#this is the shit that has me going 'oh no i'm a failure :("

[genericpuff]

working on my biggest fix-it / "foefic" project ever

and i'm already stuck on the 'chronically overthink what style to draw it in' stage because ofc

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time, here's my chronological viewing experience:

woo-hoo! dusty old japanese house with japanese architectural details aplenty

these kids got some ENERGY my goodness

family dynamic's adorable. peak quality dad humor

kids: our house is haunted. parents: that's so cool!

hell yeah, wrinkled old lady rep. we need more friendly old women with potato faces and warts like storybook witches. the backbone of society, these ladies

Plot Summary: Small Child Bothers Local Wildlife

sacred tree sacred tree sacred tree

Introducing Totoro! nobody said this fucker's got TEETH???

Uh-Oh! Inadequate Parental Supervision Detected

(you misplaced your four year old! you're not supposed to do that)

4-year-old: i met a magic forest spirit. dad: oh shit fr?

4-year-old: *angrily hugs sister* missed u bitch

this small child has a smile like a toad. like a really really cute toad. like the cutest toad in all existence. i love her she's perfection please just let this child be happy

rice paddies are so pretty....so back breaking....rice is such a prissy crop

*my crush is stranded in a rainstorm* takethisumbrellait'syoursnowBYE *runs away in panic im so good at flirting*

Giant Chinchilla Learns To Hold Umbrella, Is Fucking Delighted By Experience

take this, it will help you on your quest! *hands u trail mix wrapped in a leaf*

LO-FI HIP HOP STUDY LIST!

crouching down to peer at dirt--A++ top notch foundational childhood experience

mom has a big ass forehead

honey! the chinchillas are performing Rituals in the backyard again

help yeah let's jack and the bean stalk this shit

huh so we're all just climbing aboard the giant chinchilla's tiddies now ok

class trip!

the pure adrenaline of Vegetable Gardening

no! the small child is crying! she is bawling her eyes out. no no no. i can't cope with this. emotionally i cannot cope 🥺🥺🥺

i've only had Mei one hour but if anything happens to her i will raze this earth and everyone on it

please someone make this small child smile again

oh no the tall child is crying too

i can't take this. my heart can't take this.

i need a drink

small child running determined to deliver magic veggies to the hospital. this kid is my hero

she is also unsupervised. so, so unsupervised

babe you are FOUR

godDAMMIT ghibli, you cannot give me watercolor sunsets while a small child is missing. u are killing me. my heart is giving out. this is me, experiencing heart failure.

Totoro to the rescue!

no wait CATBUS to the rescue!

i admit i initially thought the cat was a creep. alice in wonderland prejudiced me. i have revised my notions of smiling cats

i've decided the cat is a metaphor for the magic of a robust public transport system

MEI'S OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and so is mom. she's a lovely lady im sorry for what i said about her forehead. it's a noble forehead.

happy ending YES bitch!!!!!!

ok. ok ok ok. that was magical.

(as a first-time adult viewer i was worried i wouldn't be able to Access the Magic. but i could and i did and it was incredible. that was culture. that was ART. joy distilled into animated form. holy rites of childhood. i understand now. how glorious, this world we grow out of. how full of marvels. i'm going outside to smell grass and sun and get dirt under my fingernails. miraculous.)

[dolldefiler]

please write something about a bully raping the person he bullies and making her do disgusting shit 🫣💗

C/W Rimming, piss, forced bi, impact

Oh lookie here, if it isn't the geeky little nerd. What do we have here? Aww? Your books? It'd be a shame if I did—

Slam

Go on. Pick them up, you dumb cunt. There we go. You look much better on your knees like that, you stupid little bitch. Ha! You know I can see right down your blouse, right? Are you trying to get my dick hard? Stop lying, you whore. You're trying to get my cock all hard and throbbing, aren't you? Do you really think that'd stop me from beating your pathetic ass up?

Ziiiip

What? Never seen a real cock before? Yeah, you don't seem the type, you fucking nerd. Keep your fucking eyes on my cock or I'll beat the shit out of you again. That's right whore, look at me jerking my thick cock. What the fuck are you blushing for? You realise I've just finished fucking that cheerleader, don't you? And your worthless little cunt's drooling? Pathetic.

You know what? Lick it. Did I stutter? Lick her fucking cunt off my cock, you pathetic failure of a human being. You're too fucking slow. Bite and I'll kill you. I won't be able to cum from some loser's pathetic blowjob so I'm going to skullfuck you instead. Fuckkkk, I don't care if you're complaining or begging, but every time you sob I feel it on my cock.

Shiiiit yes, that's a good little whore. How do you like the taste of a real woman's cum on my cock? SLURP IT ALL UP. Don't leave a single fucking drop, you stupid skank. Fuck, yes, SHIT, I'm cumming. Fuck, don't spill a single fucking drop, you dumbass!

You look so disgusting with all those strands of drool connecting your lips and my cock. God, are you crying? That's... such a turn on. Fuck, you're going to eat my ass now. 'NoO, pLeAsE DoN'T MaKe mE', shut the fuck up, cunt. Shove your fucking tongue up my asshole and I won't give you another black eye. There we go. That's a good ass-licking whore. Are you retching down there? Am I going to have to suffocate you with my fucking ass? SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. AND EAT MY ASS.

This clearly isn't working. This slap isn't slap working. God, you look fucking disgusting. All that mascara running down your face, those teary eyes, those bruised, red lips. You know what would make you look better? Open your fucking mouth. SLAP. Do as I fucking say. Now say 'ahhh'.

Don't you dare waste any of my piss or those slaps are going to turn into punches. Drink it. Drink it all up. Fuck, you spilled some, you dumb cunt. Lick it off the floor. Go on. God, you really are just a nobody. pathetic. I'll see you tomorrow, moron.

[qqueenofhades]

i do genuinely hesitate to ask, as i am sure i will find out more than i meant to in time, but atm my various feeds and an uninformed google are not telling me what most recently exploded about the british government, so if you have the time and the inclination i'm agog for your summary/take

HOO BOY. It has been a Things Exploding In the British Government day to the extent that in the hour-odd between my previous post and this one, I had to go back and check if anything ELSE had exploded while I wasn't looking. Everything that they are currently denying will probably be confirmed within the next 12 hours or less, though, so nobody get too comfortable.

Anyway, we all remember how Liz Truss succeeded Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, met the Queen, the Queen immediately fucking croaked which honestly was the funniest time she could possibly have done it, the country ground to a total halt for ten days, and then when it got going again, Truss and her chancellor (aka finance minister, for those of you happily ignorant of British politics), Kwasi Kwarteng, proposed a Thatcherite wet-dream economic plan of unfunded massive tax cuts for rich people, because something something Stimulate Growth. We are also generally aware that this crashed the pound through the floor, blew up people's mortgages and other mildly important bills, and did nothing to deal with the actual energy bills/cost of living crisis currently engulfing the UK. Oops.

After absolutely everybody, including the commie socialists at the Bank of England, screamed OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU MORONS DOING???, and the day after Kwarteng insisted he would absolutely remain in post and he had 100% confidence in the Plan, he... got sacked for creating this, the Plan that Truss had asked him to deliver and which had won her the Tory party members' election. This made him officially the second-shortest serving chancellor in UK history aside from the guy who literally died in office. Womp womp. That will be a pub quiz answer for you. You're welcome.

Having spent all this time hiding from the press, then giving eight-minute press conferences during which you could literally track the pound crashing in real time, and performing more U-turns than a dancing dashboard hood ornament, Liz Truss took a break from her busy schedule of conducting the Economic Disaster Waltz in the key of B Fucked to appoint Jeremy Hunt as the new chancellor. Jeremy Hunt is mostly notable for being a Tory who can put his pants on without assistance and being a genteel failure at all the previous cabinet posts he's held, which is why he is now regarded as a "safe pair of hands" in a party that has dissolved into a lot of shit-flinging coked-up gibbons who can only scream BREXIT BREXIT BREXIT and IMMIGRATION IS BAD!!! (Side note: they recently had to cancel a festival designed to "celebrate the freedoms of Brexit" due to logistics issues associated with, you guessed it, Brexit. That is not directly relevant to the current clusterfuck, but it is too funny not to include.)

To nobody's surprise, Jeremy Hunt then ripped up the entire economic plan and offered a new one, which was not measurably better than the last one but at least reversed some of the most egregious cuts, and which made everyone ask if Liz Truss had been tied up and duct-taped in the boot of a Range Rover and/or if Hunt had secretly staged a coup with the help of Larry the Downing Street Cat and taken over the government. Probably nobody in the Tory party would mind very much if he had, because they were all busy either planning how to oust Truss or publicly denying that they were indeed planning to oust Truss. One of the popular names for her successor? Boris Johnson! No, I am not making this up. Maybe this has all been a horrible dream and we're going to wake up and find that BoZo is back in charge, after massive public scandal for being a serial liar, which he had been from Day 1, finally made him resign. I repeat, what even the hell is going on here. Nobody knows. Meanwhile, Hunt is warning about even more budget austerity and "eye-watering" cuts to public services that can least afford it, because the last decade didn't result in quite enough preventable deaths for the Tories' tastes, and because they have been forced into this by a car crash completely of their own making.

....anyway. This brings us, more or less, to today. Yesterday, Truss refused to commit to protecting something called the pensions triple lock, which guarantees that old-age pensions (the UK form of social security) will rise in line with inflation, costs, or earnings. A) Inflation in the UK is now at a whopping 10.1%, and B) given as old people are literally the only demographic still willing to vote for the Tories, this miiiiiight seem like an even more unnecessarily stupid and self-sabotaging idea. Sure enough, U-Turn Number Eight Million was duly performed this morning, and Truss insisted she had always intended for the triple lock to be protected. But would Universal Credit and other welfare/benefits programs also be adjusted upward for inflation? HELL NAH! THOSE ARE FOR POOR PEOPLE! GROSS!

This, however, was only the beginning of the unpeeling of the latest idiot banana. Keir Starmer, riding high on the back of recent polls that have given Labour a 36-point lead and predicted that the Tories could be left with as few as 22 seats in Parliament if a general election was called tomorrow (leaving the SNP as the official opposition), appeared at Prime Minister's Questions and got to shoot fish in a barrel. Truss did not dissolve into a pile of goo on the floor and/or have a bucket of water thrown on her and melt into Margaret Thatcher, so that was taken as a win. Well, at least for two hours or so. Then Suella Braverman, the ex-Attorney General who had briefly run for the leadership when BoZo resigned, and who exists along with Priti Patel in order to prove that in the modern Tory party, women of color can heroically be just as much as awful xenophobic monsters as crusty old white dudes, resigned as Home Secretary. Did you even know she was Home Secretary? Neither did she. She took over Patel's job in a bid to apparently make Patel look cute and cuddly by comparison, as she is even more determined to do horrible things to migrants as much as possible. The official reason given for her resignation was that she sent an official document from her personal email account, and this had something to do with immigration and/or the Office of Budget Responsibility forecast that the Tories have, in the valiant spirit of freedom, resisted actually publishing for any of their current economic plans. CONSERVATIVES ARE GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY!! yell people on both sides of the Atlantic. Oh-kay.

Anyway, Braverman used her resignation letter to blast Truss for pretending that everything was fine and dandy, which means the BUT HER EEEEEEMAILS was absolutely just an excuse and even she wanted off this sinking ship as fast as possible. Grant Shapps is now the Home Secretary. It's not important. The point is, if more ministers start resigning, the government will probably implode just as it did when they deserted BoZo en masse. What the hell happens then? Fuck if anyone knows. Since they will, as noted, get absolutely cosmically annihilated if they call a General Election, the Tories will resist doing that with all their might (the next one isn't due until 2024, which is about 1004329 years away at the current rate that time is passing here). Truss was already elected by a tiny minority of the country (about 160,000 Tory party members). STICK RISHI SUNAK IN THERE AND CHANGE THE RULES AGAIN?? HECK, SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN! KEEP THOSE MUSICAL CHAIRS COMING, CHAPS!

(Also: we will recall the Daily Star's Lettuce Cam, where a picture of Liz Truss has been placed next to a head of lettuce to see if she is kicked out of office before it rots away. It now has a special companion, Tofu. This is because Braverman, just yesterday, gave a speech attacking the latest round of climate protesters as being spurred on by Labour, the Lib Dems, and the "Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati," which she doubtless thought was a very clever line at the time. Because British Twitter is British Twitter, the Tofu: 1, Braverman: 0 jokes have been rife.)

And since we are still not done: tonight, Labour forced a vote on a fracking ban which was being treated as a de facto confidence vote in the government. Aka if the Tories voted for it, they would be considered to be defying the government. Because Britain is a cartoon country run by clowns, the method of Parliamentary voting literally involves walking through Door A for Aye and Door B for Nay. The "whips," or the people whose job it is to assure that party members vote according to the government's position, have thus been known to physically stuff recalcitrant MPs through these doors, because Hail Britannia, or something. So we soon had reports that the anti-fracking vote was, dare I say it, a total clusterfrack, and the Tory whips were literally throwing crying Tory MPs through the Nay door so they would Vote To Support The Government. This sounds like a beginning to a Monty Python sketch, but it is just another ordinary evening in British politics in 2022! (Did Truss herself vote? Or BoZo, Patel, or any of the other Tory big beasts? Nope. Evidently she was "too distracted" with all the other crises going on, which probably means she just didn't want to show her face or she might get killed. Hard to blame her.)

So: the fracking ban was defeated, Labour MPs were like "oh my god the sheer clownery," even Tory MPs were spitting mad, we soon had more rumors that both the Tory chief whip and the deputy chief whip had resigned (currently in the Official Denial stage, so yeah, that will be confirmed before tomorrow morning), and I haven't even mentioned the part where one of Liz Truss's press aides admitted that they used to lie about various relatives of hers having just died so Truss didn't have to do interviews (actual quote: "just aunts and cousins, not any major relatives!"). We all wondered if that wasn't actually a lie but the minor members of the Truss family had voluntarily decided to die rather than have anyone know that they were related to her. Either that or she just sent MI6 after them. It's entirely possible.

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'm looking for TTRPGs that have... for lack of a better way of putting it, mechanics where like, your character is under a profound amount of stress, and if they don't manage it and additional stress that comes in, they'll break or snap and do something horrible and then have to deal with the consequences. So something that mechanically 'forces' your character to do something they'd normally never do due to external stressors.

THEME: Stress Clocks.

Oh this is my shit. Get ready for a Hall of Fame style of recommendations from me this week (as well as a bit of self-advertising)!

Also a note: this was (mostly) a chance for me to get very excited about a number of games that have specifically inspired me, and I am aware that it means that I’ve kind of neglected certain houses of design as a result. For this post especially, I encourage anyone who can think of a game that fits this request that isn’t listed here to give it a shout out in the reblog and the replies!

Mothership, by Tuesday Knight Games.

Mothership is a sci-fi horror roleplaying game where you and your crew try to survive in the most inhospitable environment in the universe: outer space! You'll excavate dangerous derelict spacecraft, explore strange unknown worlds, exterminate hostile alien life, and examine the horrors that encroach upon your every move.

Mothership inflicts Stress upon you with every failure, and hitting your Stress cap reduces your most relevant Stat or Save, thereby consistency reducing your chances of success with every roll. That’s not all though - your Stress cap also makes it harder and harder to stop your character from panicking, by representing the threshold you must beat every time you make a Panic Check. If you roll less than or equal to your current Stress rating, you must take on a new Panic condition.

You make Panic checks whenever you roll a critical failure, but also whenever you witness something traumatic. These conditions don’t necessarily force your character to do anything, but they represent the toll that being in a constantly hostile environment takes on your mind and body. You have to work harder and harder to prevent your character from attacking allies, giving in to the demands of whatever is haunting their psyche, or going straight-up catatonic.

You can also try to mitigate this stress and panic by resting and doing something that helps relieve the pressure - having sex, taking drugs, praying, etc. There’s even a Shore Leave mechanic for long-term games that allow your character to turn their stress into a character improvement.

In some respect, these conditions remind me of the Morality and Clarity tracks of Chronicles of Darkness and Changeling: the Lost, but with less of the errant language around mental health. The dice rolls also make the consequences much less predictable, so if you want to be surprised by what exactly causes your character to snap, I recommend Mothership.

Urban Shadows, by Magpie Games.

The streets bleed shadows as the supernatural politics of the city threaten to swallow you whole. Will you die a hero—a savior for those who have never had enough—or live long enough to become the villain? Will you fight the darkness…or give in for power?

The choice is yours. 

Urban Shadows is an urban fantasy tabletop roleplaying game in which mortals and monsters vie for control of a modern-day city, a political battleground layered just under the reality we think we know. Vampires, faeries, hunters, and wizards fight to carve out a piece of the streets and skyscrapers, ready to make deals with all those who have something to offer. 

The ‘consequences’ track for Urban Shadows is called Corruption. Each character playbook in this game has a couple of special moves called Corruption Moves, and when you start playing, you start with two Drama Moves the tie into this. The Drama Moves describe specific situations in which your character must mark Corruption. If you fill your Corruption track, you take a Corruption Move. Corruption moves give you special powers that are super-effective, but fill up your Corruption track faster. You can only fill your Corruption track so many times - fill it one too many and your character must be retired, because they’ve just become an antagonist.

I really like how this feels like a slow descent that speeds up the more you lean into it. Your character is consistently tempted to give into their darker sides in order to keep themselves afloat in this unforgiving city - but lean too far and they become exactly the kind of person they were hoping to stop.

Antiquarian Adventures, by acegiak.

Antiquarian Adventures is a pulpy tomb raiding and treasure hunting Blades In The Dark hack in the style of Tomb Raider, Indiana Jones, National Treasure, and The Mummy.

So Antiquarian Adventures is a pulp game. It’s not grim dark in any sense of the word, but I think it introduces a unique use of the Blades’ Stress mechanic in a special “ability” that happens when your character uses up all of their Composure (this is the “Stress” of this gam). Once you’ve used up all of your Composure, you cannot resist anything that comes your way and your dice pools are reduce to 0 until you do something (specific to your playbook) that usually invites a new consequence.

For example, The Veteran’s version of this is called “Not As Quick As I Used To Be,” which hamstrings the character until the player allows themself to be left behind or separated from their comrades. This kind of mechanic has directly inspired one of the projects that I’m working on, and I think that if you tweak the amount of Composure your character has, or makes the reaction harsher, you could absolutely make it work for a game that’s a bit grittier than Antiquarian Adventures.

Last Fleet, by Black Armada Games

The last of humanity are fleeing across space, pursued by the implacable inhuman adversary that destroyed their civilisation. They're outnumbered and outgunned. Supplies are running low. The actions of a brave few could be all that stands between humanity and extinction.

Welcome to the Last Fleet.

Last Fleet is a PBTA tabletop roleplaying game where you play brave pilots, officers, engineers, politicians and journalists struggling to hold the human race - and themselves - together under unbelievable pressure. The game focuses on action, intrigue and drama in this high-stakes situation. You'll fight space battles, search for enemy infiltrators, tackle supply shortages and navigate faction politics. You'll strive against your own self-doubt and sometimes crack under the stress.

Last Fleet has something called a Pressure Mechanic, which can be used as a player resource, but also activates when you take weather harm or get called out on your shit. Hit your cap? Clear your Pressure and take a Breaking Point action, which often puts you at odds with the other characters, making the situation worse. The whole situation is a designed to act as a pressure cooker, making the situation harder and harder to bear until you finally pop. I love it, and it’s also a direct influence on one of my games.

Apocalypse Keys, by Rae Nedjadi (@temporalhiccup)

Unmask your feelings, uncage your ruination… The Doomsday Clock is ticking down and emotions run high as you and your team of DIVISION agents struggle to find the Keys before the villainous Harbingers unlock the Doors of Power and bring about the apocalypse.

As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.

Taking cues from Urban Shadows, Apocalypse Keys gives you a Ruin track to follow as your monsters try to stop the world from ending. The Ruin track gives you a Ruin advance every time you fill it, unlocking Ruin Moves, permanently marking character conditions, and eventually forcing your character to turn into a Harbinger if you let it. Your Ruin moves are powerful and dark, generating even more Ruin when you use them, and in some cases (like with the Hungry’s "Only Hunger Remains" move), your character can actually halt the current mystery as they get close enough to becoming a Harbinger that the entire party will have to work together to stop you from ripping the world apart.

Protect the Child, by Mint-Rabbit (that’s me!).

Humans have always been protective of their young, sometimes overly so. Humans have also always feared that which might make their young strange or different, and so insist that only humans can raise their own young. Monsters cannot raise human young. This is known.

You have a human baby. You cannot find its parents. What is even worse, is that this child has powers, powers that others covet, and so everyone wants it. If you want to prove that you’re not the heartless monster that everyone says you are, that means you’ll have to raise it, at least until you find someone who is better suited to it than you. 

You are creatures of fur, scales and fangs. You have claws that can rend flesh, faces that can crack mirrors, howls that can cause ears to bleed. 

And your charge wants a blankie.

Protect the Child is a Forged in the Dark game about monsters caring for a young human, a human who contains strange and mystical powers that make them a valuable asset in any monster crew. The setting and factions present in this game are flexible: you might be aliens in a far-flung future galaxy, fantasy monsters from rival kingdoms, or even everyday wild animals that fear human society. 

Alright, so this is my baby and I can tell you exactly how to push your character towards some really unhealthy coping mechanisms. In Protect the Child, your character is constantly battling the stress of being a parent. Stress, like in other Forged in the Dark games, is a player resource, but it’s also inflicted on you when you resist consequences, and when the kid has an emotional breakdown.

Should your stress clock fill up, you’ll have to take a reaction from the list attached to your playbook before you can take more Stress, and these reactions range from doing something for selfish gains to lashing out to your fellow monsters to being fully monstrous at exactly the worst time. Your tools to manage this stress are also limited - you have to be willing to confront your fellow monsters and be honest about your relationships with each-other if you want to stop your emotional kettle from whistling all of the time. If you want a game where building relationships is the only way to deal with the pressures of monster-parenting, then check out Protect the Child!

[hedgehog-moss]

I was woken up last night by a sound like a machine gun being fired... loud clak-clak-clak that went on for like 10 seconds and I sat in bed completely bewildered because my brain couldn't come up with a plausible explanation for it. Then I remembered about the thunderstorm warning and thought oh shit, the greenhouse. It could possibly be the sound of thick glass cracking and breaking after a branch fell on it...?

I ran outside in my pyjamas and found the greenhouse intact—then thought oh shit, the chicken coop. Had no idea how a chicken coop could produce such a noise but I ran there anyway, and the coop was fine. It was a dry storm, lots and lots of wind but no rain or hail and I stood there uselessly for a moment, trying to think of other explanations with my 3am brain (not easy), then went to check on the llamas just in case, and I found all three of them standing with very alert ears, staring at a fallen tree—one of the four very tall wild cherries in their pasture.

So that was a relief ! From where I was I couldn't see if the tree had crashed on the fence and destroyed a chunk of it, it seemed possible but I decided that was a problem for tomorrow-me, and in any case it could have been worse. The fact that Pampe was still here boded well (for the integrity of the fence)—but seeing as the llamas were lined up in front of the tree like mourners paying their respects at a funeral, maybe she just felt that taking advantage of the tree's misfortune to immediately escape via the opening created by its prostrate body would be inappropriate.

First thing I saw this morning when I opened my bedroom window was the fallen tree, and I started feeling less optimistic because from afar things really didn't look promising for my poor fence.

(And from up close either)

But the tree missed the fence by just a few metres!

Its branches were tangled up with the other trees' branches and I think some of them slowed its fall until they broke one by one, which would explain the prolonged cracking noises, it wasn't just the trunk. But only 1 branch fell on the fence and it wasn't a large one, so there's no damage!

The God of Fences was on my side last night. :)

Consulted on whether he had been frightened by that loud sinister noise in the middle of the night, Pirlouit declined to comment, as he has more tragic problems right now. Our neighbour made hay recently which means Pirou now has several tonnes of hay staring at him and taunting him just outside his pen, out of reach. He is in a bad mood for reasons that have nothing to do with a stupid tree. It's like if you had to live right outside a pastry shop's window, except worse because you're a donkey (they already find life unfair as it is.)

I wonder if the wild cherry tree will soldier on...? Its roots + part of the trunk are still intact, and there are fallen trees in the forest with only 1 toe still in the ground who take their fate pretty philosophically and just start growing perpendicularly, like okay I guess we're sending our branches in that direction now. I'm going to leave it here and see if it rallies. I think it actually looks pretty breezy right now, it kind of looks like this:

Good luck, wild cherry! Let's see if you still have some life in you...

Oh and since we had a new obstacle, I tried to check if Pandolf remembered the word "Saute !" (Jump) and he does! We did it a bunch of times because I was trying to make him understand that I wanted 1 majestic jump and not his lazy 2-steps solution, but I didn't manage to explain it.

Maybe if I said "no :/" instead of "good great what a dog!!" he would think harder about how to improve his technique, but I'd rather fluff up his ego. Even that ridiculous failure at the end was met with a "yes amazing!!" response from me and he felt like an agility champion instead of a bumbling bag of fur. I'm going to try and get him to find his balance and walk on this part of the trunk, so I expect to see a lot more of his "argh, oops, wait" facial expression :)

[rainybubbles]

How do the COD men end up calling you at 1 A.M ?

Gaz, Price, Soap, König, Ghost, Alex, Alejandro

(Sorry in advance for my mistakes, English is not my mother tongue. So sorry if it's badly written or if they're OOC)

G A Z :

-"I don't think I can help you Gaz" you said on the phone, while sitting on your bed.

-"but you said you like animals."

-"YES BUT I CAN'T MOVE A FUCKING ALLIGATOR BECAUSE IT'S ON YOUR BALCONY" you scream on the phone "How..." you take a pause "I don't want to know how it ends up here."

-"...so you won't come."

-"Gaz it's 1 AM."

-"You said I can call you if I need help."

-"Yes. But the alligator is the exception."

-"...and if I also have a racoon in my bed ?"

-"...Gaz did you..." you realize.

-"It's a hypothesis."

-"I can hear on the phone, the crack behind you."

-"...okay maybe it's true."

-"WHY DO YOU HAVE A ZOO IN YOUR HOME ??!"

-"It's not me, animals like me."

-"You're a fucking Disney princess."

-"...does it mean if I whistle, they go ?"

-"...I don't want to answer that."

-"...so you're coming ?"

-"Only because I don't want to end up in prison for failure to assist a person in danger."

-"And you like me."

-"Gaz I'm not confessing my feelings after we talked about a racoon."

-"You don't deny it."

-"..."

-"you will see the alligator is nice."

-"Gaz, no." you sigh

P R I C E :

-"John ?" you answer on the phone. Your voice is hoarse, the call has woken you up.

-"Sorry I have woken you up, love."

-"Is there a problem ?" you ask. You were worried because last time John called you, Soap exploded John's bathroom and he needed your help.

-"No, there is none. I just finished a mission and wanted to hear your voice." he says with his deep voice.

-Your heart skips a beat. Alone in your dark room, you feel butterflies in your belly. Price and you were friends, you were a librarian and you met because John was a regular who reads many history books.

-You have a crush on the man, but you didn't know if there was a chance because of his job.

-"I see" you answer, you don't know what to add "does my voice sound so charming ?" you joke

-"It is honey for my ears, love."

-shit.

-The man has rizz at 1 AM after a fucking six-months mission, you thought.

-"I...I can say the same for you ?" you try to flirt, but it sounds more like a question than a compliment.

-He laughs on the phone.

-Oh gosh how you love his laugh.

-"In fact I was trying to think of a clever way to ask you out, but it's late and my brain isn't functioning properly, love." He confesses.

-"oh" you say

-oh ? You really said oh to a fucking romantic confession at 1 AM, like in a dramatic romance movie ?

-"I DIDN'T MEAN OH ! I mean, yes, but not to your confession. It...Yes. yes." you say embarrassed

-He laughs again.

-"then we have a date."

-"yes."

-"I'll text you the information, good night, love."

-"good night."

-You didn't sleep at all this night.

-You were too stressed about the date, and too happy to have this date.

S O A P :

-"you won't believe me."

-"Soap, it's like 1 AM, why the fuck are you calling me ?" you answer sleepy.

-"I discovered this new recipe."

-"...so you decided to call me at 1 AM, for a recipe ?"

-"It's the best you'll ever hear."

-"...go on" you sigh.

-"You mix marshmallows."

-"Ok."

-"With nutella"

-you frown your eyebrows.

-"ok"

-"And bacon"

-"everybody is so creative." you say

-"What ?"

-"Soap you- wait, did you eat this ?"

-"YES ! It's so good, you have to try it."

-"It's 1 AM. Why did you try this ? Why calling me after, I...Soap are you okay ?"

-"I am."

-"you eat nutella, marshmallow and bacon mixed."

-"yes."

-"It's not what an okay person does."

-"Person with taste do that."

-"Yes person with taste and no taste bud."

-"You haven't tasted it yet."

-"And I won't."

-"...so me being in front of your door with this incredible midnight snacks is a no ?"

-"Soap you- I live like 3 hours from your flat."

-"I wanted you to try it !"

-"It's fucking creepy."

-"so you won't open the door ?"

-"I will. And I will throw this snack in a bin, cook a real snack, feed you with it, and call Price to have your taste bud check by a doctor."

-"I'm fine."

-"No, your tastes are horrible." you say

-"So you're insulting yourself."

-"What ? why ? I said your tastes are horrible not mine."

-"But you're my taste in human."

-You shut up.

-"did you-"

-"I'm trying to say you're my type, yes"

-"fuck I open the door."

-"Told you it was a game changer."

-"I don't open the door for your snack. I open for your ass"

-"that's mean."

K Ö N I G :

-You saw König calling you on your phone which surprised you because you know he hates talking on the phone.

-You immediately answer.

-"König ?"

-"...You're awake," he says relieved.

-"yes, are you okay ?"

-"Ja, I'm back home."

-"I see," you smile.

-You met König on a base. You're a trainer of detection dogs, so you often work with the army. Since this meeting, you both text each other a lot.

-"Do you want to talk about your mission or do you want me to vant about how annoying my day was ?" you ask as usual

-"I wanted to know if you're free now."

-"Well it's 1 AM, so yes."

-"I don't have any sugar, and I want to bake. But I can't. And I don't want to go outside."

-You know König bakes when he has anxiety, it helps him to relax. So if he wanted to bake, it would be probably because he needed it.

-"Ok, I'll be here in 30 minutes."

-"thanks."

-"But you let me eat the finished products."

-"of course," he laughs.

-You start to dress and put your shoes on.

-"What are you baking exactly ?" you say on the phone

-"Cookies."

-"that's one of my favorite snacks." you said while you put your sugar in your bag.

-"I know." König answers

-"you know ?" you repeat

-There is a silence.

-"I wanted to give you cookies tomorrow, but everything happened and..." he starts hyperventilating.

-"König, calm. Okay so you wanted to give me cookies but you felt a wave of anxiety coming, so you decided to bake them now, but you ran out of sugar" you summarize.

-"yes."

-"Can I ask why you want to give me cookies ?"

-"because it will be a good idea to picnic with you"

-"as a date ?" you ask.

-"yes."

-"well I hate picnics."

-"oh"

-"But guess what my favorite activity is ? Baking at 1 AM cookies. Guess you're a lucky guy."

-He laughs.

-"you just try to comfort me." he says

-"Does it work ?"

-"yes."

-"then we have a date."

G H O S T :

-"Simon" you answer on the phone.

-He doesn't add a word.

-You know why he is calling you.

-He has had nightmares.

-Every time, when he was not on the field and had them, he usually did nothing. But since he met you, he knew that focusing on your voice, helped him to not think, to just erase everything.

-"Do you prefer me rambling about my day or a funny anecdote ?" you ask.

-"your day." he says quickly, his voice is hoarse.

-"Well at work a grandma fought against a gym bro in the line. Because the guy was mean to my colleague, he said she fucked up his coffee just to have one free. Nothing unusual sadly. But the grandma started to snap at him. And we were scared because the gym bro was all muscular so if he decided to fight, the grandma would finish to the hospital, you know. And...she beat him up. She was like super strong. It was so cool. She was like Batman."

-You ramble again and again.

-Ghost just listens, every word was his anchor. Every word was a flow calming him.

-And until the sun rises up, you talk.

-It's his favorite thing about you, your voice.

-Maybe one day, he'll hear it saying sweet nothings to him.

-But for the moment, he'll focus on it and just feels at peace.

A L E X :

-"what's your favorite flower ?"

-"Alex it's 1 AM, what the fuck," you say on the phone.

-"What's your favorite flower ?" Alex asks.

-"Why do you want to know that and why now ?"

-"I have already asked you that during a break on a mission but you never answered the question."

-You frown your eyebrows.

-"It was like 2 months ago."you realize

-"yes, and ?"

-"And you ask me a question you have already asked me two months ago, on the phone at 1 AM ?"

-"yes."

-"...you have drunk Price coffee, isn't it ?"

-"...yes."

-"how much ?"

-"four cups."

-"you're still alive?"

-"I hear my heart. I don't know if it's normal."

-"Shit the fuck this man is drinking." you groan "Alex you know you can't drink his coffee, it could wake up the dead."

-"I know but I needed one."

-"Drink water. I'll come."

-"So you'll answer my question ?"

-"No, I'm coming so I can avoid you having a heart attack. The flowers are not important here."

-"even though I want to give you flowers for a date ?"

-"We'll see later, first your heart."

-"so it's a yes ?"

-"yes but first your heart Alex, focus damn."

He laughs.

A L E J A N D R O :

-"don't laugh." Alejandro says

-"How can I not laugh ?! You stuck on a stranger's balcony in panties, Alejandro."

-"Y/N."

-"Okay, okay. So tell me how it happened ?"

-"I was at my sister's flat. I was dressed up as a princess, because I was playing with my niece."

-Cute, you think.

-"And after few hours, my niece fells asleep, so I changed my clothes but while I changed I heard a meowing. So I checked, and a kitten was precarious on the balcony under my sister's flat. So I went through the window without thinking, using my phone as a flashlight, and I jumped."

-"And now you're in panties with a safe kitten but you can't go back to your sister's flat."

-"No, and I can't call her. I was supposed to babysit my niece because my sister and her wife are on a date, I don't want to bother them."

-"You didn't need to wear panties for a princess costume." you realize

-"I like to immerse myself in the character. If I cosplay someone, I take it seriously." he says firmly.

-You laugh at his determination.

-"Okay, but how can I help you ? I mean I can't teleport."

-"You can ring on the owner's flat, so he could open the door. I don't want to break in someone's flat. I'm not a criminal."

-"You fight the cartel everyday Alejandro."

-"It's not the same."

-"Okay, I'll come."

-After this you helped him. But you sent a picture to Rudy of Alejandro with the kitten and the panties.

If you want more, my COD masterlist : here.

And my masterlist : here.

[ohmyeyesmyeyes]

what if i have big boobs and a small heart?

luke hughes x f!reader social media au

warnings: swearing, use of 'manwhore', allusions to sex

fc: steph bohrer

liked by markestapa, trevorzegras and 791 others

ynofficial: j-dog strikes again

view all comments

colecaufield: HEART, NOT BOOBS 📢

ynofficial: let's all bow down to preacher jack🧎

colecaufield: he's my summer entertainment

dylanduke25: you'll have to excuse my brother in law's behaviour, he does this sometimes. you just have to reset him by giving his fake tooth a wiggle

ynofficial: 💀

lhughes_06: duker what happened to the definitions?

dylanduke25: 'forgetting' - a failure to recall information

liked by lhughes_06

trevorzegras: i think i just pulled something trying not to laugh

lhughes_06: jackhughes you know it's bad when z points it out

_quinnhughes: i can confirm that was my live reaction

markestapa: my my he's done it again

ynofficial: my friend my pal my buddy

markestapa: YOU TALKIN TO ME? YOU TALKIN TO ME?

ynofficial: well who the hell else am i talking to

markestapa: we're really funny

ynofficial: the pranks? the laughs?

markestapa: between me and you?

ynofficial: ah!!!

edwards.73: YOU'RE ON VACATION WITHOUT ME?????

lhughes_06: you're in nj????? at dev camp?????

edwards.73: SEMANTICS

ynofficial: if it helps it's only duker, gavo, me, luke and mark now

edwards.73: it doesn't

ynofficial: you'll get over it😘

jackhughes: fuck

ynofficial: brace yourself. i'm never letting it go

_quinnhughes: he could do with being taken down a few pegs

lhughes_06: and what better way than a future s.i.l with no contractual obligations?

ynofficial: you make it seem like i'm unemployed

lhughes_06: you know you could be...😘

ynofficial: I DON'T NEED YOUR MONEY OKAY

ynofficial: I DON'T NEED TO RELY ON A MAN FOR FINANCIAL AID

lhughes_06: aid???? YOU'RE MY GIRLFRIEND I LIKE TAKING CARE OF YOU

markestapa: rare otp crumbs 😲 

dylanduke25: OTP OTP OTP

liked by edwards.73, jjmccarthy and 873 others

ynofficial: but what happens if i have big boobs and a small heart jackhughes?

view all comments

nolan_moyle: immediately that is incorrect

ynofficial: TREAD CAREFULLY MOYLE I HAVE BOOBS OKAY

nolan_moyle: i was in fact ☝️not talking about your boobs

markestapa: i'm honoured to be featured but you're the biggest liar in the world

dylanduke25: THAT GIRL IS A SOFTIE

edwards.73: well spoken

ynofficial: i will have you know that i am NOT a softie 🤨

_quinnhughes: i beg to fucking differ

ynofficial: QUINN YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE MY BACK

_quinnhughes: then i'm switching sides

ynofficial: 😨

jackhughes: I WAS HAMMERED THEN OKAY.

jackhughes: also you probably have the biggest heart out of everyone i've ever met

ynofficial: shut the hell up i do not

markestapa: to answer your question though, i think you'd just be a baddie

ynofficial: are you saying i'm not a baddie then

markestapa: you're a different kind of baddie honey 💛💛

liked by ynofficial, tyler_duke and 43,183 others

lhughes_06: an appreciation post for the biggest baddie with the biggest heart

view all comments

markestapa: you missed the boob part

lhughes_06: dude

ynofficial: mark has a point, do i not have boobs?

ynofficial: ample?

lhughes_06: i don't know how to answer that on social media

dylanduke25: ample: large and accommodating/plentiful

lhughes_06: LET'S ALL STOP TALKING ABOUT MY GIRLFRIEND'S BOOBS

jackhughes: are you jelly?

lhughes_06: you're the last person who gets to ask me that after what you just said

jackhughes: have a little brother they said 😐 you can bully him they said 😐 it'll be fun they said 😐

_quinnhughes: i'm literally living proof of that not being true wtf are you on

adamfantilli: question 🤔

lhughes_06: oh dear

adamfantilli: are cheesy speeches genetic? or was it a fluke?

lhughes_06: i think i'm offended

_quinnhughes: ouch

trevorzegras: LOL 😛

ynofficial: i had that thought and with experience luke usually says 'fuck shit up' and quinn says 'expose their weaknesses, flash luke, i'll point at the ocean to distract mark and then spike the ball. also, if we win, i'll buy you alcohol for the next month'...so jack is probably the fluke

bradytkachuk: i can confirm this is true yes

colecaufield: that does sound pretty accurate

trevorzegras: _quinnhughes YOU BRIBE UNDERAGE CHILDREN WITH ALCOHOL?????

_quinnhughes: i also know a lot of your secrets and i happen to be incredibly persuasive 😬

trevorzegras: was that a threat?

ynofficial: YES LMAO

edwards.73: so in conclusion, y/n is a soft baddie and the boob thing is inconclusive????

ynofficial: i totally forgot about the point of this post

lhughes_06: love to know my efforts go unrecognised ❤️

ynofficial: i don't have to show it on social media 😘

lhughes_06: tis true 😊

rutgermcgroarty: OTP 📣 OTP 📣

markestapa: private but not secret will always have my heart

luca.fantilli: he says swiping at the photos of them making out and shoving them in both luke's and y/n's faces telling them how cute they are and that they should post more couple content

markestapa: how tf do you know what i'm doing

luca.fantilli: there's a groupchat

markestapa: WITHOUT ME IN IT????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

liked by ynofficial, jacob_truscott20 and 63,197 others

lhughes_06: this is how we do ☀️😎

view all comments

jackhughes: 😎🫣🔥🤝

_alexturcotte: court marshaled

g.brindley4: Behaviour.

ynofficial: hot hot hot

lhughes_06: all you you you

markestapa: flirty flirty flirty

trevorzegras: baby hughes is smooth smooth smooth 😮‍💨

jackhughes: 🙄🙄

dylanduke25: is pitcure #1 proof that boobs do indeed win?

g.brindley4: YNOFFICIAL WAS TAKING THE PIC SO YES!!!!!

edwards.73: luke hughes boob guy confirmed 🤫🤫

ynofficial: your curls will be the death of me

lhughes_06: 😊😊😊😊

matthewknies: they'll be the death of me too 😔

liked by rutgermcgroarty, nblanks98 and 528 others

ynofficial: just told these 4 goobers that they've all been 'so bf' recently and luke walked away from me, mark literally FROZE and eddy and duker just...got it

view all comments

ynofficial: side note: luke heard me tell this to mark and i've never seen the man look so ready to punch his friend before

markestapa: i was about to use my pims to defend myself

ynofficial: channel your inner rocky

markestapa: NEVER BACK DOWN NEVER WHAT

edwards.73: i think sometimes you should back down and go home

ynofficial: 😧😧

lhughes_06: in my defence, i was in the middle of playing golf

ynofficial: which is ridiculous because it was literally dark

_quinnhughes: yeah i don't remember still being there in the dark

ynofficial: that's because...

lhughes_06: no

lhughes_06: stop don't

jackhughes: now that i think about it i don't remember still being there either????

ynofficial: erm

dylanduke25: ew so you and luke were on a dark golf course with a buggy by yourself????? you disgust me

ynofficial: WE WEREN'T DOING THAT

lhughes_06: we were chatting shit but now that you mention it, thanks for the idea

jackhughes: 🤮🤮

_quinnhughes: don't pretend like you haven't done worse mr hot tub time machine 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

ynofficial: i can never watch that film again

edwards.73: me and duker are just 💪 that 💪 good 💪

dylanduke25: PERIOD 😤😤

ynofficial: it's true, you are

nolan_moyle: nblanks98 you look so bf all the time

ynofficial: yk what i think you're 10000% correct with that nolan

nolan_moyle: thank you 😊😊

nblanks98: aw 🥰

umichhockey: admin would like to agree with you

liked by ynofficial

jackhughes: have i been 'bf' lately?

ynofficial: you've been more 'manwhore' lately

_quinnhughes: ynofficial you're my favourite non-hughes

lhughes_06: when i marry her will she be the favourite hughes?

_quinnhughes: out of my siblings? absolutely

ynofficial: i'm SO honoured

ynofficial: _quinnhughes also you've been very bf lately, i don't tell you often

_quinnhughes: it's the hoodies isn't it?

ynofficial: and the fact that your cuddles are just *chef's kiss*

jackhughes: i give good cuddles too i'll have you know

lhughes_06: jackhughes you're not coming near her with a ten foot pole

ynofficial: you do jackhughes

ynofficial: what

lhughes_06: what

ynofficial: jack's given me hugs before

jackhughes: yeah

lhughes_06: why

ynofficial: he broke up with his girlfriend????

lhughes_06: JACK HAD A GIRLFRIEND?????

_quinnhughes: WHEN WAS THIS???????

jackhughes: ynofficial thank you for that

ynofficial: i'm so sorry oops

markestapa: you've been so gf lately

ynofficial: thank you bestie

edwards.73: what does that mean?

ynofficial: (i don't know)

lhughes_06: should i be threatened right now? i don't feel it but i feel like i should be iykwim

[tyrantisterror]

I think one of the things that gets lost in the big, endless internet conversation about whether or not heroes should kill their villains is the fact that killing villains off robs you of a lot of story-telling potential. The Joker died at the end of his debut story in Batman - imagine what Batman would be if he stayed dead. No Joker in Batman 66, no The Killing Joke which means no Barbara Gordon as Oracle and no The Dark Knight, no Mark Hamill Joker episodes of BTAS (so many of them were based on his comic appearances, after all - the laughing fish is a direct adaptation of a comic), which means no Harley Quinn and no Return of the Joker, on and on it goes.

Like, you can argue the morality of heroes sparing their villains till you turn blue - god knows this site does it at least a thousand times a day - but on a purely pragmatic story-telling level, the minute you kill ANY character, you kill all the story potential they had. And yeah, it's fiction, you can bring them back from the dead if you really need them, but that's a pretty hard story beat to pull off without hurting your story. You don't want to fill your tale with "Somehow, Palpatine has returned" moments.

And you can just make new villains, sure, but again you have a problem with that - a new villain has to establish themselves and has to stand out from who came before, which means you can't go directly to the storylines you could have had with a villain who stuck around AFTER their introduction. A recurring villain is capable of doing things that one-off villains can't.

I'm going to illustrate this with a character from a fandom I'm not even a part of - I never played the Ratchet and Clank series and am only vaguely aware of it, but one day I saw a supercut of scenes starring one of its recurring villains, Dr. Nefarious, on twitter, and I was like "Oh shit, that's the guy who plays Quark on Deep Space Nine, isn't? This guys a hoot, let's see if we can find more clips on youtube." Which brought me to this hefty video here from one of the more recent games in the series.

And, like, as a person who "doesn't even go here," it's obvious this goofy little fucker has a history. His opening scenes have him ranting about how much it sucks to lose repeatedly - a lampshade on the "flaw" of a recurring villain, i.e. that their threat diminishes the more they come back because, by the nature of their role in the story, it means they've suffered a lot of losses. So how cool is it that as this supercut chugs along you can clearly see this is a theme of the game - that this is a story about the virtue of losing, a story that is enriched by having an antagonist who fans of the series know has lost a LOT?

The true antagonist is an alternate version of Dr. Nefarious who's won every fight in his life so far, apparently with little effort, and I love how they differ on a design aspect. They're both technically mad scientists, but notably, Emperor Nefarious, the winner, has a more imposing and "heroic" build, but a smaller brain-dome for his robot brains. Because winning may make him look strong, but if a mad scientist's real power is their mind, well, which Nefarious is really the strong one here then?

Dr. Nefarious gets this juicy arc about realizing the virtue in his repeated failures that corresponds with the heroic characters struggling to find a way to win against a seemingly invincible opponent, as well as contrasts the true villain, Dr. Nefarious's explicit counterpart and foil Emperor Nefarious, who has never once lost and is a total piece of shit for it. Again, not my fandom, I don't go here, not an expert on Ratchet and Clank, but even as a relative stranger to it who's just watching a big supercut, I fucking love this. This is an excellent story.

And it's one you can only tell with a recurring villain. Without Dr. Nefarious, this story works significantly less. You need a villain with a history the audience has seen to really sell this.

Anyway, I made this post because, ironically enough, I saw another tweet talking about how some fans think Dr. Nefarious should have been killed off in his first appearance, and, like... that's just fucking baffling to me, as a person outside this fandom looking in. Recurring villains deserve more love, man, they give us so much.

[yakumtsaki]

Dear readers, we've been through so much together and you know at this point it takes a lot for me to describe a situation as 'out of control'.. yet here we are. So Kea moves in and the following happens in the span of like 2 hours:

Barth beats up Felina.

Kea beats up Spice.

Barth beats up Cyan.

Felina beats up Barth. Like seriously, ENOUGH. I've decided that next generation when we're at the third cousin tier relation I'm just gonna let whoever wants to date a cousin do it because holy hell, breaking them up has been a disaster. Everyone is near aspiration failure, everyone has shit grades, we're BROKE, and to top it all off..

-HELLO AGAIN

Why. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING WE DON'T OWE ANY BILLS LIKE THIS IS LITERAL THEFT. I also love how everyone is already so miserable so the repoman just comes and takes all the fun objects we can't afford to replace, FML

Barth's aspiration meter is absolutely pathetic as a result of everyone viciously assaulting him and desperate times call for desperate measures..

-Well well.. If it isn't Glitched Butler #9.. How's it hanging? ;)

-Same as always, I'm here to not cook and to open the doors we no longer have thanks to Baby.

-You know what, I'm too depressed to seduce you so will you just sleep with me?

-As you well know my butler programming prohibits me from doing anything helpful!

FFS. It's ok Barth, I will fulfill your throw a party want, I don't see how anything could go wrong with the situation in this house being what it is!

-Hey there! Join our party! Sleep with me! I COMMAND YOU

Barth please get it together.

-I CAN'T FUNCTION ROMANTICALLY BECAUSE I'M SO SAD BUT I REFUSE TO THROW ANY WANTS THAT DON'T INVOLVE ME SLEEPING WITH SOMEONE

OK DO YOU MAYBE SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THAT APPROACH

-NO

-Ugh, Spice is so hot when he's crying after I beat him up.

Ok Kea, I'm only gonna ask this once: are you fucking kidding me????

-What? It's only natural to be attracted to your girlfriend's ex who is her cousin and your enemy.

I'm just gonna pretend I didn't see this shit and move on.

So I have invited several of Barth's existing and potential lovers to this party and my goal is to figure out who, if anyone, I'm gonna marry him to. Now please enjoy this sequence of events:

a) Barth is flirting with my current top spouse pick, Stella Terrano, and it's going great!

b) Barth leaves Stella Terrano to go sleep with GODDAMN GUNNAR. Since I can't seem to shake this fucker off, the only option remaining is to give him a ridiculous fake accent to make him bearable.

-Oi luvs you, Barth!

-Why are you talking like a servant from Downton Abbey? Also who the hell caught me cheating now?

Who knows or cares? Let's continue:

c) Barth goes downstairs to beat up Cyan.

d) Klara aka my former top spouse pick attempts to leap into Barth's arms and HE LETS HER DROP

-Äääääh mein arsch!

-Sorry Klara but I refuse to get caught cheating by Gunnar..

-..unless it's with Stella Terrano!

LOL OMG, I really thought I'd have to marry him to fucking Gunnar due to THIS SHIT:

But God's mercy finally shines upon me!!!

Oh man I'm so upset by this >:)

-Ha culd youse do 'is, ya broke ma 'eart!!!

-What?

-Oh my, turtles are considered the sexiest animal in my planet👽

Stella ffs. Oh well, so sad, goodbye Gunnar, I was really hoping to add your freakish lack of chin into our gene pool but looks like I won't have the chance huhu!

e) Barth flirts with Stella again and is caught cheating AGAIN..

f) ..by Sarah Love who I keep forgetting exists but man that's a HARDCORE slap, she legit got her fingers in his eyeball(s)

-SORRY WHATSYOURNAME BUT I THINK BLINDING ME IS A BIT OF AN OVERREACTION

Yay! See Barth, our amazing party did the trick and now everything is gonna be ok!

-IM BLIND IM BLINDDDD I CAN'T SEE

Excuse me?! You know what Barth I'm done helping you, nothing is ever good enough for you!

[forsworned]

I NEED more Elias Walker content before I die😫😫💀

God Knows I Tried ft. Elias Walker

Synopsis: Your daddy issues are raging and your long-time 'victim' has been none other than your superior and captain, Elias Walker. After a failed attempt to capture and kill Rorke, you go to "comfort" him, but he seems to have other plans for you.

Author's Note: AND GUESS WHAT I WILL PROVIDE FOR YOU, I'M GLAD WE'RE REVIVING GHOSTS IN THE FORM OF DROOLING OVER DILFS BC LORD KNOWS I NEED SOME MORE MCDADDY CLUB LOVIN

Tags: NSFW, Daddy Issues, Age Gap, Power Dynamics, Reader has long hair???

Elias ruffles his fingers through his silver hair after he removes his distressed and worn mask, setting it down on his desk as he sharply inhales. He hadn't gotten to Rorke on time and that pissed him off, and rightfully so. The bastard had been getting away every damn time. His body is tense and he feels as though his anger is brimming from within, bubbling to the surface and he yearns to do something about it.

So when you come rapping on his door, ripping him away from his inner turmoil, and he hears the pleasant sound of your voice through the small crack asking, "Can I come in?" He is more than willing to oblige.

His body completely faces you now, beaconing you over, and taking in your figure in your all-black tactical uniform. It fits you like a second skin, but his intense gaze shifts to your smooth visage. The moonlight catches in your teeth when you greet him. "Can I speak to you for a moment, Sir?"

He raises a brow at you. "Somethin' on your mind, Sergeant?"

Truthfully, you had no idea why you came in. You just found yourself walking back to his office rather than your bunk. After today's failure, you want nothing more than to comfort him. You slowly step forward, just a few feet away from him. "Was just checkin' on you...?"

God, you were so stupid. Checking in? Come on...

A flash of amusement etches into his features, he tilts his head as he studies your expression. "Checkin' in?" He leans his palms against his wooden desk.

"Yeah, I mean--I know this is something very close to you..."

Oh. My. God. Would you shut the everliving fuck up!?

He sighs and turns to the night sky. The moon is full, and its luminance brings a sense of calm to him. He chuckles at your obvious statement, but he doesn't chide you about it. Something about you makes the hardass in him a little soft. "Suppose so."

You swallow and fiddle with the leather on your gloves, waiting to think of something, anything else to add to the conversation, but your mind is coming up blank.

"Tell me, Sergeant--why did you really come into my office?"

Your heart drops to your ass, and your stomach does the thing. Not the hot-and-sexy-thing, but the oh-shit-I-just-got caught thing.

Elias is a sharp man; follows his intuition, checks every corner he treks, and was raised by plain-spoken folk. He can see through most people and unfortunately, you're most people. You wear your heart on your sleeve, your gaze lingers longer than usual and although it may not be obvious to others, you imitate most of his behaviorisms.

Where you used to take your coffee sweet and milky, you now take black. The way you now drink sparkling water over soda. Your go-to music is The Eagles and Creed over Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift (though you still did listen to them, it was seldom). Even your eating habits have changed drastically from avid fast food eater to health nut, although that seems more like a get in shape sorta ordeal due to your fast-paced, rigorous work environment. Either way, you have definitely been picking up on a lot of things that he actively does.

You avert your gaze to your fatigued boots. "I don't know."

"Step forward, soldier." He commands, and you oblige. Not because he commanded it, but because you want to be nearer to him. To take in the scent of gunpowder and the leftover aroma of his aftershave.

You're a foot away from him now, hands tucked behind your back, eyes forward. His dark eyes size you up, and you feel the sweat forming on the nape of your neck. 

"Eyes up." His fingers tap under your chin and your lip quivers a bit when you meet his gaze. "You gonna tell me what's really on your mind?"

He taps on your chin once more. "And don't lie to me."

You swallow thickly. "It's not...appropriate."

He clicks his tongue and a half smile appears on his lips. "That right?"

You nod. "Yes, sir."

"I want to hear it."

But he sees the trepidation that overcomes your features. It’s been so painfully obvious to him. Your little crush. It was endearing, cute, mere puppy love, but he would be lying to himself if he hadn’t thought of molding your walls with his girthy cock. He usually tiptoes around it, but the mission from earlier is bringing on an itch that he can’t quite scratch. Not even a Playboy mag could get him right anymore.

He sighs. "You're not my bud to blossom, sweetheart." Brushing the strands out of your face. You tremble at his touch, yet you lean into it. God, he could do anything to you and you'd let him.

"But I'd let you." You grasp his hand. His eyes ream in surprise, but the building arousal jostles up his spine. He may think that blossom is not for him, but he's intently observing how your desire stirs, seeping into your veins. His breath spreads out your petals, the smell of your perfume permeating, intoxicating him.

Your lips part open and his thumb slips in, your saliva coating his gunpowder-stained skin draws an involuntary groan from him. He wants to devour you, but he can't. You're too sweet, too decadent, too fresh. He needs to take his time to savor you. It's wrong, but he can't help himself. Especially when you look up at him with those pretty, perfect doe eyes with his fingers in your mouth.

Your free hand palms at his crotch. It's intrepid, daring how forward you are about your fiery fervor for him. He cocks an eyebrow at you, but he doesn't halt your actions.

"That's a big weapon you're slingin' there, sir." You smirk up at him, squeezing his member over his trousers. "Can I cock it?"

He chuckles at your cheekiness. He wants to disarm you, wipe off everything on his desk, and throw you up there. And you'd be so easy to lift too...

But he's shocked when your lips lock with his, a dauntless action on your part. A subordinate fraternizing with her superior? It's enough to get you locked up, and dishonorably charged, but this wasn't the minor leagues anymore. You were hunting for bigger fish. Something that's beyond the crumbling American government outside these four walls. There's a spark between the both of you that you've been waiting to ignite in him, and he can no longer suppress his deepest hunger pains for his carnal needs.

And soon he is swiping away at the stacks of papers and stationery that lines his desk, hoisting you up to sit that pretty ass on his mahogany counter. A gruff moan escapes his lips as you collide once more, and you're practically clawing at his chest. His tongue slips between your lips wanting to collect yours as your teeth clash in desperate need for each other's solace.

His hands grasp at your wrists, slowing you down, wanting to relish in your taste, your smell, your touch, and the way you moan when he dips his head in the crook of your neck to sensually kiss at your sweet spot. Perspiration builds at the base of his forehead as he slowly unzips your fleece, revealing more of your skin and he kisses at your sternum. Your fingers thread through his silver hair and your breaths become labored at his hot touch.

He wants to build as much anticipation as possible before he takes all of you, all of what you'll allow him at least. Impatiently, your arms cross over your chest, pinching at the hem and smoothly peeling off the skin-tight fabric, leaving you only in your tactical bra. Elias pauses for a second. He loves to appreciate the finer things in life.

His fingers caress your disheveled plait from the top to where your hair tie keeps it bound and he gently removes it. You analyze the lust and admiration in his features as he carefully unweaves your hair.

You watch as his Adam's apple oscillates. "You're beautiful." He susurrates, carding his fingers through your hair. Your heart stammers against your chest when you notice how he looks at you. The rough pads of his fingers glide over your collarbone to the strap of your bra, and slides either side off of your shoulder to reveal your naked breasts. Your nipples instantly harden from the chill in the room, and he gulps before reaching out to squeeze your left one.

To say it had been a while was simply an understatement. The touch of a woman has been lost on him since the death of his wife. So soft, so supple. He pinches at your bud and you involuntarily arch your back and whine out. The guilt he feels dissipates the second his lips latch onto your nipple and you shudder as his tongue swirls around the sensitive skin. "Captain...!"

He gently hushes and kisses your lips tenderly, then your cheek, your jaw as he cops another feel, grabbing two handfuls of your tits while he sucks on your neck. One of his hands glides over the expanse of your abdomen, to unbuckle your belt and unzip your trousers--

"Dad?"

Shit, he left the office unlocked. But it's too late. His boys are stepping through the door, although it's not long before their eyes ream at your half-naked form, legs spread with their father between them. Hesh quickly shuts the door and you both glance down, feeling the guilt skulk into your minds.

"I should go--" Elias sputters, and you nod as you scramble to put your clothes back on. Now this was humiliating. Being caught by his sons fraternizing with their father is just the icing on the cake of it all. You straighten your hair and fix your collar as you begin to head out the door, but his hand catches your wrist bringing you back flush against his chest.

"Don't think I'm lettin' them scare you off." He caresses your cheek, with thumb and you sigh, cheeks still warm with embarrassment. "I ain't done with you yet, sweetheart. Got that?"

He raises his brows at you and you nod. "Yes, sir."

He kisses you softly and your heart skips a beat. "Go on, now." He gestures toward the door. "I'll deal with those two."

Your lashes flutter up at him and you feel warmth all over. He smiles at you, kissing your wrist and it's no wonder you keep forgetting to leave. His gaze, his aura it's alluring and you keep pulling back in for more.

He chuckles at the hearts in your eyes. "That's an order, soldier."

You straighten at his words and nod before rushing out the door, ensuring you hear the click as you close it and quickly get to your quarters. A feeling of heaviness weighs on your shoulders as soon as you shut your door. How were you going to face Hesh and Logan?

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I said I wasn't going to get started on the topic of Aveline ruining Carver's chances with the guard but I lied okay, it's Carver Hawke defense hours.

Here's the thing; it doesn't matter if you believe Carver was or wasn't fit for the guard. That's a different debate that I'll get to. What matters is Aveline's in no position to tell the guard not to accept his application. Why does she think that's her right to judge whether or not he's fit?

Carver should've had the chance to prove himself one way or another. If it turns out he's not a good fit, then let him fail. Let him learn from it.

"Oh but failure could mean lost lives-"

Aveline doesn't get to talk shit about failure and the people. Plenty have died on her watch yet she still believes she's a good guard and Guard-Captain.

"maybe Aveline's protecting him, Carver could die while on patrol-"

Carver could die working in the Bone Pit, or serving as a templar, or when he's running around with Hawke. Carver could trip and fall down a set of stairs and die. In fact, he can die in the Deep Roads, somewhere he wouldn't have to go if the Hawke's weren't desperate.

Either Carver fails as a guard, or more likely, he succeeds and proves himself worthy of it.

But let's be real, Carver probably kept getting rejected due to being a Fereldan with a past of smuggling/mercenary work and Aveline only reaffirmed the decision, either because they asked her what she thought or she stuck her nose in unprompted.

But what irritates me is that she admits to telling them not to accept his application, and then has the balls to call Carver too proud to take up a trade or find another line of work.

Carver tells her, "And who would take on a Fereldan apprentice? Maybe in another year I could work my way up to pissboy." He has a good point here. Aside from the guard, the only other place Carver could work and use his skillset is with the Templars. Or go back to mercenary/smuggling work.

And Aveline doesn't even have a real answer for him. No suggestions, no encouragement, nothing. Just "Fine, let's crawl down some holes. Good bloody luck for your sake."

Also, if you do the Mark of the Assassin DLC in Act 1-

Aveline: You should see if any of the noblemen are looking for new men-at-arms. Carver: Are you trying to get rid of me? Aveline: It's a role with some autonomy. A good fit with your training and... tendencies. Carver: After serving King Cailan? You want me to suffer some poncy git who needs two servants to wipe his own ass? I'll find my own way, thanks. Aveline: I wish you would.

You wish he would?? Aveline, he was trying to find his way into the guard, a position he'd make a good fit for, and you helped deny him of it because YOU didn't think he would be good enough, I just-

If I haven't made it clear yet, I firmly believe that Carver would've made a great guard. He wants to help people, to be a protector. He's loyal, and despite what Aveline claims, he can follow orders and take his duty seriously. We see him do incredibly well with the Grey Wardens, after all. If he were a guard, he wouldn't have to go down into the Deep Roads with Hawke, and I think he would've been okay with that! He's so hurt and bitter when you leave him behind because that effectively tells him, "I don't need you." Carver's spent the whole first act telling you he wants to go on the expedition aka that he wants to be needed.

But if he were a guard, he would be needed elsewhere. He'd be in training as a recruit. He'd look after Leandra while you go. He wouldn't be backed into a corner with no income and only the templars left as his chance at forging his own path and providing for his family.

He doesn't get that opportunity, though.

By the way, if he becomes a warden, you can get this banter:

Aveline: I'm glad you found a place with the Wardens. Carver: Well, it's not the city guard, but it'll do. Aveline: Carver... it wasn't the place for you. Carver: No, it's all right. It is. It cost a lot, but I get it. I really was a bit of a tit those days, wasn't I? Aveline: Well...

This banter makes me want to scream.

Aveline's just... she's so insistent that she's right. She's someone who will double down rather than entertain the idea that she's wrong and it's not just with Carver and the guard, it's with everything. The "my beef with Aveline" list gets longer and longer every time I replay da2, I swear.

Say what you will about Carver, whether you think he would've been a good fit or if Aveline's right and it wasn't for him, he was denied a chance and it cost him so much in the end. He either dies, or he joins the templars where he deals with Chantry's bullshit trying to brainwash him with "mages aren't people" and "magic is a cancer in this world", or he's infected with the blight and becomes a Grey Warden, forced to serve the rest of his life fighting darkspawn, tormented by voices and nightmares.

I will never not be bitter about this.

[rontra]

i think kawakami has some harry dubois shit going on in her head like becky is one of her personalities in there but you just know theres like other facets like "half-remembered lesbian porn" and "urge to kill self" and "kanji factoid"

ELECTROCHEMISTRY — What was that *stuff* they pumped you full of at the hospital? It feels awesome. You need more of that! Now! LOGIC [Easy: Success] — A saline solution, to treat dehydration. ENCYCLOPEDIA [Trivial: Success] — Water and salt. ENDURANCE — I agree with her. Get more of that. THE NEFARIOUS BECKY — If you give Isako the puppy-wuppy eyes, she'll bring you some water for suresies! ♥ DRAMA — Yes! *Oh*, yes! She will eat it up! COMPOSURE — No. Don't do that. YOU — I don't think I have to. I'm pathetic enough on my own. THE NEFARIOUS BECKY — That's the spirit! ♥ YOU — Enough. PAIN THRESHOLD — A cough rattles out of you, leaving burrs in your throat. The strain makes your head pound. How much more of this? YOU — I don't want to think about it. Give me something else. KANKEN LEVEL 1 [Challenging: Success] — It's rare, but sometimes you see *sad* written with the character for *love*. CONCEPTUALIZATION — That's so meaningful and cool… SUGGESTION — Toriumi likes poetry. You should tell her about that. She'll think you're deep. PORNOGRAPHIC MEMORY [Trivial: Success] — She *knows* how deep you are. VOLITION [Easy: Failure] — This time I'm really gonna do it.

[zizbombs]

Is there a more useless cape in the bay than triumph?

After much soul searching, wiki browsing and pondering, the answer to that question is yes. Yes there is.

Meet exhibit A: Trevor, AKA Chariot.

The worst fucking tinker to ever live.

Outwardly, very similar to Triumph. Complete mouthbreathing fodder.

What really puts Chariot in 'I would rather have greg veder have this power' tier is the fact that he had so much potential.

Chariot is a movement tinker, one who I cannot stress this enough, HAS ACCESS TO TELEPORTATION TINKERTECH.

TELEPORTATION TINKERTECH.

One more time for the people in the back,

TELEPORTATION.

TINKERTECH.

I could cry, really I could.

So first off, you need to understand just how good his power is. He literally made fucking POWER ARMOR that could go 100 mph with fucking dogshit scraps. Fucking power armor. The only other tinkers with power armor was trainwreck (a guy who's specialty is literally working with scraps) and Armsmaster, who's funded by the protectorate. And this guy just fuckin made some shit in his basement with an oven and a blowtorch or something.

He's got an extra dash of that shardstuff for sure. Also for some reason he just has extra insight into tinkertech? Just added on, for shits and giggles. His shard was forking over the shardbucks to give it's host a head start, too fucking bad it landed on literally the worst person in existence to have a tinker power. even fucking leet would be better than this idiot.

Not only that, he was able to copy trickster's power. Yk, trickster, just the guy with one of the most versatile and powerful powers in a street level setting and even beyond some of that, no biggie. fucking trickster.

This guy could scan movers and copy their powers.

In a world where this guy had a single braincell, he would've joined the protectorate, scanned strider's power and worked with dragon to set up fucking portals all around the united states or something.

Instead, we get this fucking brainlet.

I'm assuming he could also make some sort of neurological implant to speed up his thoughts to keep up with his tech, but thats just another failure of this troglodyte.

I still, I'm still laughing at how utterly fucking stupid this shit is, but one of his gadgets that he made.

So get this, he made a jetpack right, or a flight pack whatever. Guess what this dipshit decides to add in his shit. A fucking bomb. Yeah, he added a bomb in something he was carrying on his back. The reason? As far as im concerned, as a fucking escape route.

Yeah, you heard that right.

The MOVEMENT tinker, put a fucking bomb in their movement gear, to ESCAPE.

???

Unless he had some sort of secret 540000 iq plan to do something else with that bomb, but considering this guy's track record I doubt it. Even then that's fucking stupid. Why are you blowing up your gear? 'Oh hey! I got a great idea! Instead of doing literally anything else, how about I put an EXPLOSIVE right next to me in volatile tinkertech! What a great idea!'

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, this guy triggered about a year before canon start. What was he doing in all of that time?

Literally fucking nothing.

All he did was just ride around at 3 am being a little shithead. A year btw, he did that for a year.

Then he eventually got caught by assault (lol) and was forced to talk to Kid Win. In an incredible play, since Chariot was working for coil and decided to become a rat, got DISCOVERED BEFORE HE EVEN SIGNED THE PAPERS. LOL?

This fucking dipshit was like 'Yeah, they'll never see it coming >:)' meanwhile the PRT had a meeting deciding to fucking just feed this guy faulty information. Can you fucking do anything 😭.

He just was taking L after L.

He's like Leet but he doesn't even have the excuse that his shard hates him.

He's literally Legend's long lost cousin.

no goals, no plans

what are you doing man? 😭

Worst fucking spy on the planet.

Literal shithead kid waking people up at 3 am going on joyrides, which would be based if he wasn't so stupid. Such a cool power too, definition of wasted potential. I just agh.

WHY DO YOU GET. LIKE. UNDERSTANDING OF OTHER TINKERS SHIT. JUST TACKED ON. WHY ARE YOU BUILT FOR COLLABS AND YOU DO NOTHING.

Only fucking this guy could take a teleportation tinker spec and be absolute fodder.

Im still laughing at the bomb shit. Why is your first thought as a movement tinker to put a fucking bomb inside of your tech. Like what? Instead of literally making anything else. Are you fucking stupid? Yes you are, you are stupid. Even if it wasn't an escape plan (still can't believe it WORKED as an escape plan.) Like, what are you gonna do, throw your shit at the guy your fighting then stumble away because you blew up all of your shit. This fucking guy.

Anyway, stay tuned for more hating.

[lesbianrobin]

Hi for a writer new to writing 911 fics what are some key character points that you think are really important for capturing the vibes of Buck and Eddie?

omg HIII 🫶🏻🫶🏻

so first off i also consider myself New to writing 911 fics fmvjdjc but i assume since ur asking Me of all people you like one/some of my fics enough to think i am an authority which rules. thank u that's so sweet. ANYWAY on to my actual advice.

buck: you know that john mulaney bit where he's saying he's a terrible driver and he's like "i hear you honking and i also don't want me to be doing what i'm doing. i don't like that i'm in that lane either. and i sure would like to get out of it." that is buck in basically every aspect of his life besides being a firefighter. his problem is that he won't pull over long enough to figure out what the hell he's doing. buck acts before he thinks and only Later does he even consider like hey Why did i do that. What was i feeling. What was i trying to accomplish. which often results in him behaving selfishly and hurting others (see: lawsuit, Entire Relationship With Taylor Kelly, maiming eddie during a basketball game, coming to the erroneous conclusion that he was jealous over tommy rather than eddie) as well as behaving recklessly and risking his own life under the cover of heroism and necessity.

as far as more like. basic character things go. buck can be kinda dumb And smart at the same time. people often swing really hard in one direction or the other and i think it does buck a disservice. like, yeah, he loves his fun facts and research spirals and books, he clearly has a love for learning, but he's also not the Best at critical analysis of his sources and maybe has a tendency to take things at face value. like i do fear that buck could be persuaded to join an essential oils mlm.

ALSO buck is a weirdo like yes he Can be charming but he also has chronic foot-in-mouth disease and says shit like "oh we didn't kill him we just WANTED to!" TO THE COPS. WHEN BEING QUESTIONED ABOUT A MURDER. i think buck is just constantly rolling either nat ones or nat twentys when it comes to charisma.

i also think it's important to keep in mind that while buck can be deeply insecure, that insecurity doesn't Usually manifest in him like. noticeably withdrawing into himself or trudging sadly around like a kicked puppy. his response to that insecurity is most often to be loud, to lash out, or to overcompensate (see: his entire personality in s1, eddie's introduction, befriending red and taking on his end of life care, swearing to abby that he'll rescue her fiancé and risking his own life to do it, etc).

ok i think i've yapped enough ab buck SO!

eddie: i actually feel like way less confident prescribing advice for writing eddie fmvkdjc so this'll probably be shorter than the buck section. as far as the Basics go i think people can often characterize eddie as very like serious and grim but he rly is not! he's a very silly guy! mostly with chris and buck, but also a bit with carla and linda and the rest of the 118. i think eddie is a guy who can behave very differently depending on how comfortable he is around somebody, and there are many parts of himself that he keeps locked down around others.

eddie thinks about his feelings and motivations before acting in a way that buck typically doesn't, but that doesn't mean he's correctly assessing those feelings and motivations. eddie is an incredibly unreliable narrator when it comes to his own life! he'll feel the desire to do something (for example, dating ana or going from active firefighting to a desk job) and Then construct his conscious reasoning for it (i'm ready to move on from shannon and i like her, chris will feel better and it's better for him if i have a safe job) while avoiding his Deeper feelings and motivations (the compulsion to give chris A Mother so that he feels like less of a failure as a father, his own ptsd and other mental health struggles in the wake of the shooting).

this doesn't mean that eddie is entirely emotionally unintelligent! he just kinda hates himself and he's deeply repressed and he often feels that he can't do things For Him, they all have to be For Chris.

ok that's like most of what i've got for now i'm rly not an authority on eddie but i tried my best 😭

as a duo: i think the #1 thing to remember when writing buck and eddie is that they're best friends and they understand each other better than anybody else in their lives. like that doesn't mean that they're always on the same page but they Do canonically recognize each other's feelings and motivations most of the time and after the lawsuit/street fighting era, they always respond to each other with patience and care when one of them is having a rough time.

like i think you actually have to try Very hard to justify it if you're gonna have buck and eddie miscommunicating and seriously arguing with each other in a fic. i remember when everyone was like omgggg buck is gonna LOSE IT ON EDDIE when he finds out about kim!! and then when buck Did find out about kim he was literally just worried about eddie and talked to him about it and asked the questions that eddie Needed to be asked so that he could work through his feelings and address the situation. buck and eddie just have a knack for knowing what the other person needs, and they're at a point where they will go to each other for help and be openly vulnerable!

and they have fun together! they're silly! see: "locked room mystery" "locked Yard mystery", the whole bachelor party, eddie being like buck Pwease can we look for the treasure together 🥺, etc etc. they just enjoy being together and i think that is so crucial to writing them.

final thoughts: in general my #1 piece of advice for writing fic is to rewatch the show/clips from the show when you're trying to capture a character's voice. i do not do this nearly as often as i should bc i am lazy but it rly is deeply helpful for making sure that they sound like themselves!

i would also advise that even if your fic is buddie-centric, it helps to include the other characters in even small ways. our relationships with others are central to who we are! references to other characters like chris, maddie, chim, etc. can go a long way toward making buck and eddie feel like themselves.

thank you again for asking me!! it's really really flattering. i hope this was of some help to you!!

[tossawary]

Everything surrounding Orihime's kidnapping in the Hueco Mundo arc of "Bleach" feels... weird and underwhelming to me. Like, I'm not fully certain what happened there. Did Ulquiorra hold those two random soul reaper escorts hostage until Orihime returned from saying her invisible goodbye, or was he just threatening her friends generally...?

The invisible goodbye thing has some interesting elements, but... I don't want to call Orihime a pushover for being threatened by genuinely scary people when she's feeling especially isolated, but it does seem to immediately and directly prove Urahara and others right when they said that Orihime is probably unsuited for the battlefield. Even medical / support people have to triage and improvise under fire and work within a greater structure! She (fairly!) does not like weighing lives!

(Though I do think that Urahara and others were very wrong to just tell Orihime to go away. She has no family! All she has left are her friends! And she's too self-sacrificing to ever willingly leave for her own sake! It would have been far better to keep her close and let her train for a medical / support position, so that she wouldn't get kidnapped like this (and would have had the confidence to work out some way to get around Aizen's weird mind games), when Ichigo is fucking notorious now for going apeshit if anything happens to even distant friends.)

When Ulquiorra first appeared in that space between worlds for an ambush, I was like, "OH SHIT, THAT'S COOL." This place is famously dangerous and if she and her escort disappear without a trace here, no one will know what happened. Perhaps Ulquiorra can destabilize whatever safety technology exists here and make it look like some mechanical failure. It's clever! (It also made me imagine Ulquiorra as some kind of deep sea leviathan, cleverly feeding on the plus souls and hollows passing over this trench, where the soul reapers don't think to look. Ulquiorra potentially first meeting Aizen by attempting to ambush him and swallow him whole in this inbetween place would be a great first encounter.)

And then Ulquiorra lets Orihime go to say a weird invisible goodbye? As part of Aizen's mind games to make the Gotei 13 think she left on her own and her feel like this kidnapping was partially her own choice? Unless Ulquiorra was holding those soul reapers hostage at this point in time, I'm really not sure why Orihime went along with this instead of trying to get help (besides her obvious feelings of isolation / depression + plot requires she be the damsel in distress to kick-start the Hueco Mundo arc). (There's REASONING, I'm just not fully persuaded by it.) It feels a little overcomplicated for me on Aizen's end, especially when I haven't yet seen it be paired with any other charisma or compelling persuasion from Aizen, this supposed master manipulator, when Orihime has plenty of buttons to press besides fear.

"Soul Society is broken and doesn't care for the poor people on the outside." "The Gotei 13 are corrupt and will ungratefully turn on people like Ichigo and Rukia as soon as they're no longer useful." "Hollows are people too, aren't they? And the soul reapers don't bother trying to help the people who need them most." "The Soul King is a threat to us all and I'm the only one who can stop him." There are so many lies and half-truths that Aizen could tell! This could be a point in time to showcase how he got so many people to follow him besides spiritual strength, and him being apparently nice to a vulnerable Orihime would be genuinely eerie given what we saw / know happened to Momo.

And this "making the Gotei 13 think that Orihime left of her own choice" story decision could work if Aizen had done more to frame her! But the fact that the Captain Commander immediately makes this assumption with so little evidence makes him look incompetent, when there are so many people who could immediately vouch for her and for the fact that it's way more likely she's been forced into something bad. Of course, maybe the story's point is to make the Captain Commander look bad at reading situations! Rather than simply ruthless for dismissing Orihime as lost and irrelevant. That gets a slight pass, I guess, but it's really such a wild and insulting and unnecessary assumption.

I think what I would have preferred to happen is OPTION 1) Aizen or underling kidnaps Tatsuki first and uses Tatsuki to get to Orihime.

This would bring Tatsuki fully into this arc instead of sidelining her again. It would be a nice culmination to the secrecy straining her friendships with both Ichigo and Orihime, and a nice bop to Ichigo's nose for trying to protect everyone on his own and his utter failure communicating danger to his friends and family. We could have a lot of fun stuff with Orihime and Tatsuki trying to survive together in this place. It would give Orihime some fucking motivation that isn't just "trying to help Ichigo". It would allow Orihime to find her strength by protecting the friend she has always viewed as being tougher and more confident. I need more women in this show who aren't made of relentless boob jokes.

OPTION 2) I would have preferred it if Aizen had found some way to locate Orihime's brother, Sora, and kidnapped him from Soul Society to use against her.

Aizen is supposedly a genius. It would track with the rest of the story if he could invent this technology. It would make the Gotei 13 look really bad if they have a way of helping families reconnect in the afterlife and just don't bother; and it would look really bad for them if Soul Society had utterly failed to be a safe place for Orihime's loved one. If Aizen is interested in Orihime's powers, he would probably be interested in seeing if her brother has any similar potential.

Option 2a is that Sora could be a regular plus soul and remembers Orihime. Aizen could have been experimenting on him and could be threatening to continue experimenting on Sora. Maybe being a regular plus soul in Hueco Mundo without the protection of a soul reaper's cultivation energy is dangerous. The air is toxic to him. He'll undergo hollowficafion again without special medicine from Aizen / Aizen's experiments keeping him as a normal plus soul, and he's terrified of becoming that monster again. Aizen coaxes Orihime to help him by claiming he's trying to find a way to cure hollowfication forever, so that Sora will be safe.

Option 2b is that Sora has no memories of Orihime or they've been suppressed, and Aizen has turned Sora into an Arrancar. Aizen claims that Sora was left vulnerable and starving on the outskirts of the Soul Society, abandoned to become a hollow again, or attacked by a hollow and transformed. Aizen has now used the Hogyoku to take Sora back to a mostly human state and given him Arrancar powers to "protect himself". Sora is grateful to Aizen for having saved him and as loyal as Ulquiorra. Aizen asks Orihime if she's prepared to fight her own brother. Doesn't she want to help him help Sora?

Honestly, I dig Ulquiorra so far and I'd like to keep him (he and Sora could have a weird not-twins thing going on), but you could totally replace his role in the story with Arrancar Sora and then put Orihime through the ringer torn between Ichigo and Sora. It feels so, SO weird to me that Orihime's dead brother never comes up again in this show about dead people and the story barely treats it as relevant.

OPTION 3) is that you bring both Tatsuki and Sora into it! Why not? Have amnesiac Arrancar Sora kidnap Tatsuki while Ulquiorra ambushes Orihime! Have Aizen threatening to turn both Tatsuki and plus soul Sora into hollows if Orihime doesn't cooperate!

I am feeling desperate for Orihime to have anything in her life again that is not her love for Ichigo. They don't have chemistry! The story is not taking the time to develop chemistry and bonding and partnership between them! Ichigo barely seems to remember she exists half the time.

Side note: I can barely fucking believe that Ichigo went off to train with the Visored without telling his family that he was leaving or where he would be. That's not a great sign for good mental health or healthy relationships! Which is probably (hopefully) the point! He could be dead in any alleyway for all his baby sisters know. That's not good big brother behavior! Ichigo has a real problem with not trusting anyone else to protect everyone (not without reason!), including not trusting his loved ones to protect themselves, and I'm not certain yet whether or not the story actually thinks this is a real problem and intends to have Ichigo fix his communication bullshit.

There is so much good, bloody material here if the story was genuinely willing to dig into the mess and make it hurt good. Instead, I'm watching Nel and her little hollow buddies do their fairly repetitive hijinks and Ichigo fight random nobodies who will not be meaningful to the story later. When Rukia finally ran into Aaroneiro pretending to be Kaien, I was like, "Oh, thank fuck, something with SOME emotional weight and compelling psychological turmoil again."