#I’m honestly not sure about the choice to include this in a children’s series?

[peachsayshi]

Hiya Peach! Hope you’re living your best life!!!

Not sure if you’re still taking drabble requests for dad!gojo, but if so I wanted to see what your take on “Gojo finding out his s/o is pregnant” would be? I go back and forth on my imagining of his reaction to the situation-positives and negatives-and I’d love your take! You always write him so well 🤩 and I love using your fics for my own character hcs 😆

Also thank you for posting the Gojo drabble tonight-I screamed when I opened my app and saw it!! Your writing is so fantastic and I’m so excited whenever I see updates to your series or a new drabble on your blog. Keep it up! Honestly live for your JJK scenarios!!!! ✨

Thank you!! 💕

Dad Gojo x Female Reader (prompt: finding out you’re pregnant) 

- minors & ageless blogs dni - 

A/N: First off, I’m swooning over your comments right now! 🥺 I always feel like my Gojo can be slightly ooc because I write him soft and sweet, but honestly to me he’s such a good guy that I can’t help it! 🥺 I’m so sorry it’s taken me so long to get through these requests, I have so many of them half done/almost complete (including this) but I’ve been behind on actually cleaning and editing them for post! I hope you still enjoy this drabble, and I’m so happy that you enjoyed the previous drabble posted! 💕💕  You guys really help keep me motivated, especially on days when I just don't want to write period. So, I’m going to take the time to say THANK YOU. *please accept this 🍑 as a token of my affection. 

TAGS: pregnancy, discussing kids, alludes to abortion, angsty, fluffy, slight mention of smut

Satoru sat with his back pressed against the bathroom door. He tapped his fingers along the floor, his heart racing as he nervously tucked his bottom lip between his teeth.

“...ok, it’s done…” he heard you speak from behind the frame.

“Can I come in?” your boyfriend asked a little too eagerly while still trying to maintain his calm demeanor despite feeling like he was about to combust.

“Five minutes,” you sternly replied. “We…I…have to wait.”

Satoru sighed, a tightness pulling across his chest from your particular choice of pronouns.

Did you really think that he would abandon you at such a crucial moment?

He rubbed his hands over his strained face, recalling the night you both had sex without any protection. Your boyfriend was sloppy too, completely losing himself to the intimacy of the moment being inside you that he didn’t pull out fast enough.

How could he when he was staring deep into your lust-blown eyes filled with nothing but love for him, when he could feel the tips of your swollen breasts brush over his chest as your bodies molded into one, and how you sang the most sensual notes as you clenched around him? 

Your apprehensive behavior is completely valid - he knew that. 

Despite being in a committed relationship together, you knew that you could never have a traditional future with the head of the Gojo family. You accepted him even after he told you that he can’t marry you, but the possibility of children…that was something neither of you ever took into consideration.

Not yet, at least.

“I’m right here,” he replied upon clearing his throat, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Seconds passed, the deafening silence only making the sorcerer grow even more nervous as he shifted uncomfortably in his place.

“I-I don’t know how to change a diaper.”

He perked up, “I…don’t either.”

“I forget to feed myself when I’m too busy…” you vented, “How…How am I expected to take care of anyone else?”

“You take care of me,” he kindly reassured, “Just like how I take care of you.”

“This…this is different. This…is permanent.”

Satoru drew in an unexpected breath, digging his nails into the flooring as his eyes widened in shock.

Why were you speaking like this?

“What makes you think that we are temporary?” he questioned defensively.

“I just…I don’t know if this is what you want. I would never ask for this kind of commitment from you, Satoru. You’ve told me many times that being tied down isn’t easy for you, and I know just how troublesome this will be if anyone were to find out…”

“Troublesome?” he blurted with a surprised laugh.

The quiet found its place between you both once more, and your boyfriend had a sudden urge to rip the door out of the frame to close the distance. Instead he closed his eyes and steadied his breathing, channeling all his rational thought as he used his words to soothe you instead.

“I don’t see anything troublesome about a little baby that looks like you, angel,” he exhaled before resting his head against the door. “Pretty eyes, round cheeks, bonus points if it's a girl too…”

You sniffled, “not a boy?”

“And release another menace to society?” he half joked. “Although, I’m sure that my daughter would be chaotic in her own right…”

That earned him a small laugh on your part which he found relieving.

“How would this even work? We aren’t married.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that this baby will be ours.”

“But there’s so much to figure out and this is so…we didn’t plan for this, we haven’t even talked about this…”

“We’ll figure it out together.”

“But…” you kept insisting, trying to find the wild card in your relationship that’ll prove your worst fears crossing your mind. “What if you’re saying this now but you change your mind later on?  I-I don’t want you to feel trapped. I don’t want to force this obligation on you. I’m not asking you to take care of me, or…or this child…we would only burden you with more responsibilities…”

“You seem so concerned about me, what about you?” he interrupted.  “Do you want to have this baby?”

You chose to be silent.

For whatever reason you weren’t sharing what was on your mind, and it was driving your boyfriend nuts.

“Look,” he said, “We both were careless. If you’re not ready for this, then we’ll do what needs to be done. I’ll be there for you, and I won’t stand in the way of your decision. You matter in this too, but if you’re truly only concerned about my feelings…well, I think it’s cute how you’re getting all worked up...

He tapped his index finger against his chin while thinking over his words. 

“Honestly, with everything I deal with, this is actually an easy problem for me to fix. I can leave you to raise the child on your own. God knows that might actually be the ideal option. I can just...support you financially, if necessary…”  he breathed out a chuckle as he stared into the middle distance. “…it’s a good thing I’m loaded, right?”

“I guess…” you nervously replied.

“My life has always been burdensome, you see. Everything requires me to think twice, and I can see why you’re so worried about how this would reflect on me but really you are the one dealing with the ramifications of my problems…”

Satoru smiled to himself, “I’m sorry you had to settle for a man who can’t devote himself to you wholeheartedly but my love for you…has and always will be, the best decision I’ve ever made.”

He stood up, unable to keep himself grounded as leaned against the frame of the door instead.

“Let’s…let’s think about another scenario instead, hmm?” he proposed, “Maybe you move in with me, and we turn one of the rooms into a nursery. I’m sure you’ll have a great time redecorating. I’ll offer to pay and get it done, but I know you’ll want to paint the walls yourself and assemble all the furniture while forcing me to partake in such unnecessary labor…but I think we can build a home together...”

“I’ll be here as much as I can, and you know that there are a few good people who I trust who can look out for you on the days when I can’t. We’ll go to every doctor’s appointment, and I’m not ashamed to ask questions even if they sound stupid…” he carried on, “and it’s not like I’m completely clueless, right? I practically raised Megumi myself…so, technically we have a free babysitter considering I kept him alive all these years…”

He could hear a muffled giggle coming from behind the door, and knew you were listening intently to his words.

“…so yeah, maybe this…this situation is an opportunity for trouble. You’re not just having a child, after all, but my heir. These are things I should be taking into account but…for the first time in my life, I don’t see the implications of my decision. I just…I just see myself coming home to the love of my life and our adorable little menace. Sounds like quite a lovely picture to me...”

The door swung open, and Satoru finally relaxed his shoulders. Your eyes were brimming with tears and you immediately cupped his face in your palms before pulling his lips down to meet yours. His hands met your waist, and he hauled you closer into his body as your fingers tangled through the soft peaks of his snowy hair.

“You’re going to be an amazing dad,” you murmured against his lips, and he smiled into yours.

His slender fingers moved to spread across your belly, “really?”  

You nodded your head in confirmation before stealing a second kiss, then a third and by the fourth one you felt a dampness on your lover’s cheeks as you gently caressed over them with your thumbs.

“Satoru?” you questioned in surprise, but your boyfriend merely brushed his nose over yours as a heart melting grin tugged the corners of his mouth.

“I’m so happy, angel,” he reassured. “I’m so fucking happy.”

#scheduled post.🍑 #gojo x reader #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo fluff #gojo fluff #gojo x you #satoru gojo x you #satoru gojo x female reader #gojo x female reader #jujutsu kaisen fan fiction #jjk fan fics #jujutsu kaisen x reader

[gffa]

I'm really glad you're enjoying the lockwood and co books and series so far!! they're very special books to me and my friends, i remember reading them when i was 16 and absolutely adoring them, they;re just SO GOOD.

one thing i've really enjoyed about the series is the very clear depictions of issues of class and worker's rights, and its one reason i want to reread the books again, because those just went completely over my head as a kid and i want to see how the series and books depictions differ. jonathan stroud had a very close hand in the production of the series so im curious to see how his now 10 year old books and attitudes in them hold up. Anyway, i was curious if that was something that was also as obvious to you as it was to me? my mum's English and i grew up with a kind of baseline understanding of english class struggles (despite the fact that she's from the south and grew up relatively rich) and the attitudes in England surrounding worker's rights and unions and so on, so its always interesting me to see how other people see these issues and how they're presented in media.

for example i absolutely love the casting choices of all the main characters, i think they really perfectly exemplify the struggles portrayed in the books that something as big as The Problem would affect on all working levels, including the class of children which honestly i find is a class of people that goes overlooked a Lot in stories, or at least in the way jonathan stroud does it. Lucy and lockwood are both excellently portrayed i think, and their intrinsic struggles to connect and attitudes are products of their upbringings and backgrounds and i think the series does an excellent job of portraying that (as much as I can say this without revealing spoilers hgjkfdls), with lucy being a northern working class girl from a poor family and lockwood, despite not having a close family, being raised objectively middle class and having relatives who go hunting.

anyway its!!! very good!!! i think the series is a fantastically faithful adaptation of the themes and ideas of the books so far, and also almost every setting looks EXACTLY how i pictured it which makes me absolutely feral hjgfkdsl

but yes idk if this makes much sense but aaahh I'm glad you're enjoying it all!! i really can't wait to see what you think of the second book and the rest of the series!!

also cos im curious: did you read the book before watching the series? and if not, do you think the series holds up as a story in its own right without needing the background of the books to watch it? cos while i think it's a brilliant adaptation I'm wondering how well it plays out as a story on its own without having to read the books first

I'm delighted at how many Lockwood & Co. fans there are, I’d never heard of the books before the Netflix adaptation, but it seems like there’s a bunch of you!  It’s lovely to be able to discuss things already even if I’m not sure I’ll have a lot to add just yet, since I’m only on episode 5 of the adaptation and halfway through the first book. (I didn’t want to burn through the episodes too quickly because it’s such a charming series, so I decided to switch back and forth between them and the books, which helps keep my memory fresh of the show when I read the books, so I can take note of the differences.  There are some differences, but ones that generally seem like really good ideas for a TV series adaptation, like I already like the tweaking of George’s character and I really loved the Norrie backstory.) I don’t know that I would have clocked the class theme on my own--but I’m not that far into any of it yet, though, I know how the first book turns out, of course--I can’t say that I felt it was necessarily a strong theme in the adaptation in the sense that it was driving the plot, but it is very much there, Lucy’s character is very much that of a working class type of character.  And, when you mentioned it, I can pick up on it in the book as well, especially as I’m just getting to the introduction of John Fairfax commissioning the team for a case. I’m also not sure where I’m going to land on the aspect of having children with so much more autonomy given to them, like the scene where Barnes comes by and they’re just totally blase about how he’s trying to tell them to be careful, openly laughing about how worked up he seems after he leaves, just struck me as very “this is a series aimed at young readers so it’s going to have young kids as protagonists, it’s not meant to be taken super seriously as commentary on 15 year olds being allowed to run their own agencies”, but other times the consistency (and Barnes’ comments from the adaptation) of how characters who have faded talent are treated make me think that, once you get a bit outside Lucy’s perspective, that maybe there is something to the idea that there’s commentary on these kids having this tremendous burden placed on them. Right now, the concept of adult supervision seems to be set up as an obstacle to be overcome, that Lockwood & Co. are freedom because they refuse to work with adults, but how much of that is because of course they would think that?  Lucy’s whole backstory is that she never had parents who took care of her or were involved in her life, just punished her and used her for her talent, so of course she’d view them that way. Anyway, I’m looking forward to getting further in so that I’m not just half-baking my thoughts on the themes and might actually have stronger views on things!  And as long as people avoid spoilers, I would love to hear commentary on what kind of themes to be watching for!

#lumi.txt #lockwood & co.

[loosesodamarble]

Hi Erika! Congratulations on your 300 followers! That’s wonderful! You are a fantastic writer and deserve this recognition! 💙 I apologize for sending my request in a little late (it took me a while to decide what to ask for 😅). I hope you still have spot open for this, but I would absolutely love Finesse x Finral fluff with a little bit of hurt/comfort (given the prompt) for B7, if it’s not too much trouble, please? Either romantic or platonic would be fine with me, so it’s really up to you & what you’d like to write most. They’re just so sweet, and I wish we got more of them in the series. Thank you so much, dear! 💕

I'm so sorry that it's taken me this long to fulfill your request, Acacia. I just got hit with a serious case of writer's block and my brain was just... in a place to put it vaguely. I've managed to pull out of that mental state and now I have a fic for you!

Thank you for your patience! I don't know if just fulfilling the request is enough to make up for the wait. But I hope to continue interacting with you in the future! I opted to make the fic a RalEsse ship fic because well honestly, your "Treasures" fic inspired me to start making ship content for them. Heh heh... 😅

Summary: Finesse and Finral have a late night conversation about family and the future they have. Genre: general, fluff Word count: ~1000 Content notes: Mentions of pregnancy. Also, I couldn't help but include Josele and Sterling's presence in the fic. It is a little relevant to the topic of the fic.

..........

Finesse hummed as she set a bouquet of flowers into a vase that rested atop the nightstand. The bouquet consisted of asters, shellflowers, holly, and flax. It was a rather chaotic choice of flowers, but Finesse appreciated the thought behind them. With the bouquet in order, Finesse picked up the letter that had come with the delivered flowers and went to her armchair to read it.

[Greetings from the Fausts to Finral and Finesse Roulacase…]

While the introduction was phrased formally, it was clearly written by a child’s hand, making it feel more casual.

She didn’t get any further before the door creaked open and Finral stepped in. His gait wobbled and his eyes were half closed. He walked for a bit, paused in the center of the room, and let out a sigh.

The sight made Finesse smile. One secret of hers was the fact that she found Finral’s exhausted state to be rather cute.

“Good evening, Finral,” Finesse greeted from her seat. “You’re looking quite chipper tonight.”

“Yu-aahhhhp. I’m in tip top shape…” Finral said without letting his yawn disrupt him. “What about you, love? How are you tonight?”

“Well, the Fausts dropped by with a bouquet and letter.” Finesse pointed to the flowers in the vase for Finral’s eyes to follow. “I was just about to read the letter.”

“Mm, that so?” Finral remained silent for a moment. “Was it just to deliver or did they stay a while?”

“They stayed for a bit of tea. And I got a chance to play with Sterling, the darling she is!” Finesse cooed, unable to hold in her adoration.

The thought of Josele and Nacht’s young daughter made Finesse’s eyes drift back to the bouquet. To her recollection, the holly and flax blossoms included in it represented domestic happiness. Domestic matters, like that of children, were something that Finesse and Finral were working on recently.

“Say Finral, what do you think of the bouquet?” Finesse asked as her husband examined the flowers more closely.

Being a former flirt, Finral surely knew the language of flowers as well and would understand what Finesse was getting at.

“I’m glad they’re showing their support, but it’s a little embarrassing that they’re so blatant about it,” Finral answered with a chuckle.

Finesse giggled. It wasn’t a humorous remark by any stretch of the imagination. It was simply that Finral’s laughter brought out Finesse’s own. That was the effect he had on her.

“Finral…” Finesse stood up and approached her husband to stand by his side. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Do you believe we’re ready to be parents yet? That we’re prepared for children?”

“Kids, huh?” Finral removed Finesse’s hand from his shoulder but kept it in his grasp. “We’ve got most things regarding our home settled and we’ve been researching plenty so perhaps we are.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Finesse whispered. She pressed her face to Finral’s shoulder to hide her smile. Not out of guilt, but embarrassment and glee. The news wanted to pass through her lips so very much and bring a smile to Finral’s face.

“Good news: your recent bouts of nausea and lightheadedness aren’t a result of your constitution, Lady Finesse,” Doctor Owen stated with a smile a couple days ago.

“Well yeah. I’d like to think we’re ready right now but… There’s no need to rush things either,” Finral said carefully, gently. He turned so he and Finesse were face-to-face. “Why are you bringing this up, anyways?”

“You see, Finral, I just learned something today,” Finesse started as she leaned in closer. “That, when it comes to kids…”

“Wait… I just realized, we haven’t been discussing names whatsoever!” Finral suddenly gasped, making Finesse reel back in surprise. “We keep on talking about kids and the responsibilities with them! And we’ve been trying and trying these past weeks! But do we even know what we’ll call them?”

Finesse blinked a couple of times. A smile crawled onto her face as she choked down a laugh. She had summoned all her courage to say it, but the attempt ended in failure. Awkwardly, she averted her eyes.

“Pff—!” Finesse slapped a hand over her mouth to mask a most unladylike snort. “F-Fi-Finral! C-can’t-t that wait? Pfff fee hee hee!”

“But Finesse! There are so many names out there! Do you expect us to just know the right one the second the baby is born?”

“You don’t— Aha! Even know if-fffsssshh! A baby’s been conceiv— Ehee hee!” Finesse’s laughter went on and on. So overtaken, her knees buckled beneath her.

“Ah, Finesse!” Finral yelped. He eased her backwards and onto the bed. He sat beside her, still holding her hand and rubbing her back. “I didn’t mean—! You’re not unwell are you?”

“Ahaa… No no… Just overcome.” Finesse took a few deep breaths to calm herself. A couple of coughs escaped her but her heart wasn’t in any pain. She noticed Finral opening his mouth and placed a finger to his lips. “No apologizing for that. I found it quite delightful.”

Finral sighed and muttered, “Caught me, love.” Slowly, his hand came to a stop in the middle of Finesse’s back. She leaned against his arm, taking in his warmth. “You were going to say something earlier, right? I interrupted. Go on and tell me now.”

“Right, what I wanted to say…” Finesse sat upright and looked Finral in the eyes. “About kids… You did have a point regarding names because…” She took one of Finral’s hands and held it to her stomach. “Doctor Owen confirmed… We’re expecting.”

Finral’s eyes went wide. And his lips spread even wider into the brightest smile Finesse had ever seen on Finral.

“We better prepare more earnestly,” Finesse whispered. “Nine months will surely pass quickly.”

Finral nodded. Nodded and pulled Finesse into his arms.

He hugged so tight. Because he held not only his wife at that moment but their future child too.

#black clover #finral roulacase #finesse calmreich #black clover fanfic #finral x finesse #ralesse #questions from the ask box #fully bloomed acacia #a moment in time #bringing in the new year

[katisconfused]

Distorted Reflections

So, I posted a short fanfic for PLA recently and mentioned a couple times that I was working on another (that I started before the other one) and I have finally finished it and started posting it to Ao3.

I made a bunch of comics earlier, that were a series of not really connectable scenes of choices I wished the game would have let me make, this fic is basically adapting them, plus a great deal more that wouldn’t make sense without more context, into an actual story, so if you enjoyed those maybe you’ll enjoy the fic. I thankfully found someone to help proofread it so it shouldn’t be held back too much by my having poor language skills lmao. I will be including art but there was far too much of it to make a full comic.

First chapter + added picture under the cut

  2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Prologue 

It was near impossible, not feeling cursed when you had spent almost three decades of your life trying to make the most responsible choices in life, only to have it blow up in your face. Astrid had lived a life of half-hearted attempts, trying to make something of herself that never paid off. All she found herself doing was aiming for ill-fitting goals that suited her about as well as a box of secondhand clothing from a donation bin. She always bitterly wondered if paths she hadn’t taken would have gone better in the end. Astrid never managed to find anything she had both the opportunity and skill to accomplish.

Today, she was grasping at straws for her latest career attempt, combining her few limited skills regarding autobody with her only viable connection, which mostly amounted to a friend that was too good to her, and graced her with too much pity . At least in this case, she was just slow, and not directly incompetent. Currently, she was working on a custom Jeep, brandishing a pearlescent, white-adorned body with golden accents. This prototype sported depictions of the Creation Trio and Arceus from actual ruins, and in Astrid’s eyes, this was quite frankly her greatest masterpiece. Sure, it would be wrecked from use before long, but that just came of the job. She might have been abysmal at schoolwork, and took classes on niche things she couldn’t make use of directly, such as art and mythological history, but she was intent on getting something useful out of all the money it had cost her.

“Can you grab the heat lamp, Jim? Cynthia will probably be here to check the final product soon.” The old Luxray that the shop kept around for assistance with electrical work meowed in response, and set about dragging the lamp over to her.

“Actually, I got here a little while ago, but I didn't want to interrupt you.”

Astrid spun around to face the champion, who was leaning against a work table behind her. “I knew you'd do a good job. I was right to go to someone with knowledge of what they would be painting.”

Astrid blushed. “You're too kind. Honestly, I needed a lot of help with the parts, but that’s likely due to the fact that I'm still a novice... I wish I had figured out that I wasn't any good at school sooner. 'I'm a jack of all trades, but master of none.'” She sighed.

“It's not too late; you still have time.” Cynthia remarked with a soft smile, one that refracted a delicate sort of reassurance. “Have you put any thought into a Pokémon training license either?”

Astrid laughed bitterly at the mere thought. “At my age? When most people start as children? The whole system was set up around that, you know. I'm way too far behind to be successful.” Being a Pokémon trainer was one of the many paths she regretted not taking to begin with, and it showed. Cynthia knew that well, and still tried to nudge Astrid towards trying it out anyway. But she and Astrid were different.

Astrid had no talent.

“How about we have a little battle? You know, simply for fun?” Cynthia clapped her hands together and smiled, as if she was proud of her own self-proposed idea.

“Me? Battle you? I don't think that would last all that long; after all, what Pokémon would I even use?” Astrid pointed out firmly with a shake of her head. However, she was broken off from further argument as Jim pawed at her leg, practically volunteering himself without needing his own words; the now-retired veteran of the shop owner's own attempts at challenging the Pokémon League seemingly was itching for another chance at action. Astrid sighed again. She didn't want to ruin his fun, after all, regardless of her own doubts. “Fine. I'll give it a shot.”

She could hardly get the words out before Cynthia had already sent out her signature Spiritomb. Its reaction to Astrid was... odd. “Oh? You seem pretty fired up to battle Astrid, Spiritomb.” Cynthia remarked in a teasing manner. “You sense some potential with her, too?”

Astrid could only roll her eyes. It still all felt like a big joke.

They headed outside to the mostly empty lot to avoid damage. Spiritomb launched a Shadow Ball attack towards Jim, who managed to dodge quite well in spite of his advancing age. “All right Jim, counterattack with Play Rough!” Astrid called out, to which the agile Luxray managed to catch the Spiritomb off guard and land a crit in response, only to be taken down by a Dark Pulse attack directly after due to his close and dangerous proximity. Astrid winced at the seemingly easy defeat, and moved to instead comfort the Luxray for his efforts. “You did great, buddy. You should be proud.”

“You did good as well, though.” Cynthia interrupted, handing Astrid a Max Revive to get Jim back to full comfort and health.

“Nah, I just got lucky. And besides, Jim is the experienced one here. Not me.”

“Strong pokemon have never guaranteed victory against me.” Cynthia retorted. “You should really rethink that license. At least find yourself your own partner. Things have been... dangerous around here lately, you know. You need to be able to fend for yourself, Astrid.”

Astrid contemplated that. It was true she was hearing more and more about some up and coming group ( Team something... Galactic maybe? ) causing trouble, but she couldn't imagine she was really notable enough to be targeted by people like that. Not right now, anyway. She laughed it off. “I'll be perfectly fine, I think. After all, I have a god watching over me.” Cynthia's face was still concerned and unconvinced, however, and it was anything but hard to miss.

“...Ahem. Anyway.” Astrid said, changing the subject. “I still have to add a clear coat over this, but it should be ready in the morning.”

“Excellent!” Cynthia exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “I look forward to it. See you tomorrow. Oh, in fact, why don't we have lunch afterwards? I just got back from surveying some ruins and would love to talk to you about them.”

Astrid broke into an enthused smile; one of her few useful qualities was being able to give Cynthia a somewhat engaging conversation about her special interests. “It's a date.” Partially, that was intended as a bit of a lighthearted joke, but she knew it would be taken as it was silently intended as well. Cynthia knew her well.

Cynthia waved goodbye and left Astrid to finish up her work for the day. Jim retreated back to his designated living area behind the shop to call it a night as she put all the supplies away. Astrid began locking up afterwards, unable to stop from grinning stupidly about that.

She had a date with the champion . Giratina must be working overtime to bless her today .

Astrid had honestly taken the long dissolved faith towards it as something to jokingly play around with as a teen, but after too many blessings to be coincidence, she had become surprisingly faithful to the forgotten and disregarded god. Maybe one day, it would grant a bit larger of a blessing upon her. Though… Perhaps she was simply sounding greedy now.

She doubted Cynthia had that kind of interest in her, but it was still an enjoyable thought. One so distracting, in fact, that Astrid didn't notice when she was leaving the shop that she wasn't alone.

“Oh, someone is still here?” a voice proclaimed from behind her.

Out of the shadows came two people with repulsive, teal bowl cuts, a Skuntank and Toxicroak not far behind. “Is it true that you have the champion's personal vehicle here?”

Astrid's eyes narrowed. “What is it to you?”

“We were thinking of… making some modifications ourselves; I'm sure she'd get a real bang out of them." A ghoulish smile crossed the first one's lips as they spoke. Astrid suddenly realized that there was something potentially "special" about her that might be worth targeting, and that this was exactly what Cynthia had feared.

She popped the trunk of her car behind her and pulled out a torque wrench. There was one more thing that was unique about her, and why she felt safe without a partner pokemon. She clasped her hands together. “...Giratina, I beg of you: please protect me.” The glyph tattoo on her right arm began to faintly glow red, and she readied herself.

The Toxicroak came at her, and she rolled out of the way before simply shrugging it off to its trainer's surprise. The trainer was even more surprised when she used the momentum of the roll to make a direct hit on them with the wrench, docking them across their face with a sickening crack. A lone human in a Pokémon battle didn't have the luxury of holding back, and Astrid was no champion or hero. The bowlcut grunt fell to the ground like a ragdoll, the Toxicroak distraught and confused about what to do.

“You BITCH! ” the other grunt blindly swore, calling upon the Skuntank to go for Astrid this time. As it did so, it was able to successfully disorient her with a Poison Gas attack. Astrid doubled over; the dodges couldn't protect her now. The enemy Toxicroak moved to attack her again without instruction, preparing an impending Poison Jab attack. Astrid braced herself for the worst; a point-blank direct attack from a Pokémon would likely be the end of her. In her head, the last few hours proceeded to flash back before her very eyes. Cynthia's encouragement, and the " date " she was looking forward to mere moments before now. She largely hated her life, but now facing its end, she felt nothing but regret, perhaps mixed with fear and dread of the incoming unknown. Why didn't she just have a partner Pokémon? Did she seriously expect Giratina to protect her every time?

What an idiot she had been. Now her life WAS truly wasted.

She closed her eyes preparing to meet her end.

The end never came, but her senses did in fact cut out from around her very being. Astrid opened her eyes to darkness, followed closely by an unfamiliar light that shone of white and gold.

“ Ah, thou may be suited to receive my blessing. Seek out all pokemon, and thou shall find me once more. ”

…

Everything fell away to black once more.

☆

“Oh, wake up! …Do wake up, will you? Are you alive, my girl?” an unfamiliar male’s voice called out, breaking through the muted void of her fall.

“...Probably not,” she mumbled in response, struggling to come back down to Earth.

“Oh my… That’s quite concerning.”

Astrid opened her eyes then, finding her senses finally redirecting themselves to activity as she managed to focus on a man with a lab coat and an admittedly ridiculous looking winter hat with a pom-pom on it. Three starter pokemon, none of which were the local staples, stood at his side, peering down at Astrid in interest.

“You gave me quite a shock, falling from the sky like that. But thank goodness you seem to be unharmed!”

“...Where am I?”

“Why, this is Prelude Beach of course. Dear me; did the shock of your fall addle your memory? I must say your clothing is... unusual.”

A fair statement in general. Astrid's choice of dress skewed rather goth, and her jacket was of her own design, the back picturing a stylized image of Giratina's origin form. A big upside to a job not dealing directly with customers was looking however she pleased.

“I've never even heard of this place before,” she said, slightly dazed and more than confused. Was this the afterlife? Another dimension? Did Giratina save her after all? …No; she was pretty sure the Pokémon that appeared before her was Arceus. Surely it couldn't be as bored as Giratina to the point she would be of interest.

“Oh yes, and... What would your name be?”

“Astrid.”

“Your name has quite the ring to it! I imagine it must have a lovely meaning.”

It was related to a word for “star”, she thought to herself. Somewhat fitting for someone who fell from the sky somehow, she supposed.

The odd-hatted man introduced himself as Laventon, a Pokémon professor. As he was speaking, however, the three starter Pokémon ran off, leaving him in dismay. “I'm terribly sorry, but do you think you could help me round them up? I beg you!” he yelled before running after them.

Astrid followed his lead, noticing what was probably her phone nearby on the ground. It had taken an odd shape, and frustratingly seemed to not have a connection anymore, but it appeared that the things already saved to it still were there at least.

It echoed the message she heard before on contact.

“ Seek out all Pokémon. ”

Well, might as well start with those three, then.

Being able to throw a pokéball competently was a skill taught to children in general, and Astrid was no exception. It didn't take too much effort to round up the three starter Pokémon for Laventon; it was quite literally a job for children to her. The praise for it felt undeserved and almost patronizing, but it became clear fairly quickly why the strange professor found it so impressive.

The small village that sat on the beach was jarringly antiquated, and the people in it were as perplexed by her appearance as she was by everything else. Laventon went off somewhere and came back with more people, who reacted similarly to her presence and incredibly basic (in her opinion) skill set. A serious-looking woman with no eyebrows even offered a job and living quarters to her, if and only if she could pass some sort of evaluation. It felt ironic to have been so recently complaining she was too old to train Pokémon. Her wish had, in a very strange roundabout way, been granted. Was this Giratina's blessing or Arceus' instead? She could usually, on some level or another, feel Giratina watching over her, but it felt notably absent now. Was that the cost of her wanting to be given this chance?

…She probably wouldn't get a real answer for that.

The strange people discussed the rift in the sky she apparently fell through. That was definitely Giratina's handiwork. She could just tell. She wasn't sure if this was another parallel world or not until she heard the word Hisui, which she also recognized from her studies. It seemed she had traveled back in time to when settlers were flocking to the region of Sinnoh.

No wonder the phone had no connection…

She was provided with lodging for the night, but told that it would be only temporary if she failed the evaluation.

Maybe this blessing was a curse after all.

#PLA #Pokemon legends Arceus #Volo #I have possibly written an Entire Light Novel Worth of what mostly amounts to Volo deconstruction hahahaha #distorted reflections

[francesderwent]

I have no commentary about the last 140 pages of Penderwicks in Spring because I spent all of it crying.

#Cate rereads #I’m honestly not sure about the choice to include this in a children’s series? #it makes the characters SO compelling #but it is so so so emotional #and there’s people there the entire time who love her #not just her family but nick and the Ayvazians and Mrs. Grunfeld #but it’s really hard to watch her go through it #and Skye does such a terrible job at fixing things #to be fair to her she’s like seventeen and she’s just had a huge upset #but we don’t get to see inside her head and so I think the whole plot line suffers #you have to go back and remember moments when Skye was better at being a sister #despite all her hurt and grief #for instance when I remember Skye taking batty’s hand and telling her she’s perfect I wanna die #Skye trying so very very hard to take care of her in Point Mouette #well that’s a lot of tags for someone who said she had no commentary

[ace-trainer-risu]

what are your fave diana wynne jones books that aren’t howl’s moving castle??

Oh whattt a lovely and fun question which I was definitely not secretly hoping someone would ask!!!! Yay!!

Hm okay so, not specifically in order, probably my top fave Diana Wynne Jones books would be:

Deep Secret! Deep Secret is not just one of my favorite books by DWJ but one of my favorite books full stop! It’s so good. Basically, the premise is that there is an infinite series of interconnected worlds, some of which have magic and some of which don’t, at the center of which is a vast interdimensional magical empire. Magic in the multiverse is overseen by an organization of magicians called Magids and there must always be a specific number of Magids in existence. When Rupert, a young Magid living on Earth, discovers that his mentor has died (ish) he becomes unexpectedly responsible for finding and training the next Magid, which is extremely inconvenient timing for him because the aforementioned magical empire is on the brink of civil war and chaos and its his job to stop it. And also almost all of this takes place at...a science fiction convention. It’s amazing.  I have read this book minimum four (probably more) times and every time it’s absolutely delightful and hilarious. I would like to go to the sci fi convention in this novel more than anything. It’s such a good read and its one of her few novels which is specifically aimed at adults, so I would EXTREMELY recommend it. Plus the romance in it is extremely good...not exactly enemy-to-lovers but more like ‘annoys-the-shit-out-of-each-other’ to lovers.  (**One note about this one...there’s a few very briefly mentioned side characters who are gender noncomforming and even tho they are actually portrayed very positively, it’s not necessarily ideal and 100% respectful (basically the protags comment on them being very beautiful and nice but also keep trying to guess their “real” gender). Additionally there’s a different briefly mentioned side character who is fat who isn’t portrayed very nicely. Both of these are brief incidents, just wanted to provide a warning for them)

Dark Lord of Derkholm - Okay this one is weirdly hard to summarize but it’s about this magical fantasy world which has been taken overy and is being used as a tourist destination by a non-magical world (heavily implied to be Earth) for people who want to role play at being in a classic high fantasy story, including fighting and killing THE DARK LORD...who is really just a random magician pretending to be evil. The inhabitants of the fantasy world do not enjoy this and are trying desperately to stop the tours, but unfortunately according to a magical oracle, their best hope of stopping the tours is this year’s Dark Lord, a hapless farmer magician named Derk, and his, um, eccentric family consisting of his glamorous wife, seven children (of whom five are griffins and one is a bard) and a simply improbable amount of magical animals. And also there is a very good dragon.  I think Derkholm is so great as a novel b/c it’s a very funny, loving but sharp, parody of high fantasy stories...but a lot of the time parodies only function as parodies but not as good stories in their own right, you know? But this novel completely functions as a story too, and in fact the first time I read at maybe age nine or ten, the high fantasy parody went completely over my head...but I still loved it. I also really love that this novel is very accessible to all ages, I think I enjoy reading it as an adult just as much as I did as a kid, which is rare.  For anyone who has read Howl’s Moving Castle but nothing else by DWJ and isn’t sure where to start, I think this is a great place to start. (TW: There’s a brief, non-explicit scene which has implied sexual assault.) 

Fire and Hemlock - This may be the most controversial one since it features a romance with a significant age gap where the two characters meet when one is a child and the other an adult. And I fully agree that that’s :/ and normally that trope is NOT my thing but it doesn’t come off at all creepy in this story imo, and if you think you can deal with that then this is a very weird, atmospheric, cool book about storytelling and fairy tales and growing up. The short summary (this is another hard to summarize one) is that as a child, Polly encounters and strikes up a friendship and correspondence with a young man, Tom, which mainly consists of the two of them jointly making up a silly, ongoing fairy tale type story...but things get weird when parts of their story start to come true in real life.  I’ve only read this one twice but it really stuck with me and in fact just describing it here...really makes me want to read it again!

The Chrestomanci Series - So all of the above are either specifically aimed at adults or a general audience whereas the Chrestomanci series is aimed at children, mainly a middle grade type audience. And tbh I started reading them as a kid (fond memory - I bought an omnibus of the first two with my allowance money...b/c it had a cat on the cover!) so I don’t know what it would be like to first read these as an older teen or an adult. BUT. Honestly they are really good and would be a quick read so I do still recommend them. There’s seven overall, with th seventh being a collection of short stories, and they’re only semi-chronological so the reading order isn’t vital. My recommended order (b/c this the order I read them in, haha) is Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The Magicians of Caprona, Witch Week, The Pinhoe Egg, Conrad’s Fate, and then Mixed Magic you can read whenever you want so long as you read it after Charmed Life and The Magicians of Caprona.  So the very core premise of it is not dissimilar to Deep Secret - there’s an infinite series of worlds/universes and there’s a magician, called the Crestomanci in this case, who is responsible for making sure magic isn’t abused across the multiverse. The Chrestomanci is an extremely powerful enchanter who has nine lives, and the novels are various semi-connected stories about the adventures of Chrestomanci as an adult and child. Chrestomanci is a title so it’s not always the same person, but for the majority of the stories it is the same guy and he’s...the best/worst...He’s this extremely handsome, charismatic, powerful enchanter who is very good at his job, loves his wife a lot, wears very beautiful clothes and makes, um, questionable life choices and is very annoying to everyone. I’ve thought about this very hard and I believe that he’s what happens when you take a fundamentally chaotic good person and make him do a fundamentally lawful good job; yes, he’s going to do it and do it well, but he is going to do it in the most chaotic, ridiculous way possible, and he IS going to die at an ALARMING rate, doing things that would not normally kill a person, such as playing cricket and trying to catch stray cats. He also, as previously mentioned, frequently wears very dramatic silk dressing gowns with elaborate embroidery, which the protag of Charmed Life finds deeply alarming.  It’s very odd to me how these books don’t seem to be well known, because the Chrestomanci books were some of my absolute favorite books as a child. I still have my omnibus editions of the first four novels and they are very worn and very beloved. And it’s so WILD to me that I don’t think I have ever talked to someone who also read those as a kid! Like I’m not saying those people don’t exist, I’m sure I just haven’t met them, but that’s so weiiirddddd to me. If I bring up Tamora Pierce or Garth Nix or other authors of weird, eccentric children’s fantasy novels to other avid childhood consumers of fantasy, people usually know what I mean, but Chrestomanci and its just..crickets. Is it b/c she’s British? Anyway all of the Chrestomanci books are very degrees of good, but if I had to pick a favorite, I think, controversial choice here, it would be Conrad’s Fate. Particularly in terms of recommendations to others, Conrad’s Fate works as a standalone and, unlike the other books in the series, it’s aimed more at a YA audience, so if you wanted to read a Chrestomanci novel without getting into the whole series, that’s a good way to go. It’s about a boy, Conrad, who is told that he has a terrible, possibly fatal Fate awaiting him unless he goes to work as a servant at a wealthy, and weird, estate neighboring his town, at which place he encounters things including color changing livery, an extremely annoying teenage Chrestomanci, and the greatest liminal space house EVER. It’s like a combination of an upstairs/downstairs Downton Abbey type social drama with bizarre fantasy shenanigans. How could that not be good??

Also as Honorable Mentions - A Sudden and Wild Magic and The Time of the Ghost. A Sudden and Wild Magic is fun b/c it’s one of her few works aimed specifically at adults and it’s (gasp) a little bit NAUGHTY which I was very surprised and delighted by when I read it. (This may seem like an unfair statement considering that Deep Secret fully has an orgy in it, but Rupert is so fundamentally unnaughty of a character that he completely unnaughtifies the whole novel, whereas Sudden and Wild Magic embraces being a (little bit) naughty.)   The Time of the Ghost on the other hand is weird and haunting and creepy and atmospheric. I only read it once but it’s one of those novels you just think about periodically and go “wait what the fuck that was a weird novel” (Also known as the “Garth Nix” effect) 

#the ask and the answer #i spent...too long writing this out but i love talking about her novels soo muchhhh #that i couldn't help myself!!!!!!!! #diana wynne jones #things you didn't care to know about veronica

[canmom]

Animation Night 76: Rankin//Bass

When it comes to naming Western animation studios, you’ve got the really old school studios from the early 20th century like Fleischer, Disney and Warner Bros. You’ve got the offshoots of Disney like Don Bluth Productions and Dreamworks. You’ve got the oddball directors like Ralph Bakshi would who hop from studio to studio, whoever would take their pitch. Head over to Europe and you find a lot of smaller studios like Cartoon Saloon, Bobbypills, Xilam or (long list of French studios) who tend to work on massively multinational collabs designed to scoop up arts funding from as many countries as possible. There are limited-animation oriented TV studios, which is to say there is Hanna-Barbera.

And then there’s Rankin/Bass!

Rankin/Bass are a bit of an odd beast, in that they were perhaps one of the earliest studios to primarily produce animation via international outsourcing - and while nowadays that usually means South Korea and the Philippines, back in 1960 that largely meant Japan.

Rankin/Bass, founded naturally by two guys called Rankin and Bass (in 1960 under the name Videocraft International, based in New York), took American money and sent it to animators at some of the oldest anime studios including Toei, Eiken/TCJ and Mushi Pro to draw or stopmotion animate their films, which they would voice act with American VAs. But the studio they’re most associated with is Topcraft, which you may remember from Animation Night 70 as the studio which old Hayao chose to make Nausicaa; outside of this rare exception, Topcraft almost exclusively served Western productions, largely for Rankin and Bass. And after Topcraft vanished shortly after Nausicaa, with the majority of its animators going on to follow Miyazaki to the exciting new Studio Ghibli, but a certain portion hung on, creating Pacific Animation Corporation. You can see the full list here.

The way things seem to work at this studio, Arthur Rankin and and Jules Bass themselves directed basically all their movies. On the Japanese side, the stop motion ‘animagic’ productions are credited to Tadahito Mochinaga at MOM production; Topcraft was led by Toru Hara, formery of Toei, before he joined the Ghibli exodus.

For the first few decades of the studios existence, Rankin/Bass specialised in, well, ‘holiday specials’ for various US xtian celebrations like Christmas and Thanksgiving. Since the official line of Animation Night is that the only valid one of these is Halloween and all others are revisionist, we are going to pass over these without much comment. Which means we’re speeding forwards to the late 70s, where they started to branch out a little. First were a series of hourlong TV specials, and then, suddenly, childrens’ books were in, starting with Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

Why did this happen at this particular point in history? I’m honestly not sure, although perhaps the success of Zuiyo Eizo’s World Masterpiece Theatre series (also talked about on Night 70) had a lot to do with it? Or perhaps they were hoping to fill the space left by a weak decade at Disney? In any case, in the space of about a decade, Rankin/Bass dived head first into adapting fantasy books - among them Tolkien’s Return of the King, The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle (certainly the best remembered), The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, and a version of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

The particular visual style of this period of Rankin/Bass movies stands out - if not necessarily always for good reasons, those giant hobbit eyes are certainly a choice! The 70s and early 80s were a period when ‘fantasy’ had not yet ossified into its current rigid commercial aesthetic (i.e. the Star Wars money machine was still revving up), watercolour paintings and fantasy artists were throwing out some fascinating feelers into aesthetic space. At its best this led to some brilliant works like Belladonna of Sadness [Animation Night 69] over in Japan, the rise of French comics artists such as Meobius, and even disjointed but very compelling Bakshi movies like Wizards.

It may contextualise things to note that this song by Leonard Nimoy was made in 1968:

...which is admittedly a full decade and then some before The Last Unicorn, but that’s the vibe. Imagine a drawing of a hobbit with a pipe on top of a weed shop... oh, you don’t have those outside of Glastonbury? Huh.

So, let’s have a look at a couple of these movies.

The Last Unicorn (1982) is actually the only one I’ve seen, capturing a suitably ethereal and melancholy atmosphere - perhaps not surprising since the book’s author Peter S. Beagle wrote the screenplay as well. Rankin/Bass were the last animation company to be approached, initially horrifying the author, but he came around after seeing the Japanese animators’ character designs (which include a fascinating cloven-hoofed look for the unicorn herself that recalls illuminated manuscripts and medieval tapestries, apparently intentionally!) and the voice actors’ performances. @mogsk​ reports actually meeting the guy at a screening of a remastered version with additional inbetweens, and he was very happy about the adaptation, only regretting that they hadn’t had the budget for more full animation in the first place.

It was rly cool, we were sitting in the second row to the front, and the guy in front of us kept turning around and excitedly talking about each scene, and when the lights came up at the end t hey handed him a mic and he was like ,"So yeah I'm peter s beagle!" lol

A lot of the tone has to do with the score, composed by Jimmy Webb with the band America and singer Lucy Mitchell. A reviewer is quoted as calling it “an appropriately somber and sentimental blend of fairy tale motifs and dark, Wagnerian cues” and disparaging the folk ballads which became so common in other rankin/bass films, but honestly these ballads now convey a feeling of ‘hey it’s (only just ceased to be) the 70s’ and it really works here. At least I think the OP is pretty :p

So yeah that’s who’s on it, but what’s it about? It’s a tragic little story about a unicorn who goes looking for any other survivors of the magical creature genocide by a tyrannical monster known as the Red Bull, falls into various misadventures including a traveling circus, and it gets very bleak indeed when she has to turn human to evade capture.

As for our second movie... one of the Tolkiens might be an obvious pick, but instead, I’m going to take the opportunity to show @mogsk​ the one R/B fantasy film she hasn’t seen... and nor have I so this one’s a roll of the dice. That is The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, If you look at the poster you might be like, “hey bryn have you gone mad” (you fools I was mad all along), but the film itself looks like... well, a late 70s fantasy film, so high drawing counts, some rotoscopy looking scenes, often kinda-stiff animation but also some beautiful 70s-anime approaches to stuff like fire.

This one... the plot’s pretty daft, a buncha wizards get together and have an argument about the fate of humanity. Forbidden to fight among themselves, the 'good’ wizards deputise a small group of humans to steal the bad wizard’s crown. Meanwhile a young Peter Dickinson - author of the book, self-inserting here! - gets isekaied into the past and accidentally downloaded into a dragon’s body. From there we get a kind of science vs magic subtheme which honestly sounds a little painful, as Peter attempts to fit dragons into his 20th-century ontology, but we shall see...

And oh! Guess this is actually our first isekai on here. Wasn’t expecting that. I shall save an attempt to research the history of isekai for when we end up doing an actual anime one.

Anyway, it looks like it will have some fun vocal performances and cool visuals, so hopefully a chill and amusing time, and it still has something of the colouring of 70s/early 80s anime which should give some visual appeal even if it’s not quite the technical showoffiness of something like Horus. Idk, let’s roll the device.

Animation Night 76 will start... now! I know, late again. Hopefully this will be a fun one to recover from any surgeries, illnesses, malaises, and misfortunes you may have experienced in the last week <3 head to twitch.tv/canmom when you are ready!

#animation night

[toomanyrobins]

a little birdie told me pt. 3

Summary: Y/N “Birdie” Parker left New York and her family three years ago in the middle of the night. Now, a call for help to her best friend brings her back into the fold of the Three Families and their “business”

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Parker!Reader

Content warning: physical abuse, miscarriage, allusions to fertility issues, cursing, mentions of forced marriage

Word Count: 1.3k

Notes: comment if you want to be tagged!

Series masterlist // next part

Virginia Pepper Stark may have married a mafia boss, but she was no ordinary mob wife. She didn’t just stay home and raise children. Tony had involved her from the moment of their engagement and Pepper had become powerful in her own right. When she got the call from Tony that Y/N was back, she quickly had her assistant cancel her entire week. One of the maids had been sent to get a bath ready as soon as they hung up. The moment Becca pulled up, someone had taken her car and they had helped Y/N up into the house. She hated all of the fussing around, but one look from Pepper had silenced any complaints. 

The four women gathered in the bathroom as Y/N sunk into the steaming hot bath. She had undressed behind a divider and tried to hide beneath the bubbles, but it was impossible to cover everything. Bruises in various stages of healing covered her torso and upper arms. It was clear that whoever had done this had been strategic in how he had abused her. “Oh, stop looking at me like that,” Y/N snapped at them and then sighed, rubbing her brow, “I’m sorry. I just don’t like being the sad, pitied girl in the corner… or bath, in this case.”

“I don’t think you realize how awful it looks, Birdie,” Becca explained, “I didn’t realize it was so bad at the hospital. ”

Pepper brought her chair up beside the tub and started running a brush through Y/N’s hair, her mind churning. “Tell us what happened. Every detail. What’s said in here will never leave this room, but I need to know everything.” So… Y/N did. She shared every gruesome detail of the past three years. How life had been suffocating her, how lonely she had become, and the whispers of an arranged marriage. That last fact had been the final push for her to run, the hatred that she didn't have a say driving her. And then her life from the past three years including the final moments. 

All three women, especially Pepper, were surprised to hear about the arranged marriage. She was angry that such an important thing about one of her kids had been hidden. Her anger was put aside when she heard about Y/N’s miscarriage. She was well aware of the struggles and sadness that pregnancy and loss could bring. When Y/N finished her story, everyone was in a hailstorm of emotions. They all sat in silence in the steam-filled room. A knock at the door startled them all out of their musings, “Mrs. Stark, your husband called and said he and Mr. Parker are leaving the office now.” That spurred the group into action. No one had realized how much time had passed. Nat and Becca rushed to go back to their homes and Pepper helped Y/N get dressed. They put her into a turtleneck and pants, thankful for the winter weather. 

By the time they were ready, the front door opened, and they heard Peter calling for her, “Y/N! Y/N! BIRDIE!” She flew down the stairs into her brother’s arms. He wrapped her up in a tight hug and they stayed that way for a minute. Peter pulled away and dragged her into the living room. Tony went to follow after them, but Pepper held him back. The siblings needed a moment together. “Where the hell did you go? Why are you back? Why does your face look like it exploded?”

Y/N punched him on the shoulder, “It doesn’t look that bad! This whole thing isn’t that bad.”

“Rogers said you have a handprint wrapped around your neck.”

“Steve has always been dramatic.”

“Is he lying?” Y/N bit her lip and dropped her gaze. That was all Peter needed and he tightened his grip on her. “I knew it. What the hell happened to you? Why did you leave in the first place?”

“Because, for all the love you men claim to have, no one actually seems to care. It’s always your thoughts and your feelings that dictate things. I got sick of it. Unfortunately, I’m so fucked up over it all that I seem to fall into similar patterns. This time it was a different kind of control. That’s what happened to me and that’s why I left. That’s the only answer I am willing to give.” 

Y/N got off the couch and went upstairs and closed the door, flipping the lock. Once she was sure that everyone was asleep, she wandered out into the walled garden at the back of the house. The house was suffocating her and she needed a break. Y/N sat down on the bench and pulled the pack of cigarettes that were in her jacket. Her head fell back to rest on the bench, the stars overhead a calming sight. When she lifted her head again, there was very little surprise that a certain blond was in front of her. “Was waiting to see if you’d come out here.”

Her head fell back again and refused to look at Steve, “Thought you might be here, skulking in the shadows. Guess the years don’t change much.”

“You’d be surprised, sweetheart.”

Y/N laughed bitterly, “No one has called me that in a really long time.”

“Scoot over.” He stole the cigarette from between her fingers, exhaling slowly. “What are you doing, Birdie? You’ve been gone ages and you show up looking like this.”

Y/N shifted her weight on the bench, “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing. I wasn’t planning on any of this. I’ve spent four years living according to someone else’s rules. Now, I have almost every opportunity in the world and all I want to do is curl up in a ball under blankets.”

“Why didn’t you call someone?”

“I know how difficult I made life for everyone before I left. I was so awful that you guarding me was punishment. At first, I figured it was best to stay away and eventually I didn’t have the choice.”

He mulled over his next question, “If you hadn’t ended up in the hospital would you have come back at some point?” Y/N shook her head as she stole the cigarette back. The two sat in silence, the only noises being the wind through the trees. Eventually, he cleared his throat and forced her to turn her head, “I thought this was clear, but apparently not. I’ll come for you whenever you call.”

“You’re too good of a guy, Steve. Now help me up.” He grabbed her forearms, making her suck air between her teeth. 

He tugged at the fabric, “Take off your shirt.”

Y/N smirked up at him, “You’re pretty forward, Rogers.”

“I’ll take it off of you. Don’t think I won’t” 

“If you want to see the damage, you’re going to have to. My ribs make lifting my arms hard.” Steve’s eyes drifted over her torso before pulling her top off. He gritted his teeth when he saw her body. Fingers drifted along her throat and over her chest, as he took in the damage. They trailed down over her ribs, leaving a trail of goosebumps that weren’t from the cold. Y/N looked up and saw an emotion she loathed more than anything else, “Please, don’t look at me like that. I’ve had enough pity today.” 

With some help, her shirt was pulled back on. Steve took a step back, putting some distance between them, “You should get some sleep. Besides, I have to go.”

“Got plans at 10 at night?”

“Something like that,” Steve pressed a kiss to the side of her head and walked out of the garden. Once she heard the roar of his bike, Y/N fell back against the bench, lighting another cigarette. Once she had reached the end, she extinguished it and went back into the house. When she looked up the stairs, she could already feel her ribs twinging and decided to sleep on the couch.

#mafia au #mob!steve #avengers au #avengers imagine #steve rogers #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers au #steve rogers x reader #captain america #captain america x reader #captain america imagine #mob!au #mob!avengers #mafia!avengers #mafia!steve #mafia!steve rogers #toomanyrobins

[asprettyasyourown]

How/Where do you think Jon and Arya will meet again? And how/where do you think Dany and Arya will meet?

Honestly, I can’t see Arya and Jon meeting anywhere else other than Winterfell. It would be such a satisfying “conclusion” to this aspect of their storyline. For Arya, both Winterfell AND Jon have been associated with home. She has tried since day one to return to either of them, and to see her do both at the same time would be so lovely. And Jon too, who has struggled for so long with his desire to have Winterfell (feeding his rivalry with Robb and his conflict with his status as a bastard) and Arya (contradicting his position as a member of the Night’s Watch, who have no family), would then get both at the same time. I know GRRM doesn’t like to hand things on a silver platter, and that “Be careful what you wish for” is a massive theme in the series, but come on. You can’t tell me they had it easy, and that they didn’t fight for it.

Now how and when is a little trickier.

Unfortunately, it won’t happen before a loooong time. Arya has a long way to go before leaving Essos, let alone reach Winterfell. She still needs to: 

Tie the story with the FM (including a “training” with the courtesans/the Black Pearl, and of course leaving them);

Deal with the wildlings women and children that are stranded in Braavos now that the Sealord captured the ship (= slavers) that intended to sell them;

As I’ve mentioned before, I very much see the Iron Bank being involved in her storyline, so there’s that to deal with as well;

Meet Dany (I’ll go back to this later);

Go back to Westeros;

Deal with the Riverlands, the Brotherhoods Without Banners and, most importantly, Lady Stoneheart;

Reconnect with Nymeria.

And all that doesn’t even take into account what GRRM could throw in her way on top of all of this. That’s a lot. And since Arya will definitively not see Jon anywhere outside of the North, it could only happen after she resolved all those things.

Jon too has a lot on his plate. He first needs to be resurrected (duh). He also needs to deal with the traitors who stabbed him and his future in the Night’s Watch. If you omit the whole murder thing (kinda hard to tbh), there is still the fact he broke his vows for Arya. He was already set to leave before he died. And since his last thoughts were about Arya, and we know the dead who get resurrected focus on their last conscious thoughts, his resolve to get her back will not be lessened.

Honestly, I think he’s done with the NW. I think he’s gonna do what he intended to before dying, aka kill Ramsay and get “Arya” back, whether by allying with Stannis or at the head of his own wildling army. I don’t know if he’s gonna become King in the North like in GoT, but he’s definitively going to be considered for the role; and since Bran, the legitimate heir, is still alive and will one day return to Winterfell, this could be the catalyst for the tension between these two George planned in his original draft. Not to mention the tensions it would create with the other northern lords, who would not see with a kind eye a bastard allied with the wildlings (enemies of the North for generations) and Stannis; or those who simply won’t appreciate a king not as malleable as a child (side-eye to the Manderlys).

(Oh, and there is also the matter with fArya and Theon. I’m going on a limb here, but I doubt he’s gonna be happy to learn that what he thought was his precious “sister” is really an impostor (though he might be happy to know the real Arya didn’t get what Jeyne had to endure). Or that she’s bringing along the guy who betrayed the Starks and supposedly killed Bran and Rickon. His first reaction definitively won’t be good, though it will probably soften once he learns what happened to them and how Ramsay is the real culprit. But I’m not anticipating much benevolence from him, especially since he’s in dark mode now).

So yeah. Lots of issues to be resolved before they can be reunited, and that’s without counting on the threat of the Others or what other characters might do. Honestly, I’m anticipating a reunion between the end of TWOW and the beginning of ADOS. On one hand, I think it would be more impactful in TWOW; most specifically, the last act of either Jon or Arya’s chapters. It would be a nice conclusion for the both of them, before the Others mess everything up. But I’m also aware that all the issues I’ve previously mentioned might not be resolved in one book, and that it might spill on the second one.

-----------------------------

Now Dany.

Honestly, it’s kinda hard to be sure of how they’re gonna meet. They will, that’s a certainty. There is so much hints, since the first book really. Remember this?

This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. [Arya, IV, AGOT]

Which is exactly how I’m anticipating their relationship. At first, things are going to be tense, especially on Dany’s side who has been fed lies about the Starks and their role in her exile (and who could blame her). So there’s definitively room for Arya to be frightened. But once she gets Dany to see her side to the story, and her vision of the events become more balanced, they’ll become fast-friends. They have so much in common, it’s impossible for them not to.

But, once again, the details of how they’re gonna meet is blurry. Arya will need to at least be done with the FM. And Dany... Dany has a lot on her plate too. She’s gonna need to deal with the khalasar she hears at the end of ADWD, and a possible confrontation (alliance?) with the Dothraki. She will also need to end the plot in Meereen (aka choose between “fixing” its whole culture or do what she always intended to, return to Westeros and seize back the Iron Throne). Of course, we know she’s gonna choose the latter - but a bunch of things can happen between that, and with them time passing.

At this point, Arya and Dany are very far away, each at one extremity of Essos. For them to have a chance to meet, I anticipate that Dany will end things with Meereen at the same time Arya closes the storyline with the FM (maybe even before, so Dany could already be on the road towards Braavos). Now is the tricky part. I have two theories on how they will meet: through the lost Wildlings and through the Iron Bank.

The lost Wildlings

We know the wildlings women and children in Braavos were “freed” when the Sealord seized the ship carrying them. Unfortunately, others were not so lucky.

“I know why the Sealord seized the Goodheart. She was carrying slaves. Hundreds of slaves, women and children, roped together in her hold.” Braavos had been founded by escaped slaves, and the slave trade was forbidden here. “I know where the slaves came from. They were wildlings from Westeros, from a place called Hardhome. An old ruined place, accursed.” Old Nan had told her tales of Hardhome, back at Winterfell when she had still been Arya Stark. “After the big battle where the King-Beyond-the-Wall was killed, the wildlings ran away, and this woods witch said that if they went to Hardhome, ships would come and carry them away to someplace warm. But no ships came, except these two Lyseni pirates, Goodheart and Elephant, that had been driven north by a storm. They dropped anchor off Hardhome to make repairs, and saw the wildlings, but there were thousands and they didn’t have room for all of them, so they said they’d just take the women and the children. The wildlings had nothing to eat, so the men sent out their wives and daughters, but as soon as the ships were out to sea, the Lyseni drove them below and roped them up. They meant to sell them all in Lys. Only then they ran into another storm and the ships were parted. The Goodheart was so damaged her captain had no choice but to put in here, but the Elephant may have made it back to Lys. The Lyseni at Pynto’s think that she’ll return with more ships. The price of slaves is rising, they said, and there are thousands more women and children at Hardhome.” [The Blind Girl, ADWD]

So the Goodheart was too damaged to go to Lys, but the Elephant wasn’t. It means there are still hundreds of wildlings women and children enslaved there. Honestly, I’m not sure how Arya could be involved in freeing them. Lys is a long way from Braavos, which means she would have to travel down there (with no resources and the other half of the wildlings), free them and get back up to sail across the Narrow Sea, deal with the Riverlands and then go North. It’s a little much for one girl, even one as resourceful as Arya. Sure, she could ask help from the Iron Bank (see my second point), but I doubt they would indulge her (high risk for no rewards).

But. You know who is as strongly against slavery as Arya, whose path might make her travel to Lys and who has the resources to fuck shit up? Yep, Dany.

The way I see it is, after being disheartened by Meereen and her failure to change the slaver(y) culture, Dany could very much decide to go home to Westeros - and set everything ablaze in her path. If she failed to abolish slavery from the inside, she might decide to do it by force, as a last FUCK YOU to the masters. This could be the beginning of her rock bottom, before she rises back again. It’s also coherent with the Dothraki culture of “Submit or be killed”, which could play a part if she allies with them again.

So I could see her attacking the big cities of Essos, destroying the masters and freeing the slaves as she goes along, until she reaches Braavos - who may be protected since 1. she would use its port to journey across the Narrow Sea and 2. they’re famously known for being founded by slaves and anti-slavery as a whole (and they actually enforce that rule, not just preach it and close their eyes when it counts). There, she could meet Arya through the wildlings women reuniting. Like I said, things would be tense at first, but if they might not be friends at first, they might respect each other for having their hearts set on the same goal (protecting their people). Friendship would come later, I’m not worried about that.

The Iron Bank theory

For me, the Iron Bank doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as a threat, and I fully anticipate them having a much larger role in the next book.

I really believe they will have a hand in Arya going back to Westeros. After she leaves the FM, I very much see them stepping in to offer their “help” to Arya. Personally, I believe the Kindly Man informed them of her real identity (though his motivations are yet unclear). I believe he’s aware of her value as a princess, and the (supposedly) last heir of the North. Look how people are rallying for her in the North when they hear “Valiant Ned’s precious little girl” is being brutalized. Do you think the Iron Bank is gonna pass on such a prize? I can see them trying to do to her what the Manderlys are doing with Rickon, or what Illyrio tried to do with Dany - offer their protection and help so she would be/feel indebted. They could get ahold of the North through Arya, and of the other Kingdoms through Stannis/the crown’s debt. Not too shabby.

But wait, there is a problem arising. A problem named Daenerys, who fully intends to take back the Iron Throne - and if she does, she’s not gonna care about reimbursing the debt her predecessors/usurpers left, thus lessening their leverage (and with three dragons, a Dothraki army and the Unsullied, threatening her is not gonna fly well). I can see them trying to step in too, promise the same things to her they did to Arya - except she’s not gonna fall for the same ploy like Viserys did with Illyrio.

(Btw, I’m sure Arya too will see right through them - she had a whole training dedicated to make her see beyond appearances, and she’s always been pretty observant (like when she didn’t fall for trap Cersei laid for her, with Lannister soldiers dressed as Stark men in AGOT). But she also don’t have the same resources Dany has, and if she frees the wildlings, she’ll have hundreds of mouths to feed and transport back to Westeros. I can’t see her do that without external help, so she might be playing along til a better opportunity arise.)

Now, both these theories have their flaws. The biggest one, for me, is time. Meereen is not gonna be resolved in a day (unless Dany just sets everything on fire the moment she arrives and takes off into the sunset, but I doubt that). She still needs enough time to travel to Braavos. Even if George takes his sweet time closing the FM storyline, dealing with the wildlings in Braavos and the Iron Bank, it’s not gonna take a million chapters. Unless he throws something in there to delay her departure, something that wasn’t foreshadowed yet? Because I don’t see them meeting first in Westeros. What would be the point of having them on the same continent if they don’t meet there? As always, there’s a lot left hanging in the air.

#asoiaf #arya stark #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #asoiaf meta #jon x arya #jonrya #daenerys x arya #dany x arya #my metas #Anonymous #god #it's been so long since i've published on this blog #also why are my metas always so long #but here ya go #my two cents

[op-sheepy]

ok so I'm particularly interested in

Bellamy Law

Law and Bible stuff

Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

shichibukai applications

reverse hanahaki disease (?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

if you feel like elaborating on any of these!

This is gonna get long and I actually contemplated posting them separately but would that have been more work? Yeah, that felt like more work so for anyone interested, check under the cut. :D

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Bellamy Law

Hm… This would be an attempt to explore the parallels and contrasts between Bellamy and Law. I've always found it fascinating that the former was a foil to the latter.

They both come from well-off  towns in the North Blue.

Bellamy left because of boredom. Law had no choice because Flevance.

Both ended up seeking Doflamingo  because of  his notoriety as a pirate. Both admired him initially

Doffy favored one over the other though. Bellamy always sought his approval but was never really part of the inner circle Doflamingo cared about.

Law got the dubious privilege of being part of the family despite being absent for so long. Even offered one of the highest seats by Doffy's side for seemingly nothing.

Law had no trouble turning his back on Doffy once he realized the man's nature. Bellamy tried to stick to his principles until the end despite admitting that he new he was wrong.

Bellamy can (and did) quit piracy after his ordeal with Doflamingo. Having the option to live peacefully, perhaps a return to his previous life (the one he considered boring). Law can't do that quite as easily what with his Devil fruit and his reputation.

I thought it would be interesting trying to explore what Bellamy was thinking. Did he hear the Donquixote Pirates talk about their missing 'family'? Did he get to see Doffy be amused at Law's rise as a Supernova while he kept being reminded of his own status? Did Law save Bellamy partially because he also saw what he could have been had Corazon not saved him?

On principle, Bellamy should have hated Trafalgar Law. Does. Bastard even saved him without him wanting it. But there was something about the shadows haunting those eyes and Bellamy started to wonder.

He had heard the family talk about Law before. The child personally taught by Doflamingo, chosen to be his right hand. Never was he compared to the man because Law was just obviously better. Smarter. Stronger. Bellamy was ever just an uncouth thug.

He was allowed to 'borrow' Doflamingo's symbol while Law had an empty seat waiting for his return–a seat Bellamy had wanted enough to risk everything for.

Maybe he had resented, Trafalgar Law for carelessly rejecting the things he had that Bellamy had always desired. In the end too, Trafalgar Law did prove to be better. He'd done as a child what Bellamy had trouble doing even as he was now.

But having been given the chance to observe the other man as they all recovered, he wondered, perhaps for the first time, whether despite Law being better than Bellamy, Bellamy had had it better–barring the poor life choices.

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Law and Bible stuff

This is just me wanting to know how many biblical parallels and themes I can draw from Law, the Donquixote brothers, the characters associated with them, and his backstory. Honestly not sure whether this would become a fic and in what style or I'm gonna give up and just make it a post.

Not gonna elaborate on them much but here are the ideas in more bullet points (yay):

Law gets familiar with all four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine, and death. He even survives them.

Law is like the son in the parable of the prodigal son to the Donquixote pirates. Except the themes are inverted.

Doflamingo and Rocinante -> Cain and Abel

Ope Ope no Mi -> Granting eternal life by sacrificing one's own life

Gods descending or living among humans. Also, Homing and his family being prosecuted for other people's sins.

That scene where they were hanged by their arms outstretched looks like a crucifixion. Also, Rocinante was on the right while Doflamingo was on the left. Similar to how the penitent thief was on the right and the unrepentant one to the left.

Flevance being considered a paradise with walls/fences/gates and somewhere Law cannot return to.

In the panel where the Donquixote pirates are seated at the table, there were thirteen of them with Doffy at the center. Same as The Last Supper

There are a lot more of these (David and Goliath, Solomon, Jonah, Job, etc.) but I kinda lost the notes and some are more visual so I can't really explain it too well. This would is a drabble series to emphasize or highlight the parallels so no proper snippet for this one.

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Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

Originally an idea to get around most of the Heart Pirates being nameless but evolved to include other characters as kids. Chopper is a kindergarten teacher and he convinces Law to take over his class for a week because somehow Law has the qualifications to and free time. Naturally, he wasn't able to say no.

Unfortunately, despite not being terrible at handling children, Chopper's class is filled with menaces. Also, despite not being terrible, Law can still be awkward so...

"Mr. Trofao–fargar—"

"Trafalgar."

The kid—which one was this one again? Shit, he should really get them name plates or something—scrunched up his face and tried harder, "Tar-pal—"

"Law. Just call me Law."

"Mr. Low"—eh, close enough—"can I go to the bathroom?" Wide imploring eyes stared up at him.

"Sure, go ahead." Law gestured towards the exit of the classroom with his head.

The kid just stared expectantly at him and he tried to suppress the need to narrow his eyes.

"Is there… anything else?"

"Mr. Chopper always comes with me to hold my hand."

Really?

"Mr. Chopper isn't here. You should practice doing it on your own now." He said after a deep inhale.

"But the monsters might get me…"

"No, they won't."

"You don't know that."

"I do." Before the kid could open his mouth again to argue, he added, "Besides, children taste terrible so you're safe."

The kid looked stricken and took a step back from him. Uh oh. Glistening eyes, wobbling lower lip… "Alright! I'll go with you." The kid did not look reassured. In fact he looked like going alone with Law was the last thing he wanted to do. Guess, he kinda implied that he ate children didn't he? Oops.

Well, the kid needs to go and he's not going to be cleaning up after him if he wets himself.

Law glanced at the rest of the children. It was Arts and Craft time and they seemed preoccupied enough. Still, Law doubted Chopper ever left these kids alone–already he could see some of them glancing up at him, waiting for him to leave no doubt to cause trouble. That Monkey kid in particular looked extremely suspicious.

He stood up from his crouch and clapped twice to get everyone's attention.

"Alright. Fall in line. Single file."

There was some grumbling and questioning directed at him. "What's going on?"

Law shrugged. "You're all going to the bathroom."

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Shichibukai Application Forms

Crackfic where the World Government and relevant parties review various Shichbukai Applications. Most submitted by the pirates applying themselves, some produced by their own staff. They discuss and debate. As well as judge pirate resumes.

She scanned the document. Terrible format, really. If you fail to impress within the first page, you've failed entirely. There just wasn't anyone promising enough in this batch of applications or any of the other ones before. The last one had been that clown. "Apprentice to the Pirate King," was a pretty hefty credential.

"Oh, how about this one? Three years experience pillaging, and they even listed all the towns they looted." One of the newly transferred administrative staff said.

"None of these are worth considering at all. You know, when Mihawk was asked to submit his application, he hadn't bothered with all of this. He just sent us a card with his name on it and the title "World's Strongest Swordsman," underneath."

The staff perked up. "Oh, there was an application like that." There was scramble and some shuffling before a plain white card was produced. "Here."

"'From Trafalgar Law'. What does this even mean?"

"Well, it did come with a big box..."

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Reverse Hanahaki Disease

(?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

Haha. At first it was going to be that way (because it is hilarious) but the inflicted would probably choke to death too soon. Or if both enemies had it, they'd end up just coughing flowers at each other until they stopped being enemies.

The version I ended up going with was that this variant of Hanahaki, instead of afflicting those with unrequited love, affected those in denial instead. The reverse part comes from the original idea that this would usually happen if you somehow fell in love with your nemesis (someone you originally hated). So it's not the thought that the other person can't love you, it's that you can't accept that you love that other person. You get cured by confessing to the person sincerely.

This is actually another KidLaw (surprise!). And the flower coughed up directly represents the person they're in love with (I went with Oda's flower representation for them because I found it funny for plot)

So the idea is that, you get sick but you don't automatically know (maybe) who it is because that's part of being in denial. Kid and Law have many enemies after all. In this story they both get it though not exactly at the same time and not known to the other.

He survived Amber Lead Syndrome only to be killed off by a stupid flower disease that apparently knows more about his own feelings than he does.

He glared at the petals. Tulips. Red.

An image of a cocky grin and a shock of red hair flashed through his mind and—nope. That's not right.

He coughed harder, tears stinging his eyes with the effort. More flowers. Now he has enough for a bouquet.

Alright, he was a doctor. He could do this. Differential time.

First, which variant does he have. He doesn't particularly feel unloved or hopeless. There wasn't anyone he wanted in particular to love him. Ok, nothing. It was maybe safe to say he had that other variant.

Which was stupid because Law had many enemies and he hated all of them.

And cue the racking coughs. More red. He was very familiar with that particular shade.

New theory. This was a new variant that somehow makes you sick when you think of the person you hated the most.

Yes, that had to be it. He thought as he all but collapsed on the floor from the sudden paroxysm.

I knew this was gonna get long. :) Oh well...

Thank you for playing. :D

#One Piece #One piece fanfiction #wip game #trafalgar law #donquixote brothers #donquixote doflamingo #donquixote roci #donquixote homing #donquixote pirates #one piece bellamy #bellamy the hyena #eustass kid #kidlaw #trafalgar d water law

[msgrumpygills]

Honestly, I don't know how Jared's stans can "support" him or don't analyze his actions critically after that interview. I never understood weird emotional attachments to SPN cast where people acted as if those men are their actual family. I liked them, sure, but after r*pe jokes and the way they spoke about their children (for some that would be ok, for me it was icky) I distanced myself from SPN and generally lost my interest watching series. I came back, of course, right before the final, stayed after Hell that was Dean's ending (still don't know how Jensen agreed, probably couldn't breach the contract) and rediscovered the beautiful world of SPN stans. Back in the days it was Misha's stans with 'Misha has been bullied by j2' narrative but this whole "great betrayal" mess is outstanding.

But what is more outstanding is arguments that have been made after the interview. Jared shifted blame on fans. Like they created the "back stabbing" thing. He throwed the usual 'I love you brother' speach to wet someone's panties. It's an obvious damage control for his awful image. He wants people to believe it was funny misunderstanding, not misunderstanding with tantrum of a teenager.

But even if it is a cover up for Jensen, let's pretend. How does Jared benefit from this? Because this scenario insinuate that Jared's feelings were rightfully hurt (read those tweets again 😂), he forgave Jensen, but now suddenly nobody is to blame. It doesn't make any sense. Why would Jared defend Jensen if he truly messed up? And by defending him he put all blame on fans. It is a strange decision in that scenario.

I guess my opinion of Jared is bias and I generally don't understand why people are spending their time to defend that man. And by writting this I am not better than they are. But this situation is so much fun and I just couldn't pass by.

Thank you for creating this blog! ❤️

I definitely had my times of defending the guys like they knew who I was and cared about my defense of them, and when you're that deep into a fandom, it's hard to see the flaws. I remember Jared's PSH comments coming out and I defended that. Him constantly bullying Justin Bieber? Defended it completely. Looking back at that now, I am embarrassed that I did that. I understand that I was younger then and I was a total fangirl so I try to go easy on myself while recognizing that defending those actions weren't something I would do again. I'm a fan of things and geek out over people and things now, but I'm not nearly as bad as I was back then. I am able to see mistakes and flaws and while it sucks to say "Yeah, my fave messed up." it's part of human nature. I'm not saying that you can't be a fan of something or go hard for someone or something, but just be aware that no one is perfect and don't let your love of these things cloud your judgement.

I hate to say it, but a big part of why I stopped watching the show or fell out of love with it was the fans. I didn't agree with some of the writing choices and things on the show, but the fans and the whackjobs within the fandom just made me want to get away from all of it. Then I found the anti blogs and realized that there was a lot more that I had missed or ignored because I was so deep in the fandom.

Jared is incapable of taking responsibility for anything. I'm no psychiatrist, but I'm pretty sure he ticks a few boxes for a narcissist, no? At the very least, he's toxic which I know gets thrown around a lot, but if anyone, stans included, had a friend who acted the same way Jared acted, they'd cut them out of their life. But since it's Jared, it's fine. I think the reason Jared's behavior struck such a big cord with me is because I've seen the same behavior in people in my life. At the beginning of the year, I ended a 20+ year friendship because of toxic behaviors and some of the things I criticize Jared for, were things that my friend did. Maybe it's extreme, but if I knew Jared personally, I would try and limit my time around him as much as possible.

Back to my original point though, he can't accept blame and say "I messed up" and learn from things. Him doxxing customer service workers? Not his fault, he wasn't getting treated right! Him assaulting his employees and friend while drunk off of his ass? Not his fault! He must have been drugged! (Don't get me started on his mugshot shirt and him making it all a big joke). Him having a tantrum on Twitter of the prequel? That's Jensen's fault for "gutting" him. Wait, no! It's the fans' fault for reading it wrong! Yeah, that's the new story.

Common thread? Jared not taking blame. He also has a habit of making things out to be silly or a joke when they shouldn't be at all. The assault, prequelgate, he just brushes them off like they were tiny mistakes, not big things that caused a lot of harm. He's a prick and I am comfortable saying that until he proves otherwise.

This got long and I apologize, but thank you for coming to the blog!

#grumpy answers #anti jared padalecki

[sage-nebula]

the pokemon company be like *thinly-veiled misogyny*

To be honest, the sexism isn’t even really thinly-veiled if you think about it. Like off the top of my head:

— Professor Juniper was our first female professor, and it took until Gen V to get her. But whereas all the other professors got to stand on their own without needing anyone else, Professor Juniper had to have her father come in to provide answers to various plot occurrences that she didn’t know. IIRC, she also inherited her practice from him, which was also something that the male professors before and after didn’t have to contend with. It’s a miracle that this was averted with Professors Magnolia and Sonia in Gen VIII, both of whom are women.

— Speaking of female professors being screwed over, in Gen VII we’re introduced to Professor Burnet, whose practice specifically focuses on ultra wormholes and disturbances in space-time (which makes sense since she was previously working on the Dream Radar). Given how much of the plot concerns ultra wormholes, you would think that she would be the main professor of the story, or at least play a big part. But you’re wrong! Instead she’s only in one mandatory scene, and then is basically never heard from again. Meanwhile, Kukui shows up all the goddamn time even though his goal (to create a League) is literally meaningless in the scope of the overall plot. (And even that could have been cool if it had delved into the socio-political ramifications of what overthrowing Alola’s current system of government for another one would mean, but now is not the time to get into the failings of Gen VII’s plot. I’ve gone through that enough times.)

— Back to Gen V for a second, we’re also given two rivals in the first of the Unova games: Bianca and Cheren. While Cheren, the male rival, is taken seriously and has it talked up over and over how great of a battler he is, Bianca has her Munna stolen from her halfway through the story and spends the rest of the game talking down on herself and ultimately deciding that her father was right and she really is not cut out to be a Pokémon Trainer. Keep in mind that Bianca was the first mandatory female rival in the games, because while May could be a rival in Gen III if you played as Brendan, if you chose to play as her, both rivals (Brendan and Wally) were male. So on that note, our rivals so far look like:

Gen I: Blue Oak (male)

Gen II: Silver (male)

Gen III: Wally (male), optional May (female), optional Brendan (male)

Gen IV: Barry (male) 

Gen V: Cheren (male), Bianca (female), Hugh (male)

Gen VI: Shauna (female), Tierno (male), Trevor (male), optional Serena (female), optional Calem (male)

Gen VII: Hau (male), Gladion (male)

Gen: Hop (male), Bede (male), Marnie (female)

So, let’s see. We only have two mandatory female rivals (Bianca and Marnie), as well as two optional female rivals (May and Serena). Meanwhile, we have twelve mandatory male rivals, as well as two optional male rivals (Brendan and Calem). To cap this off, while the mandatory male rivals (outside of the useless Kalos ones) are always treated as strong, competent battlers who have important roles in the story, our two mandatory female rivals, well . . .

Bianca: See above

Marnie: Gets battled a whole grand total of two times and has basically zero impact on the plot despite the fact that her brother is the only Gym Leader who didn’t give into Rose’s vision for how Galar should operate and use Dynamax evolution

And even when it comes to the optional ones, since Brendan is treated as the default MC by TPCi, that means May is the one who gives up training to go be a professor like her dad. (Which is the exact thing they basically did to Bianca in Gen V, except she studies under Juniper instead.) Serena at least keeps battling if she’s the rival, but jeez.

So to say there’s definite gender inequality where the rivals are concerned is a bit of an understatement.

— Moving away from the rivals, let’s talk about villains! We didn’t get a female villain until Gen VII with Lusamine, and even then she wasn’t allowed to stay a villain because I guess Game Freak doesn’t want to accept the fact that women can be evil, too. Moreover, all of Lusamine’s achievements come from the men in her life, and all of her motivations revolve around her husband. To spell it out:

- She inherited the Aether Foundation from her grandfather / father, without having founded it herself like we’re at first led to believe.

- Her husband Mohn was the one who discovered how the ultra wormholes work, not her. IIRC, he was also the primary researcher behind Type: Null’s creation.

- The reason why she does what she does is because she’s looking for her missing husband Mohn, with an added dash of “women just go crazy (and abuse their children) without their husbands!!1!!!” thrown in for flavor. 

Compare this to Giovanni, Maxie, Archie, Cyrus, Ghetsis, Colress, Lysandre, and now Chairman Rose, all of whom formed their own organizations (Giovanni inheriting his from his mother is anime only and does not pertain to the games at all) and had their own goals and desires, versus relying on someone else for those goals and desires. And as if Lusamine not being allowed to form her own organization and have her own goals for her own sake wasn’t bad enough, they then had to go and make it even worse in USUM by turning her into a damsel in distress in the Rainbow Rocket plot, depicting her as not only less capable as the male villains, but also less capable than her male subordinate. Gag me.

— On that note, Oleana is sorely underappreciated by basically everyone except the Twilight Wings writers considering she’s the only reason anything Rose did got done, yet got none of the credit for herself. Damn shame.

— Stepping away from the games for a moment, Generations was a hot mess in terms of sexism. First of all, they only ever used the male MCs, pretending that the female ones didn’t exist at all, even in cases where the female MCs are vastly more popular (e.g. May, Dawn, Hilda). Second, most of the episodes focused on male characters from the series, and the ones that didn’t were either there so they could disrespect the best character in the series by not giving her the episode she deserved (Zinnia), or were told from the point of view of a male character despite that it was supposed to be a female character’s story (Emma). And lastly, there was whatever the fuck that mess with Cheryl was. It was animated in a way that made it look like an anime not suitable for anyone under the age of eighteen. Like honestly, what the hell.

— Leaf has been consistently and constantly disrespected all over the franchise. Despite there allegedly being four trainers who left from Pallet Town (counting Ash) in the anime, Leaf has never been seen or mentioned even once throughout the two decades that anime has been running. They had an opportunity to show her in at least a cameo form in the 20th anniversary movie, but they chose not to do that either, adding yet another disappointment from that movie to the list. She had no appearances in Origins, no appearances in Generations, they didn’t do what they should have done in HGSS by making her the rival atop Mt Silver if you chose to play as Lyra, she wasn’t a skin for Pokémon Trainer in Super Smash Bros. until Ultimate, I’m pretty sure they never made an Amiibo for her either, they replaced her with her Special counterpart in LGPE and her characterization absolutely bonkers to boot, and back to Masters, SS Leaf doesn’t have the Main Character designation for the theme skills that SS Red has, and is also routinely left out of any story bits that feature Red or Blue. It’s a miracle she was even included in the Battling Legends event or whatever it was. As far as TPCi seems to be considered, Kanto only has one main character and that’s Red.

— Oh and speaking of Iris, they gave her the Gym Leader theme designation instead of the Champion designation, instead choosing to act like Alder is Unova’s only Champion when he, no offense, didn’t really fucking do anything in Gen V. :’) We hate to see it.

— In the current run of the anime, the two boys (Ash and Gou) have gotten to go around and have adventures for ~50 episodes while the girl (Koharu) has had to stay home and go to school. You can argue, “She wanted that!” all you want, but you have to remember that she only wants what the writers tell her to want, and the writers said the boys get to have adventures while the girls stay home. She finally has an Eevee and will presumably go on adventures now, but we’ll have to wait and see. And don’t get me wrong, I like Journeys and I love Gou as a character, but it is absolutely a Choice to not have a female lead present in the adventures at all and it’s one that the writers deliberately made for whatever reason.

— On that note, let’s look at Ash’s female companions, shall we? 

Misty: A Gym Leader who has a vague goal (water pokémon master) and is largely out of focus during her run as a primary companion. She had no rivals or in-series (as in, concrete ones she could accomplish before leaving the main cast) goals of her own.

May: A coordinator. Does have rivals and has a story, which is nice, but battling isn’t her focus.

Dawn: Another coordinator. Even more focus than May (she was written as a deuteragonist), but also not primarily focused on battling.

Iris: A battler (her Gym Leader / Champion Status is written out) who actually does get decent focus and a cool arc surrounding her connection to dragons. 

Serena: A performer, which is a girls-only career path that doesn’t have battling in it at all, unlike contests. Does have a goal, but much of her character is written around her crush for Ash and at the end of the series she says that he is her goal.

Lillie, Lana, Mallow: Honestly I didn’t watch enough of SM to have an opinion on how these three were handled outside of hating how Lusamine didn’t get to be a villain in the anime either.

Koharu: See above, she’s only just now getting to be involved with things.

Now, don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with being a coordinator (and we do see male coordinators too, such as Drew and Harley), and I think that both May and Dawn are wonderful characters. But it does make me feel some kind of way that the female characters were often given the “girly” sidequest while the male main character got to go for the Gym badges, especially since AG and DP went on for a good chunk of years. None of the ladies so far have been treated as badly as Serena was (that performer stuff is just nasty, I’m not sorry), but again, it’s a deliberate choice and something to think about, especially since I feel the only reason they didn’t go that route with Iris is because of her Gym Leader / Champion status in the games. 

I could probably think of more examples of the casual sexism in the series if I thought about it, but this is just from the top of my head. As you can see, there is a lot. All of this being said, and I’m putting major emphasis on this since I don’t want anyone to get it twisted—

I love Pokémon with my entire heart, flaws and all. It has been my hyperfixation for 22 years and that is not going to change any time soon. So DO NOT even dare suggest that I hate Pokémon, or shouldn’t play it, or anything like that. I will be playing Pokémon on my deathbed and nothing and no one will stop me.

But that being said, I criticize because I care. Because I wish it would do better. Pokémon is for everyone. It’s for boys, girls, nonbinary folks, and people all over the gender spectrum. But the treatment of its female characters and the abundance of favoritism shown toward the male characters leaves a lot to be desired (though at least girls are at the table, whereas trans folk are relegated to background NPCs and nonbinary folk are nowhere to be seen :/). I think Pokémon can get better—Magnolia and Sonia felt like a proper apology for how Juniper in particular was shafted, not to mention Burnet—but it’s got a long way to go.

(And also, yes, you’ve understood this right. Twilight Wings is the only anime series to not fuck up at all when it comes to sexism. You go, Twilight Wings. Four for you, Twilight Wings.)

#pokemon critical #pokemon criticism #pokemon negative #let me know if I should use any other tags #long post for ts #stabbymattress #the treatment of Ash's female companions from best to worst has been: #Dawn - May - Iris - Misty - Koharu - Serena #and the Alola girls somewhere in the middle ig I honestly didn't watch enough of that series to know

[carriagelamp]

April l was apparently the month for me to revisit some children’s authors who are steeped in controversy at the moment. So here’s my hot (well, lukewarm) takes on issues that absolutely do not need a single other person talking about them. Also some actual good books that I read this month!

Badger in the Basement

The Animal Ark books are a childhood classic — though I recently found out that apparently there’s a difference between American and British publications, and the American versions didn’t include a lot of actual COOL animals which is… bizarre. As a Canadian stuck in the middle of this, this nonsense drives me nuts. This one was about the main character, the daughter of pair of vets, trying to protect a local badger sett from men wanting to participate in badger digging and baiting. These books are always feel-good, and it was a nice single-day-read while I waited for a library book to come in.

Chi’s Sweet Home

The cutest manga series about the misadventures of a little kitten, Chi, who has been adopted by a loving family. I’ve never bothered to read them in order, but apparently this time I stumbled across the last in the series -- whoops! Still, stood on it’s own pretty easily, and it was a fun read! Things get tense when the family realize that they may have found Chi’s original home… and may have to give up Chi forever.

Earth Before Us: Dinosaur Empire!

This was an odd graphic novel, I feel like I’m not sure who the target audience was exactly. It was a nonfiction comic done in a Magic School Bus style, with the purpose of teaching current, up-to-date facts about the animals that lived in the Mesozoic Era. If you’re into dinosaurs, you’ll probably enjoy this! The art is absolutely adorable, I love the dinosaur illustrations, and I learnt some really neat facts. That being said, the pages are really dense, and there’s a lot of info crammed in… some of it will probably go way over a child’s head without specific additional teaching or a very strong personal interest. But that being said, a dinosaur obsessed kid is still probably going to really dig this… as would a dinosaur obsessed adult. It wasn’t my cup of tea exactly but I’m sure it is someone’s.

assorted Dr Seuss Books

I love these types of controversies because it means getting to listen to every moron who has never had an opinion on Dr Seuss ever start generating a mile of them out of the aether. So many people are so mad about the six books that are getting retired and I bet most of them haven’t even read them. These are not the friggin Cat In The Hat or The Lorax or even the likes of Yertle The Turtle. I was raised by a grade one teacher, was a voracious reader who loved Dr Seuss, and wrote my university thesis on children’s literature, and I still only knew two of the six books on that list. So by all means, if you want to write an essay explaining why those specific books are worth clinging to, feel free, but if you haven’t even heard of them maybe it’s not a big deal. *grumble*

Anyway, my grousing aside, it gave me the urge to reread a bunch of Seuss books, including the two retiring books I personally knew: McElligot’s Pool and To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. I do still enjoy both, especially McElligot’s Pool which always sparked my imagination, but it’s obvious why they’re being retired and I personally think it’s the right choice. There’s so much good kidlit out there, we can survive without these.

Goodbye, My Rose Garden

A f/f romance manga, fairly standard fair though cute if you’re looking for some historical angst, pretty dresses, and mutual pining. A young Japanese woman moves to England in the hopes of meeting a writer (Mr Frank) who she has long admired. Along the way she is employed by an enigmatic woman with plenty of money, rumours, and melancholy following her. I’ll be honest, uncut romance isn’t really my genre, but I’ll probably still try to the second book to see if the story picks up.

From The Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes: The Autobiography of Robert Clary

It’s no secret that I’ve been on a Hogan’s Heroes kick. This is the autobiography of Roberty Clary, who plays my favourite character in the show, Louis Lebeau. And holy shit what a life this man has had. He was a Jew growing up in France before the start of the war, and who was one of many children taken away from his family and sent off to the concentration camps in Germany. This was an amazing, intense, inspiring, and heartbreaking read… it has Clary’s voice all over it, and it tells everything from the charming childhood he had, to the horrors of the concentration camps, the brutality of survival, and then about his exciting journey into the entertainment industry afterwards. It’s an experience, would recommend if you’re a fan of the show.

The Ickabog

The second controversial author I read this month. Originally I was going to give Rowling’s new book a miss, given everything that’s been going on over the past few years, but in the end my curiosity got the better of me. Politics aside, it was a fun read! Not groundbreaking, but enjoyable enough and written in an interesting style. It didn’t read the same as a lot of modern kidlit, it felt more like a cross between a classic fairytale and a Dahl book. Perhaps a bit like Despereaux. It tells the tale of how an idyllic country gradually falls into ruin through the ignorance, inaction, and greed, and how a supposedly fictional monster hides the very real, human monsters at the heart of the country. It was cute and pleasant and I’m glad I decided to get it from the library, though for anyone who is choosing not to engage for political reasons: you aren’t missing anything major.

Franklin In The Dark

A Canadian classic. I don’t think there’s a single person my age who hasn’t read or been read a pile of these books, and the nostalgia is so comforting. I found this on Youtube and listened to someone read it to me, and honestly 10/10 would recommend for a calm evening.

The big reason I decided to seek this one out though, was because I finally got to the M*A*S*H episode that inspired this entire series! In the episode C*A*V*E, in which Hawkeye is freaking out over his claustrophia while the camp is forced to take shelter in a nearby cave during some intense shelling, he mentions that if he had been born a turtle he would have been afraid of his own shell, and that the other turtles would make fun of him cause he’d be forced to walk around in his underwear. And so this first story about a young turtle who’s afraid to sleep in his own shell and drags it around behind him. So if you were ever curious, Franklin the Turtle is in fact named after Dr Benjamin Franklin Pierce. (this is also why the French version is named Benjamin!)

Wolves of the Beyond: Lone Wolf

I loved the Guardians of Ga’Hoole books as a kid but I never read the Wolves of the Beyond series. This first book was an interesting read, Lasky does a great job creating worlds and societies for the animals that inhabit them. Lone Wolf is about a deformed wolf cub who was abandoned in the wilderness to die. And he would have, if a desperate mother bear, who had recently had her only cub killed, hadn’t stumbled across him and saved him, vowing to raise him as her own...

Petals

A “silent” graphic novel. It has beautiful artwork and is told entirely through pictures, no text at all. It’s loves and heart-wrenching, though it left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied… I felt like there should have been more. Still, a neat story.

The Southern Book Club‘s Guide To Slaying Vampires

What a banger of a novel!! I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s about a group of suburban mothers in the ‘80s who form a book club out of a shared need for community and a love of grisly true crime novels. But when a strange drifter appears in town and starts setting down roots… and when children begin disappearing… these women need to band together to confront the horrors that have invaded their neighbourhood, and face down not only a terrifying monster among them but the patriarchal system that allows it to flourish. To quote the preface:

“Because vampires are the original serial killers, stripped of everything that makes us human — they have no friends, no family, no roots, no children. All they have is hunger. They eat and eat but they’re never full. With this book, I wanted to pit a man freed from all responsibilities but his appetites against women whose lives are shaped by their endless responsibilities. I wanted to pit Dracula against my mom.    As you’ll see, it’s not a fair fight.“

The Weirn Books: Be Wary of the Silent Woods

I love Chmakova’s graphic novels, though I’ve only ever read her slice-of-life middle grade series before. This one is pure fantasy and very fun. It’s about two cousin “weirns” — witches with demon familiars — who attend the local night school. Things get strange though when an ominous figure appears outside the old, abandoned school house deep in the Silent Woods, and begins tempting children down its path…

I’m very much looking forward to word of a second book and was honestly kind of surprised that I haven’t heard more about this book given how popular her other series is. This has all the same charm and quirks but for those of us who prefer stories based in fantasy rather than reality.

And A Bonus...

For some masochistic reason I got a Garfield book out of the library. Jeez, if I didn’t love these as a kid, I found them absolutely laugh out loud hilarious, and now I just don’t see it anymore. But here I will share the one strip in the book that actually made me laugh

#book review #book reviews #chatter #dr seuss #hogan's heroes #robert clary #the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires #animal ark #dinosaur empire #the weirn books #svetlana chmakova #canadian literature #canlit #kidlit #children's literature #wolves of the beyond #mash #franklin the turtle #chi's sweet home #manga #goodbye my rose garden #kathryn lasky #the ickabog #jk rowling

[mcdannomoment]

finale feelings

Okay, I have a ton of feelings about the finale, and now that I’ve had some time to think them through, I’ll write them. Please be kind, I’ve seen the series once only, I’m really tired, and I’m sure this was all said before.

Okay firstly let’s just put aside Catherine as a character in and of herself… that whole thing made no sense. Catherine never showed an inkling of having the sort of skills to decode anything, much less being one of only two people in the world who could decode a thing. That was silly and just an excuse to get her back on Steve’s radar. Not to mention that Catherine just never showed much interest in Steve. I’ll come back to Catherine later as she stands as an external prop for Steve’s character, but I think we can just leave it here that Catherine’s character, for herself, made 0 sense.

Let’s focus on Steve.

Steve broke my heart this episode. The worst part is that I don’t think what he did was actually OOC. Steve has a pretty long and uncomfortable history of putting his own needs over Danny’s, starting from when he first met him and forced him to be his partner. I get where Steve was coming from, but this whole army commander take what I need for the mission attitude is the whole problem. Consulting Danny even as a courtesy never entered Steve’s mind.

(more below cut)

Steve just does this with Danny continually throughout the series, like leaving him with a letter to run off chasing Shelburne. Again, he doesn’t bother even consulting Danny as a courtesy before he leaves. He has an objective, Danny doesn’t fit that objective except to keep his seat warm in 5-0. He honestly just never gives Danny even basic autonomy, from things like choosing his lunch for him right through to putting him in situations he’s not comfortable with. Sometimes Steve pushing Danny is definitely a good thing since Danny does get paralyzed by fear (the incident where Steve pushed Danny into jumping across the building gap springs to mind; if they hadn’t have done that they would have died) but sometimes it’s just more of Steve has an objective to achieve, and Danny is a means to achieve that objective (the skydiving incident).

I don’t mean to slam Steve’s character, and I’ve known quite a lot of people like this! They’re good people, they just need a lot more emotional development. Between the two of them I think Danny’s a lot more emotionally mature and empathetic, and they’re quite good for each other in many ways. But Steve is very selfish, in the sense that his focus is always on himself. What he wants, what his objective is, how the things around him make him feel. With where Steve’s head is at, I don’t think he fully and completely understands Danny as an individual human being with his own needs. Hell, he even bullies Danny into including him in his retirement plan and abandoning said retirement plan.

With Steve’s focus always within his own head, and the people around him established as tools he can use to achieve his own ends, I can really start to understand Steve’s severe control issues in season 10 in particular. His mother dying was what sealed his fate, really. I think it was really the first time a person close to Steve fully used their own initiative and choice to go against what Steve said, and Steve trying to force his mother to do what he wanted and become a controllable force in his self-directed life ended up getting her killed. And that screwed him up badly. I don’t think he fully processed his role in his mother’s death properly. He ends up dumping Danny, who is really the love of his life, saying he needs time for himself, that he’d spent a decade saving everyone else. In reality I think Steve is just spiralling from loss of control. He tries to regain some control by cutting out the more unpredictable variables: the other people in his life.

Then Danny gets kidnapped and tortured. This is obviously devastating for Steve, because Danny really is the love of his life. And Steve kind of loses it, but he loses it in a very interesting way. Steve gives up all control to Daiyu Mei. He doesn’t even entertain not letting her control the situation. Danny’s been in danger before, but Steve has never given up control so completely like this before.

Steve’s really broken by this. And it’s the hardest he’s ever taken Danny getting hurt. Because I think he’s less broken by Danny getting hurt as much as it is leftover trauma from his mother’s death and spiralling loss of control.

He winds up leaving Danny when Danny can hardly move and must have only just been released from the hospital, and isn’t that a dick move. He claims he’s going to “find himself” but I think he’s just running away from people in order to regain a sense of control. He can’t control other people. He couldn’t control Danny being taken or his mother making the choices she did in Mexico. If he’s alone, he can gain full control over the situation.

And Danny? Well, Steve sort of has him trapped. Danny can’t leave - he has a son, it’s implied Steve gave him his dog to look after and possibly his house, and while he’s injured Danny can’t go and get himself into dangerous situations that Steve feels the need to save him from. Danny sort of becomes an ornament in Steve’s home ready to welcome him when he comes back. Steve’s been on record several times being pretty aggressive about Danny staying in Hawaii, but he’s never shown remorse for leaving himself, and he doesn’t here.

I hate to characterise Danny as Steve’s “wife” but that’s the dynamic I get from them. You see it so often in married couples, particularly married couples where the husband has to travel for work, whether that’s military, mining, corporate, trucking, what have you. The husband has his goal, his life, and he sees his wife as someone to support that and make it happen. This is exactly what happened in my own family, as I had a travelling father. His need to fulfil himself drove him away again and again, and my mother, trapped where she was by children and the obligations her husband abandoned her to deal with, was left to clean up his mess. It’s what happens when the husband is selfish in the way Steve is - the emotionally more mature wife has to clean up the parts of his life he won’t deal with. In Steve’s case Danny is left with a bullet hole, a dog, a house full of ghosts, and a lot of mourning friends. Not to mention the kids Steve abandons. And there must be more too. Steve leaves a week after Danny is shot. That really doesn’t leave much time for Steve to get his affairs in order. I think he left Danny to clean up his emotional mess.

Minus the bullet hole, I’ve seen my mother go through very similar things. And it can destroy your sense of self. You end up living for the ghost of your husband as he pursues what he perceives as his destiny. It’s a really shitty thing but it’s so common. Every family I know with a travelling husband ended up like this.

Back to Catherine. As established Catherine as her own character makes no sense at all. But Catherine’s role in the finale as an extension of Steve’s character does make some sense. Steve is running away from his stable family, the love of his life, his role as a parent to Nahele, Grace, and Charlie - he’s running from all the progress he has made, because he is afraid of losing control the way he did when he lost his mother, and when Danny was taken from him. Catherine is safe. She’s Steve’s easy emotional release and fuck buddy. She’s familiar. And she’s basically Steve’s mother. A flaky CIA agent who always picks the job over Steve is far more familiar and therefore comforting to him than a stable family life with Danny. In his panic Steve runs from all the progress he has made back to Catherine.

It actually reminds me a lot of a wonderful fic I read, the love that you gave by Teeelsie. I never thought I’d read a cheating fic, let alone a McDanno cheating fic, because McDanno is my all time OTP, but this fic was highly recommended and wow, did it nail it. The fic is more about Steve’s internalised homophobia, but I think the way it relates to the show is in how Steve panics and goes back to the familiar. Back to Catherine. It’s a common thing just in life. It’s also extremely common for these travelling husbands that I think characterise Steve to be cheating on their wives, too. Now I’m just pretending Catherine wasn’t there, because it makes no sense for her to be there (jfc, she wasn’t a codebreaker and how did she know he would be on the plane anyway, and was she just sitting in transit in Honolulu waiting for Steve to get on the plane like a stalker) but I think there’s an element of “emotional cheating” to what Steve’s going through when he runs away from the emotional risk that is staying with Danny at the end.

So basically I don’t think Steve running off was OOC. I think it was very in character. What was so frustrating was that the story clearly isn’t over. Running away will not solve Steve’s many issues, and he really does need Danny - and Danny needs him. Steve desperately needs to learn to stop being so selfish and see Danny and the others as full and complete human beings with their own complex needs. It’s tough because Steve pushing Danny was very good for Danny in many respects, so I want to see them learn to thread that line where Danny doesn’t get treated like an emotional doormat, but he also isn’t allowed to just retreat to the safety of familiarity all the time either - he needs a little McGarrett magic in his life!

But after what Danny told Steve when they were stuck in the building collapse, it’s going to be hard for them after this. Danny doesn’t have to look at Steve and imagine him leaving him any longer. Danny now has the memory of it.

tl;dr Steve is a whacked out, certifiable control freak.

#hawaii five 0 #h50 #mcdanno #steve mcgarrett #danny williams #meta #sorry for word vomit #you've probably heard all this before #i'm new okay