need the commentary.

Still, it keeps shouting, and it only gets louder when Phil tangles one hand in his hair and tugs him back up for an open-mouthed kiss.

He's kissing you! AmazingPhil is kissing you! that part of his mind is chanting, and in the short break between their lips meeting, Dan can't help but murmur a, "Shut up."

Phil pauses. Dan realises he's said that out loud and promptly wants to die.

"I didn't say anything," says Phil. His voice is low and amused, and Dan feels a renewed spark of heat up his spine.

"Not you," Dan says.

Raising his eyebrows, Phil makes a point to look around the flat as best he can without dislodging Dan from his hips. "Uh huh. Y'know, I always knew this place was haunted. I just figured I'd be the one to make friends with the ghosts."

"You're ridiculous," says Dan, but he can't stop himself from smiling.

"I'm not the one talking to ghosts," says Phil.

"I'm not taking to ghosts, Phil, I'm talking to myself. My brain won't shut off, it's so fucking loud right now."

Phil laughs, but he doesn't seem like he's making fun of Dan. He twirls his finger around one of Dan's curls and grins up at him. "I can help with that," he says. In case there were any doubt about what he means, Phil squeezes Dan's ass. "Bet I could make your brain be quiet."

"Yeah?" Dan grins and noses at Phil's jaw. "Yeah, alright, do your worst."

"What do you want?" Phil asks, using his light grip on Dan's hair to make Dan look at him. Dan personally thinks he could tug harder, but they can talk about that when Dan has to pull up a PowerPoint presentation on his kinks.

That's not an easy question. Dan wants everything, whatever Phil's got on offer. He shrugs.

"Honestly," says Dan, "I'm even easier about sex than I am about food."

"This has not been easy," Phil grumbles, good-natured about it. Dan cackles in response. Not a very attractive sound, but Phil doesn't seem to mind. He just smiles.

"Okay, yeah, fair enough," says Dan. "You know what I mean. You can make that call, I believe in you. Although, for you to make an informed decision, you should know I haven't showered since..." He trails off, frowning.

"Not a good sign that you can't remember," Phil laughs. He doesn't seem anxious the way he has when Dan pushes him in the past, but maybe he's just feeling the same loose vulnerability that's making Dan go mad with it. Phil hums and toys with Dan's hair. "Uh, alright, you wanna maybe fuck me?"

The suggestion being somehow both unsure and totally blunt makes Dan laugh, and then Phil is ducking giggles into Dan's collarbone, too.

"How is that a question?" Dan grins. "Sure I do."

Phil is grinning back at him, bright and beautiful, and Dan has to lean in and connect their lips again for a long moment. "Mm, you wanna grab the stuff from the loo, then? And put Thor in there while you're at it."

"Why do I have to?"

"You're on top of me."

"I don't have to be. You go put the dog away."

"No, you should - okay," Phil cuts himself off with a laugh and takes his hand off Dan's ass to hold it up between them in a fist. "Rock, paper, scissors you for it?"

As Dan proceeds to lose two of three - and then three of five, and then five of seven when he keeps complaining about not being in the Zone - it occurs to him that this whole thing feels ridiculous.

It's not a bad thing. Dan hasn't had silly sex in a very, very long time. He's certainly never had sex with someone he trusts quite as much as he trusts Phil. He's trying not to think about that too hard when he lures Thor into the bathroom with treats and his favourite toy, because he doesn't want to accidentally activate his own fight or flight reflex.

Phil is propped up on his elbows in bed, watching Dan with an absent smile on his face, and Dan remembers seeing him like this when they were drunk together. He'd been sprawled out over Dan's sheets and smirking up at him and Dan hadn't done anything about it.

"God, I'm stupid," Dan breathes, and Phil laughs.

"Yeah," he agrees, even though he can't possibly know what Dan is thinking about. "You just gonna stand there?"

With a rude gesture, Dan tosses the bottle of lube at Phil, who yelps as it almost hits him in the face. Dan finds himself cackling again as he fights to get his ultra-skinny jeans off his legs while he's still standing. He'd put them on to go to the dog park - stayed in the Friends shirt, though, it's very comfortable - but he's regretting that now. Phil's cotton shorts would be way less awkward to shimmy out of.

"Must you watch me do this?" Dan huffs, hopping on one foot as he tries to yank his jeans down over his other ankle. "It's not exactly sexy."

"It's very funny, though," says Phil.

Dan manages to get his jeans and socks off without injury, and then he flops back into bed to help Phil with his own tight jeans.

"We need to rethink our fashion," Dan laughs. Phil is giggling, too, and lifting his hips for Dan, and this is all so fun. Dan had actually forgotten that sex could be fun. His jeans come off easier than Dan's, thank god, and Dan runs his hands over Phil's thighs with a little hum. "Damn, you're pale."

Phil makes an amused, choked-off noise and kicks out at Dan without actually trying to hit him. "Hey, fuck you, you're supposed to say nice stuff to me."

"I'm so sorry, Phil, the beauty of your alabaster legs just drive me crazy," Dan simpers, exaggeratedly batting his eyelashes. He's being a dick about it, but the sentiment behind the words are true enough. Phil's got nice legs, nice thighs, a nice semi in his nice boxers. Dan brushes his fingers in a way that's probably ticklish and laughs when Phil kicks his shin for real. "Fucking ow, do you want me to tell you how hot you are or not?"

"You're so annoying," Phil informs him, and then he's sitting up to take his shirt off and Dan's mouth goes dry for real.

"Oh," he says, shifting further up the bed so he can flick his thumb over the metal bar in Phil's left nipple. He hadn't really expected that from Phil. Dan blinks, trying to get his brain back online. "Why didn't you get both?'

Whatever Phil was expecting him to say, it wasn't that. He sits there for a moment, stumped, the pads of Dan's fingers curiously poking at his nipple. It doesn't seem like it's very sensitive. Dan wonders if that's from the piercing or if Phil just doesn't have sensitive nipples. He wonders how long this piercing has been here - it hadn't been, back when he was an avid AmazingPhil subscriber, and Phil hasn't taken his shirt off for YouTube in years.

Then, Phil shrugs. "You only get one pierced, don't you?"

"I think most people get both," Dan says, but he's talking on autopilot right now. He shakes his head, tries to clear it. "Fucking symmetry or whatever, yeah?"

"I guess," Phil says. He doesn't shrug again, but his broad, bare shoulders twitch like they want to. He's got freckles and beauty marks on his shoulders and arms and torso, and Dan wants to get his mouth on every single one.

"No offense," says Dan, "but I really didn't peg you as the piercing type."

Phil smirks a bit. "Wow, the MySpace boy I was trying so hard to be is crying right now. Yeah, I dunno, it was one of the really impulsive things I did a couple years ago. Getting Thor was one of those, I think I told you about that."

He had. Dan remembers it, vaguely, remembers wondering if Phil was hiding a tattoo under his clothes.

"Did it hurt?"

"Not as much as I expected," says Phil. "And definitely not as much as my other ones did."

Dan narrows his eyes and looks Phil over, dubious. Phil isn't wearing anything but a pair of boxer briefs with sushi print on them, and Dan can't see any more metal or healing holes on him. Phil's little smirk only grows while Dan looks him over carefully. "Stop fucking with me, you don't have more piercings."

Phil raises an eyebrow and his hips in a synchronicity that Dan didn't know his body possessed. Dan swallows, hard, can hear his heart pounding as it rushes all the blood in his brain south and makes him a little dizzy.

The room is quiet and still and too hot for a long beat. Then, Dan pulls his borrowed shirt off and chucks it somewhere over his shoulder so that the cool air of the basement can stop him from overheating. He slides his fingers under the hem of Phil's boxers and pulls them down his long legs, unable to stop himself from dropping a kiss to one of Phil's very pale thighs as he does.

"Fuck," Dan breathes. He nips at Phil's thigh a bit, making the muscles there jerk. "Alright, so I can see how that would hurt more."

Phil's cock is pretty and thick, which Dan suspected but had no way of knowing, and it's also got two piercings in it. Dan knows the name of the one, a Prince Albert ring right at the tip of Phil's dick, but he has no idea what the other is called.

He has to touch them, of course. He wraps his hand around Phil's cock and rubs his thumb back and forth over the ring, watching Phil's face carefully as he does.

"Dan," is all Phil says, but his voice has gone low and his eyes have gone dark, so Dan figures he's doing something right.

"What the hell is this?" Dan has to ask, trailing his fingers down Phil's cock to nudge at the bar through the bottom of it, right above his balls. "Like, what is it called? Also, why did you do this? Also, also, I want to suck your dick now."

Phil laughs, throaty and dark, and that doesn't help Dan's situation at all.

"You only grabbed one condom," he points out, waving the wrapper in Dan's face. "So you can either fuck me or suck me off, your call."

"I don't need a condom to suck your dick," says Dan.

Somehow, even with Dan's hand idly stroking him and playing with the piercings, Phil manages to roll his eyes. "You do. I'm not giving you a safe sex lecture, Dan, either make up your mind or go get another condom."

Dan sulks, but he doesn't bother arguing. He hasn't actually heard Phil be so strongly opinionated about something before. There's not a hint of hesitation or anxiety in telling Dan what he wants, and Dan likes that too much to bicker over something as miniscule as a condom.

"Fine," he sighs, sitting up between Phil's legs and letting go of his dick.

"Aw, Dan," Phil lightly mocks. He reaches out and pets Dan's hair, which Dan is only a little embarrassed to lean into. "It's like you don't even know that getting tested together can be third base for gay people."

"Well, I don't know," Dan huffs. He's a little prickly and defensive about the teasing, but Phil smiles at him so softly that he melts all over again. "It's been a while, okay? And it's not like any of us were the smartest bulbs about this shit in uni."

With a sympathetic little hum of a noise, Phil pulls Dan up by the hair to kiss him. It's slow and lingering and Dan's body is pressed against Phil's with the angle, only his thin Calvins in the way of them sliding together. When Phil pulls back, Dan is the one who gets stopped from leaning in for more.

"Sorry," Phil says, quiet and sincere and still smiling. "I really will talk about why it's important to me later, but right now I just really need you to put your stupidly big hands to work."

Another request, no hesitation. Dan is only too happy to oblige.

Dan has never fingered another guy before. The rare times, back in the day, that he hadn't been craving something inside him to ease that constant tension he carried around with him, Dan's sexual partners had just done the task themselves.

Still, it's not rocket science. He's had his fingers in women and in himself before, how different could it be?

Too much lube and a wrist cramp later, Dan is getting the hang of things. He's using his right hand on Phil so his left wrist can take a break, pushing and prodding deep with his longest fingers to coax drawn-out noises from Phil's pretty lips. Dan kisses him, rocks against his hip, murmurs absolute nonsense into his ear that he'll feel embarrassed about when he isn't so fucking turned on. He hasn't managed to consistently hit Phil's prostate or anything but Phil doesn't seem to mind. He's grinding into Dan's hand, biting his lip hard, murmuring, "That's it, you've got it, c'mon, give me another."

"Yeah, alright," Dan breathes, carefully pressing another finger into him and shuddering at the way Phil's back arches into it.

This is easily the hottest thing he's ever done, and that might be pathetic if it wasn't so obvious that nothing else could even come close to this. Phil doesn't bother telling Dan when he's ready, he just shoves the condom into Dan's free palm and wraps a hand around himself.

"Not getting any younger, here," Phil says on a little pant, and Dan realises that he's just been staring.

"Right, fuck, okay."

Dan's fingers shake a bit, but he manages to get his boxers off and his cock ready without any incidents - aside from another mean twinge in his left wrist. He waits and just looks at Phil again, spread legs and long neck and all gorgeous man, and Phil's eyelashes flutter as he tugs lightly on one of his piercings, fuck.

"C'mon," Phil urges again, hooking a lanky leg over Dan's hip to pull him closer.

"It's gonna be like that, is it?" Dan laughs breathlessly. He hoists Phils body up by his thighs for a better angle and keeps a hand on Phil's ass to hold him there. "Fucking pillow princess, I should have guessed."

"Whatever, Dan," says Phil. He seems very distracted by Dan lining his cock up and slowly, so slowly, pressing inside of him. Phil groans then, the loudest noise he's made yet, and rocks his hips to take more of Dan's cock than Dan is giving him. "Not gonna fucking break, c'mon."

"Jesus, Phil," Dan half-laughs, half-moans. "So demanding. Feel so good, though, shit, I can't stay in Atlanta, I can't not have this all the - fuck - all the time."

It just kind of slips out, the way everything Dan babbles during sex slips out, but Phil is nodding along anyway, wrapping his arms around Dan's shoulders to pull him down into a messy kiss.

The wet noises where they're joined should be comical, maybe, all squelching lube and skin slapping against skin as Dan starts to fuck into Phil properly, but Dan is too focused on the breathy noises escaping from their kiss to care. This is just what sex sounds like - this is what sex with Phil sounds like, and Dan could really get used to that.

Phil's heel digs into the small of Dan's back to urge him on until, presumably, his leg gets tired or cramped and he wraps them both around Dan's hips instead. They gasp into each other's mouths at the slight change in angle, and Dan's hips snap forward.

If Phil weren't sucking on his tongue right now, Dan would be prattling on and moaning loud and generally making an idiot of himself. He feels the telltale sensation of heat in his gut that means there's an orgasm at the finish line, he just needs to get there.

Dan plants a hand on the bed and lifts Phil's lower body a bit more with the other, moaning absolute nonsense into Phil's mouth as he thrusts a little harder and faster to try and get Phil where he is.

A whine reverberates through Dan's body as Phil makes the noise with his teeth on Dan's lower lip, and then Dan can feel the rhythmic nudges of Phil's knuckles against his stomach as he jacks himself off, fast, because he's close too and Dan can tell. Dan wants to wait it out, he does, but Phil feels too good around his cock for him to hold out any longer. His orgasm hits and he groans like he’s been punched in the stomach, burying his face into Phil’s neck as he does.

He hears Phil say, "Fuck, okay, just stay there," and stays deep inside of him, pressing wet kisses to his neck and grinding his hips in little circles until Phil gets his, too, toes curling against the backs of Dan's thighs with a quiet groan and one hand gripping his hair so tight that Dan sees stars.

Dan presses a soft kiss to Phil's jaw and carefully pulls out of him to flop onto his back, trying to get his breathing back to a regular rate. He's seriously unfit when he isn't filming, his personal trainer would be so furious about all the Domino's he's been eating. He laughs at the thought of his trainer's angry face and then he's just giggling, throwing an arm over his face to hide from Phil's curious eyes.

"I think you fucked me stupid," Dan tells him through the giggles, and Phil responds with a low chuckle.

Arms are wrapped around Dan's waist and a line of kisses are dropped along his collarbone. "Hey, now," says Phil, his voice low and fucked out, "I can't take credit for that. You were stupid when you got here."

"Oi," Dan laughs, shoving at him. If they had more energy, they'd probably roll around until all the mocking words are just breathless laughter, but as it is they just manage to elbow each other a few times and then curl closer. It's quiet for a few minutes, just holding each other close and letting their hands brush softly over each other's skin.

Then, Phil yawns.

"Okay," he says, like he's psyching himself up. "Contacts out. Dog out. Pants on."

"That last one seems optional," Dan says, waggling his eyebrows. Phil laughs and swats at his chest.

"You," says Phil, swatting the same spot again for good measure, "condom off, pants on."

"What is this pants agenda you're pushing on me?" Dan hums into Phil's hair. It smells sweet, like some kind of berry. "I'm not sure I'm interested in these pants you speak of."

Phil laughs and pulls away to stretch all his long limbs out. Dan takes the opportunity to shamelessly check him out again, admiring the glints of metal that the majority of the world doesn't get to see. "You will be. Thor's going to want to cuddle after we locked him up."

He watches Phil as he searches his room for clean boxers, wolf-whistling when he bends down and laughing at the finger he gets in return.

"Yeah, okay," says Dan. He feels a smile spread across his face before he even thinks about it. Yeah. This is what he wants. This is what, for some godforsaken reason, he's been allowed to have.

[srrrokka]

Wip meme: blood (ik you'll have fun with this one :)

[Give me a word and I’ll quote it from my fic WIPs]

Please note that my WIPs are mostly a mess of notes, half written scenes, dialogue snippets, and so on, therefore this might look a wee bit weird.

 Blind AU

1)

But the moment burst like a soap bubble when a trickle of blood suddenly poured out of Corvo’s nose. Corvo licked his upper lip reflexively and frowned. He touched it and looked at his fingers to confirm his suspicion. He sighed but didn’t look alarmed.

“It’s fine, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He tried to reassure both Thomas and Daud who in the meantime approached the other two and was now having a closer look at Corvo with a deep frown on his face.

Out of lack of better options Corvo put the hem of his sleeve to his nose to soak up the blood that only started flowing heavier.

2)

Corvo grinned widely, teeth red with blood. But his triumphant demeanour got instantly broken by a coughing fit that pulled on his muscles and bowed him over in half.

3)

“I get to see–” He covered his mouth with his left hand, an unpleasantly wet cough shook his body furiously. A single drop of blood rolled from between his fingers. “–you get to be seen.” He finished with some difficulty.

He looked at the palm of his hand, covered in splotches of blood, and made a face. The taste of copper in his mouth was overpowering. “You picked a gruesome one this time, huh?” He rasped out, the next inhale came out as a painful wheeze.

That’s a single scene hahahaha

4)

“That won’t be necessary.” He pointed with his chin in the direction of the assassin’s blade. “Unless you just really want to kill me, then by all means, but I personally didn’t come here for bloodshed.”

“Why are you here, then?” Daud lowered his sword but didn’t put it away.

“See, I heard you have my daughter.”

5)

It hurt. It hurt so much. His fingers touched a large, sharp splinter of the Void sticking out of his chest. It was slick with blood that was slowly dripping down onto the ground, a single bright flash of colour in an otherwise colourless world.

The Outsider slowly strolled into his field of vision. His hands were clasped behind his back and he looked with calm curiosity as Corvo struggled to catch a breath, as his knees buckled underneath him and he fell to the ground.

He pushed Corvo’s chin up with two fingers. A pleased expression was painted on his features, a stark contrast to desperation, fear, and suffering on Corvo’s. “You can see me now.” He brushed a bead of blood from the corner of the man’s mouth with his thumb, creating a long streak on his cheek. “The dying and the dead can always see me, my dearest Corvo.”

________________________

 Soulmate AU

1)

Paloma’s lips parted around a silent gasp and her eyes widened as she took in the splatter of blood on her son’s palms. It stood out with bright crimson against his olive tanned skin. She took his smaller hands in hers carefully and rubbed her thumbs along the splotches. He was right, it wasn’t coming off.

2)

The person on the other side of the bond spilled blood. But was it someone else’s or was it… their own? It wasn’t that uncommon to find a singular splash of blood on your hands and then never hear from the other again… She hoped, for her son’s sake, that it was not the case.

________________________

 With Your Single Word (Token)

1)

It felt good. It gave Corvo a sense of dark joy to see the hand that hit him so many times over the last months, fall to the ground in a growing puddle of blood, to see shock twist Campbell’s features briefly before he grabbed his throat and drove the sword all the way to the hilt in the High Overseer’s torso from between his collarbones.

2)

Corvo can’t stop looking at where the blood amber and bone are touching Daud’s skin.

3)

C: I can take care of myself. I don’t think–

D: I know. I know you can. But you said it yourself - you’re my responsibility now. If something happens to you, it’s all on me. I don’t need your blood on my hands as well… [jaw tightens, looks away, his fingers close over the Token]

4)

Daud believes him. There is something in his voice that sounds like blood on the edge of cold steel and screams of pain deep in the night. And Daud knows it, he knows the feeling of it intimately. Corvo’s cold fury resonates with him as if Corvo is speaking of what curls in his own chest.

5)

D: That’s why you were so off…

C: What?

D: When we went to break out Stride.

C: [Stops for a moment] I spent many, many hours in that interrogation chair. My blood is probably a permanent fixture on the floor… But as happy as I was to see that place shredded, it was still– I still– [takes a deep breath] It’s not a good feeling to be back there.

6)

“I imagine now you know how Corvo felt when you murdered the Empress with cold blood.” The voice came from just above his ear. “He held her the same way you’re holding him right now. Funny how both of those deaths were your fault.”

________________________

 Inhuman AU

A silver spike he abandoned on the ground earlier pierces the monster’s head from the back, splattering blood onto Corvo’s face and then collapses on him, just a limp corpse.

As the corpse drops, Corvo sees Daud, who was standing behind it. He’s panting, absolute fury is lighting his eyes up.

Corvo wishes he could pass out…

________________________

 Save Game

He finally stands up. His eyes seem to be unseeing, empty. Daud grabs his face with one blood-covered hand and forces him to look at him. “Corvo. Listen to me. If you don’t move, we’re both going to die.” Still no response, although his eyes at least look at him and not through him. “Just follow me, can you do that?” Corvo moves his head, shifting his jaw out of Daud’s fingers. Daud decides that it must be good enough.

________________________

 High Corvo’s Chaos

C: So this is the part where we fight and one of us dies. Or neither. That’s also an option, I guess. Or both. Although, I find that rather unlikely. [Slowly advances towards Daud while touching and inspecting various things on the way like crates and bookcases, isn’t really looking at Daud but keeps him in his peripheral, sword still at his side and not in his hand] I must be honest with you, Daud, I don’t feel like this… clash between the two of us is going to resolve anything in particular. I’ve read some fun things about you in Burrows’s journal and well… I’m rather less inclined to cross blades with you than before. I especially don’t fancy spilling your blood, believe it or not. [he finally reaches Daud and stops a meter or so away from him, fingers lingering on one of the pillars holding up the small balcony in the chamber, he turns his eyes to him, gaze intense in a bit manic way] Do you want to spill mine? [tilts head]

________________________

 Amnesia

1)

There is a heartbeat of a moment when nothing happens. Everything stands still. There is just the rise and fall of Corvo’s chest, his hot breath in Daud’s ear, and the rush of his own blood, deafening in the silence. If Corvo Attano has been playing a really long game this would definitely be the culmination of it. The type where Daud ends up drowning in his own blood…

2)

“Daud, please.” A shade of desperation creeps into Corvo’s voice as he cradles Daud’s cheek with his left hand, putting his unpleasantly dangling head upright again. His fingers leave smears of blood on his skin.

A bang on the door makes him jump, muscles tensing, and he squeezes his eyes shut so hard he sees white as pain shoots up his side. His bloody fingers slide to Daud’s collar and he presses his forehead into his shoulder.

________________________

Witch!Corvo AU

1)

‘Don’t let them touch us! Make them stop! Their hands are soaked in blood!’ Jessamine screeched in the back of his head, fury painting her voice.

2)

Jessamine was in his arms. Blood was soaking through the front of her coat. “Corvo!” She called as if she was pulled away from him. And then her head fell limply to the side.

[…]

For a short moment there was only darkness and a sense of despair so overwhelming he couldn’t breathe. A bloodcurdling scream pierced the air.

3)

Corvo touches the back of his head and comes up with fingers covered in blood. He raises one eyebrow at Daud pointedly. Than makes a symbol of glasses with his thumbs and pointing fingers in front of his face and then motions with his thumb in the direction of the infirmary.

4)

Corvo was sitting cross-legged on the ground in the middle of the room. All around him, every reachable surface was covered in symbols drawn in whale oil and something else, maybe blood. The sigils seemed to form concentric circles with Attano at the very centre.

________________________

 Body Swap AU

D: Black-eyed bastard.

C: Outsider. [Corvo nods in greeting]

O: It’s good to see the two of you getting along so well. [Appears behind Corvo] I see that you decided to take your fortune into your own hands, Corvo. Good job. Although… [Floats to in front of him] It would seem that your choices have very bloody consequences. [He takes Corvo’s chin in his long fingers to look at the drying blood still clinging to his skin]

D: [Grabs Outsider’s wrist] Don’t touch him.

O: [Slowly looks down on where Daud is touching him and the Daud in the face]

D: [Lets go]

O: [Appears on Daud’s other side] I never took you for a jealous type, Daud. Seems like I was wrong.

________________________

Scratch Session

1)

He collapses, blood is flooding his lungs, pain makes him feel distant in some way. He lies on the floor, a growing puddle of red underneath him, and he watches Daud as he touches Jessamine’s cheek and the stone recedes. And he watches Daud hug his daughter. And then there’s nothing.

2)

Something Daud did not expect was an actual fight. The Whaler holding Oz runs out of Pull and so the Lord Protector joins the fight but is stormed by Whalers so Corvo is still on his own against Daud without any weapons. He is half blind because of the blood pouring into his eye and he pleads with Daud to stop. He tries to knock him out but it’s really hard in that state.

The Whalers get Oz again and Corvo is getting woozy because of the pain and blood loss. Daud grabs his throat and pushes him against one of the balustrades and raises his blade to put it through his heart. Corvo gasps his name, clutching onto his arm with his left hand, the Mark stark as the day on his skin, and Daud freezes. He drops the sword and pulls Corvo, who is honestly ready to faint, into his arms. (“Void, Corvo, no no no no!” “You better fix this, Daud, because I am not being the Heart again…”)

3)

In his open palm lied an intricate, silver brooch in the shape of a bird mid-flight, holding a round, polished piece of blood amber in its talons. He brushed his thumb over the meticulous detail of the minuscule engraved feathers and hummed in thought.

It was a crow.

________________________

Dark Matter

Corvo falls to his knees in the puddle of Daud’s blood. He touches his face, his eyes the colour of the clouds look unseeing into the sky. He scoops him up into his arms.

A drop, black like ink, falls onto Daud’s cheek. And then another. And another. And Corvo realises he’s crying. He didn’t notice. Everything is so distant…

Corvo couldn’t protect him. The same way he couldn’t protect Jess.

Everyone he loves dies.

________________________

TRC/DH1

Either way the Empress died because Pull still works on Corvo, but instead of being hurt after falling Corvo just gets up and continues fighting until Daud runs a sword through him and… nothing happens. Corvo looks Daud dead in the eye and the assassin takes a step back. his sword doesn’t have even a trace of blood on it.

________________________

Fugue Feast Story

“I don’t understand killing for fun.” Corvo signs, and sits down on the curb. “There is nothing fun in violence. I can accept killing for a reason - in defence, for revenge, for honour, even to some extent for money. But for fun? No, never.” Corvo touches the deep cut on his mask, not much longer and he would have probably lost his eye… He looks up at Daud “Murder is never fun.”

He looks to the side where the blood of the Butchers nearly reached his feet, crawling slowly towards him in the cracks in the pavement.

“Let’s go somewhere else…” he signs at Daud and gets up.

________________________

Apocalypse AU

“That is true… But have you?” His gaze rolled over the men and women surrounding them in a loose formation, whatever weapons they had out and ready to strike. They were all scared, apprehensive, unsure, Corvo noted. Several seemed to harbour a deep discontent towards him. Corvo grinned, after making sure his fangs were big enough to make them wonder if a well-aimed bite would be lethal. “You even brought friends with you. Just like old times.”

The knife pierced Daud’s skin and the man twitched in his hold, as a stream of hot blood spilled down his neck. Fear and intense anger swirled in him and Corvo couldn’t help but smile, eyes narrowed in delight.

[homebehindarchive-blog]

1, 4, 5, 9, 20, 25, 29, 31 for the character development questions meme, for hannah! (pls take your time i know i sent a fkn lot im sorry i was curious)

NEVER APOLOGIZE I LOVE THIS 

1.  How do they move and carry themselves? Pace, rhythm, gestures, energy?

hannah can behave noticeably differently depending on who she’s with and her comfort level with them. she’s not always the most confident in new situations, and she can get nervous: lip biting/nervous smiling/hair twisting/leg jiggling when sitting. in those cases, her motions tend to be pretty quick, as if to just get them over with. there’s a lot of energy in them, but it’s nervous energy. she tends to talk quickly and can say some pretty inane things just for the sake of saying something, which then compounds her anxiety. BUT. with people she’s comfortable with, this changes. she’s not nearly as fidgety. in fact, her overall energy changes to calm and welcoming warmth. there’s still definitely an undercurrent of something else underneath that, but it’s like a pleasant hum of energy. she still moves a lot, even in little ways. she had a habit of playing with her quill during classes, for example. at the leaky cauldron, she’s always doing something. 

4.What is their size and build? How does it influence how they use their body, if it does?

hannah is of pretty much entirely medium build, in height and weight, though she did run toward roundness as a child/young teenager (a fact that didn’t do wonders for her self esteem). there’s always a sort of softness to her - - - she’s never any sort of angular or anything even bordering on toned. she loses a good deal over her sixth and seventh year due to various circumstances (loss of appetite after her mother’s death, seventh year being what it was) without really meaning to, and she’s actually not very happy about it. over that time she’d tend to carry herself with arms folded across her middle, shoulders sort of curved forward, hands always pulling the sleeves of her sweaters down over her fingers, etc. her body language became very much about self-protection. after the war, when she’s had a little time to heal, she gains a bit of that weight back. she hits a fairly average size and maintains that as she runs the leaky cauldron. as she puts weight back on/has the exercise of running the leaky, her expressions open up and her body language becomes much less self-protective, kind of an unfolding. there’s still the nervous/shy distinction of her general energy, but nothing like war-time levels. 

5.How do they dress? What styles, colors, accessories, and other possessions do they favor? Why?

her clothes tend to walk a border between moderately fashionable and entirely practical. she doesn’t follow fashion as closely as some of her friends do, but she picks up elements of it. she tends to favor earth tones like these or pastels. she doesn’t go in for prints very much, but she does have a taste for more understated florals. her preference as far as jewelry goes runs to the simple: mostly just the necklace her mother gave her on her last christmas and simple earrings. she wears a couple of thin bracelets on her right wrist, and a simple, pale-leather banded watch on her left. as far as shoes, she avoids heels like the plague, but loves canvas shoes. she’s not much for “things” when it comes to favoring, but she does love anything soft. texture is huge for her - - - she can’t wear anything rough or scratchy, and when it comes to her living space she likes to surround herself with soft knits, comfy pillows, thick blankets, etc. 

9.How do they manifest energy, exhaustion, tension, or other strong emotions?

to be honest, hannah is terrible at hiding anything. most of these can be read pretty easily on her face and in her body language. exhaustion, disappointment, and even sadness tend to register in a lot of the same ways. her movements slow down, her smiles are smaller, she tends to sort of curl in on herself in minor ways. she’ll try to hide these things and just push right through them, and she usually manages to do that...but she doesn’t do very well at the hiding. tension i’ve pretty much already described in her nervous reactions: quicker movements, fidgeting, etc. they’re manifested pretty much identically. anger, frustration, and embarrassment can be read very clearly in her face (it tends to scrunch up a bit, she blushes easily, etc) and also tend to show up in what she’s doing with her hands. when she’s angry or frustrated they tend to curl hard into her palms, when she’s embarrassed she tends to fold them up or tuck them away, somehow. she’s basically an open book when it comes to emotions, though she tries hard not to let the negative ones show (she really doesn’t want to make anyone else feel badly just because she is!) 

20.What kind of individual relationships do they have with others, and how do they behave in them? How are they different between intimate relationships like friends, family, and lovers versus more impersonal relationships?

hannah tends to build very strong and close interpersonal relationships, but they tend to be fairly few. her closest friends at school were ernie, susan, megan, and justin, and they were more or less a small family. she tends to gravitate toward people who make her feel secure in one way or another, and while she’s friendly with everyone, she’s really only truly intimate friends with a select few. she’s actually more quiet and more settled with people she knows well. she’ll open up more, easily confides in them, uses affectionate touch, etc. in more impersonal relationships, she tends to display a lot more nervousness in a do-they-like-me/i-really-hope-they-like-me sense. she talks more without saying much, avoids touch, etc. 

her general behavior around close friends vs. a romantic partner would be pretty much the same and only vary by degrees of intensity. she’d be the sort to really give her all to a romantic relationship, and that would include building a solid friendship at the core of it. 

25.What do they need and want out of relationships, and how do they go about getting it?

security tends to be a common theme with relationship needs. it manifests in various ways: ernie was very secure in himself and his ideas, and she liked that - it tended to anchor her - but it’s not the only kind of security. in fact, the security she’s looking for tends to be more security within the relationship. she needs to know that the person isn’t going anywhere and isn’t going to just stop liking her for reasons she can’t explain. she doesn’t really do much to get this, actively, unless it’s in recognizing that she’s not comfortable around a certain person/in a certain relationship and distancing herself a little. (she’s rarely ever able to fully distance herself, she’d always continue to be friendly, etc, but she also wouldn’t pursue a deeper relationship.) 

29. What kind of activities, interests, and hobbies do they have? What significance and impact do these have in their lives, both positive and negative?

hannah has always loved plants and animals, particularly flowers. she likes taking care of things/helping them grow. there’s really no purpose to this: she doesn’t grow flowers for anything, she just likes that they’re flowers. i wouldn’t say she has very many hard-and-fast hobbies. most of her time at hogwarts was typically spent sitting around and talking with her friends, going on walks through the grounds with them, studying with them. she loves people, and she loves being around people. positively, all of this means that she makes a great owner of the leaky cauldron and turns it into a place of welcome. she gets to push all of that into the ability to take care of the people that walk through the door. but it also means that, at the end of the day, she doesn’t tend to know what to do with herself. once she’s outside of a school environment/not living in a dormitory anymore, she has the tendency to succumb to a good deal of loneliness. to avoid this, she’ll find tasks to do even if they don’t need doing: the floors were just scrubbed yesterday, but she’ll scrub them again just to distract herself. ironically, this is an isolating cycle more than it is anything else. she doesn’t want to “bother” anyone with her loneliness, so she finds ways to distract herself from it instead of finding ways to fix the problem. 

31.. Is there anything that counts as a “dealbreaker” for them, positively or negatively? What makes things go smoothly, and what spoils an activity or ruins their day? Why?

there really isn’t much that i can think of as far as “dealbreakers.” for the most part, if she’s with a person/people she trusts, hannah can just go along with things pretty happily. i do think hannah can be a bit oversensitive to people’s reactions to her. brusqueness can crush her, as can moments she perceives as a failure, socially. anything that causes her anxiety to spike and manifest itself, particularly in magic-related ways (flock of flamingoes in the exams, for instance) can shake her for days. 

[nintendobiitch]

ALL THE 80’S MOVIE ASKS DO EM ALL

OMG BABE TSYM

And @adora-milaje thank you for asking toooo my bud I’ll just put all the answers here :)

Bill and ted’s excellent adventure: Are you more of an optimist or pessimist?

More of an optimist I think! Like, I’m not wholly irrational, I don’t completely inflate my expectations, but I also can’t help looking forward to stuff or just hoping that it goes well. I find the idea of constantly expecting the worst just super depressing. Like yeah you’re technically “never disappointed” but you also don’t get the excitement of anticipation? I dunno.

Back to the future: Which decade in the last century would you most have liked to live in?

I mean tbh as far as basic civil rights go the 20th Century was largely a catastrophe but purely for fashion/film/music purposes I would rock the 1980s.

The breakfast club: Which high school stereotype do you fit into best?

UMMM I have no idea tbh. Like, nerd but a nerd who’s bad at maths? Idk.

Ferris bueller’s day off: What’s your guilty pleasure?

There’s this one coffee shop that I practically live in, like well enough that I know the owner now, and it’s not exactly a “guilty” pleasure but I’ve definitely spent far more money there than I should have haha

Footloose: Who did you last dance with?

When I went clubbing with a bunch of friends to celebrate the end of exams! So my future housemate Becky and a bunch of my other close friends :)

The goonies: What was the last thing to make you laugh?

Just 20 minutes ago I was laughing at my friend James while we played Portal 2 co-op. He died. He died so much.

The outsiders: Why is your best friend your best friend?

OH MAN this is so hard cause like, there are multiple people I’d consider my best friends. My friend Lizzie I’ve known since I was two, she’s so easy to talk to, she cheers me up no matter what, I just feel completely comfortable in her company. My friend Nat I met this year at uni and we have so many similar interests, she’s one of the coolest, funniest people I’ve ever met and we just clicked super quickly. My friend Lucia has been with me through so much difficult shit, she cares so much for me and it’s so lovely. My friend Cosi I can go without seeing for a year and then feel like no time has passed when we next speak.

The lost boys: Would you rather be immortal or objectively beautiful to everyone?

Objectively beautiful??? I’m vain as hell and I think immortality is more of a curse than a blessing tbh

Labyrinth: What’s the relationship with your siblings like?

Great! I love my little brother so much. He’s a dumbass but he’s my dumbass, and really surprisingly respectful for a 14 year old boy. He’s my person to yell about nintendo stuff to, it’s awesome.

The karate kid: When did you last have to work really hard to achieve something you’re proud of?

One of the things I’m most proud of recently is getting my Camp America placement! I had to do three interviews and fill out a huge application, and it’s for a job that is literally a dream come true for me, so I’m super happy I got it! Only two weeks until I head out to New Hampshire now!!

Stand by me: Why did you last go on a road trip?

I really haven’t been on that many road trips tbh. You can drive the length of England in like less than a day. I guess technically the last thing was when I drove back up to uni after the Easter holidays haha

Pretty in pink: What’s your signature ‘look’?

I Do Not Have One hahaha. I swap between styles pretty much constantly. I have an insane number of button up shirts so I’m either high-key flannel lesbian or quite feminine skirt/dress type clothes, totally depends on my mood. I guess the most “signature” thing I own is my dungarees? I wear them a looooot.

Drugstore cowboy: Which historical figure most spikes your interest?

Bruh I’m a history student this is a dangerous question hahaha. Big fan of ALL the Russian tsars, especially Catherine the Great, and Nicholas I. Also love a bit of Otto von Bismarck. Charles II was a mad lad and I love him for it. James I was gay as shit and I respect that. And who doesn’t love Louis XIV? The Viking leader Guthrum was pretty snazzy too y’know I respect him. I really could keep going hahaha.

Ghostbusters: Where were you when you watched your favourite movie for the first time?

Bold of you to assume I have just one favourite movie lol. The one that comes to mind though is when I first watched Inception at my friend Lizzie’s house! Fuckin love that movie so much.

Sixteen candles: At which age do you consider a person to be mature?

Totally depends on the person, and also what you mean by mature. Like anywhere from sort of 15-18 you can start talking to someone like an adult, people start forming more personal/informed opinions about the world, making decisions about their future, but they’re also still children in so many ways. I was dumb as shit at 15 but I also really wasn’t a baby anymore either. It’s a weird age period.

Dirty dancing: Where were you when you first heard your favourite song?

OOOH again, favourite song SINGULAR? One of the songs I treasure the most (Disloyal Order/FOB) I was in the kitchen doing my art coursework, this huge intricate batik thing, and it was the first time I listened to folie a deux and I totally lost focus on my art, I just sat there drinking in this song, every word felt so perfect, ugh I love it

Better off dead: Why did you last laugh so hard it reduced you to tears?

SO I was drunk off my ass, a group of us had gone for cocktails, and my friend Nat showed me that meme of pitbull stretched really big that’s just captured “mr wide” and I lost my SHIT, literally laughed for ten straight minutes, tears streaming down my face, it was the purest joy I’ve ever felt haha

Heathers: Did you apologise the last time you were unreasonably mean?

Yes? I think so. Hard to pinpoint the last time I was mean to someone for no reason, but I tend to feel guilty very quickly and I already say sorry every third word so...

Parenthood: Is there anyone you’re not biologically related to that you consider ‘family’?

I’ve name dropped her a lot already but my friend Lizzie is basically my sister haha. My friend Freya has been calling herself my sister for six years and she pretty much is by now too.

Permanent record: Where were you the last time you told someone you loved them?

I was in right here in bed, texting my girlfriend Maya haha. I guess the last time I said it to someone’s face was last Saturday before she left to go back home, and that was outside her block.

St. Elmo’s fire: What’s one piece advice you would give to someone two years younger than yourself?

A) You are not a grown-up yet, please go easy on yourself you still have so so much growing to do! B) You don’t have to know your passion yet, you don’t have to figure out your whole life at sixteen. There are a lot of things you don’t have control over right now and that’s frustrating and shitty but believe me it gets so much better. Hang in there.

Dangerous liaisons: Which language would you most like to learn?

French or Greek! French because I studied for-fucking-ever but I never got close to fluent (admittedly because I’m impatient as hell haha) and Greek because it’s the language my dad speaks and I wish he’d taught me when I was younger!

Rumble fish: Who do you look to for guidance in times of need?

My mum! I’ve always been able to go to her for help and advice which has been really great, although certainly more recently there’ve been times I’ve rather asked my close friends for comfort too.

E.T.: What’s one ‘weird’ feature that you love about yourself?

Nothing particularly quirky or different about me. My eyes are different colours which I’ve always thought was pretty cool!

Young guns: What’s one style that you love on others, but would never try yourself?

Literally EVERYTHING my girlfriend wears oh my god she is a fashion queen and I’m so shook every time I see her. She fucking rocks fishnet tights and idk if I’m feeling that look for myself but she looks AMAZING.

Oxford blues: Why did you last pretend to be something you’re not?

I guess the last time I was really pretending to be someone was before I came out to my parents. It never felt like a big deal until I came to uni and actually had the chance to express myself and feel comfortable doing it, then it felt like I was constantly lying to them.

Dead poet’s society: The last time you made a decision that everyone around you told you not to make, how did it work out?

Surprisingly, I’ve not done anything stupid enough recently for people to all tell me it’s a bad idea? Huh.