#wow i was long over due an insane ramble

[blackbatcass]

If it’s okay could you recommend comics for the flash fam? I really want to start reading them but I have no idea where to start 😅

YES I ABSOLUTELY CAN ANON!! reading flashfam comics can change your life for the better fr, unlike batman comics which usually change your life for the worse. Flash comics are honestly very simple to get into? for the most part you can just pick which era you want to start with, hop on that mainline ongoing and read from there.

this got kind of ridiculously long (i ramble about flash sorry)

i am not by any means a well-read silver age fan so I'll just skip right over those LMAO. if you want to read barry's run i assume you can just read flash v1 up until crisis. if you're interested in reading wally as kid flash he's featured in backups throughout a lot of v1 iirc!

unsurprisingly, my number one rec for the flashfam would be the flash volume 2 (1987). it's got pretty much everything you need. it introduced the speed force, basically created what we think of as the flashfamily, reintroduced & created beloved characters, and built up wally into the loser we know and love today<3 at its core it's the story of wally's journey from the very start of his career as the flash, learning how to fill barry's shoes and be a grown-up. it starts when he's this insane cringe 20 year old loser and ends with him as a full adult who's married with two kids LOL. it does soooo much work for wally as a character it's unreal.

but to keep it real flash v2 is......very long. like Incredibly long. it is 200+ issues and ran for over 20 years. so i can break it down into some smaller pieces & try to provide a roadmap so it's maybe a little less intimidating

the bad news is that the first guy to start out on the run fucking HATED wally for some reason lmfao and it shows. it's painful to read. the good news is he only stayed for the first 14 issues lol so honestly you can just skip those and start at #15 where william messner-loebs took over. now......the messner-loebs era is also not perfect and can be a bit of a slog. I love it in the fond 'wow wtf was all that' kind of way but it is definitely not a masterpiece. there are a lot of unmemorable, bland (occasionally batshit & ridiculous) arcs and he introduces a whole army of mostly forgettable side characters. credit where credit is due there is a lot of good stuff in there, he set up some stuff that is foundational to flash lore (like LINDA!! and hartley!) but it's not for everyone. if you want you can jump in at #31, where wally moves to keystone, or if you read some of it and it's not for you it's honestly fine to just skip to #62 where waid's run begins. #62-65 are a flashback retelling of wally's origin story (basically flash year one) and it's sooo good. essential wally reading.

the waid run is definitely the best section of the comic. it's classic it's iconic it builds the flashfamily it creates the speedforce it introduces bart allen. it's phenomenal. if you are interested in characters like bart, the garricks, johnny & jesse quick, and max mercury they are all integrated into the flashfam over this run. if nothing else i would recommend reading this part. oh and SPEAKING of bart allen, he gets introduced in issue #92! he hangs out in flash for a bit, zero hour happens, and pretty soon after his impulse series starts in 1995.

this is my #2 flashfam rec! if you have been in these tumblr circles at all then you've heard us rave about impulse 1995. it's simply Thee comic of all time. everyone on earth needs to read it im not kidding. it follows bart's life living with max mercury and his daughter helen, trying to adjust to normal life in the past. it's just. it's the best. it's 89 issues long, but honestly it goes by SUPER fast. i would recommend doing what i did and reading impulse and flash in parallel, just to get that organic experience & context. they cross over several times until impulse eventually ends.

ok back to flash v2. once geoff johns takes over..... i mean i won't say it ruins the comic and there is definitely stuff worth reading but i love waid infinitely better. it's really up to you. waid also comes back now and then to write a few chunks.

the flash series doesn't end until 2008. the next big thing after would be flash: rebirth, which. i am not a fan of for obvious reasons (get back in that coffin barry) but it's essential to understanding the plot so i have to include it lol.

i honest to god have no idea wtf was going on during flashpoint & new52. I will not pretend to understand that era. however if you are interested in the modern flashfam & the introduction of characters like ace west and avery ho, there are a couple good places to start! if you want to read williamson's run, you can start at the rebirth flash run (flash v5 #1). wally is eventually reintroduced (thank god) during this run.

if you want to start at the jeremy adams run (which features lots of members of the flashfamily) you can start at flash #768, which runs all the way to #800.

I would personally recommend the current flash ongoing written by si spurrier! it is kind of a lot and I'm in the minority in my love for it but it's interesting, thoughtful, has a role for pretty much every character, and has a lot of really cool cosmic horror elements. i will concede that it is VERY complicated and technical but you can tell spurrier has things to say and honestly it's so rare that a comic makes me think these days that i'm eating it up.

there were also two recent flashfam miniseries that just finished, speed force and jay garrick: the flash! i enjoyed both. they're short and fun.

aaaand that's my list! it is by no means comprehensive and it is very possible i got some things wrong so I apologize in advance. if you have any more questions I will be happy to try and answer them. I hope this was at least a little bit helpful and not even more confusing lol!

[lukevonhagen]

my take on marius von hagen: part one, his approach to romance

marius has been with me for over a year now and he pretty much occupies my thoughts 24/7, and this was something i have been itching to write for a while. so... strap in, grab your juice box and your cheetos and let's get this show on the road yeah?

Fair Warning, this will not be under a read more, so i apologize in advance if it gets pretty lengthy. (edit: this post is abt 1.8k words long, wow sorry lol.)

this is going to be a character analysis... sort of; it's an analysis of the version of marius that lives in my brain rent free. given that this is an introductory post to what i believe might be a series of my insane marius ramblings, i think i should provide some insight as to what said marius is like in order for the rest of this post to make sense.

first of all, i embrace realism and i reject canon. in marius' sweet wonders card, he finally reveals the significance of the z dog tag he's always wearing. while i think it's really magical that he was able to move on from blaming himself for his mother's death by having an epiphany staring at the ferris wheel... well, i like to make him worse and i just don't think, ultimately, that it's likely or realistic. the marius in my head has a very hard time trying to justify his own existence. i'm not saying he doesn't want to live, or that he'd put himself in any kind of danger, but i believe that he works very hard in order to justify being alive (to himself). not only does he still grapple with the loss of his mother and the role he believes he had to play in that, but there's a part of him that also blames himself for giann's disappearance.

marius believes that he is a vortex that sucks in everything, that destroys everything in its wake. we know for a fact, above all else, that marius doesn't want other people to have to go down with him.

i also believe (especially due to this description) that marius personally manufactured the image he has as a playboy, as opposed to it being a reputation that was given by others which he eventually leaned into.

allow me to elaborate.

marius, in his desire to avoid people being chewed up in his life and spat back out, would want to control the situation as much as possible. there are a few reasons why i believe he'd make this reputation for himself, which are 1) having control of the narrative of himself and making sure people do underestimate him is precisely how he maintains the upper hand in many scenarios (because let's face it, no one expects ditzy, arrogant marius von hagen to be able to outsmart them), and 2) it's much easier to push people away when he makes himself seem incompetent and undesirable. he may be one of the richest men on the planet, but sometimes money isn't enough to redeem an awful composition.

all of that having been said, marius additionally has to have severe trust issues due to the fact that he has a lot of influence and wealth people undoubtably want to use him for, and said influence is the source of a traumatic experience he went through as a child that would forever change the way he'd interact with others in the future. if you remember, marius vaguely alludes to an incident in will of the trees.

he mentions it again in the card in the darkness when he and rosa get trapped in a dark cave and he begins to panic, only this time he's a little more detailed about what happened to him in order to explain his anxiety to her.

then, he actually gives the details of what happened in his personal story.

mc remembers the hints marius had dropped to her a couple of times regarding this incident, so she then asks:

i don't believe marius actually blamed himself for his mother until this was said about him. his mother is the root of all things; he thinks that if he was never born, she would have never died, and perhaps she and giann would still be around and would be happy and healthy. he convinces himself that his existence destroyed his family. the stress of his feelings and anxiety makes him extremely sick as a kid.

all of this was too much for a young marius; now, remember when i said that i reject canon? that's important, because i don't think he ever properly recovered from this episode. i fully believe that marius does need and should go to therapy as an adult, and hasn't done so. my headcanon as to why he didn't, and why he gives off the impression that he's fine now and everything is fine now, is because he wised up and realized that he was being a burden on others and his mother's death would be in vain if he did so.

marius, tired of being a strain on the people he loves, pretends to be mentally sound to avoid his father and brother worrying about him. the way he chooses to cope with this is to disassociate himself with these events that happened to him, to the point where he talks about them like it wasn't him personally that experienced it. (i might touch upon this again in a future post if it becomes relevant.) he can't let others know that things bother him, because it can be weaponized; it would make him look weak, and the last thing he wants is anyone worrying about him but himself, or anyone to take advantage of that weakness. consider this as a strategy he adopted from the "conceal, don't feel" philosophy.

that having been said, a personal acceptance to "get over it" to stop feeling like he needs an emotional babysitter in his relatives =/= a lack of resentment towards others for how that was handled. marius nearly died due to the cruelty of a jealous relative, and his family was right in trying to protect him (as burdensome as he feels he may is), and he learns pretty quickly that he cannot trust others.

he still is one of the most influential people alive, and that means there's going to be a slew of people walking in and out of the revolving door leading into his life that are going to want to take advantage of that fact. it also goes beyond just people wanting to manipulate him, but he doesn't enjoy playing along in this circus of social hierarchy, and doesn't enjoy the people hanging around in these spaces. because they're ingenuine, they have no merit to him, and quite simply put he's looking to fill his life with color and sincerity.

i propose that... in order to consider a romantic relationship with someone, despite how much he longs for one, he would need to deeply get to know the person first and it would take a significant time to do so... and i know what you're thinking, it's just like a regular relationship, right? getting to know someone before deciding if you want to be with them? except, to marius, this is extreme; this social sphere he occupies has effectively chewed him up and spat him back out, because he's at the top of the top. his father is the wealthiest man in the world. marius by virtue of being a von hagen is essentially on the same level as royalty, and his family name is not enough to protect him. he has to be sharp, and he needs to be alert and constantly on guard.

he'd have no idea what someone's intentions may be with him when he meets them and he knows better than to blindly trust a person's seemingly apparent good faith, but also... he's so worried about dragging people down that he'd be almost afraid to consider it. it isn't enough that people want to use and abuse him to their hearts' content, but they'd try to tear up anyone else who went in there with him, and marius would be afraid of that outcome. he's already ruined the lives of his mother and his brother in his failure to protect them from the circumstances that removed them from his life. he would be unwilling to cause someone else he cares about to be put in the same situation, and he wouldn't be able to bear it if they also ended up abandoning him.

all of that leads me to say: i believe he would be more scared and avoidant upon realizing he was falling in love with someone, rather than immediately trying to pursue it with all he's got like he would his other endeavors.

the reason? it's so simple to pursue art. art is an arbitrary passion of his that doesn't impede on anyone else but himself, nor is it influenced by any outside forces; marius has full control over it. the same goes for his company; no one is going to sit there and hold his hand with his newfound ceo duties. he's always been capable of pursuing things on his own. romance is different; romance involves putting his young and fragile heart on the line to go after a whole other independent and outside entity not knowing whether or not he's going to face rejection.

eventually, i believe he'll completely learn to get over the hurdle, but in the interest of transparency... i think he's going to need a nudge from the other person first. a sign it's reciprocated, before he has to put his heart on ice.

i think it's on brand for marius to be a tease when you meet him; it is a genuine facet of his personality, but it's also something that feeds well into his reputation. he's assuming that people are going to know exactly who he is when he runs into them on the street, so he doesn't even bother dropping his pretense. but, i do think that extends... he doesn't drop that mask right away, it takes months and months, and lots of patience and understanding in order to unravel the mystery that is marius von hagen. he's going to want to gauge whether or not it's something he wants to commit to, and if it is, he's going to have to be prepared to unpack all that baggage. he would have to believe that this is going to be a happy ending for him, that his fairytale won't be a tragedy, in order to see a path forward. once marius goes into something, he doesn't step out.

so, he won't put up that much of a fight if he starts to fall in love with you, but that doesn't mean he would be eager make that leap of faith without getting a hint that there will be a safety net ready to catch him when he falls.

[legitimatesatanspawn]

How many heroes are there in Hero Academia's Japan? No, seriously. How many?

Math time~! (it's 1 am why am I doing this.)

We know of... (checks notes) 8 named schools, 3 of which are anime-only. U.A. High alone has 40 hero students per year (assuming two full classes AIZAWA) and that doesn't get into other departments having students get hero licenses too.

Let's go with the idea of just the 8 schools just to show how insane this is, even setting aside the possibility that there's more (or at least one per prefecture). 8 schools, for sake of simplicity let's say they have the same number of hero course homerooms and students and while I doubt it let's go with the idea that they all get their licenses. So 8 times 40 = 320 students in one year including UA.

320 new heroes to compete with, not counting all the pre-existing heroes or people from other countries.

Placing "keep reading" here because it got long and rambling but basically "WHERE ARE ALL THE HEROES?!". "In this essay I will.." is a threat and a promise with me, so read on if you want to.

This doesn't get into independently trained heroes getting licenses, or any school with a 'minor' heroics education, or a school that spams out larger numbers in place of a supposed quality education. Or if there is indeed a school per prefecture to make it easier on would-be heroes to train near where they live.

And this doesn't get into the… let's say 40 years worth of heroes already trained and working? Including All Might. All Might and characters like Gran Torino and Recovery Girl are likely outliers to how long a hero can stay a hero whether by burnout/overwork, injury/death, or retirement.

Guess work time:

Let's assume that most heroes only do 20 years tops due to the high stress and risk of the job, 30 if they're more 'paperwork heroes' (research/management) or the PR-main ones like Uwabami.

Let's assume that 5% of each class quits/dies in year 1 of their job because it's more dangerous then they expected or there was a slip-up. Numbers might go up for some schools and numbers might go down for others but 5% is a good even number for the schools as that's 1 hero per homeroom.

10% more might quit/die within 5 years. That's another 2 per homeroom. Normally I'd say more but I can't think of how many would bail on average. 5 years is enough time to go "wow it's not just me, this job sucks". But we can say they keep at it for the sunk cost fallacy.

We know the fandom-popular teachers are about 30 so that's 15 years on the job. So another 5 for injuries or deciding to finally hang up the hat seems about right to me. All Might is an outlier. Recovery Girl is an outlier. I don't know why Torino is still in the game but he too is an outlier even assuming he's not as old as he looks. (I mathed his age before and decided he was around 72-77 years old by canon era. Which is past retirement age for a lot of jobs.)

ANYWAY

Upward max of 12800 heroes total who graduated from the 8 schools over 40 years. Not getting into heroes coming from other countries or going to other countries.

Halve that for the 20 year typical max, add in... 17% of the other half for everyone still working past 20 years. And don't forget to take out the 15% for heroes lost during years 1-5. So total heroes currently running would be at 5568 just from the known schools. (Jesus.)

and that's before all the stuff with the plot from Izuku's entry onward.

I still wanna know how the rankings work and where everyone is on it. How they calculate it. I want to know where Nedzu falls on the JP board. But I'll never know.

And... how many heroes quit when the plot really went going? When they lost All Might as a safety net and buffer? When heroes were being blamed?

Even if it's just 1% of the remainder, that's 56 heroes. if it's 10% that's 557. Either a small but noticeable chunk or a VERY BIG chunk. All these people who said "I'm not paid enough for this" which... fair, you get to say when it's enough, but also? Literally your job you chose? Not so much fighting terrorists though but you do fight people under the assumption that their crimes (real or assumed) are a form of terrorism (I'll never get over Kamui Woods claiming a giant jaywalker blocking traffic was "pure evil" I MEAN REALLY and with like 5 heroes chomping at the bit to fight him? definitely too many heroes running around).

And now teenagers are being conscripted to make up for the numbers. Where's all the adults who while they don't have hero training could still fill the position? Is this because civilians are constantly shown as being either in need of protection or in need of being stopped?

yet we don't see any of the other numbers in any of the fights. We also don't see any other schools in any of the fights. AND we know that some of them turned out to be villains - or rather sided with the enemy faction.

This shows why I hate it sometimes when I overthink a setting! Where are the other heroes?!

[astridspeckles]

Random thoughts and ramblings about the amazing film Nimona! Warning this is a huge tangent and does talk about spoilers for the movie and a bit of spoilers about the graphic novel (that I haven't read since my copy hasn't arrived yet) also I've tried to write this post like 3 times but it keeps breaking so oof.

Kudos to the creator ND Stevenson who I swear is a massive source of creativinies that I would absorb like a sponge if I had the energy to because everything they're apart of is something I feel like I'd adore if if I took the plunge. Also he identifies as enby transmasc (which, I am too, and I didn't realize how huge of a blow it was to realize that people like me exist). I really ought to look into She-ra and their other works at some point. Anyway, anyway, anyway - this is about Nimona!

I love that this obviously queer movie decided to be release during the later stage of June aka "Pride Month" because I feel like it gives people the chance to watch it with fresh eyes during July, which is Disabled Pride Month (I'm Australian so it isn't really a thing here as far as im aware sadly) which Ballister is such a fantastic and amazing character who is gay and disabled.

He is never portrayed as weak or lesser for his disability, I imagine for people that it'll actually be easy to forget that he is disabled as an amputee with how capable he's written. I feel like it might just go over peoples heads at some point because you never get to see stuff written so well unless if its poking you with it every few episodes or its extremely obvious at a glance. But with Ballister it 'just is who he is' and it moves on to focus on its plot like it has from the beginning.

And its never used as a plot set back or change the storybeat or anything of that sort of matter. Which is amazing. However it isn't just ignored either! He has a moment of weakness when he sees Ambroius again. He hesitates, he withdraws from reach out to him while looking at his arm (Oh, Nemesis!). It is still fresh and new and he's trying to handle it (you're doing great sweetie).

I'm not physically disabled (I do have a weak knee however) but a mentally disabled and experience fatigue constantly and I'm sure I'd have chronic pains if I didn't have a high pain tolerance. So while this sort of character isn't someone I can directly relate to it is someone I can connect with (Although I don't believe you need to be the same as something in order to connect/relate to it).

However I am at home a lot and I don't get exposed much to other people and that includes a lot of people with other cultures, beliefs, body types and disabilities. So being able to see people different than me on the screen is always awesome, and being able to connect with them is too. Which the Queen, Nimona and Ballister is fantastic for everyone and hopefully the Director will give the other sort of audience of this movie a time to think back and work through things.

But I haven't seen many disabled people in media, because I don't really have the energy to engage with much content for long. So I have a limited selection of characters who seem like fantastic representation - because while yes Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender is fantastic she has literal superpowers compared to the every day person so I love and praise how she's handled because everything she does is fantastic-

Seeing Ballister's strong and dedicated personality which still has that life to it made me instantly feel for him along side Hiccup from How to Train your Dragon (And before you ask - no, AstridSpeckles is not due to HTTYD, its inspired from Zelda actually!) And I just love how it was all written and displayed. In HTTYD it was to connect Toothless and Hiccup together in a beautiful narrative. Here they used his arm to make a beautiful narrative too - he uses it, constantly.

He fixes his arm with just one hand which is insane because its also his non dominant hand which wow thats amazing. And he doesn't shy away from using his arm for anything, he still touches people with it, still wields things with as much confidence as ever to do so. He reaches out to Nimona with it too in that scene. Also Ambroius reaches out to hold his hand in that scene too! So tenderly and without hesitation! Which if it was another case with other characters I reckon I'd be a little upset but you see how much they love eachother and how gentle and tactile and soft they are so it is just so beautiful to see here...

Also I don't really know where else to put this but since im on a tangent about Ballister ima just say it here. He is such a fantastic knight! He knew the moment his sword was handed to him that it was off. He knew it didnt feel right, the weight was wrong? Or it just felt off? He knows his sword. He knows his morals. He knows what he has to do to make things right. He never betrayed himself ever!

Also the eye sparkles change. At the start their diamonds, but Ballister's turns into squares as he gets more exposed to different views where Ambroius turns into a triangle as his views are being pulled (the director whispering in his hear, his own heart, and his love for Ballister).

Also he too is a fantastic knight! His life falling apart? Never lashes out. Never hurts those around him (Okay, cutting off an arm isn't a love language.) So yes that is a case where he did hurt someone but that is addressed in its own ways.

But he never hurts or lashes out at the people he's protecting. He could easily just take it out on them, stop caring, fall into a pit of despair at his own problems. But you actively see him dealing with this own issues and then instantly being a knight the next scene and he doesn't falter or fall.

He is also so strong and I love that he had these moments, would of liked some more though but he isn't a main character like Nimona and Ballister so I understand why he didn't.

Also back to Ballister for a moment because the moment he heard Nimona's not really handling the things she's carrying, that she was able to tell him about her most vulnerable, scary and intrusive thoughts after knowing him for so little, that his thoughts in an instant was to get her the hell out of there and go with her.

He would try to work things out with Ambroius I believe, but he saw the hurt of Nimona who he hasn't known that long over the love of his life and said this is my priority. That would be so hard for anyone to do, for example a parent knowing their child is queer and the other parent not accepting them - there are cases where the parents stay together because its too hard for them not too, and lose the kid or kick the kid out.

The fact Ballister in a heartbeat acted accordingly to keep this new precious person in his life to abandon (like they did to him) without hesitation is absolutely insane and I love it so much. Also that it wasn't a move out of malice or defiance. It could of easily of been written differently that they need to protect her and they have to leave right now. But no. He took action (he always takes actions!) and while he lingered on Ambroius, it wasnt hesitation. It wasn't to hurt Ambroius either. He put Nimona being at risk first.

So I've actually been aware of Nimona for a few years now. I've heard about its ups and downs and its eventually cancel to its amazing revival! But I was watching it as a passive observer, never interacting with it because I know I hyper-fixate, I didn't want too get invested and attached and because off the rollercoaster of it not coming to the big screen while being in the fandom at that time (im sorry you are all so much stronger than I am haha!)

However, it is alive and amazing! And I'm finally here in the fandom - I've finally watched it - I've finally decided to order the graphic novel like I planned to back during its first movie announcement so I can quote "Enjoy the movie and then read the book since the books are always better", so I can love both as much as I can, yknow?

From what I've discovered reading online here and there so far (and its likely that this is wrong so take this with a grain of salt since I haven't gotten my graphic novel yet) that apparently that the movie is leaps and bounds improved compared to the graphic novel (Note: Not better, improved.)

Improved origin stories, improved personalities, improved characterizations. So much of the voice actors provide life and inspiration to these characters bringing them to a level that the graphic novels didn't have the resource to do.

I also love how people also aren't going crazy (negatively) about the change of races to the characters - im so used to seeing discourse about this sort of thing but its so accepted here that it is so refreshing to see.

The graphic novel has a larger and looser timeline and I believe a darker story and not as much as a happy ending compared to the movie. I can't wait to read the graphic novel though it looks very interesting!

But the ending of the movie implies such a happier ending for everyone, since apparently I've seen that in the graphic novel Nimona visits Ballister while being shapeshifted as a nurse while he is in hospital and he caught on too late after she says goodbye and he never sees her again and is constantly reminded of her when she sees people with her hair colour and that is so bittersweet!

The fact we get her coming to him at the end with him going HOLY SHIT is because it is saying here that it doesn't end with that note. They are together still. And I really hope something more comes out after this because I need to see a bit more to know what is happening there.

I had written a lot more here but my post keeps breaking and doing ctrl+z is making me lose entire paragraphs and gifs I put in as text breakers so I'm gonna leave this here or maybe do another post when I end up reading the graphic novel, who knows. But yes. I love Nimona :D

[sixosix]

I know it's been a while since Sleight of Hand was posted but I wanna ramble about something I noticed during a recent reread now that I have knowledge of 4.1 quests.

The raw panic he has when he catches up to the reader makes me think that it falls in line with how he acted in the fortress in regard to Freminet and Lynette: his family. Which is insane considering the short amount of time they know each other as compared to his family. This guy falls in love so fast and hard that he is the world record holder for those categories by a vast margin.

In both situations is the fact he is losing someone close, someone important; granted he is losing them in different ways. His family and the person he loves. Both times he is not composed/ hiding behind his act (or just barely) and is (or at least appears) to be almost single-minded driven to get them back. With his family, he was absolutely willing to go up against the Duke to fight for them back (granted he could have just accepted the deal to contact the Knave but that's a whole different thing about Lyney shhhh) and with reader he ran frantically across the city just for the slim chance he may be able to make it before they leave. That uncertainty/unclear target to focus on (unlike the duke who he could focus on fighting/stopping/convincing, not to mention he may be in a mission mindset as well) may even be a reason why he is so panicked and frantic as compared to what happens in the Fortress. Not to mention the whole falling in love thing prob isn't something he does often, so that's a whole new variable thrown into the equation.

Not only does this new connection make me giggle because wow look at this man speed run falling in love but also makes me wonder what his thoughts could have been when he found the empty room and even as he was trying to catch reader before it was too late. He is smart, so he absolutely figured out the truth but was his first thought wildly off course? Did he assume the worst(hurt in some way) due to what he had seen as part of the Fatui and his past? Did he have an instant rush of relief knowing he made it in time? Was he even calm enough to try to string together a few ideas of what to do if he made it as he was running? Or did he come tunnel-focused with the singular goal of just 'find them'? It's interesting to think about.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

i havent played the latest archon quest myself and only learned the lore secondhand so i havent rlly thought about it? honestly i wrote that long fic barely knowing ANYTHING about lyney and how he handles situations—it felt like i was just guessing everything and my only clues were a dialogue or two LMFAO

but this is so interesting to think about!!! my intention with ‘ lyney visiting an empty room ‘ was that he walks in there like a kicked puppy and comes out frantic and wild. he is very smart and hes definitely remembered you insisting that you never planned on staying so he pieced it together immediately

and yes youre ABSOLUTELY right. the reason why hes so frantic and all over the place when he caught up to you was because he didnt even know if you were still there, if he didnt make it in time. the entire time he was thinking ‘no no no please’ he was not at all calm while running lol. his mind would have most likely blanked when he saw you still there and he couldve just dropped on the floor in relief

“the whole falling in love thing prob isnt something he does often” YEAH EXACTLY!!! i see lyney as a romantic but in that fic i like to think hes never been infatuated in that way ever before and it snowballed into something wayyy more when u started getting close

ITS SO JNTERESTING to think abouut the connections youve made WOW thank you so so much for sharing im always down to hear your thoughts!!!!

[cubedmango]

NAINAAAA OH MY GOD?(:&:?:& I’M DJD YOUUUUUUU !!!!!!! I’m so sorry I don’t want this entire ask to be pure nonsense so I’m gonna pick up every single one of the million pieces I just exploded into, off of the floor and try and function,,, can I just say you needed to add a warning to that post because I genuinely yelled so loud I felt sharp burn in my chest afterwards WHYY WOULD YOU DO THIS😭😭 KUROSAWA CRYING,, THE BREAKFAST NOTEJNSJS ADACHI AND THEIR LITTLE GIRL CUDDLED UP,,, THE RING,, THE CHERRY!!PYJAMAS I’M FUCKFNFJF oh man. Oh God. Wow you… bless you… you wonderful miracle working legend… like I need you to understand so clearly when I say that my heart took a nose dive upon glancing at that art like my deeply heartfelt love for your art aside the fact that you put it into a perfect visual form with our la sweethearts like I actually can’t move on?? I saw it earlier today and have been racking my brain trying to find ways to properly emote the groundbreaking shift that took place within my soul like. Every so often (every 10 minutes) mind would drift back to Them and I’d have to grab onto the nearest wall to steady myself I’ve officially Lost it. Like thank me? THANK /YOU/ 6473683 times over😭😭😭<333333 I feel like I felt the warm rays of the spring sunshine after a 12 month long winter like truly I’m not sure how but I’m gonna have to join you sensei is gonna receive a mental transmission from me every day onwards BEGGING for this progression it could fix me in so many ways nothing else ever could I just know it…

(other ask below for length)

The ask was getting so long I’m sorry😭 (you Broke Me) BUT your tags had my heart aching because I didn’t even think about that but you’re sooo right like it’s clear that a lot of kurosawa’s unrealistic expectations for himself were ingrained into him through his mother and what she actually expected of him growing up and that manifesting into fears of fatherhood and making the same mistakes is,,,, (had to stop to forcefully regulate my breathing pattern here out of sheer pain) like it’s a perfect next life stage arc that stays true to his character. Plus the whole contrast with adachi being naturally adept and comfortable with fatherhood due to /his/steadfast upbringing and being able to talk things through with kurosawa and help him understand that yeah there’s no such thing as The Perfect Parent™️ but you do just have to learn as you go, while taking into account to be mindful of not making the same mistakes as your own parents but at the end of the day the goal is to create that loving, supportive and consistent environment which he’s more than capable of doing like oh GOD I could eat rocks by the spoonful right now sensei PLEASE,,, I’m gonna stop rambling before every single thought floods out but once again THANK YOU SOOO MUCH for the Kurodachi brain food I’m gonna think about it an insanely unhealthy amount,,, I hope your day was loveliest it could be <333

PLS ANON IM CRYING SM these asks made my day pls im eating up all ur thoughts instantly (and weeps thank u im glad u liked the doodles 🥹) im so unwell abt kurodadchis rn so ty again for putting them in my brain !!!!!

also everything u said abt them talking the possibility out and accepting that they might not be perfect parents but they can actively try to do better and theyre 100% capable of that is just . aaauagGGHHGH i need sensei to make this happen w manga krdc like Right Now and then i need the drama crew to come back and give us a full s2 of this and then same w rd and then-

[miss-midnightt]

LITERALLY!!! Also, here, have uh, have, yes

Professor Hojo watches his experiments with a soft insane laugh, an unhinged stream of laughs escaped as he stared up at the chamber which contained the Jenova. His prized possession.

He shifted his gaze to Lock, a slight insane grin on his face before he turned back to the chamber.

"Hm.."

His daughter, Lock, was standing beside him, silently staring at Jenova, curious, and unaware of the terrible deeds behind it. The more she grew up, the more fascinated she became with Jenova, and the more she grew up, the more she wanted to learn and know everything her father had to teach her. She was currently under her father's metaphorical wing as an assistant researcher.

"That's Jenova, isn't it?"

She questioned, staring at it with a tilt of her head, a questioning look upon her face.

Not only was she the biological daughter to Hojo, but she was also the daughter to the last descendant of the angels, Starlight who had passed away decades ago due to Hojo killing her in cold blood. And because of that, Lock was now the last descendant of the angels, being experimented on every now and again due to her angel wings, but it didn't seem to bother her.

Hojo chuckled softly as she spoke, taking a small note of a notebook near him and writing down her comment.

"Indeed it is. One of the many experiments I am conducting, I am studying it's DNA and attempting to combine it with various living beings. If my thesis is correct, it would help advance science by a millennia."

Hojo's voice held a cold, scientific tone as he spoke of the subject-matter.

Lock scratched the back of her head with a small nod, giving a small shrug in response as her wings ruffled a little, causing a few feathers to fall to the ground.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask, why in the world did Dr. Hollander just.. kind of.. leave..? It's like, one day he's here, then he's suddenly gone. Why would he just get up and betray everyone? I mean, I knew he was a really shitty person, but seriously? Damn."

She had a tendency to ramble on about who the Hell knows what. She did this all the time, she talks about one topic and starts rambling about it for little to no reason. Sure, she had a really high intelligence, but she also had a short attention span and became fixated on certain things.

Hojo chuckled lightly and looked over at Lock's wings, taking in the sight of the feathers which fell. He didn't answer immediately, and just looked down at the ground for a few moments.

"Dr. Hollander.. he.. betrayed the company due to.. his disagreement with Shinra. I can only assume that he didn't approve of Shinra's way of business. Which really is.. quite strange, considering he was willing to do anything to obtain the funds to continue his research."

Lock furrowed her brows, shifting from one foot to another.

"It could very well be that the only reason why he stayed for as long as he did was to further his own research on duplication and cloning. And then when he finally made a breakthrough he left to do his own thing. Who knows."

She shrugged simply, folding her arms over her chest and leaning back against the wall.

"It's strange how the brain works."

Hojo nods in response, folding his arms over his chest as he thinks to himself.

"Indeed it is. The complexity of the mind is truly fascinating. We only understand a fraction of it."

Hojo spoke as he continued to take small notes as he spoke, glancing up to her wings one more time.

OMIGOD ITS SO GREAT U CAN REALLY SEE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LOCK AND HER DAD, AND WOW! SNDNIUSDIuBI SO GOOD

[petrosapian]

as a rom-com connoisseur, what does your ideal chapgone confession/getting together scene look like?

oh ho ho now that’s a question

So I think we all agree that it is Chapman who would have to make a move and confess, we the audience do not know what goes on in his head. Madeline is isn’t an omniscient narrator but she does have way more insight into pretty much every character except for Chapman. All we know about him is what he says and we all know he’s untrustworthy. I will take him at his word that for most of the show he was not attracted to Antigone. Dumb? yes but unfortunately the truth.

BUT Antigone has not done anything explicit on her part which I think is a bit of a flaw? The reason I refuse to believe Antigone’s crush won’t be a part of s4 is because she didnt confess and get any real closure and it was alluded to for the rest of the season bc she has moved on because she respects herself but it doesnt mean that’s it, feelings are gone bc that’s not how feelings work. She is over it, but if given the right circumstances where she is being recognized for the important person that she is, then it is not a waste of time anymore.

MY dream chapgone confession scene is a lil pie in the sky, im not a very good predictor but this would my personal fun time not necessarily good ask: fake dating

I want a fake dating episode. We are long over due for someone from Chapman’s past. Family. Former Co-worker. Ex. Someone he needs to impress so desperately. Cliche yes that the perfect man in a small town gets shown up by someone from his past but I trust the WO team to do it right. But that couldn’t even necessarily be the reason bitch could just need to be in a relationship to get money in a will. 

So Chapman needs someone to play his beloved significant other. Georgie finds him repulsive and isn’t single anyways. Rudyard could not convincingly play “In Love” if his life depended on it. Antigone is the only one left because Chapman does not want to go outside of Funn Funerals because of course not, Antigone to be a good playwright you really should venture a big part of acting

Alternatively it could also be a classic 90s romcom dare “Bet you can’t date the weird girl and make her prom queen material” except Chapman may be an ass but not in that way, he would approach Antigone and be like lets prove these people wrong and swindle Sid Marlow in the same move.

Naturally being in cahoots leads to love, it’s a hat trick, hiding a dead body, surviving a mine explosion, fake dating, the plots these two have had they are in it now. Chapman bring back his idiot lets join funeral home again, Antigone moves to reject, but he clarifies, it;snot for business, it’s for love, they’ve been through so much already, would it be so odd if they continue? Antigone hesitates, then vents her pining frustration and he gives some bizarre rousing speech, partially in french no less,she is still not so convinced but her feelings are stirred up again. Beth Eyre gets some insane soliloquy about how she has grown she is important and this fall back crux would be a misake(performed for Madeline) that fuels my personal anxiety spirals for years to come. She considers going to Rudyard and Georgie but she’s embarrassed. Who does does she turn to as her inner subconscious? The village hoodlums. she’s also considering leaving the island. They go on about how the notion of romance is nothing but a heteropatriarchal capitalism con sold to us by the industrial card and diamond complex. Antigone has a personal revelation that if she ever wants to at least try for a romance then she’ll have to grab for it when the opportunity presents itself and if it fails then it fails thats life

Chapman on the other hand turns to Rudyard and Georgie, why? because he’s a glutton for punishment Rudyard muses it wouldn’t be so bad to have Chapman to be a part of the family, they’ve softened up even more over the course of the season and Georgie is hesitant but does care for Antigone and doesn’t think it’s the end of the world. Jennifer is also there, offers to allow him to make another impassioned speech on the radio, this time he has had the added sensible touch of georgie and rudyard’s awful funn sensisbilities, Antigone hears it on the radio, knows this is (especially bc he uses a bunch of weird morbid references) she comes home and then they kiss :)

this really got away from me ihave no idea if itsin character i havent read this over but this is what ive got :)

[drakenology]

My Other Half. - Bokuto Kōtarō

warnings: smut, soft, passionate love making, fluff, angst?, best friends to lovers, maaaybe overstim?, praise, fem!reader, cunnilingus (a fancy word for pussy eating). just bokuto going all out to make you feel good.

Summary: Two childhood friends reunite after years of being separated to find old memories and new feelings of love.

Author’s Note: this is my first ever like fluffy piece. all my other work I feel has just been raunchy and I wanted to show yall my soft side. enjoy! <3

Bokuto Kotoro. A name you knew well. A name you knew since you were both kids playing in dirt together, running around and screaming without a care in the world. Two peas in a pod; like Peter Pan and Tinker Bell. It was a sad day when he moved away. Your only friend packed up and left for Tokyo, tears in his eyes as he sat in the backseat of his parents’ car. He waved goodbye through the glass window as the car drove away, a trail of his tears seeming to follow the car as it went. That was the last time you saw him.

When you turned twenty one, your birthday present was a small house in Japan. Some place rural and quiet to do your writing, a small creek flowing in your back yard. You packed up and left home, kissing your mother and father goodbye as you walked out the door. Maybe you’ll run into Bokuto? Hell, he probably won’t even recognize you. It’s been years after all.

You still hoped some how some way fate would bring you together again. You missed him like crazy. His laugh, his stupid jokes. That sparkle in his eyes when he saw you at school. The bear hugs he used to give when you scraped your knee playing with him at the park. It was crazy to assume he’d be waiting for you in Tokyo as if you were the only girl he’d ever meet or care to talk to.

He’s grown now, just about a year older than you. He could have a significant other by now. Your heart ached at the thought. Even though it was selfish to call dibs on a childhood crush who hasn’t seen you in over 10 years, you still hoped; prayed that he was waiting for you or at least remembered you.

When you arrive in your new home and settle in you decide to take the town. Surely you can make some friends, maybe even meet a guy while you’re out? You don’t bother to get all gussied up, walking outside your front door and walking to the nearest bar you can drink your inhibitions away in. The bar you found was small and smelled a bit like sweaty athletes and sake.

The atmosphere was lively despite the off putting smell, everyone was laughing and chatting aloud. The sounds of glasses clinking in celebration and jovial cheering filled the space. You smile softly at the sight of everyone having a great time and find a spot in a nice booth by the window.

The guys behind you must be where the sweaty smell was coming from, their clammering laughter pounding at your head. You try ignoring it until you hear a different yet familiar voice; boisterous and proud like a boy you once knew.

“Yo, Akaashi! Pass the ketchup man, I’m hungry!” He whined childishly, same as always. You turn around swiftly to see if the face matched the voice. Surely enough there he was sitting there, tall as a tree even when sitting in his seat.

God he got so handsome, his face definitely grew into his looks. Bokuto wasn’t a little boy anymore for sure. You stammer, looking between Bokuto and his messy haired friend sitting next to him and a few others. You go to say something only for your own anxiety to stop you, your heart fluttering in your chest in a new way you haven’t felt before.

Finally Bokuto’s eyes meet yours and you both sit there for a while just staring, as if each of you couldn’t believe you were seeing each other again after all this time in forever. Bokuto’s face crept into a smile; a familiar smile that melted your heart.

“Y/n-chan? Tell me you’re joking! I can’t believe it’s you!” Bokuto shouts over everyone’s conversation, leaping from his seat and running towards your booth. You’re still stuck there turned around looking like an owl gawking at the table behind you to realize what’s going on.

Bokuto practically lifts you from your seat and wraps you in one of his famous bear hugs, the ones that made you cry into his chest. As tradition called, you start sobbing into his shirt. Your arms wrap around his neck and pull him in tight almost to tell him not to let you go ever again.

“Hey hey hey.. why are you crying? Shit you’re gonna make me cry. Stop it.” Bokuto says into your shoulder, rubbing soothing circles into your back with his big hand.

“I-I’m sorry I just.. it’s been so long.” You admit, sniffling as he pulled away to wipe your face. You can’t help but get emotional at the sight of him.

“Geez, Y/N if you missed me just say that.” Bokuto teased, erupting into furious laughter at your flustered face.

“Oh shut up Bokuto!” You squeak, punching him in his side like the old days. Your usual banter made you two look at each other and laugh as if you two were the only ones in the bar, his friends staring at the the two of you as if you were insane.

“Uh Bokuto.. who is this woman?” The messy haired friend asked, looking about the most confused out of everyone.

“Huh? Oh! Sorry guys. This is Y/N Y/L/N. Other than Akaashi, she’s one my closest friends. Our moms were close so we were raised kinda like siblings.” Bokuto explained, nudging you to say hello.

You wave and introduce yourself, the everyone ooing and ahhing at you. Not to toot your horn but you were gorgeous. Even Bokuto couldn’t take his eyes off you.

He was thinking of how well you grew up, so stunning and so you. Bokuto remembers the little scar you had just above your eyebrow from tripping over and rock and smiles when he sees it, almost wanting to reach out and poke it like when he did when he was 10. He wonders if you remember that day.

You were playing pretend by the trees in the park, you were good and he was evil. You were chasing him and you tripped and fell, causing the evil doer act to shed away to make sure you were alright. You both made up a crazy story about your scar to your mother; which she never believed. Good times.

The rest of the night was spent catching up and talking like he wasn’t even with others originally. Everyone else eventually had gone home, Akaashi the last to go. He waved goodbye to you and Bokuto and drove home, you and Bokuto still sitting at the bar basking in each other’s company.

“Wow! So your parents got you a place here so you can work? Nice. And you live nearby too. So I can come and visit you and- sorry I’m rambling.” Bokuto says sheepishly, running his hands along the nape of his neck. You giggle, taking a sip of your drink.

“No no, you’re fine Bokuto. Of course you can visit. My house is your house.” You smile, Bokuto’s cheeks heating up as he blushed. You check the time and notice it was far too late and stand from your seat.

“It’s late, Kō, we should call it a night.” You say, grabbing your things. Bokuto smiles and stands up with a stretch of his limbs; relishing in his old nickname.

“Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

You two talk and talk all the way home, years of catching up to do feeling long over due. When you get to your home you almost feel sad that you’re about to depart from each other. It felt like you weren’t going to see him again. Bokuto pulls you into a hug, spinning you around a little. He laughs when you squeal and yell at him to put you down.

“Hey. I’ll come by tomorrow night so we can watch movies.” He declares, standing you on your feet.

“Hah. How do you know I won’t have plans, hm?” You teased, poking Bokuto’s forehead. It was a lot easier when you were younger since he was shorter than you back then. Boy sprouted like a palm tree.

“You just moved here. Besides. You know I’m your favorite.” Bokuto smirks, taking your hand and spinning you. You giggle and punch his shoulder lightly.

“As if, Kō. See ya tomorrow.”

A month goes by swiftly. Bokuto had been over to your house more often than you thought he’d be. You loved the time you spent together just goofing off and being big kids.

Your schedules worked perfectly together, his volleyball is usually done by the evening and your work is over just after him. Bokuto would pick you up from work with fast food waiting in the car for you both to eat together. Today was no different, the smell of fries greeting your hungry nose as you climb inside his car.

“Yo! How was your day, nerd?” Bokuto asks, fisting his fries into his mouth as you dig for yours.

“It was okay. I’m starving though.” You say, stuffing your face with your food.

You both sit in the car and eat for a while, Bokuto’s phone breaking your shared silence. You look down at where it rested in the cup holder and read the caller id. It was a girl. Bokuto answers the phone, sounding as if he didn’t want her to call him right at this moment.

“I’ll call you back. Bye.” He said, hanging up his phone and sitting it back in the cup holder. You couldn’t help but feel a little jealous, your heart sinking as your head makes up several sceanarios about who she was, what she meant to him.

You eat in silence, answering Bokuto’s yammering with no ambition. Bokuto’s so dumb he doesn’t even notice the difference in attitude as the call wasn’t as scandalous as you seemed. It was just some girl who was trying to get with Akaashi but was too afraid to say anything herself so she had asked Bokuto to set them up.

“My place or yours today?” He asked, sing songy and happy.

“Mine.” You say monotonously. Bokuto looks over at you and sees you’re not even facing him, your face stuck to the window as he drove off.

“Hey, what’s wrong? I smell?” Bokuto said, playfully smelling his armpits. You shake your head and insist it’s nothing and that you’ll get over it. But it wasn’t nothing, and you were pretty certain you weren’t going to get over it. Was that his girlfriend? Some random hook up looking for another round? It made you sick to your stomach thinking about it. You got out of the car when Bokuto parked, walking to your front door to unlock it as Bokuto followed behind you.

“I pick the movie out this time. I’ll be damned if you pick another chick flick out.” Bokuto says plopping on your couch and turning on the tv, making himself at home.

You sigh and walk into your room to change into something more comfortable, rolling your eyes as you hear Kōtarō yell about the movie starting. You walk out in shorts and a tank top since it was pretty hot inside and sit next to him, folding your arms.

Bokuto’s eating his snacks and talking through the whole movie since he’s seen it before. He always picks a movie he’s seen before so he can tell you the whole plot, forgetting that you could just watch the movie for that. You half laugh and sigh at all his mannerisms, your guard completely blocking him out from getting any closer to you.

“Is something wrong, Y/N? Seriously you’re being a little stand offish.” Bokuto says, a serious tone taking place. You scoffed, rolling your eyes to hide that you’re obviously upset by something.

“Nothing.” You snide.

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me. Somethin’s wrong. Don’t make me start guessing.” Bokuto says. You sigh.

“It’s so stupid.” You admit.

“How you feel isn’t stupid. Tell me what’s up.” He persisted, pausing the movie.

“I just- well.. I-How do I say this? I’m.. jealous?” You finally admit. Bokuto raises an eyebrow.

“Jealous? About what?”

“Well. I saw a girl call you and I-I just assumed it was your girlfriend so..”

“Wait what? I don’t have a girlfriend. And besides why would you care?” Bokuto further questions, his face nearing yours with a perplexed look on his face. You flush, turning your face away from his.

“I-I don’t know I just-“

“You’re in love with me, aren’t you Y/N?” Bokuto smirks, turning your head to face him with your chin. You blink up at him, embarrassed and flustered.

“I-um-I...” You stutter. You loved the idiot sitting next to you with all your heart. But to say it was a different story.

“Because I love you too. So say it back.” Bokuto declares. You freeze for a moment, almost unsure you heard what you just heard.

“R-Really?”

“I love you, Y/N. The moment I saw you again felt like...fate. It was like everything made sense again. I never realized how much tou meant to me until I left that day. You’re my other half.” He says to you so sweetly, his words stirring up emotions inside you that were aching to be let out. Your eyes sting as you choke back tears, clutching onto Bokuto’s hands.

“Kōtarō... I-I love you too. All those years felt so empty without you. And God I just wanted to kiss you that day at the bar and I-“

Bokuto stops you midsentence to pull his face into yours and kiss you hard, your heads bumping into each other a bit from the sudden movement. Passion flowed through the kiss, your mouths exploring each others for the very first time. You sigh, wrapping your arms around his neck as you go to straddle him.

Bokuto welcomes you onto his lap with ready hands, palms feeling every curve and divot of your body. Your need for each other grew with each kiss, mindlessly grinding against each other to feel closer. Every touch of his big hands made you feel alive, setting your body on fire. Bokuto starts to whine softly, his pants growing a tad bit tight at all the raw kissing. He pulled away, lips swollen and breathing uneven.

“I want you so badly. Can I-“ Bokuto goes to ask for consent, his nervousness making him struggle to find the words he’s looking for.

You shut him up with another kiss, already knowing what he wants to say as he lifts you up and carries you away. Starting in the kitchen he sits you on the counter as he takes off your top, your bare breasts popping out when the garment flies over your head and onto the floor. He’s never seen such gorgeous breasts before, he swore. Seeing you this way only made him long for you more, standing there dumb founded at the sight of your chest.

“W-Wow.” Bokuto gasps, taking both your breasts into his hands and oogling at them with love in his eyes. “So perfect.”

He takes one into his warm mouth, your body arching at the feeling and letting out a small whine. Music to his ears.

“Kō..” you sigh, closing your eyes as he suckled on your nipples.

His tongue slid over each hardened bud and looked up at you, studying your body language to learn it well. Without a word he slides off your shorts and pick you up again, hoisting you away to your bedroom after asking where it is.

Frantic kisses and breathless moans trail down the hall with a reach of the doorknob. You’re laid carefully onto the bed, Bokuto crawling on top of you without daring to pull his lips from yours just yet.

He could kiss you for hours. He could die right now and be completely content all because of this moment. Bokuto takes his hands and slides them down to the waist band of your panties, tugging them down to reveal your dripping core.

Bokuto teased his fingers along your slick folds, savoring the feeling of your wetness on his skin.

You let out the sweetest sounds he’s ever heard, urging him to draw more music from your lips. He crawls downwards towards your pussy, laying on his stomach and pulling your hips forward.

You gasp at the sudden feeling of his tongue parting your folds, mewling as you arch your back. His tongue worked its magic on you, sliding up to your clit to pay special attention to it. Breathless calls of his name fill the air, your hands grabbing fist fulls of the sheets as he fucked you with his tongue.

Your eyes roll back with every swipe of his tongue, relishing in the toe curling pleasure he gave you. That familiar knot started forming in the pit of your stomach, your moans increasing in volume as you near your orgasm. Bokuto must have sensed this and wrapped his plush lips around your throbbing clit, prodding his fingers at your weeping hole to fill you.

“Kō! I-I’m gonna cum!” You whine, your hands finding home in his hair and tugging lightly. Bokuto responded with a groan against your clit and a hook in his fingers, causing you to boil over without hesitation. Your thighs shake around his head, one hand covering your mouth to spare your neighbors the noise. Bokuto comes back up to kiss you, your slick coating his lips and chin. You taste your sweetness and kiss him with tongue, both of you sighing into each other.

“Wanna... be inside you.” Bokuto says breathlessly into the kiss, his dick aching to be let out of his pants.

You pull away and unbutton his jeans, Bokuto kicking them off onto the floor and pulling down his boxers. Your pussy throbbed at the sight of his dick, its sheer size enough to make you salivate. The way it swung a little when he took off his boxers, the prominent veins running along the shaft, its head blushing and leaking with precum. Bokuto had a gorgeous dick. You almost wanted to put it in your mouth but the heat of the moment called for a different hole to be filled.

Bokuto prods himself at your entrance and slowly slides inside you, inhaling sharply at the contact. You gasp at the dull stretch, feeling so full as you mewl uncontrollably. His hips roll slowly, thrusting deep inside your gummy walls as he rested his forehead onto yours. Your legs wrap around his waist, nails digging into the skin of his back as he picked up the pace.

“You feel so good, baby.” He spoke, kissing you gently to soothe you. You can feel him so deeply it almost brought a tear to your eye, his plunging movements sending your mind into a stupor.

He mummbled sweet praise against your neck, kissing the soft skin as he took you. A part of him wanted to go harder; really ruin that sweet face of yours and turn you into a lewd mess, but you mean more than that to him. This moment is nothing but pure love between two people who have known each other all their lives. You shriek as his hips start slamming into yours, back arching off the bed as your nipples pebbled against his chest.

“I-I love you, Bokuto.” You whine. Your eyes flash white, your vision becoming foggy as the mind boggling pleasure ripples through your body. You chant his name like a mantra, Bokuto mumbling how much he loves you as his hips do more of the talking. You feel him throb inside you, it becoming obvious he’s holding back so you can cum first. He’s rubbing circles into your clit as he pins your legs above your head. It all became so much so fast, your mewls spewing from your lips no longer caring who hears what.

“Let go for me, baby. C’mon..” He hums, nibbling on your neck. You scream, your tight cunny clenching down on his length as you cum for a second time that night. Bokuto rides out your orgasm, watching your body shake and shiver at the feeling of him sliding in and out of your weeping hole.

Bokuto doesn’t have time to think of where to cum, your walks sucking him in so well he loses all sense of control. He cums hot inside you, your pussy milking him for everything he had as he pants into your neck. You both stay in position for a while, looking at each other with love sick eyes. Bokuto rests himself on top of you, still nuzzled inside you as his cum leaks onto the sheets. You’re both out of breath, sitting in the high you both came to as you rub lazy circles into his back.

Nothing but pure love circulated the air as you rest together in bed, naked and vulnerable. You don’t say anything but soft I love yous to each other, gentle kisses on each others lips as you fell asleep in each other’s arms.

[makiema]

finally finished writing about how much stormbringer enhances the skk dynamic which was at a nascent stage in Fifteen and anticipates the developments which happen later and culminate in Dead Apple where the faith they have in each other is absolutely remarkable! the fact that i said i’d do this in a few hours yesterday but it took me like 24 hrs to finish i have an attention span of a whole 2 minutes 💀

my favorite thing about stormbringer is that it actually builds up on the concepts/themes introduced in Fifteen so it's a glimpse into what has changed in dazai and dazai & dhuuya after one year of being together. As much as it's about chuuya confronting his past and his identity this is also about dazai’s development from who he was in fifteen. chuuya and rimbaud both left their marks on dazai and in Stormbringer we see him, actually trying to emulate or follow in a sense a way of life, that chuuya and rimbaud represented. Stormbringer is not just about chuuya, abt his test of humanity, or he coming in terms with who or what he is. it's about dazai too. it's about dazai developing or at least attempting to develop what he calls “boyish”/ “ordinary” in Fifteen. its not about chuya having an identity crisis. in fact what we understand from Code 04's last section is that chuuya never considered it as his crisis and neither did dazai. so to dazai “saving chuuya is important, human or not doesn't matter” and when dazai gives chuuya time to think abt what the operation will cost him chuuya doesnt so much as flinch form his purpose. This goes on to show unlike verlaine he doesnt care about memory and certainly doesnt consider it as the only determinant of someone being human. He cares more abt yokohama and his friends and in that, in caring abt his “family”, he is just as human as the next person. whether he’s factually human or not comes secondary to his desire to save people. This is a message that the quality of being human has more to do with embodying human qualities or humanity than having memories and lineage. so yeah stormbringer is essentially about embracing humanity but this happens on 2 levels: both chuuya and dazai embrace humanity. Going back to the boyish or ordinary bit, im talking abt this segment:

here dazai is shocked because he assumed everyone “gangsta” and everyone crazy powerful delighted in homicide, in deliberately indulging in the macabre. but he is proved wrong. He logically concluded that anyone with power more than average and belonging to the underground would kill people and delight in that because it’s a given they lack any kind of moral understanding. To that end, they’d be exalted at the prospect of relentlessly shooting a dead body, mutilating it and dishonoring it. The mafia code (any general mafia code) works in a way where honor and death goes hand in hand. So only the lowest of the low would do that to a dying person, who even when faced with certain death is loyal to his own organisation. This really shows that even within the mafia dazai is the only person whos like the devil incarnate. So yeah dazai at this sate far lower than even a mafia member. But chuuya who actually embodiess the mafia code and is incredibly loyal to his organisation and “family” [ putting family in quotes bc he himself calls his friends family 🥺] ofc kicks the gun away. From dazai’s pov chuuya being as insanely powerful as he is should also do the same. But chuuya comes along and suggests that even enemies should be shown respect where it’s due. And that is what an ordinary person, oblivious to mafia life (mafia life as in waht dazai makes of it) thinks. So in undermining the binary between “ordinary” and “mafia” chuuya proves that being mafia doesnt necessarily mean selling your soul to the devil and giving up the last smidge of humanity. In fact by embodying qualities like compassion and kindness and mutual respect, you can make the mafia a better place for yourself and for the other members. Now in Stormbringer, we see how this affected dazai. here dazai is introduced as someone mercilessly killing to set up the channel. 

Now to expand the channel one would need to keep doing it right? To mercilessly kill ppl and stuff but instead what he does is hand the channel over to chuuya bc he knows chuuya wouldnt handle it like him. im not suggesting that dazai miraculously becomes v good or anything with dazai the key words is “try” or “to some extent” like in Fifteen when Chuuya asks “do u wanna live” he’s like “ not to that extent”. similarly its not to say he doesnt kill people anymore. it is that he tries to lessen the number of casualties by handing over one of the most troublesome channels to chuuya who would manage it in a much more humane way. That dazai draws from his friends/at least tries to is smth we’ll see again later on when he deals with akutagawa. He talks about odasaku and ofc its baffling to him that a mafia member as powerful as him would be taking acre of orphans. and dazai says but he cant afford to be that kind and proceeds to shoot akutagswa but again does so in a calculated way such that he doesnt end up killing him ( im NOT justifying dazai’s abuse not at all im just saying that its hard to believe he coincidentally knew the exact no of bullets that aku could block. and had odasaku’s words and his way of life not been in the back of his mind he could’ve ended up killing aku) coming back to chuuya and dazai we also see him avoiding further conversation on the jewelry channel thing as he says “leave that for now”. He does a similar thing again when mori brings up the concept of double suiciding with chuuya.

 Its a HUGE thing for him to digest that him suiciding would inevitably spell the doom for chuuya. this puts an unimaginable responsibility on him. And he avoids further discussion on this. Now we know dazai is the rambly type. Even in the most dire moments he goe son with his LOONG monologues so really he is the last person who’d avoid a conversation but he deliberately does it in these 2 instances because its hard for him to grasp these things. That he can go against his nature and do a conscientious thing by handing over one of the most grisly channels to chuuya (i dont think dazai’s nature is evil. Or even if it is, its a a social construct keeping in mind the war ravaged times or its mori’s construct because he does exploit dazai to the hilt. but dazai ofc thinks of himself as non-human, devious. perfectly devilish...etc.) And also the fact that someone as suicidal as him is actually responsible for the life of someone else is really too much to take in. a whole 10 seconds pause indicates just how much he was thrown off when mori opened his eyes to the reality of things: if he dies, chuuya inexorably dies as a consequence. also i dont think the “wow” here or the next bit :

is something jokey. if it was like haha double suicide with chuuya is the worst haha wanna do it w pretty lady kind of a deal. that pause would have been unnecessary. dazai’s immediate reaction would’ve been whining and shit. the use of “froze” too implies the gravity of the situation. so ofc what is “wow” is how much meaning his life has for someone else. and for some so much....better than him. and what is unacceptable is this sad, sad truth that his life (to which he ascribes no value) would be so inextricably linked with someone else’s and hold so much meaning to them. it is like when a suicidal person at the brink of suicide understanding his life is not his own. his life and death holds consequences for ppl surrounding him. so both of these are huge things to grasp and at both these times dazai is visibly shaken up so much so that he doesnt want to do his favorite thing- ramble in a condescending tone. smth he does in so many instances. this really is a testimony to the fact that things are changing in him. the redemption process has begun. he’s no longer the kind of maniac he was before he encountered chuuya. when zuko underwent his transition in atla he was so shaken up after one (1) right decision he had a fever. i think this is true for anyone who’s trying to change. change is after all a huge thing for everyone. ofc he’ll be unsettled. so anyways this is proof that he has indeed come a long way from being someone who revelled at the prospect of meaningless bloodshed.

now coming to the concept of love he assumes he’d get sick of love and die:

and that death is the singular goal worth chasing after because it makes you feel more alive/get a fuller picture of what living entails. but here he is erring by supposing love is something that’ll bore him/have no meaning. and it cant provide him that “something” he’s looking for. at this point he hasn’t loved so he doesnt know whether he’ll be sick of it or if it'll have no impact. And yet he’s morose and regretful. this is a kind of self-imposed constraint hes putting on himself. he cancels out the v idea of love because hes convinced it isnt worth it. he hasnt even been in love okay scratch being in love that sounds romantic and i really dont mean love in a romantic sense here...its just love. in general. any form is cool. anyway so dazai is not familiar with any kind of love. He is entirely alien to the concept. he doesnt even know what a friend/partner is so he doesnt know what love is. this is cleared out here when rimbaud confesses he did everything for paul and dazai is unconvinced:

chuuya ofc admonishes him and shuts him up for good, he says dazai has no right lookind down upon smth he doesnt understand. he doesnt understand friendship, love. or loyalty. or how important those feelings are at this point. now this situation is turned on its head in stormbringer. but before we go into that let’s look at the message rimbaud had for both of them. ik he specifically asks for chuuya to “live” but there’s purpose behind including both of them in the frame. it’s a message they should both take to heart. and at the end of it its implied both are changed after hearing it:

and in this message the first bit is for chuuya. what he says is basically memory doesn’t make u human... ”you are you” just a frame or not doesnt matter. and even if hes just a frame, he is still beautiful. beauty actually is a v important concept in literature starting right from Plato to Shakespeare. i’d not bring this here but because bsd is so deeply rooted in literature i feel like the reference to beauty, and later on to soul and even warmth and also the universal tone of this message carries some meaning. so the thing is  both Plato and Shakespeare were endorsed the idea of love as a force awakened in the world by beauty which then leads the soul to perfection. so humans and by extension, all life are beautiful frames that can inspire love. this concept is also there in Romantic poetry like Keats and Wordsworth all of them talked about loving beauty in nature and how that can elevate the body mind and soul. so essentially in telling this to chuuya what ehe basically means is that chuuya just by being him, by being a beautiful framework can inspire love and warmth in others and thats a great purpose! how much chuuya understands of this purpose with his one (1) braincell and his low self esteem is questionable but he gets some sense of belonging. now this is a two way relationship so ofc dazai has to be factored in. he comes in the next part: 

these are from 2 different translation so the disparity im sorry ;-; but anyway,  this last part abt the world being a cold place. then paul. then “warmth” is a message to dazai who’s been introduced to us as cold-hearted and having like no bearings of a human being. this is the reason why its important for both o f them to be there. now going back to chuuya being a beautiful framework, the framework can be beautiful in so far as its beauty is appreciate by someone and inspires warmth and love in someone. this again is the whole beauty/beholder nature/the romantic concept that is there in shakespeare and in Romantic poetry where both are a part of a codependent relationship. so what rimbaud implies here is that dazai can have that kind of a relationship with another person (chuuya) just like rimbaud had with paul which makes him warm and the world doesnt feel cold anymore. rimbaud has no regrets about what he did because. so the idea is that dazai and chuuya can share the same dynamic. also after this, the narrative says that their hearts are now changed and wont return to what they were before....and even their souls are refined in a way. but in Fifteen we dont have a concrete proof of how this happened bc the novel ends at this point. Instead, Stormbringer shows exactly how deep the impact of those words is: 

this is the third instance of dazai showing hesitation and once again this has to do with chuuya. the seed of the dynamic that rimbaud was talking about  is already germinating in him. his reactions, his fidgeting, his hesitancy, in response to chuuya’s situation is such a big contrast to his cocksure self when he’s conversing with adam and verlaine. after this of course we have: 

not only does he clearly express his concern but he gives chuuya 2 whole mins to make a decision and based on that he’s prepared to overturn the operation. the success rate of an alternative plan will ofc be lesser than the og one but that doesnt faze dazai. he’s ready to turn the tide for chuuya’s sake and if this is not development idk what is. just a year ago, he was someone to whom the concept of rimbaud going thru all that trouble for his friend was a lost concept. ironically enough, now he finds himself doing something that is along the same lines. he puts chuuya above his mission. to him, chuuya is more important than getting a satisfactory result. another bit that i wanna talk abt is that one controversial section where dazai says he’ll save chuuya, human or not, and then the justification is: 

i think a lot of people got mad bc of this and honestly at first glance i was peeved too. as a chuuya stan some of the shit dazai has done so far did rub me the wrong way. i love skk obv but still those were moments that kind of left a bad taste in the mouth. i’ll discuss them later on bc stormbringer helps allay that feeling. coming back to the “i wanna see chuuya suffer” part firstly context is important. ofc someone like dazai cant be expected to be upfront about his feelings with ppl (or AI) he barely knows. so what be relays to adam, is only partly true and its actually a kind of a twist in concept. the things is, and this is  smth dazai knows all too well is that ppl suffer simply on account of being human. human suffering is brought on because humans, by virtue of being humans, feel. so when he says he’s willing to acknowledge chuuya as human despite what N and Verlaine said he’s already admitting that chuuya suffers. so there is really nothing “new” to see for him. he knows chuuya suffers already and he does too because they’re both humans trying to make it thru their messed up lives. also chuuya “ceasing to be human” is a p huge concern for him bc he himself is like that. just like with the suicide thing, it bothers dazai when someone else shares his situation/his fate like as long as his life is his own, he has no problem ending it whenever but the situation is complicated when someone else’s life span is determined by that decision. and similarly, as long as he is “no longer human” its not that much of an issue because he’s like resigned to a doomed fate but someone like chuuya ceasing to be human or worse yet never getting to know if hes human or not are pressing matters. so anyways what he actually means here is that in saving chuuya, he saves someone who suffers just like he does and in their case, even the cause of suffering boils down to a shared psychological conflict: what essentially constitutes being human and if im human or not. now this sharing of pain and suffering is the foundation of forming a connection with someone, which makes life a little better. here again, what rimaud imparted to dazai and chuuya is driven home. also dazai’s key anxiety is not finding meaning/anything. this “anything” can be assumed to be something that justifies life. so all his anxiety and frustration stems from the fact that there really is no discernible meaning to be found in the mechanism of life. so it is an empty pursuit because it is true that nothing can explain why feelings of pain and suffering are exponentially heavier than feelings of happiness or why after getting to experience one (1) free day we’re back to square one where life is grueling. these are questions that really dont have an answer so every time dazai like gazes into the abyss and says he didnt  find anything, he is not so much asking if he’ll ever find anything as swallowing the hard truth that there is nothing to be found, no singular entity exists that can magically justify everything. again drawing upon literature or philosophy more specifically, there’s a concept called Absurdism which says the only philosophical truth so to say is this that life is absurd and looking for meaning is futile. instead what we can do is accept that it is absurd and deal with it in the best way possible, by finding little sources and moments of happiness, and strewing them together so we feel somewhat content. even if it is just for a fleeting second. and this happiness/contentment amidst a wretched life (altho temporal) can be found in friendship, in sharing, and even in having fun with people you’re comfortable with! this is actually why dazai wants to save chuuya and now it may seem like im interpreting his words through the shipping lens but thats not so and it can be corroborated by looking into dazai’s words to odasaku. after chuuya, dazai’s next attempt at friendship was odasaku who he found “interesting”. now when odasaku sort of like threw hands and chose death over having to live a life without the orphans, dazai tried to stop him not by saying stuff like life is good. and things will def change for the better. but instead he admits that living is hard and the sense of void is ubiquitous and yet he doesnt want him to  up and die because then he would be sad. because the little comfort that he got from odasaku and something he probably assumed odasaku also got from him would be gone. [how much odasaku considered dazai a source of comfort remains unclear. in fact the reason odasaku gave up and died was because he did not have this. this feeling of sharing in someone else’s suffering and seeking comfort in friends in the real world. instead he was too vested in his ideal world. his over reliance on an entirely idealistic concept is actually what pushed him over the edge. and this would have been the case for dazai too had he not encountered and sought comfort and companionship in chuuya and eventually in odasaku ] so this again goes on to show how rimbaud’s words changed dazai’s heart. and in a way dazai really has been doing this unconsciously form the v beginning like by teasing chuuya continually in Fifteen. you dont expect someone as cold as him to indulge in friendly bickering and taunting so often but he does. that there is significance and even happiness in that is something he learns over time, after rimbaud’s words to him. although these things seem futile on the surface they give a moment’s respite. so although chuuya spinning dazai on a rope in stormbringer might seem weird to everyone, they still serve a purpose:  

what shirase puts forward is particularly relevant here because neither dazai nor chuuya is fully aware of the extent of their feelings (or even what those feelings are like they dont know what label to put. so typical oblivious lovers) for each other or what they stand to gain just by driving each other nuts but there is something intangible but satisfying to be felt. a kind of contentment that helps him continue. one day at a time. there is no one great “thing” that can make him like wake up one day feeling like he doesnt want to die ever again. but again like i said before, the key word for dazai is “extent” so, these little things to some extent contribute to a sense of fulfilment which helps him keep death at bay. thats why he’s bent on saving chuuya bc he knows they can share in their suffering and make life better for each other. its not like he wants chuuya to suffer. chuuya will suffer nonetheless like every other human. but in suffering together there is something to be found so he doesnt want him to cease being human. 

this covers more or less the intertextuality between Stormbringer and Fifteen. i just wanna talk a bit more about a couple other moments in Stormbringer that i feel are p important because they put some things in the series in perspective and also made the dead apple moment 10x more emotional 🥺 one thing that really strikes me is the absolute fanon level of comfort that dazai and chuuya share in Strombringer. its like scenes form k-drama lol. 

so yeah this stuff. compare this with dazai’s reaction @atsushi when he drops im not saying that its not just a joke and that what im saying should be the right way to look at this contrast. its not like that at all. but what this does is give an estimate to the readers just how close and comfortable dazai feels when its chuuya. and this plus everything i rambling on abt for so long also gives us an estimate about the sincerity of dazais feelings. now 2 things always bothered me : the fact that dazai actually left chuuya and the fact that after the fight against lovecraft he actualy deserted him (this again can ofc be construed as just a humorous bit but still it did leave a bad taste in my mouth) dazai leaving the mafia is ofc something he had to do to fulfil oda’s dying wish but it still dint sit right with me that he would abandon chuuya. just like oda levaing is harder on dazai, dazai leaving is harder on chuuya. its always harder on the one left behind. so anyway, these sorts of things sometimes made me doubt dazai’s feelings but now that stormbringer clears it all up i do think there is a larger motif at work here. when mori offers dazai to come back to the mafia in s2 we see him saying that it was mori who kicked him out and that he did so because he was afraid dazai would usurp his position. so he set it up in a way that dazai would be forced to leave but on his own accord. now more than usurpation i believe what mori really did fear is that dazai had no allegiance to the mafia (which is actually true) bc he doesnt have that sense of loyalty and that to him his friends were more important than swearing allegiance to mori. (which again is true). so by getting oda killed, the message that mori seemed to be giving out was if dazai didnt leave he would do it again. and if we consider ango’s betrayal which had already transpired at that point, the one mori would next target to sort of get at dazai would inevitably be chuuya. this is only conjecture but still, i do believe this might as well be true because then it would explain why dazai didnt carry chuuya back to the base after their fight [something he was v comfortable doing in Stormbringer. in fact in the first case he carries chuuya back to the billiards bar and not to the mafia’s base so he could hear albatross’ last words 🥺] its because mori needs to know unlike dazai, chuuya is absolutely loyal to him which regrettably he is. it kinda becomes imperative therefore on part of dazai to make it seem that way to mori. that they really are at each others throats and that dazai is insignificant to chuuya. and that the mafia comes before dazai. (which is not true bc we see chuuya protecting his friend [shirase] while also staying loyal to the mafia in Stormbringer) 

mori also in his own way tries to provoke hostility b/w them like in Dead Dpple when he was all like yeah so dazai is the star and chuuya is merely bait. so it kinda makes sense if dazai left the mafia not only to like do good work but also to protect chuuya from mori. also the fact that chuuya did the same thing— left the Sheep and joined PM to protect Shirase from the mafia makes be believe that my speculation is plausible given all the parallels we find between dazai and chuuya. 

and the last bit is about the brilliant Dead Apple scene and how much added context it gets in light of Stormbringer. 

in this scene dazai first says: “you used Corruption believing in me?” and then the translation is “how beautiful” which is an okay translation but the exact thing dazai said was “nakasetekurerune” which literally is : youre gonna make me cry you know? now my knowledge of japanese is like duolingo level but i do know “nakasete” has to do with crying and “kureru” is used by the receiver to indicate he’s receiving a feeling/object from someone close. so basically chuuya trusting him is something so beautiful that it could almost move him to tears. now lets look at dazai’s intro in Stormbringer:

dazai, being dazai, ofc would be able to tell genuine trust from fealty out of fear so ofc the fact that chuuya has this kind of blind faith in him is overwhelming for him. also stormbringer really expands on the sight effects of Corruption in full detail. its so PAINFUL and to think that chuuya would jump into it right away for dazai’s sake.....no wonder he is so soft when deactivating him. and then he proceeds to flirt for a little bit with the Snow White and the kiss of life reference. but this flirting doesnt seem even a little out of place now. it doesn't feel like smth meaningless or smth that dazai is just saying as a joke. that there is absoluetly no subtext to making a statement like that. instead that kind of flirting feels like smth inspired from a deep, deep familiarity with someone who really shares his heart and soul. when he talks to chuuya abt the problem of not knowing whether he is human or not, it is a problem that is as central to him as it’s to chuuya. not feeling fully reconciled to a human identity is a problem thats fundamental to both of them. I don’t think familiarity gets any deeper than this where you share the exact same psychological problem. so its really wonderful how we can trace the skk development now: what starts out as a crush on part of dazai or not a crush exactly rather, a feeling of perplexed admiration because chuuya is breathtakingly beautiful inside out, eventually gain all these layers and develops into something meaningful where they have so much faith in each other and where they literally help each other live. knowing someone out there shares your exact issue so you’re really not alone in this is perhaps the greatest comfort in the world. also now its clear how both of them would have turned out had they not met each other and had they not taken in rimbaud’s advice. chuuya in his desire to learn about himself and frustration at not being able to do the same would have perhaps spiralled downward and ended up becoming like verlaine. he is his double here after all. and had dazai not seen chuuya up close being the wonderful person he is, he too would have probably ended up developing a god complex and becoming like fyodor. dazai is there to save chuuya literally from dying a monster and chuuya is there to remind him he too can try and mend his ways and embrace his human side. after all chuuya has so much trust him in! (despite him having questionable methods) for both of them, it starts out as an attempt to be more human, then establishing a fruitful partnership, and finally coming in terms with their feelings to some extent. for dazai, he’s comfortable enough to engage in occasional flirting at this point and for chuuya it’s playing along with dazai’s antics (well with the ones he get 💀 pretty boy has half a functional braincell) and openly showing his concern for him. so really by confirming their feelings what strombringer does is enhance the skk development in a way that Dead Apple doesnt seem like fan service anymore. the fact that dazai would casually flirt or be comfortable with chuuya landing on his crotch 💀 all that isnt as ridiculous as it first seemed because stormbringer lays the groundwork and anticipates all the intimate/flirty skk moments that have happened till now and ig will happen again soon. 

[shyneanon]

There is only one bed with red

I bet you thought I was never gonna respond to this one, huh, anon? Nope! I just had to rewrite it like five million times before I felt like it was actually not terrible. lol

Hope you enjoy this even though it’s been foreeeeeever.

---

“Well. Lookit that.”

You stared at the single available bed in the single available room, pretty immaculately kept.

“There’s only one bed,” said Red, leaning against the wall. “How unfortunate.”

You stared at it for a while, then looked back at him. He was flashing his gold tooth at you in a smug grin.

Nope.

“It’s fine,” you said. “I can sleep on the floor.”

His smile vanished.

“Hey,” he said, “hold on, sweetheart. I c’n sleep on the floor.”

Actually kind of nice of him to offer, but as much as he annoyed you… no. “It’s cool, I can do it.”

“Nah, it’s gonna make me feel like trash if I letcha sleep on the floor.”

“Well, ditto.”

He grinned. “Ooh, I gotta solution. How ‘bout we both sleep on the floor?”

You held in a laugh, trying your best to give him a deadpan look. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh….

He waggled his brows at you.

And you let out a snort.

You started to set your things down and move onto the floor but Red shoved you towards the bed. “No,” he said, “I don’ wanna feel like an asshole.”

“You are an asshole,” you said.

“Sure but I don’ wanna feel like one…!”

“OK,” you said, “fine.” Whatever, his loss. You climbed into the bed and got under the covers, and you turned a bit as Red lay down on the floor.

… Dammit.

You sighed. I’m going to regret this.

“Red,” you said.

He turned with an oddly soft smile. “Yeah, beautiful?”

Your face turned warm. His nicknames are more effective than they should be. “Just get in the stupid bed.”

“Oh?” A brow rose, and the soft smile was gone. “Feeling bonely?”

“Don’t,” you said, moving over. “You just look so pathetic on the floor, I can’t do it.”

“Sure, sure.” He moved the covers aside and slid under them with you. “You tell yerself that.”

“I will shove you back onto the floor, Red.”

He shut his mouth (figuratively speaking), and you shut your eyes. He was surprisingly warm for a skeleton, perhaps due to wearing a jacket all day. Since he didn’t have the jacket on, though, you were far more aware of the fact that he was literally just… bone. You could feel his actual spine… It was kind of weird, but not weird enough to keep you up. You were just glad he wasn’t getting handsy. Though the truth was that him getting touchy hadn’t been your main concern. In reality, you tried to avoid having to share a bed with anyone. There was a, um, bad habit of yours that people had informed you of.

But hopefully you wouldn’t do anything crazy tonight.

---

Red was awoken by the feeling of something lying across his whole body.

What the hell?

He was on his side, and he attempted to push it off, but it didn’t budge. Groggy and annoyed, he awkwardly twisted and wriggled until he was on his back and could see what the fuck it was….

It was you.

He squinted, thinking he might be insane, but yeah. It was you. You were lying on top of him. A bit awkwardly, one of your legs was pointing in the direction of your side of the bed, but your head was where the crook of his neck would be, and you were breathing softly.

Red’s face lit on fire instantly.

“Sweetheart?” he mumbled, even though he was pretty sure you couldn’t hear him. When had this happened? Had it happened in your sleep? Had you done this on purpose?

You sighed in your sleep.

Oh… oh my God.

What if she likes me?

Had you instinctively cuddled up to him in your sleep because you… liked him? Or… maybe you liked his smell, or the way lying on him felt… Red was a bit embarrassed to find that he felt giddy, but the giddiness overrode the embarrassment.

“Sweetheart,” he repeated softly, gently wrapping his arms around you. You snuggled closer and he felt his soul start to hum.

We’re… so close….

She’s so cute when she’s asleep….

“You are the most adorable thing,” he said. He knew you couldn’t hear. That was the nice part; he could say whatever he wanted. He started to readjust your stray leg with his own, and his face warmed up even more when you curled your leg around his. He let out a small sound of surprise.

“Baby, you’re uncooperative…. Hah….”

Not that he, uh, minded… having your legs like this….

“Aren’t you just the sweetest,” he purred, pulling you closer. His soul was picking up. While you were asleep he felt no need to maintain his tough guy persona, so he cooed. “Yer cute as hell.”

He nuzzled you, holding you close.

He never wanted to let go….

“Don’t worry,” he said softly, lifting one finger and stroking your cheek. “I’ll keep you safe.” He closed his eyes, relishing the feeling washing over his soul while the two of you were so near each other. “Jus’ stay right here… with me, yeah?”

One hand tangled in your hair and he sighed. It was so soft…. You moved closer to him, making a soft hum, and Red’s grin widened, his soul melting into a puddle.

This was the best night of his life.

—

When your mind started to barely lift out of its unconscious state, the first thing you noticed was that it did not feel like you were lying on the mattress.

The second thing you noticed was that a pair of arms were around you. What the… Red? Why was he…

Oh. Oh no.

I climbed on him in my sleep, didn’t I?

It was a weird habit you’d never would’ve known about were it not for the unlucky victims who had told you about it. You had never woken up on top of someone before— you always woke up next to the person in the morning, in the same spot where you’d fallen asleep, and then they would tell you about how they’d woken up in the dead of night to find your entire body lying on top of them. It also apparently took a lot of effort to push you off, especially since attempts would usually result in you immediately trying to climb back onto them.

Red, uh, didn’t seem to be making any attempts to push you off, though.

“Hah, sweetie… You look so stupid when yer asleep….”

Did he know you were awake? Judging from his low volume, you were pretty sure that no, he didn’t.

His finger wiped the side of your mouth and then immediately withdrew, and you heard him laughing as quietly as possible. Yep, he was trying not to wake you up.

“Gross!” he whispered, and you heard the sound of his hand brushing against the fabric of, presumably, his clothes. “You drool in your sleep!”

More quiet laughter. If you blushed visibly you’d give yourself away, so you just buried your face in his collarbone. Embarrassing.

“... Ah… doll….”

A hand was gently placed on your back.

“I wish we could do this all the time,” he said softly. If he thought you were asleep he wasn’t saying this to flirt with you.

He meant it, then?

“Why’ve you gotta be so damn adorable, huh? M… My soul’s going crazy over here….”

A hand ran through your hair. He was being unusually gentle….

“Then again, that happens a lot when I’m with you.”

Your face got hotter; thank goodness he couldn’t see it from this angle.

His teeth pressed against your forehead. A kiss?

“I wish… I had the guts tah tell ya how I feel.”

Huh? Not… not like… romantically, right?

“You make me feel amazing. Like… really amazing, I… I dunno how t’put it in words cuz I’m real bad with words. S’why I can’ bring myself to tell you, I wanna tell you but every time I open my goddamn mouth all I say is somethin’ suggestive.”

Some silence. Should you tell him that you were awake? You were basically eavesdropping right now.

But at the same time…

“‘N, admittedly… I wish I was good fer you. Which I’m not, I’m… I’m fuckin’ me.”

Why did your heart suddenly ache?

“I’m lazy, I’m sleazy, I dress stupid, I act stupid, I can’t communicate like an adult to save my damn life…. An’ I… I’ve done a lotta bad things. Y… ya should get with some sweet guy who’s responsible ‘n shit.” He muttered: “Lookit me, fuckin’ swearing while I’m tryna talk about my feeli— Fantastic, I did it twice.”

It took all the effort you had to not giggle.

“I wish I was good for you. Ah, sweetie, I’d… I’d take such good care of you, I really would. Or, I’d try. Tryin’ is… really all I could do, t’be honest.”

Trying is all anyone can do.

“... Too bad I suck, yeah?”

Your heart ached again. Red didn’t suck, he was a good guy…. It was probably best to tell him that you were awake before he spilled any more personal information.

“You don’t suck,” you mumbled, turning your head.

“‘M sorry, dollface, did I wake you up with my rambling? I’ll be quiet.”

“No, I’ve been awake for a while.”

His whole body froze up.

“... Ya have?”

“Yeah.”

“H… How much of what I was just saying did you—“

“All of it.”

There was a long, awkward silence.

“I’m sorry,” you said, “I should’ve said something—“

“Fuck,” he said, and you lifted your head. His eye sockets were squeezed shut.

“No, Red, it’s OK—“

“No it’s not, I’ve been makin’ a sappy ass outta myself an’ now I prob’ly made you feel guilty—“

“You didn’t make me feel guilty—“

“Jus’ please don’t say that we should go on a date cuz I know you’re only doing it to make me feel better ‘bout myself—“

“Shut up, Red.”

His eye sockets opened and he looked down at you. You could see the two red lights standing out in the darkness. “... Huh?”

“Stop wallowing in self-hatred and listen to me.”

He said nothing. You would take that as cooperation.

OK, he was listening. So, uh… what should you say?

You actually didn’t know.

So you just kissed him.

Initially he just froze up, but after a moment his arms wrapped around you and he pulled you close, kissing back. W… Wow, this feels really good…. You moved into a better position and felt your hair spill down onto him.

“Sorry,” you said as the kiss parted.

“Sorry?” Red cupped the back of your head and gave you a second fervent kiss. “What the hell for? Ya just kissed me.”

“My hair is kinda touching you.”

“Oh no,” he said in monotone, “how awful. Kiss ruined.”

You snickered and leaned down to press your forehead against his. He looked up at you with fuzzy eyelights.

“I don’ deserve your love,” he said quietly. You smiled back.

“Nobody deserves love, Sans. That’s why it’s so special when someone loves us anyway.”

“You deserve love,” he said, “from somebody better than me.”

“That’s awfully vague.” You kissed his cheek. “And besides, I don’t want love from this person you call ‘somebody better than me.’”

He smiled.

“I want love from you.”

“Hah,” he said, and you saw his eyelights change… They were like hearts now. “Sweetheart, trust me, you already have all my love.”

Your face heated up. “That’s really romantic,” you told him.

“... It is?”

A giggle escaped you. “Yes, Sans.”

You kissed his nasal ridge.

“So?” you said with a smile. “You gonna ask me out or not?”

His eyelights got fuzzy again. “Ya think maybe we could go out sometime, beautiful?”

After kissing his cheek, you said, “I’d love that.”

“So, uh…” He looked at the way you two were positioned. “You think… we could do this more?”

“Absolutely.”

You lay your head down on his ribcage.

“We should fall back asleep,” you told him.

“Sure thing, angel.”

Drifting off took no time at all.

[lovingrosewho]

Flunked

Hii so, as some of you may guess by the summary, one of my teachers failed me in a project in which I put a lot of effort in:( I had to take my anger out writing this haha, I hope you like it, as usual, any feedback or suggestions are well received! English is not my first language, etc. Enjoy!

ONE SHOT

Pairing: Crowley x Reader

Rating: T.- Fluff

Word count: 2.1k words

Summary: Crowley finds you crying in your room because you failed a really important test

Warnings: mentions of sex, curse words, protective!Dean which of course counts as a warning

You had been taken under the Winchesters wing for a while now, they agreed to share the bunker with you as long as you didn’t drop out of school after that wendigo hunt that had left so many scars, physical and emotional. They had warned you about the dangers of being a hunter and how it would eventually kill you and the ones you loved around you if you decided to take it up as a job. They kind of saw you as the little sister they never had, to be protected at all costs...

But when it got to the King of Hell, well, that was a whole other story.

Crowley had been around you a few times, the boys did not want him anywhere near you, had it been for them they would’ve put up a 12 feet round salt circle with you in it, but of course you would’ve argued.

You didn’t see the King of Hell as a threat, you even found him charming. His witty comments mocking Sam and Dean made you laugh in silence more times than you could count, his confident stand and even the pace of his steps made your insides nervous, ticklish. When he was around, he’d salute you with a slight tilt from his head and a “Kitten”. Nickname which would make the Winchesters roll their eyes and tell him to focus with, frankly, nearly not any manners.

The first time you talked with him properly, even though the boys were around, was kind of cute. You were helping them with some research and he went to stand by you, eyeing whatever you were reading, you had to suppress a laugh at how his eyes squinted trying to read the tiny letters.

“Something funny, Pet?” he asked you, a hidden, smug smirk in his lips. Sam and Dean gave each other a look, which shifted to Crowley afterwards.

“No, no, nothing” you assured him smiling, returning your gaze to your book “I’m guessing this snooping around is due to boredom, your Majesty?”

Crowley now grinned notably whilst Dean’s head snapped back at you.

“What did you just call him?” the eldest Winchester asked quite annoyed, but you dismissed him anyways.

“How’s hell, Crowley?” you said turning to him, ignoring Dean’s question and Sam’s glance at you.

“It’s okay Squirrel, I think (Y/N) here can take care of herself just fine” he said without taking his eyes off of yours and winking “Hell’s fine, by the way. Sweet, boring hell, which I should be getting back to right now, I hope by next time I drop by you’ll actually have something to show me”.

His eyes flew to Dean’s flared face with annoyance, then Sam’s and finally they fell back at you.

“I’ll be seeing you around, Kitten” and with this he vanished.

After that, Dean had scolded you, repeated once again what Crowley was capable of and how you shouldn’t be joking around with him. You shrugged it off just like Sam did, because nor him nor his brother were able to keep Crowley at bay with you after that. He’d drop by even more than he did before, and most of the times his words were directed at you, not the boys, talking about Hell, hunts, and overall non-important stuff. The Winchesters finally gave up and had to deal with the fact that, inevitably, you and the King of Hell were close.

A few months passed since your first little chat with Crowley, Dean insisted in scoffing and rolling his eyes every time he made a flirty move on you, Sam just smiled, guessing you probably had a thing going on for him as well.

Things stayed that way until the last term of the semester started, then you were buried underneath books, essays and projects. You still talked on the phone with Crowley at least once a week, but seeing each other personally was nearly impossible, he did not want to distract you.

When he was sure you were just days far from finishing school, he appeared at the bunker with the classical “Hello boys”, scanning the library, but you were nowhere to be seen.

“Looking for something?” Dean mocked, which caused Crowley to gave him a boring look.

“Very funny, Squirrel. You know bloody well who I’m looking for and I don’t see her in this room” he answered giving them a sarcastic look.

“Now’s not a good time Crowley” Sam affirmed without looking up from his laptop.

“Whatever do you mean, Moose? I’ve been told (Y/N) is almost finished with the semester, she should have less deadlines now” he argues when Dean interrupts.

“She failed a test and she has been... moody, the whole day, I wouldn’t even touch her if I were you, hell, I wouldn’t even go near her” he suggests winking at him. Crowley grunts at his, yet again, unsuccessful attempt to keep him far away from you.

“That’s because you two morons don’t know how to talk to her, I’ll just go to her room” he says beginning to walk, causing Sam to stop paying attention to his laptop and instead getting up all of a sudden along with Dean, who’s decided to stop Crowley.

“Wow wow wow, you’re not going into (Y/N)’s room” Dean declares laying a hand on Crowley’s chest so he doesn’t make another move “You’ve never been to her room”.

Crowley removes Dean’s hand with visible disgust.

“Oh Dean, I thought we were past the whole ‘Stay the hell away from (Y/N)’ deal. Listen Squirrel, if you don’t let me see how (Y/N)’s doing, I’ll just zap myself over there, understood?” he demands, and Dean is about to say something when Sam interrupts.

“Dean... maybe he’ll be able to cheer her up” he encourages timidly.

“What? Oh so you’re on his side now?” Dean reclames and Crowley can’t help but roll his eyes, snap his fingers and there he is, inside your room, standing in front of you.

You are laying flat on the bed when the unexpected smell of sulfur, whiskey and citrus invades your nostrils and makes you smile slightly.

“Crowley” you greet him lifting from your bed, inviting him to sit at the edge of it.

“Hello, darling” he says smiling back and accepting your offer of taking a seat next to you. When he gets closer he notices your swollen, red eyes “Have you been crying, Pet?”

You avert your sight and say nothing.

“Pet?” Crowley prompts “Are you alright?”

“Yeah” you lie “It’s nothing really, just some stupid test”.

“It’s not ‘stupid’ if it’s important to you. What is it? I know you. You can’t tell me you forgot to study or something like that”.

“I didn’t! I-“ your voice cracks again and you have to clear your throat to keep speaking “Of course I didn’t forget. I studied. Hard. But my professor said that ‘my answers weren’t clear enough’ which I totally disagree and I... I just find it unfair”.

“Huh” he says listening to you ramble whilst he gets up and starts walking in circles around your room. You glance at him and see his thoughtful look “Perhaps we could arrange an appointment between your teacher and my hellhounds”.

You laugh lightly and shake your head.

“Whatever it’s... it’s fine, I suppose the boys told you” you say “Guess now I’ll just have to drop out of school and take up hunting again”.

Crowley rolls his eyes for the eleventh time this day. Even if you’re joking he doesn’t like the thought of you being in danger, much less getting hurt or even... or even killed.

“Quit being dramatic, (Y/N), it doesn’t suit you at all” he tells you arching an eyebrow “Besides, we both now I’m the dramatic one in this relationship”.

You chuckle.

“Is that so?” you ask.

“Yes” he answers walking towards you and cupping your face with his hands, wiping the last tears from your eyes. You let a sigh escape.

“How did the boys let you in anyways?” you say changing the subject. Crowley scoffs at your question.

“They didn’t. In fact, they surely must still be discussing my quite essential stay with you today” he answers, taking his hands off your cheeks and sitting beside you.

You nod in understandment, amused.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Kitten” he assures you, placing his hand in your leg, yours instantly flies to it.

“I know” you tell him, moving your other hand to his cheek and making him face you “Thank you, for being here...”

He grins softly.

“Anything for you, love” he says and you smile. Slowly, you start leaning forward towards his lips. Crowley stares at you perplexed, but does nothing to stop you, instead, he shifts to touch the nape of your neck and leans into the kiss.

The kiss is swift. It begins with slow, careful movements, eager lips brushing over yours, turning into a heated passion as Crowley requests for entrance with his tongue and you jump to his lap. He explores your mouth until you’re both out of air.

“Well that’s an interesting turn of events” he tells you arching his brows and you laugh giving him a mild smack in the chest with your elbow.

“Shut up” you say pecking his lips a few times “You know... if Sam or Dean come in they’ll kill you right?”

The boys are right outside the door waiting for you or Crowley to go out, conflicted if they should go in, or knock, given that they’re not able to listen to anything you say.

“They’ve been insanely quiet in there” Dean’s mind begins to wander in the possible escenarios where you’re involved with Crowley. In your room. And he doesn’t like any of them.

“So what Dean? Maybe they’re just catching up” Sam says, exasperated with his brother.

“No, no, no, I could hear murmurs just minutes ago, now it’s total silence”. Sam sighs.

“Do you really want to go in there? Like really?” he questions giving his brother a look.

Dean considers his options for a few seconds.

“You know what? I’m going in” he asserts and Sam laughs.

“Suit yourself, I’ll be right behind you, covering my eyes”.

“Don’t be a baby” Dean snorts, but to be honest, he’s praying he doesn’t find you having sex with the King of Hell.

They come in the room to spot you in Crowley’s lap, arms wrapped around his neck, eyes closed, his mouth grazing over yours.

“Crowley you son of a bitch!” Dean yells at him, taking long strides to get to you.

“Squirrel” Crowley says sighing, whereas you do the same, adding an eye roll “Didn’t your mommy teach you how to knock?”

Sam is just laughing in the back, glad that at least they didn’t find you naked.

Dean is about to continue yelling at you and Crowley just raises his hand, snaps his fingers and you’re on his throne in hell.

“I believe that was our cue, love” he tells you with a half smirk in his face. You outburst in laughter.

“After this Dean’s definitely making me sleep with the dog” you state. Crowley chuckles lightly “Well, if we had a dog”.

“I thought that was Castiel” he says pretending confusion, you snort and shake your head, a grin not leaving your face.

Crowley takes a lock of your hair between his fingers and starts playing with it. At the same time, he leaves a trail of wet kisses that go from your mouth to your neck.

“Those Winchesters are lucky I was too busy admiring you to shove them out the room and lock the door” he acknowledges, continuing tracing kisses along your skin.

“They’re lucky they found us with clothes on” you admit and he chuckles again.

“Now now, Pet, never took you for the naughty type” he jokes “Quite honestly, I figured this was eventually going to happen, but I always thought I’d be the one to invite you out”.

“You want to invite me out?” you tease “Never saw that coming”.

Crowley smirks, faking annoyance.

“I’m asking to date you, (Y/N), but of course you would tease me about it” he says. You giggle, he’s right “So, what’s your answer?”

“Yes” you speak without hesitation, covering his lips with yours in a long, deep kiss.

“See? If Dean Winchester decides to kick you out the bunker, which I’m highly doubtful, you get to sleep with the King of Hell, not the dog” he tells you with bedroom eyes.

You bite your lips and nod, proceeding to keep making out with the King for a long time, spending the night with him. Dean’s chide can wait.

MASTERLIST

[seriouslysam8]

For the ask game, would you please answer questions numbered 2, 8, 14 (all of your titles have such cool names), 18 (I hope Abditory isn't one of them as that story rocks), 21, 24, 29, 30, 33, 34, 44, 51, 62, 76, 82, 85, 88, 90, and 98.

Sorry for asking so many, but I love your work! Entombed gave me so many feels! I found your stories because author Breanie said to read them in her author's notes. Best rec ever! Thank you for answering.

Wow, that is a lot of asks! Thank you so much for wanting to know so much about little ole me. I think I hit them all in this and my apologies if I missed one. Let me know if I missed one. @breaniebree is awesome and my writing BFF. She is amazing, and I love her.

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one?

So, I’ve written for The X-Files, Supernatural, and Harry Potter. I currently only write for Harry Potter. I would say Harry Potter has always been the most fun.

8) Where do you take your inspiration from?

Random shit. Brontide came to me because I was browsing the HPFanfiction subreddit looking for a story suggestion and someone asked for a story where Harry was addicted to Felix. Only one unfinished dimensional time travel story was listed. It idea sparked me to write my own version. Entombed came to me because I was rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy was buried alive. I knew I wanted to bury Ginny alive. As I stated in the author’s notes of last Kalopsia chapter, I drew inspiration from the Djinn storyline in Supernatural. I write about things I know, too. I have young kids at home so I like writing the Potter children as young because I can mimic their mannerisms in my writing. I’ve even asked my kids to say certain words to emulate their speech pattern in my writing if I’m writing that age group.

14) How did you come up with the title for the XXX? You can ask about multiple stories.

I HATE coming up with titles. My newest trend has been to literally Google “unique words”. There are a ton of Pinterest accounts who make fancy word and definition pictures. I scroll through all these little unique words and pick out ones I think fit a story. Sometimes I Google a unique word for BLANK and see if I can get a cool version of that name. @breaniebree actually helped me with Entombed.

18) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

Sadly, I would put Abditory in this category. Never say never though. I think about it from time to time. Honestly, I abandoned it due to such a negative response I was receiving and the lack of positive response. I became discouraged. It wasn’t even negative response due to my writing, it was literally a bunch of “why would you waste your time writing a story about the biggest plot hole in the books? JKR butchered the whole SK storyline and it’s unbearable to read.” So, basically, my reviews and PMs were filled with JKR hate over that plot point in the books. They heavily outweighed the positive reviews I received. Honestly, I think that’s why a bulk of stories get abandoned - lack of positive reviews or enthusiasm for a story. If I didn’t get so many great reviews for my stories, I don’t know if I’d be able to finish them or continuing writing new ones. Fanfiction is free, (as it should be) but it’s a lot of time and hard work. A little appreciation goes a LONG way. So, my advice, review everything you love reading and encourage writers to keep writing. I always say in my authors notes that reviews make me want to write and inspire me. That’s the truth. The moment I stop getting reviews will probably be the time I take a writing break again.

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

@breaniebree. I mean she’s dedicated years to a single story with so many plot lines and characters that I’m amazed she did it. She’s a fantastic writer, and I definitely consider her my writing BFF. I feel like I’ve learned a lot from her and enjoy talking about writing with her so much. I’m so glad we’ve become friends.

24) How do you feel about writing smutty scenes?

Horrified. Anytime I get a little steamy in my stories, it goes immediately to @breaniebree who usually adds way too much smut and then I cut it down to still be somewhat PG-13 in order to appeal to a wider audience.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

I feel like Kalopsia isn’t getting as much love as my other stories. I’m way behind in my normal review count per chapter. I wonder if it’s just the confusing storyline or if it’s just not as fun to read? But I was definitely worried it wouldn’t get the love I thought it deserved when I started writing it and it’s lived up to that expectation.

30) In contrast to 29, is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

Cronus Rising. People still recommend it occasionally and I still get random reviews. I’m like, “why????” Its horribly written and a stupid plot line. I literally was getting back into writing after not writing for a good five years, so it’s abysmal. I’ve often wanted to rage delete it.

33) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

When someone tells me I should write an original novel and they’d buy the hell out of it. I do have some original novel ideas floating around (one I’ve been writing since I was like 15), but crippling fear of rejection from publishers have stopped me from ever actually finish an original novel.

34) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

I got some criticism in Brontide for having drama for drama’s sake with no real purpose or goal for said drama. I felt my drama served a purpose, drove the story along, and I add a lot of fluffy and cute family moments. I feel like in real life, when you to your loved one is going through sometime, it feels like nonstop drama and bad news and like a dark cloud just follows you. I wanted to emulate that in real life. So Harry’s POV was often drab because HE was the one going through something horrific and it was all doom and gloom for him.

44) What is the last line you wrote?

“You never think I listen to your ramblings, but it’s kind of hard to block out, mate.”

51) From one to five stars, how would you rate your writing? (No downplaying yourself!)

Um... I’d say a 3. I think I have some good and unique plots for stories but sometimes I struggle on how to execute those on paper effectively. I struggle with descriptions, action, and showing rather than telling. But I do think I’m good at dialogue and capturing a character’s personality. So, 3.

62) Tell us about a WIP you’re excited about.

A lot! I have a Teddy/Victoire stalker story in the works that I’m excited about. I have (this is going to sound weird) but an outsider rom-com planned where Ron/Hermione breakup right before Hinny’s wedding and Hinny struggles to get them back together before the big day. I have a Potter family vacation fluff/comedy story planned. I have a game night one-shot planned. I have a short story about Luna’s wedding. So many that I want to write and don’t know which one to write first!!

76) Is there anything you’ve wanted to write, but you’ve been too scared to try?

I’d say no. I’ve always tried to write my ideas down. Some I’ve never finished because inspiration peters off and some I plan on finishing once my newest big project is done.

82) Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less.

Harry goes through some shit, and Ginny is his soulmate.

85) Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

I don’t understand why people don’t ship Harry/Ginny more. I don’t understand the Harry/Daphne obsessions (like just why???) or the Harry/Hermione ship at all. I always see people asking for story recommendation and they specific say “no Harry/Ginny”. They are literally perfect for one another and they are soulmates.

88) If you could ask one other fanfic author three questions about their writing, writing process, or works, what would they be and who would you ask?

@breaniebree .

1.) How do you organize all your charts? Send me the ALL the charts. Because I don’t understand how you keep everything straight!

2.) How do you write so much? You’re like a little writing machine in a cute little package.

3.) Where do all the ideas come from? In a dream? Just thinking? Driving? Do you write everything out in your head like meeee? Can I have some of your writing mojo?

90) How do you process and deal with negative reviews?

I obsess over them. I analyze them. I may get bummed out and not write for a few days. If you don’t like what I write, then don’t read or review. It’s a hobby. I do this for free. I’m not asking you to critique me. Give me a nice review or ask me a question, but don’t be cruel or mean because you can hide behind a keyboard and be a bully to make yourself feel superior.

98) If you had to give up either snacks and drinks during writing sessions, or music, which would you find more difficult to say goodbye to and why?

Music. I grew up with three older brothers. My house was always rowdy and loud and obnoxious. I need it to be loud. I can’t stand the silence or focus when it’s silent. I need music to help me think and write. When I’m home alone, I always turn on the TV or music, because I can’t stand when it’s silent. I think I’d go insane.

[zappho]

Some Meta on Murdock and mental illness

Generally speakig, The A-Team is a dumbass, light-hearted comedy with action on the same level as youtube poop videos. Obviously there isn’t alot of depth to be found here. The show had tons of different writers, all with their own take on Murdock and none of them offer any clear info or a proper backstory for the character. It’s basically up to the audience to fill in the blanks and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do by overanalyzing the mess that is the show’s canon.

The question of whether Murdock is ‘‘‘really crazy or just faking’‘’ has been around for over 30 years, but I’m gonna argue that he’s both.

When Kelly visits Murdock in the psychiatric hospital and confronts him about why he’s living there in the first place he gets instantly uncomfortable.

He really didn’t want her to ask, it’s why he’s been avoiding her. Joking about how you’re hashtag crazy™ is easy; having to admit that you’ve been institutionalized for over 10 years because you have legitimate problems is much harder. (Sure, the VA also gives him a convenient cover from the military police, but if that was the only reason for him to stay he wouldn’t react to Kelly’s question in this way). “It’s a long story”, is all he says. There are clearly some painful memories here that he’d rather not delve into.

He’d have to explain how he got committed in the first place. We know that after the gang was arrested for war crimes in ‘71, Murdock was still serving as a pilot in ‘72. They never clarified when and how Murdock was sent home, but i’m guessing without his only friends around and it being, you know...war, his mental health eventually deteriorated until he received a medical discharge straight into the VA hospital.

After Murdock gets wrongly released in season 1, instead of his friends being worried about his supposed cover getting blown they just shrug it off and go ‘Oh well!’ (This could all be due to the show’s inconsistent writing, but you know)

No longer being an inpatient would finally allow Murdock to be employed as a pilot again (his #1 passion), and yet he seems really disheartened about the situation. Even though the hospital gives him no privacy, the staff barely respects him and he spends most of his time there by himself, he still prefers to stay.

For a character who’s allegedly cheery comic relief, he sure gets his feelings hurt alot, mainly when dealing with other people’s ableism towards him. B.A. and Face are obviously just palling around, just guys bein’ dudes, they don’t want to hurt Murdock for real, they probably don’t realize how sensitive Murdock is about the subject. Usually he plays along or shrugs it off, but sometimes he gets genuinely upset. In the first half of In Plane Sight he’s so fed up with it he tries to ‘‘act normal’‘ until #Woke #Queen Hannibal reassures him that they love him the way he is.

PTSD was barely starting to become a diagnosis when the show first aired, but I think it’s fair to say he suffers from it. The pilot episode states that he has anxiety, paranoia and memory loss, so that checks out.

With PTSD you don’t just have to deal with flashbacks and nightmares, but also intrusive thoughts, images and memories about your trauma. Murdock copes with it by getting hyperfixated on a new activity or pretending he’s someone else. This is were alot of people will go ‘‘haha wow look how wacky and insane he is! He’s talking to his sock 😂’‘. But Murdock knows it’s all made up nonsense, he just needs his mind to focus on something else. What’s important here is that he never lets his coping mechanisms distract him when he’s flying, first of all he’s already focused and also he doesn’t wanna crash (lol). There’s a believability to his actions that’s missing in the 2010 reboot.

In the episode where the gang helps out the vietnamese cook from the POW camp where they’ve been tortured, Murdock tries to distract himself with some golfballs. He soon starts projecting his trauma on them however.

I think this is the only time in the show where Hannibal tears up, so this scene is kinda significant. As the leader, he probably blames himself for getting his team captured and tortured, and seeing that Murdock is still so strongly affected by it gotta hurt. 

Compared to the rest of the gang, Murdock’s alot more fucked up over the war. There are subtle changes in his voice whenever he talks about it. In the ep about their old war buddy Ray, Face was reminiscing about how cool of a guy Ray was for borrowing him his helmet, Murdock’s memories meanwhile are much less upbeat. ‘My bird was the only one left in the sky’ he remembers while we see an image of a field filled with shot down helicopters. His experiences are bound to be different from the other three as a huey medevac pilot. Murdock did have one off-screen breakdown in the present timeline, after collecting every newspaper article about the upcoming execution of the team in Firing Line. Apparently it was bad enough that he had to be restrained. It’s been 10 years, so he’s recovering and getting better, but he’s still not all there yet.

Everyone knows Murdock’s just messing around when he’s being interrogated by the military about his connections to the team, but like what about when the military isn’t there; or NO ONE is. He often talks to himself or just puts weird shit in his mouth for no reason while nobody’s paying attention to him (eating leaves, paint, an entire raw egg, a frozen sandwich). Sometimes he’s just unhinged like that.

Another thing that’s brought up a few times in the show is his anxiety. Murdock’s often seen being generally tense, sweaty, uncomfortable or reflective in the background of a scene. (I have no idea if this was a deliberate acting choice but Dwight does have anxiety irl so who knows if that had anything to do with it, I mean who knowsssssss, i’m just observing)

He’s got a habit of fidgeting with his hands or touching his neck when he’s stressed out. Murdock also does it when he’s telling his psychiatrist Dr. Richter about his dreams “If you were me, wouldn’t you be terrified to put your head down?” he asks him.

Richter isn’t really paying attention though, because he’s so used to Murdock’s non-stop clownery, he can’t exactly tell when his patient decides to be honest about his feelings for once. He just replies ‘Well only if it was a bad dream’. Which really irritates Murdock because what other dreams besides bad would he have? So he derails the session by rambling some made up bullshit on purpose.

Richter knows that Murdock uses humor and fantasy to cope, but he’s obviously tired of Murdock’s cringe antics, he just wants to help him. But Murdock doesn’t like to open up and be confronted with his traumas again, he just wants to avoid talking about it all together. There are still parts of reality that Murdock’s not ready to deal with, or he wouldn’t always retreat into his fantasies.

Before he can continue messing around a helicopter passes by and Murdock freezes for a second. Richter assures him that the helicopter is real; Murdock nods and starts fidgeting with his hands again, seemingly in deep thought. We know from the season 4 finale that he hears the sound of rotor blades when he dissociates. He was definitely being sincere here.

After getting drugged by some military goons he has a few brief flashbacks (feat. cheesy 80′s neon filters): seeing the chopper fly away, getting stuck in a potted plant as if he was walking through the jungle, being surrounded by heavy smoke and sparks from the burning carpet).

Despite being the 2nd highest ranked team member, Murdock dislikes being in charge and gets severly distressed when anything goes wrong that he might even be slightly responsible for. Most notably is the episode where the owners of the diner get kidnapped after Murdock got knocked out by evil cowboys or hill billies or whatever they were. Instead of telling anyone what happened, he’s just lying on the floor, repeatedly calling himself a failure until the others show up.

Seems like Murdock gets startled more easily than the rest of the crew as well. We often see him flinch when guns go off; one time he literally wore fluffy ear muffs to a backalley shootout.

This short moment from Family Reunion always stood out to me. Face opens the van door a little too quickly and it takes Murdock so off-guard he has to take deep breaths to calm down.

Murdock sounds exhausted when he has to remind Face not to sneak up on him. Face also realizes he messed up, he just wanted to check up on Murdock and not trigger him on accident.

When it comes to portrayals of mental illness in fiction there’s obviously better representation out there than Murdock. But sometimes you just wanna see a mentally ill character have a good time instead of being miserable 24/7. And Murdock’s already got the worst behind him, he’s had therapy for years and friends who love him. I just think that’s refreshing to see, especially with a character who’s so kind and openly affectionate.

[tfw-no-tennis]

ani....morphs.....

ok so picking up after the david trilogy, which hit hard as FUCK, we have book 23, which basically was a semi truck that ran over my corpse, jesus christ, they really followed up the david trilogy w/all that....

23 was so so good and also painful. its the culmination of a lot of tobias’s characterization in the series thus far and also we finally get the reveal we’ve been waiting for about elfangor....ooooh man 

and there was a lot of painful stuff in this book but the worst imo was tobias wondering if it were possible that somebody wanted him and would take care of him, only to have it all come crashing down in the worst way when it turned out aria was visser three in morph, ouch. 

that was so brutal augh. and when he figured it out and just crash landed and kept thinking about how he wanted to die and how he was stupid to think he could have a home...bro get these kids some THERAPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

so yeah that book was absolutely brutal but also so good...and it further fleshed out the animorphs working as a near-flawless team, w/the whole setup of tobias meeting w/the lawyer being so airtight and well-planned 

also more free hork bajir!! its cool that there's stuff happening w/them offscreen, I like that 

I literally had to take a break from reading the books bc the david triology + 23 was like so much, and also bc the olympics were on and all my time got dedicated to watching those, but then I opened 24, not sure what to expect, and BAM it was the helmacrons lmaoooo

I don't even remember the helmacrons but ig a lot of people hate them? lmao so that whole reputation preceded the book and I was like oh wow time for a change in tone

which wasn't wrong but also I liked that book?? I was never bored, even tho the whole thing was patently ridiculous and also had very little bearing on the overarching story

but I think it would be a standout if it were a TV episode w/a good budget - the visuals were amazing even in text, and I can imagine all the cool shrinking/growing/cellular stuff would be WICKED cool visually (ideally 2d animation but an ant man-esque live action adaptation wouldn't be terrible if they had the budget for it)

whatever let me dream. so yeah I didn't hate the helmacron book even tho the helmacrons themselves were...sure something. lmao I think they come back? that should be interesting

next book is the arctic one, we have yet another alien of the week style adventure - I liked this one too, it felt like more plot-y stuff happened since they destroyed the base, and marco’s POV is always fun 

I do find it funny/interesting how sometimes when the animorphs do something - like in this book, destroying that base in the arctic - it doesn't really seem to impact the yeerks much/it doesn't get brought up much after that. and then other things like them destroying the ground-based kandrona get mentioned a lot (that example is understandable tho bc that WAS a big deal). its just hilarious to me how blowing up entire building complexes has become so routine that it isn’t even worth mentioning at this point

Also I adore when they meet other random people/kids and are chill w/them, like w/that kid they met in the rain forest earlier on w/the time travel 

the descriptions of the brutally cold weather were great. I hate the cold so I was like oof this is a nightmare lmao

also ig that was the first ghostwritten book and I did kinda notice it was slightly different than usual? maybe? I could be imagining it tho 

okay but book 26 tho...BOOK 26. bruh 

that was SO good and I really didn’t know what to expect - but when we finally revisited Jake’s dream w/crayak I knew it was gonna be good (but I didn’t expect it to be a chess game war epic..!)

basically I loved it. SUCH a good Jake book - I really appreciate his character now as opposed to when I was 10 and often overlooked him (sorry jake).

similarly, when I was a kid and read these I sympathized a lot w/the chee and felt bad for them towards the end of the series when they had to get more involved in the war (genuinely don’t remember what they even do but ik I felt bad) 

but now I've basically 180′d and I'm like damn those chee sure are hypocrites huh. 

like they could solve So many of the animorphs problems but their stringent adherence to nonviolence leads to them actively getting in the animorphs way sometimes? and obviously pacifism is a complicated topic, but in this case it also intersect w/the whole ‘child soldier’ thing, and as beings who are insanely old and wise, the chee probably shouldn't just leave all the dirty work to a bunch of literal middle schoolers

aaaaanyways. there’s so much I love about this book. the iskoort! they were sure something. and the ‘plot twist’ that they are actually 2 beings, the Isk and the Yoort - and the Yoort are essentially Yeerks - that slapped. the symbiosis of it all! 

I loved the part where they all realize what this means, that this is why Crayak wants the iskoort destoryed - because someday the yeerks might come across them and realize parasitism is not the only way. I love it! 

alas I don’t recall the iskoort returning in the story (but also my memory is terrible so who knows?) but still that would be cool

basically I feel like this is the book where Jake Truly comes into his own as a leader, in every sense. he outmaneuvers Crayak, and even the ellimist, who’s yanking them around in his own way

the scene where jake shoves the howler off the cliff and jumps off and morphs and acquires the howler...that was fantastic and tense. 

also the murder is definitely becoming more overt. I mean, it has been for a while, but it isn’t really pointed out as much anymore. oof

more on the chee - as Jake points out in this book, and other characters point out in other books - the chee could have saved the pemalites, but instead just stood by while their creators were slaughtered. on the other hand, jake says, what do the chee do AFTER they’ve killed the howlers - where to point them next? when is the end of their violence? 

buuuuut also standing by while atrocities occur is pretty damning, as is frequently mentioned in this series - from the very beginning, when marco initially doesn’t want to get involved in the war at all, and the other animorphs basically tell him that turning his back on the war and acting like he doesn’t even know it’s happening would be immoral and cowardly (which imo this reaction helps to push marco in the direction he ends up going, but I digress) - this topic comes up again in 19 when cassie quits the team and rachel is upset bc she sees it as cassie elevating her own feelings above the greater good (as in, as long as cassie feels good about how she acts, it doesn’t matter how much preventable evil the yeerks are committing while she turns away). etc etc. but that’s essentially what’s happening w/the chee - even tho they help w/intel, the lack of any sort of Action on their part means that they’re essentially allowing awful things to happen when they could prevent them. this is rambly but basically...animorphs deals so much in grey areas, and the chee are noticeably black and white in their actions, despite falling, in a meta sense, in an extremely grey area. its such good, thought provoking writing!

anywayssss I keep talking about the chee lmao what else was there. oh YEAH jake and cassie kissed for the first time awww that was super cute 

and ofc immediately marco teases them as asks jake if he’s gonna kiss him next, and all I can say is...marco is a bicon 

also I love the background worldbuilding w/the iskoort, how they have all these groups and guilds and stuff - its not dwelled on much, which actually works really well to give the world/species a sense of lived-in realness 

okay oh man and the reveal at the end that the howlers were just like...children who thought the whole thing was a game...AUGHH man that’s sooo fucked 

like, when jake morphs the howler and has rachel ready to knock him down in grizzly morph if he gets out of control due to the howler’s murderous instincts, and he morphs to find that the howler is...playful, like a dolphin morph. SUCH a good fucked up sense of dawning horror there 

and the fact that as far as I can tell the chee KNEW this, but wanted revenge anyways, so they let the animorphs assume that the howlers were Evil On Purpose

also I love smaller moments, like jake seeing that ax is ashamed for briefly running away during one battle w/the howlers, and then entrusts him w/an important task bc he knows that ax will see that as redemption - and when everyone thought jake was dead and were so happy when he wasn't (they all love each other so much im gonna cry about these child soldiers augh)

basically that book was so good

man one thing I absolutely love is that the longer the series goes on the more obvious it is that andalites, despite inventing morphing technology, barely use it themselves 

like, most of the andalite characters we see barely morph. its kind of a last resort to them, as they’re already plenty dangerous in their regular forms 

meanwhile for the animorphs, that’s all they have to fight with. that’s their only weapons against the yeerks, and its so fun to see them use the power in so many varied ways, and so creatively, while the andalites have barely scratched the surface of their own technology

its also interesting to contrast against the yeerks who start out w/absolutely no technology, and the andalites share some but not all of their technology w/them...its too bad that morphing technology was just starting out cause that would’ve been interesting

like imo a lot of the conflict w/the yeerks could’ve been avoided if they could just nothlit into better forms - of course, there’d still be plenty of yeerks who want to go start wars or w/e, just like pretty much any species in the series, but a lot of yeerks would probably be like ‘yeah I'm good’ and just chill out as nothlits

also people online love to talk about how humans are alienfuckers and would definitely have sex w/sentient aliens and whatnot, and while I'm not saying that's untrue, its just funny bc in animorphs the truest alienfuckers are definitely the andalites

as of the hork-bajir chronicles, we now have a second instance of an andalite morphing another species to be in an inter-species alien romance (and eventually have kids) 

speaking of, I don’t think I’ve talked abt the hork bajir chronicles yet??? even tho I read it a while ago lmao 

HBC was great...I honestly haven’t really run into an animorphs book I’ve actually disliked at this point, I’m sure it’ll come w/all the ghostwriting and whatnot, but I’ve liked at least some aspects of every book

anyways HBC was great, and it’s funny bc I remember that I read this book as a kid, and yet rereading it now I didn’t remember a single bit of it lmaooo

I really liked the framing device of the free hork bajir telling this story to tobias. I also liked how we know from the beginning that this story wont have a happy ending - we know all the hork bajir end up enslaved by the yeerks, but it’s still somehow hopeful at the end? I think this is largely due to the framing device tbh. 

also I love toby, and I love that the First free hork bajir named their kid after tobias ;_; 

and oooh mannn I LOVED the different POVs from this book. all the characters were so interesting! aldrea was fascinating - I really like the increasingly negative view of the andalites that the readers are getting, all while maintaining the sense that they aren’t like, actively evil, just that they have their issues - like aldrea’s arrogance, and the general andalite arrogance which lead to the loss of the hork bajir. also, who knew andalites had their own brand of sexism? Ls

I did like getting a female andalite tho, that was cool. and dak was really cool, he was such a good, compassionate character who was able to maintain his morals in an interesting way throughout the story

and VISSER THREE...or should I say esplin 9466, because he’s not visser 3 yet...getting his ‘origin story’ was excellent - I really like how we’re learning about visser 3 backwards - we start off the series w/him as the main villain, and he’s campy and menacing, and then we see him in the andalite chronicles as a power-hungry sub-visser trying to climb the ranks and eventually getting alloran as a host, and then back even further here, w/the start of his focus on the andalites and the beginning of his ambition. its been very cool and interesting to see

plus, the beginning of the yeerks as we know them! seerow! alloran! it’s a party and nobody is having a good time, except for some of the yeerks. 

I like how it’s pretty obvious that the andalites are well-meaning with their interactions w/the yeerks, but go about it the wrong way - they give them enough technology that the yeerks realize there’s a whole world out there to experience, and then they blockade the yeerks on their planet and tell them they can’t leave. nnnnot the best approach imo

again, as I said above, I’m interested in how things could’ve gone if the andalites had given the yeerks morphing technology early on - could a lot of the conflict have been avoided, or would it have been worse? the yeerks seem pretty evil in this book, immediately jumping to enslave anyone they can. otoh we hear from esplin that not all yeerks like having host bodies, and find it overwhelming, preferring to swim around in the yeerk pool as a slug - I assume as host bodies became more available this type of thinking was probably stamped out in yeerk society or w/e, but there are a lot of interesting what-ifs in the situation 

I loved the scene where esplin first experiences having a host, and immediately knows he can’t go back. there are a bunch of great sensory descriptions, and it’s a nice scene to pinpoint as a foundational moment for the visser three in the current story, who spent a lot of time and energy getting what he sees as the best possible host body, an andalite

I find it interesting how much visser three clearly respects the andalites, even while constantly deriding them. and you can see the origins of that here as he immediately focuses in on the andalites, working to become an expert on them in order to make himself useful enough to move thru the ranks

another thing I like is how esplin seems a lot more crafty and ambitious than the visser three from modern times - I would guess that reaching his goal (andalite host body) and being given all that power was detrimental, playing on his weaknesses instead of his strengths. basically, I don’t think it’s ooc or anything, I can see how HBC-esplin became animorphs-esplin, especially w/TAC in between

as for seerow...poor dude. you really do have to feel for him, because you get the sense he really did just want to be kind to the yeerks, but it was borne from a place of pity, and he (and the other andalites) consistently held too much power over the yeerks for the species relations to ever be truly equal and functional 

AUGH I have so many thoughts about alien space politics. omg. I need to talk about the actual story lmao

so yeah I also feel for aldrea, she had a rough time, watching her entire family die and being thrown into a hopeless war

and then the andalite council or w/e not listening to her bc she's a girl AND seerow’s daughter...oof

also, I really really liked the running theme of the andalites - specifically aldrea - looking down on the hork bajir as ‘simple’ and constantly underestimating them, especially dak

and I like how this is portrayed as a bad attitude for aldrea to have, and she still remains and interesting and sympathetic character even while having obvious flaws. it’s about being 3-dimensional baby!

and oh man I love that dak realizes that aldrea looks down on him, and his entire species, but he can see that that’s how the andalites are, and it all connects back to the beginning of the story w/the yeerks, bc the andalites looked down on the yeerks and treated them with pity and kept them pinned under their proverbial thumb ‘for their own good’ and look how that turned out 

but dak is wise and kind enough to not hate aldrea for this, even acknowledging when she’s using him, but not pushing her away because he recognizes good in her too - and she ends up changing, partially because of his faith in her

and I feel like it can all be compared to that scenario of like - a hypothetical creature that lives in a 2D world suddenly being thrust into a 3D world, and comprehending what its seeing, and understanding that there’s so much more out there outside of the flat lines of its world - and then its dropped back into 2D-land with the knowledge of all the stuff its missing out on, and no way to get back to it or explain it to anybody else

I loooove that ‘trope’ or w/e you wanna call it, and it’s done beautifully here w/the yeerks - whos the say they wouldn't have been fine in their pool swimming around; as esplin said, a lot of the yeerks were terrified of having a host, it was only from the andalites’ perspective that their lives were sad and pitiful, and the andalites showed them what the world could be like, and then said ‘no, you can’t travel the stars like we do, you have to stay here on your planet and do what we say.’

and then again, w/the hork bajir - dak talks about how, even though he drinks up the knowledge that aldrea gives him, in the end it might have been better to just have lived peacefully, not knowing what was in the sky or the Deep - as aldrea says: “It was too late for Dak: he knew that the stars were not flowers.” 

plus the hork bajir having to go from a completely peaceful species who don’t even understand the concept of violence, to a bunch of soldiers fighting a war...oof 

basically everyone in this story uses the hork bajir. the yeerks use them as hosts, the andalites use their planet as a convenient place to dump seerow and then take their sweet time coming to help, and the arn created them as means to stabilize the planet, but block them off from their society and refuse to help when the yeerks come

like, the arn modifying themselves to be un-infestable by the yeerks and then being enslaved for physical labor instead? oof guys. if they had teamed up w/the hork bajir resistance things might have gone better, but probably not 

more on aldrea - throughout the story I was always thinking ‘how am I supposed to see her? as a good person, or as a bad person?’ 

as a POV character, especially a ‘good guy’ andalite, you just start off automatically thinking of her as a good person, but as the story goes on, she starts getting lost in revenge and begins using dak and the hork bajir, and you’re left wondering if this is a story about her slide into darkness, and then towards the end of the story her character development culminates in her making the decision to stay w/the hork bajir, and the be with dak, and that’s about when I went ‘ohhh right this is animorphs so every character is pretty much gonna be grey’

I feel like that moral grey-ness was on full display w/aldrea, and I really enjoyed that. I love so much when characters who are good do bad things, for good or bad reasons, especially in media like animorphs that’s aimed at kids. it’s so compelling. 

oof, and the ending when aldrea convinces dak to mobilize the hork bajir and teach them violence...and dak asks her if she’s ever killed another andalite, and she’s horrified, and says of course she hasn’t, and he says that that’s what she’s asking him, and all the hork bajir, to do - to kill their own people, even if they are being controlled by the yeerks. biiiig oof. I love that dak can keep up w/aldrea and her andalite supremacy attitude - it seems that the non-andalite characters who get along best w/the andalites are the ones who wont take their bs 

what else happened....oh my god how could I forget about alloran, and his quantum virus. oooof. I like how we find out about alloran in parallel to visser three, in the same backwards way - in animorphs he’s the tragic host of visser three, in TAC he’s the disgraced but still semi-respected war-prince who becomes the first ever andalite controller, and here he’s the guy who decides to commit some war crimes because, hey, we haven’t tried that yet 

but yeah that was fucked up, I love it. I’ve said it before I think but I like that alloran isn’t some perfect martyr tragically taken by the yeerks - it’s a lot more compelling that he’s a very flawed person who was taken as a controller partially due to his own bloodthirstiness. 

but yeah, the part where aldrea morphs alloran and ‘sneaks’ into that room was great. aldrea’s dedication to disposing of the virus is a great indicator of her character development - it really feels like the straw that broke the camels back w/re: to the andalites not being what she thought they were, w/their tardiness coming to help the hork bajir planet and the way her father was treated being the precursors to this realization. it all culminates nicely in aldrea saying ‘fuck this actually’ and nothlit-ing into a hork bajir.

and it’s really tragic but realistic that even though aldrea and dak end up seeing eye to eye at the end and getting together, the virus ends up being released anyways (and fails in its objective to stop the yeerks from using the hork bajir - the whole thing was p much a lose-lose situation oof), and aldrea and dak still die fighting a hopeless war 

but then we have the free hork bajir on earth, including toby, who, like tobias, has andalite ancestry, but no DNA to show for it - I like that they have that connection as well as tobias being her namesake

so yeah I enjoyed that one and its many-layered themes

WOW this got long uuuuuhhh ok I think i’ll leave this one off here. at the time I’m actually finishing the writing and editing, I’m on book 35 lol so I have some backlogging to do. never fear, I have a lot to say....

[fannishcodex]

some more rambling/venting thoughts: Talking it Out Works Better than Turning Your Baby into a Hybrid

Kipo is half human half mute because Lio and Song, who were both completely human at the time, made her that way through experimentation and genetic engineering. Kipo is mixed race because she has a Black father and Korean mother who loved each other. There should be no mixed race metaphor because Kipo was genetically engineered half human half mute due to the scientific experiments of her human parents. There are potential metaphors and commentary for the abuse of science as a shortcut over engaging with others found in the concept of Kipo being genetically engineered to be half human half mute.

Burrow humans seem to regularly hold the belief that they cannot live safely on the surface. Lio and Song started Project Kipo with the goal that their genetically engineered daughter/experiment could make the surface safe for humans. They are of course making huge decisions about their daughter's life and future without her consent and are forcing their ambitions on her before she's even born, but that's not exactly the main thing this time and another meta post.

Years later Kipo makes more progress with mutes not because of her genetically engineered hybrid status, but because she's Kipo. Because of herself. Because of her willingness to communicate, emotionally engage with others and listen to them. Kipo starts making more progress with a number of mutes than anyone else by engaging with them, dealing with communication/negotiation/sympathy/etc. while under the lifelong held belief that she's entirely human and still visibly appearing human. Kipo herself even remarks that all her life she's been told the surface is a horrible, dangerous place--and Kipo does learn it's threatening, but she also learns about the wonders of it too, and generally moves past her fears and the prejudices the Clover Burrow tried to teach her when she engages with the likes of the Timber Cats, Umlaut snakes, and Jamack, and finds their better sides or encourage them to start changing. Kipo continues to make more progress with mutes by continuing to do the work of engaging and communicating with them. Kipo's artificial hybrid status as half human half mute doesn't often play a huge factor in true engagement with mutes, other than some practical uses that still often support a broader effort to emotionally engage with others, and sometimes also are in response to the long-reaching consequences of her parents' actions; and again, her genetically engineered mega mute--not just mute, but mega mute--apex predator traits are volatile, threatening herself and others. What ends up mattering more to mutes and progress with them are Kipo's actual efforts to reach out to them as fellow sentient individuals with their own feelings. Lio and Song did not show signs of actually wanting to reach out to mutes when creating Project Kipo. They wanted Project Kipo to make the surface safe for humans, presumably safe from mutes, or "the Other." They wanted security for humans, not actual engagement with mutes. Their decision to not take away intelligence from mutes did not lead to them wanting to try to fully engage with mutes as fellow sentient beings; they started thinking of another way science could be used to more quickly improve the life and status of burrow humans and bypass engaging with mutes and even safeguarding against the "automatic danger" of mutes. Let's dissect the safety/threat of the surface for a bit. Burrow humans often act like the surface is not safe for them, presumably because of mutes, and they have to live deep underground in their burrows. The surface is truly dangerous, and mostly mutes live there now with so many humans apparently going underground--but the surface isn't that much safer for mutes either. Mutes do fight amongst each other. They have mega mutes and other wild, non-sentient mutes to deal with. There are other environmental dangers to face. Hugo was shown no mercy on the surface even though he was a mute, and had to literally fight for any basic acceptance from other mute primates. (Thanks to @lemonadesoda for the latter point.) And the root cause for Hugo/Scarlemagne eventually making the surface more dangerous for humans is the consequence of insanely oppressive/cruel/abusive treatment he suffered since his birth from burrow humans; it was suffering he endured while young and impressionable and still developing, and so it heavily warped him; his restrictive and abusive upbringing while young left him with a limited understanding of humans and a negative response to them, and he had no reason to believe differently after that or even try to look at things differently, and no one to try showing him differently, and that went on uninterrupted for about 13 years, further warping him. Like, I can't ignore that in an ongoing fictional story. Hugo/Scarlemagne would not have done that if he hadn't been so hurt and traumatized since birth by Emilia and several humans in the DNA Burrow. And again, a lot of Hugo/Scarlemagne's suffering at the hands of humans is because they wanted to revert mutes and go back to the status quo and make the surface safe for humans. Because of a refusal to engage with mutes as fellow sentient beings and instead treating them with fear/prejudice/rejection for the "danger" they pose. Mega mutes also seem like literally the biggest danger. Lio and Song's reactions indicate they're probably the biggest motivation for humans to go underground. But the mega mutes so far have not been shown to be malicious. They do seem like normal animals, but largely more dangerous because of their size. With centuries into this mutation, mega mutes just seem like a part of life now. Other mutes largely don't go deep underground to avoid them, but live with them on the surface. Why can't humans do the same at this point? I suppose what I'm saying is that burrow humans seem to act like the surface is barred from them and it's impossible to live there as it is, and that mutes reign; but the mutes are dealing with similar surface threats and are living there regardless. It's not impossible for humans. It's especially not impossible if humans tried to engage with mutes more instead of fearing them so. Also may seem a little...too privileged? Like humans--some humans--apparently can live underground in burrows; that doesn't seem like an option for mutes. The surface isn't just dangerous, it's very much not to the liking of humans at all and doesn't center them at all anymore; humans are not largely in charge on the surface like they were 200+ years ago. Instead of trying to deal with the surface as it is now and their new sentient mute neighbors, a number of humans seemed to have just packed up and left and went underground, and some of these burrow humans even plot to remove the intelligence of *newly sentient beings like the mutes (relatively newly sentient, like within a span of about 200+ years apparently). I do think largely mute distaste for humans at this point is more a cultural thing passed down through generations, especially since mutes don't seem to have any regular contact with humans. In contrast, Hugo/Scarlemagne has direct experience with humans, and it was a damaging experience, making his hate for them more personal and amplifying his negative response to them; Hugo/Scarlemagne has more reason to hate (and arguably even fear) humans. But I think the larger mute cultural distaste for humans is rooted in experiences similar to Hugo/Scarlemagne's, that it originally came from mutated animals who remembered suffering under humans, or experienced new suffering under humans; but through the following generations that somewhat faded and became more a matter of culture/tradition for mutes, connected to mutes' lessened exposure to humans. But now I do also wonder if the average mute population also might resent humans for hiding underground to be "safe." Like every other mute they know lives on the surface and deals with its danger; but oh no, not humans, they largely have to stay underground for their own "safety." Also I guess I just keep thinking, "Wow, Kipo seems to progress a lot with mutes by actually talking with them and learning about them! ...Has any other human ever just tried talking to them before??" Speaking of, Benson and Dave are a great example of human-mute engagement and friendship on the surface. Other than promoting Ratland, they may not have shown as much willingness as Kipo to try engaging with others*, but Benson and Dave are a big example of a strong personal connection that can happen between humans and mutes when they engage. Speaking of, also Ratland is another example of an actual effort of human-mute engagement.  *But Benson and Dave also have surface/survivor upbringings versus Kipo's sheltered burrow upbringing with a parent and a long standing community. But many humans, including Lio and Song (especially from before), show an unwillingness to really try engaging with mutes and regard them more with fear; and sometimes implied to think them as lesser, like of course they're so-and-so-and-a-threat, of course we have to fear them. It's even suggested in how Lio and Song continue to treat Hugo. When the formula finally works on Hugo, it motivates them to change their minds about taking intelligence away from mutes, but they still apparently maintain other arguably troubling attitudes. Again, they choose human experimentation over trying to actually talk to and engage with mutes. After they decide they don't want to be a part of the effort to revert mutes, do Lio and Song try to get Hugo out of the awful situation they're complicit in maintaining? No, they again go for human experimentation instead and continue to be complicit in Hugo's imprisonment until they're ready with an alternative for humans to live "safely" on the surface. They make Hugo wait, they do not prioritize him or his new status as a sentient mute; the greater good and "safety" of humanity takes precedence over the welfare of one mute. (Like Lio and Song are not on Emilia's level, but I think they're an example of the layers that can happen in something like this; Lio and Song are not as terrible to mutes as Emilia is, but I think that, for example, they don't or didn't actually respect mutes that much.) Kipo is also not a potential bridge between mutes and humans because she's half human half mute. Kipo cannot even meaningfully engage on a cultural level as half human and half mute because her whole life she was culturally raised as only a burrow human. She's learning more about mutes, but still culturally as a burrow human outsider. She doesn't have enough lived experience to meaningfully reach out to both human and mute cultures because she spent most of her life culturally as only a burrow human, and never even had to deal with growing up with a half human half mute identity; and she's an artificially made hybrid due to scientific experimentation conducted by her human parents, not the child of human and mute cultures truly engaging with each other, Kipo is not the child of a human parent and a mute parent. Lio and Song genetically engineered mute DNA into Kipo in the interests of making the surface safe for humans, and did not think of true engagement or communication with mutes and their culture. They probably didn't even consider mutes having a culture and society, etc. They only saw the physical benefit of mute DNA as something useful to ensure human "safety" on the surface, but didn't look at mutes as fully formed sentient beings with multiple layers to them. (*The entirety of Project Kipo is flawed and poorly thought out. Why not at least average mute DNA instead of going straight to mega mute DNA for an already risky experiment on your own child? They probably went straight for mega mute as the highest safeguard against other mega mutes. And they probably went with apex predator mega mute DNA to make the safeguard against other mega mutes even stronger. But there seems to be the heavy risk of an apex predator mega mute also seeing humans as prey and turning against them too. And the risk of that seems to be even more implied now that it's known that half mute-humans can lose themselves to mega mute side. And jaguars are again carnivorous predators. So. Just. I don't think Lio and Song thought this through at all and it's had poor consequences for everyone.) But Lio does end up raising Kipo as more his daughter than an experiment, and he did care for her and kept her mostly safe until the past came back to bite them with Emilia using mind controlled mega mute monkey Song to attack the Clover Burrow, and the mega mute jaguar traits making a comeback in a big way and exposing Kipo to losing her mind in mega mute mode and other traumas and dangers. (Would Emilia target Kipo like this at all if Kipo were a normal human?) But Lio is in a way still not as open as Kipo, or needs her help and/or reminders from her to try to be more open. I think Lio was able to create an environment where Kipo could come to her own and learn to be open herself. So a pro for him there, but Lio (and Song) again still made numerous other mistakes with severe consequences for both Kipo and Hugo/Scarlemagne, and a lot of others too actually (Emilia is using Project Kipo research after all). So Lio helped give Kipo a loving and safe enough upbringing for about 12 years before the consequences of his and Song's actions caught up with them; and Kipo was able to develop to the point that actually the most important thing she can offer is being herself, not the artificially hybrid half human half mute status forced on her.  I suppose what I'm also saying is that Lio and Song really unnecessarily experimented on their daughter, changed her body without her consent and forced these ambitions on her without her consent, tried to use science as a shortcut focused on only improving the status of humans, instead of trying to actually engage with mutes as fellow sentient beings in an ongoing dialogue and relationship. I'm saying that Kipo is doing what her parents and a lot of other humans should have tried before: talk to and engage with mutes on an emotional level. I'm saying that Kipo didn't need to be experimented on and genetically engineered into an artificial half human half mute hybrid for that. I guess what I'm saying is: Human Experimentation or Sending out a Peacekeeping Delegation to Mute Factions (Talk to Mutes)?? And Lio and Song went with human experimentation. (I love that the show has made me think about stuff like this. Lio and Song are very interesting and part of that is because they've screwed up so much, and they'll be even more interesting if the narrative ends up really acknowledging this. Also I felt he was relevant, but I also could not resist Hugo/Scarlemagne thoughts, I love him.)