#everyone is being mean to him on purpose whereas in the books only half the characters are mean on purpose

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

why are they treating my boy like this

#bullying him!!!! #i’m on s02e01 #everyone is being mean to him on purpose whereas in the books only half the characters are mean on purpose #and the other half are just stupid and chaotic #like stiffy threatening to break up madeline and gussie instead of just taking advantage of an existing breakup #jeeves is meaner too #he always sounds like he’s mocking bertie #in the books he’s only mocking bertie some of the time #and comes off more like he’s genuinely fond of him #j&w show #jeeves and wooster

[sirensmojo]

"Big Bank!" - Hubby! Tommy Shelby x Reader

Warnings: Big Fluff, Old Money love story vibes.

Summary: Tommy decided to let his wife take care of his Gin. He comes to taste it for the first time after the Gin was met with great success.

A/N: We stand for a caring & trusting Thomas, sorry not sorry.

*Masterlist*

It was a windy day when Tommy entrusted you with his Gin distillery.

The sun was out, as your children were running around the garden, their giggling easing his mind. His head dropped backward on the garden chair as fingers of one of his hands were fidgeting with his cup or whiskey, as a cigarette was locked in between his lips.

Spring was early this year, much to your family’s pleasure. Spending time outside was something you loved to do, and knowing Tommy’s busy agenda, you made sure to make every family moment the best one.

No need to say time flew so fast, the days becoming months, becoming years.

Tommy and you was an evidence. From the day you bumped into each other in the London’s library his sister Ada used to work, you were inseparable. Thus you didn’t know each other for very long, but everything between you made this fact questionable.

You were acting as if you knew each other since children, a single look and you understood what the other thought. Not too many words were said, but not too many words were needed.

Although you weren’t Tommy’s first wife, you were “the perfect two”, making all the people you knew jealous and envious.

“My love,” you announced your presence when coming closer to the garden table as your husband was eyes closed. “I did some thinking.” You added, catching his attention.

Tommy straightened back his head and he was now facing you as you seated in front of him, glimpsing from afar of your three little boys.

“You know I don’t like your whiskey or any type of alcohol, truly.” You raised your brows, and he puffed on his cig, waiting for you to continue. “I want to make Shelby’s Gin.” You let out outright.

No need to turn around your wish, by the way he shifted position you already knew he was ready to hear anything, and you didn’t want to disturb him from his peace. You knew how he dearly appreciated those little moments in which he didn’t have to think about running a business or dealing with dirty gangsters and rude people.

“You want to do what?” He raised a brow not too sure he heard you well, but when he caught eyes of your lips curling at the corner of your mouth, he knew he had heard it well.

His family was his haven of peace and you would do anything to take off some weight off your Shelby’s shoulders. it was a regular task, a daily basis habit that you quickly took and that you’ll probably never lose.

“I already tried a mixture.” His deep voice accentuating your smile.

“It’s my turn now, you played enough with that, you need to focus on real business now. Put your mind elsewhere and let me fill my bottles.”

You couldn’t quite put your finger on what changed precisely, but you noticed a shifting in your husband’s expression along with the gleam animating his iris.

You thought it was worry.

You lost your father a few months ago due to lung disease and your mother died long ago when you were the age of your own children, and as an only child, you were now all alone without your parents.

Gracefully you had Tommy and the kids because if you hadn’t you didn’t know how you would’ve handled this loss.

As being a sensible cord, your husband didn’t bring it up, and he wasn’t the type of comforting people with words anyway, but he tried it his way, which means he bought you a ridiculous amount of new jewellery and books because he knew how much you liked to read and how you were a simp for big diamonds.

Incidentally, Tommy always found it funny how much time you spend with your nose in books while having a voracious appetite for jewellery. He would never miss an occasion to make fun of you when catching you reading as you had to wear glasses, and it was all funny and stuff till he too, had to wear glasses to read.

Now, in bed, you looked like two old people, instead, you were reading adventure and dramatic novels whereas he was stuck with political subjects.

“Okay.” He didn’t hesitate a single moment which made you smile.

“Okay?” you repeated, your smile growing as seconds passed. He straightened back, leaning over the table to you and his hands reached for yours.

You intertwined your fingers together with ease, sparkles spreading at the tips of each of it.

It was that way with every of his touches. He just had that power over you, which you were proud of as it was just love. It could never be anything else.

His deep blue eyes were anchored into your Y/C/E’s ones and you knew he was trying to bring you comfort. He knew what it felt like to lose people, and was ready to give you whatever if that meant to ease your pain.

You neared your faces and he ran his thumb over the end of your nose, down to your lips as cupping your cheek with his palm. Tommy’s head was slightly tilted to the side, his only purpose being to reach your soul with either his touch or his soul hidden behind his iris.

You leaned your head into his touch and closed your eyes for a second, enjoying that moment between the two of you as the breeze made its way to your neck under your mane.

Now, nearly five weeks later, all Birmingham was only speaking of the Shelby family as the people making “the good priced good gin” according to what you heard in the streets. From the fancy restaurant to the underground pubs, everyone in town had tasted of that oh so liked liquor.

Tommy first heard how good the gin was by his brother Arthur. He, who liked to get drunk all day long and all night long, was always keeping a bottle of it in his car or even on himself.

Then it was Ada, always offering him a drink of it whenever he would visit her.

(...)

It was 4 in the afternoon when Tommy walked through Charlie’s yard to join the Gin factory, when opening the door he was surprised to see you, seated at the old dusty desk filling paper and sipping on several cups.

Your husband frowned, “Y/N?”. He didn’t know if he should be worried or glad to see you working in such a place while drinking a lot knowing you’re not even a drinker in the first place.

You lifted your gaze to him and a huge smile instantly warmed up the atmosphere in the space, “Tommy!” You exclaimed as you got up. Being a bit dizzy you were strongly holding onto the table while getting up but you wanted to join him, and that’s when Tommy noticed your reddened cheek and little eyes.

“You’re drunk,” he stated, concerned. His expression shifted. He seemed a bit worried as he took one of your wrists to help you walk correctly.

You waved your free hand before you as to blow away his remark, “I was trying a new mixture for the Gin.” You informed him. You slid a hand into his rough one and stepped backwards, to the desk. “Here, choose one and tell me.” You proudly pointed to each of the cups. “This one on the left is spicy, the middle one a little too sweet for the Americans, this one to the right is the version that is out, and the last one is a bit strong. If the sadness hit too much.”

“The sadness?” Tommy asked while grabbing the third cup, being the gin that was already out. He was quite startled by how implicated his wife seemed to be, he didn’t actually think she would invest that much time and energy in this activity, but he was relieved she found a reason to get up every morning other than their beautiful family.

He knew how living a life without having or serving a purpose was meaningless and boring, even more, when being saddened by something you can’t control such as the death of a loved one.

The Shelby brother will sleep better now, knowing his other half found purpose somewhere, even if seeing her drunk was a sight he could never get used to…

At this moment, he felt the need to feel her skin under his touch before doing anything else, and that’s what he did, putting his hand at the end of her back, he pulled her closer, his thumb rubbing her skin over the fabric of her dress.

Tommy then drank from the cup and took his time judging the taste of it.

He opened his eyes and dropped the cup on the desk before turning to his wife, she was looking at him, impatience spreading all over her face. She seemed ready to hear Tommy’s opinion on her Gin... On their gin.

The blue-eyed man grabbed her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to Y/N’s. She closed her eyes a couple of seconds before opening them to a staring Tommy. He was fondling her cheeks with his thumbs before exhaling deeply, “I now understand why everyone’s talking about us, Shelbys, being fucking genius’, eh” He got distracted by her lips.

“This,” he pointed to the bottle standing at the corner of the table, and, once again, Tommy got distracted, he noticed words were present on the bottle down the name. “Distilled for the eradication of incurable sadness.” He read out loud.

A faint smile was found on his face before he agitated the bottle in his hand. He was proud.

He put down the bottle and directly sealed his lips to Y/N’s, the calling for love being too loud to resist.

That was exactly why it was her and no one else, she was always unpredictable and versatile. Who would have thought his bibliophile wife could be a real gem in the making of gin?

She put away, gasping for air before looking him in the eyes, “What? Did I never tell you the fact that my grandpa was making alcohol?” She teased his lips by speaking inches away from them, “I know one or two tricks. That’s why it’s selling well.” She concluded before pressing their lips together eagerly.

“This is a big bank, yea” He succeeded at saying in between two kisses.

#Thomas Shelby x Reader #Tommy Shelby #Peaky blinders #husband tommy shelby #hubby!Tommy Shelby

[along-came-atsushi]

Akutagawa – Dazai – Atsushi: An analysis about their relationship

And why Dazai treats them so differently.

.

The symbolism of Atsushi and Akutagawa:

From their outward appearance and their design alone, Atsushi and Akutagawa are meant as opposites, but they’re also a duality:

Both wear black and white clothes, but whereas Atsushi is mostly white with a streak of black, Akutagawa wears mostly black with a streak of white. It’s even represented in their hair colours.

Besides this, there are many other things that mark their oppositeness and their duality to each other:

Atsushi is a member of the ADA, while Akutagawa is a member of the PM. Atsushi’s ability colour is blue, Akutagawa’s ability colour is red. Being a member of the ADA makes Atsushi someone who works for the “light and day”, Akutagawa is someone who works for the “darkness and night.” Atsushi loves cats, Akutagawa hates dogs. Atsushi’s ability takes the form of a tiger, Akutagawa’s ability represents a dragon, both creatures are important elements in Asian mythology. Ultimately, Atsushi symbolizes life or is associated with life, while Akutagawa symbolizes death or is associated with death.

Considering this, the title Shin Soukoku (Double Black) isn’t even a fitting name for them, since they both aren’t simply a double, as both Mori and Fukuzawa or Dazai and Chuuya were.

[Beware: Spoilers starting from chapter 83]

.

Dazai’s mindset and his relationship with Akutagawa:

1.) One of the reasons why Dazai’s treatment towards Akutagawa as a mentor was so cruel and brutal, firstly lies in his overall negative mental state during his PM time. He was visibly unhappy, constantly surrounded by death and violence, and more than now struggled with his suicidal thoughts.

Is it an explanation for his treatment of Akutagawa? −Yes, it is.

Is it an excuse for his treatment of Akutagawa? −No, it isn’t.

2.) Another reason is that this is just how things are done in the Mafia. There is no sense in handling someone with kid gloves in the PM, a place where you get killed for disobeying orders, where you shouldn’t see your peers as friends or get to intimate with anyone:

“It’s an unwritten rule in the Mafia to not stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. One must never open the door to another’s heart and try to judge them for the darkness tucked within.” – Odasaku

If it wouldn’t have been Dazai who taught Akutagawa in such a cruel way, with high probability, it would’ve been someone else. Or as Dazai explained, a sign of weakness will get you killed in the PM:

And Dazai had the absolute chance to kill Akutagawa after he disobeyed orders and killed a person captured for interrogation. His ability can nullify all other abilities by mere touch. He could’ve simply touched Akutagawa, so that he wouldn’t have been able to use his ability to protect himself, and then shot him on the spot. But he didn’t do that, because:

“Akutagawa – he’s like a sword without a sheath.” Dazai grinned from ear to ear. “He’ll surely become the Mafia’s strongest skill user in the not-so-distant future. But for now he needs someone who can teach him how to put that sword away.”  [...]

“When I first saw him over in the slums, I was horrified. His talents are extraordinary, and his skill is extremely destructive. Plus, he’s stubborn. If I’d left him to his own devices, he would’ve ended up a slave to his own powers until he destroyed himself.” – Dazai to Odasaku

He already valued Akutagawa’s skill and saw the huge potential in him:

I was surprised. I had never heard Dazai openly speak so highly of one of his men like that before. [...]

Dazai didn’t freely make people work under him, period; much less a boy on the verge of starvation in the slums. But Dazai seemed to have his own reasons for doing it. – Odasaku about Dazai

.

Something which is also later confirmed by Atsushi:

“I believe Dazai-san has acknowledged you long ago.”

Why is it then that Dazai still treats Akutagawa so badly and doesn’t tell his approval right to his face? Something that becomes Akutagawa’s main purpose for a long time, even after Dazai left PM.

.

Dazai’s relationship with Odasaku and Ango:

Dazai’s behaviour and actions when he’s with Ango and Odasaku clearly shows that he can be different and doesn’t treat everyone with cruelty and coldness, if he wants to.

But what’s the difference between the two people he considers his friends and the people who are his subordinates?

-> Ango and Odasaku value and respect life.

.

The reason Dazai becomes and is attached to Odasaku and Ango is their viewpoint about death and life:

“I would become a novelist and write a story about why the man stopped killing. But to become a novelist, I needed to sincerely know what it meant to live. – Odasaku

.

“You’re quite the interesting fellow, Ango. Doing that isn’t going to make the boss happy. […]” “You’re making records of the lives of the deceased. Am I right?” […] “The line between human losses and those of money and equipment begin to blur. There is no individual, no soul, and no dignity to death. But you’re fighting back against that.” – Dazai to Ango

This is the reason why he values them so much that he considers them his friends. He’s not friends with them because he gains something from it, or because they have interesting abilities, or because they are on the same intellectual level as him (which they aren’t). Something that gets emphasized by Odasaku’s rank. He descended from an assassin (a high reputation in the PM) to a maid-of-all-work and an errand boy (a low reputation in the PM).

Dazai is attracted to and fascinated by people who value life – something you don’t find in the PM, and something he himself struggles to understand. Probably because there never was a person who taught him this. Like a curious child, he turns to people who he knows have a better understanding in this than him.

He even becomes very irritated when one of his subordinates questions his friendship with Odasaku:

“Dazai, sir, I don’t mean to be rude, but… I saw him [Odasaku] sweeping behind the office the other day. A man of his status isn’t qualified to be your friend, let alone with an enemy like this.” Dazai stared, flabbergasted, at his underling.

“Are you joking? Odasaku’s not qualified?” Dazai asked, thoroughly surprised. […] “You fools!” Dazai’s lips curled into a sneer in genuine disgust.

This respect doesn’t solely concern Odasaku and Ango. Hirotsu is also one of the very few people he respects for this reason. Even though Hirotsu may not value life in the same terms as Odasaku and Ango do, but he also doesn’t lightly throw away his subordinates lives either:

“…Ha-ha! Just kidding!” Dazai abruptly added in a cheery tone. Hirotsu stared back at him, confused. “The reason you have so many people following you is that you don’t turn your back on them. I’ll leave things in your hands. I won’t tell the boss.”

It’s only when Odasaku dies in Dazai’s arms and tells him to go protect the living, that he starts to change his behaviour and viewpoint.

.

Dazai and his many failed suicide attempts:

Why is it that Dazai − a genius, a manipulator, someone who exactly knows how the human psyche works, someone who’s predictions always come true and who has plans within plans – then always fails when he tries to kill himself?

Dazai has read the book “The Complete Suicide” so often that he can cite it in his sleep. He has engaged in torture and killed many people. He knew exactly how to involve Ango and himself in a car crash without them dying.

If he really wanted to, he could’ve already killed himself many times ago. He claims that “he doesn’t like pain and suffering”, which according to him is the reason why his suicide attempts fail. But there are ways how he could kill himself without just that. It’s just that he doesn’t WANT to die.

„I thought if all went well, I could die a heroic death on the battlefield. But the dozen or so armed guys who showed up were a real scrappy bunch. […] Thus, I unfortunately avoided death once again.”

He always tells that something inconvenient happened that kept him from dying. But sometimes people around him notice that there’s something wrong in his attempts:

“I was walking and reading a book called ‘How To Not Get Hurt Out Of The Blue’ and fell into a drainage ditch.” A surprisingly absurd reason. – Odasaku and Dazai

.

“I glance at his desk and see the blasphemous book he bought the other day, ‘The Complete Suicide’, opened to a page titled ‘Death by Poisoning Mushrooms.’ Next to the book lies a plate with a half-eaten mushroom on it. However, upon further inspection, it appears to be a slightly different color from the one in the book. – Kunikida about Dazai

.

“I thought you [Gide] were similar to Dazai at first, rushing into battle and wishing for death without even considering the value of your own life. But he’s different. […] And he’s just a child−a sobbing child abandoned in the darkness of a world far emptier than the one we’re seeing.” – Odasaku to Gide about Dazai.

Dazai is a person who actively seeks life and wants to be freed from his own philosophy. He’s struggling between seeking death, which he thinks is the only way to free him from his loneliness and suffering, and seeking life for the simple reason that he doesn’t want to die.

.

Dazai’s relationship with Atsushi:

Atsushi saved Dazai from drowning despite the fact that he himself was on the brink of starvation. The first thing Dazai got attached to Atsushi is his view on life. Despite the abuse he suffered, Atsushi seeks life and wants to live, makes it even his reason to fight and his life motto.

“The lives of those who can’t save anyone have no value”. In that moment an idea suddenly popped into my mind. […] If by any chance I can let the passengers return home save and sound does that prove that it’s okay for me to live?”

Throughout the story, Atsushi transfers his viewpoint and determination to characters who have a connection to death, darkness and/or suffering (e.g. Kyouka, Lucy).

The reason Atsushi values life, being the symbolical personification of it, is the reason why Dazai is able to treat him much better than Akutagawa.

.

Forming Shin Soukoku:

Dazai says that Akutagawa is a highly skilled student, but he needs someone to sharpen him. He instantly decides and plans to team him up with Atsushi, the moment he meets him. He knows that Atsushi, due to his view on life, is the only one who can teach Akutagawa to value life himself and to change as a person. In other words “the one who can teach him how to put that sword away”.

This is something Dazai in the past couldn’t and still can’t teach Akutagawa (or anyone at all for that matter). Because he himself needs and wants to be taught that, so he seeks people who are able to give him a different understanding in this (see Ango and Odasaku). Vice versa Akutagawa isn’t able to teach Dazai how to value life, because he himself represents death and has a strong connection to it. It’s one of the very first things he says when he gets introduced in the story:

“Fear death. Fear slaughter. Those who desire death have an equal desire to die.”

Even though Atsushi’s words may seem very harsh, but it IS one of the reasons why Dazai so abruptly abandoned Akutagawa. Is it an explanation? −Yes, it is. Is it an excuse? −No, it isn’t.

Another reason is that Dazai tries to flee from his responsibilities, his past and the terrible things he has done (including Akutagawa’s abuse), because he is not able to face them. Not now that is. He is still in need of guidance and of change, in order to be able to do this.

[Side note: Dazai and guilt is something that can be analysed in its very own meta. I’m not expanding on it further here].

Akutagawa’s connection to death gets emphasized by him even disobeying orders to not kill, for the sole reason that in his mind, killing is much simpler and more effective. He lashes out and tries to kill the people who are respected by Dazai and/or considered friends, even though he should know that an action like this will definitely not get him the approval he so wants.

He was willing to kill Atsushi, even though his mission was to capture him alive, ignoring the possible consequences this would have had for him.

But throughout the story Akutagawa changes his viewpoint. He thinks that the reason why Dazai acknowledges Atsushi and puts him above him, is because he is a better (better in the sense of physical and ability strength) subordinate than him. But he realizes that this can’t be the case and questions it more than once:

His former pure jealousy and grudge towards Atsushi (something which he also felt for Odasaku) slowly turns into questioning, trying to understand what differs them from each other. Dazai knows very well that Akutagawa is still obsessed with him and his approval. Therefore if necessary, he uses this to manipulate him, if it’s to either protect/help Atsushi or to get them both to work together:

Akutagawa starts to constantly challenge Atsushi, questioning him, and demanding him for an answer. It’s only when Akutagawa saves Yokohoma from the Moby Dick crash, that Dazai openly tells him “you did well”.

The reason why Dazai does this so hesitantly, shows that he is still in his own metamorphosis. He’s slowly changing as is Akutagawa. He is still afraid to face his responsibilities, but doesn’t treat his former subordinate cruel anymore.

This change in Akutagawa goes so far that Atsushi is able to ask him to not to kill anyone until they meet again. When told about, Dazai is visibly happy, as it is something that he as a mentor wasn’t able to do. He is reminded of Odasaku, comparing Akutagawa now to him:

Due to this, Dazai now has this much faith in Akutagawa that he puts the task to keep an eye on Atsushi and to protect him in his hands:

Mind the difference of his expressions when he talks with Akutagawa then and now:

Dazai doesn’t team Atsushi and Akutagawa up only for strength and fighting reasons. Or because their abilities are compatible in battle. But because Dazai knows that Akutagawa won’t unnecessarily kill anymore, because he is seeking answers through Atsushi and is changing through their interactions:

He keeps his promise, much to Atsushi’s surprise, but it’s out of the question that he is happy about this:

Akutagawa promising not to kill anyone, keeping his promise in the end and even going so far as to protect someone, in other words valuing life, is something which Dazai could’ve never taught him. And again, he still can’t. Dazai is not solely the teacher, but the student himself. And although Atsushi may be a teacher for both of them in his philosophy, he is a student of Akutagawa and Dazai in other things.

Because what Atsushi lacks is self-confidence and his own worth, faith in his own abilities and the mental strength to overcome his past abuse and trauma. Those are things he learns through Dazai and especially, through Akutagawa.

#ryunosuke akutagawa bsd #atsushi nakajima bsd #osamu dazai bsd #shin soukoku #sakunosuke oda bsd #ango sakaguchi bsd #Ryunosuke Akutagawa #Atsushi Nakajima #Osamu Dazai #Sakunosuke Oda #Ango Sakaguchi #Bungou Stray Dogs #bsd meta #my meta

[ickle-ronniekins]

chemical reaction

request from nonnie! “hiiiii! love ur writing sm ! could I request a fic with George maybe like an enemies to lovers kind of thing? or maybe like she’d hated him and he’d actually fancied her the entire time or something? thank you!!”

pairing: george x fem!reader (no specific house)

word count: 5.7k whoops sorry

A/N: i LOVED this request; i don’t think i'd ever really written an enemies to lovers fic before.. maybe once, so i adored this. wish this could be me and him rn tbh. also, had to put a hand through the hair in there ~shoutout to my gals~ anyway, please leave feedback, comments, reblog, share with your friends if you wish, thanks!

tag list: @mintlibri @georgeweasleyx @seppys-return-to-madness @fopdoodledane @fredd-weasley @iprobablyshipit91 @darling-details @laneygthememequeen @lupinsx @keoghans @helloallthethingsilove @waschbiber @dreamer821 @feffffffy @the-hufflepuff-of-221b @62442-am @wtfweasleyy @obsessedwithrandomthings @thoseofgreatambition @harrysweasleys @sleep-i-ness @shadychaoticcollection @haphazardhufflepuff @afriendlyneighborhoodhufflepuff @hood-and-horan @letsfightsomeorcs @theweasleysredhair @purpleskiesstorm @hxfflxpxffs @wand3ringr0s3 @finecole @angelinathebook @highly-acidic @purplefragile @90shermione @zreads @susceptible-but-siriusexual @hollands-weasley @andromedaa-tonks @bbstrawberry0421 @princessof-theuniverse @cappsikle @mytreec @imseeinggred @idont-knowrn @flyingserpxnt @auroraboringalis57 @godricsswords @jejegu | message me to be added, loves!

There was no denying the indisputable chemistry between you both. Everyone could see it. It was pretty difficult to miss, actually, especially when the two of you spent nearly every single lesson at one another’s throats.

“I’m warning you, Weasley -- stay as far away from me as you possibly can. I don’t want you and your misplaced priorities anywhere near me.”

“Wow, it is a pleasure to be insulted by you. Really.”

It all started in your third year. The very misguided and frivolous George Weasley and his brother, Fred, had decided to be prats in your Potions lesson. You’d never really had any interaction with them before that; you were their absolute and complete opposite. You’d preferred to spend most nights borrowing any and all books from the library and reading through them as quickly as you could, or spending your afternoons with the Dueling Club to further your studies with spells, charms, and incantations; whereas the two of them were always setting off fireworks in the Astronomy tower, or whatever the bloody hell two thirteen-year-old pranksters did.

Potions had been normal that day -- Snape had his usual displeased scowl painted on his face, and you were continually checking the clock and counting down the seconds until you could leave and speed off toward your History of Magic lesson. That is, until George had purposefully put the wrong ingredient into his cauldron, causing a spark, resulting in an explosion quite larger than they’d presumed and a ghastly horrible sight: one of your eyebrows burning off completely.

You’d been outraged; while the majority of the class had been too startled and shocked to let a laugh escape their lips, the twins had absolutely no issue erupting into a fit of obnoxious giggles, obviously incredibly pleased at their error. Snape had even cracked somewhat of a grin (if you could consider the edge of his lip slightly curling upward in a sort of mock expression a grin), but he still threw all three of you into detention. You! In detention! For getting your bloody eyebrow burnt off by a juvenile boy!

You and George hadn’t been the fondest of one another since.

In an attempt to separate yourself from him, you’d completely changed course -- McGonagall had been able to help you switch out some of your lessons for others. You didn't really want to take Divination, but if it meant being away from him for an hour and a half of your day, then so be it. You were going to have to be okay with your choices.

Until you heard the sardonic, cool wash of his voice from behind you.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

He sluggishly fell into the seat next to you; (of course, it being the only open spot left as he’d arrived precisely two minutes after the bell signaling the start of the lesson) he propped his feet up on the table in between you both. With your mouth still agape and brows threaded together, you angrily shoved his feet off of the table and slammed your spellbook down in place of them. “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” you huffed, folding your arms across your chest. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be right now? Like setting fire to a third year’s eyebrows? Or detention, perhaps?”

He scoffed airily. “Oh, hilarious, darling -- really; right fantastic joker, you are. No, you see, contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend every waking hour cleaning out cauldrons, or --”

You cut him off, “Oh, and here I was thinking that you’d make a perfectly adequate cauldron cleaner if a full time opportunity were to present itself.”

He didn’t skip a beat. “-- or setting fire to third year’s eyebrows.”

“No?”

“No,” he replied throatily. And then, that all too familiar smirk of his. “Only to those who deserve it.”

You were about to snap back with some snarky retort, but thankfully Trelawney’s very soft-spoken voice floated through the room and managed to calm you down a bit. It didn’t stop you from sneering at George completely though, as he relaxed back into his chair and grinned to himself like an idiot.

You yanked your spellbook off of the table and turned to the desired page; you didn’t really fancy the idea of doing more research on crystal gazing, palmistry, ornithomancy, and tessomancy, but seeing as N.E.W.Ts were coming up, it only made sense that Professor Trelawney would make you revisit these desired areas of study.

“Gaze into the beyond!” she cried, “and tell your partner what you see!”

George very obviously rolled his eyes as you peered closely into the crystal ball. You couldn’t see anything except smoke, and so you furrowed your brows even more, as if to will yourself to concentrate. It was no use. You hated this subject; you’d only taken it to get away from him, anyway! He scoffed at the sight of you concentrating fiercely. “And what is it,” he asked you in an uncanny expression of your professor, “that you see?”

You shot him a glance and backed away from the crystal ball, scribbling something down on your parchment, and then turning your attention back toward him. “I see myself trying to lower my blood pressure and focus on my work,” you said cheerily, “because the idiot sat across from me is being an even bigger git than normal.”

“Wow,” he replied, his voice fierce with mock surprise. He widened his eyes and nodded his head fervently. “You’re really rubbish at this, aren’t you?”

His quips made your blood boil.

It felt as if it were hours before the lesson had ended; when the bell rang mercifully, you packed up your things in a rush and nearly sprinted out of the classroom, without a last glance or a word to George. This was going to be a long bloody year.

-- -

“So what’ve you been learning in Divination, Georgie?”

You groaned and placed your head directly on top of your parchment. Why is it that they always seem to end up where you are? This was the library, they had absolutely no business being here. This was your turf, and it always had been.

“Little of this, little of that,” George replied to his brother, his voice merry. “Been revisiting some old tasks to prep for N.E.W.Ts. Oh, that reminds me -- I was crystal gazing the other day.”

“Yeah?” Fred’s voice heightened. You could hear the smirk and the eyebrow raise. “And what did you see?”

“Well, it was kind of difficult to tell,” George said, “my huffy, stuffy partner kept distracting me with her bloody obnoxious sighs every single time I so much as blinked in her direction.”

You slammed shut the very large book you were reading as the twins and their friends erupted into laughter, swiveled your way through students, and returned the book to its proper place on the shelf. To your delight, Madam Pince was not too keen on noise in the library, and immediately began scolding them. This didn’t stop George from sending you a wink and a shake of the head before you vanished in the corridor. Merlin, he was going to drive you bloody mad.

-- -

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. Had your friends gone absolutely bonkers? He fancies you. You couldn’t seem to shake the phrase from your head no matter how hard you tried -- it was that outrageous and that hilarious.

There was no way that George Weasley fancied you -- for one, the two of you could not be more different. Secondly, if he really did, and he was still busy treating you like he loathed you, then that could mean only one thing: that he had the personality of a five-year-old. Yes, like that of a five-year-old boy chasing and pushing and teasing a five-year-old girl on the playground at primary school. And then, you figured, he was just as immature as he seemed.

“Perhaps you could make it a less.. hostile environment,” your mate told you one afternoon over lunch. “Clear the air a bit.”

“There’s nothing to clear,” you told her gruffly, picking at your sandwich. “He’s a git -- always has been, always will be.”

She began to laugh. “But you don’t really know that, do you? I mean, yeah, sure, he was a right prat during third year, but you’ve bloody hated the guy since then for laughing. Laughing. It’s not like he did it on purpose, you know. It was a mistake.”

You turned toward her in surprise. “A mistake that caused my bloody eyebrow to burn off!”

“And look,” she replied cheerily, “it’s grown back!” You groaned; why was she doing this? Make it a less hostile environment. The only way that could happen is if you and George were miles, if not worlds, apart.

“Maybe try.. having a conversation, yeah? You may have something in common,” she continued on, noisily slurping the rest of her pumpkin juice. “I’m just saying; you don’t have to love the bloke, but you don’t have to hate him, either. Make this atrocious Divination lesson less dreadful for you both by just being civil.” She slung her bag across her shoulder and tapped you on the shoulder. “Have got Charms -- just think about it, okay? See you,”

Civil. You supposed, as you took a very deep sigh and finished off the rest of your drink, that you could attempt to do that. Just then, a very loud bit of raucous laughter echoed across the Great Hall, coming from none other than the Gryffindor table, where George and Fred were no doubt showcasing one of their products for their shop they were so confident they’d be able to open and run. The commotion from the table only seemed to increase, and you took yet another very deep, gruff sigh. Civil. You could try. But Merlin, you’d have to try really very bloody hard.

-- -

When George sat down across from you a few days later, you’d been back and forth between the idea of being courteous and being rude more times than you could count on two hands. And luckily for him, you’d just flopped back to the idea of politeness.

You stuck out a hand and he looked at you quizzically. “Merlin -- have the fumes in here gone to your head or something? We’ve known one another for years.”

Civility, you thought. You stood your ground. “Can we just.. I dunno, start over? This lesson is already terrible enough without us nearly killing one another. I, for one, don’t want to dread this any more than I already do. So what do you say?”

You couldn’t tell right away if the arch of his eyebrows meant he was genuinely considering this or if he was fighting back a very haughty laugh so as not to spark an argument. But then, surprisingly, incredibly, he took his hand in yours and shook it firmly. “Alright then, Y/N,” he said professionally, “I suppose I can do that. But no bashing my methods of study,”

“No burning off my eyebrows,” you retorted.

“No worries there,” he replied, sneaking a small smirk at you as he opened his spellbook, “nothing to blow up in here.”

For the first time in nearly four years, the two of you had made it throughout an entire lesson without yelling at one another. It was both surprising and refreshing. And although you both continued to make small digs at one another, and he certainly continued to test your patience, you realized that maybe your mate was right.

It turns out you did have some things in common, actually.

“Why the bloody hell haven’t you tried out for Quidditch then?”

George was still beaming over your story of how you’d miraculously caught a Snitch at the very young age of seven in your backyard with your siblings. You’re not exactly sure when Quidditch had come up in the conversation, but somehow it did, and the two of you were now packing up to head to your next lessons.

“I dunno,” you replied truthfully, “it was never really my thing. I much rather prefer dueling than playing Quidditch.”

“Word of advice,” he said, shoving his Divination spellbook back into his bag, “never tell your housemates that you’re a Quidditch wizard. They will kill you dead you for not going out for the team.”

Just then, Professor Trelawney came scurrying over to you both -- her eyes wide and hair a tousled mess. “Mr. Weasley!” she cried excitedly, pointing down at the crystal ball, “what have you seen today?”

He looked at the professor, the ball, and then at you, a simple smile on his lips, sort of a half-smirk half-genuine sort of look. “Friendship,” he said simply.

Dumbfounded, Professor Trelawney began nodding fervently to herself and mumbling things neither of you could understand -- utter nonsense, really, and moved onto the next pair of students before they could leave. You folded your arms across your chest and raised an eyebrow. “Friendship, hm?”

George shrugged and placed his hands inside his pockets before starting toward the door. “And to think,” he said, “all you had to do was not loathe me so much.”

“It’s harder than it seems, George.”

“That’s mean,” he teased, bringing a hand to his chest in mock hurt. Then, genuinely, “we’re kind of best mates now, aren’t we?”

You choked back a laugh and held up a finger to him. “Erm, easy there -- wouldn’t go that far.”

He shook his head and began tuttering. “Dear, dear Y/N.. rubbish at both Divination and at lying.”

You threw a cushion from one of the chairs straight at his head before you both headed off in your respective directions. Best mates. Merlin. It was one lesson you’d both sort of gotten along in. He certainly was exaggerating a bit, wasn’t he? Even so, you couldn’t help the very small grin that spread itself across your face as you walked merrily toward Defense Against the Dark Arts.

--

You were having a particularly rough day.

You’d started the day off by waking up behind schedule, rushing through breakfast, and running in late to your morning lesson. You’d managed to completely bungle whatever nonsense Snape was having you concoct in Potions, losing a generous amount of points from your house. You’d slipped down the steps and given yourself a nasty bruise on your arm, and you were pretty sure that you were getting a cold -- and right before the winter holidays, at that.

So when you sluggishly made your way into Divination and George immediately began to tease you, you were not having it.

“Uh ohhhh,” he said in a sing-song sort of voice, “someone having a bad day?”

You knew he probably meant it as a joke and nothing more, but you were too pissed off to care. Was it the glassiness in your eyes? Your red nose? Your disheveled hair, or the fact that you’d hardly found the energy to straighten your tie? You growled, “I am not in the mood, George.”

“Blimey, alright, I was just --”

“I know what you were doing,” you scowled after a sneeze, “and I’d really just like to get through this lesson in one piece, if you don’t mind.” He put up his hands in surrender and sealed his lips shut. You sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m just not feeling the greatest today -- d’you mind if we just focus on the work?”

Today you were focusing your studies on palmistry. Not your favorite. It was an incredibly long, mundane lesson.

Later on, George asked you, “D’you want me to ask Trelawney if we can finish up early since you’re feeling ill?”

“Please.”

You closed your eyes for the few seconds George was gone; when he returned, he sat back down in his seat with a rather confused look etched on his face. “She, erm, told me no can do. I’ll just have to really.. ‘cleans my aura’ after this.” He used air quotes and actually had to hold back a bit of laughter. “It’s fine, I reckon. I’ll read yours. You don’t have to do mine.”

You reached out across the table as far as you could; your entire body was hurting. You didn’t want to be sneezing and achey during the Christmas holidays! You were busy pouting when George took your hand in his and began examining closely. You found yourself feeling surprised by a few things -- one, the tender touch of his fingers grazing your palm; two, how soft his skin felt against yours; three, the way your breath had hitched in your throat at the mere contact.

The feeling of his pointer finger tracing over your life and head lines on your palm sent shivers down your spine; perhaps it was an oncoming fever? You weren’t sure, and you didn’t know if the fogginess clouding your brain was the head cold or Trelawney’s classroom or the sheer intensity of the moment between you and this redhead. Somehow, though, when George looked up and locked eyes with you, you had this strange feeling that he was feeling the same things you were. Pure shock. Pure surprise.

“So, erm,” you began, clearing your throat and stretching as far away from him as you could, “what’s it say then? What’s going to happen?”

George hummed appreciatively and looked back down at your hand once more before letting go. “Some type of.. chemical reaction. In our Potions lesson. Bubbling cauldrons, and all that.”

What? Were the fumes getting to him too? He never looked so serious in all his life! Maybe he needed a trip to the hospital wing to uncloud his own head --

“Sorry? George, what’re you on about? We don’t take Potions together.”

“Oh, you’re right,” he replied, shaking his head a bit and forcing down a smile. And then, much to your surprise (and delight, perhaps?) he said something you were pretty sure you dreamt up: “--reaction must be between us, then.”

If his knee hadn’t been touching yours under the table, or you hadn’t felt the stuffiness of your head cold take you over, you would’ve been sure that it had all been a dream, or perhaps the haziness of the classroom making you hallucinate. But no. He’d said it. He’d said it quite seriously, with his signature smirk and hand through the hair right afterward.

The bell rang, startling you, and he stood up slowly and slung his bag across his shoulder. You fumbled with your books, both exhausted from your oncoming illness and dumbfounded by his comment. “Mum swears by green tea,”

“Oh, erm, sorry?”

George laughed. “Green tea. My mum says it always helps during the colder months. Pretty sure they’ve got some in the kitchens.” He started toward the door, but waited for you. You both parted ways near the Great Hall. “Rest up, alright? Don’t need my partner missing out on the very exciting, albeit outdated art of palm reading.”

You laughed a bit. “I’ll be sure to, George.”

“And remember,” he pointed at you, “lots of green tea. A Molly Weasley recommendation.”

You couldn’t help the gentle smile that tugged at your lips. “Tell her thanks for me.”

-- -

Two days later and you were feeling as good as new. George had been right -- a few cups of green tea everyday, and it seemed to have cleared your sinuses right up. His mum was a right genius.

There were only two more days of classes before everyone was going to pack up and leave for the holidays. Although you’d be back after the new year, it still felt odd going home; you missed Hogwarts so desperately whilst being home. Something about the castle, illuminated by dazzling decorations and lights and ornaments -- it was rather stunning, actually, and always left you yearning for more.

You were busy scribbling down the very last bit of your Charms essay in the library when you heard your name. Oh no! How long had you been there, working away? You groaned and quickly wrote your name on the top of the parchment and bolted from the back of the library. Then you stopped in your tracks as goosebumps rose on your skin, and you listened:

“Do me a favour, Weasley, and just admit that your brother is mad for her.”

It was your mate. What was she doing, here in the library? Wasn’t she supposed to be in Herbology? You quickly skidded your way into one of the empty aisles, listening intently to the conversation unfolding just a few feet away from you in the aisle next to yours. And then came the unmistakable sound of Fred Weasley’s very dry sarcasm:

“Who? George? My twin? Mad for your friend? No, there’s no way.”

You could almost hear the smile that split his face. Your breath caught in your throat, and you struggled terribly to stifle a cough. What were they on about? There was no way, just absolutely no way that he really did fancy you. You thought your mates had been joking a few weeks back; you’d taken them up on their suggestion to be polite, but that was merely it. Friends? Maybe. A couple? Bloody hell, absolutely not.

“Could you be bloody serious for one moment?”

“I reckon I do not have a serious bone in my body, I’m afraid.”

Ignoring this, your friend continued. “How long?”

“Hmm,” Fred began. You imagined that he was probably looking toward the sky, as if searching for his thoughts so he could pull them directly out of thin air. “Well, let’s see. Pretty sure the day Y/N screamed bloody murder at him in Potions, he’d fallen very quickly in love, even though he never admitted it to anyone. I’ve known it, though, because the poor bloke wears his heart on his sleeve. So about four years, yeah.”

“And he just couldn’t quit the merciless teasing, could he?”

“It’s like you don’t know us at all.”

You couldn’t listen anymore. You quickly shuffled your way out of the library and all the way to your common room until you were safely in your dormitory and could yell into the void. Why on bloody earth would he have been acting so rude if he actually fancied you, even if he had been trying to keep his feelings a secret? But then his comment from the other day flooded your mind, and you soon found, as you mulled them over, that a lot of his comments toward you could be taken in a flirtatious manner if you hadn’t been so obsessed with hating him so much. Perhaps, looking back, he’d been basing his repartee off of your desire to make your distaste of him very well known.

What would have happened if you’d taken that misfortune in Potions in stride? Would you two have been alright? Acquaintances? Friends? Maybe even..

You felt a small jab in your stomach.

It’s as if the conversation you’d overheard had made you do a complete one eighty. Four months ago, the idea of spending any of your time with George Weasley nearly sent you into a tizzy. You absolutely abhorred the idea. The sight of him alone made your blood boil, and any and all interaction with him would have made you miserable to the point of constant sulking. But now?

It was sort of hard to get the guy out of your head.

You found yourself constantly replaying all of your interactions with him over the years back each night before bed. Of course, there hadn’t been too many, seeing as you’d done your absolute very best to avoid him at all costs. But the ones that had happened.. perhaps there was something other than disdain in his voice. Maybe you’d just chosen to hear it as disdain, because you didn’t want to admit to yourself what was actually true.

You didn’t know what happened between that time he’d first read your palm and what you’d overheard in the library, but something had changed.

Lots had changed.

His words echoed in your ears.

Maybe there was some type of chemical reaction going on.

-- -

When you walked into Divination the next morning, you weren’t very surprised to see George already sitting there. He’d started coming to lessons earlier and earlier, to the point where he was getting there before you. It was refreshing, actually. You’d always thought he didn’t really care about work; he’d proved you wrong, though, and you were glad.

You both fell into your routine quite easily, ignoring the very theatrical talks coming from Trelawney as she made her way around the room to observe each of you through her her very large spectacles. You felt a bit of a pull at your heart that this would be your very last lesson together before the holidays -- you relished and also sort of dreaded the idea of being very far away from this foggy mess of a classroom for a few weeks time.

“You’re awfully quiet today. Feeling better?”

George’s voice took you by surprise, because you’d both been working rather diligently on the finishing touches of your essays. You cleared your throat and stunned yourself at how softly your voice sounded in your own ears. “Yes, yeah of course. That tea worked wonders actually -- your mum’s a genius.”

George laughed softly but didn’t look up from his parchment. “Yeah, she’s a wonder, she is.”

“Has to be,” you replied, tracing over the letters of your name, “with seven kids and all. Has to be on top of things.”

“I reckon you’re right.” He finished whatever he was writing and looked up at you with a smile, and when you skittishly glanced back down toward your parchment, he asked, “are you sure you’re alright?”

“Mhmm,” you replied, biting down on your lip. Your feet were thumping rhythmically against the floor. And then the words were said before you could register just exactly what you were doing: “Heard something about you.”

A small smile tugged at his lips. “Whatever it is, I swear I didn’t do it.” Then he paused, thought for a moment, and opened his mouth to speak again. “Alright..maybe I’ve done it.”

A small chuckle settled in the air between you both when he finally looked up from his parchment and locked his gaze with yours. “Sorry. What did you hear?”

You considered making something up, for now you were panicking, and you hated feeling panicked: but then again, you were in pretty deep already, and what did you have to lose? “It was from your brother, actually. Fred.”

“Oh, Merlin.”

“Yeah, said something interesting,” you continued on, focusing your eyesight solely on the parchment in front of you. You resumed tracing the letters of your name over and over, just to give yourself an excuse to not look at him as your cheeks surely flooded pink. “Said you actually haven’t loathed me this entire time?” It came out as more of a question.

“Really?”

“Actually, if my memory serves me correctly..” you dragged out every single word, still unsure if you were going to go for it. And then you did. “I’m pretty sure he actually used the word.. fancy.”

You half expected George to throw up his arms in a fit, exclaiming that Fred didn’t know what the bloody hell he was on about, and of course he’d actually disliked you this entire time. You also half expected him to burst out and cackle himself silly, because the sheer idea of a guy like him fancying a girl like you just tickled him. But instead, he licked his lips and peered at you with a type of compassion in his eyes you’d never seen before. Then he wiggled his eyebrows and offered, “He’s smarter than I thought. And to think.. I’d never even told him how I truly felt.”

Okay, surely you’d dreamt that. But nope; nope, he’d said it, yet again, causing the butterflies to dance animatedly around your stomach. You opened your mouth to speak as he smiled softly at you, but then Trelawney came bouncing over, completely interrupting the moment. “Oh, my dears! Friendship was on your horizon, you say; now, look into the beyond and tell one another what lies ahead!”

She bounced quickly over to the next group, and you took to looking inside the crystal ball; but any type of focus you’d had before had flown out the window now -- there was no way you were going to be able to properly function, because as it turns out, your very worst enemy had actually liked you this entire bloody time.

George leant in closer so that he, too, was hovering over the crystal ball, your foreheads almost touching. You could feel his breath on your neck. His voice was low and cool, “What’s the future say now, love?”

“Friendship,” you somehow spit out, your throat and mouth suddenly as dry as the Sahara desert. “Maybe more, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,”

And then the sound of glass shattering against the hardwood floor across the room startled you both, causing you to pull away from one another and catch your breath.

Moment over.

-- -

The Great Hall was bustling with students chatting animatedly and loads of luggage carts and parcels of presents. You’d just finished your final lesson before the holidays (Charms -- ending on a high note!) and you were very relieved to be on a break from your studies for a few weeks time and to be heading home.

The Great Hall was filled with people, but not the familiar one you were looking for.

Perhaps the conversation you were hoping to have could wait until after the holidays; although you didn’t know if you’d make it through three weeks of wondering what and if without spontaneously combusting.

You tugged your luggage out into the corridor to board one of the carriages to the train when you spotted him standing with his siblings, surrounded by luggage carts and huddled up in his Gryffindor robes and scarf.

Before you could find the courage to walk on over to him to wish him a happy Christmas, it seemed as though he was able to read your mind, for he excused himself from his siblings and made his way over to you, causing you to back up a few inches and press yourself directly into the wall.

You both hadn’t had a chance to chat since your lesson yesterday, since you’d found out the truth, since you’d ran out due to your nerves and George’s cheeky grin.

“So, erm -- sorry I ran out yesterday. Was a bit.. flustered, is all.”

You could’ve said anything else, but these were the words that chose to escape your lips. Bloody hell. You internally scolded yourself, but the expression George’s face didn’t change.

“Flustered?” he asked, confusion crinkling the edges of his eyes. “About what?”

“George, come on.”

“No, please,” he placed his hand on his chest, “You’re going to have to remind me. Yesterday’s events are all a blur, I’m afraid.”

He smirked, and you suddenly felt your blood begin to boil again. He was going to make you say it, of course he was.

“You know,” you started through gritted teeth, “our little conversation in Divination yesterday afternoon. About your... feelings.”

He nodded dramatically and clicked his tongue. “Right. That conversation. You know, it’s funny,” he began, placing his hands inside his pockets and moving closer to you, “I really dislike crystal gazing. I find the more accurate readings come from palmistry.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” he replied flatly, as if it were obvious. He took out his hand and placed in front of you. “Look here. I reckon you’ll be able to read the future quite clearly.”

You took his hand in yours, and immediately felt as thought you were out of your element. Yet, you began to trace the lines gently with your forefinger. You weren’t reading any bloody future; you were merely trying not to let the very steady pounding of your heart be so evident in the rising tension between you both. You found yourself, actually, pulling ever so gently on his hand, as if to bring him closer to you. You could easily reach out and trace the outline of freckles on his nose.

“See anything intriguing?” he breathed.

Something about being around him made you feel simultaneously more nervous than you ever had been and more confident; you were feeling so self-assured that you actually said something before you could overthink it. “Yeah, actually, looks here like you’re about to kiss me,” you said breathlessly.

How odd, you thought, that just mere months ago the man in front of you was none other than your absolute mortal enemy, and now all you wanted to do was spend the holidays locked away with him in a broom cupboard.

A cheeky grin split his face and he moved another inch or so closer; just centimeters to go, and his lips would be fully pressed to yours, the chemical reaction bubbling over perfectly. “Is that so?” he asked quietly, very slowly moving his way forward. He lifted your chin with his hand so your face was angled up toward his, and he stopped just as his lips so very softly brushed yours. It didn’t even seem real, honestly. Just then, one of the Weasleys shouted to George that their older brother was here to fetch them, and he you felt his smile brighten ever so lightly against you. Damnit! And instead of finishing what he’d started, he merely ran a finger across your chin, down your neck and over your collarbone and whispered, “Happy Christmas, love,” before pulling away.

What in the bloody fuc--! Was he kidding? Not only had the reaction bubbled over, but you now felt like exploding at how much of a prat he was being. He’d already made you say such silly things, and now he really had the audacity to almost kiss you and then pull away?

“You’ve got to be joking,” you said under your breath as he squeezed your hand. “You’re going to kill me.”

He wiggled his eyebrows seductively. “Have got to leave you wanting more, don’t I?”

You scoffed loudly and took a very deep, very overdue breath to regain your composure, but not before he leaned in and caught you off guard by pressing his lips to yours and gently melting into you. A slight sigh escaped you, and before you could register just what it felt like to have his lips on yours, you both broke apart -- he winked merrily at your wide eyes and made his way back toward his siblings. “You still going to be a right prat in three weeks time?” you teased, folding your arms across your chest as he tugged a beanie over his head.

“Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind, love,” he said as if it were obvious, “you still going to let me read your palms and drive you mad?”

You grinned a bit more and shook your head, tugging your own scarf around your neck as he was pulled by his siblings out of the castle. You breathed deeply, brought your fingers to your lips where his had just been, and said to nobody in particular, “Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind, Weasley.”

#george weasley #fred weasley #fred and george weasley #weasley twins #george weasley x reader #george weasley reader insert #george weasley fanfiction #george weasley fanfic #george weasley imagine #weasley twins imagine #weasley twins fanfic #weasley twins fanfiction #hp fanfic #hp fanfiction #hp imagine

[s4ijoh]

icarus falling. oikawa tooru

OIKAWA TOORU X GN! READER

GENRE: angst; fluff

WORD COUNT: 1.9k+

WARNINGS: established relationship

after seijoh's loss to karasuno in the semi finals…

the walk back home was nothing like what you had expected. you wondered if, walking on this sidewalk next to you, stood the same gutted boys that back in the court had their heads bowed down in defeat - their frowns now replaced by lighthearted smiles. you cling onto your boyfriend's arm, your presence silent next to him, watching from the sidelines. from your position, it might have just looked like a group of friends catching up on conversation but there was so much more to this moment than met the eye.

despite their loss, the conversation was rather lively - but you knew it was all a hopeless attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. there was a bittersweet taste to the current energy on the atmosphere. they carried on chatting almost as if they felt it was best to avoid the topic, it didn’t feel right to spend the last moment they had last as a team mourning their mistakes but rather reminiscing on the good memories instead. whereas, on the other hand, to deny to acknowledge their loss was to live a lie.

you keep a close watch on tooru, his features completely devoid of even the slightest hint of sorrow. however, you have learned to read in between the lines, to get to know each and every one of his quirks - to know his voice gets quieter when he is lying or how he blinks more rapidly when he’s nervous. you could read him like an open book and the occasional furrow of his brows, that even though was barely there for a half a second, only for you to catch a glimpse of it, was an immediate giveaway of the thoughts plaguing his mind.

once you reach the doorstep to tooru’s house you wave your goodbyes to the boys before the both of you part your different ways with the group. a heavy silence falls between the two of you yet there are so many things to be said. as the boys disappear into the distance, the atmosphere turns blue, all of tooru’s troubling thoughts lingering in the air yet not spoken of. you choose to give him his space to grieve, you knew he would talk to you once he was ready.

it was the quiet before the storm. as soon as he walks through the front door a suffocating void settles in his heart. tooru finds himself spiraling down a deep dark hole, a sudden numbness taking over his body before he is brought back to reality when his emotions strike him all at once. it was the catalyst to his ruin.

the lump in his throat tightening knocks the oxygen out of tooru’s lungs making it hard to breathe and he can no longer find the strength within himself to hold back any further, it is almost physically impossible for him to keep the tears from falling. he had kept all these feelings bottled up inside him for too long and it was only a matter of time before the inevitable happened - they start overflowing, all at once, against his own will. after the rainstorm, it’s not long until the flood. 

despite all his effort to keep himself under control, his first attempt at verbalizing his thoughts comes in the form of a choked sob as he falls right into your embrace. and so you watch him fall apart right before your eyes. as many times as you had held his trembling body in your arms, you would never get used to this sight. you could never guess that someone as cheerful as tooru had all these hardships in his life, but he did and ever since you met him you knew better than to believe the little show he put on for everybody.

you had seen him at his worst, and you were one of the few lucky ones he trusted enough to willingly let his walls down for. he had trusted you to see the rawest version of him and to allow you to roam his naked soul - no matter how many times he confessed his love for you, this was the ultimate proof of his sheer devotion and no matter how many times you confessed your love for him you could never show him how grateful you are to be fortunate enough to know the real tooru oikawa.

"let it all go" his shaky sobs resonate through your skin as he cries on your now damp shoulder with his face buried in the crook of your neck.

it was hard to notice on the outside but there was a battle taking place under the surface. disguised beyond his usual bright persona, tooru was fighting a war against himself. he was indeed his own worst enemy as cliché as it might sound. his number one struggle was to acknowledge his own worth, which induced the growth of his prevailing self-destructive habits. he would beat himself up every day, neglecting his own health in favor of working towards being the best player he could possibly become - he never thought it was enough; he had spend many restless nights wondering whether he would ever be enough. perhaps he was hopeless. so far, life had gone hard on him but, ever since you entered the scene, he could rely on you to brighten his darkest days.

"i did e-everything i could and it was still no-not enough" his words make your heart ache in your chest for you can tell how difficult it is for tooru to speak by the way his voice cracks at the end of the sentence before he falls into another fit of watery sobs. but to know he was taking it all upon himself struck you even harder.

this was the same boy you had watched pour his blood, sweat and tears into everything he had done, you only wish you could give him the world for he deserved nothing less. you knew he carried the weight of responsibility that came with being the team captain on his shoulders with pride, whether it was for the best or the worst. however, what he failed to realize was that he didn't have to bear it all on his own.

tooru felt like a failure; he had hit a wall. despite all his hard work he could not see the fruits of his labor. it was as if he was trapped in a maze with no exit - no matter the advances he made, he would always find himself back on square one, hopelessly running around in endless circles and driving himself insane.

in the end all his effort had gone to waste - or so he thought, in his current state, it was hard to see past the fog clouding his mind. he was inconsolable. you knew that no word you said could possibly mend his broken heart but you could at least try to relieve some of his pain.

"tooru, i know you will achieve great things one day. you just have to hold onto your dreams." you caress his hair whereas your spare hand rubs up and down his spine before settling on the nape of his neck, cradling the back of his head and tugging him closer to you.

“right now, i know it might feel like a loss but i believe in you and know you will make it out of this stronger, you always do"

you pull back to look into his glassy eyes, a thick veil of tears coating his hazel orbs. the eyes that once held all that passion are now dull as the familiar hopeful gleam fades away with every teardrop streaming down his cheeks, being replaced with a void of broken dreams. he always aimed high, strived to be better and it hurt to see him like this for he did not deserve it but, unfortunately, the universe had different plans for him.

tooru stood too close to the sun. he was close, close enough to yearn for more of it's warmth - he needed more. but what he failed to anticipate, guided by his own instinct, was that it was physically impossible to go any further without getting hurt. the higher he flew, the closer he got, the harder he would fall; his ambition was his greatest blessing as well as his worst curse. 

yet, once again, here you stood, ready to catch him on his fall back to earth. you had been there for him every step of the way. you had watched tooru fall flat on his face several times only to witness him build himself back up and work harder than the last time. you admired his cunning nature, it was his greatest weapon.

"i know you wanted to pursue your dreams next to your friends, tooru, but i promise you that they will be there, alongside you, watching your every step on the way to the top"

you feel his stiff muscles relaxing under your touch, it was almost as if you knew exactly what he needed to hear. everyone thought tooru required high maintenace but a few reassuring words were all it took to make him feel better and upon hearing the mention of his teammates, a switch flips inside him and he has a purpose once again. tooru wished to be better and even if it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, he would keep going, if not for his sake, for his friends - he wouldn’t let them down again.

after a while you listen to his sobs fading into the air. after the flood always comes the quiet.

tooru’s body leans weak against yours once his sniffles die down. you hold onto his waist, dragging his limp body across the hall and into his room, sitting him on the edge of the bed to help him change into more confortable clothes. you crouch down in front of him to press a kiss to his injured knee before you lay down next to him, cradling him in your arms whereas you let the silence of the quiet night envelop the both of you in it’s sweet embrace. he felt at home, secure in the shelter of your warmth, your body caging him in a reassuring hug. he feels invincible all of a sudden, like he could conquer the world.

“i will make you feel proud of me, one day” he whispers against your chest, his voice is still hoarse in the aftermath of his emotional burst.

“i'm already proud of you, tooru. you are stronger than anyone could ever fanthom” 

“no. i mean that, one day, i will redeem myself and i want you there, by my side.”

despite his mellow tone, the eagerness was still present in his voice, each word radiating with the strength of a thousand suns. you were glad to know that, regardless of the storm, the flame was still burning bright inside him.

“i will be there, tooru.” you pull away from him to hold his face in your hands “i will be there to watch you reach the top. i will watch you get each and every one of your opponents out of the way and prove them wrong, baby. it's us against the world”

that night, you never leave his side, holding him as close as humanly possible expecting that, perhaps, if you hold him just tight enough you can fill the hole in his heart and make him feel whole again.

and, hopefully, you would still be here when he is finally ready to spread his winds open again and earns back the courage to fly high.

[a/n]: so im experimenting with a new writing style,, i wanted to improve my dialogue writing skills so from now on ill be focusing more on dialogue than i used to (feedback would be highly appreciated :D) + also no smut in here, for now, cs i was tired of writing nasty shit ,, give me a break, for the time being this is a smut free zone, (lmao who would've guessed) if you were here for the smut im sorry to disappoint you - the old ellie can’t come to the phone right now cuz she’s DEAD. my goal is to write shorter pieces and work on characterization as well hence the new blog!!, my old stuff didn't serve me anymore.

+ also it took me more time to write 2k words than those longer fics i used to write lmao. im actually proud of this one. hopefully, i changed for the better!

#had a personality 180º im blaming my unstable mental health #n e ways #i would rather say that im constantly improving myself so #if you knew me before this no you didnt #not me writing this while listening to i hate this part by the pussycat dolls #oikawa tooru #oikawa x reader #oikawa tooru imagine #tooru oikawa x reader #oikawa fluff #haikyuu x reader #hq #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu #oikawa torū #haikyuucreations

[kookiepredictions]

Jungkook Twinflame Journey: Challenges & Lessons

The general structure of the TF journey is available plenty on the web so I won’t talk about the step by step journey, rather only focus on the highlights of it, specifically the challenges they are dealing with and how to possibly overcome them. Also, as was pointed out to me earlier, it must be mentioned that these readings are timeline independent, and don’t signify when these activities are happening. This is just the overall energy of Jungkook’s TF journey and what he might have/ might be/ will facing, whenever they happen.

Also, this post is long enough to be a book lol (8.5k words when I last checked) but you gotta do what you gotta do. Happy reading :)

 The first thing that jumps out is that both of them seem to be running from the connection. Both are runners, both are chasers. Jungkook is running in the 5D while his counterpart is running in the 3D. Jungkook wants to make a physical (as in 3D) relationship happen ASAP. He endlessly daydreams about being together with his DF and what he can do to make it happen. However, he is both indecisive and hesitant about taking actual action for various reasons that I will discuss later. The DF on the other hand, is running from a physical connection for reasons I will discuss later. The imbalance here is that the DF sees this as an energetic connection before anything else and wants to treat it as such, whereas Jungkook is focused on the physical manifestation of it. They’re not on the same page about how they see this connection and how they want to deal with it. Now, since a TF connection is a soul connection, it makes sense to start with the soul growth because that is what will ultimately lead to the physical manifestation of it. As I mentioned in the previous reading, Jungkook is in a stubborn “my way or the highway” kind of energy where he just wants what he wants lol. He can’t seem to understand why someone who loves him will want to stay away from him. On the surface level, this is a valid thought, but he’s not seeing, or rather refusing to see all sides of this.

The most important “earthly” blockage that gets in the way of his connection is his job. He has a lot to handle right now and he’s not, in any way, prepared to start or handle a new relationship. The irony is that he knows this. This is in fact what is making him hesitate to take action towards this connection and might I add, rightly so. His judgment and reasoning towards this connection is absolutely correct— he wants to focus on himself and his work right now and clear the unorganized mess in his life before he can bring anyone else into it. So the problem is not that he doesn’t know what to do. The problem is that he is finding it difficult to commit to this decision. He keeps swinging back and forth doubting if he has made the right choice. He keeps fearing that his decision might be wrong and he will end up losing everything he has dreamt for his future— including his DF, who he has come to value a lot right now. She is a big part of his future dreams and he fears that if she leaves, everything will start falling apart like dominoes. This is leading him to overthink this connection from every angle and feel weighed down in a way that he’s not able to take any path. He seems to be on a crossroad and really heavy with indecisive energy. And all of this is happening because he is running in the 5D— he’s running from the spiritual aspect of this connection, from the soul lessons that he needs to learn.

His DF on the other hand, sees the connection for what it is— spiritual before physical. She is in a state of complete surrender to the Universe that if they are meant to be, nothing and no one can get in the way of that. However, she also has a realistic view of it. She knows that the connection might be spiritual but the people in it are imperfect humans. She knows that the only people who can mess up this connection or stop it from manifesting in the physical are her and Jungkook. She knows how the TF connection works but most importantly, she is allowing herself to be guided by what she intuitively knows to be right. She not only has the clarity of the present situation of herself and Jungkook’s, she also has the foresight of what can go wrong in the near and far future if they rush into a connection right now. She “sees” the wounds, trauma and ego-driven behavioural patterns that both of them have and knows that unless they work on healing themselves first, their connection is no better than anyone’s else’s.

On this note, here’s something about a TF relationship: just because you are TFs doesn’t automatically mean that you both are perfect for each other. It just means that this has the HIGHEST POTENTIAL for being the best kind of relationship that anyone can ever hope to have in their lifetime. That’s what it is: a potential. Not a reality. The TF counterparts are only POTENTIALLY right for each other IF they want to make it that way. Every soul in this world has a twinflame— someone who is their most ideal, perfect match. However, when we use the term “twinflame” in discussions and articles, we only mean the twinflame counterparts who have incarnated on earth at the same time and have met, and if they have, then they will most definitely “fall in love”. However, what they then decide to do with that connection and in what direction they take it, is entirely up to them. The foundation of spirituality is free will. NOTHING is forcefully thrust upon us. We’re given complete sovereignty over how we wish to live our lives. Yes, there’s Destiny, but destiny is not a forced concept where you have no say over it. That’s not how spirituality works. Forceful subjugation is the tool of lower vibrating earthly authorities. Spirituality in its core is about freedom. Since the world is in a position of having ingested prolonged low vibrational thoughts and belief systems about love and life in general, the population at large is vibrating at these lower frequency energies. Healing these trauma and reviving our DNA to its original form takes many lifetimes. This is why even though everyone has a twinflame that was created to be their best match, the trauma we’ve incurred over generations, periods and eras, and even in the past years of our current lifetimes, have made it such that each counterpart of each twinflame pair is busy healing themselves over several lifetimes, and depending on the necessary soul contract that was undertaken, might or might not be healed and ready to meet their counterpart in each lifetime. If TFs meet their counterpart in a lifetime where they are not “healed” and behave excessively from their ego standpoint, they will face relationship problems and breakups like any other couple. Being counterparts won’t make you any special. To summarise, TF counterparts who are not healed are the exact same as any other person. In fact they can be worse, because there is an insurmountable amount of passion between them due to their soul connection, but since they haven’t learnt to “behave” like healed counterparts yet, they will end up hurting each other even more. That’s because when you meet your TF, you see how similar you both are and how this connection has SO MUCH potential to be perfect, and you start lowering your guard down, believing that this is one person in the world who will NEVER hurt you. So when you get hurt by them, it feels so much worse and painful than anyone else who has hurt you. This is why a lot of TFs who meet and fall in love before they are healed, end up with a soulmate or even a karmic or 3D partner later where they are actually happier than they were with their TFs. Also when we talk about TF Union, know that it can mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean a committed relationship or marriage. The reason being, marriages and relationships are earthly concepts. The spiritual realm doesn’t care for earthly practices at all; it only cares for earthly practices when they serve the purpose of spiritual advancement. So if a TF couple is destined to get married, that only means that their marriage is supposed to serve a spiritual cause on earth. I just remembered one of my followers kindly pointed out how rare it is for TFs to get married and I’d like to reiterate that here. It is indeed SUPER rare, because it is rare as is, to be incarnated at the same time as your TF. Spirituality is about the soul, obviously, so you’ve got to see a spiritually-rooted connection from the viewpoint of a soul, not from your earthly ego. Souls are immortal; no matter what is happening in the world, whether or not you’re dating or getting married with each other, TFs are together forever as soul units. It’s just that a soul is independent AF lol. They don’t need to always stick to each other. They let their other half do their own work/ mission on earth in one lifetime while they chill in another lifetime lol. It’s only when they know they are on the same-ish page in terms of healing from earthly traumas that they incarnate together and “plan” to meet at the right time, and when they do, fireworks lol. However, it’s still about the healing. Even after they meet. Being the kind of souls who have incarnated at the same time to be “twinflames” means that you have done enough of healing in your past lifetimes that you now have a lot more refined (less traumatic) view of love and life, than other people around you. And when I say “around you” I mean in the world. TFs who have incarnated together to meet are super rare (again, when we use the word “TF” we automatically mean the only ones who are supposed to meet). They are already born as old, highly advanced souls with thoughts, feelings and actions distinctly different from others, possibly with a great many set of talents (because they have lived several lifetimes as different people honing different skills in each lifetime— I’m reminded of the interview where Jungkook asked what had he done in his previous lifetimes to get so much love from his fans and Yoongi replied he was possibly good at everything), but most importantly, they have the desire to be better versions of themselves stronger than anyone else, because they actually are serious about their healing, even if they don’t know it consciously. They are righteous and idealistic kind of people but not in a naive way— they know the light as much as they know the darkness, because healing is about balancing both. TFs who have incarnated together are possibly living their last lifetime on earth and on the way out to Ascension but only if they do the remaining healing in their current lifetime. Because like I said before, that’s the whole point. This is why this connection, right up top, seems so powerful and deep. It’s rooted in spiritual awareness and healing past traumas. You help each other in your missions. But that doesn’t mean necessarily by being physically together. If you’re destined to be together, then you will, but if you’re not, i.e. if your mission does not include being together, then you will part ways. This seems sad and depressing (“what is the point of having/ meeting your TF if you can’t be together?”) but this is where I remind you again that this is, first and foremost, a soul connection, and no matter what happens on earth, you’re together as souls at all times. Here’s the thing though: if being apart from each other is your mission, then you will not feel sad about it. That decision will come about as a natural transition at some point in your TF journey. You both will feel that that is the right thing to do, without malice or pain in your heart, because any decision made from the soul always feels peaceful on the inside. For example, many people believe that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ TF, and they had a lot of love between them, yet, since Jesus’ destiny was to embrace the cross, he didn’t end up marrying her. And yet, it was something he CHOSE to do, not something that someone thrust on him. He did it with complete awareness and acceptance. Because again, like I said, spirituality at its core, is freedom. Destiny only means that every path has a particular destination at the end. But which path we take, is completely up to us. Whichever path we take will lead to the destination that is at the end of it— that part is nonnegotiable. You can’t take one path and expect to reach a different destination. However, these paths are not linear, parallel tracks. They are more like a labyrinth— connecting and disconnecting at several junctions. Which means that we can change our paths at any moment that we want. If we have taken a wrong path today, it will lead to a wrong destination, but if we want to change where we end up at, we can change the path at any time. We are not doomed or fated forever to end up in a wrong place just because we took the wrong path in the past. We are only fated to go there if we keep continuing on that same path.

Coming back to Jungkook’s DF, she recognizes the spiritual aspect of the connection and what it means for her life and Jungkook’s. She knows a separation is imminent and she’s accepted it with her whole heart. She can’t pretend to be sad or missing him just to look good in his eyes because she neither misses him nor is she sad about this. She longs for him every moment of her life but she never feels like they are separate from each other. She always energetically feels him around herself and knows that he feels her too. The difference is that while she embraces this situation, Jungkook is resisting it. He WANTS to be connected with her in the physical world. It’s a really stubborn energy lol where he is simply refusing to see anything else. I used the word “refusing” because it’s not like he doesn’t know the problems that are there with regards to this connection. He is just ducking his responsibility of dealing with them and just hoping that they will somehow go away. He is, knowingly or unknowingly, in a self-centred energy where he has put all the responsibility of them being together on her. He wants her to be with him but he doesn’t want to address the reasons why they aren’t together. Truthfully, the real reason they aren’t and cannot be physically connected (in any way) is because Jungkook’s life is a mess— ENERGETICALLY. This needs to be emphasized because Jungkook often feels like he can “handle” a connection. Like I said, he daydreams and fantasizes about everything he would like to do for her and he just wants the damn connection to start and get moving already. But there’s the problem. He is only concerned about the external, physical aspect of the connection, but this is a spiritual, energetic connection. They are connected so deep and so profoundly because of this very reason. It can’t be ignored just so you two can start dating or talking even. At this moment, Jungkook is in a state where he is carrying everyone else’s energy except his own. There are way too many interferences and sabotaging around him. Add to it his wounds from past experiences and relationships. It’s just unfair of him to expect his DF to be with him while his own life is so disharmonious. It’s like, when you invite someone over to your home, do you expect them to come to a dirty, messy home? Or would you first clean up? It’s not that he is unaware of these problems. He knows, and he also often feels guilty of getting her involved in all of this. But feeling guilty is not enough. It won’t make the problems go away. He is in a victim mentality where he feels everything is happening TO him, and he is absolving himself off of the responsibility of admitting that by not doing what needs to be done, he is also a part of the problem. Don’t get me wrong, he DOES want to work on these problems, he doesn’t want to subject her to this forever. But where he is wrong is in expecting that she SHOULD stay by him while the problems still exist. And that’s just unfair. She has possibly also tried doing that. But the thing is, the actual problems are not the ones on the outside. The actual problems are the ones in his mind. He can’t always have control over his external situations, but he can ALWAYS have control over his own self IF he wants. It’s the negative energy that he lets stay inside him rent free that is the real problem. No matter what she does to make him happy, Jungkook finds a reason to be sad. No matter what she says to assure him that she loves him, he will still stick to that one vague reason that makes him afraid of losing her. Or some other fear. He feels like the problem is that they are not together. But the problem is actually that Jungkook is a whole warehouse of fear, insecurity, jealousy, anger, etc. And he is entrusting it upon her to heal him. But no one can heal someone else unless they really want to, unless they make their own effort, but most importantly, unless they recognize what the real problem is. His fears are not because of her actions, his fears are because of his past wounds. It is unfair to expect her to be at his beck and call to heal HIS past issues without him being proactive about healing himself first. TFs do play a very important role in healing each other, but not in a co-dependent, energy-vampire-ical way. They heal each other by empowering each other, helping each other be free. Excessive dependence on your counterpart does the exact opposite of healing.

His DF was likely in a past relationship with a narcissist who expected exactly this out of her. She was expected to compensate for his insecurities by limiting herself— her thoughts, feelings, and just living in general. Back then she wasn’t “awake”, so she complied, but it was never enough. The more she adjusted, the more areas she was given to adjust. It resulted in her living a life that ran on autopilot, doing only things that were “permitted” by her partner. In moments where she wanted to assert her own will, she would be made to feel guilty of doing something that her partner didn’t want her to. That she was the reason why her partner was unhappy. Now she understands that no one is responsible for someone else’s happiness or sadness. We can do things with the intention of making someone happy or sad, but how they take it and react to it is completely their call. And in the end when she had fully adapted to his way of living by completely bequeathing her autonomy of decisions and actions, one day he turned around to accuse her of not being independent and proactive enough, and for being too needy. Because that’s what ego-based behaviour leads you to do. You’re never satisfied. Here’s the difference between ego and soul— the ego demands everything but is happy with nothing; the soul accepts everything and is happy with everything.

She can assure Jungkook a million times that she loves him, that she will always be with him, but unless he gets to the root of his insecurities and eliminate them from the root, they will always go back to the same problems. Because the harsh truth is, as much as he loves her, right now he is using her and this connection as a distraction and escape from his real problems, a quick fix. But the TF connection is not supposed to distract you from your problems, it is supposed to point you exactly in the direction of where your problems are. This is what Jungkook and this connection has done for his DF, and this is what she hopes to do for him. But she can only direct him towards those problems, she can’t decide or act on them. That is something only he can do. He needs to quit waiting for someone else to fix his life and take it upon himself. He has been having tower moments after tower moments simply because he is refusing to see or act on the problems.

His problems are not all though. His DF is staying away also because of her own problems, her own past wounds. She is not as perfect as he thinks she is. Her life is not as perfect as he thinks it is. She has as many problems— both external and internal— as he does. She knows that Jungkook dreams of healing her, taking away all her pain, solving all her problems, and she is forever grateful, but it’s the wrong approach. There are some things only she can and should handle. She knows that Jungkook often looks for her dreams, wanting to fulfil all of them, be that person in her life who does those things for her. And again, she is both grateful and happy that there is someone in this big, bad world who has that kind of intention and energy towards her, and someday when the time is right, she has absolutely no doubt that he will do all of these things. But right now, it means something to her to be able to do all these things for herself. All her life, she has been following directions from someone else, either parents or a partner or anyone who would show more authority than what she had on herself. But continuously living her life on someone else’s terms didn’t work out very well. Neither for her nor for others. Her life felt empty and her soul felt restless and unfulfilled. And if one doesn’t have peace within themselves, they can’t radiate peace around them. She doesn’t blame anyone else for this. Truthfully, it’s her own fault. For not having boundaries, for letting people walk all over her. For not asserting her own choice in her own life. But she won’t do that anymore. She can’t go back to that co-dependent energy. Not even with her TF, even though he’s one of the most important people in her life right now. She’s not mad at him, she’s not punishing him for any “mistake” that he thinks he has made. She’s only doing this because she is fully convinced that is the only right thing to do in this situation. And she is not back down from her own conviction. She is no more letting other people decide for her, especially when her own intuition doesn’t support it. In the past, she has had plenty of people telling her what to do, and now she realizes that those people were a lot more clueless than she was, and that she has always been the more intuitive and “right” person in any crowd. But the self-trust that she lacked back then, she has now. And she is not questioning it anymore.

One important lesson Jungkook has to learn is to know that there are no “punishments” in this world. Due to his past experiences, either very strict parenting or strict K Pop training environment, he has this deeply seated fear of being punished when he does something wrong. If he makes mistakes— which we all do— the Universe won’t punish him. We simply have some inconvenient situations as a direct or indirect result of our actions, so that we can learn that our actions were wrong and we can correct them in future. Punishments are also ego based repercussions. If his connection is as spiritual as he believes it is, then he also has to believe that his DF would never punish him. That’s just now how a healthy relationship should be! Imagine if two people were always out to get each other for their mistakes, keeping count of them and then waiting to punish them at an opportune moment... just how stressful would that relationship be! It might be that Jungkook has had to deal with someone like that in the past which has shaped his mindset about love and relationships that way. Love is not so egotistical. Anyone who claims to love you should be always willing to forgive you, no matter how many times you make mistakes. Yes, everyone should have boundaries, no one should allow anything they consider as mistreatment, but they should still be able to forgive the person they claim to love. If there are feelings of anger, malice, revenge towards someone, no matter what they have done, that is not love. So much of Jungkook’s pain is rooted in this mindset. He believes that just because he has made mistakes in his life, he is now destined to live a life of misery and sadness as a punishment, over which he has no control. Like I explained earlier, that’s not how Destiny works. We ALWAYS have a choice and we can make that choice anytime. The question is: are we REALLY willing to? Or are we looking to turn a blind eye towards our responsibilities and then blame it on our “fate”?

With his current energy, Jungkook has one foot of the door. He KNOWS what he has to do— the hesitation that he feels about taking action towards connection is not his fear. It is in fact, his soul voice. Deep inside, he knows this is not the right time. He is not ready for this connection to move forward or even exist in the physical. He knows he needs to work on himself first. He knows what his problems are and where they are. He knows that no matter what he does, he will never lose his TF. He just finds it difficult to trust himself with his own knowledge. There are too many outside opinions and energies that interferes with his thoughts and actions. And that is also his fault because he is allowing them to.

Very notable here is that Jungkook has one or more Karmic connections that are constantly interfering with this connection. He is frequently under psychic attacks, as is his DF. These karmics act as energy vampires by energetically trying to influence his thoughts— pressuring him for attention, communication and commitment, threatening to leave him if he doesn’t oblige, threatening to date someone else— acting as if it is coming from his DF. His DF wants nothing of that sort right now. Co-dependent energy is the very first thing that TFs are supposed to eliminate from their connection, which means from their own minds. Look around you. 99% of relationships in this world are based on co-dependency. A “if you give me this, I’ll give you that” kind of energy. Love, true love, is unconditional. Think about it: “love” is defined as an emotion, and abstract noun. Love, at its core, is an emotion. It is not actions or words or relationships or marriages. Love is a feeling, that’s all. If you can feel it inside your heart, no matter what situation you are in, you are in love. It’s the world’s biggest mistake to equate love with what we do for those we claim to love. It’s like, if you love me, prove it. No. If I love you, I’ll just love you that’s all. There will be no condition on my love. It won’t exist or disappear based on what I do or don’t do. We are often placed in situations where we can’t always do everything that we do. Actions are not always the same as feelings. Sometimes two people can love each truly and deeply, but— and I’m not afraid to say it— one of them can die before the other. Or fall sick and be bedridden forever, and be completely unable to “do” anything for the ones they love. What happens then? The love disappears? Just because they can’t prove it anymore? It’s such a limiting concept of love. Also, so many people will do so many things— gifts, vacations, anniversaries, social media updates— but then will also cheat on their partners, leave them for someone else... what value do all these things that they did hold in that case? My point is, doing a lot of things means nothing if the feeling behind it is not backed by true and pure love. Too many people depend on actions to prove the existence of love, but don’t take the time to really FEEL it. When you feel love for the emotion that it is, without restrictions and judgements, trust me, the action flows effortlessly. You will naturally know when to do what and those actions will NEVER be wrong. Instead of jumping about going crazy doing things, take the time to connect with your heart space and see what is really going on in there. It’s not always fun and games. Love does come with pain and sorrow too. But negative emotions are not a bad thing. Remember, negative emotions are NOT the same as negativity. Negative emotions are signifiers. They help us see where we are facing problems, what needs to be fixed. Negativity on the other hand, is blinding ourselves from those signals, and staying stuck in that stagnant pool of negative emotions, and not making the effort to get out of it. Always remember, energy is like water. As long as it is flowing, like in a stream, it is clean and healthy— no matter what type of energy. It is only when it is stagnant that it becomes unclean and breeds diseases. And to keep energy moving and flowing, it is essential to feel your feelings, no matter what they are. Be brutally honest with yourself about how you feel. Don’t judge your feelings, don’t censor them. Don’t tell yourself, I’m not supposed to feel this way. Bulls***! You can feel any type of way that you want to. Because you’re human. And that’s what humans do, they feel. That’s what makes us different from machines. Once you can feel accurately, you can now understand your feelings. You can understand the root of those feelings. So many people get away with saying, I don’t know what I feel like, I don’t know why I feel this way. Well, it can happen. Initially. But as humans we can and are supposed to KNOW our feelings by observing them. That’s what makes us different from animals. They feel but can’t make sense of those feelings. They directly go from feeling to acting. But we can do the essential step in between. Understand our feelings and then decide how to act.

Honestly, Jungkook has been sitting in a pool for a while now. Like I said, he is carrying mostly others’ energies than his own. This is why his DF feels the need to distance herself from him even though she wanted to, and has tried to be there for him in whichever capacity possible. She is all for healing Jungkook, but she can’t be responsible for other people’s energies too. As she is energetically connected with him, she feels his energy, and it is especially difficult when he is stuck in low vibrational energy for a long time. As long as he doesn’t find a way to block these energies, he is bringing both himself and this connection down. One person is trying to fill the connection with positive energies while the other acts as a host to energy vampires. It’s exhausting for both of them! It’s like trying to empty water from a boat with holes. No matter how hard you try, the boat will sink if the holes are not repaired. And it’s something only Jungkook can do. And the only way to do it is if he rises from his pool of negative emotions. Energy vampires, psychic attacks are only effective if you give them access to your energy. Remember, any person who tries to sabotage you is already vibrating in a low frequency with their ill intentions. You block their access by simply vibrating at a higher frequency. This is the singlemost effective way to both stop outside interference as well as improving your own energy. Commit to wanting to be a happier version of yourself. And just like love, don’t make your happiness conditional. Don’t think I’ll be happy if___ Be happy where you are, how you are. You’re not unhappy because you don’t have your DF, you are unhappy because you have mental blockages that restrict you from being happy. Find out what those restrictions are, then get to work on them.

The separation is also necessary because Jungkook NEEDS to face his fears. He has been battling with a lot of fears about losing his DF, and with her losing his dream future. But instead of facing it and getting it out of his system, he has been avoiding it. He creates different scenarios that would help him avoid feeling the pain of facing and analysing his fear. Somehow, somewhere, these scenarios lead him to believing that she doesn’t love him, she cheats on him or will cheat on him, or has left him for good, is intentionally hurting him, is taking advantage of his love and his having fun doing it. These are accusations his DF will not entertain. She understands where he is coming from, she understands the conflict and battle he is going through but she will not be held responsible for something she doesn’t even dream of doing. She could be just watching a movie and crushing on an actor but Jungkook’s paranoia will conclude she is seeing someone else. It’s hurtful. And even more so when it comes from someone who seemed like the one person in this world who would never hurt you. She is struggling in her life too. She is working on herself too. The difference between her and Jungkook is that she does not hold Jungkook responsible for her happiness. She accepts his situation and his decisions without questioning his motives, and she expects the same energy from him. They might be TFs but they are two separate individuals with different mentalities, backgrounds and situations. Each of them has the right to live their lives EXACTLY as they want to, without having to explain themselves, or proving their loyalty all the time. She won’t spend her whole lifetime proving her love and loyalty to someone who is supposed to understand her already. The TF separation period is not a punishment. It is a gift. It is their first opportunity to test if their love is really as strong and eternal as they think it is. True love does not disappear because of distance and situations. You don’t need to be with your partner to love them. Heck, you don’t even need a partner to love! Love, as I said, is an emotion to be felt. If you feel it, you know love. If you experience love, and then proceed to put fences of restrictions and conditions around it, one day, the restrictions will win and the love will lose. The separation really helps us test out the strength of the connection. Know that in spirituality there are always win-win situations. If two people do love each other truly, they will always come back to each other. It’s always better to leave your connection be free. Two people who are free to go anywhere they like and be with anyone they like, yet choose to come back to each other without demanding without accusing, is the best kind of love connection. And if they don’t come back, that means that connection wasn’t as good as it seemed after all, in which case, you’re free to look for the real one!

Jungkook really needs to loosen his grip. He needs to let her go. He needs to let her come back to him because she wants to, not because she felt trapped with guilt to stay with him. It is also his test for how much trust he has on someone he claims to love so much. If he can’t trust her now, he will not magically learn to trust her later when they are in a physical connection.

The thing is, everything written in this post, Jungkook already knows. And his DF knows this. She sees him beyond his outer tantrums through to his soul. She knows who he is inside there and what he wants and needs. She’s probably overconfident that she knows him better than he knows himself lol. And this is what is keeping her hopeful about this connection. She believes in him and is rooting for him to come through with his soul lessons and healing. Just like he believes in her and is rooting for her success in her life and career. He’s just... how to put it... overzealous about her lol. I’ve mentioned earlier that Jungkook values equal give and take in a relationship but this is causing detriment. He believes that she has done way too much for him and in return, he has given too little to her. That might be true lol but he must remember that firstly, he has already given her a lot more than what she has ever received from anyone. It’s not always the material things you know, the most valuable things in life are the ones money can’t buy. She has experienced being loved exactly the way she had always wanted to be loved. Him and the people around him have contributed to making her a strong, independent, assertive woman and shed many of her past inhibitions and weaknesses. This connection has caused her faith in herself and the Divine to go through the roof! And that’s exactly what he needs right now too. He needs to have faith. Faith in himself, this connection and the Universe. He really needs to see that she is not the only special person in this connection. He is as special as her as well— he is her! If he can’t forget her, how can she forget him? If he thinks she is irreplaceable, how can he not be irreplaceable in her life as well? He needs to work on his self-image and self-confidence to really see that he is equal, if not greater than her. She already sees him as special and irreplaceable but his lack of self esteem is causing him to create this illusion that she is too good for him, that he will never find anyone like her and therefore he must cling to her to make sure she never leaves. Even if they get into a connection, is it healthy to live with these fears and insecurities all your life? It’s time for him to shift the focus from her to himself and give himself all that pure, genuine love that she gave her. Self love. And then if she doesn’t come back, then fu** that bi***! An insanely gorgeous man who loves himself and has healed himself? There must be someone in this whole wide world who will know how to value that!

He needs to have faith in this connection. He needs to remember that he had no control over how it started. It just... happened. It was Divine planning and Divine timing. It came to him when he most needed it even when he didn’t know that he needed it. That’s how the Divine works. As broken, trauma-beaten humans, we tend to want to control everything exactly according to our understanding. But know that our understanding of life is limited. We don’t know everything that is happening or will happen in the future. We don’t know everything about other people. We don’t even know everything about ourselves. How can we hope to control everything with our limited knowledge? Only the Divine/ Universe/ Source or whatever you want to call it, knows everything every time. Even when homo sapiens were merely amoebas, the Universe was still here, doing its job. Even when humans were not here to “oversee” everything, the Universe was still operating smoothly according to its own rules. Everything human beings have learnt is from the Universe, from nature. It was here before us and it will be here probably even after we’re extinct. We’re not supposed to get ahead of it, we’re supposed to align with the Universal flow that has always existed. And we do it by having faith. Anything that is rooted in spirituality will require faith. We tend to want to first see things/ get assurances before we can have faith, but in reality it is only when we have faith that we see what we want. If the greatest inventors of the world waited to see things to believe in their existence, we wouldn’t have made all these advancements. To create something, and especially to create something new, have faith first. You can’t expect to have deep, pure, unconditional love by treating it like a casual date. Don’t try to define or understand it in terms of connections or relationships you’ve already had, because this is nothing like that. IF there is something wrong with this connection, trust that you will know. If you are keeping a clear, open mind, you will KNOW when things are wrong, and you will know when they are right. Don’t restrict your good judgement by doubting yourself all the time. Don’t depend on others to define or solve a situation that YOU are going through. It is your problem, you are capable enough to solve it. That’s how the Universe hands us situations and problems. We already have the capability of handling them, we just need to dig it out of ourselves firstly by deciding that we want to solve it, then by believing that we can. We really don’t need anyone for anything in life. If we do need anyone, the Universe promptly sends them to us. It is natural to WANT someone to be beside us though. But if the Universe is showing us that it’s not the right time by putting distances and obstacles between us, then we need to trust and accept that it is for our highest good. We might not know how right now, but in time we will.

The DF, as I said, is in this state of complete acceptance. This has filled her up with a sense of peace, happiness and stability. She is not one bit sad about the separation. Instead, she is sad that Jungkook is staying sad simply because he’s not accepting a situation that he has no control over. This resistance is making him overthink and worry himself sick over what she’s doing, thinking, feeling, and then accusing her of being the reason why he’s sad. This is not his energy. This is not the person he is, she knows it. This connection has given her the much needed high vibration energy to deal with her personal problems and solve them. She is celebrating her small wins and just being alive you know? She has not felt this free and light in all her life and she is not going back to worrying over things and situations she can’t control and be sad about them. She REALLY wishes Jungkook to do his own healing and join her in this energetic space because it is beautiful! But like everything else, she can’t control him. Because of the intense love and passion he has for her, he might think that she controls him but she doesn’t. He is controlled by his own fear and anxiety. She can’t make him take the decisions and actions required for him to heal. She can only heal herself, hoping that it will energetically help him instead. And to do that, she needs to focus every bit of her energy on herself. She is always connected to Jungkook, but she will not play host to other interfering energies anymore. Jungkook needs to also focus all his energy on himself but again, she can’t force him to do anything, it’s his call. She expects complete freedom to make her own life decisions according to her own understanding, and she expects anyone who claims to love her to respectfully accept it without accusing her of being selfish. Because self love is NOT being selfish. Especially for people like Jungkook and his DF, who are giving people, self love is an investment for the betterment of everyone they come in contact with. The more they invest in themselves, the more their tribe flourishes. He needs to accept that she shouldn’t be expected to be on standby while he is sorting out his life. He needs to accept that she deserves to live her life while she needs to accept that he deserves to live his life as well. There is no need to restrict or limit your life for your TF. Like I said, spirituality is about freedom. If a TF connection is not completely free of restrictions and limitations then it’s most likely not one. And yes, that includes dating as well. It might never happen, but that’s not the point. The point is, how far are we willing to go into acceptance of our TF counterpart’s freedom of choice for their happiness? And the answer should always be, ALL THE WAY. If your divine counterpart decides to start dating while in separation, it definitely won’t be an easy thing to handle. But if it’s really the unconditional love you swear you have for them, you should work through your own insecurities to allow them that choice as well. Of course, one doesn’t have to. No one is obligated to put up with anything they don’t like or can’t accept, or stay in that kind of a connection. And that’s the beauty of spirituality. Freedom. You are free to reject that connection. There is no “duty” or “destiny” binding you to anything you REALLY do not want to be a part of. But you’ve got to choose a side now and commit to that journey. No more doubting and avoiding. If you want it, then do what needs to be done for it, not just what you’re comfortable doing. If your comfort zone is more preferable to you, then stay in there but don’t complain why there’s no “unconditional love” in this world. To get unconditional love, you must give unconditional love first. And to do that, remove all restrictions and conditions in your own mentality that get in the way— not in the other person’s mentality. Trust in the Universe which has obviously proven time and time again to be more powerful than you. Trust that the energy you put out is the energy you will receive.

To sum up, this is a really important phase in Jungkook’s life. He is on a crossroad, not able to make definite decisions, just because he can’t put enough faith in himself, the Universe and this connection. Well, he can’t control the connection or the Universe so he should start with increasing faith in himself. Believe that he can and will always take the right decisions because here’s the fun thing: there are no wrong decisions when the intention is right. His DF believes in his ability because she knows his intentions to be pure and genuine all the time. All he wants is to do good to everyone, she has seen that. And the Universe loves him for that and wants to reward him. But he is blocking his rewards by being so damn stubborn and resistant. Don’t resist the change. Change is good. Change is growth. Growth means promotion and rewards. He has already sort of taken the right decision by wanting to focus on himself. It is time to commit to it by letting go of doubts and by FULLY, WHOLLY focusing his energy on himself and himself only. Leave his worries about his DF to the Universe. She’s a strong gal, she’s got this! TFs are not supposed to be energy leeches on each other’s backs. They’re not supposed to be weaknesses to each other, they’re supposed to be each other’s biggest strengths. Allow her to grow on her own to be the strong and rightful partner that she has the potential to be. Allow her to stretch her limbs and see what she’s capable of doing in her life, to go after her dreams with full force and focus. Just his energy of wanting to protect her and take care of her make her feel SO loved it really makes her feel like she can do anything! He doesn’t need to do anything else for her right now. What he really needs to protect her from is his own negative energies, by working on healing them, because she feels them. He needs to protect her from outside interference by taking responsibility of his own healing and his own life. People are pointing fingers at this connection because his life and mental health deteriorating. Not everyone is against him or this connection. Some people genuinely love him and want the best for him, and if he gives them the reason to believe that this connection is the reason why he is suffering, then that is wrong. He needs to step up and step in. They need to see this period as a gift, an opportunity to become their best versions before they get back together so that when they do, they don’t end up hurting each other due to their wounded ego-based behaviours. It’s not the easiest journey but I assure it is the MOST fulfilling. Once you let go of your worries, and everything you can’t control, you find this constant peace of mind, which is interspersed with frequent moments of euphoria— when you do get there, you’ll never want to go back. You get a bird’s eye view of this life and realize what the most important things in life really are, and what you really want, what really gives you real happiness. And you also see the best ways to get there. Free yourself. That’s why this connection really has come into your life. Free yourself from your own limitations. Your DF wants nothing from you except for you to flourish and be happy. Do whatever the hell you need to do for that, no judgements at all. She’ll meet you at the other side of the finish line :)

[miraculouscontent]

Ask Explosion #6

Asks answering previous posts:

Oh, okay! I’m glad, thank you!

(the post this anon is referring to)

Ohhhh.

And fjbgjnfkjgfg thanks >////<

I don’t think there’s much wrong with liking the design itself; I prefer Riposte personally, but that’s just me.

The best way I could put the “insensitive” part (I’m sort of dumb when it comes to this stuff and I talked about it before when I was working on that 3D model of Marinette) is that it’s so heavy on Japanese. I mean, they already have Kagami constantly wear what looks like a school uniform and Tomoe is just like--super heavy Japanese. It’s like the show doesn’t know how to balance “can’t tell at all” (with Marinette) and then “okay this is WAY strong” (with Kagami+Tomoe+Kung Food).

That makes sense! I guess the only problem then would be that the kwami can’t really act as mentors of any kind because “you’re saying this just because that’s all you can say” (like Sass, hypothetically, always willing to give someone a second chance, no matter what; I know that’s not what his power specifically entails but it’s just an example).

I would however definitely lean towards kwami being very strict in one alignment, so Tikki would always be on the path of pure good and thus never want to take/steal/whatever, whereas Plagg is always on the path of “bad,” but there are times where Marinette will have to ignore Tikki while Adrien will have to listen to Plagg.

And yeah, the guardians existing and the kwami not having so much control... not a huge fan.

Someone asked about Chat Noir’s flirting and he claimed that it was “on purpose” (you know, while throwing episodes like “Felix” at us but okay) and then he followed up with this:

There was also this other comment he made a while back when someone tried to make a suggestion to him:

Except he’s missing the point completely. When he talks about constructive criticism, he acts like it doesn’t matter, especially not anymore now that they’re working on Seasons 4 and 5:

(I mean, personally, I don’t think I need “engineering knowledge” to know when a rollercoaster I’d ridden nearly tossed the cart off the tracks and had questionable design decisions, but you do you, Astruc.)

Yes, constructive criticism is mainly for seeing a product improve, but that doesn’t mean ignoring it because, “well you haven’t seen the full product.”

“Animaestro” even has a bit of commentary on it:

Ladybug: What's with that trailer too? I am not scared of cats, at all.

Animaestro: You haven't even seen the movie and you're already slamming it?

Chat Noir: He does have a point, you know.

Ladybug: I wasn't slamming it. It's called constructive criticism!

(firstly, of course Chat Noir bows to Astruc on that one because he’s Astruc’s sunshine boy, ugh)

Ignoring the fact that a movie/printed book is usually a “full product,” criticism is also to say “you did this thing wrong, don’t do this in the future.” It doesn’t have to be referring strictly to the show. It’s just, “you did this thing wrong and here’s why, try to catch yourself if you accidentally do it again in the future, whether in what you’re working on now or otherwise.”

(He’s also talked about “unsolicited critique” before and I don’t know what that means? Like, dude, this isn’t someone’s fanfiction where I’d actually agree that you can’t go after them for their work. This is professional work.)

Anyway, remember “Chameleon”? When everyone saw the trailer and absolutely flipped out over it, then there were people who were like, “Wait for the full episode!!”?

Guess what? The full episode came out and people were either just as mad or even madder than before.

Astruc wants to have his cake and eat it to. He wants to say that his episodes are “stand-alone,” and that the order isn’t that important, but when people start pointing out issues, it becomes, “No! You have to wait for the rest of the episodes to come out!” and when people do that, it’s gonna be like, “Well, we already did the whole show so it’s not like I can change anything. *shrug*”

Also, just blaming it on “the industry” when everything else has been exhausted:

(He’s literally brought up before that the New York special was meant to have subplots about other characters, so it’s not like he can never say anything when something didn’t fit the “original vision”; I’m not asking him to get on his knees and say he’s sorry - plus, I do recognize that a lot of influence comes from the industry and people like Jeremy - but I expect a little more than the “whoops” he gave when people pointed out that “Weredad” contradicted his statement on Miraculous Ladybug.)

I think the reason people see it the way they do is because of Fu’s line in “Robostus” seems to imply the exact opposite thing happening.

Master Fu: Universe must always stay in balance. For every action, there is a reaction. For every wish, a price to pay in return. Had your robotic friend asked to become a real boy, someone would have lost his humanity in return.

New Asks:

Marigami is acceptable. I’m not crazy about it but it’s likable enough.

Lukadrien though... no, absolutely not. On a conceptual level, because it’s such a slap in the face for Marinette, and on a fanon level, because most of the jokes around it is Luka going to Marinette like he’s about to ask her out and then just asks for Adrien’s details. It’s just... ugh. I hate it (throwing Marinette into the ship still doesn’t help for me though because I’m not into the love square).

Bi erasure is my least favorite thing.

And yeah, it’s like--they set the love square ship(s?) out onto the water, then the Lukanette ship later with the plan to either sink it or just kinda... return it to the harbor if they don’t make a huge fuss about it?

Meanwhile, the love square ship has been in piece this whole time, and instead of letting it sink, they put it on a raft to keep it floating.

Depends.

In LadyBugOut? It’s already written and I haven’t posted it.

For canon? Like, Marinette being super disappointed at her view of Adrien being shattered or? :P

That’s accurate. I dislike about a fourth-ish of Season 1,then about half-ish of Season 2, then like... almost all of Season 3.

So we’ll just have to see what happens in Season 4.

I like Adrimi, but I’m not crazy about it and I don’t really write for it unless Lukanette is already the main ship (making Adrimi just a background ship). Adrien tends to dismiss Kagami a lot (like in “Frozer” and then “Miracle Queen” with him not committing) and I don’t want to see Kagami hurting like that (I agree with the anon completely that Adrien is more at fault than she is). They’re both emotionally-stunted so I usually have them wait it out or something to have them get together.

My ideal endgame is Lukanette while Adrimi is more like “let’s wait, let’s work on ourselves (especially Adrien; Kagami at least has on firm crush and wants to commit to it), and we’ll see where we go down the line.”

I don’t know if they really have the guts to arrest Gabriel. I also think that Lila might pick up the butterfly at the end of Season 5 or something after she’s been “dealt with.”

Chloe also is the mayor’s daughter so even if the law was that strict on teens, nothing would happen to her unless Andre got replaced.

Big yikes.

Maybe that the thing forcing Marinette away from Adrien and causing things to go wrong is the part of the curse trying to prevent the ladybug and cat miraculous from coming together?

So, close enough to be attracted and want to work together, but forcing the ladybug away from the cat to prevent the miraculouses from being used to make a wish?

I CHOKED ON MY DRINK.

ugh

ugh

ugggggggh

I’m 100% sure that Marinette wouldn’t be as uncomfortable around Adrien if Alya hadn’t constantly intervened. She’s the enabler of both Marinette’s anxiety and her crush on Adrien.

I went back and looked at the scene and it does kinda look like it, yes, because it basically goes from the intersection Marinette is in to another intersection that looks very, extremely similar and I don’t see Marinette in that intersection.

It was just a really, really bad transition. I remember being thrown off for a second too so I don’t blame you, anon.

I think Bob Roth’s intent was to scare Marinette away from showing that proof? He probably knows very well that Marinette has all the evidence she needs to make a case and already had a story planned for the press about how “the young talents they found didn’t measure up and the people deserved better.”

He just needed enough pressure on them for them to believe that he had enough authority to silence them.

And then Silencer tried to silence him instead. :3

I don’t think Marinette’s relationship with her parents would change too much. Like, they already let her just go out whenever she wants which obviously Plagg approves off, although Marinette might become more numb to the idea of being grounded because Plagg just teaches her, “hey lol Ladybug isn’t grounded tho,” so Marinette sneaks out all the time.

Yeah, Tikki would probably justify Gabriel’s behavior, and she wouldn’t really be able to get on his case for flirting as Mister Bug because she’s not aware of it.

lol it helps no one to have Tikki I guess.

Adrien overall and then honorable mention to Alya for Winny’s comment about her being Marinette’s conscience (which is probably why they almost never nail Alya for stuff she does).

KHNJFDNGFD THE LUKANETTE QUEEN MONIKER RETURNS >///<

And ugh, the absolute level of bias in that. Even if the video was made in, like, Season 2 (don’t know, didn’t see it), Season 2 still gives examples of why Adrienette isn’t making Marinette happy at all (and has some of the love square failings too).

The name and the fact that they gave it that name tells me everything I need to know.

Goodness gracious.

Yeah, people can talk about character’s flaws. I mean, we talk a lot here about Marinette’s struggles in getting over Adrien (partly brought on by a lot of outside factors but still).

Also, sure, Luka is a “pushover” because he’s one of the few characters who understands Marinette’s tunnel vision and isn’t bothered by it, okay. :P (Interesting that the topic of Chat’s entitlement towards Ladybug but Luka respecting her choices and just enjoying being around her makes him her punching bag).

Every time I hear, “Adrien needs more spotlight!!!” I lose a part of my soul. How people can’t see that Marinette is the show’s true punching bag is beyond me.

#other: ask and answer #relationship: Kagami Tsurugi & Marinette Dupain Cheng #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Luka Couffaine #category: salt #category: fandom #relationship: Luka Couffaine & Marinette Dupain Cheng #relationship: love square #character: Oni Chan #topic: kwami #character: Adrien Agreste #character: Alya Cesaire #special: Miraculous New York #episode: Silencer #relationship: Marinette Dupain Cheng & Plagg #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Tikki #character: Lila Rossi #character: Chloe Bourgeois #topic: the wish #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Kagami Tsurugi #character: Hawk Moth #relationship: Alya Cesaire & Marinette Dupain Cheng

[deniigi]

@puffins-studio is my Selkie Verse enabler.

We were chatting about where Mike would fit in the Selkie Verse and then this AU of an AU happened lol

Title: twin hearts twin coats

Summary: Mike’s an unruly little seal who wants nothing more than to give Jack high blood pressure and he is on a crusade not to make a single friend in Ireland. Unless they’re Matty’s friends. In which case, he needs to steal them.

Context: Matt and Mike are born as rare twin seal pups. This bit assumes that Mike was there for all of Whispering Seas but then fades out of view for a bit as he does his own thing until Matt gets his coat back.

-------

For as long as the two been walking, Jack had been missing a twin.

Usually, it was Mike.

Usually, Mike was trying to sink his sharp little teeth into something he knew Dad did not want him too.

Usually, whatever he was trying to swallow whole would result in a call to poison control and Jack would be on the line for half an hour, reading through ingredients with a patient but stern woman while Mike beamed up at him, proud of his latest accomplishments.

After Matt’s year of hell with foster care, however, Mike had been traumatized. And had taken to keeping Matt within sight at all times.

You would have thought that that would have prevented Mike from being the missing twin these days.

But no.

No, now Jack wasn’t missing one twin.

He was missing two.

Constantly.

Both of his children were un-findable at practically all times.

Grace did not have these problem with the boys. Grace simply made a sound in her throat that Mike called back to immediately, regardless of where he was.

Jack did not have this power.

Over Mike, anyways. Jack had more power over Matty because Matty had a deep-ingrained instinct to only want Daddy when he was upset. But that shit didn’t exactly have range, now did it?

Grace told him he should simply learn how to make the throat-noise, which was easy for her to say: as if Jack could make seal noises.

Jack could barely speak a form of English that folks around here understood. He wasn’t makin’ any damn seal noises. He’d just figure out how to find his kids, thanks.

He was good at it, anyways.

His boys were eight.

They were on the way to being geniuses and criminal masterminds, but they were not there yet, so Jack had a good 76% chance of finding them in the first place he looked.

The bathtub.

He always looked in the bathtub. And, like he said, 76% of the time, there they were. Both of them. Looking guilty as hell—big liquid seal eyes or not.

Matty usually got quiet and scared of punishment around then and would make sad tiny seal noises at Jack and let himself be hauled out of the water and rubbed down with a towel.

Matty was the good twin.

The extremely traumatized twin. Jack didn’t like to think too much about how compliant he became in the face of a stern tone. It was enough that he was home again and that he was healing. Slowly. Very shyly.

It was enough. Matty was allowed to be a little fragile.

Now Michael had no shame and, true to character over the last eight years, refused to feel anything about his disobedience but ‘caught.’

Jack loved Mikey, the little shit, with his whole heart, but that big smile and those baby blues did not work on him anymore.

Up you go, monster-child. And into towel-hell—yeah, yeah, whine all you want. Look how nicely your brother did it.

As soon as towel-hell was over, Mike went tearing out of the bathroom, turning back only to hiss at Jack and then run into the door. Jack watched him vanish out of sight and then sighed. Matty pawed at his side, making those little throat-sounds.

“You’re okay, baby,” Jack said. “No one’s in trouble.”

Matt clung to him and hid his face in Jack’s belly.

Really, he was the one who should have been trouble. He was the one who Jack should have been chasing after to grab the hand of—to be keeping a constant vigilance over to prevent him from falling off cliffs and getting too far out into the surf.

But no.

That would be Mike.

That would always be Mike.

A pot banged and clattered in the kitchen.

Matt covered his ears and made even more urgent sad chirps.

Jack sighed harder.

“Come on, let’s go make lunch before your brother destroys the whole lighthouse,” he said.

 ----

 Matty had Foggy and thank fuck he had Foggy because that gave Jack time to go pry Michael out of whatever deathtrap he threw himself into after school.

Jack didn’t understand what this kid wanted from all the dark places he crawled into.

Was it adventure?

Was it the bugs?

Was he trying to fish?

Mike was more seal-like than Matt. Grace noted this with approval. He jumped into the water and swam deep and ate fish whole and let Mags groom him with minimal fuss while Matt wailed and whined like all those things were a death sentence.

He was simply more human, Grace said. The seal behavior didn’t come as naturally to him, so he was resistant.

Jack thought it was more like Matty had enough sense in him to not want to be suffocated by pelts and people prodding and prodding and dragging his fuzzy little coat this way and that.

Matty was a sensible child.

Foggy was slightly less sensible, but he had the right spirit. He was a good friend for Matty.

Mikey refused to make friends.

“They’re boring and human,” he told Jack. “I want a friend with more style.”

Mikey was a New Yorker through and fuckin’ through and he talked like a fuckin’ Newsie no matter how hard Jack tried to get him to imitate his mama’s cadence.

That accent would serve him no decent purpose when he was older, whereas something more Irish would at least make him come off as friendly. Jack knew—boy, Jack knew.

“Why don’t you try making friends with Foggy, too?” Jack offered, once the Trouble Twin had been dumped in the boat. Mike popped up and immediately tried to jump ship. Jack pushed the boat further away from the dock with his foot and got a face of pure betrayal.

“I don’t want a friend like him,” Mike snapped. “He’s gooey. I ain’t got time for some fruit snack.”

For fuck’s sake, child.

“Just because Foggy doesn’t wanna steal footballs with you, doesn’t mean he’s not a good friend,” Jack said. “He don’t like the church, Mikey. It’s not you, it’s the church, son. I told you this a thousand times.”

“If he’s scared of the church, he’s gonna be scared of shenanigans, Dad,” Mike said. “I live for shenanigans. No, we just ain’t compatible, Father.”

For.

Fuck’s.

Sake.

Jack wasn’t letting this one watch any more tv. No more Guys & Dolls. It was bad for everyone.

“Michael,” Jack said.

“Jonathan,” Mike shot back, haughty as hell with his arms crossed and back straight as a board.

“Son, you need to make friends,” Jack said.

“I got loads of friends at home,” Mike said. “And we’ll be home in no time. I don’t need any more ‘til then.”

Mike hated Ireland.

Jack could not understand this.

There were rocks to climb and there was sand to dig in, there were clams to bang against each other, bricks to throw, a local witch to antagonize—this was Mikey paradise. Or it should have been.

But no.

Mike had learned the word ‘cosmopolitan’ and, even though he thought it meant ‘good enough to be in a magazine,’ he’d declared Ireland not that and had set out on a crusade against being happy with it.

Grace said he was too much of a city boy was all. She said that he’d realize after some time that he was lonely and he’d do what he’d always do, which was charm half the girls at his school and become a popular kid within days.

It had been months now, though, and Mikey was still refusing to budge.

It was exhausting.

“Boy, you’re givin’ me heartburn,” Jack told him.

“Well, you’re givin’ me Lupus,” Mike said.

God.

No more House either.

 ---

 Matty came home around four thirty, which Jack could tell made Mike green with jealousy. Mike wanted to stay out like him, but he didn’t want to be associated with Foggy or his sister.

They weren’t cool enough, apparently. Or tough enough.

Jack didn’t know what that meant. Foggy had helped them relocate Mike’s brother. That was plenty bad-ass to Jack, but what the fuck did he know about kids?

Clearly nothing, since Mike had outsmarted him again and somehow managed to watch a whole three Emergency Vets reruns while he wasn’t looking.

This child wanted to give himself nightmares.

“What did you and Foggy do, hm?” Mike nagged as Matt struggled with his shoelaces. Matt sat down to go at them better and Mike flopped down next to him.

“Hm?” he pressed.

“Made homes for ants,” Matt said. “They live in hills. So we made some for them. Put leaves on top to make sure they stay dry ‘nd stuff, you know?”

No. Mike did not know.

“Ants bite you,” Mike said.

“Only if you’re mean,” Matt said.

“No, they got grains of sand for brains,” Mike said. “They’ll bite you.”

“Well, they got a home now, bitey or no,” Matt said.

“Hey, let’s make a cave—”

“I want a snack.”

“Cave then snack.”

Matt tried to work through that order of events and Jack sighed before he agreed.

“Boys,” he said. “Close the front door. It’s gonna storm. No caves for now.”

Mike turned back to him mutinously.

 ---

 After an hour of shooing the babes away from windows and then telling them that it was time to settle down and do indoor activities or listen to a book on tape, the house had gotten quiet.

That was trouble.

Jack put a lid on the pot on the stove and began the Hunt.

The kids were not in the tub. They were in their room.

They’d made a blanket fort.

It wasn’t a good one—they didn’t have that many blankets, but they had some pillows and Mike had a flashlight. They’d cuddled up in the middle of the room with a pile of pillows from the couch and the spare duvet and were nestled up against each other in their coats.

Mike hissed when Jack parted the sheet curtain they’d gerry-rigged around the perimeter of the nest. Matty turned his way and made a happy throat-sound.

“You two getting into trouble?” Jack asked, folding himself into a pretzel to join them on the duvet. Matt immediately wriggled up to climb into his lap, which Mike scowled at.

Mike was of the opinion that this was ‘baby’ behavior. He was highly concerned that his sibling was still exhibiting it, as if Mike didn’t immediately bury himself into Grace’s side when she came up to take the two of them out for a swim.

Jack pulled Matt into his arms more comfortably and reached over to snag his coat to drop over him.

“Are we telling ghost stories?” he asked the boys.

Matt said yes. Mike told him they weren’t ‘doin’ nothin’’ which meant ‘yes, I am trying to give my brother dreams about banshees again and your presence is destroying all of my hopes and life goals.’

“I have a ghost story,” Jack told them.

“Lana’s not dead, Dad,” Mike said. “You can’t tell ghost stories about ladies who aren’t dead.”

“You ain’t gotta be dead to haunt stuff, son,” Jack told him. “Lana will haunt the blue apartment long after we’re all gone.”

“Nuh-uh,” Mike said. “Me and Matty are gonna live forever. Selkies live for hundreds of years.”

Oh really, now?

“Come here, oh ancient one, then,” Jack said, holding out a hand. “Come indulge a poor, aging human.”

Mike huffed but allowed himself and his coat to be dragged over to join Matty in Jack’s lap.

“A long, long time ago,” Jack told them, “There was a guy trying to raise two squirmy little kids.”

Mike rolled his eyes by rolling his whole head into Matt’s so that he’d giggle.

“Was he a boxer, Dad?” Mike asked.

No, oldest child.

He was a lighthouseman.

Mike sighed harder than ever.

Damn, everyone’s a critic, huh?

“One day, the lighthouseman’s two squirmy kids went out to play on the beach in a storm,” Jack said. “They transformed into seals. But the sea was strong and the tide rose high and it swept them away from shore. They went all the way out to sea, far from their home. And they were lost and scared. But soon they decided that being scared wasn’t any help anymore, and they picked a direction to swim for shore. They went from island to island, asking the people there if they’d seen the lighthouseman because the kids were worried you know? Because their old man was just human, unlike them, and the sea back home had been so strong and the tide so high that it might have crashed against the lighthouse and taken the lighthouseman away. But no one had even heard of a such a guy.”

Matt dug fingers into his sleeve and made a soft distressed sound.

“One day,” Jack said, kissing the top of his head. “The kids came across a load of swans in the middle of the ocean. So they asked the swans, ‘have you seen our dad? He’s kinda tall with a busted up nose.’ And they said, ‘no, we lost our dad, too. Maybe we can help each other find them?’”

“Did they?” Mike asked reluctantly.

“Of course they did,” Jack said. “The swans were secretly the children of Lir. They knew what it was like to be separated from their father, but, unlike those kids, they knew their father wouldn’t recognize them. So they flew up and the kids swam after them all the way back to Ireland, so that they wouldn’t end up like the Children of Lir, waiting hundreds of years for their dad to bring them home.”

Matt did not like this story.

Matt had had plenty of bird people in his life. He wanted no more. He wrapped himself around Jack’s neck and made grumpy sounds to indicate that he was done with this whole story business.

Mike’s little brow stayed furrowed.

“You’d recognize us right away,” he said. “We wouldn’t be like the Children of Lir, Dad, first off, ‘cause we wouldn’t ever leave you by yourself. Second off, because Mum’s carryin’ your soul for forever, so even when you’re old and dead, we’ll still have ya. And third off, ‘cause you’re a hero. We could find you just by sniffin’.”

Matt made louder grumpy noises to remind everyone that he didn’t like this conversation.

Jack hummed and rubbed Matt’s back and used the other hand to smooth down Mike’s hair.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But that don’t mean that I don’t miss you guys while you’re paddlin’ around in the sea without me.”

“TUNA,” Matt snapped.

Jack was startled.

“Tuna?” he asked.

“I’m hungry,” Matt said. “Let’s eat tuna.”

“You hate tuna,” Mike reminded him. “I’m the one who likes tuna.”

“Well I hate tuna less than I hate stories,” Matt snapped. “So I wanna eat tuna.”

Ah.

Bless him.

Okay, tuna it was.

 ---

 Grace told Jack to stop telling the kids that he was going to die. She said it was making them cry out in the sea. She reminded him that she didn’t take the damn kids to the sea to cry. She took them to fish. And they were still both shit at fishing.

Jack apologized.

But he didn’t feel too bad.

The fae in the woods told him he didn’t have too much longer in human form. He didn’t want the boys to be surprised.

Lord knew that they’d already been surprised enough over the last few years.

 ---

 Mike decided that he wanted to learn how to sail and, in lieu of him finding children his age to play with, Jack set to teaching him how to row. It was a good start. Grace approved. She even went out and found a little tub with a set of oars for Mike to play around in.

He immediately nearly drowned by taking it out into the bay.

Jack set him on the other side of the sandbar by the lighthouse and he did better. He was closer to where Matt and Foggy liked to play too, so if something went wrong again, the other kids would start shouting.

After a whole afternoon of no shouting, Jack went out to collect the munchkins and found Foggy out in the bay chatting with Mike with hands on the edge of the tub.

That was surprising.

What was not was the fact that Matt and Candace were digging a fuckin’ hole in the sand. Again.

Foggy must have gotten bored of them.

Jack watched as Mike took ahold of his wrist and heaved hard and brought Fogs over the end of the little tub. They both tumbled down into it.

Then Foggy popped up and leapt right back out into the water. Mike nearly followed him, shaking his oar after him.

Jack couldn’t help but snicker. He left them to it for another ten minutes before calling the boys in.

 ---

 It was hilarious.

It was adorable.

It was the cutest fucking thing Jack had ever heard, indignant as Matty was, standing on his toes, all puffed up and agitated.

“Mikey’s got a crush on Foggy and he won’t clear off,” he’d told Jack.

He didn’t appreciate Jack’s giggling.

“Foggy’s my friend,” Matt told him. “Mike can play with Candace.”

Uh-huh.

Sure, son. That was gonna go down real well.

“Daddy.”

Jack forced himself to stop laughing. He cleared his throat.

“That’s not how these things work, bud,” he said. “Why don’t you talk it over with Mikey?”

“I did,” Matt said. “An’ he told me to bug off.”

Ah, you poor child.

That was older brothers for you. Jack knew the feeling intimately.

“He’s rude,” Matt complained. “An’ he’s stealin’ my friends. He’s already stolen my identity, Dad. Tell him to stop.”

It would never not be funny that these kids thought that people confused them out of spite.

“You can both be friends with Foggy,” Jack told him. “Unless Foggy only wants to be friends with one of you.”

Matt puffed up and then deflated.

“Mikey’s got loads of friends at home,” he mumbled. “Why do I gotta share my one friend when he doesn’t share any of his?”

Oh, baby. No, it wasn’t like that.

It was just that Mike was outgoing, that was all. He just had that special knack for being around people. Jack didn’t know where he’d gotten it from, both he and Grace were not people-people. Matty was the natural extension of their mutual social awkwardness. Mike was more like Jack’s own brothers, actually. Smooth, suave, and oh-so likable.

Dangerous shit, that was.

He would be unstoppable after 14 years old.

“Here, come here, you,” Jack said. “Having friends isn’t about the number of ‘em. It’s about having fun. You have fun with your brother all the time, don’t you? And Foggy brings Candace along with you two all the time. Why don’t you guys try to be friends as a group of four, huh?”

Matt didn’t love this idea, but he relented.

“Only if Mike stops tryin’ to be a pirate,” he said. “He keeps hittin’ me with that stick.”

Ah. Okay. Well, that Jack could do something about.

 ---

 “But I am a pirate, Dad. I’m stealin’ Matty’s friends.”

For.

Fuck’s.

Sake.

Jack could not with this boy. He simply could not.

“Son,” he said. Then paused.

No. Mike wouldn’t hear anything he said.

This was a job for Grace.

 ---

 “Is that what Jesus would do?” Grace snapped.

Mike sulked.

“No, Mum,” he groaned.

“Then why’re you doing it to your brother?” Grace demanded.

“Cain didn’t like his brother,” Mike mumbled.

“Michael. You are named for a saint.”

Mike groaned with his whole body somehow.

“I’m sorry God,” he said.

Grace vibrated.

Jack didn’t know who to protect here.

“I just wanna be a pirate,” Mike explained. “And pirates steal things. They gotta, Mum. It’s how they make a livin’.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed.

 ---

 Grace did this occasionally.

She kidnapped one of the twins for some personal time with them. Jack was grateful for it because that twin was usually Mike and he usually came back looking guilty as hell.

It wasn’t that Jack didn’t love his kid. It was just that Mike didn’t really show much regard for his authority.

Affection? Oh, sure. Both boys wanted nothing more than to show Jack everything they’d ever done or made. They wanted to be cuddled and tossed around and tickled. It had been ages before they understood why Dad didn’t come out swimming with them anymore—they couldn’t show him their cool seal tricks that way.

But authority? For Mike?

Nope. This kid was on the path towards trouble, and he’d probably already be there if his mama didn’t routinely take him under her flipper and remind him that he needed to think about other peoples’ feelings.

Matty, of course, had decided early on that personal time with Mum was a punishment, however.

When Jack came home without Mike, in full awareness that Mags was probably just gonna throw him in the water and tire him out until he was pliable and open to suggestion, Matt sniffed all around him and came up in tears.

It took a good ten minutes to convince him that Mike would be coming home.

What helped were some cheerios and letting Matt smell the tuna that was to go into the tuna salad sandwich that his brother was currently obsessed with. Jack reminded him that he wouldn’t be making two different kinds of sandwiches for dinner if there wasn’t gonna be someone there to eat them.

Matt played with the dry cheerios in the bowl Jack had given him and quietly asked him if Mike would be mad if he learned that Matty wanted to be a human hero like Jack.

Jack’s heart melted.

Grace had told him that Matt had told her this. But Matty hadn’t said it to him directly and he sure as hell hadn’t told Mike.

That was fair—the second bit. Mike, like most other selkies, tended to see humans as replaceable things. Kinda boring. Kinda selfish. Not overly worth his investment unless they were investing in him.

Jack thought that Mike might change his tune if he realized that his twin thought humans were kind of grand.

Or maybe not. Who knew what Mike would think.

“I think that if you tell him, he might be really confused for a while,” Jack said.

Matt dropped his handful of cereal back into the bowl and squirmed all the way back in the chair.

“’M not hungry,” he said.

Aw.

It’s okay, little one. Things will get easier with time.

 ---

 Objectively speaking, it wasn’t long after that that Jack died.

It was what it was.

His kids were ten. They were safe. Mags tried to wrangle them.

Jack went to sleep.

Five years, he slept.

He woke up to Matty having a breakdown and Mike nowhere to be found and it was another three years before Jack managed to have enough awareness and mobility in the afterlife to get both of them to not fuckin’ do that shit.

Then it was another four years before Mike reappeared out of thin air and announced he was stayin’ in the city and where the fuck was his evil twin, which coincided with Matt showing back up from orientation at law school to shriek at Jack that Foggy was there! Foggy was back! Foggy was studying law with him and staying in his dorm and OH MY GOD, DAD, IT’S FOGGY.

Kid was love-fucking-sick.

Grace told him to watch his mouth. Matty didn’t know yet. They needed to let him figure it out on his own.

Jack thought that it had already taken Matty a good 16 years to realize that the reason he hated his brother crushing on Fogs was because he was crushing on Fogs. He was not the most self-aware of people. He deserved a little help.

Grace told him that he would speak to their younger son only upon pain of being stuffed into her flute.

Jack did not like the flute.

So he kept mum. But only in Matt’s presence.

This did not include Mike’s presence. Because Mike had other problems which looked like him trying to join a local mob, deciding that they weren’t cool enough for him, and then bouncing off to go join a pod of selkies, making enemies of all of the guys in it and then coming back to New York from a trip to Florida in the arms of a pixie who was actively trying to kill him in his sleep.

Mike was, predictably, a hot mess.

And he loved it.

God help this boy. He required all of Jack’s energy.

“Michael,” Jack reminded him exhaustedly when he stopped in the street as a gal with butterfly wings glanced over her shoulder at him. “You’ve got one at home and she’s mad enough to spit.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike said without listening.

This fucking kid.

“Hey, pops, why don’t you go be someone else’s angel for like, twenty seconds over there, huh?”

Hm. No, you’re right, what a great idea—AHAHA. No. Nice try. Jack wasn’t born yesterday.

It was his new purpose in death trying to keep this one on the straight and narrow. He’d been assigned the mission by a nun. It was now a holy quest.

“You can’t say that about everything Mom tells you to do,” Mike scowled.

He did not, however, pursue Ms. Butterfly wings.

“Where’s Matty, anyways? None of you will tell me where Matty is,” Mike pouted.

Matty was, according to Grace, being heartsick because Foggy had gone home for the holidays.

“Mass,” Jack said.

Mike rolled his eyes.

“I’m not goin’,” he said. “I’ve got a job, Dad. Tell Matt to get one, too.”

A job, huh?

What a job. Sluggin’ people on behalf of other humans.

“I can feel your disappointment and—oh, wait? It’s my life? I can do what I want? I am allowed to sustain myself with offerings however they come? Oh my god, Father. What sense you speak. You’ve turned over a new leaf, truly.”

This?

This was a Grace problem.

 ---

 Jack didn’t expect Matt to be the one who came home with a secret violent identity.

Then he didn’t expect Mike to be the one to break down Matt’s door and stand over him and ask him what the fuck he was thinking.

Then he didn’t expect Mike to be the one to bodily drag Matt out to sea in an attempt to bring him back to his roots.

Mike nearly drowned his brother.

It was certainly one way to get everyone back on the same page. Jack wasn’t about to lie and say it was the best way, but it was definitely a way.

Mike came to church and accused him and Grace of keeping Matt’s secrets from him. Not just the devil, but the coat situation and Foggy.

Mike was justifiably upset, but Grace pointed out that Mike’s current approach to humanity did not exactly jive with his brother’s existence, and not even Mike could argue with that. Although he did try. Let it be known that he tried.

He kept cutting himself off though, saying that Matt was different from other humans. Matt wasn’t like them. He was better than them. Which was exactly what Matt took issue with. And unfortunately for Mike, his brother had supersenses, and that included super hearing.

Grace asked Jack out to go calm Matty down.

He was pretty upset.

He tucked himself into Jack when Jack got to his hiding place on the roof of his loft and asked him why Jack had told Mike about the coat to begin with.

But Jack hadn’t told Mike about the coat. No one had. Mike found out these things on his own. He was clever like that.

“He’s always treated me different,” Matt said. “I thought it was ‘cause I’m blind, but it’s always been ‘cause I’m more human, hasn’t it?”

Horrible things to hear your kids say to each other.

Also untrue.

“Mike doesn’t treat you different because you’re blind or you’re human, bud,” Jack told him. “He treats you different because you’re his brother and he’s protective of you. That’s where this is coming from. It’s nothing you did.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Matt said.

Well, no.

It probably didn’t.

 ---

 Mike came around. And he came around by encountering the Hell’s Beast that little baby Franklin Nelson had become.

Foggy, to put it kindly, was one hell of a selkie.

He was huge, to start with. He’d grown from a chubby, pale little glow worm to a good three hundred pounds of enormous, white seal. He was staunchly traditional, if flexible, in his dealings with other fae, and he had zero patience for humanity while somehow acting entirely in their favor.

Foggy was a selkie in a textbook somewhere. He had to be. He was paranoid and untrusting of humans, but he would throw himself in the line of fire to protect anyone who he dealt with. And Mike, who’s relationship with humans tended to be more on the Trickster spectrum than the whole Noble Being one was a smidge intimidated.

At first.

Then he was violently jealous.

And let’s just play this record once more, shall we? Take it from the top.

He nagged Matt to bits, asking him to give up his bond with Fogs and to entrust his human soul to Mike.

We’re twins, Mike argued, it’s only right that I guard your soul.

Matt told him he’d lived his mortal life in plenty of dumpsters, thanks. He was looking for a change in the afterlife.

Mike told him he’d get him the nicest dumpster blood money could buy.

Matt told him to try to take the question to Fogs and see what would happen.

Mike took that to heart.

Grace asked Jack what they’d done wrong to end up with a stubborn devil-child and a vulture selkie.

Jack thought it was probably the tugboat.

Foggy, however, thought that it was the fact that Mike had zero impulse control, manners that only came out when he didn’t have the upper hand in a situation, no respect for boundaries, and shit fashion sense—not to mention a lack of interest in fae hierarchies, a fondness for antagonizing people, and, in Foggy��s opinion, a brain that didn’t properly register pain chemicals or empathy.

He told Mike that Matt’s soul was his and that if he wanted, he could fight him for it and Mike decided that that was a vow good enough for his little brother.

He switched tact and began trying to court Foggy instead and, to his credit, it sure as hell de-escalated the situation.

 ---

 Grace told Mike that Matt was going to get his coat back, but they didn’t hear from him. Jack wasn’t sure what to do, but Grace said that they didn’t have time to wait.

When they got home and Matty was trying to relearn how to swim and struggling like a zebra on a tightrope despite having both Grace and Fogs there to keep him from sinking, Mike reappeared in a pew at the church.

Jack found him and settled in next to him.

Mike asked him if Matty was okay.

He’d gotten the message only a few days ago. His hands were a little shaky when Jack smoothed his hair back and told him that he was just fine.

And not only was he fine. But he was very recognizable now. Or he should be, to Mike more than anyone else in the world.

Mike asked if Matt was still angry with him. If Foggy was still hellbent on chasing him off.

Jack thought that maybe, what Matty really needed right then wasn’t his mama or his bondmate, but his brother. His twin.

It had been a long time since Mike wanted a hug.

He told Jack that he was sorry for being a dick all these years.

Jack told him that he wasn’t a dick. He was fiercely independent and even if Jack didn’t always agree with him, he was still proud of him and proud of that drive and that passion.

He asked him if he was ready to go make up with his brother and Mike nodded instead of saying yes out loud.

 ---

 Matty’s new coat was white for the time being and Mike would not and could not drop that. He cooed at Matt and told him he was too fluffy to swim. Grace had to break them up before they got to neck-slamming.

But at the end of the day, Mikey was right.

Matt’s new coat was a baby’s coat. And Matt was a good 14 years out of swimming practice. His muscles had forgotten how to work as a seal. He was angry about it, which was endearing, but not especially helpful.

He explained to Mike that he’d made a deal with Fisk and Mike went dead quiet before exploding at him and once they’d mutually worked through that argument, the intensity of the swimming lessons rocketed up. Grace stood back and pulled Foggy back with her and they watched on as Mike harassed Matty back into fighting shape.

After the third night of Matt’s refresher course, Jack went to go check on them and found them piled together in their coats on Matt’s couch.

You couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended and to Jack, it felt like home.

He found threw a blanket over them both and took the time to kiss both foreheads before turning off the light and letting the purples and pinks of the billboard outside wash over them.

It was its own kind of rippling sea.

---

#ficlet #matt murdock #mike murdock #jack murdock #fic #selkie verse

[bigskydreaming]

So just out of curiosity, what inspired the whole Beacon Bay idea? What kind of sharks and dolphins are they? This entire thing is very intriguing to me and I can't wait to see more.

So first off, anyone who’s ever played soundingboard to my original stuff like Moukie or Adam can attest to the fact that I’m ocean obsessed, so there’s pretty much nothing I’m interested in that isn’t a mere two or three steps removed from an ocean/merfolk/sea witch AU in my head. Gimme anything and like, five minutes, and I can make it ocean themed. Space operas included. I grew up near the ocean, been surfing for ages though of course I haven’t in years, blah, but like. I’m a big fan of the deep blue sea. Its just....neat. ghaskfhalkfhla

So I’ve always had a bunch of ocean-set concepts. This particular AU came about from like, smashing a couple of them together to preserve them when my plans for doing original stuff with them fizzled out, at least for the time being. Cuz the other thing about me is the way some people like, take their fanfic and file off the serial numbers to turn it into original novels, I more often do the reverse, lmao. When I have something I can no longer do something with original-content-wise, for whatever reason, but I still like the idea, I turn it into fanfic so I can still play around with it whenever I want and like, have purpose to that, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time by still ‘indulging’ in that concept or whatever.

Like my Batfandom fic By Lost Ways, as I’ve mentioned before....that actually started out as an original high fantasy novel set in my ‘Tales of the Citadel’ shared universe. BUT the setting ended up being similar enough to a sci-fi project I wanted I to move forward with, ‘Waveriders’ (the one with the sky pirates and the ATLA-style benders only instead of evoking the four classical elements, waveriders could each ‘hack’ a different kind of wavelength, that one) like....basically, the projects FELT similar enough in setting and various superficial elements that I started to feel derivative of myself moving forward with both, so I picked Waveriders and then recycled the setting and a lot of the plot of the sky-set fantasy novel for fanfic, just for fun.

Same thing here, though Beacon Bay is basically the mash-up of two different shelved original projects. Basically, its the plot of a CW-style show about teen sirens and the sea witch making like the Fagin to their Oliver Twists, from a pilot I wrote years ago.....it got some interest but I refused to make it less gay because lol have you met me, so it ultimately never went anywhere but I still liked the plot. 

And then remember the werewolf books I mentioned awhile back, that had the mongoose shifters in them? LOL. Yeah, so I’d written two and a half novels in that series and had this whole expansive worldbuilding of twelve different shifter clans each with their own innate magic, patron deity/creator, etc, but all my agent and editor contacts at the time were like yeah sorry, shifters are over for now, and I was like wow, can’t believe cancel culture’s real and publishing cancelled werewolves, wtf, rude, and then I was like eh, still wanna play in this universe especially with the dolphins and shark shifters which I never even really got to in those books, so I’m just gonna air-lift them out of that and drop them smack in the middle of my CW siren plot and fanfic away to my heart’s content and call that ‘being productive’ when I feel like it.

Anyway, found family was a big theme of those books and the world-building I did there in general, because again, have you met me, I’m not predictable or anything (shhh, the word is consistent), and one of my initial things there was I wanted the various shifter types to all have innate magic, because for literally no real reason that I can discern other than Whimsy, I have always been Team Werewolf in vampires vs werewolves, and I was tired of werewolves always being by default the underdogs in those narratives. Even if that does make for a good pun.

SO, I wanted to come up with werewolf magic that felt natural and organic to werewolves, like nothing too flashy or obscure, but that would make them a legitimate threat even to other supernatural creatures. And I made it so each of the shifter types were granted an active and a passive magic by the god that created their type of shifter, and with werewolves, their active magic was that of the pack gestalt. I took the idea of ‘their whole is greater than the sum of their parts’ that TW kinda briefly touched on when presenting (but never really doing much with) the idea that the more wolves in a pack, the stronger that pack was.....and I decided okay what if being part of a pack upped stats all across the board AND all shifters have a SLIGHT innate resistance to magic, being innately magical beings themselves? 

So a werewolf pack, with enough pack members, would thus not only be formidable in strength, speed, senses and speed of healing....but compound that innate shifter resistance to magic, which in a single shifter is negligible, like, just enough to make them slightly harder to track with magic or curse or whatever.....but in a whole werewolf pack, that adds up to make the pack effectively immune to foreign magic. Vampires can’t compel them, demons can’t possess them, witches can’t curse them, etc. So a lone werewolf, not part of a pack, is formidable, but nothing another supernatural being can’t take on. But a lone werewolf who IS part of a pack....different story entirely, because now most other supernatural beings, no matter what their USUAL strengths, are reduced to taking on that werewolf hand to hand, as their own supernatural gifts or spells or whatever, like, aren’t gonna do them any good against these particular foes. And werewolves are USED to fighting with just brute physical strength and attributes, which gives them the edge against opponents who are more used to being able to fall back on magic in battle.

But as much as I like sticking to a theme, I like to diversify that theme where possible, so when it came to the other shifter types, I wanted to similarly come up with ways where ‘the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts’ but in like, entirely different ways.

So with dolphin shifters, their ‘passive magic’ (in quotes cuz that’s not quite the right word for it but whatever) is that they’re all empaths, with their more active magic being weather manipulation. Their empathy is a two-way street....they project emotions as well as just feel other peoples’, which ties into the fact that their patron deity was Dionysus. Dolphin parties....legendary. But in an extremely wild, dangerous and Bacchanalian kinda way. In terms of Beacon Bay specifically, this is a bit of a problem for the BB dolphins, as the closest thing they had to an official Triton (the dolphin shifter version of an Alpha) was Peter, but they were like nope, not loving this guy, and kinda drove him out of town in the AU S1 backstory of this ‘verse, which means Scott and the others are kinda just making it up as they go along, and don’t really know the ins and outs of BEING dolphin shifters. (Derek is....elsewhere, in this. Mostly). 

So bottom line is they have reputations around school for being loud obnoxious goofs and trouble-makers, constantly playing hooky and such, but its because they don’t really know HOW to safeguard against spilling their emotions onto everyone around them so they try and err on the side of being the life of the party whenever possible, as that’s better than the alternatives in their opinion. And when they’re just having bad days and bumming hard, the whole pod will just skip school and glomp around the bumming pod member whilst self-caring, rather than like, accidentally bum out the entire school.

But their weather manipulation magic is where the gestalt idea comes into play with them, as I love weather manipulating powers, but I didn’t want to make them all Ororo Munroe, y’know? Only Ororo Munroe can be Ororo Munroe. Don’t make me scoff. I’ll do it. I’ll scoff so hard. SO I went with the idea of weather control married to manipulating storms via song and was like, okay what if a dolphin pod is like, a symphony of shifters. 

Basically, its like each individual dolphin shifter is a single voice in a chorus, and there’s magical equivalents of being a baritone, an alto, etc. Like, none of them can whip up a storm on their own. Its more that each of them can summon or conjure a PIECE of a storm with their song, with it being different for each of them....symptomatic of their magic as an expression of them as an individual. So for instance, Scott’s song is ‘tuned’ to lightning. He can call down a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.....but he can’t summon so much as a drop of rain to save his life. Literally. Its an actual plot point at one point. Whereas Isaac’s song is all about calling down rain, Boyd’s is more of an arctic wind, and Erica’s kinda summons a pressure front that in harmony with the two of theirs can whip up a mean waterspout. And then Corey’s all about conjuring fog banks with low visibility while Liam can whistle up a strong, gale-force wind but sucks at using his song as a precision instrument. Etc, etc. But the real magic is when they all use their voices and magic in concert....as a group, they can summon huge magical thunderstorms.

Also, one thing I love about using different kinds of shifters is the opportunity to explore enhanced supernatural senses that aren’t just keen sight, smell or hearing. So the dolphin shifters aren’t like wolf shifters in being able to detect chemosignals or anything like that....in fact, their sense of smell isn’t much different from anyone else’s. But they do have an ability to use what’s effectively supernatural echolocation even above water, and their sight is adapted for optimal viewing underwater, making them particularly good at seeing in the darkness even on land. 

(Also, related but somewhat tangential to both the shifter senses and dolphin ‘voices’....all dolphin shifters have a strong talent for mimicry, but this isn’t technically a form of magic, more just a combination of their control over their voice and their keen senses of pitch, etc).

The shark shifters, on the other hand, have some of the keenest senses of all shifters. Not only is their sense of smell even better than a werewolf’s, they’re sensitive to changes in pressure, for one thing. Which means on land, they can even feel changes in atmospheric pressure.....so like, the shark shifters of Beacon Bay could be in math class and then ‘feel’ a sudden drop in air pressure and thus even before some strange weather phenomenon occurs, they’re groaning like ugh fucking A, what the hell did the damn dolphins do now.

Also, their magnetic field perception is such that they can kinda ‘sense’ when people are around, just by being aware of the approaching magnetic field of another living being.

And then with the sharks, I was looking for ways to lean into the associations we have with sharks and blood, but subvert them to be less macabre and more communal. And another big theme of mine in general is like, I am DETERMINED to go to my grave shouting at the top of my lungs “Its THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT IS THICKER THAN THE WATER OF THE WOMB, NOT BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER, HOW DID PEOPLE GET THAT SO BACKWARDS ITS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW ITS USUALLY STATED!”

Like, that’s just...HUGE pet peeve of mine. Its like nails on a chalkboard, lmfao, that drives me nuts. That phrase is usually cited by people using it to express like, the idea that there’s no greater force than family, specifically BIOLOGICAL, ‘blood’ relations, but its literally meant to be the exact opposite, that the blood of CHOSEN bonds, of covenants, of vows or promises, is a greater force than the water of the womb, ie being born of the same womb, as in biological siblings. The entire point of the phrase is biology ain’t shit, family is what we choose. And somehow it got turned ENTIRELY around.

(Note: Okay, so for the record, its not ‘somehow’, there’s actually a very clear reason for why that particular interpretation gained so much momentum, and that’s because for a long time it was conflated with an old German proverb from like a thousand years ago that basically translates to “kin-blood is not spoiled by water.” Which basically was meant to mean that nothing can ‘dilute’ blood relations, not time, not distance, not water. So that phrase DOES correspond to the idea that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Problem is, there isn’t a direct trace from that particular proverb TO most USAGES of ‘blood is thicker than water,’ which when you throw in the OTHER phrase, which in its entirety is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” what you end up with is a lot of people SAYING that one when they actually MEAN to say ‘kin-blood is not spoiled by water’ and that’s where the meanings get switched. But I fucking digress. Per usual).

Anyway. So combine that particular pet peeve with my found family fixation AND the fact that this is about magic and magic means I can do whatever the hell I want, fuck your biological connections mwahahaha.....I decided to base shark magic on the idea of the blood-ties of family....but CHOSEN blood-ties, as in blood of the covenant ties.

What I mean is okay, so it first of all just made sense to me to have shark shifter communities be heavily focused around adoption, because like....let’s be real, shark shifters going around biting people to change them into shifters, and then people magically healing from....shark bites....was going to attract a lot more attention than people turning after being attacked by other types of shifters. Not to mention the fact that not only are shark attacks always big news, part of why they’re big news is because they’re actually pretty rare.

So, shark shifter communities were never really gonna propagate via lots of random shark shifter attacks turning people. So the way they DO expand and grow is by, well, family. Both biological AND adoption...as well as of course shark shifter communities taking in people who ARE attacked by rogue shark shifters, when that does happen. 

But bottom line is, there’s an additional element in play in shark shifter communities, beyond just the gene pool....and that’s like, a magical tidepool of talents, let’s call it. Because I do love me some alliteration. But also tidepool of talents is just a cool phrase, IMO.

Anyway, the main part of shark shifter magic, and how THEIR whole is greater than the sum of their parts, is that any shark shifter can draw upon or channel the talents, skillsets or knowledge of anyone else in their communal family. And whenever that family gets added to, the talents, skillsets and knowledge of the new addition gets added to the pot, so to speak. So shark shifters are kinda all like Rogue, if Rogue’s focus was less on the superpowers of other people and more on things like Beast’s scientific knowledge, Cyclops’ strategic skills or Cable’s weapons expertise.

And then their ‘passive magic’ is a form of psychometry whenever they come into contact with blood. By touching even just a drop of someone’s blood, they can get a vision of how that blood was spilled or even get a sense of where the person who spilled it is now.

As to the types of sharks and dolphins they all are, for that I went with the thing about the shape you take reflects the person you are.....all the shifters here are full shifters, and there’s no genetic component to their shifting, its purely magical, so like....just because Peter turned the various dolphins of BB doesn’t mean they all turn into the same kind of dolphin he was. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of dolphin he was on account of I don’t really care tbh, lol. Whereas Erica’s an Atlantic spotted dolphin, Liam’s a pygmy killer whale which looks like an orca just tiny in comparison and is actually a dolphin, and I found that combination of factors hilarious, etc, etc.

Same thing with the shark shifters. Even among biological relations, there’s a ton of variety of shark types. Like the twins aren’t even the same type...Ethan’s a blue shark and Aiden’s a bull shark, Tracy’s a tiger shark and Hayden’s an angel shark. Danny’s actually a throwback to an unnamed prehistoric shark, not Megalodon big but big enough to shut up Jackson when he goes on about being a great white shark. Shark and crocodile shifters are the two oldest shifter clans, old enough that literal dinosaurs fall under the umbrella of their shifter type, and thus occasionally show up even in modern generations.

[linkspooky]

The Characters of Nisioisin (3)

Trickster - Kaiki Deishuu

Nisioisin often uses and reuses a lot of common character archetypes in his writing. An analysis on his common use of liars, thieves and cheats by comparing and contrasting the differences between Kumagawa, Iichan and Kaiki. More underneath the cut. 

A. Defining the Trickster 

Already covered in this post. 

1. Introduced as a Villain

In the story proper Kaiki is introduced to us as the opposite of Araragi. If Araragi is the person who saved Senyjogahara’s heart, then Kaiki is the one who broke her heart. If Araragi is a hero who saves everyone, Kaiki is a callous villain who cons people and doesn’t seem to care about the consequences for those he cons. 

Their interaction with every character they both interact with is the opposite. Araragi helps Senjyogahara, Kaiki stole her money and ruined her family home even though they are both positioned as people Senjyo once loved and thought of as a savior. Araragi saved Nadeko from the curse of the snake, whereas Kaiki is indirectly responsible for her being cursed due to selling curse charms to middle schoolers. 

Araragi heroically faces off against Gaen to defend his sister, while Kaiki is the one who sold the information about Tsukihi’s location to Gaen in the first place for a quick buck. In every instance, Araragi saves, Kaiki cons. 

Kaiki is also one of the few characters that Araragi shows an open disdain for. Araragi who is usually a very passive protagonist, and will go with the flow and talk casually with people who have beaten him half to death and is overly forgiving outright despises Kaiki on sight. 

However, it’s important to remember that Kaiki calls himself a villain when making his first introduction to Araragi. He intentionally places himself as the villain so that Araragi can play the hero, even calling him “Manly”, “Cool” and “Grown-up” for doing so, implying again that Kaiki is his opposite. Kaiki however is a liar, and when he calls himself a villain intentionally that also is a lie. 

2. Subverts Expectations

Everything we learn about Kaiki in his first introduction in Niseimonogatari is inverted later on. He is a character who exists to play upon other people’s expectations and cast everything into doubt. There’s even a meta aspect to this, originally Koimonogatari was foreshadowed to be Senjyogahara’s narration debut only for Kaiki to take the mantle of narrator from Araragi instead. 

Ladies and gentleman, dear readers and all of you who picked up this book expecting Hitagi Senyjogahara to be the narrator have been duped. The lesson you should take home from this is every sentence ever written down by a book is bogus. 

-Koimonogatari

Koimonogatari is a book that exists to flip everything set up by Nisei. It is a book where the villain saves the girl (Nadeko) whereas the hero is someone almost completely helpless the whole story (Araragi). You could even say that it’s Araragi’s actions which created the problem for Nadeko, as his complete ignorance of her, and his coddling of her helped push her to want to become a god. 

Koimonogatari also starts a turning point in the series, where Araragi who had been a straightforward hero until this part starts to have his character deconstructed. Araragi who is constantly remarked upon as a hero who tries to save everyone, we find out that in Owarimonogatari is not only are there people he never even made an attempt to reach out to and help (Sodachi Oikura), but that Araragi is someone who uses obfuscation and self-deception to cover up his bad traits. He is someone who cares far more for the appearance of being good and helping others, then the actual work of helping others. This is again an idea that is set up in the intro to Koi. 

Humans have a desire for truth. or they have a desire to believe what they know is the truth. Kaiki brings up the example of the higgs boson particle that moves faster than light. Plenty of people will find this change in the truth alarming, even though most normal human beings aren’t physicists and won’t even bother to look at the math or data that proves the Higgs-Boson particle and will just read the headlines and take other physicists at their word. 

People often care more for the image of something, than the actual thing. That’s true for Araragi as well who isn’t as noble as he appears to be and is for all intents and purposes a normal people. Kaiki is presenting us with the image of himself as a villain, because that is general is easier to accept then viewing himself as a more complicated person. Kaiki also, prefers to view himself as a villain rather than what he really is, which is a failure. 

Araragi uses obfuscation to hide his bad traits, but as his foil, Kaiki always desires to hide his good traits. The reason being that Kaiki as a person when he acts with good intentions, things always tend to go opposite of the way he planned them. Kaiki feels in control when he lies, he can control others by lying to them, manipulating them, duping them, but reality is something entirely out of his control. He can try to save someone only to have the completely opposite effect. 

“You tore apart the Senjyogahara - and backed her parents into a corner from which divorce was the only way out - because nothing else was going to work, right? You judged that the only daughter would have no future if you didn’t cut her mother off from the family.”  “Uh huh, that’s right. I was actually a standup guy. A real sweetheart, just looking out for a kid. I was only putting on a show of being nefarious. You’ve got all the details, don’t you? You’re really well informed. But don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s embarrassing.” 

-Koimonogatari. 

Kaiki is ultimately someone afraid to be good. That’s his weakness. He knows his good intentions are not guaranteed to produce good results, and he can’t face himself when his failures spiral out of his control so it’s easier to present himself as a villain. Kaiki, much like Iichan only feels comfortable when he’s deceiving everyone around him. He exists to subvert other people’s expectations because it’s a way of grabbing back control, in a world that Kaiki is mature enough to realize by now is completely out of his control. 

3. A Lying Liar Who Lies 

When Kaiki said every word written down in every book ever are lies, what he’s talking about is narrative. People who see the world in narrative view are applying a lens to reality to make it more palatable and easy to understand for them. Once again, they are preferring to hold onto images and preconceptions, the idea of the truth rather than the truth itself. It’s true that books are like reality, but people will often craft a narrative about reality in order to believe everything has direction, meaning, and a purpose when there is none.

Kaiki is also one of those people. He embraces crafting narratives, and telling lies because it gives him this idea of control he otherwise would not have. Kaiki is someone who doesn’t have a lot of control over his own life. If you take him for his word in the book he has almost no background, no family, he’s legally dead, and he’s a wandering vagabond that never remains in the same place for long. Kaiki’s way of reclaiming that stability and agency is to always craft a narrative around himself wherever he goes. He’s the one in control because he’s conning everyone else around him at all times. He acts like he always has all the cards in his hands, and he’s the smartest person in the room, because he can’t admit how afraid he is of not being that. Of being vulnerable. 

Kaiki goes one step further not just by calling himself a liar, but believing the whole world is made up of lies. He’s not just a fake, everyone is. A world of fakes desperately struggling to be real. 

“The second you say it out loud to someone, it deviates from your true feelings. All words are lies, it’s all a scam. No matter how true, the moment you utter it, it becomes embellished. Words are only representations, so impurities find their way in. If you want to make a wish, to make it exactly as it is, you absolutely mussn’t say it aloud.” - Koimonogatari

Yes, Kaiki I’m sure this speech has nothing to do with your fear of ever letting your intentions be known. 

This is also something Iichan directly calls out in his own struggles with lies, the truth, and the trust in other people you have to find between them. 

Hime-chan said everything was a lie. I agree, that must be the truth. But- really. Really, really, really you know.  If this world were like what Hime-chan said, if this world were like what I think.  We would not be suffering like this. Do you get it? If everything is a lie and there is not one ounce of truth - if ther is nothing of comparison, then everything ends up being the truth, too. - Zareogoto Vol. 3

Kaiki is able to call out Nadeko’s assertion that everyone in the world is a liar, everyone was misleading her and leading her on so easily because that is the same narrative lens he applies to the world to cope with it.

Let’s return to the Senyjogahara household again. Basically imagine you're Kaiki, a homeless man with no family who spends all of his time in luxury hotels and you're watching what looks like an ideal happy household. They are a rich loving family, with a good marriage, and their daughter is basically the school idol. What you Kaiki would call “Normal Law Abiding Citizens” the kind of life he could only dream of. 

Traditionally held values say that these people should be happy forever, because they're good people doing the right thing. But the things the world tells us have meaning, are secure, have no meaning at all and easily fall apart.

So, he watches this good family, get struck by misfortune and fall apart. The loving mother sells her daughter to a cult basically, even though she originally joined the cult because of her daughter's sickness.

Now what's an easier story to swallow? That good people do bad things and good circumstances can easily turn bad for no good reason at all.

Or is it easier, and more meaningful to swallow that Kaiki showed up, conned them, caused the parents to get a divorce and therefore he's the villain in the scenario. By being the villain he turned the scenario into a story, he gave it meaning.

The first time I met Hitagi Senjogahara - two years ago, in other words - I thought to myself, What a fragile-seeming kid.  Of course, back then Senjyogahara was afflicted with her mysterious ailment, which is why her devout mother had summoned me, flying the flag of the ghost buster as I was. But even without the ailment business, I thought she seemed “fragile.”  The impression hadn’t changed.  Fragile. [...] Fragile, on the edge of fragmentation.  Which is exactly why her current self was a miracle. A mysterious ailment followed by a miraculous achievement - for someone who seemed so breakable to make it so far without ever breaking, not two year sago, not now, for eighteen years -  The mother broke.  But the daughter Didn’t.  -Koimonogatari

So Kaiki says he thought Senjyo and her mother were fragile, but he probably thinks that about everybody. He's cynical and disaffected because he's seen this kind of thing happen again and again. That's why he tells lies, that's why he manipulates, it gives him the illusion of control over a world not only him, but no one else has any control at all.

There are two sides to the story of Kaiki’s perception of Senjyo. First, that people are more fragile than you think they are. Even if you come from a good household, have a loving husband, and have money you can break. The second is that people are less fragile than Kaiki thinks they are. Even if your mother turns against you, you lose your money, status, and family you still might not break. Both of these things are true at the same time, people are both more and less fragile. There are truth, and lies, and even Kaiki is unable to face reality directly because he prefers to stare into lies and shrowd himself in them then ever confront the truth. 

4. Themes of Nihilism

Kaiki case believes everything is worthless and everything will be eventually lost so he thinks it's pointless to cling to things. However, that doesn’t have to be an inherently negative idea. Nihilism the rejection of the idea of inherent meaning, is also something that can lead to creating meaning which is where we get existential nihilism. 

Nihilism is the precursor to existentialism. To find your meaning in life you have to first reject the meanings that other people give you.

With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. The meaninglessness or meaning of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism. 

He basically tells Nadeko that he likes money because the value of money is something entirely made up by people and yet it’s still something that has value.

Kaiki loves replacable things while at the same time hating irreplacable ones, because he hates the way people tend to cling to things forever. Almost like, Kaiki himself is someone who always clings to his first love that he lost over ten years ago and doesn’t try to love anyone else, or find anyone else and Kaiki hates himself. 

Existential nihilism also means rejecting what society tells you to think has value, because you have to reject first before you can come up with your own meaning. Which is literally exactly what he guides Nadeko to do, he tells her to reject the thing which she thinks gives her life meaning, her love of Araragi and then find a new meaning instead in being a mangaka. and that she can do this because everything is worthless therefore she can try anything.

He also suggests that the work of having to create her own meaning to life, and follow her own dream, will make her far more satisfied than simply following the job of a god which was given to her by someone else.

Humans are always changing their minds about what has value and that makes them human and Kaiki thinks that's a wonderful thing, that's existential nihilism, they're always inventing new meaning. Kumagawa is someone who always loses, but he tries again an infinite amount of times, and that struggle to keep trying again and again is what makes him human in Kaiki’s mind. It’s not the result, not the happiness or sadness, but rather in the constant searching for meaning that defines yourself. Once again. Kaiki sees the freedom in that. There is nothing in life that will make you truly happy, there is no meaning to life, but there’s freedom because it means you can try as many times as you want. 

Everything is worthless. Everything will eventually lost. However, because of this it also means that you’re never going to lose something that will destroy you permanently. Because the things you were holding onto were worthless in the first place, you can always try to replace them. You can always try again and find something else. There is no ending that will permanently end you, there’s no loss you cannot suffer. Araragi is not really that important to Nadeko, she can live without him, she was only giving him that importance. This is also the compelte and exact opposite of Iichan’s a fatal would speech. 

Iichan is someone so terribly afraid to hold onto anything, because he feels the process of trying over and over again at something he’ll never succeed at is going to completely destroy him. 

And Kaiki would tell Iichan the same way that he tells Nadeko that him constantly stumbling over his own actions and trying to find meaning in them, is something in itself that has meaning. That's what makes him human, his search for meaning. But philosophically Iichan isn't there yet. He's still a little baby nihilist. Tiny. Infant. He hasn't grown up yet.

“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.” “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy

[Albert Camus]

So if you were to put iichan at one end as the baby nihilist, and Kaiki as the adult (kind of) nihilist then the adolescent Kumagawa would be right in the middle. That’s the way to compare the three, Kaiki is a mature adult who has figured out the way he wants to live his life, Kumagawa is someone constantly in flux like an adolescent, desperately struggling to reach the point where Kaiki is where he’s decided how he’s going to live and not quite there yet and therefore always doubting himself. Finally, Iichan is a child who wants to cling onto his immaturity and his completely wrong views of the world because he doesn’t want to face them or have to change. All three of them are liars, and but the lies they tell are different and that brings us to the end of this comparison. 

#kaiki deishuu #monogatari #niseimonogatari #koimonogatari #nisioisin #nisio meta #monogatari meta

[dangerous-mess]

Loki, Come Down

Characters: Loki, Avengers (mentioned), Thor (mentioned), Tony Stark (mentioned), Chitauri (mentioned)

Contains: Mentions of a suicide attempt, mentions of self harm, mentions of the attack on New York (2012), childhood mentioned, religion and an afterlife mentioned briefly, self hatred

Word Count: 2.1K

Achilles, Achilles, Achilles come down. Won’t you get up off the roof?

After the invasion on New York city and the events that had happened in Asgard, Thor and Loki had returned to New York. Of course, once the brothers moved into the tower things were different. Everyone got along well with Thor as he was included and involved in every meal and activity hosted between missions. Loki, on the other hand, was not. He knew he wasn’t wanted as the room became quiet every time he walked in. It didn’t take a genius to know what was going on. Sure, he should have known everything he did all those years ago won’t go unforgiven overnight, but yet it was as if all of them, Thor included, held his mistakes over his head. 

Being the proud god he was, he refused to let how he felt show around anyone. He kept up the same façade, not letting anyone see how he truly was feeling. He slowly spent more time in his room, mostly reading any form of literature he could get his hands on. When he and Thor had first moved into the Thor he was forced to join particular missions and tasks Thor or even other members of the team were called upon to perform, but slowly he was let go and forgotten, as why would anyone trust the deceitful god. 

You crazy assed cosmonaut, remember your virtue. Redemption lies plainly in truth

The team had once again been called away on another mission, one that from what he had overheard, would last a while. Which only left him completely alone in the tower. That itself was a blessing and a curse. A blessing as he could roam and not being holed up in his room all day. But unfortunately, it also meant that Stark would most likely be watching the tower, through whatever means possible. 

The weeks the Avengers were gone, Loki spent most of his time reading or walking through the halls of the tower. Although he was free to leave the tower whenever he pleased, a part of him was scared to walk through the streets as himself, afraid of how the mere folks of New York would respond to seeing him. Of course, no one knew this. He was a god, and everyone on this planet were mere mortals, he could crush them with the bottom of his boot if he so desired. Yet, after everything he had gone through, specifically everything that had occurred over the last several years, his confidence and self-esteem had slowly gone down the drain. He had begun to hate himself, if he were to be honest, hate himself more than he had prior to being cast out of Asgard. More than he had when he tried to take over New York alongside the Chitauri Army. 

He truly realized now, more than he had ever noticed before, that he was a monster. He was much more than feared by the creatures that walked across Earth, he was hated by them as well. He was hated by the Avengers and he knew even his own brother hated him, even if Thor never said so. It was clear to Loki, he wasn’t a mere fool, he was a god. A god who is the master of lies, so of course he can see through the false statements his brother made. He had heard from Thor himself that humans tended to be forgiven creatures, if given time, but that was clearly a lie as well. 

The self is not so weightless nor whole and unbroken. Remember the pact of our youth.

Days turned into weeks as weeks turned into months and it eventually felt as if the god himself was simply going through the motions. He began to realize he was losing weight from not eating as much, only going to get food when he was positive everyone within the tower was fast asleep. Even then only taking a bit, no longer wanting to feel as if he was an incontinence or more of a villain for wanting to eat. The time Loki had once spent reading was now spent either sleeping or standing on the balcony looking as everything else was moving, while he felt trapped. 

The confidence that once could be seen on the god was gone. His hair is more of a mess, tangled and greasier than it had ever been before. He wasn’t sure when he bathed last and at this point, he had no energy to do so. Any time he attempted to shower, he ended up stripping down completely and staring at his nude self in the mirror. He stood there criticizing every little thing about himself, everything that was wrong with him. Although he was a god, Loki knew that he wasn’t immortal and if he continued down this current path he was on he was bound to kill himself. And for the first time, he wasn’t afraid to die, if anything he wanted to die. He just wanted to rid the world of the monster he was, to ease the stress he put on his brother for existing, and to make the lives of the Avengers better. 

In many cultures across history, Loki knew that the act of suicide was considered an honorable act. In many religions however, it was considered a selfish act and would not secure a person’s place in the afterlife. Loki being a god, was unsure what would come of him if he went through with his plan. Would he be allowed into some afterlife or if he would just be gone forever, a corpse lying within a grave who is not welcomed anywhere. Regardless, at this moment, what would be there for him, was not a concern for him in the moment. 

As he reflected on his life up to this point, his thoughts often brought him back to his childhood, before things turned sour. Back when his mother was still alive, back when he and Thor were close. Thinking back to that, brought a small sad smile to his face. He longed and missed the sibling rivalry and friendship Thor and him once had. He remembered all the times, Thor would tease him for reading, studying, and practicing magic whereas Thor led a completely different life. But at the end of the day, Thor was his brother and he always made sure to let Loki know before bed how proud of a brother he was and how one day, Loki would be a great King and leader. The smile that he had thinking about the past slowly turned into a frown as tears rolled down his cheeks. 

It is empty Achilles, so end it all now. It’s a pointless resistance for you. 

Originally he had planned not to write a note, but he felt that he owed his brother that much. So a few days before, Loki sat down on the balcony and using the moonlight, he wrote out a goodbye. He had only meant it to be a few short paragraphs, no more than a page at least. Though, that slowly turned into pages of grief and self-hatred. He wrote pages of apologizes and wishes to take back every mistake and foul sentence he had ever done or spoken into existence. His once neat writing became a mess as he neared the end of the note, the paper stained with his tears. Everything was becoming too real, and as much as the cocky and confident part of the god wanted to back down from this plan, he felt it was far too late. That he had to go through it, soon for that matter. 

The day arrived and like every other day, Loki spent most of the day sleeping. When he woke up, he forced himself out of his bed and took a shower for the first time in a long time. He made sure to scrub all the grime and filth that he could psychically wash off himself. He took the time to wash his hair, undoing all the tangles slowly, making sure his hair was back to the way it used to be. After he felt clean enough, he stepped out and dried himself off. As he brushed his teeth, he stared at himself, one last time in the mirror. He could see his ribs poking out, and how thin all of him had become. His skin was paler than it usually was and when he turned to close the door attached to the shower, he saw many strands of his hair covering the shower. 

The rest of the day after cleaning himself, was spent sitting on the balcony enjoying the sun and fresh air as he read his favorite book, one last time. 

You may feel no purpose nor a point for existing. It’s all just conjecture and gloom

Loki finished the book several hours later, and night had fallen several hours prior. He had used the moonlight as a source of light to finish reading his book, as well as turning the light to his bedroom on. He walked back into his room and sat his book down on his dresser, as he pulled out an outfit. It was the same outfit he wore all that time ago, during the attack on New York. He slipped into it, fixing his hair as he wanted to look perfect. He grabbed the note he had written just nights prior and stuffed it into the pages of the book he was just reading. He grabbed the book and made his way to the bedroom door. As he went to open it, he glanced around his room, taking it all in one last time. He sighed as he opened the door and turned off the light to his room. 

He made his way to the stairwell, knowing it would be less likely that he would be stopped or caught by any of the Avengers. He slowly made his way up several flights of stairs, in no rush, taking everything as he knew it would all be over soon. As he made it to the top of the building, he stopped and stared at the entrance to the roof. It was now or never, and he slowly began to have second thoughts. Was this really what he wanted? His hand was shaking as he grabbed the door handle, opening the door. He stepped onto the roof before stopping. He was frozen with fear, one of the few times he truly experienced fear. 

And there may be no meaning, so find one and seize it. Do not waste your self on this roof. 

Still struck with fear, Loki got his feet to move again and slowly made his way to the edge of the roof. He wrapped his arms around his favorite book, clutching it tightly to his chest. He sat down on the ledge, his feet dangling off, watching as the city was still wide awake even in the middle of the night. Multiple thoughts ran through his head, a split in what he should do. Half of his thoughts were screaming at him to jump, trying to convince him even more that he was a monster who needed to die.

Be real and just jump, you dense motherfucker

 While the other half calmly whispered for him to get off the roof, to reassure him that he wasn’t a monster. That if he just went and talked to Thor and Stark as well as the rest of the Avengers maybe things could change. 

Don’t listen, Achilles. You’re worth more, Achilles.

Soon enough both thoughts were overlapping and he could no longer tell right from wrong. He was becoming frustrated just wanting an answer, just wanting to know what to do. He wasn’t sure if it was out of frustration or anger but before he could stop himself, he let out a scream. He just screamed and yelled at the universe, cursing it for all the pain and sorrow it had brought upon him and his life. Tears rolled down his cheeks, as he spilt out all the emotions he had bottled up inside for so long. Soon his voice became hoarse and all that came out was whimpers as the tears just kept coming. The dam within him had broken and everything was spilling out. 

Clothe yourself in beauty untold and see life as a means to a triumph.

As Loki began to calm down, he realized he didn’t want to go through with this, at least not today. He slowly turned and moved his legs back onto the rooftop, clinging on to the book even tighter than he had earlier. He made his way off the roof and snuck back to his room. He would live to see another day, maybe things would get better with time, and if not the rooftop would always be waiting for him. 

How you will heal and you'll rise above. Crowned by an overture bold and beyond. Ah, it's more courageous to overcome

#marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel avengers fanfic #marvel loki fanfic #marvel loki fanfiction #loki (marvel) #angst #fanfiction #fanfic #songfic #marvel #the avengers #the avengers post 2012 #mentions of tony stark #mentions of thor #mentions of the avengers #asgard

[kendrixtermina]

[Vague Gushing about how well-crafted all the character contrasts in Three Houses are]

For example, all factions have a Token Traditionalist (Ferdinand,Lorenz) except the kingdom... that’s because it turns out they’re the traditional faction and only Felix and maybe partially Sylvain are more individual-minded, the rest is always going on about honor, their regions cultural values and the local afterlife and mythology. Meanwhile the Alliance suspiciously lacks a token foreigner along the lines of Dedue or Petra, because, plot twist, it’s actually Claude himself. 

The Empire has neither a Token Ordinary Poor Village Person (like Leonie and Ashe - Dorothea used to be poor but after that she was famous) nor a Token Devout Believer(like Marianne or Mercedes - the only one who’s even a believer is Ferdinand) which goes with the empire being more secular but also having an elitism problem. 

Team Empire sorta knows each other because they’re largely from the handful of families that have been in power since forever, Team Kingdom is kinda the most close-knit before/without Byleth’s intervention since many of them have been longtime friends, whereas Team Alliance isn’t that familiar with each other apart from some individual pairs like Ignatz and Raphael, leading up to when Claude gives that moving speech about how they all learned to work together & be friends despite coming from such different backgrounds.  (Likewise half of team empire ends up renouncing their titles in order to follow their hearts in many of their endings)

Even Hilda doesn’t really start out as Claude’s right hand but rather becomes his right hand during the events of the story untill we have the two of them epicly suckering ppl in tandem after the timeskip. Kinda sad really because both Dimitri and Edelgard at some point express some wish that they could just have a normal friendship with their respective number two’s/ met under more normal circumstances, they have enough alignment in their values and MO’s that you could picture them naturally gravitating together without fucked up circumstances involved, with Edelgard and Hubert both being coldly pragmatic, purpose-driven nonbelievers and Dimitri and Dedue having a tendency toward single-mindedness and a rather similar way of responding to hostility. 

Also the house leaders are each quite ironically places - Claude wants to unite the world and gets the most divided faction, Dimitri who’s a peacemaker and wants to foster stability gets the most chaotic territory which is also full of xenophobes, and Edelgard who wants to bring about social equality and get rid of higher powers manipulating things from behind the scenes got her house full of elitists and thoroughly infiltrated. 

It probably played some role as to what problems would be on the forefronts of their minds....

Then there’s their supports; Dimitri goes straight from C to B to A ; Meanwhile Edelgard has two steps at C and Claude has two steps at B, and that kinda really underlines/ fits with their personalities. To go with the classic fruit metaphor, Claude’s a Peach Person - Soft and friendly outside but with a more closely guarded center that only a few get to see.  He’s very personable at surface level and kinda gets along with ppl but it takes much more for him to truly trust you and some thoughts he doesn’t show to everyone - He’s markedly the one where you need to wait until after the timeskip to get the big reveal. 

Meanwhile, Edelgard by contrast is the classic Coconut, with a tough exterior or higher entry barrier at first that you need to get past before you can get into her inner circle - which is really just Byleth and Hubert, everyone else gets to see her business face even peeps she tendentially gets along with like linhardt and dorothea. 

And then there’s Dimitri who’s very emotionally impressionable and kind of an open book. I mean he goes out of his way to be friends with Byleth right away even though he later admits that they creeped him out at first

#fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem #claude von riegan #edelgard von hresvelg #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd

[jaimetheexplorer]

Oh, let’s go back to the start

WARNING: negative review ahead! 

Game of Thrones is over, and it’s never coming back.

I think many viewers all over the world thought that once this day came, they would wish they could do it all over again because boy, what a great journey it was. Or they would be eager to rewatch the whole show and look out for all the little clues they missed and revisit characters and storylines they might not have previously paid attention to.

Instead, most of us are left with a bitter taste in our mouth, and many of us are left wondering why we even bothered investing our time and emotional energy (not to mention money) in the first place. This is because the final season of Game of Thrones did not make fans wish they could go back to the start and do it all again, but, rather, took many of the plots and characters people knew and loved back to their start, at best, if not to an even worse place.

Game of Thrones changed television as we know it, but this has never been a flawless show. Plot holes and questionable adaptations had been criticized for many years. Book readers in particular have been very vocal about the quality (or lack thereof) of the show’s writing. Yet I feel people kept coming back to see how it all would end, because, surely, the endgame would still be worth the investment. 

Season 8 then came. Much criticism can be raised to the first half of season 8 for having wrapped up the Night King/fantasy storyline too quickly and with almost nothing in the way of explanation. While I understood and shared some of that grievance, I also thought that it was perhaps not that overwhelmingly disappointing, and that it could make some sense from a narrative and logistic perspective. Little did I know, however, as the credits rolled on the third episode of the season, that that instalment was symptomatic of a much more dangerous problem that was just around the corner, which would butcher most of what people loved about this story that had been built up so slowly across years (i.e. its characters), at lightning speed, in the remaining episodes.

From a character perspective, at least the deaths in the battle of Winterfell were mostly well earned and actually wrapped up their characters’ arcs in a meaningful way. Jorah died protecting his Khaleesi. Theon died protecting the home he helped destroy, fulfilling his redemption. Lyanna died taking down a giant. Melisandre died after having fulfilled her purpose. Edd died to protect one of his best friends. Beric died to protect Arya so she could save humanity. While Jon and Dany were not the saviours of mankind, like everyone expected them to be, they were still instrumental in helping humans to victory; Jon having done all the work to bring together almost the entire continent to fight the threat and Dany providing valuable help with her dragons and armies. Underwhelming, perhaps, but it didn’t damage any character. 

I never expected things to go smoothly afterwards. I enjoyed the political tensions between Jon, Dany and Sansa and was looking forward to seeing Dany become greyer as she struggled in a different continent and with competition. I knew Jaime was going to be in King’s Landing again at some point, to wrap up his storyline, and wouldn’t just shack up in bliss with Brienne for the entire rest of the season. I knew beloved characters would probably die (even though I had hopes for several, not just mine). But I did not expect that, from episode 4, the story would begin spiralling into a cruel, sadistic and nihilistic mess that would continue until the very end and spare almost no character that wasn’t named Stark. Nearly all the evolution, all the progress, all the journeys that people kept coming back for, year after year, were invalidated in the span of three episodes, bringing them back to square one, if not worse.

Jon, assassinating his aunt/lover, broken by the fight and taking a black for which we don’t even understand the need for anymore. Dany, her long journey to Westeros ending with being murdered by her nephew/lover for having gone from grey to Mad Queen in the space of two episodes. Jaime, apparently accepting that all these years have only taught him that his true self is a hateful man, obsessed only with his sister to the point of destroying anything that is good, pure and innocent and does not deserve to be caught up in their mess. Brienne, essentially ends up right back where she started, serving in a celibate order after learning that love is not not meant to last for women like her and failing to prevent the death of the man she loved (and having to write her rejection down, to add insult to injury). Cersei, trying to pass off Jaime’s child as someone else’s, her prophecy discarded completely and facing no comeuppance for her actions. Missandei, freed from chains to end up executed in chains. Sandor, dying in the fire that traumatized him his entire life. And even the ones who did not face bitter endings did not move much from where they either started or had been for a long time: Tyrion (who lost much of his charm and intelligence this season just to watch the world burn around him) and Davos ended up in the same sort of advisory position they were in all along. 

The ending was advertised as a bittersweet, Lord of the Rings type ending, but there was a lot more bitterness than there was sweetness in this. Especially when it comes to romance. Rarely is life so cruel to couples, and the only sweetness was reserved for Sam and Gilly, who everyone knew had been safe for years and who, let’s face it, never elicited particularly strong emotional investment from anybody to qualify as a payoff. 

Sansa came out perhaps the strongest in the end, which is well deserved. But this was not just the Sansa story. There were a dozen other plots and characters people cared about, and they almost all were served a fate that made you feel like there had been no point in their journeys all along. And for a show that wanted to subvert expectations (!!!1!1!), it ended ticking the most predictable boxes in terms of characters fates: all the bad guys are dead (and the one “good guy” that died broke bad in order to justify her assassination), all the redemptive characters are dead too, and only the good guys are left.

So here we are, at the end of the biggest show of all time, with an ending that retroactively ruined most of what made it so big in the first place and left little room for excitement, if any. 

The sad thing is that all of this was easily avoidable. When people say that delivering an ending that satisfies everyone is impossible, that is very true, especially for a show with such high expectations. But delivering an ending that disappoints nearly everyone, is actually equally as hard, if not harder, and yet... they managed to achieve it. 

Finishing a story is never easy, but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that what makes people stick with a series is the journey they are taken on (especially when they are asked to invest years of their lives into a story). If the journey starts to suck, that’s when you lose numbers. So if you have a good enough journey, with all the ups and downs and angst and drama you like, which makes people stick with it for years, you’ve accomplished 90% of the task. The ending is just the icing on the cake and it needs to provide a payoff that is consistent with that journey and does not make the audience feel like they never want to eat what’s underneath that icing ever again. 

This does not mean handing out fanservice left and right. But there’s a difference between succumbing to fanservice and destroying literally everything that made people come back for more and that the story had been building up towards. There’s a difference between fanservice and delivering an ending that is unpredictable not because it emerged from a subtle thread woven within the story that was always present if only people paid attention, but because it came out of nowhere and/or had little to no buildup within the story, and/or went in the completely opposite direction to where the buildup was pointing towards. 

I see some complaints about the criticism this season is receiving saying people are too emotional about it and therefore not being objective. And yes! Of course people get emotional about stories! What kind of writer doesn’t want people to become emotionally invested in their story, and just see it as a giant, sterile, plot-driven spectacle? This is why humans are attracted to stories in the first place! And this is particularly true of a story like ASOIAF which is entirely built upon the concept of character perspective. This is why, while slow, the first two episodes were still highly rated: they were character-driven. This is why, despite The Long Night being criticized for an underwhelming conclusion to the WWs storyline, it was not even remotely near the huge dealbreaker the last three episodes were for the audience. That is because The Long Night disappointed in wrapping up the plot, while the rest of the season crashed the characters. I feel like D&D’s never really understood how crucial character-driven perspective was (they didn’t even remember Sam was a major POV character!) and so wrote the show as a sterile, shocking, plot-driven spectacle that eventually made people sick due to the total lack of care with which the characters they know and love were handled. 

And let’s stop pretend that misery and nihilism at all costs is “adult storytelling” while hope and a sense of fulfilment is for children. Adults need hope too, perhaps more than children, because we know just how tough life can be, whereas children often don’t. Dramas can be great tools to show how people face and overcome tragedies and conflict, find the silver linings and some comfort in the chaos, even if things ultimately don’t end the way they expected they would at the start. All Game of Thrones has shown us, in the end, is how people fail and how little changes. No matter how hard the journey, no matter the effort, no matter the loss, most of these beloved characters might as well never have set off on their journeys at all, given the results. 

While this kind of storytelling can work and be compelling for a single season, or a single book, or a single movie, once you ask people to invest years of their lives, you will never land the ending with this last minute, bait-and-switch approach. 

So who wants go back to the start, now, and rewatch the story of these characters once again, knowing most of them end back to square one? Who thinks that it was worth the journey, if we end up exactly where we started? I certainly don’t. 

#game of thrones #game of thrones meta #review #this is the end

[panharmonium]

I love your SW stuff, and recently found out you rewatching "Merlin". So, I was scrolling through your once and future slow burn tag, minding my own business... Now I can't stop thinking about how both Merlin and Obi-Wan watched their fathers die, and it's all ur fault (kidding). Is it just me, or there really are some parallels between them? What do you think?

Aha, well, I think the parallel between them is that they’re both definitely My Type, for sure XD

And by that I just mean that I do tend to gravitate toward these ‘hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up’ characters (Obi-Wan, Merlin, Nightwing, etc).  I think they’re similar in that respect, in that they both sort of thrive on that hopeful vision for the future, they both stay focused on the light at the end of the tunnel even when things aren’t going well.

Their core personalities are very different - like, in today’s terms we’d say Obi-Wan is an introvert, whereas Merlin is Decidedly Not.  Merlin thrives on human interaction and if he didn’t have a big secret to keep he’d be the most open-book emotion generator in the world.  That’s just like…his natural state of being.  He only keeps a lid on himself because he’s forced to do so by circumstance, whereas Obi-Wan keeps a lid on himself because that’s who he actually is.  Reservedness and a degree of circumspection are core aspects of his personality and also part of his cultural upbringing - they don’t mean he doesn’t connect with people, they just mean his version of connecting doesn’t look the same as Merlin instantly making friends with literal strangers and dragging them home to be his new roommates (*cough* Lancelot *cough* Gwaine).

I think also the thing about both of them seeing their fathers die isn’t actually as relevant a point of similarity for them, at least in my head, because I think those two moments serve very different purposes/hit very different ways for each of them.  Like, for Obi-Wan, the end of Phantom Menace is the big turning point in his life - that’s the axis point, the crisis, kind of the…crucible, the point of no-return.  After that things are never the same, not just because of Qui-Gon but because Obi-Wan’s whole life trajectory changes.  He’s forced into a new stage of his life.

And if we’re looking for a similar point for Merlin, i don’t actually think it’s when Balinor dies - like, losing a father after having so recently found him sucks, but Merlin also literally just met the man 24 hours ago.  To me, Merlin’s big ‘can’t go home again’ moment isn’t losing his father in 2.13, it’s losing Will in 1.10.

And this is just my own read, so everyone is free to interpret things differently, but I have always felt that 1.10 is a crucible point for Merlin in the same way TPM is for Obi-Wan, in that it formally shoves Merlin onto a new path and slams the door shut behind him.  It changes Merlin’s time in Camelot from ‘temporary adventure I am having’ to ‘I live here now.’  Before that, I think Merlin kind of always expected to eventually go back home.  But after, there’s no way he would ever even consider it - like…he would never go home, after that.  He has nothing to go home to.  His home was always just two people, and half of it was just obliterated in front of him.  He couldn’t go back to that old life even if he wanted to.  It isn’t there for him anymore.

That’s the same feeling we get from Obi-Wan in TPM.  Irrevocable change.  ‘Can’t go home again.’  So while I think Balinor’s death is obviously an important event for Merlin, I feel like it impacts him more in a sense of ‘mourning for what might have been,’ not quite ‘personal bereavement unalterably changing the course of my life.’  Merlin’s path is pretty set, by the time he meets Balinor - the axis point has already swiveled, in 1.10, when Merlin’s train permanently switches tracks to Camelot, whether he wants it to or not.

#i do love them both though #they’re both also ‘i carry the weight of the world on my shoulders and don’t complain about it’ people #and that’s very admirable #they both also really deserve a vacation #XD #replies #the once and future slowburn #tag disclaimer: all this merlin discussion comes as I HAVE NOT FINISHED SEASON 5 #working on getting there as we speak #please be gentle and avoid spoilers in my inbox folks thanks love y’all

[aspiringplato]

A Contrast and Comparison between the Themes of the Bible and the Odyssey

Any work that claims to be a contrast and comparison, must, by definition,  consist of an examination of the similarities and differences of whatever it is that is being contrasted and compared. Thus, the following paragraphs shall be composed of such, with each considering a different theme from the Odyssey, and its counterpart from the Bible. It should be noted that this essay does not attempt to prove the validity of the biblical standard, but simply accepts it as a given.

         To commence, then, the first theme to be addressed, as it is a rather imperative one, is that of the cultural standard employed by characters in The Odyssey versus the objective standard found in the Bible. In the Odyssey, the standard by which both the characters and the author operate is quite cultural, but accepted as completely valid. One provable way in which one can conclude The Odyssey’s standard to be subjective, is to simply consider that there is an entirely different moral standard applied to females than that which is applied to males. Consider, for example, that Odysseus practices marital infidelity on multiple occasions, and it is thought to be perfectly normal by everyone. When Agamemnon’s wife, Klytaimnestra, however, commits adultery, she is considered by all to be a most despicable and deplorable human being, and is given the death penalty as a result. In addition, the day she is killed is declared a festal day by her son, Orestes. Another cultural standard, which is actually a good one (as opposed to the previous) found in the Odyssey would be the excessive hospitality shown to strangers by anyone considered respectable. The suitors, for instance, were considered base, uncultured, and completely lacking respect for the gods, because they treated a stranger, who was indeed Odysseus disguised as a beggar, poorly. Thus, the cultural standard found in the Odyssey has both good and bad aspects, but is by no means objective. The standard found in the Bible, however, is indeed objective, and applies to everyone regardless of race, class, gender, or anything else. Marital fidelity, for instance, is supposed to be practiced by both male and female parties, not exclusively female. Murdering and avenging oneself is also wrong, according to the Bible. In the Odyssey, however, murder if given provocation, is considered “justified”, and revenge, an honorable pursuit. An example of this would be Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors, which was indeed provoked, but was still murder, and is therefore wrong. This was also revenge, since the suitors had been feasting on Odysseus’ cattle without permission for years, living in his home, and attempting to court his wife.

         Not all themes of the Odyssey are bad, or morally wrong, however. Bravery is one of the most prominent themes, and is indeed one found in the Bible. However, bravery in the Bible is both similar to and quite different from bravery in the Odyssey. Bravery in the Odyssey is partially due to Odysseus’ (and indeed other characters) faith in themselves, and partially in Athena. An example of this would be when Telemakhos asks Odysseus what they are to do, being outnumbered by the suitors, and Odysseus replies that first they must prove their bravery, before Athena will aid them further. An example of bravery in the Bible, however, could be found in Judges in the story of Deborah and Barak. Barak is too afraid to lead the men in to battle, and thus Deborah has to lead, and, as a result, God says the glory of the battle (at least the human aspect) would go to a woman. Deborah’s bravery was different from Odysseus’ in the sense that she was brave solely due to her faith in God, whereas Odysseus’ bravery was at least half due to his faith in himself.

         A third theme found in the Odyssey is Goodness as an accomplishment, rather than as a given. A main theme of the Bible is human failing in a moral sense. When one fails something, it has usually been expected that one at least had a chance at succeeding. Likewise, in the Bible, God created humans with freewill, but free from sin (that is, lacking a sin nature).  Humanity therefore had a chance to succeed, and indeed it was expected of them. There was only one temptation in the Garden of Eden, and it should have been reasonably doable to avoid sin completely. However, humanity did not (avoid sin, that is), and thus failed, in the moral sense. But, as has been seen, it was quite possible for humans not to sin, and therefore Goodness on the part of humanity was a given, not an accomplishment. In the Odyssey, however, being more moral than the typical person (who was by no means exceptionally good), is considered quite an achievement. This is evidenced by multiple scenarios, the most prominent of which is the fact that Odysseus, who is by no means exceptionally moral, forgiving, or kind, is held up as a standard of human goodness by the Greek pantheon, and is indeed favored by them for this (among other things, of course). Thus, there is quite a gap between the view of Goodness presented in the Odyssey versus the view of Goodness found in the Bible. This is another example of the cultural standard/objective standard issue.

         The next theme to be considered is straightforward Nationalism found in the Odyssey versus the digression from Nationalism to Globalism in the Bible. The biblical theme is, once again, quite similar in some respects and quite different in others. Consider first the ways in which the two themes are similar: Nationalism in the Odyssey is just general nationalism, and is demonstrated not only in how various city-states and Heroes rallied together to sack Troy (that actually happened in the Iliad but is mentioned multiple times), but also in Odysseus’ complete pride in, love for, and longing to return to, Ithaca (his homeland).  Now, the theme in the Bible is similar in two ways: first, with literal, human nationalism practiced by every nation mentioned in the Bible, but especially by Israel, in the Old Testament. And second, with “nationalism” in regard to the Kingdom of God. In the New Testament, every biblical author or serious Christian character, practices divine nationalism. As for the digression to globalism, however, that occurred with respect to literal nationalism and the issue of salvation. In the Old Testament, it was mainly the Jews who were offered salvation by God, but by the New Testament, Grace, not just the law, is extended freely to all, regardless of race, class, status, or the like. This is the aforementioned digression into “globalism”.

         Yet another theme to consider would be the theme of Revenge versus the Biblical theme of Grace and Forgiveness. One clear example of revenge as a theme of the Odyssey is when Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, asking him to destroy Odysseus for blinding him in his escape, and Poseidon grants his request. A more memorable and indeed more imperative example of Revenge as a theme of the Odyssey would be Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors. However, the themes of Grace and Forgiveness are quite opposite of this, and in the Bible God clearly states “Revenge is mine…etc”. Additionally, Jesus instructs multiple times to forgive, and to extend grace to one another.

         Finally, the last theme to consider would be Self-control in regard to one’s anger. Indeed, the reasons behind this theme in the Odyssey and the Bible are quite different; however, the theme itself remains identical in each. In the Odyssey, Homer says multiple times in the closing books that “Odysseus checked his anger…etc”. This self-control gets him quite far, and ultimately gets him what he wants. Additionally, in book 24, Athena instructs Odysseus to control his anger, lest blood be unnecessarily shed. In the Bible, in James and some of the Pauline Epistles, it instructs the reader to control one’s anger, or at least any expression of it, at all time. Jesus even states that one should eliminate it completely, for “You say, ‘Do not murder’, but I tell you, if one is angry at another in his heart, that one has committed murder”. Thus, this theme of the Odyssey coincides with a theme of the Bible, if imperfectly. It’s concurrence with the theme of Anger-control in the Bible is imperfect the sense, that, Odysseus was simply controlling his anger for an ultimately bad purpose, whereas in the Bible, one is to control one’s anger, not only for the practical benefits, but to avoid sin. Odysseus’ aim in controlling his anger was to sin in a more orderly manner, which indeed is no better.

         To conclude, the main themes that can be contrasted and compared from the Bible and the Odyssey are first, a cultural standard versus an objective standard. Second, it is bravery found in both, and the similarities and differences between them. Third, it is the idea of Goodness as an accomplishment versus Goodness as a given. Fourth, there is straightforward Nationalism in the Odyssey versus the Digression from Nationalism to Globalism in the Bible. Fifth, there is revenge versus Forgiveness, and finally, there is the concept of anger-control in both. 

[mightyhydrator]

There is a level of hypocrisy in Andrew Hussie’s statement.

This may end up in having my points be out of order, but whatever.

One of the things that I felt kind of aggravated by was the bit at the end:

“Wherever the most conscientious and invested members of fandom want to drive this universe...”.

Obviously you can’t have all members of the fandom be involved, so you pick out the biggest and most loyal ones, but even then, why alienate half the fanbase with something you made bad on purpose (I am sure that most of those who stopped being part of the fandom because of the epilogues would have otherwise fit the description)? Why make something stupid to “challenge” the fanbase to think critically when you can simply make something good? There isn’t really any reason to make something bad unless you are doing a big subversion thing by proposing an alternative, which Andrew is clearly not going to do, as he’d rather continue the epilogues’ arc, just with the “help of fans” (all of whom, no doubt, loved the epilogues).

There is also a level of blaming the fans for wanting things out of this.

And by peeking into the imagined realm of "happily ever after" to satisfy our curiosity, we discover that our attention isn't so harmless, because the complexities and sorrows of adult life can't be ignored. Nor can the challenges of creating a civilization from scratch, when several teenagers are handed god-status. It turns out the gaze we cast from the sky of Earth C to revisit everyone isn't exactly friendly, like warm sunlight. It's more like a ravaging beam, destructive and unsettling to all that could have been safely imagined. Our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems, and the troublemakers appear to be keenly aware of this.

Calling this paragraph a thermian argument would be very weird, as the nature of the epilogues and its themes (which are part of the universe, mind you) are incredibly meta, but he tries to blame the fact of this being written as the fault for all the terrible things that happened. But it’s simply not true: you chose to write this, you chose to present the attention as a “ravaging beam”, and only you made the troublemakers like this. (also the realm wasn’t “happily ever after”, calling it that is just being dumb).

His fable about the meaning of words applied to media is also somewhat inapplicable? “Intermission” was kept consistent in Homestuck for the most part, there were just a lot of them. “Intermission” always meant “a break between parts of the current Acts”. A break betwen act 3 and 4, a break between Act Acts (where the attention moves away from the alpha kids onto other characters), and a break between Act Act Acts (where the attention moves away from Caliborn onto other characters). If anything, if Andrew called these intervals “entr'actes”, his questions would be more applicable. (Disclaimer: Homestuck was my first piece of media where an intermission is present. I may not actually know the exact way people use these words).

Same with “epilogue”. As far as I know, there is no unspoken rule as to what an epilogue can include, as long as it concludes the story. Honestly, from what I know, it might even be allowed to have a cliffhanger. His “epilogues are kind of an afterthought” thing is no more than drivel about his own interpretation of the way the word is applied. The only way the Homestuck Epilogues challenge the word is “Can an epilogue act as a) a story in its own right, and b) Segway directly into a new narrative?”. A) has been addressed by the stamenet, in a way, but b) is just left there.

And the stuff about unreliable narrators.

Like the fact that all narratives have perspectives and biases, depending on who is telling the story, even in the case where it's unclear if the narrator has any specific identity. The suggestion that all narratives are driven by agendas, sometimes thinly disguised, other times heavily.

The one narrating simply can’t be an unreliable narrator if they are the author. The author, as the one who creates the narrative, has an agenda to convey the events, and in most cases even thoughts, truthfully. There are cases where this isn’t super applicable, like interpreteable events, unconcluded plot threads, red herrings, etc., but the author, as the one with inherent authority over everything in their story, has the answers to everything, and their every whim dictates what is part of the story and why. An author can’t be an unreliable narrator as the author has neither any reason to have their narrative lie about its contents nor is a fallible source of information about the narrative. (Outside of narration, however, these are possible, but we are talking about narration here).

“Heroes of Olympus”, since every book is written in third person, doesn’t have unreliable narration coming from the author-narrator (Rick Riodan), as he has every interest in keeping his story truthful. “Trials of Apollo”, as it is written from the first person perspective of Apollo, is subject to being unreliable (in the moment, overall everything is true), as Apollo is a real person within the diegesis of the books and has every interest in being seen as infallible, wronged, etc.

Andrew’s narration is more like Rick’s, no matter what he says, whereas Calliope’s and Dirk’s is closer to Apollo’s, no matter what they say.

Now here is the last bit:

It's also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and for fandom in general to continue developing the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate. Sorting that out has to be a communal experience, and it's an important part of the cycle between creating and criticizing art. I think not only can creators develop their skills to create better things by practicing and taking certain risks, fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. Skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time.

So the reason he decides to show us that it’d be a good idea to better the fandom and develop frameworks for helping us deal with negative emotions created by pieces of media  is... by worsening the fandom and instilling negative emotions? This is like breaking someone’s leg so that it’ll heal, or giving the King of England the plague so that he gets well soon and then later could have a better immune system (not like a vaccine, but a genuine plague).

I am all for fandom being a better space to be in and for frameworks to help deal with negative emotions, but again, nobody forced him to cause problems for us to solve (this also applies to conflict in the epilogues, where nobody forced Hussie to make more villains).

If you wanted this to happen, Andrew Hussie, then you should have given people something that would inspire them to do what you want them to do, not blame them for not doing it when the only thing you gave them makes them feel like shit. You’ve done this with Homestuck, you are capable of this, don’t chicken out.

#homestuck #homestuck epilogues #hydra talks #Andrew Hussie