#this is fucking tenuous but i'm emotional okay

[jaskierx]

something about 'i know it's unlikely we'll find each other but it was unlikely for us to meet in the first place'

something about 'did you know there are birds that spend their entire lives in the air'

something about how albatrosses mate for life but spend a large proportion of the year apart and at sea before returning to aotearoa during mating season and finding their mate through recognition of the unique courtship language they created together

[littlepadika]

hi friend!! i absolutely love your fics. especially the daddy/papi ones (i’ve read them all so many times!!!) would i be able to request some daddy joel little reader fluff please! 🤍🤍🤍

hehe me was talking bout dis idea with @littlebirdsbookshelf. Kinda angsty but ends soft and fluffy i pwomise. Takes place after encounter with the infected. I hope you wike i wrote all in one go!

Warnings: big emotions, ddlg, fem little

It was hard living in the QZ and being little. It was hard living in this fucked up world and still trying to be playful. Joel knew you sometimes let big emotions and fear come out when you were little. Things in the past that he couldn't change. He wished he could protect you from it all. Wish he could go back in time and make it right.

Violence was how many people around here coped. It wasn't unusual for someone to punch someone else in broad daylight or pull guns on each other. It was a tenuous peace among the residents. The latest attack near the border had everyone on edge. No more search parties for a week so rations were running low.

"We can't go baby I'm sorry." Joel tried to explain for the third time. He sat you down on the couch.

"But why?" you pouted. You woke up with your bag all ready to go for a sunday hike. It was something you looked forward to every week.

"They're not lettin' anyone out right now. It's not safe."

"pcuz of me" you clamped your eyes shut.

"No..." Joel frowned, rubbing your arm. "Because of those scary monsters."

To Joel's dismay you started crying and balling your fists up. He knew you wanted to scream in frustration but you were holding it in like a good girl. Like he told you. You can't scream anymore. Draws too much attention.

Joel knew this feeling too. When the weight of everything got too much and started to spill over. He used to take pills or drink the feeling away but he knew it wasn't healthy. One time he even punched a wall which gave him scars over his knuckles to this day. Eventually people just go numb from the anger. They walk around the QZ like zombies. Joel fears them more than the infected beyond the border.

"Are you angry?" Joel asked, feeling panic stir in his belly. You were having big girl emotions.

You nodded quickly. Having trouble keeping it all in you started pushing joel's chest weakly and head butting his chest. You were not trying to hurt him but trying to get your anger out. You pressed your lips together and exhaled hot air that felt like you were breathing fire.

"Here petal..." Joel looked around before grabbing pillow from behind you. "Here punch this, baby. Get all that anger outta ya."

"But- but pillow" You paused, not wanting to hit your comfort object.

"It's okay. Pillow can take it. Let pillow help you." Joel kissed the top of your head before guiding your fist to the soft pillow. It was a little flat from you carrying it around but it still absorbed the blow.

You gave it a weak hit, then another, then another. Pretty soon you were hitting it with as much strength as you could muster. You felt your frustration build but it felt kinda good. Hot tears landed on your fists as they hit the pillow. The pillow and lumpy couch cushion damped the sound into little thuds. Daddy joel's body made a safe coccoon where you could let all your emotions out. His arms bracketing you as you punched. You leaned forward till your head was almost touching his chest. Thump. Thump.

"That's it. Let all those big emotions out, baby." Joel whispered feeling his own tears sting his eyes. He wanted to do more but he just watched you keep going until you were panting.

You imagined all the scary things in the world and punching them one by one like daddy joel would do. You imagined punching through a thick door that was blocking you and daddy joel from the light.

"Come on, baby. Show daddy what you're feeling. Good girl." He urged you on. Proud of how you were letting yourself feel everything.

"Hmmf hmmf" You grunted with each punch. You were getting tired and as you got tired the sadness sunk in. This world was so mean. You looked up at daddy with tears still pooled in your eyes and melted under his warm empathetic gaze.

"Are you all done, petal? Oof-" He caught you as you jumped into his lap. "Aw it's okay. That was scary huh?"

"M-mhm" You were shaking a little.

He rubbed your back as you cried silently, hiccuping from being out of breath.

"I gotcha. You're safe. Ain't nothin gonna happen." He whispered into your hair.

"Da-daddy..." You croaked sniffing his t shirt. You looked up puckering for a kiss which joel happily bestowed. He kissed your lips then around your tear streaked face.

"Feel better?" He asked after a moment.

"Ya." You sigh. He rocks you in his arms until your breathing slows.

"I'm sorry we can't go hiking, petal. But I'm sure we can have fun exploring around here. We haven't done an i spy with stuff 'round here."

"Here is bo'ing." You sniffle. You pull pillow into your lap and stroke it as if trying to smooth out areas you punched.

"Oh it most certainly ain't." Joel chuckled. "Have you seen all the treasures around here. I'm sure I saw some old tea cups by the laundry. An i know you been wantin' to play tea time with april!"

"Der is?" You perk up, wiping your eyes.

"Mhm why don't we go find it, huh?" Joel suggests, his spirits lifting.

You get your hiking bag and trail snacks packed up like it was a regular hike. Joel wrote down a list for you to play i-spy. Even though it was only around the QZ it still was fun. And you did find some lightly chipped sky blue tea cups. Daddy washed them up for you and set it up like a real tea party!

"Daddy come." You point at the chair next to you.

"Why thank ya for invitin' daddy."

"Mhm daddy always welcome." You nod, pouring him some 'tea' (it was lemonade and honey that joel warmed up). You did a good job and didn't spill.

"Good job with that petal." he praised. "Well let's see here... i think we should start it off with a toast to you petal for being a brave girl and a smart girl findin' all the things on i-spy." He held up his cup.

"Fankie." You grin. "Thankie to daddy for letting me have big emotions and not be angy." You clinked glasses with him.

"I love that you have big emotions, petal." Joel smiled. "It's what's gonna save this messed up world I reckon."

~~~~~~~~

Daddy masterlist

[paradife-loft]

okay, round up of miscellaneous NtN thoughts now that I've finished it. content warning for the usual TLT shit, and also my generally very mixed opinions about the series, and so on.

the whole cow situation and resulting moral outrage is wildly underwhelming to me. eight thousand eye-rolling emoji at everyone in-universe as we speak. like oh no, someone killed a bunch of (iirc raised-for-meat??) cows for an instrumental purpose of keeping some humans alive... come back when the entire species has stopped eating beef and maybe I won't want to kick you for being pea-brained hypocrites.

I need. some kind of explanation to make sense of Nona continually referring to dead!Gideon as "Kiriona Gaia" and Babs!Ianthe as "he", while also being perfectly spot-on accurate when it comes to Cam, Pal, and Pyrrha? like not in the moral sense but in the sense of, "if the latter is about matching the social cues her family gives her, why does that not apply for the former? if it's about her ability to read people's identities from their motion and general physicality, does the body being dead but still inhabited really make that much of a difference, and if so, then still why does she keep being immune to correcting social cues for those two in particular? why is Coronabeth "Crown" and Aim "the Angel?" etc etc"

speaking of which. Aim. Messenger. A(OL) I(nstant) Messenger. lmao.

so Cristabel seems to be two for two in terms of "died via killing herself in service of some greater goal she wanted for another person she cared about, despite them going "no fuck don't do that", huh?"

John and Blood of Eden really are just equal and opposite varieties of insufferable to me, honestly

(John because *gestures at Everything*, and BoE bc 1. similarly pretentious motherfuckers aren't they; 2. that meme of the lady putting boxes up high out of the child's reach and this particular box says "zombies"; 3. look I don't like Judith Deuteros either but that's no excuse for war crimes (if you want advice on quality war crimes to do while fighting a magic society with deities hanging around, please consult one (1) Turyin Mulaghesh Divine Cities trilogy))

I do think the main thing that's interesting to me about the pre-rez chapters, is the way it contrasts... (even immense quantities of) personal power vs the institutional self-sustaining power of capitalism+the state? but/and also... by the point that you're puppeting the (I assume?) president of the United States, could you not figure out how to. spot-remove the trillionaires and take control of their plans in the same way...? I mean. there just seems to be more effective use of the personal power they had, compared to what they actually did. (I'm inclined to put that down to John's bigger emotional motivations being personal aggrandizement & glory, being the one Known to have saved the day, if that's up against truly getting shit done, ngl. see above re: insufferable.)

CamPal fusion made me cry like a baby. it's so..... like the relief and love on Cam's end just hits like a truck; and then at the same time I completely get Nona's distress at "these two specific people I love no longer exist". but idk, to me it's more of a... grief about change than about straight-up loss, if that makes sense? because of the way various Cam and Pal things aren't just flat gone in the way they'd be if they winked out of existence instead of transforming. esp since Palamedes was already very much on borrowed tenuous time.

("Paul" reallllyyyy doesn't do it for me, though. because of, rather than in spite of, the thematic baggage, personally speaking. esp when they could've picked something nice like "Garnet" instead)

I still don't get the other planets in the solar system having rez beasts if the rationale for "planet has a soul" is anything remotely like the explanation John gave back in HtN. like sure, I buy him eating all the people on say, space stations at each one, fine - but a few space stations isn't an ECOSYSTEM??? I just. either the other planets have all been terraformed to some degree (in which case why do we need to go to Tau Ceti?), or else whence comes this planet soul? I'm sorry to be a nitpicker and a "why? why? why?" bird, but it's fundamentally in my nature #scorpionshrug

Ianthe and Corona still living rent-free etc etc but also oh my gooooddddd get a room you two, I cannot deal with the degrading comments in front of everyone else in the same way I can't read fanfic involving public sex OTL

and finally, Nona Is Valid; I Too Would Not Despairingly Kill A Truck Full Of People Because Someone Reminded Me There Was A Dog In The Back. highly relatable a+ content.

[phoenixyfriend]

ok wait. OBI-WAN vs anakin's genome being 50% the Force. go

Okay I'm assuming this is in the context of GG Stewjon AU

In which case! We're in luck! Obi-Wan is a Spark, and Sparks have a very tenuous grasp on the whole 'respect for procedure' thing and are going to be much less upset, on average, than a lab manager type like Karin.

So we'll assume they've been doing the whole "Obi-Wan teaches Anakin how to do A Science without going completely bonkers, how to time your cackling so that you feel like you're releasing a valve on your emotions instead of just throwing it around for no reason, how to avoid electrical arcing with dramatic effect," thing for a year or two. Anakin's got a good grasp on it, and he's primarily a mechanics spark, so even though his projects are often significantly more dangerous than many people's, because things go boom, he's generally considered less worrying than Obi-Wan, because Obi-Wan is an adult, one who often comes out of the lab covered in blood and spinal fluid and--

Anyway. They're used to each other.

Qui-Gon always sits in the corner with a book, some tea, and a wealth of experience in managing a baby Spark. The corner has a square of tape on the floor that's labeled to make it clear this is his corner, and also the only section of the lab where people can eat and drink. Maybe there's a low-level forcefield that people can walk through but keeps out unfortunate gasses that could land on the food. If he's not available, someone of a similar level of "can control these madboys" will be. Yoda likes taking this duty. Nobody wants him to, but he does anyway.

(He has an unfortunate habit of encouraging them.)

There's a rotating cast of healer/starfighter padawans who get assigned to play lab assistant for practice with high-stress situations where it won't get a patient/pilot killed if they fuck up, and also so they get used to being able to tell someone with COMMAND to fuck off and stop doing something stupid before they get everyone killed. Anakin might be eleven, but he has the harmonics, okay. Most people listen instinctively to the first few seconds of orders and then go "wait, he's a baby" and stop. Obi-Wan is harder to ignore, so it's great practice for learning to tell Authorities With Bad Ideas to shove off.

So, now that we've got that set up, we can say that two years in, Obi-Wan asks Anakin if he can pretty please take a look at his genome, because he's circled back around to midichlorian counts in his studies and he recalls the actually quite fascinating--

Padawan.

Er. Yes. Right. Well, Anakin, your blood had some anomalies that I'd like to take a closer look at, do you mind?

And they do that! Obi-Wan gets a blood sample, Anakin goes back to doing questionable upgrades to a zeppelin--he was inspired by some of the stories Obi-Wan told about his and Qui-Gon's last "I need to talk to experienced Sparks who can give me advice on how to manage this incredibly rare neurotype that is pretty much nonexistent outside of this one planet" trip to Albia's Empire, he wants to make zeppelins for a few months, it's fine--and Qui-Gon keeps reading his book. Obi-Wan Does A Science to the blood. What kind of science? Unclear, but he's doing it.

I'm not sure what he finds, but I am sure that it makes him happy, and he spends a significant amount of time trying to tease out answers from the cells. Why is the DNA wrapping in this specific way?! What's with the error message he's getting from Chromosome 12?! Why is the mitochondrial RNA the wrong color?! What are these organelles?! Why are they glowing in ultraviolet?!

He's having a lot of fun and Anakin's eager to help him make Neat New Scanners to figure out more weird blood things.

Qui-Gon got in a new brand of tea, would any of the padawans on rotation like a taste while the madboys have their Maniacal Laughter break?

[thnxforknowingme]

Klaine Season 4 Rewrite

So like a week ago @awkwardcaterpillar asked me about what Klaine moments I'd rewrite if I could. And I had a hard time pinpointing particular moments, because most of their individual scene interactions are so great! What bothers me more is larger narrative choices.

So, haha, I decided to just go off on how I'd like to change the large, overarching plot of Klaine, post-season 3. I started writing and I already have 1000+ words just about season 4, so I guess I'm gonna split it up by season, more incoming soon.

Basically, the crux of it is: Blaine doesn't cheat.

He wouldn't. He felt extremely betrayed by some text flirting that Kurt engaged in back in DWS (I do have some old meta here comparing the two cheating plots, which I think has some merits, but is mostly just trying to justify the poor writing choices that shouldn't have been made in the first place). Blaine is a character with a strong sense of loyalty and what is right, it's unthinkable that he'd cheat on his boyfriend like this. This is a problem that often happens in Glee, but I think also just in media moreover - adding infidelity, adding a third party, is an easy shortcut to make a romantic couple have issues or break up. Instead of diving into the nuance of relationship dynamics, the writers just go "uhhhh this character is lonely and horny. They cheat. Cool, that plot's done."

Blaine encourages Kurt to go follow his dreams and live in New York, but then he feels angry and scared and alone when he finds himself sidelined in Kurt’s life. He used to be everything to Kurt - last year every aspect of their lives were intertwined, whereas now Kurt has all these new things to worry about and experience and enjoy that Blaine isn’t a part of. Kurt, of course, is focusing on the new and more tenuous things in his life - he feels okay about not answering Blaine's call and instead continuing to talk with coworkers because he feels secure in his relationship with Blaine. He's confident that a missed call won't damage their relationship, whereas it's currently very valuable for him to be building relationships at his internship. But when it becomes more of a pattern, Blaine discovers that his worst fears from last year - the whole emotional conversation they had in DWS - have come true.

He goes to visit Kurt in New York, and they go out to Callbacks. Of course Blaine does a song. He decides to play Teenage Dream, to dedicate it to Kurt, because they're finally together in-person again and he loves Kurt so much. The song is still acoustic, still slower and more emotional, but it starts out as a genuine love song. As it goes on, though, Blaine realizes that he misses those halcyon early days of their relationship so much, that compared to that the present is so much worse, that he can’t go on like this. His performance becomes more tortured and sad as it goes on.

After the karaoke bar, Kurt asks what that was all about and Blaine tells him how he's feeling and they fight about it. Kurt could be reasonably defensive about the fact that he has to build his adult life and Blaine can’t expect him to drop everything for their relationship, that Blaine was the one who told him to go pursue his dreams in New York instead of playing it safe in Lima. Maybe some cruel things get said - we know Kurt can be cruel when he’s backed into a corner. Even though they still love each other, this isn’t working - Kurt feels that Blaine is asking too much, Blaine feels that he’s being abandoned, they can’t reconcile those differences under their current circumstances, so they can’t be in a relationship. They break up - and I think it's most powerful if Blaine is the one who makes the decision, who says those words, even though he already knows how fucking wrecked he will be over this. He can't have this relationship halfway, so instead of feeling ignored by Kurt all the time, he decides they should just break things off.

If you want to know what I think Blaine could be getting up to in Lima after this, I already have a whole post about my ideal Blamtina friendship/romantic plot!

Meanwhile, Kurt throws himself into work, and prepping for NYADA applications. He and Blaine maybe start to reconnect a little bit - having conversations at Thanksgiving or Christmas as they do in the show - but they're cautious, because they're both still tender. They want to still be each other's best friends, but know that a romantic relationship won't work between them right now.

Kurt meets Adam at NYADA, and they start going out, and it’s pretty good! Adam is older, and it’s Kurt’s first “adult” relationship, and it’s not always perfect but he’s enjoying it. I absolutely adore the Klaine scenes in I Do, so I'd probably keep that concept in - that early in his relationship with Adam, they're not exclusive, and he and Blaine fall back into old habits when they see each other again (while still maintaining that distance, insisting that they can't be together, this is just having fun while they're in the same place for a weekend).

Kurt and Adam go out for a couple months, but things eventually peter out. Maybe Rachel or Santana ask Kurt why Adam hasn’t been around lately, and Kurt gives kind of a non-committal answer, mentions that they’ve been busy, but also that he’s sort of been ignoring Adam’s texts. Rachel can have some obnoxiously self-important but also accurate advice about how they’re adults now, and Kurt should be mature and break things off with Adam if he’s not feeling it, so he does. It’s relatively amicable - Adam's like, “well Kurt, I think you’re great, but I can tell you haven’t been totally committed to this whole thing and that you're dealing with a lot of baggage. Good luck with all that, it’s been fun.” Kurt stops going to Adam’s Apples, not because he was kicked out, but because it’d be awkward (also, maybe he becomes aware that it’s a little weird Adam named the show choir after himself. That feels like a sort of egotistical move that was never unpacked in the show).

I'm toying with the timeline here - because this is the point at which Glee decided to really go off the rails, time-wise - but let's make the reasonable assumption that Kurt and Adam met and started going out in February (typical college spring semesters in the US begin at the end of January) (I'm assuming NYADA is on a semester system and not a quarter system, because that's more common, especially with private schools) (I know nothing about performing arts school specifically though) (also, this is already way more thought than Glee itself ever gave to the schedule of NYADA, so we're gonna go with my knee-jerk assumption here). So if they date for a few months and then break up, that brings us to April/May. Kurt is finishing up his first semester, and will make a trip back to Ohio for at least a little bit, once he has time off school (maybe this could also coincide with Burt getting those test results about his cancer). Blaine is preparing to graduate high school, and at this point will have received acceptances/rejections from the colleges he applied to and knows he'll be going to New York in the fall. This sets the stage for them to get back together.

[ratherembarrassing]

I’m the same as that previous anon, totally loved that Jake verse!

here is another secret: i FOUND the NOTES. so all is not lost.

turns out there are actual bits and pieces written in here. have the first two scenes from the first chapter after the interlude that i never finished.

--

"Santana?"

She's supposed to say something; that's how this works. She tries, but her mouth feels strange, has since she managed to tell her mom she'd come to Lima—come home, she'd said—and now she's heavy breathing down the phone, wheezing out in little pants of breath that she can't quite catch.

Someone knocks her foot as they walk by, and she remembers that she can't keep sitting on the sidewalk forever.

"I can't come," she says, because she doesn't want to creep Rachel out.

"Oh," she hears, and it sounds so disappointed.

(Her mom has this little noise she makes, when Santana says something ridiculous or disappointing, and it's like Rachel's little 'oh'.

Before today it was the last thing she ever heard her mami say to her.)

"My dad died."

Another, "oh," so completely different.

"I can't—" She can't even say what she can't, and Rachel shushes her down the phone line.

"Don't worry about it, okay. Do what you need to do." She doesn't actually know what she needs to do, but it's nice that Rachel thinks she can do it. "Is there anything I can do?"

And then she remembers Rachel's never been back to Lima, just like Santana, and now they won't have that in common.

"No." She swipes her hand over her eyes, but they're dry. "Mike's taking care of flights. We'll get a rental when we get to Columbus and then…"

She can't think about that right now.

"Sounds like you have a plan," Rachel says, and the blind encouragement in her voice makes Santana want to vomit. "I know you said there isn't anything I can do, but if you think of anything, all you have to do is ask."

"Okay." There's another kick to her foot. "Rachel, I gotta go."

"Of course. And Santana, I'm so sorry."

Santana is as well. "Thanks. Me too, about the coffee."

…

She powers through everything, and then she's buckling Jake's seatbelt on the plane and she just….

It's a benign thought—Jake's never been on this flight, Logan International to Port Columbus—but as she clicks her own seatbelt together she realizes she's never been on this flight either, not in this direction, and whatever tenuous grip she had on her emotions slips completely out of her control.

A tiny hand clutches at her sleeve, pulling at the soft wool, and she chokes on a sob as she tries to swallow it. "It's okay, Jake," she forces out, because this— this eruption of everything she's kept firmly in place for so long she's lost count, it has to be scaring him, and she clamps a hand over her mouth until it stays closed.

"I wanna go home," Jake says, right as the plane begins to pull away from the gate. She can hear that wobble in his voice that only comes out when he's really upset, and she bites her lip so hard there's blood on her tongue.

And fuck it; she shoves the arm rest up and out of the way and pulls Jake as close as she can with the two seat belts holding them in place. "Me, too, J-man."

[purekesseltrash]

This is my final ask talking about BTD so it has to be perfect, I literally created a google doc so I wouldnt fuck it up before I sent it

Shoji replaying a song over and over while doing a task reminded me of when I listened to “Ophelia” by The Lumineers on repeat while drinking coffee on my kitchen counter and lemme tell ya, I’ve been chasing that high ever since

Yeah knowing you'd have *some* family but not all of them after coming out sucks major ass but its the truth, I'm ever so grateful that the only person who would react negatively that I know would be my maternal Grandmother whos a narcissistic bitch who I haven't spoken to in years so like, i dont give a shit what she thinks but I know that it would be hard on Shoji seeing how family oriented he is in this story and him knowing his relationships with his siblings and parents would be rocky makes my heart break for him

OOOOO BITCHHHHHH HES TEXTING HIMMMMMMM

That went over a lot smoother than I thought it would, I mean i'm incredibly happy that they’re like, getting together, but I honestly expected it to be more drawn out

Awww Tokoyami getting their as fast as he could and Shoji being soft for domestic Tokoyami

Sweet jesus I can relate to Shoji just randomly thanking his friend for being his friend, the amount of times I’ve wanted to just ominously text my friends a “thank you for everything” is too many to count

I LOVE GRITTY, HE REMINDS ME OF MY CAT WHOS A MAINE COON (his names Chewie if you're interested)

I knew Mic would suck at cooking, its just so him

I practically squealed at Shoji changing Tokoyami’s contact name to Fumikage

Okay, little background story, I keep a list in my notes app of headcanons for Tokoyami and literally one of them on there says word for word “Dogs absolutely love him and he loves them right back” so im SO GLAD you made him a dog person, making him a cat person seems like the easy route

LAWYER MOM IS INTRODUCED i honestly didn't picture her as a blonde but now I see it

Tokoyami’s mom being incredibly enthusiastic reminds me a lot of my mom, she always get excited when people have pride flags hanging up and suggested we get a pride flag so that made me appreciate my mama more than I already have been

I swear to god my eyes got as big as saucers hearing the part about cheesecake because I'm from New Hartford and forgot Hartford was a different city.

I can just picture Aizawa SLAMMING the brakes and whipping his head around, hair flying, as he looks at Shoji

“And he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding” how much more cliche could you get, not gonna lie that made me laugh

All right I have to confess something. I've skipped every transcript of Put Your Sticks Up because I was impatient and wanted to get to the story. Now you know my biggest secret, I always felt bad but would get frustrated cause I wanted to hear ‘bout my boys.

The last precious worm ask! I am finally on my laptop so I can give this the proper attention.

Ngl, when my head isn't working, I will just put on one song and play it over and over and over and over and over until something comes into my head. My ShinOji fic 'Gold Rush' came from that. Still not sure how I managed to make a somewhat decent fic out of a song about gentrification but my mind is a wild and wonderful place.

Yeah, Shouji goes through it with his family. One thing that I can say though is that as Shouji starts to get more and more successful with his art, Tokoyami starts to spitefully send articles and reviews written on his work to his parent's house. He never gets a response but doesn't expect to, he just feels like they should see how amazing their son is, goddamnit. The one day, a letter comes back. Tokoyami opens it, expecting it to be them telling him to knock it off and instead, one of the pictures has been sent back with 'This is beautiful' written in pen, an arrow pointing to one of his vases. Tokoyami then has to show it to Shouji and explain what he did. Shouji cries basically all night. That starts a very, very tenuous back and forth with his mom.

Gonna put the rest of this under a break because it's gonna be long

You should have seen my first outline if you thought this was quick with them figuring it out. Basically, the only reason that Tokoyami broke it off in the first place was because he didn't see that there was a chance of it working. They worked so well otherwise. Amazing chemistry, complimentary senses of humor, Tokoyami didn't want to break it off at all. He just felt like he had to because otherwise they were both going to get more hurt. So when Shouji was like 'okay, but actually I do want to try this', he was all in.

Ojiro is legit Shouji's first real friend. Which is really really sad given that they met when they were eighteen but Shouji never really got a chance to do anything normal.

Maine Coons rule and Chewie is an excellent name for them. I was going to name their cat after Marie Phillipe Poulin, the greatest women's hockey player ever, but I decided that Gritty would be funnier. Mic as a bad cook is deeply satisfying, I picture him being like me, just all 'okay but I just do enough to make something to survive on and uh.... who needs all the details and stuff'.

The name change actually came from my beta. They asked why his contact was still Western Civ Tutor in the beginning of the chapter and I was like 'oooo, great way to show how they have changed'.

And maaaaaaaaaan. I'm sorry but how is someone who is a bird gonna like a cat. Nah. Tokoyami is a dog person. They do go on to get a dog. They were going to get a Shiba Inu or something catlike until Kenta came through with a hound puppy that he'd found in the rain while on his route and just dumps it in Shouji's lap like 'Surprise!'. They name it Lu after Roberto Luongo, famed goalie. The dog is a goddamned menace and Shouji ends up having to take it to classes and learn about dog training so they can all keep their sanity. He ends up loving Lu the most. (I do some part time dog training so I had to throw that in)

Tokoyami dyes his hair. He's actually a mousy blond under the dye like his mama. And yeah, my parents are hella supportive too. I figured it would be healthy for one of them to have accepting parents.

Aizawa was pretty pissed, ngl. For all that he should know better, he got caught up in the same shit that coaches tend to slip into, which is a responsibility because they have someone with potential that they must mold and then when they go on to do amazing things, they can feel a part of it. But then he realizes where he fucked up and how he was so busy seeing Shouji the hockey player that he couldn't see Shouji the person.

Listen, it's my fanfic, so I'm gonna get as cheesy as I damn well please. I'd written a super cheesy ending for the end of 'Black Sun' and was waffling on keeping it until somebody was like 'it's a fic, be as cheesy as you want'. I can has my cheese, as a treat.

WHAT IN THE FUCK WORM. HOW CONFUSED HAVE YOU BEEN THIS ENTIRE TIME?!?!?! this legit made me laugh out loud when I read it. GO BACK AND READ MIC'S SHOW!!! I set up so much stuff to try and prepare the reader to understand the emotional stakes, not to mention the basic facts of hockey! That being said, I get the feeling.

Thank you for this last super mega grande worm ask, sorry that it took me so long, I wanted to be able to give it my full attention. <3