#I want to say non canon on habit but honestly having spent so much time in danmei fandoms

[jojaqualityheadcanons]

SDV's 1.5 update contains content that plays into racist, colonialist, and imperialist myths and beliefs.

Disclaimer: I loved SDV (which is a given, considering I have an SDV sideblog lol?), and I'm not writing this post to get people to boycott the game or stop liking it or whatever. I just want people to understand why this content is harmful, how it might be affecting your biases and beliefs, and think of how they can engage with this media without exacerbating the harm that it does. I'm Filipino, and I don't speak for all POC or all brown people, but I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by the content update. Please keep that in mind before you interact with this post. Explanation under the cut because of 1.5 spoilers (obviously) and because this got long.

(I will block people who clown on this post. Keep your opinions to yourself unless you also have firsthand experience with the issues I describe.)

Background

I was already wary of the 1.5 content update because of how the previews featured ~tropical~ and ~exotic~ stuff, but I decided to give it a shot because maybe I was being too hasty with my judgment.

I wasn't. I made a new save to play with the 1.5 content update, and at first, I was having a great time! The new special orders made gameplay more exciting and varied! I could finally get rid of the nursery from my house without mods! The remixed junimo bundles made me change my usual game strategy. And then, I finally unlocked Ginger Island.

It seemed cool at first, but I had a sinking feeling growing in the pit of my stomach as I kept playing. It got to the point that I started nursing a stomach ache and lots of anger that took me days to shake off. I know SDV has never been a shining example of racial/ethnic diversity and sensitivity (I mean... there's a reason why mods like Diverse Stardew Valley and a bunch of other diversity mods exist lol). But while the lack of diversity in the pre-1.5 content is more of a missed opportunity, the 1.5 content is just... actively harmful and hurtful, imo. Here's a breakdown of the issues with the setting and the characters:

The Setting

Ginger Island, along with the Fern Islands in general, is a tropical island that is clearly based on islands in the Pacific. Its features include fertile soil and an abundance of natural, foragable resources. And for some unknown reason, it has no native human population.

Many islands in the world are uninhabited by humans, and there's always a good reason why. The island's environment may be too hostile, it could be too small to sustain human life, it could be sacred or otherwise culturally unacceptable to live there, or some disaster may have occurred to wipe out the local population or cause them to flee. Some uninhabited islands are nature reserves or privately owned. The point is that if an island is habitable, people are bound to call it home.

Writing Ginger Island as an uninhabited "tropical paradise" feels like a copout. It's as if the game is saying, "don't worry, you're not colonizing this land because no one really lives here! You're not stealing this land or anything because it's up for grabs and is just waiting for the right person to come along to develop it and turn it into a resort for other people who don't live here!" But that claim rings hollow when there are so many signs of civilization there, such as literal computers and ancient structures. And the canon reason for the existence of these things is that dwarves, non-human creatures, lived there once. I just think it's ridiculous and harmful that the game completely ignores and erases the existence of the people who lived and still live in the places that Ginger Island is based on and goes even further to use non-human creatures as stand-ins. I don’t think I have to explain why this isn’t good, considering that people of color have been compared to animals and treated like animals to dehumanize us and justify our oppression for ages.

To really hammer in my point about whitewashing and erasure, all the human labor on the island is done by a flock of parrots that you pay with golden walnuts (i. e., resources that you get for free from the island they live on). There's even an anthropomorphized bird who's a shopkeep! I get that creating a whole cast of human NPCs to fill a town would have been way too much work for a content update, but CA didn't need to use a bunch of animals as stand-ins for non-white human characters. There’s a troubling trend of creators prioritizing animal characters over characters of color, and CA plays right into it. He seriously chose to create more anthro characters instead of adding characters of color to the game in a setting that in real life has populations that are primarily made up of brown people. The game includes brown people's land and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

The erasure of brown people and the portrayal of our lands as wild and untamed have been used to sanitize the narrative of colonialism for centuries. Pretending that our lands were wild tropical paradises that were ripe for the taking is pretending that colonizing forces didn't use violent, dehumanizing means to subjugate or wipe out countless peoples and cultures in order to make these lands available. Ginger Island's erasure of brown people just perpetuates this colonialist myth, and the context in which it does so disgusts me: the farmer, who already runs a successful farm that was inherited from their grandfather, goes off to a tropical island they have no personal connection to and uses its natural resources to expand their business further. They also open up a resort on the island for the enjoyment of other privileged people from their homeland, and going there is treated as a luxury. This is a classic colonizer narrative, and I cannot believe the game forces players to colonize an island in order to win.

The Characters

I'm honestly amazed that the amount of feedback about the lack of diversity in SDV didn't prompt CA to create characters of color. I'm amazed that he chose the setting he did and still didn't bother to create any characters of color. The fact that all three of the new human characters who live on this tropical island are white makes me go a little apeshit, to be honest! I hate all three of them for a variety of reasons, so I'll go over them one by one:

Birdie

My reasons for not liking Birdie are primarily related to misogyny (lady spent literal decades in isolation on this island moping over her dead husband?) and ageism (if you tell her to live her own life, she tells you that she's too old to???). Sooo they're not really related to the rest of my discussion here, and I won't get into them further. Moving on!

Professor Snail

White historians, archaeologists, and paleontologists have been stealing and plundering artifacts, relics, and fossils from colonized lands for centuries. These white scientists would send their “discoveries” back to their homelands with little regard for the people they stole from. I’ll acknowledge that Professor Snail doesn’t bring the bones and fossils off the island, so his character isn’t as awful as it could be, but he still canonically has this line:

I really just don’t understand why it was necessary to make this character white when making him a character of color could have easily prevented the uncomfortable real-world implications of a white man coming to a foreign land to plunder fossils without asking anybody for permission. If he he’d been created as someone who traced his ancestry to Ginger Island and wanted to study the island’s biological history, his character could have been so sympathetic and even admirable to me! But his character as it is just makes me think of this meme:

Here are some links for further reading about colonialism in paleontology and other social sciences: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Leo

I had a hard time figuring out how to write about this character because the way CA wrote him is arguably one of the most racist parts of SDV. So many aspects of his character left me speechless and appalled because I cannot believe people are still writing shit like this in the 2020s.

I’ll start off with his storyline: this white child gets stranded on an island and is raised by animals. When the farmer meets him, he speaks in broken English to show how “wild” he is:

As the farmer continues to interact with him, he begins to speak more “proper” English:

Wow... he’s becoming more “civilized” because of the farmer’s influence!

As his story progresses, he reveals that he’s lonely because he doesn’t fit in among the other birds. Eventually, he leaves behind his non-human family and assimilates into a primarily white, Western-coded society because that’s supposedly where he belongs.

This whole storyline is made possible by the problems with the setting that I mentioned earlier. Leo wouldn’t feel so lonely and out of place if there were people on the island. He wouldn’t be depicted as wild and animal-like if he had an adoptive family made up of humans instead of parrots. But because CA chose not to have native human characters on this island, Leo can only be around other people if he leaves his home and family behind. As a result, Leo’s story has very uncomfortable parallels with how colonizers have historically separated indigenous children from their families and cultures and forced them to assimilate into the dominant colonizer culture because they considered indigenous cultures to be savage and barbaric (1) (2).

Leo’s whole narrative unintentionally implies that a good life in a good community can only be had in civilized white Western societies. I’m honestly having trouble with further explaining why Leo’s whole character makes me feel so gross, so just read up on the White Man’s Burden, The Jungle Book and other works by Rudyard Kipling (1) (2) (3) (4) (5, PDF download link), and even Tarzan (1) (2).

Leo’s character is also used to further whitewash non-white cultures: 

Poi is a Polynesian dish. Mango sticky rice, which is also a recipe that Leo teaches you in-game, is a Thai dish. In the letter, Leo says that the dish is from his home and enjoyed by his non-human family. Considering that he probably learned these recipes on Ginger Island, and that the only “people” who could have taught him this recipe are literal animals, including these recipes in the game in this way just reinforces the equation of brown people to animals. I’m not Polynesian or Thai, but I know that if CA had included a Filipino recipe in the game and not only had it taught to players by a white character, but also passed off as something from the white character’s culture, I’d be angry. I’ll repeat myself: The game features brown people's food and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

I don’t think there’s any way to tweak or edit Leo’s character to fix the issues I described. No matter how we change things, he’s still an orphan raised by animals coded as indigenous people, and he assimilates into the dominant white Western culture. The only way to address these issues is to completely redo his character and even the setting of Ginger Island. Here are some options that I’ve thought of:

Leo is related to someone in the Valley and stays with them for part of the year.

Leo lives with his human family and community on Ginger Island.

Leo’s parents are specifically from Stardew Valley/Pelican Town and he wants to visit in order to reconnect with his heritage.

This list isn’t comprehensive, but it does show that there are so many alternatives to having yet another Mowgli story in Stardew Valley.

Conclusion

I don’t think that CA had bad intentions when he made this content, but the fact is that he did create this content. I’m not calling him a bad person. However, he does have a lot of racist, imperialist, and colonialist biases that he has yet to unlearn. Considering the setting and subject matter of the new 1.5 content, he really should have hired some sensitivity readers to avoid creating harmful content. The man’s sold over ten million copies of his game, and he certainly has the resources to put together a sensitivity team.

I can’t look at Stardew Valley the same way I did before 1.5, but I’m not going to condemn the game as a whole. I might play the game again someday, but I absolutely won’t be going back to Ginger Island. If you’ve enjoyed the Ginger Island content, then good for you! Please just keep all that I’ve written here in mind and accept that that content hurts some people like me.

If you’re a content creator, I urge you to get sensitivity readers if you’re featuring  cultures that you’re not a part of to avoid making the same mistakes that I’ve discussed here. Creating from a place of understanding and respect can only make your work better and more accessible to a wider audience, especially to the people whose culture you’re borrowing.

#stardew valley #sdv #sdv leo #sdv birdie #sdv professor snail #racism cw #imperialism #colonialism #blabbering #ids for images are in alt text btw!

[background-noise-headache]

Hurt the Bard, but like, Emotionally/Non-lethally

Um, terribly painful Jaskier-whump idea. (This has some Geraskier elements in it, but in a pre-relationship, developing friendship way, featuring a lot of Geralt openly caring for Jaskier because that’s my head canon, Geralt speaks with actions and his eyes, not his words. 

I know the fandom likes to play with the idea of Jaskier’s parents being distant or abusive or neglectful. Which I do enjoy, but I vibe more with the idea that Jaskier had very supportive parents and that’s why he’s so confident and open and affectionate.

So, this: The court mage’s apprentice is bitter and angry seeing all this love that annoying brat (only a few years younger than him) gets. The jealousy is eating at him. Jaskier goes to Oxenfurt then sets out on his own to become a bard with the encouragement of his parents even if it’s not what’s expected of a viscount.

Somewhere between when Jaskier meets Geralt to the djinn incident (I imagine after Cintra) Jaskier is home for a while, telling his family about his adventures and being showered in love and sharing that love back with them, he’s missed them so much.

The apprentice is now the court mage and that anger has never gone away, just been buried and smothered because dude does not have the best coping mechanisms, no one ever taught him any. Asshole decides to cast a curse on Jaskier:

“Every kind word will cause you pain and make you rot on the inside, but no one will see the pain they cause you. It won’t kill you physically, but you’ll swear you’re dying. Every kind word, every compliment, will make you rot until the only relief and joy you get is when someone insults you. You’ll beg for them to hate you, beg for them to spit in your face.”

By the next day it’s clear how effective the curse is.

(Okay, trigger warning for body horror, skin issues, medical wounds. This is honestly me coping with a terrible nightmare I had a few years back that I never completely got over and sometimes I need to talk about it. So, bear with me, or skip to my line of astrisks)

(You know what, additional trigger warnings for toxic relationships and emotional abuse between Jaskier an characters only mentioned in the show but never seen. You know the ones)

By rot, I mean that when Jaskier looks at his skin it looks like it’s bruising, and then cracking, bleeding, pealing away. It’s molting and pussy and awful (that is specifically what it looked like in my dream, the skin on my left arm was molting.) But nobody fricken sees it! Jaskier can point to the wounds, groan in pain, nobody sees the cause. It’s not actually there, it’s technically in his head because that’s what the curse does, it won’t kill him, just rot him. 

So immediately Jaskier realizes he has to leave home because every time he sees his parents and his siblings and his neices and nephews they’re excited and happy and loving. They’re quick to realize something’s wrong, but Jaskier knows they can’t see the way his skin is turning. He leaves without saying goodbye because he can’t explain.

He travels, avoids his friends and familiar places where he’s known. But when he performs his audience will tell him how wonderful his songs were and patrons will flirt and it’s all pain. It’s less painful to avoid performing, but harder to survive without it. But he can’t always bear the pain, it’s just too much sometimes.

He runs into an old classmate. He and Valdo were never close, several years apart in age. They chat, they flirt, they go to bed together. Valdo is sparing with his compliments, and very observant. Because Jaskier gets irritable with pain and too many nice words makes him lash out, but insults stir a fire in his eyes that Valdo enjoys. He thinks he knows what Jaskier really wants. He’s not sure how he feels about it, but Valdo can’t remember the last time he had a fling so interesting and contradictory.

They travel for a while. Jaskier becomes a backup for Valdo’s performances, getting a share of the coin to get by and minimal attention. It’s better this way, he tells himself.

One drunken night he tells Valdo about the curse. To Valdo it makes too much sense and it’s so tragic and the tragedy makes it more romantic. The relationship is downhill from there as Jaskier realizes the kind of situation he’s gotten himself into and how he’s becoming dependent on Valdo’s cruelty, and how much crueler it feels if Valdo says something nice.

He leaves.

He meets the Countess. She flirts with insults and thrives making people feel lower than her. She pays him a lot of money to play for her and takes him to bed and rarely has a kind word and if he avoids drinking too much he’ll never fall into the same trap he did with Valdo.

And then a song begins circulating about a poor bard cursed to long for pain and cruelty, who will never know love again. Which fucking hurts worse than any of this shit before, the message that he’ll never be loved again burns.

The Countess grows bored and kicks him out. He travels for a few weeks, to tired and burnt out to perform and goes through his money fast. He also had jack-all in the way of travel supplies, not even a bedroll, so it’s a rough few weeks after he can no longer afford a bed under a roof.

And then he meets Geralt on the bank of the Pontar. Gods it’s nice to focus on someone else’s problems for a moment. And then the fillingless pie comment, and it’s the first time in a Gods-know-how-long time that he finds no relief in the insult, only annoyance. And that old habit of bickering with Geralt kicks in because even if it’s been a few years they’re still friends. 

(Yes, they’re friends. I head canon that Geralt says they’re not friends 1. because he has obvious abandonment issues and self loathing problems, as the fandom well knows, and 2. every time he says he and Jaskier aren’t friends, Jaskier insists they are with more and more evidence to prove it and it makes Geralt feel warm and fuzzy. Eventually they had that conversation and Jaskier knows what Geralt actually means/wants to hear when he says they’re not friends)

(also Geralt has been plagued with insomnia for weeks or months on end, and I’m telling you, you would be cranky too. Not getting enough sleep gives me migraines, worsens my snow vision, makes my ADHD worse, and makes me irritable. That’s why Geralt is so grumpy on the river bank)

So for a few minutes he forgets about the curse and the festering rot on his skin. And then the djinn, and he’d really like to get back at the two people that have hurt him the most recently, and then break this stupid fucking curse already.

No such luck.

And after all the djinn nonsense, Yen makes the offhanded comment, “Where’s your cursed bard run off to.”

“He shouldn’t be cursed any more.”

“Oh no, he was cursed long before the djinn.”

“Why didn’t you tell me!”

“I didn’t see it until you left.”

“And you didn’t break it?”

“It wasn’t killing him. The djinn was. One problem at a time. The djinn needed to be solved before this curse.”

So, yeah, Yennefer and Geralt find Jaskier outside and they have a long talk about it. Yen needs a day to prepare for breaking the curse because she’s already used a lot of chaos today and she needs rest. (And those two idiots need to talk, she can see it and it’s giving her a migraine she needs to sleep off)

Jaskier tells Geralt about the last year or so of his life. It’s fucking shit.

The curse is broken. There’s no sign of rot on Jaskier’s skin, no pain when anyone says something kind, like “we are friends” and “I missed you” which is a relief.

But the emotional changes won’t go away overnight. Jaskier responds to kindness with hostility and takes insults in silence. And Geralt isn’t doing well watching someone he cares about act... act like Geralt. Self-hating and believing they need cruelty to be normal. And there’s no traveling therapist either. So they’re doing the best they can. But it’s a rough few years as Jaskier unlearns all that shit.

It kind of convinces Geralt to get his head a little more out of his ass and stop hating himself so much, realizing how painful it must be for Jaskier and his brothers and Vesemir and Yennefer to watch.

The mountain is just a really awful few days. Jaskier takes Geralt’s lashing with minimal resistance. A comment that it’s not fair is a vast improvement from 5-6 years ago, but nothing like his younger self would have responded, all puffed up dramatics until Geralt realized how ridiculous he was being.

Geralt and Jaskier have an awkward, stunted few days hiking down the mountain, during which Jaskier decides he needs to go to the coast and sort himself out. He’ll see Geralt next spring.

He goes home and spends that autumn with his family. It’s the most healing three months he’s ever had. The mage has long since left, and Jaskier’s not sure he’ll ever get that closure, but he’ll take what healing he can get now. He’s more like his old self than he’s ever been since the curse broke.

And then Geralt shows up on the edge of winter, limping with an exhausted child surprise and a wounded sorceress by his side. Jaskier gives them shelter for a few nights but they can’t stay, they’ll in danger as long as they’re stuck down south.

The night before they leave, Geralt and Jaskier talk, clear the air. Geralt asks if Jaskier is happy. He is. So Geralt decides not to ask Jaskier to join him. Yennefer is the one to ask, because fuck that idiotic bullshit and Ciri already knows him from a few winters spent at Cintra and adores him, and he’s already great with kids, a skill Yennefer and Geralt can’t claim yet.

Jaskier’s family supports him, of course they do. He promises to return home soon.

* * *

So like, I was going to pose this as a writing prompt and offer it to anyone who wants to write it. I didn’t intend to develop it so much, but getting it out of my system helped a lot. I needed to get all those ideas out.

If it speaks to you, feel free to run with it, but please include a link to this original post or mentioned me. My ao3 is Shadowmightwrite17

(yeah, tbh, that nightmare still haunts me. I told my parents about it immediately, but I didn’t open up about it to anyone until last summer when I told my best friend about it. I was like, “did I ever tell you about that one nightmare I had where my skin was molting off my arm?” and he was like, “no. no you did not. wtf” But there was also a thing last week when I read a vaguely body-horror sentence in a Witcher fanfic about something moving under your skin and I remembered again, so like, I needed to talk about it somehow)

#jaskier #dandelion #geraskier #the witcher #geraskier fanfiction #fanfiction #my fanfic #it's past midnight I should be sleeping #i'm too tired to edit this so sorry for that

[paintmelikeoneofyourfrenchpoodle]

((Alright, so this is probably way overdo.

Why the heck Jade gets so weird about sex sometimes:

Alright, so this is going to be a little ridiculously long, but if you want to know? I’m putting it under the cut. Also, TW: there is a brief mention of abuse. Not of her, but its relevant. I’ll also put another warning when that part is about to come up. 

Okay so, I’m going to start of with some context. So for anyone who might not know, this Jade is pretty old. I started rping her as her back in… I think late December of 2015 or early January of 2016? Either way, it was a few months before Homestuck actually ended. At this point obviously we had no idea how it was going to end, or what was going to happen to the characters at that point. Heck, if I remember correctly GIGAPAUSE, or whatever it was called, was still going on.

Anyway, didn’t know they were going basically jump start civilization and jump into the future, that’s for sure. So, not knowing how things were going to turn out for Jadey girl here, I basically made some educated guesses based on what we knew at the time, and mixed in my own ideas and head-canons to create the timeline this Jade now exists in. This included the loss of the meteor lab, building a new civilization from the ground up (and actually sticking around to help build it), and having everyone live in a fairly small, tight knit community. Mind you, some minor things have changed to reflect the retcon John did, but mostly I’ve kept things fairly the same.

So what does this mean for Jade or have anything to do with her sexuality? We’ll get to that, but I’m going to prelude things by saying it isn’t just sex she gets worked up about. It’s relationships and intimacy in general, and there isn’t really one set reason why. There is a gosh darn list.

1) She doesn’t have the best social skills. Growing up on an island with the only human contact being through the internet isn’t exactly the best way to nurture healthy emotional development. To top it all off, she spent those 3 years on the ship basically alone thinking she killed John and Davesprite. She isn’t a complete social ignoramus obviously, but she has her awkward moments and she KNOWS it. Which, can give her some major social anxiety in general. And as far as relationships, even friendships go, she is constantly worried she is going to screw things up. She also just wasn’t used to people in general for a good while. 

Mind you, it’s almost been 10 years since the end of the game now from her perspective so she has improved drastically, but there are still some hangups that she has. For example, she doesn’t handle crowds well considering she was so used to being alone. Can Town is full mostly people she is familiar with and the population is only 1,000ish, so she is mostly in her comfort zone still even during busier occasions. However, notice Jake and her chose to move outside of town when they got the chance? There you go. 

2) She isn’t used to physical touch. Which… is really sad considering how much she actually loves it. Again, this is something that has improved over the years, but she still doesn’t like being messed with by people she doesn’t know.

3) She honestly thinks that in the end she will end up alone. Jade, hasn’t exactly had the best luck with romance. Remember, her timeline is fairly small, and pretty much everyone she might be compatible with already paired up with someone else. To top it off, she had (and still kind of has) a massive crush on her timeline’s Dave, and built up a lot of false hope that something might eventually happen between the two of them thanks to John telling her about Davesprite and Davepeta kissing her that one time. Yeah, that didn’t happen. He ended up getting with Karkat finally when they were around 22, and while she is happy for them and supports them in any way she can, it kind of broke her heart. 

She also hasn’t had the best luck with people she’s been interested in online/from other timelines either. Usually, by the time she realizes she might be interested in someone they end vanishing, dating someone else, or they actually… end up being kinda awful people she shouldn’t have liked in the first place. (*cough*Venom*cough*) Also, she has a habit of dwelling on the whole “space players are destined to be alone” thing from time to time. Over the years she has genuinely started to think that she just isn't cut out for being anyones partner romantic/sexual/otherwise, and that people aren’t ever going to be interested in her for whatever reason. She’s built up this shell around herself, this illusion that she has come to terms with things, so that when that eventuality happens, she’ll maybe not be hurt so badly. So when someone shatters that illusion? She panics and gets flustered, and remember… she is related to these guys:

(Mind you Jake had plenty of reason to act like that, but it was the only one I could find with a quick google search.)

But yeah, I think big reactions kind of runs in her family.

4) She’s inexperienced. Three times as of this point. Yep. Thats it. That’s all she has done. Ever. Don’t get her wrong, she has really enjoyed it and really gets into things once she was able to get over the jitters. Plus, she was the one that asked for it each time. But she doesn’t like not knowing what she is doing, and it wigs her out because she doesn’t want to mess things up. Also fun fact, she’s never been on a non pale date before. Just throwing that in there.

5) The whole being part dog thing. As much as she loves being part canine, she actually can be real self conscious about it at times. Also, she *hates* how people will sometimes look at her as a fetish, and gets worried that if someone is interested in her its because she is a dog girl, and not because of who she is. She does enjoy indulging in her dog side (girl likes being pet), but she wants to make sure someone to see her as herself first and foremost. Being part dog should just be a bonus.

6) She’s a bit of a hopeless romantic. She wants to actually have a connection with people, and honestly is that so wrong? One night stands, flings, or casual whatevers aren’t completely out of the question, but at least give her a chance to be friends with you first geez. 7) She’s scared of being hurt. This is kind of caused by a combination of things up top, but she genuinely is afraid of the idea of being fucked and dumped. She’s got enough emotional issues as is, and does not need that on her conscious as well. Getting intimate with her in any way can take a lot of trust depending on the person. Additionally… 

*Okay, so here is the part I warned about up top.* She has had far too many friends who have been taken advantage of and abused. There have been several people that she has been close to over the years that have been seriously messed up by their partners. Jade’s smart and she knows it, but she also knows she can be really naive about certain things as well. It’s kind of the cherry on top of all her paranoia.

Okay bad part over

So yeah! This is ridiculously long, but there you go. I feel like it is important to note that Jade does really enjoy being with someone intimately and/or sexually given the chance. It just can take some work getting her out of her shell. It’s something she knows she needs to work on, and would like to. However, she hasn’t really ever had many opportunities to.

Also, her behaviors really only apply to herself for the most part. She might get a little embarrassed by other people talking about their own stuff from time to time, but she actually can get a real kick out of it sometimes as well. Has been known to have lengthy conversations with people about their own preferences, sexual interests, habits, ect. She will even tease other people about it! It’s when it gets flipped back on her somehow that she starts getting worked up. Heck, she is normally fine with people getting her flustered because she *knows* a lot of her own behavior is ridiculous, and that when people pick at her it is usually harmless friend banter.  She also usually knows when people are being truly malicious towards her and WILL defend herself. Don’t think she is a pushover just because she looks like she is an easy target. This girl has some bite alongside that bark.

Anyway, there is probably some more I could add to this but again it is stupid long at this point. I hope this isn’t too confusing and explains a few things.

#ooc #long post #abuse mention #ask to tag

[ambitionsource]

Who in the a class is in some kind of therapy?

what a question LMAO. but honestly, a very fair one indeed. while discussing this, es and i ended up basically dividing it into three groups (if someone isn’t mentioned, it just means none apply)

Is In Therapy Currently

Isadora || as we know from the canon of S3, isa is currently in therapy to work through the grief of valerie dying as well as like... the built up abandonment issues, anxiety, and struggles she has articulating or processing emotions lmao. it also helps her learn better methods to work with her autism

Farkle || i mean... we all watched S1 & 2. we know why he’s there LMAO and by god does he need it. it’s good that he’s improving though!!

Chai || she officially started therapy after the events of S1 while she was abroad because evidently her parents divorce really fucked with her emotional state and coping mechanisms -- as well as having sort of emotionally distant parents and having to navigate the world on her own. basically, money =/= nurturing. but yeah i think she realized what she did with tormenting her classmates wasn’t Healthy perhaps and so she sought out the resources to fix it on her own. her parents certainly weren’t going to be much help

Clarissa || clarissa has been in and out of therapy here and there since she was little, mainly for managing OCD. usually she’s fine and her appointments are infrequent (monthly at this current rate), but she tends to go back to her therapist when circumstances get very stressful, like the events of S2 (she mentions going back to therapy in a scene with charlie and haley in 210)

Not In Therapy Currently, but Has Before

Riley || though not by choice, riley went to therapy for a stretch of time in the aftermath of her bullying experience freshman year. by the start of S1, though, she’s on the tail-end of it after a whole summer full of it. she also had stints in family therapy when she was little when cory and topie were having their first bouts of marriage problems, but she doesn’t remember all that obviously. she’s thought about going back for herself because of all the divorce strain, but ultimately opted against it bc she didn’t want to go through cory or topanga. she mainly sticks to talking to eric if things get too overwhelming and using the coping mechanisms she already has

Darby || miss darbs spent some time in therapy in late elementary school due to having issues socializing with her peers. i think she’s always been a bit awkward and desperate to please, so that can get messy with kids cause kids are mean. she was also definitely bullied at that age for being really tall and so i think her parents put her therapy out of genuine concern just with the hopes that like, she’d be able to develop some coping mechanisms and have a safe space to get advice if they didn’t have the answers. and in some ways it helped, other ways no -- her friendships aren’t the healthiest still (as she’s the doormat), but i think she holds her own BETTER with the plastics having gone to therapy than if she never developed those emotional tools at all

Has Not / Is Not but Really Fucking Should Be in Therapy

LUCAS || this is like the most obvious blinking lights sirens wailing example ever. he is a walking textbook for endorsing therapy. between the domestic abuse, mommy and daddy issues, self-esteem in the subbasement, lack of life purpose, inability to read others well emotionally, inability to process his own emotions, the physical aversion due to his trauma, his kleptomania, his risk-taking behavior, his habit of lying, the fact that he has canonically walked off for days at a time with no warning, explanation, or safety net, that he sleeps in a fucking technician’s booth, he used to free-climb buildings SOMETIMES IN THE RAIN, no sense of self-preservation, intrusive thoughts, inability to express appreciation or affection in a normal non-stressful way...... this man is a therapist’s dream and nightmare. they could spend YEARS unpacking him. but will he ever go to therapy? no. because he a) doesn’t think he needs it, b) can’t ask for help ever, and c) could never afford it. and at this point, d) if his dad heard he was seeking help like that he would shut it down instantly. anyway, he’s the biggest case here. underline him in red

Charlie || charlie is a great example of someone who is like coping... sort of... not really... it Looks like they’re coping but they aren’t really and they really need help. like yes, charlie has stability in certain areas of his life that others don’t, and he’s extremely self-aware of his privileges, but i think that’s part of the problem. he’s convinced himself he doesn’t need or shouldn’t get external help because there are people who have it so much worse than him and he doesn’t... he doesn’t really need it, does he? he’s fine. he’ll be fine. and even if he did think about getting “help,” i think his first instinct -- and advice from others -- would be to go to his church leadership, which is not a suggestion made with ill will but just isn’t helpful considering half of his trauma is tied to his relationship with god and the church and faith. he needs a more objective space to unpack all of that, and obviously church itself is not the answer. i think that charlie will be able to work through a lot of his initial issues on his own with time and patience with himself (something we’re in the thick of right now -- we’re just barely in the acceptance phase), but he should really go to therapy in the future just to like... work through all of the long-term trauma he endured from his upbringing and bridgette’s exile and the dueling psychology of church vs sexuality. like... that’s gonna take some time to unravel and he needs to be in the right place to pursue that on his own. will he, i dont know, but i think when he does a certain heaviness he’s been carrying his entire life will finally like... lift. and he’ll be able to breathe better

Asher || so asher is a bit of a clusterfuck LMAO like he’s diagnosed officially with generalized anxiety disorder but he never saw a specialist, his mom diagnosed him since she’s a psychologist. the complexity here is that because of that... well, they say you should never let family be your personal doctors and i think that’s true for mental health professionals too. like emily basically gave asher the generic coping rundown when he was really young, and then he went on to develop his own coping mechanisms with, at least, a very fundamental understanding of what’s wrong with him. but he kind of developed his own complex about it all too, bc i think emily took pride in him being able to figure it all out and be so capable with his own mental health without ever going to therapy and he kind of internalized that, as well as having internalized a lot his mom’s perspectives and opinions as a mental health professional in a way that its like... well my MOM said that, so i feel kind of some type of way about it. so its all really complicated and twisted in his head and he just doesnt bother to unpack it (something, ironically, therapy would probably help lol). the thing about asher is that for all intents and purposes, he does cope well and he is really in tune with his own mental state. it’s just that he could seriously benefit from having an objective party help him untangle some of his neuroses i think and it would take some of the constant stress off his shoulders, but he’s honestly too stuck in his ways at this point to go. that being said, he’s a vocal advocate for therapy and its benefits -- just not for himself

Nigel || as discussed a bit in the ask i answered about him, i just think nigel carries way too much pressure on himself and he could benefit from someone helping him work through things instead of carrying all his stress on his own -- even if its less complex than some others. he’s like same range as clarissa.

Maya || maya has no issue with self-esteem, but i think she could still benefit from someone helping her actually unpack her issues over her dad and why she is the way she is. a therapist who specializes in narcissism would be a good fit for her -- not because she is one, but she does have... certain quirks where i think having that specialization can help unravel her motivations and actions a little more easily

Missy || she’s just a fucking mess. she shouldn’t be redeemed but i think therapy could really do her a favor and maybe make her less terrible and psychopathic towards people who aren’t like her. maybe

-- Maggie & Es

#a class #answered #Anonymous #ask and you shall receive

[littlemisssquiggles]

Some people are saying that Rosegarden feels forced, especially after the most recent interaction the two had. That RG had absolutely no build up in terms of shipping. What is your response to this?

Hello Draw. You see, one of the many perks of being both a Rosegardener and Rosegardening Pinehead is that my adoration for the budding bond between our pair of smaller, more honest souls has caused me to become more observant of their moments together; particularly over the course of the most recent three seasons. And it is because I pay so much attention to following these two and their interactions per episode that I can easily contest with full confidence that people’s point of the ship being “forced with no build up” is drivel because it’s not true.

Again, take this from someone who has been following the development of this bond since V5. While it’s not as in your face as the portrayal of certain other ships within the FNDM, I can’t deny the fact that he show has been slowly building up these two’s relationship from the moment they met.

Throughout the seasons, the PLOT continues to highlight Ruby and Oscar’s growing friendship in the form of their continued support of one another. In V5, we began off with Ruby being the sole member of RNJR to actively look out for Oscar during his stay with the group back in Mistral and this habit of our littlered rose being protective of our freckled farm boy turned little barn prince has remained consistent even till this season.

And what’s interesting to note is that this protective and supportive nature wasn’t only established with Ruby. Oscar mirrors this behaviour as well with his own support of Ruby particularly in V6.

But don’t just take my word for it, here’s the photo proof because a picture says a thousand words:

So no I don’t believe the relationship between the Rosebuds is forced at all. If anything, I think the CRWBY have done pretty decently on showcasing the development between these two kids. It’s slow but it’s definitely there and it’s certainly ain’t forced. ‘Forced’ would’ve been if we spent several seasons with the show never really acknowledging these two’s relationship at all, providing zero groundwork for the potential of a romance to spark between them only to suddenly slam them together for this season.

This has not been the case with them fortunately. The Rosegarden bond has been building up nicely with the show occasionally tossing in moments between V5-V7 that highlight just how much one values the other’s influence on them on the team.

My one gripe is that I wished the show had done just a bit more to push for their friendship for this season. What’s weird was that it honestly seemed like that was the direction they were going for at first looking back on CH2 and CH3 of this season.

But no, what that essentially boiled down to was more light exchange of comments between the two until the recent ninth episode. It’s not how I would’ve handled if I were a CRWBY writer but hey, it’s the PLOT and I’m not here to argue the PLOT of RWBY and how the show writes its characters.

Needless to say, the portrayal of Rosegarden and their budding bond has been handled well enough so far (certainly better than certain other ships).

The only thing I believe might be ‘forced’ here is the reaction or rather overreaction of certain members of the FNDM in regards to the recent development of Rosegarden. It honestly upsets me to no end the level of toxicity people can stoop to within this FNDM and just how far they will go to rain on another person’s parade when they weren’t even doing anything to bother them in the first place.

Do you have any idea how annoyed I was over the weekend hearing stories of people complaining about the Rosegarden moment in V7CH9? How angered I became when I saw retweets from fellow Rosegardeners with some of the comments people were making in regards to not just Rosegarden but also Oscar because of this episode. Heck I’m upset now that I can’t even answer this question since I am just so fed up with this part of FNDM and their nonsense.

And what’s silly to me the most about all of this is that these types of fans are losing their butts over a moment that confirmed nothing.

So Ruby and Oscar acted all awkward and adorable while talking to each other in a scene that focused on their interaction?

So?

It’s no different than all the other times the show has had them act this way in a scene. And that’s just it! All they did was share another nice moment together that could easily be argued as not being all that romantically charged.

I’m a Rosegarden shipper and while I will say that that moment did toss a coin in the possibility of a future Rosegarden romance should the series really take them in that direction, it didn’t confirm this possibility for me either. It was just another cute moment between the two characters and the fact that folks are losing their knickers over something as minor as that is utterly ridiculous.

I even had a Whiterose shipper leave me comments on Twitter implying that their ship was now sunk thanks to that moment and they even congratulated me as a Rosegardener in this kind of way as if we were in some kind of beef regarding our ships. My reaction to that was “…Dude what?”

The last time I checked, I’m not fighting anyone on their ships. I am here because I love Rosegarden. They are my main RWBY OTP at the moment and like any fan, I’m more than delighted to see wherever the showrunners decide to take their bond—be it platonically or romantically. That being said, just because I ship RG, doesn’t mean I have any kind of beef or wish to be in any type of ridiculous shipping war with non-Rosegardeners.

To put it humbly, it doesn’t really matter to me what your shipping preferences are. Ship whoever you like so long as you remain respectable to other shippers. To put it bluntly, I don’t give a rat’s ass who or what you ship. Just don’t be a dickwad to anyone else regarding their own shipping choices. To each their own, in my books but respect is mandatory.

To the last episode in question, I’m going to be frank here. If Whiterose or Lancaster or any other non-RG ship had received any kind of moment in V7CH9 or in any episode before that, as a Rosegardener, I would be upset that my pairing didn’t get to have a moment too but I wouldn’t go out of my way to complain about the other ships or worse attack the shippers of said ship. That type of nonsense is unwarranted.

This is why this whole recent discourse surrounding a ship that I love has left me bothered. The things I have heard people say regarding the Rosegarden pair and even our shipping community is just deplorable.

I mean…it’s not entirely new what these people are saying.

It’s the same ole rubbish that’s been said to complain about the “problems” with RG for a while—the 2 year age gap. The Ozpin Dilemma. Yada-yada! Stuff that has already been debunked by the Rosegarden community, the CRWBY and the show itself. Yet…here we go again. The same recycled arguments going around and around, like a Beyblade.

I’ve even heard through the grapevine that certain-certain folks have reached as far as to refer to us Rosegardeners by a very ‘problematic’ term (i.e. paedophiles) just for liking Rosegarden. Like…wow! All of that just because RWBY gave our ship a little moment in the recent episode. Terrific.

But who is more problematic, though? The community of shippers who see this pairing of the two youngest huntsmen in our gaggle of heroes (who are not too far apart in age) as nothing more than an innocent bond that has the strong potential to blossom into an equally charming romance built on their mutual support of one another and their shared core values, as established within the canon.

Or…the group of people who are spreading hurtful backlash regarding said ship and its shippers that are not only NOT true but are just downright vulgar.

If I were to be completely honest with you, fam, my heart really isn’t in answering this question this time because there isn’t anything here I can really say to argue in favour of Rosegarden that either I or my fellow gardeners have not said multiple times before.

Seriously? How many times do we have to argue the hypocrisy of the nonsensical 2-year age gap “issue” that people still bring up to throw shade at Rosegarden while leaving ships like Whiterose, Lancaster and Nuts and Dolts who share the same age gap completely unscathed?

How many times do we have to repeat the same information provided by the show in which “The Lost Fable” episode (V6CH3) clearly said that Ozpin does not affect the Rosegarden relationship since in the past, Ozma had learnt to live in harmony with the men he was paired off with leading to one of them even getting married and having a family with Ozma being present but never interfering with Henkle’s (Dadpin) family affairs?

Seriously, how many times are people going to dig up both of these two poor, poor dead horses and continue to beat the ever living daylights out of em, huh?

It’s bad enough to ignore the rationales of the people who actually better understand the bond between the characters within the pairing since we pay closer attention to said relationship; however to ignore evidence provided by the series too as well as the word of the showrunners— that is a level of ignorance that has surpassed my patience to deal with this crap anymore.

Honestly, this squiggle meister has reached a point where I am fed up with the toxicity of some of the folks within this FNDM. The type of people, who to me, sound like nothing more than spoiled brats throwing hissy fits and tantrums just because the ‘CRWBY didn’t give them what they wanted in regards to their favourite SHIP so they have to ruin the experience for others who are just trying to have as much fun with it as they were’.

As if the CRWBY owe them anything. At the end of the day, the people running RWBY have all the say in the world. So if they decide they wish to give certain character relationships a bigger push than others then it’s their call.

And even if something becomes canon, that don’t necessarily mean it’s the end of a ship. Look how many other fandoms there are that dissolved into ridiculous shipping wars over whose ship was going to be canon and what happened? It didn’t matter in the end. Canon or not, people still continued to love and support the ship they liked even long after the series was over. Just look at Zutara from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

You think the Zutara-shippers gave two Flying Lemur shits about Kataang being endgame? No! Both ships still thrive pretty strongly even after all of these years as well as any other beloved ship from that show. So certain folks in the RWBY FNDM need to chill it with this kind of crap. It’s foolish!

And quite frankly, I have no more f***s left to give at this point to deal with it. Once upon a time, another fellow gardener approached me with this same kind of question and I’m going to repeat the same thing I told them in the end. There is a saying in my country that my mom used to say whenever conflict arose and people would just run their mouths for no reason. “Let the jackass bray!”

If folks within the FNDM wish to continue to run their mouths, making the same ole set of noise time and time again over small ting then it makes no sense trying to debate these kinds of people. This is why I feel more annoyed that I’m hearing about my fellow Rosegardeners still answering these people. STOP! Please STOP!

I myself have been caught up in it a little bit. Whether Rosegarden becomes canon or not, these types of people are always going to complain about it. We will never win with these people and y’know what? Whatever, because in all honesty, there is no fight or “shipping war” in the first place.

I refuse to argue with anyone over my preferred ship. Whether Rosegarden becomes canon or not, what matters to me is that I just want to kick back and enjoy the progression of our rosebuds who I adore so much. Ruby and Oscar are both my all-time favourite RWBY characters. Their individual stories mean a lot to me and their shared story together means a lot to me too.  I want to be able to express my admiration for the growing bond between these two buds and create content around them in peace; away from any kind of animosity.

Instead of wasting my time and energy on responding to the half-baked comments of people who clearly only care about my ship whenever they wish to stir up trouble, I will instead channel it into giving more support for the ship I adore. And I pray my fellow gardeners do the same.

I, for one, have been more inspired than I’ve ever been to create more RG content because if I have sit in my proverbial bubble and listen to constant chatter from folks like that then the least I can do is fill my bubble with the things I like. And I adore Rosegarden very much. I also adore our community. We’re a small bunch but we’re mostly all pretty cool, very nice, very talented and mostly courteous people. If certain-certain folks are saying things, let them run their mouths. Leave them alone with their noise.  

DON’T ANSWER THE TOXICITY! IGNORE IT! AND SHOULD IT DARE ATTACK YOU FOR NO REASON, DELETE AND BLOCK ARE YOUR WEAPONS. DON’T LET THE HATE RUIN YOUR FUN!

I understand how annoying it is to hear people talk smack about something you like while also being tempted to contest everything they say. But as I’ve mentioned before, I and many others have already debated these same old arguments before. They are not even worthy of being mentioned anymore since the CANON OF RWBY has deemed them invalid already.

While I appreciate you coming to me for my views, fam, truth is that I’ve already said my piece many, many, times before and I will always say the exact same thing:

I have been a Rosegardener (and by extension Rosegardening Pinehead) since RWBY V5 (2017). I have adored the pairing of Ruby and Oscar together since the series did a great job of hooking me in with how adorable these two’s first interactions were. Watching the way Ruby giggled and smiled at Oscar and seeing his ‘mini-stroke smile’ response to that was quite cute and such an expected reaction befitting of two adolescent kids meeting each other for the first time.

I have always viewed Rosegarden as the romantic pairing between Ruby Rose and Oscar Pine. I have NEVER once confused Rosegarden with Clockrose—the presumed RWBY pairing of Ruby Rose and Professor Ozpin. I wasn’t even aware of the existence of such a ship until V5.

But regardless, when I say I ship Ruby with Oscar, I mean exactly that, I ship Ruby with Oscar. To me, Oscar is NOT Ozpin. Nor will he ever be Ozpin or even another version of Ozpin.  

Do you wanna know why? Because by my understanding of the character of Oscar Pine, he is his own person separate from the character of Professor Ozpin.

As a matter of fact, when Ozpin previously had his old body, people saw him as himself. And when Oscar first appeared on the scene, the show introduced him to the audience as his own character. Even after Oz’s soul appeared, the show immediately highlighted that the two souls are different from the other in spite of sharing Oscar’s body.

It is for this reason why I don’t understand how people can keep insisting that Oscar and Oz are the same person.Especially when the show has gone out of its way to establish time and time again that these two souls, while like-minded, are NOT the same.

So when certain-certain folks attempt to imply that Rosegarden = Ruby and Ozpin because Oscar is Ozpin, not only do I find this remark to be gibberish but it’s also a complete misunderstanding of both the characters of Ozpin and Oscar.

Rosegarden does not involve Ozpin at all since it is a pairing between Ruby and Oscar and as I shall repeat with conviction, Oscar and Oz are not the same person. Two souls, people.

I also have no problem with shipping the Rosebuds despite their ginormous, galaxy-sized age difference of 2 years.

As confirmed by Miles Luna, the age gap between Ruby and Oscar is indeed 2 years. So even if Ruby is 17 years old as of present in the series, there is the likelihood that Oscar will be turning 15 soon. Possibly in V8.

As a matter of fact, 2 years is a common age gap used in RWBY. So common in fact that it’s the exact same age gap as non-RG ships like Whiterose, Lancaster, Nuts and Dolts and for all the ‘special folks’ in the FNDM who ship Enabler—the pairing of Ruby with her sister Yang.

Not trying to throw shade at Enabler, I just find it hilarious how incest is wincest within the FNDM yet my ship is the one getting heat all because they shared a cute moment where they finished each other’s sandwiches.

No declaration of love. No confirmation of a crush. No kiss. Not even a flushed cheek. Just two KIDS being absolute dorks with one another got certain-certain people all rattled up. Wow.  

Man I can’t wait to see how those same folks will react if Ruby and Oscar were to ever…dare I say it, hold hands and gaze into each other’s eyes.

RoosterTeeth may need to censor that kind of stuff because it’ll be too inappropriate for this type of uppity audience. The same audience who wouldn’t mind this type of thing or more if it were in favour of their favourite non-RG ship of the same age difference. Nope. Just the Garden is the problem. Sure….

Anyhow, while I understand that certain people may dislike Rosegarden for whatever reasons they got, what this squiggle meister firmly disapproves of is the outright disrespect of their fellow fans. I don’t understand the need for people to stir up trouble just because things within the show didn’t play out exactly how you wanted it. It’s just ridiculous and as I said, I’m done with it.

Just because certain-certain folks are talking, don’t mean I have to listen. Certainly not anymore now.

Anyways, that’s all I have to say on this topic. Not sure if I actually answered your question fam but that’s the best I got.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2020)

#drawsforfun2000 #squiggles answers: rwby #oscar pine #ruby rose #oscar and ruby #rwby rosegarden #rwby volume 7 spoilers

[tomishaped]

Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warnings:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence • Major Character Death

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Supernatural

Relationship:

Dean Winchester!Izzy Hlton

Characters:

Dean Winchester • Izzy Hilton • Sam Winchester • Asmodeus • Dagon • Demons • Hellhound • Ellen Harvelle • Jo Harvelle • Hunters • Crowley • Charlie Bradbury • Bobby Singer • Ruby • Death • Pestilence • Famine • War • Castiel • Angels • Cain

Additional Tags:

Demon Dean Winchester • Demon Sex • Kidnapping • Gay Sex • Blood • Blood Kink • Hate Sex • Love/Hate • Major Character Injury • Major Original Character(s) • Character Death • Past Child Abuse • Past Rape/Non-con • Past Sexual Abuse • Past Torture • Past Violence • Canon-Typical Violence • Violence • Protective Dean Winchester • Bisexual Dean Winchester • Top Dean Winchester • Dean Winchester is Bad at Feelings • Izzy is too • Emotional Hurt/Comfort • Emotional/Psychological Abuse

Summary: After being pulled out of hell Dean realizes quickly that the four months he had been gone made way for a lot of changes in the lives of everyone he knows, including the life he had known for himself before he died. Nobody was treating him the same, and there was seriously something going on with his brother that he could not figure out. He was spending most of his time alone nowadays, not really hunting anymore since Bobby and Sam were against it for him, and spending most of his time drinking instead to try and forget. He was angry, pretty much all the time. That anger really worked in his favour though when walking back to the impala he came across a freaking hoard of demons getting ready to attack some blond chick. He didn't know who she was or what the hell all the demons wanted with her, but there was no way he could just walk away. Maybe if he had any idea what trying to save this person was going to lead too he would have just walked away, maybe if he had actually given any thought to the situation before him he wouldn't have put himself in the middle of it, but even before hell he made impulsive and rash decisions... so maybe not.

Previous Chapters

• Chapter One •

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter Two: Welcome to the Batcave

Part One

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When they had reached the car Dean made quick work of the door locks and got them both inside before he punched it, only leaving squealing tires and smoke behind them as they took off. Dean didn’t start to relax till they were a mile or so away from the group of demons, still keeping an eye on the mirrors though just in case. “You really pissed someone off," he said with a grin as he glanced over at the other while he drove.

Izzy did manage to force himself to relax once they were in the car, though Dean still happened to look tense with the way he was looking out his mirrors for someone. Honestly, it probably helped the demon to relax with the fact that Izrael couldn't feel Dagon as close anymore. She was either losing interest or losing track of them for now, either way that worked for him. "Huh?" He was honestly confused at first when Dean said that, "Why would you think I pissed some- oh! Because of all that? Right. Yeah. They don't seem to fond of me, do they? I should probably stop crashing into their parties like that." 

Izrael shifted in the seat a little and rolled his eyes when he saw the man look out his mirrors again, "You can stop doing that now. We're fine, mommy lost us," he said with a shrug, leaning back in the seat again, trying to get comfortable. He was ready to get out of the Winchesters car now, and he would really like to do it without having to kill the hunter next to him in order to keep him from following or trying to track him. Even if he didn't have an issue with killing humans, he didn't know which way Dean's soul would go now and having it back in the pit after he killed him could possibly become… problematic. "So uh, yeah, you can just drop me off whenever now and can go get back too… whatever the hell you were doing before joining me at that lovely party tonight. I'm actually supposed to be at a different party right now anyways, so anywhere is good."

Dean snickered when the other said that they had crashed a few parties, it made sense. He did raise an eyebrow when he was told that the horde had backed off of them. Granted he hadn’t noticed any one but still, he never trusted demons to give up. “To be honest, I was out looking for a good time… guess I found it,” he said with a wicked grin, still feeling a bit of an adrenaline high from the fight and sprint to the car. “Rest of my evening is open if you want some back up,” he offered the blond. “Not saying you can’t handle yourself, I saw your moves back there but… twenty to one is a bit much,”  he said while giving him a bit of a doubtful side look. 

This is what Dean thought of as a good time? The human was either suicidal or crazy. Sure, Izzy did have fun doing shit like this too, but he was a demon- he was fucking crazy. "Mmm, yeah… it was a bit much till you showed up. Definitely would have ended up losing this jacket," Izrael laughed a little at Dean and shook his head, "See, I haven't gone and learned my lesson yet it seems since I'm definitely gonna be crashing one of their parties again. Gotta find it first though, and I can't do that in a strangers car."

Dean raised an eyebrow when the blond mentioned that they weren’t done yet and was looking to start a similar party to where he just found them. Ok sure he had been doing stupid stuff since he got back but he had an excuse. He was trying to repress what felt like forty years of Hell - literal Hell. So what was this kid's excuse? She might be crazy, but her crazy was also kinda hot and hunters like this don’t tend to stick in one place long because of the next big hunt. Besides, too often if they stayed in one place for long then all the enemies they made along the way had a tendency to catch up to them. “I can drop you off wherever your next party is so you don’t get jumped on the way again…” Dean trailed off a little as he drove, “could at least tell me your name before you get yourself killed.”

Izrael smiled at the hunter. "Why would I give someone I've never met in this life my name? Doesn't sound too smart. Besides, I don't see you passing over that information either."

Dean grinned. “Sorry, thought you picked it up before things got hairy. Names Dean, Dean Winchester," he said as he held a hand out to shake as he drove, glancing at the blond but mostly keeping his eyes on the road. “You know demons can’t keep their big mouths shut, if your next party is anything like that one, they’re going to be ready for you and you’re going to lose more than your jacket, sweetheart," he said in a matter of fact tone. “Might be a better idea to show up with back up and armed to the teeth,” he offered with a mischievous grin. “Lucky for you I know the perfect place.”

His excuse? His absolute only memories were of hell. Turning into a demon the way he had had wiped out all his human memories and the little demon only knew the last sixty years he had spent in hell training to do just this. He wasn't trying to repress hell, why repress when it was all he knew? He was just doing what Asmodues sent him off to do, and with the youngest prince of hell being the closest person to the blond and having nothing else to really do… he listened. He enjoyed killing other demons, it was a task he found fun. But when your job is to kill any demon that stands against the man you're working for, you don't exactly make any friends. And being alone only gave him more time to hunt down Asmodues's enemies. It was a vicious never ending cycle that wasn't going to change anytime soon as far as Izrael could tell. Hell either hated him, feared him, or admired him from afar - very afar. No one was brave enough to chance getting on Izzy's bad side. And those that were like the hoard tonight that actually tried to kill him were just too stupid to stay away and deserved to die anyways as far as he was concerned. 

Of course he knew who Dean was once he heard his name. But the hunter didn't need to know that Izrael had heard of him. He eyed the other’s hand for a moment before he sighed and half gave in to the man, though didn't reach his own hand out, "Izzy Hilton," he said, using the name that Asmodues had given him for when he had to pretend to be human. Though he had no idea that it actually was his name. That Asmodues called him Izrael to see if any of the once nineteen year old’s memories would spark with little clues like that. It never did. "They're always on the lookout for me… wouldn't be anything new…" he said with a little shrug, getting the gut feeling that this hunter was not about to let him go off on his own anytime soon. The last thing the little demon needed was to do spend time with a fucking Wincester, especially the one that spent all that time in hell. "No offense, but I don't really work with others. Thanks for the help back there and everything, but you're Dean Winchester… so you and I working together is a bad idea. Trust me."

With both hands back on the wheel, Dean snorted when Izzy said that demons watching out was nothing new. He understood that, that's what made the Bunker so beautiful. It was the definition of a safe house for spooky shit and basically everything else. He sucked some air between his teeth when it seemed the other knew who he was by name, having heard some of the stuff hunters thought of him while he was putting in time at the Roadhouse. “Fair, I mean we did just meet and I also just saved your ass from a fucking gaggle of demons, but okay,” he said, half joking. “We don’t know each other, and inviting you to my secret Men of Letters bunker can seem a little Silence of the Lambs but I promise, imma damn puppy dog compared to your normal party guests,” he said,.  Ane yes, he did just name drop the Men of Letters to see if that helped his case. Dean wasn’t a creep and if Izzy wanted out he’d drop them off wherever they wanted but all horn-dog habits aside, he wouldn’t rest well if he did. He’d probably end up asking around and looking into this pretty Izzy Hilton to see what her story was about. “Again, I know bunker can be off putting, but this place is huge, over twenty bedrooms to pick from. It’s armed to the teeth so nothing is getting in. I have one of the few keys to get in but you can get out whenever you like,” he added, trying to seem a little less kidnappy and rapey. “That and there's a hundred year old whiskey collection.”

Izzy had absolutely zero ideas of what other hunters thought of the man he was currently sitting next too. Up until now, he had done a really good job at avoiding them in his travels and work. Sure, to be on the safe side he did do some research on hunters who seemed to be the biggest threats but until now he hadn't actually met any of them. So, right now he couldn't figure out if it was just bad fucking luck that Dean Winchester happened to walk in on his ambush, or some weird good luck to get him out of it unharmed. Even after over fifty years as a demon, almost sixty now maybe? He honestly had never actually hurt a human. So did he deserve this kind of bad luck? On the other hand though, can demons actually have good luck? It was really confusing. 

Fact was, Izzy only knew of Dean Winchester from the mouths of other demons. His research on hunters in general was by word of mouth in hell. It wasn't like there were any books he could read on them. So he knew the man was obviously a good hunter, and not just when it came to demons. He knew the idiot sold his soul to save that dumbass brother of his that was hanging around one of the main demons on his own hit list. It was just really hard to get to the bitch when she was being protected by the hunter drinking demon blood. He only knew that from actually running across her once, he could fucking smell the demon blood radiating from the human she was with and it didn't take long to figure out who that human was and what fucking Ruby was doing with him. Little Sammy Winchester. Lovely. He also knew the man next to him spent what was like forty years in hell, being tortured for most of them by fucking Alastair. It had come as a surprise when he heard that there was some sort of angel watching out for him. Well, the angel part wasn't really known when he figured it out. It was just known that the man was pulled out of hell and Izrael knew that an Angel was the only way the man could have escaped hell and returned to his body the way he had. And really, he would prefer to avoid angels. Most demons weren't really that much of a threat to him. They could likely hurt him but Izzy was not easy to actually kill. Not that they had quite figured that out yet. But he had no idea what an angel might be able to do to him. 

Izrael couldn't remember his own torture. He actually had no idea it even happened. Ever since the day Asmodues found his newly turned demon in that cage he kept his pet in, the youngest prince acted as though that was the first day of Izzy's life. He didn't even know that he was in that cage because of that man in the first place. "I'm not afraid of you, Dean, even though I'm pretty damn sure you're no puppy dog," Izzy told him with a little roll of his eyes, the man who had spent his last few years in hell torturing other souls was far from a puppy. But he had caught Izzy's attention mentioning the Men of Letters. He vaguely remembered Asmodues mentioning them decades ago. Something about them being all dead now… about them holding knowledge no one else had. Going to this bunker… could prove useful if the knowledge thing was true.

Izzy finally looked over at Dean again, tucking hair behind his ears, "Well whiskey is always a very good and tempting offer," he said, chewing on his lip a little as he thought it over. "If you're all armed like you say you are… Do you also have books and shit? Like, books on demons and shit." Izzy knew he had been turned differently than almost every other demon that existed, he had to have been to have his own body and no ability whatsoever to jump from one meatsuit to the next, but he had no idea what happened to make him this way. And no book he had found since being set loose on the world had been able to give him the answer he was looking for. If this bunker had hidden knowledge it might be his best bet to find out how he turned, because Asmodues wasn't telling him anytime soon. "And I really wouldn't have to just stay if I don't want to. I can just walk out? Seriously?"

Dean just grinned when the other said he was pretty sure he wasn’t a puppy, calling him out like that. And he believed them when they said that they weren’t scared of him, he did find her in the middle of a demon infested alleyway in the middle of the night. His grin grew when Izzy seemed to be mulling the thought over. He raised an eyebrow and chanced a longer glance at the other when he was asked about books. That he hadn’t been expecting, didn’t peg her for a book type. There might be something they were looking for specifically that the old bats had locked away. He would definitely be doing an inventory check but hey it sounded like they were coming around to the idea. A new face and alone time might do him some good, even if they don't get handsy and this Izzy turned out to be a gigantic book worm. 

“Like I said you need a magic key to get in but getting out isn’t a problem, locks behind you but I gotta warn you the cell service sucks,” he said with a smile. He altered his route and started out of town and toward the bunker. The long ride was pretty much silent after that, Dean was honestly a bit too nervous to say something and have the blond change her mind about coming. He couldn't help wanting to help her, wanting to figure her out at least a little. From wanting to protect the little thing and knowing that he would just worry about them at this point. “Just don’t take anything, alright? Not really supposed to take people to the BatCave but…” he trailed off with a shrug after he parked by the bunker, obviously making an exception for the blond right now. 

Izzy shrugged when he mentioned cell service, that meant pretty much nothing to him. Of course he knew what a cell phone was, he had been in this world long enough. But he never felt the need to get one. Who the hell was he gonna call? "No big deal, no cell phone. I was serious, I've never worked with someone else before. Never felt the need to get one," he shrugged, as little like it was normal or something to not have a cell this day and age. He honestly didn't actually know either way though. "And I don't plan on taking anything. I've got my own weapons and shit. Just… looking for a little info is all. If you happen to have a book with what I want to know, well, then I won't really need it anymore once I read it." He ignored the Bat Cave comment for the moment, not wanting to let the hunter next to him realize he actually understood the reference. He especially didn't want him to know he found it amusing.

Dean decided to leave Baby in a little hidden knook they made for when they didn’t plan on staying long and putting her in the very nice garage. He just grinned as they walked up to the old green doors after grabbing a bag from the trunk and he pulled it open for the other. Once past the first threshold Dean unlocked the second doors and stepped through, holding it open for the other. “This is the legacy of the Men of Letters, a bit old and dusty but we’re still fixing the place up.” he said as they made their way down the spirling, metal staircase. He walked past the light up map table and tossed his bag on the first long table in the library. “Wanna tour?” he asked as he turned to the other, smiling at them.

He just wanted a fucking book that explained how humans became demons. Without their souls spending hundreds of years tortured in hell. Asmodues had no choice but to tell him that he turned differently than everyone else when he realized he couldn't just jump from meat suit to meat suit like everyone else could. His soul never left his body, something in him changed while he was still a human. But that was all Asmodues would say on the subject. Honestly it was the one thing about the man who called himself Izzy's master that drove him absolutely insane. He didn't care so much about whatever his human life was since he couldn't miss what he didn't remember or had any sort of idea what it might have been like, but he did want to know why he turned into a demon. Was he evil in his previous life? Is that how it worked? He remembered someone once saying that he must have cracked to change the way he did, but cracked from what and how? He just wanted to know how the fuck he came into existence. What made him so different from other demons. Why even Dagon, who knew that Izzy couldn't kill her without that oh so special gun, feared him to some extent. And nothing he had found so far explained any of that shit. Was he a bookworm? Mmm, debatable. Ask any demon who knew him they'd say no,, but Izzy was really good at keeping things about himself pretty damn secret. The less people knew the less they had on you and the safer you were. But the truth was that he did love books, loved to read and learn. And now that he wasn't under Asmodues' thumb at all times and had a mission to carry out, he was able to use research for said mission as an excuse to read. Sure, he was actually doing research but for so much more than anyone actually knew. 

Izzy was a bit unsure following Dean into the bunker when they got there. This could be a really, really stupid idea. But on the other hand… he was going to have info on the Winchester's no one else could possibly dream of having and he might get a few other answers out of this as well so he followed along. He looked around as Dean led him through the place, tilting his head and letting a confused little look cross his face as he tilted his head back to see the ceiling, "Uh, sure, if you want. So, do you keep the bats in some special room or something? I kinda just pictured them all over the place."

Her not havung a phone probably should have set off more red fags then it did because even if you were a loner it was useful to have one since pay phones were all but extinct. He tilted his own head when Izzy had mentioned bats, that had been a reaction he might have expected from Cas but really? “It’s not really a batca-... never mind. This is our fortress,” he said, just trying to get past what he felt was a painful moment. He turned on his heel and held up his arms out on either side as he gestured to the books. “This is the library. Nothing says stuffy bookworms like having a library right at the front door right?” He said with a laugh, turning completely to face the other as he walked around one of the tables. 

If Izrael actually cared much about completely blending in when he was going by Izzy he probably would have gotten a cell phone. But truth be told, he didn't actually care what humans thought about him and despite Asmodues having insisted he play the part on earth he could probably count on one hand how many times he had ever used the name Izzy before. Since he usually avoided hunters he rarely ever felt the need too. So really… What was the point of carrying around a little electronic box used to call people? The only person who would ever actually want to get ahold of him had his own ways of doing so. But even Asmodues left Izzy to himself for the most part nowadays as long as he kept doing what he was told and continued to work his damnedest to keep Lucifer in his box. Though if he had realized how odd it actually was to not have one, he wouldn't have mentioned it. 

Of course it wasn't actually a Bat Cave. It almost annoyed him that the hunter found it so easy to believe that the batman reference really meant nothing to the blond. Sure, part of him was glad too because he didn't want the fact that he enjoyed those comics to be known by anyone, but still… how stupid did this hunter think he really was if he believed that Izzy? He was pretty sure that Batman was popular among humans. It was the Winchester thinking he was dumb that bothered him more than anything though, because that was just not true. Izzy had always been rather smart, even before he turned, he had a near photographic memory. But with all memories of humanity gone, and those memories being from close to sixty years before anyways, all that was left was hell and the supernatural. And he figured that shit out quickly, easily. Humans, not so much. Humanity and what they were like and what they did like were never on his list of things he needed to learn about. Humans weren't his targets. "No offense, but you don't exactly strike me as the bookworm type," he said, moving around the table to go and look at the spines of the books, fingers running lightly over them. Yeah, this would definitely be his best bet at finding answers. Some of these were obviously old as fuck. "The kill first and ask questions later type. Though I suppose since all you hunters go after everything supernatural, you need the lore books, huh?" He personally didn't bother with any other supernatural beings, just the demons on Lucifer and Dagon's side. Which was probably a good thing for them, if this little demon were to ever start working as a real hunter with someone like Dean… they wouldn't stand a chance. As they had proved earlier… the two of them working on the same side had some pretty nasty consequences for those fighting against them. 

Dean chuckled when Izzy said he didn’t seem like the book worm type, oh hell no that was Sammy’s department. “Yeah no, that's more my brother's thing,” he said as he walked over to the opposite wall, towards the small table with a few bottles filled clear, brown liquid and a few glasses. “I at least wait long enough to see what I'm fighting so I know how to kill it.” Dean poured them a few glasses and headed to the closest main table to the blond. He leaned against it on his hip and took a sip from his glass while he held out the other to Izzy. The other’s wording did strike him as odd though and he raised an eyebrow a little. The way he said it was just off, but Dean wanted to think Izzy was just into demons, and therefore could know some pretty useful stuff. That or maybe he was really green and thought of himself being different from regular hunters. His gut was telling him something was still off though, but he wasn’t sure what.

Izzy was glad his back was to the hunter when he mentioned his brother so he didn't see the little demon roll his eyes and scowl at the mention of that junkie who was seriously getting in his way with that bitch he was attached to. He was pretending he didn't really know much about them… which wasn't a complete lie, but he had a serious suspicion he knew something about the younger Winchester that Dean didn't. He might know about the demon bitch Sam hung out with but he highly doubted this man knew about the blood and psychic shit that boy was playing with. The psychic shit was honestly the main reason he hadn't gone after Ruby yet, he wasn't like other demons, he had no idea how Sam's little exercising shit would affect him. 

“You know, you never mentioned what you were looking into. I’m guessing something demon related,” he mentioned to the other. There wasn’t much small talk on the car ride over.

He didn't say anything for a bit while Dean spoke and walked around the room, more interested in looking through the shelves of books for anything that looked promising. But he never let his guard down really, constantly aware of where Dean was around him or how close he was. He stiffened a bit when he felt Dean closer again and he asked that direct question. Izzy didn't really want to answer anything he was asked, but avoiding taking to him too much might just seem more suspicious. Fuck. He really should have paid more attention to the humans around him the last decade, he was really bad at trying to be one. "Yeah, demon related," Izzy finally said as he turned around and saw Dean holding out the whiskey he had promised. Alcohol didn't really affect him as much as it did humans unless he drank an ungodly amount so he wasn't worried about drinking at least. 

He took the glass offered to him and leaned against the bookshelf behind him, shrugging his shoulder a little, "Don't know if you picked up on it during that whole ambush shit, but I kinda hunt demons. Apparently I'm pretty good at it since they don't seem to like me much at all." He took a drink from the whiskey he was given, relishing in the burn that goes down his throat. As a demon, the little blond didn't need to eat. The few times he did were few and far between and it was always for some reason he couldn't figure out, but knew he just wanted whatever the hell it was that he was trying. But he did like to drink. Alcohol that is. He liked the burn. 

"Just curious what kind of people become demons and how. Always good for a guy to know everything he can about his enemies and all, yanno?" It wasn't a lie. He had actually been avoiding actually lying to the hunter. Izzy didn't like to lie, it was too hard to remember the fake information he had given to who. So the only thing he had lied about was his name, but that wasn't that big of a lie as Izzy did sound like a nickname for Izrael. Mostly, he was just leaving out details he didn't think Dean needed to know. Like the fact he was a demon and really just wanted to know how he, himself, had turned. How demons like him were made. Because as far as the books he had found about demons elsewhere knew, Cain was the only other person to become a demon this way. And almost nothing was fucking known about that man. As a matter of fact, he was the one demon who no matter how hard he tried Izzy could not fucking find. Not that he had really looked into how to find him. He didn't want to kill Cain like he did with everyone else he hunted down, he wanted answers. But even so, he knew Cain wasn't exactly like him and probably didn't have the answers he wanted. So that had just been another fucking dead end. The little blond didn't do a whole lot of shit that he actually wanted to do or something anyways, ninety percent of his time was spent following Asmodues' orders to hunt down Dagon's followers and make sure Lucifer didn't get out of that cage. 

Dean nodded a little when the other confirmed that it was demon related, easy guess. “You don’t pick up that kind of attention without being a major pain in their ass,” he said with a snicker. The man's shoulders stiffened when he took another drink when Izzy said what he was looking into. What kind of people become demons. He forced back a smile and shifted a little as he tried to keep his mind focused on the task at hand and not let it run off with the flashbacks and nightmares he has. It felt like every time he blinked he was hit with a flash of something he’d seen or had done. He told everyone he didn't’ remember any of it and refused to talk about it and self medicated with liquor like any good hunter.

Well duh, obviously he was a pain in their asses. Two dozen of them had actually gotten together without someone in power telling them what to do to try and take him out. They failed, miserably thanks to the hunter near him right now, but it didn't negate the fact that Izzy was a huge threat to them and their plans. Really though, if the whole fucking lot of them just fucking stopped trying to set Lucifer free Izzy would have no problem leaving them alone. But until that happened…. He had a job to do. What the hell would he do with himself if Asmodeus actually managed to take the crown and this mission was over? He'd actually never thought about that before. Every single memory he had had something to do with him having to keep Lucifer in the cage. 

“Well demons are mostly twisted and tortured souls. You get twisted up so much down there you turn into something else,” he said, rubbing at his brow as he fidgeted a little as he spoke. “At the end of the day they're a spirit, just nastier. You don’t normally catch one running around before they possess someone but the same tricks apply, salt and iron,” he told him, running off a few things off the top of his head, mostly from first hand experience. “I’m sure you know all about devils traps and all that,” he said, waving his hand and finally looking over at the other. It was probably a good thing Dean had been so caught up with that Izzy was looking into that he completely missed the suspicious pronoun.

Izzy couldn't help but roll his eyes at Dean when the man just told him shit he already knew. Was he actually under the impression that someone he thought was a legit demon hunter didn't know that shit already? Also. He was wrong. While holy water did have the same effect on him that it did to most demons, salt and iron actually didn't bother him for some reason. Every single voice in his head was screaming at him to keep his mouth shut for a while, to not get sucked into this conversation. But the thing was… he actually wanted to talk about this shit. He never talked with anyone about shit he actually wanted too. Demons avoided him unless they were trying to kill him, he avoided humans and hunters, and Asmodues pretty much just told him what to do. The little demon didn't actually have any memories of just talking with someone about something he was interested in. And this happened to be the biggest fucking intrest he really had right now.

"See, right there just proves you really have no fucking clue what you're actually dealing with, do you? Obviously being tortured in hell is going to fuck up any soul in some way, but not every soul in hell becomes a demon. This world would be fucked if they did. There are millions and millions of souls in hell." He only just stopped himself from pointing out that despite Dean's own torture and escapades with Alastair he didn't actually turn into a demon. No, a fucking angel actually came and pulled him from the pit. So what the hell was it that made some souls twist the same way he had even though he hadn't gone through that die and be tortured shit and made others just… well, be tortured for all eternity. Or torture as was the case with some. "Yeah, most of them are just nastier twisted spirits, and you don't normally see one walking around without someone else's meat suit… but they can. It's apparently super fucking rare for it to happen, but a human can just wake up a demon somehow. In their own skin and everything. So I want to know what makes the souls that twist that way different from those that don't. What kind of person they must have been. And what happens to those people who turn? How does that happen? But unfortunately, because it's so fucking rare, I haven't been able to find a single book in the last ten years that actually explains that shit." He sighed a little in frustration at the thought before just shaking his head and finishing the rest of his own drink before he turned his back to Dean again to start looking through the books again, waving his own hand in dismissal of the subject. Dean wasn't going to have the answers he wanted obviously. "But yes, of course I know all about devils traps. I just don't use them." He couldn't if he wanted too, not unless he wanted to get stuck inside one himself. Besides, even if he could… with the way he hunted, it would be pretty damn useless and time consuming to try since it was usually a sneak attack/ambush of his own on their own grounds. Wasting time with a devils trap when it was just so much easier to kill them just seemed stupid. "Do you have any sort of order with these books or am I gonna have to look through all of them to find the ones about demons?"

Dean was a little taken back when Izzy said that he had no clue about demons. He felt anger rise up in his belly and his face tightened some. His pride didn’t like that but the built up emotion subsided the more Izzy spoke. He did have a point, if that’s all it took then Hell would be nothing but demons. He never really focused on the fine details, he just killed them. His face became a mix of surprises and doubt when Izzy kept going and told him about the type of demons that keep their bodies. What the hell? He’d never heard of something like that before, what the hell could it be capable of? It was a worrying thought. “This keeps getting better and better,” Dean muttered under his breath. He couldn't stop his brain from thinking about his younger brother on his road trip with his little demon buddy. What if that was Ruby's plan, twist his brother into one of them? He’d fucking gank that bitch before she could try. He wanted to call and check up but that hadn’t gone so well last time. 

He made a small face when Izzy asked about an order to the crazy amount of information. He finished his half glass of whiskey and pushed off of the table, setting the glass down before walking away. “I have a feeling what we’re looking for isn’t in here, come on,” He said, motioning the other to follow him with a head nod. He led the blond down the hall a bit, through another doorway and down some stairs. He pushed one of the two heavy doors open and held it open for the other hunter. “When we started going through the stuff that was left here we found that most of the heavy reading books are in here,” He told him. The room was about 25 by 25 feet, metal shelving lined all the walls filled with books and some jars. There was a decent sized table in the middle of the room under the only light, taking up a good chunk of the free space. 

Dean just nearly kidnapped the little blond he helped out that he knew nothing about other than the fact he could kill demons pretty damn well and brought him to his secret bunker and he thought anything that came out of this idea wouldn't be completely fucked? Hell. He was pretty damn sure that Dean didn't even realize yet that he hadn't stepped in to help a pretty little girl, but actually a boy who just happened to look a lot like one. Add on to that fact that this boy was also one of those freaky ass demons he was just talking about and you could see clearly that this man definitely hadn't thought this through. "You have no idea," Izzy mumbled back, not sure or honestly even caring if Dean heard him. 

Izzy set down the glass still in his hand before he shrugged again and followed Dean through the bunker. Fuck. This place really was huge. Izzy couldn't help but grin a little when he looked into the room. Dark. Enclosed. No way for anyone to try and sneak up on him again. Exactly the kind of rooms he liked and usually worked in when he was looking for a party to crash. "Awesome," he said as he walked in the room. Creepy jars and big old books lining the walls on top of everything else, Izzy had instantly and probably noticeably relaxed more when he was in the room that was so much like a place he would actually want to be in. He didn't say anything else as he started scanning the books on one of the shelves, his eyes widening some when he saw what he instantly felt like he had been looking for for years now. It was smaller than any of the other books in here, but that wasn't surprising considering how little information there probably was at all on demons like him. Humans Turning Demon. 

Izzy grabbed the book off the shelf and took a few steps backwards to push himself up to sit on the table, just remembering that Dean was there as he went to open the book. "Uhm… thanks," he said, forcing himself to remember that he was supposed to be a human and actually used to having someone around and even weirder for him- that someone helping him. "Hey… uh, why are you being so like… nice and normal to me? As far as I've seen, people aren't just nice to strangers. Especially when said stranger is a pretty boy who can shove a knife into a human skull."

Dean noticed the small change in the others' demeanor when he showed them the room. The room didn’t bother him or his brother too much but ‘awesome’ wasn’t the normal reaction to this stuff. Though in this line of work, who’s really normal? You see a lot of weird and horrible shit fast and you pick up a few quirks along the way. He had half turned when  the other called out to him and thanked him, he was going to leave Izzy alone to do their digging. He raised an eyebrow when he was asked why he was being so helpful. He opened his mouth with a grin to say it was just the right thing to do for a lady when Izzy said that last part, his words luckily getting caught up in his throat. BOY!? WHOLY FUCK!! Dean’s back straightened as he looked the other over again. It took him a second or two to catch himself and he cleared his throat out a little. “Well you want demons dead and I want demons dead,” he said with a shrug, his brain still trying to absorb this enlightening new detail about the blond. “And I learned about a new fleshy kind of demon, win win,” Dean chuckled. Hell all of Dean seemed stiff. Right now, he honestly didn’t know what the fuck to do.

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[magaprima]

Part 2 Episode 6 Analysis (Part 1/?)

“You look like the cat that ate the canary” Lilith says while Adam is sat there just watching her. This is totally a reference to sex, in my honest and frank opinion. It’s just such a look-who-got-some thing to say, and especially when we consider the added canon fro Part 3 where we learned Mary never consummated her relationship with Adam, and we presume this was Mary’s choice and Adam was simply respecting her wishes (’I thought you wanted us to get married’, ‘marriage doesn’t matter to me’), the fact they finally consummated their relationship and then she agreed to get married after they slept together, meaning a double whammy....yeah he’s gonna look like the cat that ate the canary. 

Also, the way Lilith says this, not judging, not even mocking or sarcastic, it’s just an observation, made gently, said affectionately, and she has a genuine smile on her face as she says it. Also, she is doing work. As in Baxter High work. She has brought work home. Lilith brought mortal work things home and is actually doing them. Let’s just appreciate this for a moment. The first woman, the first witch, the rightful Queen of Hell, who is several thousand years old, is actually doing the job of Principal properly, and seems to also be marking papers. And having not done the at work, she has brought them home to finish. She is doing her job not just professionally, but thoroughly. She has work at the table (also the way she’s doing the work at the table and the pile of papers and the pen is paralleled in the Hare Moon episode where she’s at the table, doing all of Sabrina’s regal admin).’

And how domestic is this scene? There’s tea between her and Adam, there’s jam toast (interesting side note, jam is considered something Lilith loves and can be an offering you make to her in worship or plea to her), and he’s just sat comfortably opposite her while she works, and gentle piano music plays on the record player. It’s so very domestic, and there’s such contentedness to it. There’s relaxation and comfort here and we’re seeing Lilith relaxed and at ease, not on edge, which is very rare for her, as she’s always got a guard up in one way or the other, but she seems totally relaxed here. Even when Adam makes his suggestion she take a day off, she doesn’t jump in shock, she doesn’t even stumble, she just smiles at him again, even as she says she has too many responsibilities as Principal to do that (which, considering she does eventually agree, and enjoys herself, so clearly did want to take the day off, the fact she initially refuses because of work is further proof Lilith did end up taking her job at Baxter High quite seriously. So silver lining for Mary, that in the four months she doesn’t ‘remember’, no one can claim she was shoddy at her job).

“You’re underappreciated at that school of yours” Adam says this in a way that suggests he’s said it before and/or he’s thought it for a long time, which I think is really sweet, because that means he’s seen how good a teacher Mary was, how dedicated she was to her students, and how much that was ignored by the likes of Hawthorne and others at the school. Also, it’s tragic to think Mary probably was heavily underappreciated, and probably not very much noticed, because she was just a quiet teacher, who was dedicated to her students and not gossip.

“Mm-hmm, well that’s more true than you know. I have been giving that girl-- uh, that school my all, for some time now and the rewards have been less than I expected”

The fact she gives him a truly honest reply, mentioning Sabrina, and has to stop herself as she realises what she’s saying, shows just how relaxed, confident and comfortable and at ease she is with Adam. She didn’t even think to lie to him, to give her cover story, she just answers him honestly ‘that’s more true than you know, I have been giving that girl--’ and then she snaps herself out of it and we see the mask forced back on, though it’s not to the usual degree we see. Also, we’re seeing more glimpses of Lilith admitting to herself how little the Dark Lord is giving her, how little she’s being repaid, which is a big step for her, considering her fearful and long term dedication to him in Part 1. 

And another important development; when Adam reaches out and grabs her hand, she no longer jumps at the touch. When she first met him, she was tense, wide-eyed and on guard, she jumped at him coming even slightly near her without warning and she looked shocked and bewildered through every kiss and affectionate touch. Now, when he reaches out, she doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t stare at in shock, she doesn’t even look at it in amazement or surprise. She doesn’t look at all. It’s natural for her. Adam reaching out to her has become the norm, Lilith being touch in a gentle, non abusive way has become the norm for her. And she’s smiling at him again. This scene is literally the most we have ever seen Lilith smile in the entire series, and it’s such peaceful, quiet smiling. And it’s all because she’s in a dynamic, a relationship, where she’s being respected and treated well. All she asked for from the very beginning of her creation, and I think this is just a good way to confirm to us, the audience, that Lilith was very much not in the wrong with Adam 1.0,  that when she says he was cruel and speaks of him with horror, with can trust she’s telling the truth, because we see how gentle and happy she is when she does have equality and respect in a relationship. 

And the way her hand goes to her mouth, trying to hold back from the temptation when Adam says enticingly ‘just this once, it’s a day’. Lilith has spent millennia being dedicated to the Dark Lord’s every request, she’s he’s right hand, his foot soldier, his concubine, his supposed Queen, she has answered his every request, and the entire reason she’s in Greendale is to do his bidding. And yet here is someone asking her to do something entirely for herself, something that would be utterly unrelated to the Dark Lord and I think she’s almost shocked by how tempted she is, how much she wants to do something, for the first time in forever, that isn’t related to Lucifer. And that is a long, long habit, a long time to have live a life dedicated to one person, which is why we see her debating, why even in the temptation, she almost resists, but then...she gives in.

And the fucking delight on Adam’s face when she agrees. He is so happy that she’s agreeing to take a day off work and spend the day with him. He’s so pure. He’s utterly in love, and I do mean in love with Lilith, as I’ve said in my other analysis about the way this dynamic worked, and how things changed from Adam’s perspective. Regardless this boy is like a puppy with his head over heels love vibe.

“I’ll be all yours for the rest of the day” Her choice of words is so purposeful here. I said above how everything she does in Greendale is for Lucifer, and now she’s choosing to do something for herself, and it’s important to note that in choosing for herself, she is choosing to be with Adam. It’s not just about the day off, the day away from everything, it’s very much about the company. And that smile is so bright as she said it. This entire scene is her basically smiling from beginning to end and that means so much. And, I know I went on about her hair and the style changes reflecting her level of ‘being herself’ on that long post, but here her hair is getting less ‘Mary’ and more ‘Lilith’, again showing comfortable she is. 

Also she has the red pen throughout. Could be a visual reference to her favouring red in general and her links to Hell. Or it means Lilith may be marking, but she marks a hell of a lot with the red pen...i.e telling all the students they’re wrong, wrong, wrong. 

#episode stuff

[anthropwashere]

i totally understand why tucker and sam are so hung up over the murder thing but i'm just sitting here like let danny kill ppl LMAO

There was the briefest moment where I had NO idea what this was referring to and boy was I alarmed, haha.

(context!)

The thing about Sam and Tucker’s perspective that I was angling for in the original 2015 rough and what I’m trying to clean up to some extent now is three-fold. 

1. There’s the very obvious matter of how young they are. 17, 18 max, and for all that they are competent and self-assured and clever and certain in so many aspects of the lives they’ve lived with a Danny-shaped hole in their hearts, they’re still faced with something halfway between a miracle and a monkey’s paw scenario with Danny’s return. Their best friend is back! But what unimaginable hell did he have to survive first! Literally! 

I know it’s rather gauche of me to keep comparing Freakshow’s mind control to a Saturday morning cartoon plot, but I mean… c’mon. That doesn’t happen in real life, and the sort of scenarios where such a comparison could be made are always distinctly unhappy ones. And here’s their best friend who was not only put into a real life cartoon plot, but by a man who didn’t know he was alive. It’s only by virtue of his Bizarre Ghost Physiology that Danny survived to come home at all. Honestly it could have been just as easy to write wash away the darkest days ending with him as a full ghost.

Sam and Tucker (and Valerie and eventually Jazz as well, for that matter) are so young. They know the ugliness of the world at large through bombastic movie plots (where the hero saves the day without fail) or impersonal news channels (where the villain is so rarely named, let alone defeated). On the one hand of course they know the world is ugly and messy and complicated and that there’s no such thing as a happy ending. But they can’t be faulted for wanting one in their own lives, can they?

2. On the other hand, they have an incredibly unique perspective on death, considering they (and to many lesser and/or comparable extents, everyone else in Amity Park) have spent almost four years embroiled in regular attacks and a few pitched battles against ghosts. They’ve been putting their lives on the line fighting dead people and beasts and things during the time of the lives where their biggest concerns should have been final exams, getting their driver’s licenses, and first job woes. They understand better than most their age the limits to what a person can be pushed, and how messy it can be when that limit is exceeded.

I never hammered out a lot of details for how things went in Amity Park while Danny was gone. S2 and 3 of the show are non-canon in the Circus Freak ‘verse, yes, but a lot of those things still happened. Sam, Tucker, and the rest of Amity Park still had to weather everything from Youngblood to Pariah Dark. It’s a bit bizarre to say in a “realistic” context that one person could make such a profound difference, but Danny and his Bizarre Ghost Physiology really would have. Without him it fell to far squishier humans to defend their city. Most survived. A few didn’t. A few of those that didn’t came back as ghosts. For all anybody knows everybody who dies in Amity Park nowadays comes back as a ghost due to simple proximity to the Fenton Portal, but only a few have come out of the GZ. It’s definitely something the Fentons are feverishly researching, but they’re not half as willing to make expeditions into the GZ as the trio did in canon.

All of that’s to say is, well. Sam and Tucker have done their own share of desperate acts, so they can understand why Danny did what he did (of what he’s told them so far). Understanding doesn’t mean they need agree, however.

3. Lastly, and perhaps most important of all, they weren’t there. They only have what Danny tells them and context clues (his appearance, how he speaks, etc.) to back-fill details as best they can. There’s the Danny they remember (and grief has this funny way of making one forget the negative qualities of a person, doesn’t it?), and the Danny before them now. It’s not just a matter of how personality, humor, and habits have changed. You can’t compare his rate of maturity to any other teen’s in Amity Park, because he isn’t like other teens. He isn’t human, and I love amping up that quality of his as much as I can. Kid with super powers he ain’t. He’s practically an alien wearing the face of Sam and Tucker’s best friend. It’s a close fit, but there’s something about that smile….

#danny phantom #fog has lifted #i bet anon didn't expect me to go off but i'm very fond of this AU #in this essay i WILL #lemon demon's 'a mask of my own face' is 100% on the playlist for a reason

[nvzblgrrl]

Part 1 Heyo man, I'm absolutely ecstatic that you have this whole One Piece Big Fic project in the works. I'm honestly p paranoid about interacting with words, but your works have been something I've continuously enjoyed going back to and rereading over all these years. And while you've grown and your earlier stuff feels cringe, there's a charm that Witt and Witticism and all of your earlier works have that is longlasting. And I, and apparently others, can't help but love.

Part 2 I've probably reread your fics a good thousand times by now. Like seriously I've got a good bunch of the fics you posted on AO3 saved as PDFs for my own personal reading when I feel the urge. Namely Luck of The Draw, Ultimate Symbiote, and a portion of your Chain Adventures. I've been here quietly reading for a long time and I'm gonna make sure to properly give feedback this time. Good luck in your absolutely bonkers endeavor!

Yeah, absolute mood on the ‘cringe’ part. I think the only excuse I can make for the really early stuff is that -

(this is gonna get loooong and reference child abuse + the 2000′s-2010′s meme culture, so pre-emptive apologies)

1. I had a really messed up upbringing. Not as bad as some people’s situations but still on the deeper end of bad by the ‘White American’ standard and still (albeit barely) within the bounds of Funny Sitcom Abuse Antics (at least for mid-2000′s and older stuff) most of the time. Most of it was neglect and social isolation - I pretty much left the property to go to school, church, and to visit relatives because of court-mandated visitation, the last of which probably kept me from going insane, and that was it aside from events where my dad needed an accessory to compliment his public mask - but there were some other shit mixed in that relied on the Trunchbull Rule (it has to sound too weird to be real so nobody believes it/takes it seriously) to happen.

So besides like, the PTSD from that (which has a habit of bleeding into all of my works, which you’ve probably noticed by now, lmao), I had like, zero experience on healthy relationships, social skills (well outside of a few variations on ‘messed up friendships’ and what I picked up from books, movies, and TV), and basic life skills outside of stuff like ‘boil water and follow the box directions’).

2. I got into the internet really late compared to my generation and everyone after. This was mostly because we had literally no semi-reliable internet access until I was about 11-13 and that was either the school internet or the dial-up at home (which of course was time-limited with the time shared with my brother and done on the family computer with observation in effect). Most of that was spent on like flash games or webcomics, many of which I have tried to reread only to find them gouging my soul because god what the hell was happening in 2007 - wait. Yeah.

It got better by the time we hit high school because by then we had our own computers (not scanners though, I had to pass art and passwords over to a friend of mine to get them on the internet for a couple years before we got one at home), a better internet connection, and high levels of parental disengagement as we proved to be disappointments despite our previous ‘potential’ (my dad was hoping for me to become a life-long cash cow for him, IDK what was going on with my brother and his mom), which meant I could spend more time on the internet... which at the time, meant DeviantArt and FF.net (tumblr came way, waaay at the end of my time in high school).

Yes, that’s where I started out. That should explain a good 90% of why the early stuff was Like That.

Also don’t look for my DeviantArt because I deleted the whole thing years ago, for cringe reasons - namely, a really, really stupid minor war over something I can’t even remember but it ran a lot like those old ‘Potterheads Get Your Wands’ posts, though the fact that 80% of my output towards the end were extremely banal and/or fucking insane One Piece (and occasionally Soul Eater) Demotivator Posters didn’t help.

Pictured: proof of my crimes against humanity (with some minor repeats - every single one of those demovitators are something I did and that’s not even all of them) despite my attempts to destroy the evidence, because the internet (and pinterest) never forget and often reposts without permission.

[Image description: a series of drawn images of a man. the first panel is of him looking at a computer with the subtitle ‘recognition’, the second is a close-up of him with sweat and a look of surprise on his face along with two exclamation points subtitled ‘realization’, the third and final image is an extreme close up of his intensely stressed expression subtitled ‘fear’.]

[Image description, but funny: me accidentally coming across one of those reposts a couple years ago.]

I personally can’t forget because I know my style at the time (it had a few variations, but all of them have been seared into my soul) and how inane/insane some of them read. My favorite was one that ended up turning into a word vomit about how cool Gol D. Roger was that ran so far that it didn’t fit inside the format anymore and ended up running off of the page repeatedly.

...and yes, I did make one edit that was ‘Dead or Alive? is that a trick question?’ for Brook. That one’s still circulating too.

3. While that covers a certain amount of the problems with the early work, Witt and Witticism stands out as a pinnacle because I was both using a reaction heavy style (I was pretty much doing a live-blog of my One Piece anime rewatch in fanfic form, using Witt as a mouth piece - a similar style was used with Ultimate Symbiote but fortified with a few original stories and actual non-canon stuff happening!) and going through the tail end an extreme manic period brought on by escaping (read: getting kicked out of because they were no longer socially or legally obligated to care for me anymore) my abusive childhood home + having money (from my dead mom’s social security).

Seriously, that year was bonkers. I got to go to Disneyworld, got a new cat, published an insane fic, and blew through so much money on some dumb fucking shit when my dad wasn’t stealing it because I didn’t realize he had access to my then-bank account.

Also I’m pretty sure that you can detect when my sanity/depression started reasserting itself in the last few chapters of Witt because he starts experiencing consequences, though I’m not saying you should reread it to try to locate that moment because I’m having to re-read it repeatedly for reference purposes and I don’t think anyone should have to suffer this unless they’re into that (which admittedly, might be the result of that ‘charm’ you mentioned, because I can’t otherwise account for how that fic got over a quarter of a million hits otherwise).

Not to say that all of my early stuff was bad (some of it was actually shockingly good once I found it again, even though it was flawed) but the most easily accessible stuff is... not great!

And thanks for the well-wishes. I’m gonna need that luck if I want to get through it. I look forward to the feedback!

#asks #the big fat one piece fic project #Anonymous

[dnawield--a]

002. BEN IS AUTISTIC

Hi, in this house we support and accept the notion that Ben is autistic. No, I won’t elaborate.

EXCEPT I WILL.

Going off the original series, Ben almost comes off as a neurotypical kid: just chilling, ready to leave for summer vacation with his grandpa across the country, seeing he failed a test, but who cares? It’s summer time! Tries to help this other kid who’s getting picked up, only to fair less than successful (hanging from his underwear from a tree branch with the other kid who’s pissed Ben made things worse), and then is picked up from his grandfather. Excitedly, he runs into the Rv lovingly named “The Rustbucket”, but his chipper attitude quickly changes upon seeing his cousin, Gwen, sitting there.

Immediately, he’s getting angry over her being there. This was not part of the routine that he was ready for; it was only supposed to be him and his grandpa. He says, “What is SHE doing here?!” She’s ruining everything! He’s angry! He’s mad! He’s yelling! He goes right up in her face, and it’s only his cousin’s insistence that this was her mother’s idea, and not hers. He’s still mad, but it stays aimed at her as her mom isn’t here. The tantrum takes a near twenty minutes for him to calm.

Later on, watching the Universe take him as its new host, the Omnitrix ( from the containment it was preciously protected by ) hatches and latches onto its new home on the young boy’s wrist. The mixture of fear of a foreign object JUMPING onto his wrist and not letting go as well as the immediate discomfort at this new sensation on his wrist. It feels like something is suctioning itself into his skin. Bad! Bad! Bad texture! But he can’t take it off. It’s stuck. He cries for a moment, biting at his wrist, hoping to get it off. That’s what we don’t see. What we do see his the desperate attempts with a stick to try and force it off, but no. It has decided to stay put. As much as he wants it off, Ben realizes it’s stuck.

Things, however take a turn for the better when he hears the beep when the dial pops up. He turns the dial, and he instantly looks excited. That wondrous click clack! The noise makes the awful sensation on his wrist lighten, and he just keeps fiddling. Stim away the bad feelings of what’s on your wrist. Maybe it’ll make a comforting noise when you push down?

The rest is history. Dangerous stim toy, and yeah, more than that, but hey! Stim!

Fast forward another year, the end of summer. He’s spent a lot of time using this one new alien. It feels good. He loves this alien. Feedback is great! He loves Feedback. He loves this new routine he’s settled into. It feels good to have one. Yeah, everyone tells him he shouldn’t rely on the one alien, but...he was doing fine right now. He always won! Ben was a super hero after all! Heroes always come on top! However, that routine comes to an end- one he wouldn’t ever be prepared for. No easing out of it like his mother and father always so carefully helped with. As much as he loved his grandfather, Max was rather old fashioned. Ben’s tantrums were his fault and he just “had to mature” and get over it.

He’s being treated as if this is an addiction. This is what he likes! This is what makes him happy! He spent a whole nine months having to keep going alien on such a down low! Give him this! He gets angry again! Another tantrum is coming, and he runs out, away from people who don’t want to understand and talk to him like his parents! Only they’ve been good about how he thinks! How he works! Everyone else keeps trying to force him to change without giving him time or attention or trying to find ways to help him ease out of a routine! But no! He was immature! He’s acting up for attention! He can hear his cousin try to talk to him, but he’s angry. It’s her fault! Her mom thinks he’s just acting up! He’s heard his moms phone calls with his aunt about him. His mom always defends him! She tells her what’s up, but Aunt Natalie doesn’t ever get it! She just thinks this is something he has to repress! Gwen clearly has to think so as well!

Malware- evil Malware- comes and that’s when he decides to make a point. Turn into Feedback! Stop the bad guy with his favorite alien! That’ll show them all!

Except it doesn’t.

He loses him. No more Feedback. No more happy feelings. Literally, they were ripped from him, like in school and like the times with his aunt. It doesn’t matter the one who took what he loved from him had blown up------------ it didn’t bring back what Ben lost. He just hides in the bathroom the trip back home.

These are the instances from the past in show that I go back to for this headcanon. I have my own that don’t have “canon” basis, but canon is a suggestion at this point in life. When Ben turned three, he still hadn’t spoken. His parents decided to have him evaluated, and in the mean time, all three of them learned sign language together so they could communicate. Sandra and Carl learned just how patient they could be. Finding out that their kid was a boy, that he didn’t like these kinds of foods because they feel ‘icky’ and ‘bad’ so they learned to work with it. They learned he has certain ways he wants to do things. When it’s okay, they let him do it his way. When it’s not, they all communicate and find ways to work with him so they can come to an agreement. By age five and a few months after, he begins to verbally communicate more. It’s amazing! Both parents are amazed at how much he likes to talk, although, they do come and find that while they try to always explain to him calmly he can’t say certain things like that to people during these situations, he never quite could get it. But they knew, and they never reprimanded him. That’s why he was always a good son. They all communicated. His parents learned how to listen, and Ben learned how to tell them what he wanted- be it verbally or through sign when he would go back to being non-vocal.

Honestly, you sorta get pull this idea from the fact that Ben’s parents in AF are having a conversation about how they’ve done a pretty good job raising their son. They give him enough freedom, and he does well in school, he does well in his sports, since his second summer with his grandpa, he never deals with issues in school for disciplinary things. He’s grown up to be a really GOOD kid, and they’re AWARE that they’ve done good as parents! They literally ONLY became super strict there for a bit and limited his freedom SO MUCH was because they found out he was fighting aliens and literally putting his LIFE on the line. It wasn’t outlandish of them to do that. They genuinely are afraid for their son. They don’t even CARE he turns into horrifying aliens; they care that he’s been lying to them despite the relationship they’ve built over the course of so many years. And at the end of the episode, they’re still worried, but TRUST him that he’ll be safe and CONTINUE to let him have his freedom because THIS is so important to both him and the Universe.

There’s a bit of repression of his autistic habits such as stimming ( via fiddling with the Omnitrix), his hyperfixations/special interests (granted yeah the Universe does take precedence), and he becomes colder because he gets reprimanded when he has a tantrum because no one (aside from Gwen) takes the time to realize how they have to talk to him about things. And even she doesn’t ALWAYS get it, but all of team 10 has their issues with emotions and actually talking things out. Gwen tries her best, and HAS learned sign from Ben, so sometimes she signs with him when she can tell he can’t get his point across verbally.

OV he’s more free to his autistic self that his parents taught him to LOVE about himself, that it’s not a part of himself he SHOULD be repressing simply because his role model is telling him it’s bad (in Max’s own subtle ways of being ableist). And while Ben doesn’t think poorly of his grandfather for being annoyed with the fact Ben is not ashamed of being autistic, he is aware his grandpa doesn’t know everything and this is one thing his parents will ALWAYS have over him.

Everyone still gets on his case about fiddling with the watch, but like, he’s still gonna do it. He does find other things around him to stim with so he doesn’t mess with the Omnitrix all that much, but still. He happy flaps his hands, and doesn’t care if his grandpa (or anyone really) makes a comment ‘cause who cares what you think? He’s feeling good and feeling happy and THIS is how he’s gonna express it.

#hc. \ ɪ·ʟʟ sʜᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍʏ ᴛʀᴜᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀs #long post* #// i may add more in the future to this but for now

[domesticangel]

ok ok a 68 plymouth gtx for ris is perfection but what do u think the rest of the squadra has? i really wanna say one of them has a studebaker somehow but i just dont know (ignore it was a us based company i love them anyways shhhh)

god. this is the best ask i couldve ever gotten. buckle up. ha ha. bc cars. and also bc I’m not gonna shut the fuck up

but YEAH NO SAME i also chose to foolishly disregard that italians wouldnt likely drive american cars (or necessarily drive at all…america is mad obsessed with cars compared to a lot of other countries so sdkfhsdkj) bc its all fun and games so ik a lot of this would be unrealistic but I’m american so i really only know about american cars/cars that are popular in america dskjfsdkjf so sorry for America-Centrism On Main but if any italians or ppl w knowledge of italian cars wanna chime in w their own takes, by all means!!!

oh and this post also foolishly assumes la sqaudra has money. lets pretend for just this post they all actually got paid for their jobs

SO WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY warning this is gonna make this post rly long but I’m gonna ad pics of the cars i think they’d all drive like. in case anyone reading wants to know what they look like but doesn’t wanna look em all up so I’m gonna throw this under a cut in case it gets crazy

ok i can 1000% see sorbet and gelato sharing a like studebaker speedster that they would take out cruising for special occasions….it would spend most of its time under a tarp locked in a garage bc if you touch that car without permission you WILL die by their loving intertwined hands. some couples have babies. some couples get dogs. sorbet and gelato got a studebaker speedster and treated it with almost as much love as they do each other. one might think their driving would match the “crazy” impression everyone has of them but honestly? they prefer to take it slow and cruise so they have more time to enjoy each others company. on the job they’ll wreck a rental all to hell, but not their baby. the rest of squadra would low key fear for their lives on the rare occasion that sorbet and gelato offered them rides in their car bc the inside is spotless and they all knew if they left anything out of place or dirtier than they found it their time was up

i think they’d dig a color scheme something like this; still looks mob and sophisticated without losing the whimsicality u feel me

i really like a classic chevelle ss or ‘67 mustang gt500 for formaggio

(ignore how fuckin shiney these are bc make no mistake his would be scratched and worn all to hell)

in line w my headcanon that he’d be knowledgable about cars, i think he’d like supe them up and mod them for street racing or 1960s style drag racing. since we don’t get a lot of individual sqaudra backstory i sometimes think about him maybe losing his parents at a young age or having a bad home life as is typical of passione members and getting taken in by a local mechanic, and only as he got older realizing the shop had mafia ties which eventually paved the way for his induction etc but the knowledge and interest in cars always stuck with him. i think he’d probably drive the most recklessly out of all of squadra (rivaled only by ghiaccio ofc) bc he just loves to go fast as fuck and show off. he’s definitely a revs-the-engine-when-he-drives-by-someone-cute ass bitch

illuso would drive a ‘71 dodge demon, and honestly only because he liked the name and how it looked

it would honestly drive formaggio insane that illuso would ONLY use this car to get around as opposed to flying down the countryside or doing burnouts in a field. illuso doesn’t know much about cars and he doesn’t care to learn either; if it looks good and the engine turns he’s happy. formaggio would BEG him to race him or let him take it for a spin, but illuso would be adamant in turning him down every time. he has no desire to take risks and tear up a perfectly good car, but if he feels especially generous he’ll let formaggio ride with him while formaggio excitedly rattles off specs illuso doesn’t understand in the slightest. he won’t readily admit to it but seeing formaggio that excited is really endearing and illuso would even end up learning something here and there from their time spent together

ghiaccio is anal enough about All Things Italian that he breaks my disclaimer and actually does drive an italian car. y'all already know what the fuck is going on

hell yeah ghiaccio drives a lambo. ‘71 lamborghini miura to be exact. and boy does he make this motherfucker screech and drift. as much as he seems to abuse the car he’s extremely uptight about upkeep and will take it in as often as needed for repairs. you can also bet your ass he’d berate any of his fellow squadra members that didn’t drive italian-made cars, asking them why they’d choose to drive that trash on wheels when their country is home to the best cars in the entire fucking world and they have their pick. being in the passenger seat with him at the wheel is terrifying, don’t get me wrong, but he’s actually a very skilled driver, like to the point that he probably couldve been a stunt car driver if he wanted. but whatever you do don’t show any adverse reactions to his hard turns or brakes bc he will take it as a personal insult to his skill as a driver and you will find that the louder his voice gets the heavier his foot gets on the gas so Good Fucking Luck. (also yes ik we already see ghiaccio driving a car in canon but its headcanon time and during headcanon time ghiaccio rocks the fucking lambo)

prosciutto would drive a big beautiful blue ‘65 thunderbird convertible

he would also be very particular about the upkeep of his car, but without any sort of personal touch; he hasn’t the time nor desire to keep up with the car himself so he just makes sure he takes it to a reputable shop to do it for him. it’s not his “baby” or an heirloom; its just a car. it runs and looks good as all fuck while doing it so thats all he really cares about tbh. that said, if anyone ever scratched or keyed or dented it they wouldn’t live long to regret bc as a wise man once said, you don’t fuck with a mans automobile. i mentioned this in the my squadra meme as well, but even though he smokes like a chimney, he NEVER smokes in his car. no smoking, eating, or drinking in the thunderbird. sealed packs of cigs in the console only and if the seals been broken it has to stay in your pocket. the upholstery is pristine and he prefers to keep it that way. he’s a very mild mannered driver and even often errs on the side of slow; he doesn’t really see the point in wasting gas by speeding or messing up the tires or alignment by showboating. he knows that he AND the car already look good enough to command bystanders’ attention so he doesn’t waste his time with any extra flashiness

ima keep it real with you chief: melone would drive a car you could fuck in the back of and thats about all there is to it, so look no further than the spacious ‘61 chrysler newport

he would somehow figure out a way to get an aux cord and a sound system in this old motherfucker and would listen to his music so loud it about rattled the doors off, much to any passengers’ chagrin. he’s almost worse to ride with than formaggio or ghiaccio because he texts and messes with the music the entire time he’s driving. like its almost impressive how often he manages to NOT have his hands on the wheel. he’s a master knee-driver. all that in mind the rest of squadra groans in unison when melone offers to drive and risotto, who doesn’t have time for a squabble, gives the ok and send them on their way bc they know they’re gonna have to deal with melone insisting that driver picks the music and white knuckling the handles the whole time. but regardless, if the chrysler’s rockin and the britney’s boppin, don’t come a-knockin

since i see pesci as the youngest i think he’d be the last to get a car, but the rest of squadra would surprise him by all pitching in and getting him a ‘69 buick sport wagon

it’d definitely be a fixer-upper (prosciutto insisted it’d be good for pesci to retroactively “earn” the car by learning how to take care of it, prompting the rest of squadra to point out prosciutto never even learned how to fix a car himself) but pesci would be out of his mind appreciative of it either way. after years of only ever riding in the back seat of someone else’s car he’d be so excited about finally having a car to call his own. formaggio would take him under his wing and show him everything he needed to do to make sure she stayed running in tip-top shape and they’d grow pretty close over it; formaggio would lose his damn mind the first time he’d convince pesci to do a burnout on his own. pesci would try his best to keep the car clean but he’d probably have a bad habit of leaving empty drink bottles in the floorboard or extra jackets in the back seat, but all in all he’d do a pretty good job taking care of the car and making the generous gift from his team worth it. most non-work related outings would have pesci chauffeuring, but he wouldn’t mind, bc seeing all his friends crammed into his car and having a good time would make him really happy

and last but not least risotto and his ‘68 plymouth gtx 🖤

perhaps surprisingly he wouldnt be excessively meticulous about upkeep; he definitely wouldnt do anything needlessly reckless to harm the car or neglectful of standard upkeep, but he would definitely see it as more of a personal part of him than a machine that needed to maintain perfection. he wouldn’t really sweat scratches or dents here and there; they’re bound to happen to a car that old and if he found the time he’d take it to get it buffed. like i said in the hc meme i think it would’ve belonged to his father (or any family member he was close to really) and it was passed onto him when he died so it’s kind of a sentimental thing for risotto. though not quite the same level as formaggio, he’s fairly good at making standard repairs on his own, and doesn’t mind spending a weekend or two up under the car fixing it up and making sure it runs smooth. the rest of squadra would each be surprised the first time they ever rode anywhere with him; the second the car started old classic rock or metal would blast through the speakers, with risotto mumbling a quick sorry and turning it down, but not all the way off. they would find out that their stoic leader prefers to drive with the windows down, one hand on the wheel, other out the window tapping to the beat of the music on the hood

aaaaaaaaand YEAH. i told you i wasn’t gonna shut the fuck up DSFHKJADHKSDJ LMAO SORRY I WENT TF OFF BUT YEAH THOSE ARE MY. SQUADRA CLASSIC CAR HCs

#txt #la squadra di esecuzione #yeah i gonna tag this!! just for funsies!! #idk just in case anyone else is. as interested in specifically squadra and classic cars as i am LMAO

[maryellencarter]

memed from @camshaft22 , originally an askbox meme but it's short enough that i can just have opinions at all of it rather than waiting to have the free time to get out of the house and answer asks. (i still have at least a few askmeme questions sitting in my inbox from like a month or two ago... :P)

1. do you find force users or non-force users more interesting? -- non-force users by a mile. there could theoretically be exceptions, like if anybody really got deeply into alternate perceptions / interpretations of the force rather than just kind of toeing the jedi party line as established in the movies, but i haven't seen any that really grab me.

2. which character do you want to be most like? -- oh, now there's a hell of a question. both this and the next one, really. see, let's start at the beginning: when i was a very smol tortoise watching a star war, and by smol i mean like eighteen because that's when i first saw a star war... when i was a smol, i wanted to be han solo (not least because he was hot in a very conventionally masculine way, do not underestimate the importance of that to a smol afab tortoise programmed with much body-loathing ;P), but i identified a lot more with chewbacca. i mean, let's be honest, i was not in great psychological shape as a tiny, and this particular oddment is something i'm still very much sorting out, but: from tiny!jt's perspective, at least, han+chewie is a nonromantic primary relationship that gets displaced by the han/leia primary romantic relationship. but it's still (from anything you see onscreen in the ot) primary *to chewie* even after it becomes secondary to han. that kind of nonreciprocal primary relationship, tagging around after someone who would let me express that kind of devotion and not find it creepy even after they inevitably found a "real", romantic relationship that would be more important to them than me, was the best endgame i could imagine for myself, and frankly i felt like it was way too much to hope for within my own species. i may have spent rather a while wishing i was a dog or something, so that it would be acceptable and appropriate for me to want the most important relationship in my life to be nonromantic. tiny!jt was a *mess*. this was way before i got into fandom, so i didn't really work through it at all or write it down anywhere, either.

uh. that got long. continued under the next question.

3. which character are you actually most like? -- so anyway. yeah. to continue. then i found my way into legends (then still the eu but yanno) and the x-wing books. and then there was wes. ^_^ it would be several more years before i even figured out i *had* ptsd, but here was somebody who had ptsd that presented almost exactly like mine but was also stable and functional and not-depressed and in fact actually cheerful. not to mention he was *also* hot and male and most importantly human, but still showed the kind of undemanding loyalty i was aiming towards, and had it accepted.

(which last is partly because wedge is an oblivious noodle, but still. ^_^ honestly that's probably something to analyze when i'm not one-finger typing on my phone: how much of that kind of relationship being a goal for me is just me being wired kind of subby, and how much is the abuse thing where asking for any kind of emotional reciprocation is Wrong and Too Much. :P)

uh. i had a point here somewhere. um. so i wanted to grow up to be wes, but i didn't think that was an attainable goal. i felt sort of more like wedge with the duty and guilt and everything, but wedge is also way more of a leader than i am, so that's a thing. honestly there was a point there where i felt most like cheriss, just kind of... trying to grow up and dealing with a whole bunch of life shit and intermittently wanting to die a lot. ;P

and now apparently i *am* growing up to be wes and i'm still not sure what to do with that, besides writing a lot of fanfic (which is what i am doing). and trying to figure out the whole subby brain thing. and the executive dysfunction thing. and the not wanting leadership positions thing. and still working on the ptsd thing. and the self-esteem thing. there's a lot.

i'm less wedge, though. which is good. less catholic guilt is always nice.

4. what headcanon will you defend to the death? -- er. i'm not really sure i have any of those. as opposed to just canon things i will make sure people remember and acknowledge. maybe the hoth cuddle pile? you will never convince me the rogues on hoth did not sleep in a giant cuddle pile.

5. what planet would you most like to visit? -- i frankly don't know enough about star wars planets to give a shit.

6. what planet would you most like to live on? -- ditto. not taanab, for sure. mini rancors (and possibly 46-hour days if you don't just disdain that as illogical made-up numbers they threw into the planet guide for variety's sake... ;P I have opinions)

7. who do you hope you never meet? -- of the characters? pretty much any of the bad guys, but my first thought is vader.

8. what is one thing you would change about any movie, show, book, etc? -- ahahahahaaaaaaa. just one? i can't pick. can i say fix all the things about tlj that made me go "okay never watching that"? because there were at least four or five just among the spoilers that i heard. like if it had to be just one i'd make it so poe doesn't disregard chain of command, because that's the one that's making it so i can't rewatch tfa *either*, but from everything i hear, that movie was a hot mess. (alternatively, can i just change the fandom so that people stop saying "if you don't love tlj unquestioningly you're a reddit douchebro!"? because i don't want to unfollow roguepod on twitter but unless i block literally everyone *they* follow there's no way for me to keep that particular Hot Take off my dash and it's consistently re-infuriating me. :P)

uh. i have feelings, apparently. ;P

9. have you ever made fanart or fanfic? do you make edits or any other fan content? -- so much fanfic. so much. i counted last night and just the fics i haven't published yet add up to somewhere around 80k words.

10. do you think the jedi were right or wrong? -- i think the jedi were self-important douchenozzles with a habit of being wrong whenever the plot demanded it. is this a reference to something specific they were right or wrong about? i don't think they have the one true view of the force, and i think they're obnoxious about thinking they do, much like many other religions, so there's that.

11. who is the most underrated character? -- new canon, finn. or rose, possibly, not that i've seen her, because see above re hot mess. old canon, hobbie.

12. do you care who rey’s parents are? -- honestly, i'm at the point in dealing with an open canon where i cannot give fuck about any of the unanswered questions, the upcoming releases, or anything that might happen in the future at all. i haven't even read thrawn alliances. i am Over It, and that is about 99% the fault of the people who keep calling me a reddit douchebro by association. i probably won't see epIX unless kat or sophia tells me i absolutely have to. i'm a legends-only fan at this point. i didn't want to be, i like getting excited about new things, but every time i try it, people are douchewaffles and it's depressing. :P

13. if you could resurrect one dead character, or prevent them from dying, who would it be? -- new canon, hobbie. old canon, there are so damn many options, but probably mara or pellaeon.

14. what is your favorite alien species? -- i'm not sure i actually have an opinion. i have lots of favorite alien characters but like... idek. star wars has a bunch of really well designed alien species and they're all cool.

15. who would you like to bang? -- honestly i don't really care about banging any of the characters. shipping them is more fun. although i would let princess general leia step on me, whether in a sexy way or not.

16. which movie/episode have you watched the most? -- probably anh. the falcon's flying sfx aren't as good as in esb, but if you watch esb without rotj it's just a downer, and i don't really enjoy rotj. like it just doesn't click with me.

17. what is your favorite line? -- uh. from the movies, or from all the star war? uh. either way that's a hell of a question. the one i quote the most from the movies is definitely "we're all fine here, how are you?", but that's more just... versatile. from the books, my favorite is obviously one of allston's, but i'm not sure i could *pick*.

18. what is your favorite star wars book or comic? -- starfighters of adumar. because it is the best one. objectively. ^_^

19. what’s your opinion on legends/expanded universe? -- i'm extremely glad it isn't canon anymore (see also my issues with open canons, but also a significant amount of it was just trash) and extremely glad it's still around.

20. what do you hope will happen in future movies? -- i have no hope. hope is dead. i am, as previously mentioned, Over It. (let oscar isaac kiss john boyega onscreen)

21. if you could switch any character’s gender, who would it be and why? -- in canon? no. there's no point in turning a lady character into a dude, and neither the creators nor the fans are capable of handling anyone who's currently a dude being written as a lady or nb type, even if it was retroactive and they'd always been written that way. just no. it would go Badly. :P

that said. in fanfic? and i am so not capable of writing this yet but i want to. in like five years when we're all living in caves scratching our fanfics on bone. i want to see a cis afab wes janson who just hasn't internalized any of those lessons about not taking up space. who's still brash and loud and enthusiastic and flirtatious and just... female. who doesn't feel any need to explain that she doesn't (or does) want kids, or acknowledge anybody else's opinion about how she dresses or who she fucks. who's smart and badass and competent and out to have fun. and like... *pulls hair* i mean you know the trope. a sexy lady character who knows she's sexy will pretty much always at least consider sleeping her way to the top or whatever. (tim zahn, seriously, stop using that trope. it's not edgy.) i want to see lady!wes dressing up all fancy because it's fun and she enjoys having people admire her body, and like just... not even considering ever having sex for any other reason than "i am attracted to that person, i wonder if they'd like to bang". like it's hard to demonstrate a negative but you know if you read a story like that, where it wasn't called out but just there, your brain would go all fidgety and "what the fuck something is not normal here". or at least mine would. but you know? :S apparently i have a lot of feelings about this too. like trying to portray a lady who's that confident and... and undamaged by misogyny, would be a hell of a thing.

22. favorite droid? -- bb-8. the cutest smol. target has a kit to turn a pumpkin into a bb-8 and i swear i'm thinking about getting a funkin to do that to. even though i already have a bb-8 penny bank and a bb-8 lanyard in storage.

23. what’s your favorite star wars musical piece or theme? -- i'm not great at identifying pieces of music so i'm just gonna go with the opening crawl music.

24. how do you pronounce twi’lek? -- i don't. ^_^ more specifically, i do kind of pronounce it in my head when i read, but it's sort of... neither twee-lek nor twye-lek, but something sort of in between that isn't quite a schwa and might involve an umlaut. Sort of Twülek, if you said it with an Austrian accent. That probably doesn't help at all. XD

25. which character do you have a love/hate relationship with? -- This keeps being a question. I'm honestly not sure I *do* love-hate relationships. I'm like Tinkerbell, I only have room for one emotion at a time. ^_^ Especially with fictional characters, I either love them or hate them. (Unless they're completely meh and I just forget about them, that happens sometimes.)

#star wars #rogue squadron #wes janson #i have a lot of feelings #im not sure if i should tag this as tlj critical or not #like it is but i dont want to draw the people who lurk in that sort of tag

[sugurushimura]

while we're yelling Yotsuba on your birthday: hcs for your fave yotsu ships?

hdfgjh thank you for the birthday ask, anon!!! i have some amount of fondness for Literally Every Yotsu Ship, so for this ask i’m probably going to focus on hatomura, takamura (bc lately that’s been a big one for me even though it hasn’t been in the past), midomura, and ooida?? (i know, my shim bias is showing.) these are all kind of AU bc i think it’s fair to say that none of these rlly occur in Canon, and not all of them are explicitly romantic, but just assume that the ones that are explicitly romantic take place in a non-canon verse !! also namiguchi is another big ship for me but like ... this is a sfw blog y’all. that ship gets nasty Quick.

a selection of hcs under the cut!!

hatomura

ok this is painful but. hatori came to talk to shim right before he died so jot that down

also shim regrets hatori’s death for the under a year he has left to live!

on a less painful note, hatori dabbles in writing and shim Enthusiastically Supports this?? he’s a gross sap and it makes him happy when hatori is passionate abt things

shim continues to have a frequent and well-maintained workout schedule. hatori doesn’t, but he Does like to watch shim go abt his business. it’s uh. gay?? shim is still p well-built from his rugby days and has kept a lot of his figure bc, again, he exercises regularly 

also hatori appreciates shim’s broad shoulders so jot that down

hi hello hatori is a generally upbeat person esp around shim and shim is a p pessimistic person but being around hatori makes him feel better and he’s way more likely to smile around him !! like being around hatori is just super good for shim. he makes him happy ok

hatori can’t Fucking Cook so shim cooks for him.

takamura

ok so the Reason (TM) i’ve gotten so into this ship recently is majorly bc of an AU that i’ve created (w contributions from some lovely friends) in which the six surviving yotsus aren’t killed by light. shameless little plug here -- i wrote a fic that’s p telling abt their relationship for this verse ;^)

basically they’re both sad fucked up people after the kira mess but they start hanging out together more and talking abt shit and basically they?? help each other cope w shit and it’s blessed even if the AU is tragic af

also eiichi and his wife get a divorce and she gets the house so eiichi ends up basically moving in w shim after a while

their relationship Does eventually become romantic but not for a few years?? for a while they’re just rlly close friends and it’s probably for the better bc they’re both Confused tbh

esp eiichi bc like shim kind of causes him to have his gay crisis. (or, bi crisis??) he’s also still handling his divorce and shit so a romantic relationship is Not what he needs at the time. things go very, very slowly w them.

they’re also friends w mido still (the three of them are kind of a commiserating trio in this AU) and at some point eventually the three of them go to the beach for a vacation and eiichi’s daughter comes along and idk man i know it sounds like pure crack but it was Absolutely Necessary 

i know i spent this entire section to yell abt survivor AU but listen. I Love It So Fucking Much

midomura

they keep in the most frequent contact out of all the yotsus post-canon. like ultimately they die anyways but they grew to be relatively close up until that point

also i’d die for my trans woman mido hc and shim is the only one she comes out to. even if it’s. just bc she wants at least one other person to know and shim is like the only person she trusts w that information. the point is. shim is a Trans Ally and he Loves And Supports Her even if he doesn’t rlly understand it?? he tries so hard.

mido cares abt him even though she kind of shittalks him to his face (see: the sneaky meeting scene). it’s honestly kind of disheartening to shim but he still cares abt her a lot and Knows that she cares abt him too bc he’s just Good At Reading People so it’s ok

she doesn’t smile often but every time she does it Kills Him (in a good way)

he worries abt her well-being a lot, esp bc she has some not-so-healthy habits. he just ... he loves her So Much ok 

she’s also like one of the only people he feels like he can trust uh

ooida

so basically? Power Couple (or smth like that)

kida finds ooi’s directness comforting?? tbh. good ole ooi, indeed.

they’re also one of the few that keep in contact outside of work post-canon. more so in survivor AU, but probably in canon too?

kida was one of the members who was the most Fucked Up after all the kira business, tbh. like he’s just ... consistently paranoid and on edge. ooi is a generally sturdy and assured presence, so he’s able to calm him down better than anyone else can.

ooi does care abt his coworkers tbh?? even if he’s super super stoic abt it. kida is probably the one he knows best though, and his change in behavior post-yotsuba kira is Concerning, to say the least. ooi isn’t the type to reach out to others very often, but this is an exception, i guess?

they’re literally the dad friend and mom friend respectively. It Works.

side note: kida is Absolutely a twink

#<3 #asks #Suguru Shimura #Arayoshi Hatori #Eiichi Takahashi #Shingo Mido #Takeshi Ooi #Masahiko Kida #Hatori/Shimura #Takahashi/Shimura #Mido/Shimura #Ooi/Kida #Anonymous

[marvelandponder]

The Unfaithful Student

Yes! Woohoo! Sunbutt Jr. Day is upon us! 

It’s no big secret Sunset’s become my favourite character of the entire franchise. I’ve rambled on and on about her (and the more you get to know me, the more you hear about her), but today, I wasn’t quite sure what topic to cover.

So, I went for one of the big three. 

There are a lot of questions surrounding Sunset in the fandom, but the 3 most major ones, from my perspective, seem to be:

3. What was her family/homelife like back in Equestria? 2. What’s the human world Sunset like (if she exists at all)? and, of course 1. When is Sunset going to reunite with Princess Celestia?

The fandom’s been trained since day 1 to expect that the bond between Princess Celestia and one of her students is pretty much sacred. Which, admittedly, is mostly because Twilight idolizes her to no end.

And, to be entirely fair, Sunset definitely doesn’t have quite the same reverence for figures of authority that Twilight does. But, even taking that into consideration, we’ve seen glimpses of how much Sunset and Celestia mean to each other---whether in the comics or in the Equestria Girls series---which is why the fandom’s been so eagerly awaiting this reunion since Rainbow Rocks.

Which, at this point, is almost 3 years ago to the date.

So... what gives? Have we been misjudging how deep their bond really is? 

No, not really. You all remember that Sunset kept her journal from Celestia even when she was at her worst, because, and I quote, “a part of [her] wanted to have a way to reach out to [Princess Celestia].” 

And if you’ve read the The Fall of Sunset Shimmer comic, you’ll know that despite standing by her decision completely, Princess Celestia instantly considered Sunset’s leaving “one of many” of the biggest mistakes of her life (in the same way she regretted needing to send Luna away to the moon, but knew she had to).

So, I don’t think we’re wrong to imagine all the extremely emotional reunions we’ve been writing out in fanfics or drawing in fanart. They clearly cared about each other... is it that they don’t anymore? 

I doubt it. That kind of bond can’t just be forgotten, even if you’ve built a life for yourself somewhere new. And as the fandom definitely knows, they left off on bad terms. The kind of bad terms Sunset spent the entire second movie rectifying.

It’s built into the foundation of Sunset’s character at this point to want to make amends, even if she’s grown past the guilt and shame she felt in Rainbow Rocks. So that really only leaves us with one option: She wants to, but hasn’t. Why?

I’ve had the thought before that this might be the case, but it was confirmed by the way Sunset acts in the Mirror Magic part of the mini-series. The writers use Twilight’s invitation for Sunset to come back to Equestria as an opening stinger, which is to be expected, but what’s telling is the way Sunset hesitates. 

Well, that, and the way she wants to leave almost as quickly as she came when she finds that Twilight’s not around. It’s in part just to avoid an awkward moment, not really knowing Starlight well at the time, but this is the first time Sunset’s been a pony in a while. Nearly a year since she stole the crown, and years since she left the first time. And... there’s not anything or anyone she wants to see again?

It’s not like I can’t understand just wanting to drop by to get the journal. But, given how it’s been so long since she’s seen her and since Sunset’s reformed, and as far as we know Sunset has no plans to return beyond that... well, it’s arguably telling. 

So the question remains, why avoid Celestia? 

Sunset’s arc has been pretty well defined throughout her run as a sort of co-main character with the Twilights in EQG. She’s not the guilt-ridden runaway she used to be, for sure.

In fact, at the moment, she has more in common with Celestia than she ever has.

The Prodigal Sunset

Celestia’s students have a habit of becoming her, it seems (but you can say the same thing about Twilight and Starlight, and we’ll see if that’s the case with Starswirl and Celestia and Luna). It’s absolutely becoming a trend. A really cute one.

In Friendship Games, Sunset is shown to be the leader of the group, and this is where we first see her guilt shift from her own past actions to the responsibility she feels to her friends and her school now. She’s fiercely protective to the point of making things worse, and spends the majority of her screentime focused on protecting them from magic.

Which is where she learns that she can’t, really, and in the very next movie, tries to embrace it instead. That also doesn’t go entirely well, but give the girl points for learning. In Legend of Everfree, she’s not just in the leader role, she’s very clearly in the mentor role, an important shift for any Celestia wannabe. She’s wise, warm, but still has a goofy sense of humour...

Almost like someone else we know.

Then there’s the Magic trilogy mini-series of specials... thing. Sunset’s role in the third story is to deal with things she can’t control. Of course, it probably would’ve been more satisfying to see her take control, and face it head on alongside Starlight Glimmer, but at least thematically I can see the value in imprisoning Sunset. She can’t do anything but sit, and wait, and worry, while the world she’s in literally crumbles around her and her friends because of the magic she brought to this world.

In that way, it’s a really smart special if a bit frustrating for those who don’t like Starlight’s solo heroics.

This mirrors the side of Celestia we’ve gotten to see more of recently: the maternal worrier. Celestial Advice is the easiest example, where at last see Celestia’s side of things when Twilight was growing up without friends and see how much Celestia worried over her student.

It’s more than worrying, though. It’s the reaction to the responsibility of caring for others. Sunset’s main concern is taking care of her friends and this world she’s come to love, and likewise, Celestia’s tasked with caring for her students, her younger sister, and her country.

And, on the subject of recent Celestia episodes, Daybreaker might just be Starlight’s imagination run wild, but she’s eerily similar to demon Sunset. Both power-crazed egomaniacs bent on ruling Equestria by themselves. The real Sunset and Celestia both care much more about those they care for than their evil counterparts, but I find it a neat parallel that they both always still want to take care of others.

At their best, it has nothing to do with power or glory, but protecting those they love.

So, I think Sunset’s ironically becoming more and more like Princess Celestia even though she’s no longer her protege. And she did it herself, with the help of her friends.

Which should mean now would be a good time to have a progress report back home, non? No?

Honestly, this should ultimately mean the end of Sunset’s current arc. Whenever she does make amends with Princess Celestia, it’ll bring everything full circle, drawing on her development from every Equestria Girls story (her anger and bitterness from the first, her guilt and shame from the second, her new leadership skills from the third, her mentor role from the fourth, and her sense of duty to protect her new home from Mirror Magic, and so on).

Which is why I can grudgingly understand the EQG team pushing it off for later, but I digress.

Exactly when it’ll happen is up in the air with the new Youtube Choose Your Own Adventure stories, the shorts, and who knows what else coming up next year in Equestria Girls’ 5-year anniversary, but I think that would be a good time to go for it.

Sunset’s forging her own path at this point, dealing with a host of new, unprecedented magic in her own world, but with the greater and greater focus on delegates from other nations and species... I still have to hold out hope that Sunset may become the Equestria ambassador to the human world. Which would be a great accomplishment to show to Princess Celestia.

Which is ultimately my running theory on why Sunset might be avoiding her old teacher. As I said, there’s gotta be a number of feelings that come up when Sunset thinks about the Princess these days, but given her acceptance of herself in R.R. and the My Past is Not Today music video, I don’t think guilt is the primary factor anymore. It’s certainly still a big one since she has yet to properly make amends, but we’ve come to learn that Sunset is a very direct person, so if she feels like there’s something that needs to be addressed, I think she would try to, even if it’s a hard conversation to have.

... Unless she feels like she needs something first.

Sunset’s lost storyline in Friendship Games, while non-canon, is also still very much in her character, and points toward the reasoning behind this. 

Sunset ultimately doesn’t know what her place is, or what she’s meant to do. She’s found herself responsible for the magic in the human world, for sure, but as of yet she hasn’t really addressed where she thinks she belongs or what her real role is. Well, apart from feeling like she and her friends were somehow meant to have the Element-stand-ins/super-powered geodes.

Even the official Hasbro description of her from the last two movies onward both include this:

“Even though Sunset Shimmer is fully integrated into the Equestria Girls group, she still has insecurities about where she belongs, but the rest of the Mane 6 friends consider her to be one of them.”

In a similar vein to Twilight’s search for meaning, Sunset’s still figuring out she’s already where she was meant to be, but maybe when she finally has that personal accomplishment under her belt, she’ll feel more ready to talk to the Princess again.

Not because Sunset still craves the status of accomplishments, but because she still wants to make Celestia proud, and after disappointing her so deeply, being the failed student, I think Sunny feels like she needs a win.

Let her have it, Hasbro. She’s earned it. She’s earned Sun Mom’s approval and love.

I do MLP editorials and episode reviews when I can! In fact, take a look at the last three things I’ve done, to prove it:

Top 10 Lost Content, Rarity Editorial, and Hascon Coverage

Year of the Pony

Header Image Wouldn’t be Possible Without...

Princess Celestia by 90-Sigma Sunset Shimmer by Luckreza8

Go support those talented vector artists!

We’ve Seen AJ’s Dead Parents, RD Became a Wonderbolt, Celestia Got an Episode, Starswirl’s Gonna Happen---One More Long-Awaited Bucket-List Item and I Get a Bingo

#sunset shimmer #equestria girls #eqg #mlp #my little pony #princess celestia #mlp:fim #mlp: fim #friendship is magic #my litte pony friendship is magic #mlp editorials #year of the pony #yearofthepony #mlp articles #animation #cartoons #analysis #character analysis

[dorkcresswxll]

Hi, hello, yes, the ship meme plz? With these two dorks? I need it?

send me a ship and I’ll tell you:

Who’s more dominant: dirk. he’s more loud and assertive and confident. he’d never do anything xeno doesn’t want, but he’d be the one to initiate.

Who’s the cuddler: dirk, at first – he’s so full of unbridled affection for xeno and he shows his affections freely: hand on his hip as they wait in line, forehead pressed against his temple as they listened to the radio, hands wrapped around his shoulders and midsection as they lay in bed. he takes every opportunity to caress his skin, every crevice of xeno he can touch, and every touch feels like a gift – like something he did not earn but could not turn away, could never have enough of. but xeno is full of affection and honesty and returns the sentiments completely – it only takes him more time to be comfortable with initiating touch.

Who’s the big spoon/little spoon: mostly dirk – but it depends on the mood tbh. they flipflop between whose the doting boyfriend and whose the one being doted on. lol.

What’s their favorite non-sexual activity: playing the guitar. or trying to lol dirk is hopeless. peeling parsnips and brewing potions, taking a stroll in the woods and gathering wild ingredients, baking goodies in xeno’s small kitchen, tending the flower patches outside the caravan, protesting in the streets of diagon. there is literally so much and tbh as long as xeno’s enjoying himself dirk is having the time of his life lmao.

Who uses all the hot water: dirk. he’s the fucking least considerate he’d be like ‘oh it’s not like im using ALL the hot water there’s gotta be some left in there’ but he is. all the hot water all of it. after which he’ll freak out and wave his wand and try n get the water hot again lmao. prolly spent a week looking for the right spell for that maybe even made one himself lbr.

Most trivial thing they fight over: whether to put the mushroom vase over here or over there – dirk is pedantic af and a perfectionist meanwhile xeno’s the most spontaneous and needs things to not be super organized lmao. dirk needs to chill.

Who does most of the cleaning: what cleaning. what do you mean. lol dirk does yes. xeno’s messy af and dirk’s not-as-messy-but-usually-pretty-messy self will have to haul ass and take responsibility for house cleaning otherwise the place’ll just be a fucking dumpster lmao.

What has a season pass on their dvr/Who controls the netflix queue: im gonna pretend this is about the radio instead and say that it just depends on the mood. mostly they just flip through stations and stop when something catches someone’s fancy and just listen.

Who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working: dirk. he’s the one with a modicum of social skills lmao.  

Who leaves their stuff around: both. they’re ridiculously messy bois. dirk just ends up feeling guilty when stuff keep piling up and starts to try n clean up the mess.

Who remembers to buy the milk: dirk goes out to buy milk. comes back with flour, peelers, bracelets, a book on caterpillars’ breeding habits and a cork-bottle necklace. where’s the milk? he forgot to buy the milk. honestly he should not be allowed to go shopping ever it’s a hazard. xeno will have to step up here.

Who remembers anniversaries: both. dirk keeps a handheld calendar in his pocket when an anniversary is close by and ticks the days off meticulously. xeno leaves colorful notes beside his bed and on the counter and the fridge and places he knows he’ll look so he doesn’t forget. mutters and hums and probably makes up a song for every anniversary to remind himself.

Who cooks normally: depends on whose feeling it. when they can they both sit by the counter and start cutting up onions and peeling carrots and cooking. sometimes they talk about trivial things and sometimes it’s silent save for the sound of xeno’s humming. it’s always calming tho.

How often do they fight: not often. they always try and work things out between them but if they fight it’s either about xeno not appreciating himself enough, dirk not appreciating himself enough, one of them putting themself in unnecessary danger and making the other worried sick, or a clash on views regarding aversio. namely dirk thinks they’re the best things since peanut butter while xeno is less thrilled. lmao.

What do they do when they’re away from each other: ?????? i have no idea. whatever they do during their day usually. but when something funny/interesting happens dirk’s first thought is usually ‘i gotta tell xeno about this.’ 

Nicknames for each other: NO IDEA. this’ll have to come up during play cause i FEEL there’s gotta be three thousand nicknames somewhere but where. where are they. they will come i am certain!!

Who is more likely to pay for dinner: whoever gets their wallet out first. it’s a bit of a competition. dirk gets sneaky sometimes and distracts xeno with his pretty eyes and cheekbones then pays before xeno can blink. it’s his favorite thing.

Who steals the covers at night: xeno lmao. he’s not used to sharing the covers.

What would they get each other for gifts:

Who kissed who first: …….uncharted territory but prolly dirk. impulsively. he prolly thought ‘im gonna die anyway so i gotta’ and then was the most offended at the earth for not opening up and swallowing him whole immediately afterwards.

Who made the first move: u nch a r ted. ter rit ory.

Who remembers things: both. they watch each other closely. they pick up on cues and learn each other’s tells and remember things.

Who started the relationship: UN CHA RT ED.

Who cusses more: neither??????????? i can’t think of an instance where either of them cursed. i think dirk might if he was frustrated enough or something.

What would they do if the other one was hurt: they will find the reason and destroy it.

Who is the dirty talker: neither. lmao. xeno is a virgin and dirk is inexperienced. they giggle a lot while doing it anyway so like who even said they’re mature enough for that.

A head canon: at some point in dirk’s quest to set xeno and pandora together while pounding his stubborn emotions for xeno deep beneath ground level, he decides to teach him slow dancing. because it’s a skill any romantically inclined, respectable young man must learn, and because dirk is a good friend who will teach xeno this very important skill and will not let any stubborn, selfish feelings stop him from doing the right thing. and because he’d spent the last few weeks wondering what it would feel like to lay his hand on the other’s hip, thumb rubbing circles over cloth, fingers touching as he guides him through the dance.

it hurts. like stars have burst from within his belly, have set his insides aflame, have set his skin alight – it’s a beautiful pain and he would do it again. he knows this, resigned to the truth of his hopelessness, and as xeno’s lips stretch to a wide grin, dirk tries very hard not to kiss him. it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done.  

#( meme.) #( u kno i had too many feels to not do something about it. also that last hc is my fave ) #( xeno.)

[natsubeatsrock]

My Incredibly Unpopular Thoughts on: Fairy Tail’s Ending

To start with, stop.

I don’t care what you think about the ending. I don’t care what you think about the series. I kind of care why you’re reading this post. (Hi.) Just stop.

Now, do me a favor and take a deep breath.

Before I start to talk about this chapter, I just want to say that this has been a crazy ride. I started Fairy Tail in October of 2014 and I never would have thought that I would be running a blog about Fairy Tail and such a relevant name in this fandom back then. I’ve had tons of fun running this blog for years and if it weren’t for Fairy Tail, I probably wouldn’t be an anime/manga fan. Even though this series is nowhere near perfect and this arc is nowhere near the best, I’m glad that I’m a Fairy Tail fan. And this ending hasn’t changed that for me.

Also, I actually did make a Quick Notes about this chapter. So if there’s something you think I missed in this post, check that one. I also talked about my thoughts on Nalu’s ending in a separate post, which goes exactly how well you’d think a post about it from me would be. This was supposed to come out the same week, but… 

Life.

So, with that out of the way, let’s talk about this chapter.

When I saw that this last chapter was going to be 45 pages, I was pleasantly surprised. Consider that the end of Naruto is simply two normal length chapters that came out at once. Likewise, the last chapters of Bleach and Death Note are about as long as a normal chapter. So seeing that this chapter was going to be that long gave me the hope that more ground will be covered than in those endings. Though. Rave ended with more than 20 pages more than this and, looking back, I’m not a huge fan of some parts of that ending.

Speaking of those series, the last chapter starts with a jump to the future. This is a weird trope for me. My only real issue with the Naruto ending was that it felt like there was a huge disconnect between the Last, which I had just finished, and this chapter. However, the ending of the other series (yes, even Bleach) worked so well for me because we got to see how the world moved on after the events of the previous chapters.

I’m glad that Lucy won an award for her novel. I’m also glad that the popular fan theory that Lucy was writing the events of Fairy Tail out for a story is also proven wrong. I never liked that theory and I’m glad Lucy won by coming up with her own original story.

Even though the main character based off her.

And seeing how the guild is acting at this party makes me realize that Lucy’s friends are jerks to Lucy. I said this before, but I’m shocked that they’re even worried about other people ruining their reputation when they’re so good at making themselves look terrible. I have to believe that Erza and other members of the guild are genuinely concerned about a thief pretending to be a Fairy Tail mage. But hey, she was worried about other people in the guild at her introduction.

And Juvia is still stripping…

You know, I remember when Juvia stripped to join Gray during the anime for a thing she didn’t need to. It was messed up, but it was kind of funny.

Only kind of.

And then Gray and Juvia stripped together in the Avatar arc. Like I thought it was cool back when I shipped Gruvia. But looking back, it’s weird that Juvia developed the same habit Gray formed that after training in fewer clothes to get used to the cold and doing ice magic that even the person who had the idea to do it thought was unnatural…

Because Gruvia is a “good ship”. Like, why else did this need to be a thing? Mashima should have stuck with the water body thing because that’s awesome and only kind of comes back later on in the series.

Anna is in this timeline as a teacher which is kind of cool. I guess, since she wanted to teach the dragon slayers, she gets to teach another group of young kids. Gajeel jokes to Natsu about liking Anna and…

I’m conflicted. 

See, in pretty much any other case, I’d be totally fine shipping Natsu with anyone that people joke about him liking except Lucy. But, aside from not even thinking he actually liked her the way Gajeel meant, I’m not sure I can be comfortable shipping Natsu with anyone when the age difference is much bigger than that of Jerza-

I mean Graytear.

So we learned about the other guilds. Lamia Scale has a thing called Thanksgiving Day and they dragged Wendy into performing with Chelia. I’m actually excited for this to be animated. I hope we get an actual full song from the earlier performance of these two. For those who might be wondering why, Wendy’s Japanese VA, Satomi Sato, has also been in some roles that have involved her singing.

And then there’s Mermaid Heel. (Get used to this phrase. I’ve used it a lot.)

So, out of everything that happened in this chapter, I’m shocked that this didn’t get more people angry. What even is the point of having Mermaid Heel be exclusive models for Sorcerer Weekly? That was never important to them before. Kagura even questions what the point of this was. It’s almost as if Mashima was saying, “Screw anyone who thought I was going to give the only all-girl guild a dignifying ending! This is Fairy Tail!” 

Oh, but it’s okay because not many people cared about them and of course we’re going to have sexy girls in outfits so we can appeal to the target demographic of teen boys and where do I stop?

The other guilds did stuff. Like, I know that a lot of people love people outside the guild and I have my favorites from outside Fairy Tail. But, I don’t have much to say about what we learned about the other guilds.

And then we got a block of ship moments. Oh, the boys.

We started with Gajevy. And, man, I wish I had anything to say about them. I really don’t want to continue the trend of not talking about them. I have a few posts for them in the works, but for now…

I guess they had sex?

And then there’s Gruvia. 

I can’t just leave it there, right? No?

So I’m not actually sure that Gruvia is actually canon.  Yeah, me having a view that seems very different from most of the fandom. Shocking, right? I mean, there’s a lot of noise on both sides and it was a weird scene to include. But I didn’t see that conversation as a “Gruvia definitely is/isn’t canon” moment.

When I saw Gray say that Juvia’s body belongs to him, my mind immediately went to chapter 499, which I’ve had to look at multiple times for a post I’m going to get done on August 30th. When Juvia (somehow) revealed to Gray that she (somehow) used Water Make Magic, she told him that her life belongs to him. So Juvia’s body does belong to him.

Kinda.

So, the questions I think a reader of this should have to answer is whether Gray feels awkward about this because he likes Juvia or because even kind of owning Juvia freaks him out. As you can tell, I’m not really sure how to answer this question. Of course, this doesn’t mention that Gray might also be hesitant in making a statement Juvia may think is either offensive or romantic, as different people in the fandom have been arguing it is.

At any rate, this was the kind of ambiguity I was afraid of. I wanted to voice my fear that we’d get an ambiguous Gruvia ending. However, I was assured by the Gruvia fandom that Gray would definitely give an answer and that that answer would be yes. So, while I disagreed with the latter, I bit my tongue on the issue. It turns out, neither was the case and I was right to be worried.

Elfgreen is probably canon. I don’t think it’s a huge leap of faith to say that. (Yeah, that’s all I got.)

All the popular guy-girl Laxus ships have been de-confirmed in one go. I’m actually impressed that Mashima did that. I said this before, but I find it hilarious that Mashima made sure to empathize Miraxus as a rumor. I feel like the Laxana camp is as huge, but he had to take shots at that other ship. I’m honestly not sure what that means for Fraxus. And to be honest, I don’t really care Laxus ships.

And then there’s Jerza.

Like many people in this fandom, I’m actually shocked by Jerza in this chapter, but for a different reason. I was actually shocked that any time was given to Jerza at all in this chapter. I honestly wasn’t expecting Mashima to address this issue in any way at all. But, oh the boys, did he address it. While I understand the frustration of the Jerza fandom, I actually pretty cool with this ending. I figured he would give Jerza a non-canon ending. 

This kind of situation feels reminiscent of Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye’s relationship from FMA. They’re nothing like each other, material wise. However, in both cases, it looked a lot like they liked each other. However, the series ended without them hooking up. (At least officially.) I figured this kind of thing would happen a long time ago so I’m not surprised by this.

What did surprise me was about 5 pages spent on Mashima’s Zervis AU. Or any time at all spent on any version of Zervis at all post ‘taking Nalu’s One Magic” a while ago. And I kind of liked it. It makes no sense to exist in any way shape or form, but it was kind of cute and I think this is better than real Zervis.

Somewhere in all of this, we learned that Makarov lost the ability to use his legs. Well, something had to happen because of Makarov’s return. I’d actually be disappointed if everything was fine. My big complaint about the Rave Master ending, without spoiling much, a lot of losses and sacrifices made in chapters prior were rewritten. So, in this one aspect, Fairy Tail’s ending is better than Rave Master’s ending.

But, similar to Rave Master’s ending, Chelia can use magic. This is was one of the other big things I was afraid of Mashima doing in the last chapter of the series. To be fair, it’s only to a limited ability, but it’s still pretty annoying. I hinted at this, but I didn’t say it out right because I was in a fight with someone who thought I hadn’t read Rave at the time and I wanted to be petty.

So, Lucy blanked out and wakes up in her house. And, pretty much everything about this scene up until the flashback annoys me.

After 541 chapters and almost a decade of both real world and in-universe time, Natsu still breaks into Lucy’s house. Happy decides to polish Lucy’s newly acquired trophy with his claws. And this is all played for laughs. Like I’m actually supposed to look at this and think that this is funny and not sad.

Keep in mind that people were able to get past this point and still think that Natsu was going to confess romantic feelings. Look, I think that Natsu and Lucy have an amazing bond, but it would be really bad if this was just before a romantic confession. I can understand people who were disappointed with the Jerza ending. If you thought this was going to lead into a Nalu ending, you played yourself.

Luckily, there’s more to be annoyed with. Lucy ends up remembering the embarrassing stuff she did when she was drunk. A while ago, I made a post about being annoyed with the way things were made up. This is a great example of this.

Why did we need this? This isn’t funny and I didn’t learn anything about Lucy. I don’t like these “I’ll never get married over this” jokes in anime unless it’s over something legitimately embarrassing enough to warrant the reaction. She’s not ashamed because she was teachers yelled at her for promoting a club she was dragged into while being forced to wear a sexy red bunny outfit. (You either get this reference or you don’t) She did some stupid stuff in front of two people while she was drunk. (And apparently, she liked one of those people.)

But Natsu uses the joke to segway into a reminder that they can still work together. And Lucy remembers many of the missions they shared together. Considering recent events on my blog, it’s funny how there’s nothing from the Galuna Island, but she remembered being wrapped in towels with Edolas Lucy. At any rate, she thanks Natsu and Happy for changing her life for the better.

It’s times like this that I have to remember that Lucy’s dream was to join Fairy Tail. (A point I had to remind fic writers of.) It’s only because she met Natsu that she was able to. Recently I’ve been rereading the old arcs and it’s crazy to see how much has happened since Lucy has joined Fairy Tail specifically because Lucy has joined Fairy Tail.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: you don’t have Fairy Tail without Lucy and Natsu. They don’t meet, they don’t go on adventures. They don’t go on adventures, the world would probably cease to exist at about the time we would get to Edolas. Remember, Mystogan needed her and Gajeel to help Natsu and Wendy. If Lucy’s not in the guild, Gajeel’s not in the guild. So assuming everything else is the same, which would probably be a stretch, they’re screwed.

Anyway afterward, Natsu takes Lucy on the mission with him saying that the fact that their lives are different doesn’t matter. And yes, I think it’s a jerky thing to have done. Of course, if you thought this was going to be a lead-in to a Nalu confession, I can’t help you. But that doesn’t mean he did a good.

However, I like the reasoning. Natsu isn’t worried about the past. He’s excited for what the future is going to bring them… 

…and the rest of Team Natsu…

On the Century Quest!

This is probably my favorite thing from the chapter. I actually screamed after seeing that they were going on the quest. Forget Nalu, this is probably one of the most Natsu things that Natsu would be excited for.

But I have two big problems with this.

First, if Gray’s conversation really was a confession, does that mean he left Juvia after confessing to her? Even if he told her that he was going on the mission, that’s still a pretty messed up thing to do. By the way, if you think that Gray’s scar comment was bad, this would probably make it worse.

Funny enough, I saw a comment on this. OP questioned whether or not people really believe the Century Quest would actually last 100 years. And my response is…

That’s the other problem: we don’t know how long this quest is supposed to take. Now, chapter 165 tells us that Decade Quests take at least 10 years to beat and so it should stand to reason that Century Quests will take at least 100 years to beat. However, consider everything that we’ve been told about the Spriggan 12 at the beginning of this arc and how free they ended up being. So will this take shorter than expected or will it actually take 100 years?

As a side note, is this the same Century Quest Gildarts failed or is it another Century Quest? It’s referred to as “The 100-Year Quest” and we’ve only known about one Century Quest? And why is it 100-Year Quest here instead of Century Quest? 

The fic writers are going to have a field day with that.

So, overall, what did I think of the chapter? After reading the chapter a few times and thinking about the things that have happened in order to make this post, I feel good about it. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of issues left unresolved. I totally understand (some of) the reasons people don’t like this ending and I absolutely think we could and probably should get more. However, I’m fine with this being the way the series ends. And, as I’ve said before, I’d happily reread this series again.

Now comes the main reason that I want to talk about the ending in this format. Fairy Tail has officially come to an end. I feel as though there is two knee jerk “my series ended” reactions I want to address.

The first is the feelings over everything in the ending.

As I said in an earlier post, nothing is wrong with feeling sad or happy or angry over anything about everything that has happened in this series. Nothing is wrong with expressing or explaining those feelings. That’s fine.

What isn’t fine is getting mad at or blaming people for the things you don’t like about the ending, including and especially Hiro Mashima. What isn’t fine is destroying everything Fairy Tail related you own out of spite.

I’d even say that it’s not okay to feel betrayed by the ending. Mashima doesn’t owe you anything. He doesn’t owe you ships. He doesn’t owe you moments. He doesn’t have to bring characters back. He doesn’t have to kill anyone. About the only thing Mashima had to do for his fans was get the next chapters of the series out on time. Even though those chapters weren’t always necessarily good, that was about all he owed us.

The second one is a desire the series to continue on, either it should continue on as a spin off or just never end. Some of you might want him to get to working on his completely new series right away.

Not so fast.

I get the desire to want to see more of a series or writer you’ve enjoyed for however long you have. I get that you might think the series didn’t have a proper ending. I get that you may have no idea what you’re going to do now that Fairy Tail is over.

That being said, I think Mashima should take a break.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d also love more Fairy Tail, even as I’ve ragged on some of its failings. But this guy’s been writing Fairy Tail for more than a decade. It’s one thing to be an artist whose job depends on how much you’re able to create. Having to create something new in an ongoing series every week is baffling to me as a musical composer. It takes me weeks even months to get works done to a level they can be called finished.

Mashima’s work on Fairy Tail is nowhere near the best thing in the anime/manga world, but I’m not going to accuse him of not working hard. I want this guy to enjoy the break he’s getting for now before he launches head first into his next series. For now, I’d like to see what fans do now that the story is complete(-ish).

Speaking of which, many people might be wondering what I’ll be doing on this blog now that the series is over. I still have things to say about Fairy Tail as a series and I’ll definitely have some things to say about this fandom as the dust settles. I have some posts I’ve been working on specifically to show after the end of the series and, thankfully, I only have to change a few paragraphs because of this ending…

I don’t know that I’m going to start throwing my focus onto any one other series. I’ve said this before but despite any and all problems this series has, Fairy Tail is the only series I feel comfortable running a blog for. I’ve seen other series I think are better and I have things to say about them you might see on my main blog. But I don’t see myself getting so into another series that I could do everything I’ve done with Fairy Tail.

To that point, I do have series I have been reading. To give a sense of the time I’ve been planning this post for, when I started writing this post, I had over 100 chapters of Bleach left to finish. I’m sending this off having finished that series and (as I promised) started reading My Hero Academia. Incidentally, I’ve started writing posts for those series I may post to my main blog as well and I’ve had to pull myself away from reading MHA to finish this post.

I’ve also been reading Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches and, once I’m done, I’ll finally be able to catch up with Twin Star Exorcists (yes, I’ve decided to turn to the dark side). I’ve also started reading  Astra: Lost in Space. I’m not sure this will be the next breakout hit in the manga world, but I’m enjoying where this series is going.

Somewhere along the way, I started reading Yona of the Dawn through the volumes and collecting Bakuman volumes which I will read all at once. And of course, I’ll still be buying the volumes for Rave Master and Fairy Tail until I’ve collected them all. 

To wrap it all up, there is one more question some of my followers may be wondering that I want to address: When will I read One Piece? 

Soon.

At the very least, I want to catch up with the currently running series and get all of that I’ll be following weekly and get/read all of Bakuman before getting into the beast that is One Piece. At the latest, I’ll end up following my Big 3 tradition of starting to read the series at about the time it’s starting to end. And if your fandom causes another stir over ships, I think I’m actually going to go crazy

In Conclusion:

Fairy Tail’s ending was pretty messy, but I’m fairly happy with the ending we got. But even though Fairy Tail ended, I’m still going to have fun talking about it and other things. 

I’m all fired up!!!!

#fairy tail #fairy tail chapter 545 #fairy tail 545 #the end is nigh #i only have one more of these left #not really a point #but natsu's scar is missing #it was missing in the 500th chapter cover #but does that mean it wasn't a scar? #also juvia's scar was in the wrong place #just wanted to say that #again #i wanted to do a sweet/salt week #one week of appreciation #one week of venting #i might #it will take a while to do #and now i can catch up to mha #ehh maybe in the morning #it's almost 10 here #i miss doing tags like this #for those of you wondering #this is almost 4000 words #yeah #and i started this in april #most of this was written in two weeks #i need a vacation #from this #i'm stalling at this point #just post this man!