#no this isn’t self ship coded why do u ask >.>

[fanby-fckry]

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

24 min. ago

time sensitive question how flirt boy

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

2 min. ago

thanks guys

#the fucking radio demon parody account replied to my post #with extremely UNHELPFUL advice #and charlie #is ur advice unisex? #bcuz if thats how you got vaggie #im judging you both #irl source

( 697 notes )

⚪️ Anonymous said

r u dead?

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

4 hr. ago

Ha! Bold of you to assume I can be killed :)

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

4 hr. ago

Show your face and per’’haps,’,’. I’ll come~.to you

🎀 charlies-angel Follow

32 min. ago

This account is fake. Nobody knows where Alastor is, anon. Stop wasting your time.

#this parody account is in really poor taste

( 14,581 notes )

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

Jul 1

if I make it outta this alive, I’m gonna tell my crush I’m in love with him.

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

Jul 1

fuck

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

1 hr. ago

ya know, I don’t think I’ve confessed to someone and meant it in over a decade?

🕸️ angie-fluffy-bootz Follow

53 min. ago

haha would it be crazy if I said I forgot how?

#its literally part of my job to flirt with people #then i catch feelings and suddenly #i get all tongue-tied #i cant fall back on my old scripts either #he hates bullshit #he wants me #the real me #but the real me doesnt know how to do this!!!

( 268 notes )

💀 be-gay-do-crym Follow

2 hr. ago

apparently people are canceling @.niffty-lady ? wtf?

🌕 m00nlight-h0wling Follow

1 hr. ago

they are and it’s actually the stupidest thing i’ve ever seen

#and the bar was really fucking low #considering the amount of dumb chaotic bullshit my dad gets into ↯ #niffty lady

( 22 notes )

👓 creepz0 Follow

3 hr. ago

It’s time to CANCEL @.niffty-lady

Here’s why:

Niffty LITERALLY KILLED a man in cold blood and now PROFITS off of his death

This so-called “lady” is INCREDIBLY rude to fans, ignoring requests leaving fans on read and answering asks with a NASTY attitude. NOT very lady-like if you ask me

Is associated with the VERY PROBLEMATIC @.real-radio-demon (self explanatory)

Writes TOXIC and PROBLEMATIC ships (spidermoth, radiohusk, reylo 🤢)

Writes NSFW when she herself is CHILD-CODED

PROOF is under the cut ⬇️

. Keep reading

#callout post ↯ #niffty lady #anti niffty lady #niffty critical

( 5,101 notes )

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

3 hr. ago

Despite popular belief, I am not dead!

Well, not any deader than I’ve been since 1933! Hahaha!

↯ #is alastor dead? #ha! no ↯ #alastor the radio demon #real radio demon broadcasts

( 147,381 notes )

⚪️ Anonymous said

isn’t it disrespectful to write fics about someone you killed irl?

🪡 niffty-lady Follow

4 hr. ago

I have no respect for Adam. Hope this helps! <3

#answered ask #anon ask

( 136,247 notes )

📺 voxblr4k Follow

5 hr. ago

Is the radio demon dead?

. 96,460 votes • remaining time 6 days, 19 hours

#polls ↯ #alastor the radio demon ↯ #is alastor dead?

( 19,292 notes )

🪡 niffty-lady Follow

6 hr. ago

Forbidden Fruit

Adam x Reader | 10k words | Rated E

⚠️ Major Character Death

Tags: Smut, Whump, Sinner Reader, Forbidden Love, Bad Ending

After a night of reckless passion, you quickly became Archangel Adam’s favorite sin. Your love, as forbidden as the fruit of Eden, was destined to end in tragedy.

https://archiveofoursouls.hell/works/63595697

#niffty lady fic #adam x reader #angel x sinner #sinner reader #smut #whump #forbidden love #bad ending #rpf #aoos link #aoos fanfic

( 49,933 notes )

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

6 hr. ago

Well, it looks like I’ve got some time on my hands!

I’m sure many of you have burning questions you’d like answered

So, ask. me. any’,thing. :)

#ask me anything #ama ↯ #alastor the radio demon #real radio demon broadcasts

( 16,628 notes )

🐍 x-hiss-lord-x Follow

Dec 12, 2019

i can't have beef with the power of friendship trope because if someone wanted to hang out with me i'd probably reconsider my stance on turning the city into the 10th circle of hell

🐍 x-hiss-lord-x Follow

Dec 12, 2019

besides i can always just redirect my dark urges towards being violently protective of my new friends. there's no rule that says you can't do that.

🌈 hells-disney-princess Follow

7 hr. ago

I found Sir Pentious’s old voxblr blog, and I think I’m gonna cry

🌈 hells-disney-princess Follow

7 hr. ago

He made the ultimate sacrifice to protect his friends and the hotel during the extermination. He did exactly what he said he would in this post.

I wish I could thank him for everything he did for us. And I wish I could’ve done a better job of protecting him.

I don’t know where Souls go when they get erased; I don’t know if they go anywhere at all. But I hope that wherever Sir Pentious is now, he’s with people that he considers his friends.

#rip Sir Pentious #we miss you #irl source

( 348 notes )

📻 real-radio-demon Follow

8 hr. ago

↯ #alastor the radio demon #real radio demon broadcasts #the ink spots #we’ll meet again #Voxify

( 4,102 notes )

⬜️ voxblr-meta Follow

9 hr. ago

Fanby’s Fake Dash Masterpost

#meta #fake tumblr dash

( 3 notes )

#unreality cw #fake tumblr dash #fanby’s fuckery #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #huskerdust #angel dust #niffty #alastor #vox hazbin hotel #cherri bomb hazbin hotel #charlie morningstar #vaggie #crymini #loona helluva boss #creepzo #sir pentious #id in alt text #discourse cw #it’s fake discourse but #tagging just in case #suggestive

[tankwolf]

TAG GAME LETS GO!!!! i think this is the first time i’m doing a tag game here so. here! @konnorhasapen tagged me to assign some songs to redacted ships and i think i have the right ones :] here ar my favs below the cut, in no specific order 👍🏽

Tank/Quinn Butch 4 Butch by Rio Romeo (x) yeah this ship makes me go insane as is because i love angst and pain and torturing myself, and this song just kind of gets it man. kind of puts a perspective on all the abuse and pain and makes the obvious delusion, hurt and doubt sound normalized and romanticized, and so it’s easier to get a peak into the mechanics and warped mindsets of abusive relationships through it. yeah. just listen to it. going loco everytime i put this song on 🤪

Tank/Sam Sunlight by Hozier (x) sam said his darlin’ feels like sunlight on an easy day, but i think this song is mostly from tank’s pov. the overwhelming feel of the song that fills up your chest would be how tank saw it too, a stark contrast from what they know, as opposed to sam who paired sunlight with ‘easy’. “who would trade that hum of night for sunlight, sunlight, sunlight?” to “a soul that’s born in cold and rain knows sunlight, sunlight, sunlight” and the fact that it is so new to them that it feels bigger and grander and holier than they’d ever known. AHHH DO U SEE WHAT I MEAN. YEAH.

David/Angel BREAKFAST by half · alive (x) it just feels like an easy song, but it’s obvious from the lyrics that it’s still really daunting. david’s character arc has always been about learning to accept and ask for help. his main problem was not being a dick about it in the process, which stems from him finding vulnerability daunting, and angel kind of provides that kind of support with the dickyness just, on default. the “strength in the open, the broken and exposed, should I flee to the mountains?” bit. it hasn’t been easy for him to get used to that but he pulled through!!! and. yeah. also, breakfast is just something david’s plenty good at, and food is sorta his way of showing he cares........................... i’m kidding his song is rude boy by rihanna.

Milo/SH Apple Pie by Lizzie McAlpine (x) the whole thing with milo and his mom and how they kept moving around, and then him and sweetheart moving into Their Own Place ... yeah.. the song itself is about the concept of home and your other person, and there’s a verse about cardboard boxes and moving and just. yeah :’) also, it’s established that milo is ALSO good with food. 

Asher/Babe Video Games by The Young Professionals (x) not the lana del rey (original) version because something about a male voice claiming to be in a sundress is just. very ash-core. i think the song itself is pretty self explanatory if you’ve seen his videos. video games are his number one comfort thing, and the first time he confessed his love was WHILE they were playing a halo game, and said playing was a big part of why he felt compelled to do it. like i said, self explanatory. 

Gavin/FL Say You Won’t Let Go by James Arthur (x) this ship was a tricky one to pin. ik, overused song, i KNOW. was initially gonna go for an arctic monkeys song but gav is so much deeper as a character than that kind of erotic tension. this decision is also influenced by imp!gavin. gavin even in the imperium universe is set on a future with the freelancer and it’s just AHHH it’s the “i’ll love you in every universe” thing + the purest love you can imagine, the kind that feels as easy as breathing despite both of their baggage, the kind that only grows with age. i have Thoughts about this ship man idk. can u tell gavin’s a fav :’)

Huxley/Damien Impossible by Nothing But Thieves (x)  i can just picture dames listening to this song on repeat for hours thinking of hux. idk if the album cover’s colours have tricked me into thinking the song is damien-coded, but it makes a lot of sense for these two, y’know? huxley handles hardships like it’s a breeze, even if it isn’t, and dames isn’t used to that level of optimism. he teaches damien to be vulnerable, and moreover that he can handle him being vulnerable, because that’s something i’m sure dames has an issue with. i just love them sm, especially hux. i would  really like a huxley hug 😔

Aaron/Smartass  Nerve by Destroy Boys (x) pretty obvious why. “you stride right in and you get on my nerves, but I won’t say I’m disturbed because I want you to” y’know? also the high-hats and cymbals with the guitar, that kinda high energy rock music just reminds me of their banter. put that over passive adoring lyrics and you’ve got these two idiots ^-^

tagging -> open tag!! idk enough of u and enough of u well enough to tag people :^) literally nobody’s coming to mind help

#redacted audio #redacted asmr #im too lazy to tag all these characters rn so ill leave it there #but yeah!!! i am 100% correct always. #tag games

[sazandorable]

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

#ao3 #fandom history #aaaaand that's all im going to tag

[jiminrings]

honestly i could talk w band!hobi abt numbers all day, like i wouldn't even mind. what are ur thoughts on 27 hobi? i think they a bad bitch. also UM might i request a drabble abt like a film major! yn (that is very enthusiastic abt films and the aesthetics + cinematography and whatnot) w like,,, a theatre kid?? any of ot7 works fine and it's all good if u can't or don't want to! thankyouu 💜

muse of mine

pairing: namjoon x y/n

wordcount: 4k

glimpse: namjoon’s always been a little sensitive to feedback whether it’s positive or negative, y/n’s an endearing type of talker, and smuggled snacks to the theater haven’t ever tasted this sweet :D // gif from pinterest!

notes: i kinda switched it up a lil bit and made them more established in their respective fields bc my mind went berserk on this concept!!! also this is mayhaps my oNLY piece that’s just pure fluff

“27? The number? Hmm. That sounds... sexy.” - band!hobi

this been’s bugging you for the past half hour

this whole experience feels oddly familiar

you’ve been in this theater for half an hour so far to watch this play!!

lmao ur gonna admit RIGHT off the bat that theatre’s definitely not it for you

your slight unfondness for it is deeply-rooted back to university and for four years, you’ve consistently taken dumps on theatre kids even if it’s under your breath

alright it’s possible that you don’t hATE the actual people ( only some of them ;D ) themselves but rather this whole type of cockiness and the “i’m a direct descendant of shakespeare himself. trust me bro. on god” energy that they always seem to exhude

but realistically, maybe this deep-rooted hate stemmed from seokjin

he was the guy you’d share the exact same elective class with him for two straight whole semesters and you’ve been seatmates from time to time

homie took foreign language as an elective?????

the language is korean?????????????????

“wait b-but i — aren’t you — n-no but i really???”

that’s what you first sputtered to him in realization when he took his seat beside you

the two of you have only ever shown each other notes bc the other was dozing off and the occasional sharing of gummy bears that’s already pre-opened to not make any noise

but for some reason, it’s only dawned in you why seokjin’s a god in this class and he answers your questions without even looking at his notes by hALFWAY through the whole semester of foreign language

one day, u are gonna find a way to bodyslam yourself and never recover from it ever again

“mhmm. don’t sweat it, sweetheart. i personally think it’s very don quixote of me to y’know, take something as impractical and amusing as this.”

you snort at his choice of words because honestly!! you barely remember don quixote and jin’s use of it as an adjective jigs up a refresher course on your brain

who was he again?? 

was he the donkey

.. or are you thinking about shrek again because of your film analysis

you sWEAR there was a donkey in that story

it’s good fun to talk with jin even if he keeps sliding bourgeoisie words here and there and you’re a lil confused with all these references that he makes but that’s okay !!!

atleast even him saying it in a long-winded way that he was like someone from the merchant of somewhere, you know now that he pretty-pleased and charmed his way to the registrar for him to take korean as an elective

...

two weeks later, jin sits next to you in class 

in ACTUAL non-elective, non-native language he already speaks class

now that you’re squinting a bit more, jin does look a little uh?? different

his hair that was once a hybrid of lavender and peach and pink and then blonde was now wholly black and it’s probably his original hair color because it matches with those eyebrows of his!!!

his combo of a black bomber jacket with a silk button-up underneath honestly SLAPS and it makes you forget how he used to exclusively wear only knitted shirts and argyle-patterned cardigans

you have ur jaw dropped because you totally would’ve fallen for seokjin jAW-FIRST 

— if only he didn’t strike you as the brother type when he smacked the back of your head because you were falling asleep on class again and uhhh you mUst be forgetting that the two of you were sitting in front

you had no time to reevaluate whether you should develop a crush for him or not 

he’s immediately slapping his hands on his knees, looking at you so intensely before pointing a finger at you with so much conviction, and then scoffing to himself

“switched majors to film. theatre was gonna be the death of me!!! y/n, if you even think about trying to switch to that cheap, amazon-ordered quill and tanning lights for stage lighting major, you’re absolutely dEAD to me-”

you’ve never had a conversation this striking nor long with jin but you genuinely have no complaints at all

seokjin talks pure shit about theatre and theatre junkies and everything in between for the WHOLE day 

trails beside you for every single class you had, which was convenient because he can then sweet-talk his way again (if anybody even dared to question him) that he’s just newly-switched 

sat with you for lunch and him not eating because he just needS to tell you all about it and you trying not to choke on your pasta as you try to reply to him

followed you back hOME and decided to crash the night there

yeah, that. your unfondness for theatre’s rooted on that one

uh-huh safe to say that you’ve become best friends with jin ever since that day

you’re a sponge for your friends and jin’s the closest one you have, so it was only natural that you soak up his distastes and whatnot

not to brag but aha :D

you add salt to the water while you boil pasta so u may be a little bit of a masterchef or somewhat, no big deal :D

he’s absorbed your fascination for all kinds of lights and fixtures that he has about seven different nightlights in the form of squishies or neon and everything else on his bedside table, in which he turns all of them on at night

fun fact: he’s capable of sleeping in the dark

jin’s the whole reason for your stance on this

he’s adamant about his points and you’ve graduated uni four years ago!!!

which is why you DON’T get why jin would give you a scented black envelope, with “don’t come to this” scribbled in gold at the front, carrying a single ticket to this play with a sticky note saying “don’t watch this at 7 pm, wearing your boss lady year-end award show type of clothes, sitting at the ninth row from the back and two seats from your right.”

because of course!! what the hell did he expect you to do? NOT come to this play at 7 pm wearing your boss lady year-end award show type of clothes then sitting at the ninth row from the back, two seats from the right???

OF COURSE YOU WOULD

your goal in life is to do exactly the opposite of what jin tells you. there’s literally nothing else in life you’d want to fulfill

he’s made it quite easy for you to spite him and although you wouldn’t admit it.,,.,., you may be a little petty ok

he’s the even bigger goof out of the two of you and you can never have the final say!! it’s always him and his wit and yOU being the dunce

it’s a lil sus that jin’s basically ASKING for it with his instructions but whatever

whatever it is, this is finally your chance to enact the final say and you’re gonna pull ALL the stops

all you know about theater-goers is that they dress fancy and wear these mini binoculars and that’s about it

there’s not even one film you know that you see anyone in the audience wearing a worn-in cardigan or even a puffer jacket even if the theater’s mad cold

all the people bring are scarves and shawls???? thee thinnest version of a blanket that won’t warm them up against the frigid airconditioning

that whole dress code sounds ridiculous!!! great please ring out this thousand-dollar dress im gonna wear to the theater thank u

you’re a little worried that you’re not gonna blend into the crowd, but after some digging about the invitation, formal wear is most definitely recommended

it’s an exclusive invite-only play which would be later released to the general public later on so yeah the situation dOES call for a gown thank u very much

also how could you forget that jin explicitly told you not to wear this type of attire

if you’re being humble right now, which you always normally are, even if that jUST sounded boastful talking about how you’re humble all the time —

you do look pretty breath-taking :-)

even when the doors weren’t opened and everyone’s just collectively loitering outside the hall, you’d feel glances at you

the sweet security guard did a double-take at you and mumbled a “very very nice evening to you, miss :D” instead of his normal “enjoy the show!” to the other patrons before you

you’re gonna soak all the silent compliments up and try to remember all of them before writing them on your journal later hee-hee

your midnight blue satin dress that’s floor-length and off-shoulder is dEFINITELY in your favor :D

your dress still glimmers even if the spotlight isn’t on you and you wish you weren’t shy to ask a random stranger to take a picture of you

going on self-timer isn’t ideal either when there’s like a hundred other people in the room

they probably wouldn’t even care if you took a picture of yourself!!! but in your head they probably think that you’re laughable so you’d rather not.. do that

the theater’s dark as hell if that wasn’t established

it is literally pitch black in the room and the ushers at each row holding the flashlights that are meant to guide the patrons aren’t exactly helpful

big kudos to them though,, must take a lot of self-control to not wave their lights like it was a rave :D

a flashlight tHAT bright?? whew pls is this what ships feel in the night

the last time you were in a rave, your thirty minutes of fun was cut short when seokjin immediately got hammered and wouldn’t stop throwing a fit if you didn’t drive him home that instant

his energy seemed to compelling everyone that he’s managed to somehow suck the energy out of a WHOLE rave so you took him home for everyone’s enjoyment :(((( except yours apparently

you’re trying hard to focus on the play that’s happening because for the past twenty minutes, all you’ve done is zone out randomly with ideas all of a sudden 

you NEED to listen

....

uh-huh...

UH-HUH......

wait this is actually.. good

you find plays hard to follow and absolutely boring when you don’t immerse yourself in a run-down PRIOR to watching it in order to get

it’s the same analogy as reading the plot of a movie on wikipedia before watching the movie at the cinema.... absolutely useless

it sucks out the fun from something you weren’t supposed to know

watching plays is two hours of you being confused, going home to read the plot and only understand it by tHEN, and never coming to the theater again because you’d waste your money.... watching something cluelessly in the theater..... for a plot you’d grasp at home

but no

because this one

actually this one that you’re watching...

it’s not bad

it’s nice, actually.

within two minutes, you managed to grasp that it’s a story about a never-ending spring between these two lovers

there’s something about the whole setting of it actually that just sucks you in

in some plays, the outfits would seem so forced even in the given context that it reminds you of uh a particular superhero movie

and yes ur aware that stage makeup has to be enhanced so that people all the way to the back row would see

but there’s just something in this scene that’s laid out right-now that actually gets you in awe

it’s of the couple in the back of their pick-up truck and everything about it seems so natural

the background straight up looks like what it’d be if you were to go outside

the guy’s arm around her shoulder seems so natural and in nature that it doesn’t feel like a random cue in the script

the girl twinkles and it doesn’t even feel like a forced type of laugh you’d cue in attempt to warm the audience’s hearts

it’s of a plot where the the guy eventually falls out of love with the girl, while girl gets even more smitten with the guy at the same time

it’s what you take from the past ten minutes that you watch in dead silence, and you don’t even remember in the back of your head that you’re supposed to hate plays

“no way.”

you mumble in disbelief under your breath, head shaking profusely

is your mind playing tricks on you???

you’ve got too used to seokjin sitting beside you that you immediately turn to your right, whispering out your concerns 

“is it just me or is she wearing a different shade of pink?”

you don’t even buffer for one second when you ask the stranger beside you

you’re so concerned that you’re looking at him intently while waiting for his answer that could either console or despair you, a random theater-goer that’s too noisy with her questions for her own good

it’s absolutely dARK as fuck in the theater but after awhile your eyes adjusted slightly

and the first thing you look at after the stage is him

him as in the dude in your right that you just asked all of a sudden

you could only see his silhouette and the faintest features of his face along with his well-dressed suit but god

... you are totally not lying if you say that even the barest silhouette of him doesn’t look handsome

you’re expecting him to tell you off for being so noisy but instead, he’s the one who takes you by surprise

“how did you notice that?” 

:O

“oh my god!” you exclaim almost too loudly that you yourself even jolts, the guy even making you duck with him slightly for a brief second, “im sO sorry!! am i accidentally spoiling it out for you?”

the guy blinks twice, lips slightly parted before shaking his head no

“no, no... this is the first screening — i mean uh, how would you know that?”

oh boy

you’re adjusting yourself on your seat, bum now warm as you try to explain and not be nervous because what if you just made a wrong assumption about this play and you’re sitting next to a goddamn tHEATRE BUFF???

“well i —uh, uhm what’s your name?” you’re flustered and the FIRST thing you ask is what was his name.,.,,

he seems equally as flustered before he adjusts his glasses, “o-oh uhm i’m namjoon...?”

alright! handsome guy is namjoon!

“you see, namjoon — okay it might just be in my head, but i tHINK it looks deeper with the light somehow. but uh...? the spotlight’s not following her and — is it just me or without the light, her sweater looks brown?”

you’re squinting and if u squint even more, maybe your contacts would just crumple by then

hold on a second

“brown, like — oh my gOD LIKE-”

namjoon puts a hand over his mouth before you could even gasp, hand reaching out for your forearm even before you manage to grasp his shoulder to take it in realization

was it under your nose the whole time??

“... fall.”

:D

holy fucking shit

namjoon looks positively euphoric looking at your face of realization, his once-heavy chest about the whole scene becoming completely devoid of weight

“exactly!!”

his confirmation makes you inwardly squeal, grinning as you point at him and the stage back and forth

“i think this is the first play i’ve become ever interested in watching.”

okay what now

his ears perk up at that, your first sentence that you’ve said after your pink sweater that looks like spring also looks brown like fall in certain scene because of the lighting realization

“it is?”

he takes the chance to look at you as best as he could, trying to play his squinting as cool as he can

namjoon’s far sighted and the glasses he’s wearing are nOT up to date with his current grade bc he’s pretty sure his eyesight’s worsened the past month

he can’t make you out wholly, but he does know that you’re pretty

his eyes don’t linger on you because of the snacks you’re fishing from your purse while you talk that are absolutely illegal in this theater house lmao

but instead, his gaze lingers on you because you’re so pretty

the minimal light that’s bouncing off the stage is enough for him to see a faint outline of your features, highlighting your smiles just right and your dress to glint underneath

“mhmm. i actually hate plays,” suddenly, you’re not scared if namjoon happens to be some sort of theatre buff and you’re offending him because honestly, you feel at ease. “crunch?” you’re holding out the mini bar of chocolate out to him, one he politely declines to because his eyes are bulging out the next second

“you do????”

his genuine reaction indulges you, making you grin ultimately that you put off eating snacks for now to focus on him

“yeah! this is my hate outfit :D”

namjoon giggles as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard

you automatically scoot closer because this time, it’s yOUR turn to shush him

this is totally for just the reason of talking more discreetly and not distracting anyone and is totally not an excuse to be closer to the next guy and touch shoulders with him then get a whiff of cologne because it’s rare for a guy to be handsome and aLSO smell good

your eyes get used to the darkness and eventually, you could make out features of namjoon beside you

he has the prettiest eyes you’ve ever seen

and the way he looks at you makes you feel safe and even your height difference is visible with how probably lonG his torso is compared to yours, his gaze doesn’t make you feel small

namjoon’s still (unsurprisingly) far-sighted and ur so close that he’s a lil cross-eyed 

fuck it he’s gonna go to ophthalmologist FIRST thing in the morning tomorrow

“then why are you here?”

“my friend seokjin,” you lean back upon realizing the original reason why you’re here, the situation being so ironic that you puff out a smile

your friend’s named seokjin?

cool :D kim seokjin is namjoon’s of his favorite directors eVER!!

second best for him actually though.,., no one could quite compare to his first

your explanation makes him cackle several times, a swell of pride recounting why you hate (it’ll be past tense probably after this one) theatre 

“what about you?”

you turn the question to him, making his dimples disappear effectively that you think you’ve just spooked him

“i uh, well i always wanted to see a story that went like this, so i’m here.”

“you’re a critic? oh god. please don’t tell me you heard all my mumbles.”

no this is even WORSE

namjoon’s not a theatre buff

HE’S A CRITIC????????????

god im coming up

“don’t worry, i also think that the drapings must probably be dirty.”

he breaks out into a smile recounting how you were talking to yourself earlier, a snort escaping him involuntarily 

“RIGHT??? it’s like how do you even clean them?? do they fit in washing machines or-”

my god he’s such a nice guy!!!

in fact, he’s everything you want in a guy

you’ve went through atleast twelve facets of emotions for the past hour and you’re not even dating!!!!!!!

“my thoughts exactly!! and if it’s by hand, how do you even scrub the entirety of it?? or wring the water out??”

namjoon KNOWS exactly what’s up :’)

“is there even a clothesline that’d bEAR the weight??”

the two of you are so happy that you just look at each other laughing, a moment in time before namjoon nudges you to lean back because the ending’s happening

you don’t even question him how he’d know that it’s the ending and not just another opening to a new scene, just listening to him

you’re so happy

the play made you happy but namjoon made you even happier :-)

“if you are a critic, you should probably open up your review with this chatty play-hating girl beside you, then at the end, close it off with how she loves it.”

it’s the parting conversation as you realize and holy fuck you are nOT ready for it

you r gonna drag this out for as long as you could <3

......

and namjoon wants in too <3

“noted. if i was a playwright, i’d even make you the lead. which detail should i include? offering me wrapper-covered rice crispy snacks, or asking how you’d watch it while going thru the bathroom?”

this feels so natural

as natural as the couple in the play you’ve just finished watching :))

“you’re hilarious,” you’re not even the slightest bit annoyed and your restrained smile tells him all about it

yea you may have brought in snacks illegally but you aRE gathering your trash up as you’re a decent human being

namjoon wishes you’d pick up after yourself slowly, standing up from his seat as he has the plan of picking up trash that isn’t even his

“what name should i put then?”

you’re silent and oh god he thinks you found his company stupid and would definitely not give him your name

you’re not ignoring him though!!!

his words are still stuck in your head, realizing it lately with his “which detail should i include?”

“me wanting to turn this into a film, actually.”

you test the words out on your tongue, nodding to yourself after a few seconds that you seem so sure of it

“yeah. i wanna make it into a film.”

the lights turn on after being dim for so long, namjoon’s eyes going wide trying to digest what you’ve just said

“w-what?

.....

no fucking way

HOLY FUCKING SHIT SWFRWFBWRHGBRBVWRV SWBHJSDB SHJAVBHGJDS BWHRGHBSVWBGRH

namjoon’s malfunctioning as he’s looking at you from eye to eye, bottom lip trembling while he’s so keen at pointing at you

“y-you’re miss y/n!!”

....

right

oH RIGHT

he’s a fan of yours??

namjoon’s fanning his face because he’s about to literally burst into tears

how could he nOT???

how could he not be emotional when all along, he’s been talking to his number one favorite director????

you and your films are the absolute gems of his life namjoon’s not even kidding

your films were world-renowned for being so natural and sentimental without loading too much into it!!!! you’re known for being so humble through the multiple back-to-back awards and praise you get!!!! 

he cannot calm the fUCK down when you’re rubbing circles on his back

“you w-want to turn my play into a film?”

oh my gOD

you’re fumbling for the envelope and it’s only nOW that you realize that it’s not from seokjin in the first place

spring day a play by kim namjoon an invite for director y/n y/l/n

“it’s you!!!!”

“no it’s YOU!!”

jin’s plan worked alright :D

he’s just FOUR rows behind you lmao

it was just two weeks ago when yoongi, the executive producer of his film that he was directing, let it slip that he was co-financing a play

he met yoongi some semesters later after he became close with you, and he’s aLSO converted yoongi into hating theatre then he fit right in to your little posse of theatre kid-hating film students

that gave jin the laugh of his laugh and yoongi was not joking at all

“no, no. i’m telling you man. it’s different! i even have the script that i’ll let you read.”

and holy shit it IS different

if you see a couple tears on the last seven pages of yoongi’s copy of spring day’s script then mind yo oWN fucking business

then two weeks later, here he is :D

jin managed to also convert you to love theatre even IF it is namjoon’s play that did all the work

( also coincidentally found you a future boyfriend because he’s tired of seeing you alone and the closest you’d get to having someone is projecting your yearning into writing the scripts for the films you’d make )

he’s also secretly co-financed the whole play along with yoongi and he’ll drop that bomb later on lmao

“and that must mean i looked like a total FOOL beside you oh my god im so sorry!!”

namjoon panics at that, about to cry when another realization hits him when he’s about to put his head on his hands

“then that means the friend who gave you the ticket was-”

SEOKJIN VBFHSBVHSFBVSFHDVBSJFV SFJVJSFVSJVSSV SSV V FS FSV SFBVRBVRSVSWVGU

he cries to your shoulder and you never expected to be hugging and consoling someone you’ve just met two hours ago, a more than fond smile on your face he takes advantage of when he sneaks in the chance to ask you

“do you mean that?”

“now why would i lie to the playwright who’s been listening to me talk shit, then theorizing, then crying for the past hour?”

it’s true though

namjoon’s seen it all

he’s still handsome as ever even when he sniffles, his dimples on display when you return his question

“now did you mean it? writing me into your play?”

why are you even ASKING

:D

he’s the biggest fan of u

namjoon’s made notes of your work, dedicated scripts to your movies, and he’s thinking about how it’s not yet hitting you how your whole epiphany about the pink sweater turning brown on his play,,, was entirely inspired from you and your affinity for lighting in your films

he thinks it’s still a little early to kiss you on the cheek even if you’ve already hugged, instead settling on pinching your cheek with satisfaction present in all corners

“you’ve always been my muse.”

#feedback pls and thank you :D I WAS SCREAMING THE WHOLE TIME I HAVE A TEST TOMORROW I NEED TO SLEEP #namjoon #kim namjoon #namjoon imagine #namjoon imagines #namjoon oneshot #namjoon oneshots #namjoon x y/n #namjoon x reader #namjoon fluff #namjoon au #namjoon fluff imagine #namjoon fluff imagines #namjoon fic #namjoon fics #namjoon fic recs #namjoon scenario #bts namjoon imagine

[mudhorn-djarin19]

Din Djarin - NSFW Alphabet

Figured why not share my own fics on here too haha. This here is my NSFW Alphabet for Din Djarin from The Mandalorian Rating: Mature/Explicity Warnings: smut, sex, piv sex, masturbation, overstimulation, edging, bondage and dom/sub Written with a x f!reader perspective Masterlist AO3 link. Join my taglist via here! My fics will be uploaded to AO3 first but I will try to remember to upload them here as well! ___________ A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex) Din didn’t really know anything about aftercare until you came into his life. He at first just kind of left you there, going back to work. After a while he picked up and learned that he should help you clean up, hold and caress you for a bit. B = Body part (Their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s) Din’s favorite body part is his hands and arms. He uses them everyday as part of his job and because of that they are fairly toned and strong. He likes what he can do with his hands to tease you, caress you and more. But also like how strong his arms are to hold you and carry you. His favorite body part of yours is your  ass. He likes to place a hand on it while walking through towns to guide you, and grab handful of it when making out or during sex. C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically) Mans got a lot of it. I mean he’s never really had sexual experiences until you came along. He only got off a few times by himself but it wasn’t enough to get him off as properly as he wanted or needed. But with you in the picture now and knowing how to get him off just right… he produces a ton.  He also loves to make you taste his. And taste yours in response, he finds it delicious. D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs) He always makes sure to keep his face hidden only taking his helmet off in the darkness but the thought has crossed his mind a few times to say fuck it and remove it so you can finally see the real face of the man who fucks you, kiss you and make love to you without a beskar or blanket of darkness barrier but he continues to hold on to his tradition. One day he will do so but probably not until he marries you. If you will have him. Thus still following his traditions and not breaking codes. E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?) Din doesn’t have much experience. He’s had a few endeavours here and there but nothing memorable and were only quickies. He usually just got off on his own. Being a Mandalorian and unable to remove your helmet, trying to keep yourself protected too limits you. He is learning a lot more now that you are in his life and showing him different things. F = Favorite Position (This goes without saying) He loves taking you up against the hull’s wall holding you in his arms while you’re legs and arms are wrapped around him. He doesn’t mind taking you from behind against the wall either. Watching as your butt wiggles in response and arch back into him for more. G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc) Din is never goofy in the moment. He is as serious as can be as usual and makes sure to make things romantic and as sensual as can be. H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.) He’s a busy man fighting Imps and others, traveling all over the galaxy and now having to care for an adopted son so he doesn’t always get to groom himself but he does his best to. Never gets too unmanageable, usually just some short curly hairs. I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…) Din wasn’t very romantic at first, not sure how to do so. He was pretty quiet and rough the first few times until you taught him and he softened up. Now he is a true romantic. Always calling you sweet names, caressing you, and only being rough with you when you ask. He has become a true romantic to you but denies to keep his tough guy persona going. J = Jack Off (Masturbation head canon) Din in the past has jacked off quite a lot. It was his only form of release until he met you. Since you came into his life though he has toned down on doing so since he now has you as a means to help release. You still on occasions can catch him doing so in the cockpit and then tease him about it. K = Kink (One or more of their kinks) He is new to kinks, still exploring them. Again minor lack of experience. But he has learned he likes edging, overstimulation and bondage so far. L = Location (Favorite places to do the do) Anywhere on the ship. He has no preference. It’s really the only location you guys have to yourselves to do it for he doesn’t feel safe often staying at inns. As long as the kid is fast asleep and tucked away in his pod out of ear shot… anywhere on the ship works for him. M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going) His motivation is honestly just you yourself. You get him through everything. You are the light in his life. You keep him going to stay alive on the job and keep him on his toes in the bedroom. A simple tease from you can get him motivated and rearing to go. N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn-offs) Don’t even think about someone else touching you. You are his and only his. He refuses to share you. So threesomes or swinging is out of the question. O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc) He loves when you go down on him. It’s a new experience to him and something about it makes him feel feral. He loves watching as you take him in your mouth and make eye contact with you (even if you can’t tell you are with his helmet on or in the dark). He also loves to go down on your in return, again he finds your juices sweet tasting. P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.) He uses a mix of both depending on the mood and what you want. He can go sensual and slow or fast and rough. He has no preference. Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.) He’s a busy man always having to track quarries or deal with the kid so oftentimes quickies are the way to go. He doesn’t mind them. Taking you in the cockpit in his chair, or against the wall in the hull. R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.) Din is a man of many risks. It’s a part of his job. He doesn’t mind trying new things with you but doesn’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. He will always ask you first and confirm with you if you suggest something if that’s what you really want to do. He also doesn’t want to go too far and risk hurting or upsetting you. S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…) Din is always pushing himself to the limits with his job so his stamina is very high. He can go several rounds and lasts for a good while. How many rounds you guys go is up to you though, he doesn’t want to push you too much. T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?) Din doesn’t have any toys he uses himself. He never did this stuff really with others until you came into his life so he had no need for them. He isn’t even sure what there is to use. He isn't opposed to using anything if you mention it. Open to new things. U = Unfair (How much they like to tease) Din *loves* to tease. He likes to get you riled up when out in public, get you riled up right before he leaves for a quarry. He knows it leaves you craving him more when you can’t have him right away. He’s ghost his fingers over you in different places, and whisper things to you to get you worked up. V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make) He’s a man of few words but in the bedroom he is constantly whispering praises to you. He moans an awful lot too but not too loud. W = Wild Card (Get a random head canon for the character of your choice) Din’s a dominant person. He likes to be in control. It comes from his job and he tries to ease up on it in the bedroom but it’s hard. You don’t mind though, you like him being dominant and in control, only easing up when you are teaching him something new. X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants) He’s packin’ fairly well. At least 8 inches in length and thick. Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?) He didn’t think he had a high sex drive but he does. His drive is fairly high. Always craving and thinking of you. Z =  ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterward) Din doesn’t tire easily. So he doesn’t fall asleep right away afterwards. He ends up spending a good time cuddling you and having convos with you (now that he’s learned about aftercare).

#din djarin #the mandalorian #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #mandalorian #fanfic #ao3 #star wars

[darthspideys]

antithesis // five

din djarin x jedi! reader

summary: You expected to find another of yoda’s species, much less under the protection of a particularly stubborn mandalorian. Little do you know its that discovery that will change life as you know it, and put all three of you in danger you never saw coming.

words: ~2k

a/n: So yeah basically I post when I want so you should follow me if you wanna see the next chapter :) Update on how long this thing is even gonna be, right now I have 7 chapters separated with what I have currently and my current ending I’m looking at 8 or 9 but todays episode has given me some inspiration that I’m not sure if I want to include in the story, or in a bonus (more on bonuses later) or in a sequel/spinoff so stay tuned. 

disclaimer: I h8 baby yoda and it shows

He steps back, and then he looks at your hands, “You’re bleeding.” 

“What?” 

“You’re hands.” 

Your hands are bleeding, cut from the strikes that you pelted your opponent with. You sigh as the adrenaline fades to reveal the stinging in your hands. “They are.” 

He does the head tilt that you’ve become used to again, and the child’s pod comes floating up behind him. “Let’s go back to the ship,” He says, “I’ll take care of it.” 

It’s when you’re back on the ship that you sit back and realize how tired you are. He appears in front of you and sits starting to wash out the cuts on your hands. It’s silent for a long time. He sees that you're off in your own world again, not even noticing his presence and he desperately wants to know why. 

“What did you mean when you said you should’ve killed her?” He asks finally.

The sound of his voice snaps you back into the present and you sigh, suddenly wincing at the sharp pain in your hand. “Isn’t that self explanatory?” You say, trying to keep the energy that you usually have. It fails flat and you both know it. He tilts his head again, which seems to be his go to expression of emotion. “I grew up on a farm out in the middle of nowhere on a planet in the middle of nowhere. My father and I would walk to the small town nearby, and one day we showed up and it was on fire. Buildings were burning, people were dead in the middle of the street, and she stood right in the middle of it. She came because she was looking for him and they both knew it.” 

“She killed him,” He finishes after you pause. 

“He gave up,” You correct him, “I saw it, he was more talented than her but he gave up. It was probably seeing everything broken like that, and thinking that it was his fault that sent him over the edge.” You try and stop a wave of emotions and start wondering why you're even saying any of this in the first place. It would’ve been so much easier to lie. “Obviously I tried to kill her, and I thought I did but clearly I did not.” 

You lapse into silence as he begins wrapping the palms of your hands. At first he decides that he’s not going to say anything, but as the time draws on his curiosity gets the better of him. “What is she?”

“A sith,” You explain. “If Jedi are the enemy of the Mandalorians, then the Sith are our enemy. They are force users who use their abilities to gain power and evil, usually they’re ruthless and have been corrupted by the dark side.” He doesn’t say anything for a while and you suddenly feel very self conscious, you shrug, “Their lightsabers are usually a bit cooler however.” 

You can’t tell if he knows you're trying to make a joke. More silence, more wrapping of your hands, and you're suddenly aware of how close you are to him. Another thing you’ve recently become aware of: the fact that he’s taken his gloves off, and you are experiencing uninterrupted hand to hand contact. It makes you feel a way you can’t describe, but it’s not the feelings you had for him before. 

“Tell me about the Jedi,” He says suddenly. 

It catches you a little off guard, but you indulge him anyway. “The Jedi live by a code, like Mandalorians, but it’s based on two opposing forces coexisting but one being stronger than the other. Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.” 

“Sounds hypocritical.” 

“It’s practical,” You tell him. “No one extreme can exist on it’s own, they all exist with each other, sometimes all inside of one person,” He thinks he knows who you're talking about. “Granted, the Mandalorian code is clearer and by some accounts more interesting but there's a reason they’ve been at war for so long.” 

“When we are attacked, we retaliate.” 

“And so do jedi, but there’s something to be said for compromise. Not that I’m the best example of that, or any of the teachings really but from the outside looking in the goal is to compromise where you can and when there’s no room to try and bring people together then you have to stand your ground.” 

He tilts his head again, “You don’t compromise much.” 

“In practice, I’ve found that people don’t respond to compromise as well as the teaching would hope they would.” 

“You’ve made it sound even more hypocritical,” He says. 

You sigh, “The universe isn’t black and white, Mando.” 

“It’s Din,” He says suddenly, “My name is Din Djarin.” 

You smile, “The world isn’t black and white, Din.” You continue, “A lot of things and a lot of people are a mess of contradictions.” 

“Including you,” He says. 

You nod quickly, “Especially me.” 

You have another moment, something passes between the two of you and the silence is no longer tense. You’ve been fighting with him since the moment you met him, and now you're not fighting and you don’t want to fight verbally or physically. Which is something. 

He finishes, and he stands to walk back to the cockpit. “They’re not as different as you think, Mandalorians and Jedi.” He turns back to look at you, “We’re both stubborn.” 

That makes him laugh. 

There’s something familiar about the way that makes you feel, and it gives you an idea. “I know you don’t want to go to Chandrila, but if laying low is the plan, I know a place.”

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x you #din djarin #din djarin series #din dijarin fanfiction #antithesis series #the mandalorian #the mandalorian imagine #the mandalorian fanfiction #din djarin fanfic

[hellokittymartian]

I need to get this out of my chest

I’m incredibly pissed at young justice’s treatment of m’gann’s character, i have always been, but i can’t even stay pissed bc this is the only appearance we have of young naive ‘’sweet’ megan outside comics so ugggggggggggh hear me out while i try to explain my toxic relationship with yj.

So is 2010, yj comes out, alright everyone liked that, but season 2 comes around and we miss martian’s fans found out that she’s been acting like a fuckin’ psycho frying people’s minds... okay i said back in the day, they are just givin her a little something, a lil drama, action whatever... but nobody liked that. Everyone started hating on her more than they already did (for whatever reason they hated her before. I have many things to say about that but that’s not the point of this rant, i can make another one for that) and started saying how she was awful and how she did not deserve to be forgiven and you know what more, we all know.

Fast forward to some years later, when i was finally old enough to read comics without having to change the screen everytime my mom walked in my room, i started reading teen titans and shit like that bc oui. So, i got to know m’gann better, and this whole ‘miss martian frying brains and trying to erase her beloved’s mind’ did not sit right with me anymore. Wtf was that about? what was that for?????? In teen titans (2003) she has codes and rules that she sticks to when it comes to using her powers on earth. She’s very concious that she’s an alien and only breaks her rules when it’s EXTREMELY necessary (like when they visited her in the australian dessert) soooooooo????? nevermind.

Then we got the amazing news that yj was coming back!!!!! yay i was super excited i thought ‘now is the time for m’gann to be explored and redeemed and understood. Fuck That, they said, because my girl got like 5 sec of screen time and i know she was a leader this season, that’s something, but most of the time i saw her being conner’s fiance than anything else. Not that i complain, and problably it isn’t true but that’s how i percieved it bc i expected more of her on season 3. I wanted her to be a BAMF like she is in the comics, AND THAT’S WHAT PISSES ME OF!

In the comics we have this beautiful sweet, naive alien girl who’s just so delicate and sensitive that even quit the teen titans after a fight! AND WOULD NEVER HURT ANYONE!!! in fact, in one of her first appereances in the teen titans comics she’s fighting against a thief (idk i don’t remember very well it’s been YEARS) and she’s like ‘promise you won’t do it again i don’t want to hurt you’ ‘if you promise you’ll never do it again i won’t hurt you’ and at the end she just gives the guy to the police! we only got to see that in s1 and still she was hated (ugh again, so many thing to say about that too) so it wasn’t really... joyful.

In yj it’s clear that m’gann has great power, that she’s increadibly powerful, even J’onn mentions it and then???? it’s forgotten for the rest of the series????????? noooo, the only time when we see how powerful miss martian is is when... u guessed it... she goes full psycho mod and starts attacking minds for no apparent reason beyond ‘they are the bad guys and we need the info idc’. WHY????? In TITANS (2016) we see how wonderful of a ‘leader’ M’gann can be and it’s AMAZING. Not only that but we see her being true to herself: she still has secrets, but she’s her sweet self and not some mind-intruder monster, plus she’s a lot more mature. 

In both Teen Titans (2003) and Titans (2016) we see her as we know her: kind, loving, caring, fun but serious when needed. It’s shown that she can cope with great responsabilities and we can see also how willing she is to sacrifice herself for others (i mean she doesn’t even think twice before projecting her astral self to save the rest of the titans even though it leaves her in a coma, a BAMF) and this is precisely why she’s my fav<3 why can’t a sweet girly girl also be a leader and one of the most powerful heroes of the world??

I see what yj tried to do: they wanted to give her sometnig more i guess... like what happened when she killed the Manhunter in teen titans and was kind of evil but fighting against it...but it ended up going in all the wrong directions. I feel like what happened with her in s2 was made just for the general plot and not really for her character development. People already didn’t like here as much as the rest of the characters in s1, so for the second they were like ‘ah whatever they dislike her already, what’s a little more going to do’. As each season passes i see her fading more and more to the background and it’s not fair:( bc yj is the most important and big Miss Martian appearence outside the comics, and still in the comics she’s not that studied. So now i fear i’ll never see the Miss Martian at her full potential outside the comics bc yj made everyone dislike her.

THIS is what i mean when i say that Miss Martian deserves better. I want to see her fighting villains with her 8 arms and laser vision, not being a ‘liar’ and fainting everytime there’s fire near or yes GIVE ME SOME FUCKING ANGST! so we can see the team caring for her!!! bc wtf??? you see your friend doing a villain move and you are just ‘oh never mind’ i mean Nightwing hears that M’gann, sweet naive loving im- going- to- bake- you- cookies -bc -i -love- u M’gann, fried Kaldur’s mind and he just goes :o WHAT? or Artemis being like ‘Now fix what u did and hurry up’ when they were in Manta’s ship I MEAN????????? do u really not care??? Ur friend is going through some shit right now, pulling a whole ‘I might turn evil’ stunt and u are like ...that’s something. Shouldn’t hey be asking like??? what happened to make her go like that???? they all just let it pass i mean C’MONNNNN

Okay so, what i mean is that i want to see the REAL Miss Martian, The Hello Kitty Martian, who asks what button’s for hugging when playing Playstation, but that can also kick your ass into another psychic world and then ask you if you are okay bc she didn’t mean to hurt you. THAT’S my Miss Martian. I guess I just stick around with yj bc 1. It’s fuckin great can’t lie (plot, animation, the rest of the characters, etc) 2. bc s i said before, it’s the only chance to see m’gann outside the comics.

Give me the M’gann I know and love, and give M’gann the chance to have fans who love her and get to know her.

#young justice #yj #yj season 4 #yj s4 #miss martian #m'gann m'orzz #megan morse #supermartian #dc #dc comics #young justice doesn't do miss martian justice #miss martian deserves better club #unpopular opinion #dc fans #yj fans #dc comic #young justice phantoms #yj outsiders #sorry if there are mistakes i was mad

[discotreque]

LwD 1.10, “No Small Parts”

Well, that was the most fun I've had watching Star Trek in literally a quarter of a century.

I had high hopes for this series. I love TAS, largely because of its wacky outsized concepts that could only have worked in animation—not that they all did work, but the potential was so apparent to me, even as a kid reading the Alan Dean Foster novelizations—and as an adult, there's something about the imagination of Lower Decks's FX setpieces that transcends even the glorious CGI bonanzas of Discovery.

Pause for a confession. I've long pushed back against criticism of serialization in new Trek. That's just how TV is now, okay? Might as well complain about it being in widescreen. But I'm backing down a little, because I've realized there is something about Star Trek that's inextricable from at least a partially-episodic format. And while Picard was telling a different kind of story, I can't deny that my favourite episodes of Disco have been the ones with a mostly self-contained A-plot. After 10 delightfully episodic instalments of LwD, its focus on long-term development of characters instead of a season-spanning puzzle-plot (okay, mostly just Mariner, but we only have 10 × 22 minutes and she is the star) has been downright refreshing.

So here we are, at the end of the most consistent and well-executed Season 1 of a Star Trek series since, arguably, Those Old Scientists. And sure, if they'd had to produce another... yikes, 42 episodes? Then sure, they probably would have dropped a clunker or two—but they didn't, and winning on a technicality is still winning. I'm practically vibrating with excitement for Disco to come back next week, but damn, I'm going to miss this little show while it's on hiatus.

Spoilers below:

Something I've been keeping track of finally paid off this week! (Which never happens to me, lol.) The destruction of the USS Solvang marked the first present-day death(s) of any Starfleet officer on Lower Decks, the only other on-screen killing at all being a flashback in "Cupid's Errant Arrow". Which makes sense, being (a) a comedy, and (b) about typically "expendable" characters: it hasn't been afraid to flirt with a little darkness here and there, but killing people off at Star Trek's usual pace wouldn't just be wrong for the tone, it would be downright bizarre.

But... people die on Star Trek. That's one of the core themes of the show, really: space is full of knowledge and beauty, but also danger and terror, and believing that the former is worth the risk of the latter is (according to Trek) one of humanity's most noble traits. I'm the least bloodthirsty TV watcher I know, but the longer we went with a body count of nil—ships completely evacuated before they were destroyed, main characters hilariously maimed without permanent consequences, etc.—well, I didn't mind per se, but the absence of truly deadly stakes was definitely getting conspicuous.

Turns out they were saving it up for maximum impact. And holy fuck, I've never felt such a pit in my stomach watching a ship get destroyed that wasn't named Enterprise. It felt grim and brutal and somehow both much too quick and dreadfully inevitable—and yeah, it looked extremely fucking cool—and I'd like every other Star Trek property for the rest of time to take notes under a large bold heading labeled RESTRAINT.

Comedy doesn't need to do this, but my favourite comedy does, and in a way that few other art forms can even approach: lower my emotional defences by making me laugh, endear character(s) to me with goofy-but-relatable antics—then BAM, sucker-punch me in the motherfucking feels. M*A*S*H is probably the classic example on TV, Futurama was notorious for it, and even Archer has pulled it off a few times; it's also a staple of some of my favourite standup. I wasn't sure if Lower Decks was going to go there in Season 1—and wasn't sure if they'd earn it—but I knew if they did, that they'd nail it, and damn. Feels good to be right.

Last batch of notes for the season!!! I rambled enough already, so let's do it liveblog-style:

I fucking KNEW they were going to use "archive" visuals from TAS at some point, I KNEW IT :D

"THOSE OLD SCIENTISTS" ahahahahahahahahahahahaha

I like chill and confident Boimler a lot? You can really see—

oh bRADWARD NOOOOO

That opening shot of the Solvang tracking down to the red giant was extremely Discovery-esque... minus the motion sickness, that is

A lady captain AND a lady first officer? That's—oh hey, it's Captain Dayton's brand-new ship. Hahaha, that means they're totally fucked, right?.

Yep! They sure a—umm, wh—shit, okay, but—oh no—no, you can't—wait DON'T

...fuck

FUCK.

Narrator: "And then Amy needed a five-hour break."

[live-action Star Trek showrunner voice] "Gee, Mike! Why does CBS let you have two cold opens?"

Okay, yes, the bit with Rutherford cycling through all the different attitudes in his implant was transparently an excuse for Eugene Cardero to vamp while waiting for something to do in the story, but as far as I'm concerned they can contrive a reason for him to do a bunch of different silly Rutherfords in a row any time they damn well want, because that was classic!!!

EXOCOMP EXOCOMP EXOCOMP EXOCOMP

AND THE EXOCOMP IS PAINTED LIKE THE EXOCOMP IS WEARING A LITTLE EXOCOMP-SIZED STARFLEET UNIFORM

EXOCOMP!!!!!

The slow burn and now the payoff of the Mariner-is-Freeman's-secret-daughter plot has been executed so well. I'm beyond impressed with this writer's room, y'all—they are threading a hell of a needle here

"Wolf 359 was an inside job" would have been a spit-take if I'd had anything in my mouth

...how many memos do you think Starfleet Command has had to issue asking people to stop calling the USS Sacramento "the Sac"?

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW THEY'VE DECORATED THE SHUTTLECRAFT SEQUOIA THOUGH

Is, uh, is it weird if I'm starting to ship Tendi and Peanut Hamper a little? It is weird, isn't it. I knew it was weird...

Coital barbs??? I take back everything I said about wanting to know more about Shaxs/T'Ana.

The "good officer" version of Mariner is... kind of hot, tbh! But Tawny Newsome has done such a great job of building this character all season that her voice getting uncharacteristically clipped and martial and "sir! yes, sir!" is also deeply, deeply weird

Ah, so this is literally exactly like when TNG (and DS9) would bring in, and then blow up, a never-before-seen Galaxy-class ship, just to underscore that we're facing a real threat this week, baby. And hey, it fucking worked—my heart was in my throat, omg, for the reveal of the—

PAKLEDS?????????

The fucking PAKLEDS have been gluing weapons to their ships for the last 15 years. GREAT.

(We interrupt the SHIP BEING SLICED INTO SCRAP for an interesting bit of world-building: on Earth, the traditional First Contact Day meal is salmon!)

"I need a dangerous, half-baked solution that breaks Starfleet codes and totally pisses me off! That's an order." I'm starting to think Captain Freeman might actually be overqualified for the Cerritos, y'all—she's REALLY awesome

OH SHIT IT'S BADGEY, this is a TERRIBLE IDEA

"How much contraband have you hidden on my ship?" "I don't know! A lot!"

Awwww, Boims!!!

AHAHAHAHAHAHA, FUCK THIS, PEANUT HAMPER OUT

BADGEY NOOOOO

AUGHHHHH WHAT THE CHRIST DID HE JUST—BUT—RUTHERFORD'S IMPLANT????

RUTHERFORD!!!!!!!!!!

SHAXS!!!!!!

F U C K ! ! ! ! !

ahaIOPugdfhagntpgjrq90e5mgu90qe5;oigoqgw4ouegrw5SP;IAEHURVa IT’S THE TITAN???????????

IT'S CAPTAIN WILLIAM T. RIKER ON THE MOTHERFUCKING TITAN??????????

i'm screaming I'M SCREAMINGGGGGG​TGGGTGQER;​LBHAOIBVNV;​OAPBIJNVagr;h;​oagruipuwtnaetbaetgq35ghqet

I'M SO GLAD THIS WASN'T SPOILED FOR ME WTF

I AM WEEPING LIKE A CHILD

...

(Just a brief 20-minute pause this time)

And oh wow, seeing Will and Deanna hits different after Picard too, in a few different ways, which I may even get into later now that my heartrate is back to normal, lmao

Oh, I am always here for some jokes at the expense of the Sovereign class. The Enterprise-E sucked. They should have built a new bigger model of the D and new Galaxy-class interiors for the TNG movies, and I will die on that hill

OKAY, FINE, YOU GOT ME, RUTHERFORD × TENDI WOULD BE ADORABLE AND THIS IS ACTUALLY A PRETTY GOOD SETUP FOR IT

Awwww, Shaxs though :( Congrats on the single most badass death in Star Trek history, dude. The Prophets would—well, the actual Prophets would probably be slightly confused about most of it, but Kira Nerys would be proud of you and I feel like that probably counts for more. RIP, Papa Bear

I am here all damn DAY for the Mariner–Riker parallels, ahahahahaha

Pausing it to record my prediction that Boimler's commitment to not caring about rank anymore is going to last 3... 2...

Yep.

Bradward, how DARE YOU.

"Those guys had a long road, getting from there to here." OH FOR THE LOVE OF—

What a brilliant way to resolve and renew the various character arcs and relationships moving into Season 2! The writers could easily have brought everything back to status quo—chaotic Mariner fighting with her mom and being a bad influence on Boimler, etc.—and done another 10 just like these, but I suspect that wouldn't have been ambitious enough for these writers. What a blast. I cannot wait for more.

Thanks for following along, friends! Stay tuned for my (similarly patchy and amateur) coverage of Discovery, starting next week!

#star trek #star trek lower decks #lwd spoilers #lower decks spoilers #lower decks #amy's episode notes

[plounce]

do u have any reccomendations for how to read only comics involving rictor and shatterstar?? i used to be into marvel comics so i am immune to the usual comic shenanigans but i would like to learn more about these boys

here is a guide to reading xmen comics for rictor and shatterstar, my favorite canon comics couple! they were the first on-panel gay kiss in a marvel comic! they’re very special to me!

OKAY SO... ok. for anyone else using this, here’s a standard disclaimer that obviously there’s gonna be a lot in these that just absolutely sucks because 1. the 90s, 2. comics are an extremely cishet white male dominated industry. i do not vouch for everything written in these comics, but i think the gaycoding that eventually gets canonized is worth wading through a lot of stupid bullshit and very ugly art.

quick backstory on these two: rictor is a mexican teenager who was kidnapped by an anti-mutant terrorist group and was rescued by x-factor (the original 5). he hung around their auxiliary teen group the x-terminators for most of x-factor, being a delightful little punk (wearing a sleeveless leather vest a lot of the time!) and hanging out with boom-boom (who i love) and then got put into the new mutants for a very short time (where he had a thing with rahne/wolfsbane), before it was dissolved and transformed into x-force when rob liefeld took over the title. rictor hates team leader 90sdude cable because he thinks cable killed his dad in front of him. he tends to be the snarky asshole on the team.

the first part of this article has a lot of little rictor moments i’m not covering here. if you want the full rictor experience, check out x-factor (1986) and !x-terminators! x-factor starts very slowly but it picks up and improves when the simonsons take the helm.

rictor left the team. shatterstar was introduced by liefeld - he’s an Emotionless Warrior Guy Who Loves To Fight from mojoworld (a planet run by a despot who produces tv. it’s Commentary), where he was forced to be a gladiator from birth and doesn’t know a lot of earth customs and doesn’t have emotions (or rather, he represses them). 

x-force (1991) feel free to read through all of it, but in case you just want to skip to these two, all of these issues have one or two good little Moments - just do some skimming. i tend to focus more on rictor than star in this era because star is made more interesting than Emotionless Warrior Guy by butting up against rictor:

13-16 (rictor rejoins his old new mutants friends)

19, 21-26 (the first phase of their relationship where they don’t really get along. in one of these issues rictor stares at star’s ass. big moment of star being autism-coded in here too)

29-30 (rictor drives shatterstar around and they seem to get along better, you get to learn a bit about star’s past, adam-x the x-treme is there)

32-33 (just some little moments of them hanging out, a couple good rictor lines)

34 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor backstory issue! AND this has the first big Subtext moment: shatterstar reveals he learned spanish from tv so he and rictor can have “conversations of a highly -- personal nature” HELLO?)

35 (some little moments where you can see star and rictor are now Friends and star is affected by that friendship)

39-40 (more good friendship - rictor asks if star has been watching dating shows and they just seem close. rictor also has gotten a haircut! we learn shatterstar’s mojoworld designation! they ride some motorcycles!)

43 (VERY IMPORTANT - the two go to a club. rictor tells star he’s a virgin then asks him if he has a dick. i am not kidding this literally happens. star learns what sexual attraction feels like and says ‘i don’t know what emotions im supposed to attach to that’, and rictor tells him he’ll help him learn.)

44 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor leaves the team because he doesn’t want to have the team communicate telepathically (VERY interesting for a character who is eventually revealed to have been a closeted gay man). shatterstar begs him not to leave - “you’re my best and only friend.” rictor tells him that if he ever needs him, he’ll come back.)

cable (1993) #22 (follows up directly on rictor leaving the team - star accompanies rictor to the airport and has a lot of Feelings and has great hair. “julio. one last time. please, change your mind. what am i going to do without you?” oh so you’re dependent on your best friend who you’re in love with? oh?)

45, 47-48 (star’s weird biology, star brings up rictor as his emotional touchstone in a situation where he isn’t relevant at all. also, a plotline where tabby gets treated terribly by her friends and the narrative!)

49 (VERY IMPORTANT - star wanders around at night wondering why rictor hasn’t contacted him yet. he goes to the club he and rictor went to in #43 and turns down a girl who hits on him. he thinks “i miss julio...” (in an earlier issue, rictor tells cable not to call him by his first name - “only my mom calls me that”), then beats up some homophobes in an alley. I AM NOT KIDDING.)

51-52 (51 has more weird star biology. 52 has two pages of star and james talking that is a nice look at star’s developing emotional state - the rest of 52 is a fight with one of marvel’s extremely fatphobic villains, just a warning to skip the rest of it. although the letter page of 52 has someone go HEY ARE RICTOR AND SHATTERSTAR IN LOVE? thank you roeland looman from the netherlands)

54-56 (the start of shatterstar’s weird bad benjamin russell backstory that is quickly forgotten, disregarded, and uncared about by everybody. BUT in 54, there is some extremely loud subtext where star’s feelings for rictor are explicitly compared to a het romance subplot!)

58 (star is very chill and flamboyant for like two pages, it’s great)

59-61 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor returns because star Needs him in the midst of his identity crisis!! it’s so joyful and sweet for them both, and the subtext is so LOUD here - there’s just. so much going on, i won’t describe it all, but it’s very good content and their emotionally intimate relationship is very apparent - really excellent gaycoding. the weird shatterstar backstory wraps up circuitously and to no great effect, but the art in the last issue is very nice, and rictor’s plain and uncomplicated concern for star is great.)

63-65 (some little moments - shatterstar and rictor time travel and beat up some nazis, star has a lovely conversation with siryn,)

x-force/cable ‘97 (the team goes to asgard! the important thing is that star says some goofy “ah... warriors...” things, and then rictor teases star for liking delivery pizza. it’s very charming)

67 (they hang out with tabby in a van. shatterstar has pigtails!)

70 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor and shatterstar exit the team together to go take down rictor’s crime family in mexico! they seem very devoted to each other. shatterstar’s hair is all the way down!)

post leaving x-force:

76 (VERY IMPORTANT - ricstar return for one issue - rictor gets held captive to force shatterstar to fight domino!)

x-force annual 1999 (VERY IMPORTANT - ricstar get their own story about what they’re doing in mexico! shatterstar has an ugly little goatee, but rictor looks great! they choose to share a room rather than sleep separately and then it kind of feels like they shared a bed! rictor has learned star’s alien language! they genuinely just seem so close and comfortable with each other, it’s incredible.) (if you’re using RTO, it’s within the rest of xforce’s issues)

they’re both in comics limbo for the first half of the 00s besides a couple random flavorless appearances. shatterstar at some point goes back to mojoworld to help with the war against mojo. then we hit peter david’s x-factor run in 2006, known as x-factor investigations (xfi). this directly follows the “house of m” event - what matters is that the vast majority of mutants have been depowered by the scarlet witch. rictor is one of them.

rictor is a main character of the team from the first issue (the series opens with him about to attempt suicide), so if you wanna read the run you can start from the beginning. x-factor is... well, there are worse-written comics. it’s an okay read, but i find PAD’s writing insufferable a lot of the time (he writes multiple man as a pretty blatant self insert, and literally every girl on the team wants to fuck him at some point or another). i read the whole thing and it’s decent comics, but you might want to skip to the ricstar.

PAD canonizes ricstar, which is great! but unfortunately: 1. he writes star as  “slutty bisexual just can’t stop wanting to fuck people besides his partner who is uncomfortable with that!”, which is biphobic and sucks hugely, especially since it feels so different from xforce original shatterstar (see this post). rictor also just seems so annoyed with him all the time, which also sucks - they’re best friends!! let rictor like his boyfriend!!

anyway. if you choose not to read all of xfi, here are the ricstar highlights:

first issue of xfi for rictor's horrible mental state after m-day

14 (jamie implies that star would be jealous of rictor hanging out with quicksilver)

43, 45, 49 (star reappears!! he’s mindcontrolled, but it gets fixed, and he and rictor have the first ever on panel gay kiss at marvel!! yaaaay!! then they talk about their relationship a little)

after issue #50 it changes the numbering, so if you’re using RCO youll have to go to xfactor (1986) #200 to continue

200 (SHATTERSTAR FIGHTS THE THING!)

continue to read between here for star apparently being unable to stop kissing people. sigh. star sleeps with adult layla, which... sigh. whatever

207-208 (rictor and shatterstar semi-resolve the stupid biphobic plotline, resolve to work on their relationship, rahne discovers them (she and rictor had been sleeping together earlier in xfi), rahne is pregnant and homophobic, rahne and star fight, star is a delightful bitch)

209 (shatterstar on a pirate ship. that's it)

210 (rictor confirms that he is gay and it wasn’t legit when he’s been with women. there’s a moment where it's like "oh star makes rictor laugh" which is epic)

211-212 (star is said to be frustrated about rictor and rahne, rahne’s baby’s actual dad is revealed)

213 (rictor and rahne mostly resolve their shit)

216 (star and monet hang out, star thinks monet tells him to pee on rictor, spiderman is there)

217 (there’s a joke about the longstanding theory that longshot and star are related, monet is revealed as muslim in a very dumb way)

220 (star and rahne have a pretty nice conversation about their relationships to rictor and rahne’s faith. rictor does an offscreen internalized homophobia)

221 (star and rahne continue to hang out but it’s not as good as the previous issue.)

222 (oh my god, rictor cares about shatterstar being hurt! rahne owns up to how she kind of treated rictor like shit!)

pop over to avengers: the children’s crusade (a young avengers miniseries with good ol’ billy/teddy and i like it! but if you don’t want to read the whole thing - rictor and shatterstar appear in #6, and rictor is the first mutant to be repowered! they’re more tender with each other over their five page appearance than they are in xfi, so it’s a balm)

225-226 (PAD decides the first thing rictor does with his powers is be a scab [DEEP SIGH], rictor and shatterstar discuss rictor getting his powers back, the biphobic plotline is resolved again kind of in a very PAD-y way)

235-236 (shatterstar gets to be the main character of a mini arc. fights a mojo guy)

238 (ricstar go with rahne to help her find her son)

242 (they find her son. not as important imo)

248 (oh my god... they joke together :) they like being around each other :) also shatterstar goodboy moment. then in 249 rictor’s life is spared bc of shatterstar’s goodboy moment)

259 (SHATTERSTAR’S CRAZY CONVOLUTED BACKSTORY THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS TO HIS CHARACTER! YAHOO! and star has a cute little bob)

after xfi wraps up, there’s a couple years of limbo before they appear in secret warriors (2017) #2-3 (end of #2 and most of #3), which is a big crossover event or something. i don’t know, it’s an inhumans comic, and as an xmen person i am contractually obligated to roll my eyes at the inhumans. ricstar both have mustaches, star doesn’t speak, and rictor has the ugliest costume ever (green tracksuit with no socks??) (tabby also has a terrible costume). it’s just more inhumans trying to be a match to the xmen and utterly failing to not look & act like total jackasses (except, of course, for kamala and moon girl). rictor’s jokes that daisy johnson should get more original powers (she also has seismic powers - rictor predates her!), and then daisy blows up the xmen’s jet. while it’s in the air. this is a very neat summary of most mutant-inhuman relations.

now we enter the current era of “on again off again” relationship limbo.

rictor appears next in iceman (2017). in #9 he states that he and star have apparently broken up offscreen! and then he hits on bobby! sina grace is a cool person but this writing decision is so... aghhh. the next issue he and bobby go out on a date and he’s immediately like “yeah i only have my eyes on star”, so it seems to be more “it’s complicated” than “we’re broken up for good.” he sticks around to help out with a mission in #10-11.

they’re on again in new mutants: dead souls, where rictor is a part of the team and he’s hilarious and has so many great lines! shatterstar also makes a couple cameos throughout and they’re all super sweet! they seem very domestic and comfortable and happy, i love their dynamic in this. my favorite shatterstar panel ever is in #6, where he is making rictor pancakes and is only wearing an apron. please ignore all the big plot things that happen at the end of this, especially everything with karma. they are stupid, dumb, and do not matter.

related to nm:ds, rictor appears in multiple man #1 as part of that team and looks very very cute. and he isn’t whitewashed like in nm:ds!

off again in the shatterstar (2018) miniseries. i have a lot of mixed feelings about this because i LOVE all the rictor stuff, the first issue codes shatterstar as autistic in a very characterful way, it doesn’t whitewash rictor for once, and the covers are GORGEOUS! but it also attempts to retcon a ton of star’s emotional backstory AND arc set out in xforce, casting a black woman as his emotionally manipulative ex. also star is a landlord (ew). my advice with this one is to treat all the flashbacks as not-really-canon since they suck.

star appears in extermination (2018) #3-4 and gets mind-controlled into trying to kill the time-displaced teen o5 (timetraveling baby cable is trying to put them back where they came from), and the art looks great and i feel really bad for him. rictor makes a follow-up cameo in uncanny x-men (2019) #9-10, where you can see that he’s at the school in order to visit shatterstar since he’s with cecelia reyes. he then goes to fight nate grey/x-man, where he gets sucked into the age of x-man pocket universe/event.

around half the xmen get trapped and brainwashed in that pocket universe where there is no love or family, merely friendship and comradery (it’s an attempt by nate grey to ‘fix’ the xmen by getting rid of all the soap opera stuff - it’s a bit meta wrt how xmen are the soap opera superheroes). there are a couple different titles for this event: rictor appears in age of x-man: x-tremists #4-5. people have mixed feelings about this title due to the gay characters (northstar and iceman) enforcing no-romance laws that very intentionally parallel anti-gay laws from real life, but rictor is just chilling and running an illegal romance movies theatre, and then he gets drunk and then starts a riot and he’s just delightful in this.

everyone outside of the pocket universe thinks everyone who disappeared was killed. shatterstar is part of the team in x-force (2019) (there are two 2019 x-forces: this is vol 5, written by ed brisson) who are trying to track down young cable (baby cable, or “bable”), who killed older cable, who formed good old 90s xforce. boom-boom is the best part of this entire run, hands down. the art is expressive and interesting but i Hate how they draw warpath (the one time he’s free from comic book limbo!). shatterstar is in full “i only like fighting please let me fight i am a difficult asshole” mode, and talks about grieving rictor in #7 and #10. this is never really resolved since age of x-man is thrown over for hoxpox (BIG status quo changes & current era of xmen comics), but aside from my little ricstar heart i can’t really mind.

rictor is currently appearing as part of the team in excalibur (2019), and has been very... cozy... with apocalypse. at the time of writing (halloween 2020), it’s very heavily ambiguous what exactly their relationship is besides “intense” and i still have no clue what to think about it. he and star have been stated by the writer to be exes, but i also know tini howard is a ricstar fan so im holding out for good things! and it’s cool that rictor is getting a ton of focus and a lot of powering up. i remember reading xfi #1 and being amazed at how rictor described how soul-deep his earth powers were and wanting more of that, and excalibur has that for him in spades. (i am still withholding a lot of judgment wrt rictor’s writing in excalibur until i see how things pan out)

after reading to excalibur #12, switch over to x-factor (2020). read the first three issues because i love northstar and prodigy and rachel. please ignore a couple cringe comments towards poor daken. shatterstar appears in #3, trapped on mojoworld, getting traumatized, and breaking my heart as i write this. that last data page... free my boy!!!!

after x-factor #3, read x of swords: creation. more rictor and apocalypse being Close. after that, read x-factor #4 for apocalypse being very Attached to rictor, and then rictor looking very good and freshly resurrected. then continue reading excalibur. in may, x-factor is going back to mojoworld!!

that’s all there is so far! i think within the next year there will be even more content for us, and im very eager to get to that content. i will update this post as things come out.

#ricstar #xmen #rictor #shatterstar #julio richter #chirps #anonymous

[sweet-evie]

you would probably be able to go on forever answering this (and honestly i would love something like the way u did when u answered if he loved shirley or kallen more after cc.. if it's not too much trouble for you 😅) but what convinced you that lelouch loves cc the most out of all the other girls (shirley & kallen)? taking just the series into consideration first then the movie. thank u!

Lol true 🤣😂 I could ramble forever.

And if it's about CLuCLu? 🤭😅😂 You better be ready for a lengthy (and I mean lengthy) essay. 😍😂

As for who Lelouch loves the most? 

I'm not so sure I would say C.C...

Canonically speaking, that would be Nunnally... And then probably Suzaku (platonically & shipping aside).

It's honestly not so much as I think he loves C.C. the most, it's just the ship that's to my taste. I mean, it's pretty obvious he cared about everyone he had personal relationships with. And I'm not Lelouch so I can't give a definitive answer. Lelouch is so complicated. 🙉😂

We could look at the subtle affection between them though 🤣😂😅 And why Lelouch & C.C. are soooo compatible (in my humble opinion).

But before we do... 

Let’s dive into the background.

And let's address the elephant in this essay.

C.C. betrayed Lelouch by lying to him for the majority of the series.

Okay... But do we understand why?

This is why I don't outright judge any character in Code Geass, because they all have a reason for doing what they do... well, the main cast anyway.

I saw this in a translation of the official texts... 

C.C. is the kind of code bearer who is torn between wanting to die or fulfilling her true wish. She purposely makes her contractors hate her for the sake of making it easier for them to take her code and kill her one day. (Which is why Mao doesn't work. Because he's too obsessed with her to kill her). Because she's desperate to die, and end her suffering. But let's not forget that she also has a secret wish: to be loved... 💝💘❤💗

Throughout R1 (and you only realize this after you watch the series in its entirety) and most of R2, C.C. is hellbent on making sure she dies that time around (especially because Lelouch shows so much promise and potential for ending her existence). Now why would I say that?

She deliberately lies to Lelouch and withholds information from him to make him hate her. So it would be easy to kill her and she gets to die, and he walks off happy without emotional baggage or trauma... In C.C.'s POV, that's a win-win. Her hypothetical scenario looks something like, "I make you hate me, that way when the time comes, you can kill me easily. I finally end my hell of immortality, and you get to live forever, although you may hate it one day like I did."

But you know what's fucking sad?

Aside from living on and on and having accumulated experiences and seeing the world and finding the entire point of life pointless and hopeless, the romantic part of me strongly believes C.C. wants to die because she 1) gives up on life and 2), she doesn't think anyone can truly love her after everything. She may have been hopeful, probably in the early years of immortality, but after everything she's been through, it's fucking impossible.

That might as well be canon. 😆 For all I know, it probably is. 🙉🤷‍♀️

Anyway, back to the point before I went on a weird tangent...

Remember, C.C. even asks him that question outright when they were in the Avalon. Remember? Kallen cockblocked them 🤣🤣😂😂

She asked if he hated her after everything she'd done to him (contextually speaking, & not the actual C.C. quote)

Anyway, when Lelouch finds out the terms of the contract... what happens?

He's moved by empathy... Because in his words, "Living just to die is so sad." He's too damn kind. C.C.'s intentions and plans BACKFIRE. It was in this moment that I believe Lelouch starts to understand (like truly 💯 understand) the depth of C.C.'s sadness and her personal tragedy.

He already started doing so in R1 when he saw her many deaths and he said he'll be a demon because she's a witch.

This series has reaffirmed the nature of their relationship as accomplices and partners plenty of times. First it was C.C. reiterating that in early R1, then Lelouch affirms it after the Mao-shooting-C.C.-in-Clovisland incident, and then the one I mentioned where they said they'd be a warlock/demon & a witch.

Now we circle back to R2, where Lelouch learns her true wish and gets to really see her. Like, C.C. in her entirety. From former slave-girl, to Geass-wielder, and then code-bearer.

Their complicated-turned-wholesome relationship has a slow and subtle build-up that mounts to, dare I say, a satisfying conclusion. For me anyway.

Because in the end, Lelouch did motivate C.C. to start living again. And C.C. stuck with Lelouch even if she didn't have to.

And he came to death smiling. 🥺😭

CG isn't about romance.

But if it did have an element of explicit romance between C.C. and Lelouch, I wouldn't have had complaints. It could have been a tragedy still, and I would be happy with it.

“C.C. didn't have to struggle as much for Lelouch's affection and that she got everything handed to her in a silver platter.” <-------- WRONG!

I do believe Lelouch bounces between hating C.C. and needing her. Like a fucking spectrum. And until her true self is revealed to him, I don't think Lelouch saw C.C. as a human being. Just another means to an end.

Lelouch & C.C.'s relationship is as bumpy as Lelouch & Suzaku's, albeit more subtle in its complications. Obviously, the SuzaLuLu dynamic is more fleshed out compared to CLuCLu because duh, CG is Lelouch & Suzaku's story. 😅

I can literally point out every moment where Lelouch is hating on C.C., and when you can tell he's desperate for her help and her presence. (But that's for another post 😂😂) Point is, he does it plenty of times that it's obvious their relationship is far from lovey-dovey hearts and rainbows.

So no, any sliver of implied romance between them is neither forced nor instant. There 👏 was 👏 build 👏 up! 👏

If CLuCLu romance was an actual thing in the show, it would have been so interesting to see the progression.

It's built on a slow but steady train to Love Land 🤣😂 Slow burn at its finest, as I imagine it would have taken two seasons before either Lelouch or C.C. would fess up and confess. Hell, it took them 2 seasons to care about each other deeply in all reality.

If it were a real shoujo romance, it would have been built on a unique trust... you know, the kind that only crops up when you've seen each other's lowest points and still choose to support one another. Unconditional love and all that 🤪🥳

It's not a stretch to say that Suzaku and C.C. saw plenty of moments where Lelouch was at his lowest, rawest moments. Moments where he strips himself of pride and his façade, and he caves to his burdens.

Lovely example of this is the C's World episode,

Also this scene where he calls and begs Suzaku to protect Nunnally...

And the times Lelouch grieves and despairs in C.C.'s presence.

They even added that lovely scene in the Recaps where he's despairing over Suzaku being Lancelot's pilot and having to fight his best friend. And C.C. is there offering him her advice and being the realistic voice.

A Brief Opinion on Re;surrection

The ending of Re;surrection was truly the closing of unfinished business between him and C.C... and as messy as that movie was, I still love that they touched on the profound meaning behind the names C.C. and Lelouch choose for themselves.

Re;surrection is Lelouch & C.C.'s moment 💯! CLuCLu fanservice at its finest. It's actually a decent (not great) alternate route if Lelouch lives after being killed. Plus, it's kind of obvious now that Re;surrection and the Recap films set it up to be CLuCLu end-game.

Still, it could have gone differently. Lelouch could have stayed behind and let C.C. leave. He had a choice. No one was asking Lelouch to go, and C.C. certainly wasn't goading him into leaving with her. Plus, it's obvious people wanted him to stay. Suzaku and Nunnally especially.

So of all the people he could have chosen to be with at the end of that movie, why her then?

Well, probably because C.C. really does know him and understand him on a level that's not easily achievable by many. Only matched by Suzaku, really. (Even Nunnally could admit to never really understanding Lelouch because her older brother shielded her as much as he could from being touched by the true cruelty of the world).

She wasn't handed his affection on a silver platter and vice versa. It's a relationship that developed mutual trust and understanding, even paving the way to noble sacrifice. Also, their sass is fucking on point.

And honestly, ever since Lelouch chose Geass and his path of blood, he wasn't exactly tethered to the world like a normal human being would be anymore. Both the original and alternate timeline express that wonderfully.

After everything he'd been through and the kind of power he'd acquired (both in the original & alternate timeline), I'd say he now exists on a level that's a little bit on par with C.C... Whether he wanted it or not, he tied his own fate to C.C.'s, in a way, when he accepted that contract and by making the choices that he did.

With that said,

In comparison to the main characters shipped with Lelouch -- Shirley, Kallen, and Euphemia -- C.C. (and Suzaku, honestly) have the edge for a romance with Lelouch. (According to my opinion! 👏👏👏)

Lelouch and Suzaku are opposites... Moon & Sun

Lelouch and C.C. are complements... Moon & Star

I know that's fucking cheesy 🧀🧀🧀 But it's the only metaphor I can think of. 😆😅 (Also, can you tell how pro-SuzaCLuCLu I am?)

All of that ⬆️ got me on board the CLuCLu train. And honestly, I don't want to leave.

#code geass #my half-baked #cluclu #analysis #lol #lelouch x c.c #lelouchcc #lelouch vi britannia #lelouch lamperouge #c.c. (code geass) #lulucc #lelouch of the rebellion #code geass fukkatsu no lelouch #wbad blog #wbad ask me #yo i finally did it

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

Tachibana/Kiryu/Majima is a good ship and ur right and u should say it and always bring it up!!!!!!!! Also like same abt the crying abt Tachibana like lord. I get emotional thinking about him holding Kiryus hand ffs

Soft boys are too sofffftttt. 💕💕💕

And, since you have so kindly encouraged me, it’s OT3 time bitchesssss. 

I’ve got a lot of feels about Kiryu and Majima being fated lovers, don’t get me wrong. And canon sure as fuck does too. (I find it constantly hilarious that they Won’t Say It’s Gay and then put Majima in every spinoff and in EVERY spinoff he’s in love with Kiryu. And also what if people asked Kiryu he’s gay sometimes and he just doesn’t answer??? And what if we tanked every het romance option Kiryu could ever have??? Like... canon ain’t saying it’s gay but they ain’t saying it’s NOT gay and I’m just. Y’all are... so much.)

See, I love Kiryu/Tachibana and Kiryu/Majima, both are so Satisfying. But, if I was going to write post-Zero fic with Tachibana alive, I was gonna have to choose whether I just ignore Majima entirely and pretend That wasn’t happening or, somehow, code Majima’s relationship with Kiryu another way and... I didn’t really want to do that either. They could of course be platonic soulmates, but now I have to do relationship balancing and intimacy issues and asdkfhfkjdsahfkjsd blahhhh... rough times. I didn’t like either of these options, but I love my boy. So, what to do? 

Well, the old favorite for solving love triangles is a threeway. So I began to think... Kiryu has very obvious reasons for being in love with both of them (His type is: horrifically-powerful, secretly-good human being who is Absolutely Batshit. Fight me.) And they both have reasons for loving him. And that’s when it struck me... they love him for the same reasons. 

You see, Kiryu is an impossible thing. He is a miracle-worker. He is strong, sure, and kind. He takes a licking and keeps on ticking, so to speak. And, what’s most damning for both Tachibana and Majima, while a lot of their goodness must be hidden or disguised, Kiryu’s is entirely out in the open. He’s like a creature of light standing alone in the darkness and these two shadow creatures cannot help wanting to cling to him. He offers safety and protection, in different ways. He is incorruptible, he is impossible and that gets both of them. 

Now here you may notice that it’s a relatively exclusive group of people who are head-over-heels, madly in love with Kiryu. It’s just those two. Oh, everyone likes Kiryu, but to really be in love with him like that, you have to be crazy. Because Kiryu is crazy. It’s harder to spot, he’s not as flamboyant as Majima or as terrifying as Tachibana. But anyone who would take on the entire Tojo Clan single-handedly, anyone who would Turn Down the chairmanship for no other reason than he didn’t want it, anyone who would run away to Okinawa and start an orphanage without any fear of reprisal, anyone who just Does What They Want regardless of consequence or risk... is crazy. That’s what seduces Majima and Tachibana, the kindred they all share, they are fucking WILD for it. And Kiryu, lowkey, is wild for them too. They’re all like that, screw the consequences, I do what I think is right regardless. They’re all SO FUCKING HARD for that shit, I can’t even explain. So you don’t fall in love with Kiryu for the normal reasons one falls in love. You only fall in love one way and it is soul-wrenching and everlasting. It breaks you. So lots of people like Kiryu, but you gotta be crazy to walk the path he’s on. 

And then I thought... wait if that’s what they love about Kiryu... then they would love that about each other. Each of them is crazy enough to be a good person. Each of them has had a shit start in life, has lost much, has had to build themselves up and survive. And each of them is so fucking ready to marry the first good person they see... there’s absolutely no reason why they wouldn’t all marry each other. 

So, it’s obvious with Kiryu that he’s a good person. It’s harder with Majima and perhaps hardest of all with Tachibana. So it would take some time getting to know each other and trusting each other, but god, if you could do it... 

And here’s where my boy comes in. Because he is good at reading people. And, even better, once Tachibana has decided something, it will happen. If he got one look, just one good look, at Majima, just for a minute... fate sealed. Because Majima is good at misdirection, he’s an excellent magician. He can keep your attention in the left corner pocket while he’s dallying with the right side and you wouldn’t know the difference until you lost. But anyone trying that hard to keep everyone away, anyone trying that hard not to be mistaken for a good person, is hiding something. Tachibana would spot that a mile off. And, lord, if he saw him just LOOK at Kiryu, even once. Done for. No questions. Tachibana knows that look inside and out. 

Would he be jealous? Tachibana isn’t really possessive by nature. A great deal of his wealth and resources are used to support those that don’t have enough. Never being covetous is one of his precautions against becoming a greedy tyrant and antithetical to his aims. Tachibana would be an irredeemable monster if not for the fact that he never loses sight of what money is and what it isn’t. His ideas about the value of money extends to other things. He doesn’t think of Kiryu as ‘his.’ He adores Kiryu, cherishes him, and would protect him from any threat. But, part of his promise and his love for Kiryu is embedded in Kiryu... being Kiryu. Kiryu has to be free to be himself. Tachibana knows he would love him less if Kiryu stopped being Kiryu. So it doesn’t hurt him to see that someone else is interested in Kiryu, or KIryu is interested in them, on the contrary... Someone else being interested in Kiryu means something fascinating. 

Because, as I’ve said, you gotta be crazy to love Kiryu. If you love him, then you know what he is. Tachibana can’t share Kiryu with anyone else by the simple fact that no one else knows what he is. But someone else being interested... that means someone else sees it. No, quite to the contrary, Tachibana wouldn’t be jealous, he’d be overjoyed. If you adore Kiryu, you can’t want to own him, you just want to be close to him, be part of his life, help him. And Majima... adores. 

Majima, though. Majima barely thinks of himself as a person right now, much less worthy of having wants, much less worthy of Kiryu. He does want, terribly, he loves so badly all that Kiryu is and does. But if he saw, if he thought Kiryu was already with someone else, Majima would back away without a word. He was never worthy in the first place. And all that matters is if Kiryu’s happy. No reason to interject himself. So he’d be tricky if he thought he was competing or interfering with something established because he feels no right to his own desires. But Tachibana can work fast to counteract that, especially if he’s already decided Majima is going to be a part of this, and he most certainly has. 

And then there’s Kiryu too. Kiryu who is entirely ignorant of his own role and position in life, but who greatly looks up to people who are strong and do good in spite of great difficulty. Kiryu thinks Tachibana is a god to have come from so little and built up so much, to be so powerful and yet so kind. He’s blown away by what Tachibana is and does and hardly feels like he has anything to measure up. And Majima, well. At first, Majima is annoying, fierce, brash. He’s fun to fight, because he’s so fucking strong, and that’s a little bit intoxicating if he’s honest. The way he feels seen by Majima sometimes just... it itches under his skin, if he’s perfectly honest. Makes him want... things. But it’s the first time Kiryu sees Majima, the first time he realizes that Majima’s been lying all along, the first time he gets just a glance at that tender heart, that’s the nail in the coffin. Kiryu can’t let that go no matter what. Knowing that Majima is doing all this shit just to protect himself, which Kiryu has wrong, but knowing that beneath Majima is... unbearably sweet and kind, would burst Kiryu’s heart. And he’d never understand why someone so deserving would feel so unentitled. Out of his own sheer kindness, Kiryu would insist on being nice to Majima, insist on showing Majima he was worth something because it would break his heart to think of Majima’s nonexistent self-esteem. 

So out of profound mutual experience and values, they could be unstoppable. If given half a chance, they could rule Kamurocho from both legal and illegal business. A trifecta of CEO, chairman, and hand of the king. They’re all fucking nuts and they all get off on the fact that each other is the softest, kindest, strongest fuck. Just... I need a Minute.

#OT3 essay #Tachibana/Kiryu/Majima #it's a GREAT ship and I'm sad every damn day that there isn't more content #I didn't invent this ship so it could be mine #It is a gift for everyone to share ^^; #narutomaki

[the-kiwi-is-not-a-pewee]

Emmy.

This is a callout post about discord user emmy, known for now as @eurydices-flower on tumblr, and her nasty behavior regarding her joining and then leaving a specific Riordanverse fan discord server. I don’t usually make callout posts but this needs to be addressed since she has vagueposted about my friends and been rude to them over DMs. I don’t believe she should be allowed to run around and make accusations, especially with people not able to find part of the story due to it being over private messages. So, with the permission of the friend whom she sent DMs to, I will outline her brief stay in the server and the aftermath.

It’s time you heard our side of the story.

Emmy (which is how I will be referring to her for the duration of this post), joined the Trials of Apollo (ToA) server on July 6th, 2020.

For the sake of chronicling how we know that she is also @eurydices-flower on tumblr, she says as much in her self-introduction in the #introduction channel of the server.

Emmy was in the server for less than 24 hours, before leaving voluntarily with seemingly no explanation. Naturally, we were confused and one of our own reached out to emmy on her tumblr blog to ask why she left. I blacked out the profile picture and url of my friend’s blog for the sake of their own privacy.

Let us go over this, piece by piece.

“yeah i’m alright i just realized constant negativity wasn’t rlly my game at the moment and i don’t necessarily have the headspace to ever deal with that.”

That is fair, she is encouraged to look after herself and her own mental state first. If she felt like leaving was the best course of action to take for the sake of herself, then she should not be judged for that. And it’d be perfectly fine if she left it at that! But, of course, I wouldn’t be making this post if she did.

“everyone’s entitled to be everyones own opinion but to bash other people you don’t even know for having opinions was too much for me to handle. a lot of those blogs are good friends of mine and it truly is disrespectful to harp on anyone for having different opinions but go around and spread negativity when others don’t agree with with that opinion.”

Regarding the first part, “everyone’s entitled to be everyones own opinion but to bash other people you don’t even know for having opinions was too much for me to handle”, there’s nothing wrong with this statement as it is on the surface-level. She is expressing that she personally does not want to partake in that particular kind of discourse. That is fine, she is not obligated to in any way, shape, or form. Though I do have a comment or three about the statement before we move on.

She could have muted the specific channel where that kind of discourse was taking place, which as far as I’m aware she never did. The ToA server has 2 specific channels for pjo discourse because members were uncomfortable with it being spread sporadically throughout the server, thus those two channels were made to contain discourse. If she was truly made uncomfortable by what she stated, she could have rectified that problem herself instead of leaving. But, after all, it was her choice to make in the end.

“but to bash other people you don’t even know for having opinions was too much for me to handle”Uh, welcome to tumblr Emmy? I don’t know if Emmy meticulously vets her tumblr experience so that she literally never encounters people bashing other people they don’t even know for their opinions, but it makes it a rather ironic statement considering tumblr’s reputation and that she has a tumblr blog. Heck, it’s not even unique to tumblr, it’s more of a social media thing. I can only postulate that maybe it made her more uncomfortable in a more confined and private space like a discord server, but I cannot be sure. Given she joined at the height of the Ace! Reyna discourse and the “opinions” she’s referring to are likely the aphobic rhetoric spouted by people who were astonishingly upset that Reyna was not a lesbian, I personally am rather uncomfortable that she dumbed it down as if it were merely “having an opinion” and not an attempt to invalidate ace representation in a mainstream media book series just because they were upset that they hadn’t gotten exactly what they wanted.

She retrospectively made herself a hypocrite. I’ll put a pin in this for now and we’ll come back to it.

“A lot of those blogs are good friends of mine and it truly is disrespectful to harp on anyone for having different opinions but go around and spread negativity when others don’t agree with that opinion.”

There’s quite a bit to unpack here just in this one sentence. First of all, no one in the server knew she was acquainted with any of the blogs we were discoursing about. She never stated such at any point prior to this point. We didn’t know, and thus we could not even consider accommodating her before she left in this regard.

I’ve already expressed my own views on her dumbing down people spouting aphobic rhetoric to them merely having “different opinions”, but the server was not “spreading negativity” unless you define “negativity” as calling out people for their aphobic rhetoric and frankly disrespectful treatment of Reyna as a character as a whole. It’s not as beautiful and simple as “others don’t agree with that opinion” when said opinion promotes aphobia and tries to claim that lesbian Reyna somehow cannot peacefully coexist with asexual Reyna.

“I mean no disrespect to anyone in that server when saying that or this but i just truly hope you all emotionally grow as people one day and learn to be more respectful <3 <3”

This… whole line has the basic energy of “No offense but *proceeds to say something offensive*”. Emmy basically went, “I mean no disrespect but *proceeds to say something disrespectful*”. It’s especially rude that she told us that she hopes we “all emotionally grow as people one day and learn to be more respectful <3 <3” when she was the one that came into the server in the first place. Furthermore none of us owe our respect to the people that got so mad over a fictional character not being exactly what they wanted that they have to belittle and attempt to downplay ace representation. It’s not Emmy’s place to tell us to “emotionally grow” and “learn to be more respectful”, especially when in the aftermath she doesn’t put her money where her mouth is.

“Blacked out user: Ah I see. If I may ask, what differing opinion were you being bashed for?

Emmy: not me personally but to see the rr crit circus chat (Note: one of the discourse channels) filled with other people doing it to people not even IN the chat was what bugged me”

Has emmy never been in a discord server with a discourse channel? This is a legitimate question, because this is not behavior unique to the ToA server. All of the servers I’ve seen with channels specifically for discourse have done this. This isn’t some kind of uniquely shitty thing that the ToA server does that we should be morally ashamed of, especially when something similar goes on with people on tumblr posting screenshots of tweets.

“but also when i entered and said i didn’t have opinions on litpollo or medea and i was immediately kinda made fun of for it didn’t make me feel good, as well as saying i was ace and ppl going “oMG the LESBOPhObIa. again i hope y’all just grow emotionally and mentally <3”

Here’s what happened (different colored bars mean different users):

Now, despite the fact that the “r u human” in response to Emmy saying she doesn’t ship litpollo and the “i bet u r not ace u r just LESBWEEN CODED” are jokes, I do understand why those statements made Emmy uncomfortable. Emmy was a newcomer and not acclimated to the sense of humor of the server and to basically shove her the butt end of it was not fair to her. The latter joke especially would be difficult to swallow if Emmy didn’t know that an inside joke of the server at the time was mocking the people who insisted that making Reyna ace was a lesophobic act on Rick’s part despite Trials of Apollo as a series having three lesbian major characters (Emmie, Jo, and Lavinia). 

In simple terms, I agree with my friend’s reply and the apology they gave on the server’s behalf. Emmy did deserve that apology. Doesn’t make the “i hope y’all just grow emotionally and mentally <3” any less rude or unwarranted though.

As far as any of us were aware, this was the end of it. Emmy was a bit rude but we had our closure and as far as any of us knew the ToA server and Emmy had parted ways. And then this happened.

This post has since been deleted by Emmy herself, but before it disappeared it was archived by myself and other friends reblogging to respond to it.

It doesn’t name myself or any of my friends directly, but since we were quite vocal about calling people out for their aphobia when Reyna was revealed to be ace, it is assumed we were the target of the post or are at least part of the group that is the target for the post. If it is indeed the former it seems Emmy is vagueposting about us. Even if it’s not specifically about us, it’s not a good look for Emmy. Let’s parse this apart.

“funny how the people yelling aphobia when it came to Reyna were dead silent today when Rick went on twitter and was blatantly racist and disrespectful”

There’s several reasons why people weren’t addressing Rick’s tweets that day. Some of us don’t use twitter/don’t follow Rick on twitter. Some of us don’t check the #rickriordan tag or other tags like it. Some of us have other main fandoms that are not pjo. Some of us don’t follow blogs that reblogged the tweets and the responses to the tweets, or hadn’t reblogged them yet. Some of us might want to first watch the responses to the tweets because we are not Cherokee, Muslim, or educated enough about those topics beforehand and not dig ourselves into a hole. Just saying, just because we didn’t give an immediate response doesn’t mean we didn’t care.

“funny how they only care about representation when it applies to them and them alone”

Does Emmy know that plenty of non-ace people were defending ace Reyna? If she wants an example, I’m a bisexual woman and I’ve been vocal in my defense of ace Reyna. So her logic that “they only cared when the rep applied to them and them alone” falls apart.

“funny how they only cared Reyna was ace because it gave them the opportunity to harrass the lesbians who were hurting”

I don’t condone harassment but calling them out for their aphobic behavior was not harassment. They couldn’t express their hurt without belittling asexual representation and lacking so much self-awareness that they couldn’t realize how aphobic they were being. I’m sorry that they don’t have my respect for that- actually, you know what, I’m not sorry for it. They literally chained themselves to the concept of Lesbian Reyna and would not accept anything else, that’s their own fault. Just because you’re hurt doesn’t give you the excuse to be an asshole to other LGBTQ+ people that did get representation.

"it’s almost,,, almost like you don’t actually care about these characters or color! that you just want the opportunity to clown and be bullies and abusive”

This is a very rich statement considering those “hurting lesbians” she referred to didn’t care about Reyna as a character. They only cared about Lesbian Reyna and nothing else. Some of them mixed up ace and aro showing stunning ignorance on the difference between asexuality and aromance. And now they’re playing victim because they got called out.

“if you want marginalized groups like asexuals to be represented, where’s your energy for pipers representation and characterization? samirah? where’d it go?”

Heroes of Olympus has been out for years. There have already been posts on tumblr before detailing the flaws in how Rick wrote Samirah and Piper, it’s not a new phenomenon. It just had a resurgence recently. Heroes of Olympus is old news so it’s not as fresh and hot as it was when it first came out so of course while discussions over the representation in it are still going on it has mostly calmed down until recently.

“i see you. i’m watching you. you said nothing. not a single word. not even a messy reblog of one (1) post about piper or sam. dead. Silence.”

Emmy gets a little creepy here and slightly stalkery. She doesn’t like us yet she’s watching our blogs? I guess the Blog Police is here. If you don’t reblog discourse posts about how Samirah and Piper were represented you’ll be arrested and pegged as a racist.

No one is obligated to reblog posts about Samirah and Piper. It’s not reflective of their feelings towards Piper and Sam. it’s THEIR blog and they are not obligated to reblog what others want them to. I hate to break it to Emmy but she can’t force people to reblog the stuff she wants to see.

“i don’t care if you think you ‘shouldn’t have a voice in this’ bc ur white or smth. there’s a difference between spreading posts about this terrible situation and trying to butt in with ‘i’m white but here’s my opinion’“

And here we finally circle back to the retroactive hypocrite point I put a pin in earlier. Here’s a refresher: “everyone’s entitled to be everyones own opinion but to bash other people you don’t even know for having opinions was too much for me to handle. a lot of those blogs are good friends of mine and it truly is disrespectful to harp on anyone for having different opinions but go around and spread negativity when others don’t agree with with that opinion.”

And yet she bashes people she doesn’t know and spreads negativity for… possibly having a different opinion than the ones going around right now or not interacting with it for their own personal reasons. Also not everyone who didn’t immediately jump on the Samirah/Piper rep analysis reblogs were white. Assuming people are white will eventually bite you on the ass.

After that post, she continued vagueposting on her own blog.

I seriously doubt she was sent an anonymous death threat because a friend of mine checked her account earlier that same morning she made that post and the Anon feature was turned off. Then, in the evening, she posted about having an Anonymous death threat sent to her without any proof. I’m not saying it’s not possible nor do I condone death threats, but I do have reason to disbelieve her.

IF she is still referring to her brief stay in the ToA server as that “scenario”, then she neglects to say that she did not tell anyone that she was uncomfortable until after she left. We are not mindreaders, we cannot tell when every single person we talk to is uncomfortable. So it can at least partially be held against you, Emmy, for a failure to communicate with us.

And finally, the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

This DM was sent to a friend of mine, the same friend that reached out to Emmy following her departure from the ToA server. I can only assume that the post she is referring to is the one I covered earlier, prior to the “anon death threat” post. Let’s parse through this again.

“hi love! i noticed you unfollowed me around the time i made my post calling you and other’s silence on piper and samirahs blatant mistreatment today.”

Wow, you know what, scratch what I said earlier about assuming that the post was directed at me and my friends, Emmy basically confirmed it from her own mouth. Nice to get the ambiguity out of the way right off the bat. Also she’s seriously DMing my friend just because they unfollowed her? And assuming it was because of the post? She can’t definitively connect the two dots but if that was indeed the reason my friend unfollowed her I certainly can’t blame them. Especially given that this was Emmy’s response.

“i hope you realize you’re blatantly racist and just all around a terrible person for harping on the wlw community for being upset about their bad representationk because you had ace representation but don’t use the same energy for the people hurting that they don’t have native or muslim representation.”

It’s spelled “representation”, Emmy. Also the pjo wlw community was upset that REYNA was NOT a LESBIAN, not that they had bad representation. That was their whole salt. As a wlw myself, being upset about bad representation doesn’t give you an excuse to put down ace representation which a lot of them were doing. They have THREE lesbian characters in Rick’s books so far.

Also I thought the issue Emmy took with us was that we weren’t reblogging posts breaking down Rick’s tweets or pointing out the flaws in Samirah and Piper’s portrayal in the books. And now she’s talking about posting about people hurting because they don’t have Native American or Muslim representation? Which is it Emmy, you are sending mixed signals.

“i hope you educate yourself and realize you and the entire community that kept their silence are truly acting terrible right now. thank you.”

This is… extremely rich coming from the asexual who implied she has aphobic friends. I hope she educates her friends and realizes her and the entire community who bashed the choice to make Reyna asexual are truly acting terrible right now. Though given how she put the wlw on a pedestal and turned a blind eye to how aphobic they were acting I don’t have hope. The hypocrisy when she says that my friend is “truly acting terrible right now” when my friend dared to just unfollow her.

And that is how I will close this. She is still posting about the server on her own blog but that is everything major that has happened so far. On behalf of my friend, don’t harass emmy or send her death threats. I may not respect her, but I certainly don’t condone harassment or death threats. 

She is only 15, according to her own blog, but it does not excuse her behavior towards my friends. Being a minor doesn’t exclude you from being a shitty person.

#pjo #percy jackson #rick riordan #rickriordan #discourse #emmy discourse #callout

[kheta]

The Lesbian One

SakuHina head canon where the dark haired, noble clan inheriting child she falls in love with is Hinata instead of Sasuke. 

Bullies were making fun of Sakura for her forehead and Hinata said, through bright red blushes that she thinks Sakura is the prettiest girl Hinata knows, other than her Mother.

This gives Sakura self-confidence of doom and she doesn’t care about her looks anymore because suck on that, kind, cool Hinata thinks she’s the prettiest girl around!

Sakura giving Hinata the support she deserves.

Hinata being grateful and always reminding Sakura how cool Sakura is.

Hinata still being shy, but working on her shyness because there’s no way Sakura doesn’t praise the very ground her crush walks on.

“HINATA-CHAN! YOU DID IT! YOU’RE SO AWESOME! Isn’t she awesome Ino????”

Academy Arc:

Hinata told Sakura she wanted to be a strong shinobi like her father, but kind like her mother and Sakura heard “I wanna be the strongest ninja out!” To make sure her crush succeeds in her goals, Sakura promised to be the best kunoichi ever, so her and Hinata could be equals.

She studies to be the top kunoichi of her year and trains with Hinata a lot, complementing Hinata for every hit she makes and drowns Hinata in support.

Sakura hates Naruto. With a passion, nothing to do with Naruto being Naruto and everything to do with Hinata crushing on him. This hate manifests in her declaring them rivals.

Sakura is 100% the type to wonder why her rivals an idiot and to feel frustrated that an idiot like Naruto makes Hinata blush or laugh. The angrier she is the more she demands to spar him in taijutsu, they both get dramatically good at it.

Sakura because if Naruto drags a fight to stamina he’d totally win, so she figures she needs to get stronger with her form, finish the fight sooner. Naruto because he’s always been a hands on person and kata’s don’t make any sense to him, but whatever Sakura-chan does works for her, so he doesn’t mind copying her. Plus, Sakura's scary strong when she wants to be and Naruto makes a point of not getting hit from her.

Naruto becomes the fastest ninja in their year...Whenever Sakura’s involved. Not even Sasuke can catch him when he’s running from Sakura and he’s tried, it’s good practice.

Hinata once made an off-handed remark when she was training that Naruto has some pretty large chakra coils and Sakura’s been trying to increase her chakra coils since. (Muttering, “Stupid Naruto can barely hold a kunai right without me having to smack him sideways but he’s the one Hinata compliments?”) Moral is Sakura makes him a very competent ninja, but only because she’s like “An idiot like you can’t even aim properly, look at me, I’m better! Shifting my weight properly, unlike you!” and Naruto just copies her because to prove people wrong is in his blood and if she can do it, then all he has to do is copy her to do it better.

Unfortunately she can’t do much for his chakra control in the academy.

Everyone at the academy except Ino and Shikamaru thinks Sakura likes Sasuke because once she during an argument with Ino she screamed that “DON’T BE STUPID I LIKE” Pointed at Hinata, who happened to be with Sasuke. She didn’t finish the sentence because she looked at Hinata when she pointed and Hinata smiled and she melted.

Sasuke figures out Sakura doesn’t like him when he notices she blushes around Hinata more than him and this one time Hinata dropped one of her salves, so he gave it back to her the next day in class and the glare she gave him was telling.

As long as you’re not Hinata, Sakura has no problem expressing her crush. When Hinata’s around she never says I like you Hinata, but her actions are telling.

Sakura and Ino are still best friends because only Ino wants Sasuke and they only fight when Ino says Sasuke is better than Hinata.

Ino gets way better at taijutsu as well, because if her best friends going to be the strongest kunoichi then hell no is Ino gonna get left behind.

It gets to a point where Inoichi’s like “Ino darling you don’t need to be so serious about taijutsu, you know how we Yamanaka fight” and Ino’s like “WHAT DO YOU MEAN? HELL NO IS SAKURA GONNA BE STRONGER THAN ME, I REFUSE TO BE PROTECTED BY HER!!!!”

Genin Arc:

Hinata is an oblivious eggplant and thinks Sakura is just a very supportive friend.

Kiba, “She asked you to live happily with her as the strongest kunoichi in the future,”

Hinata, eyes sparkling, “Yeah isn’t it cool, I’m so lucky to have such a supportive friend with me.”

Kiba ships Hinata and Happiness (it’s canon guys) so he’s Sakura’s biggest wingman but Hinata manages to turn every cute, romance-y moment they have into a friend thing.

Kiba could see Sakura’s crush from a mile away, it wasn’t until the Chunin exams that he realised they weren’t dating though. This is when he begins being Sakura’s wingman.

Scene:

Kiba looks over at Hinata, “You know...If we meet Sakura and them in this exam, I won’t let you hold back. We’ve worked too hard for your feelings to stop us and if she’s the enemy, we face her.”

Hinata smiles softly at Kiba and stammers out, “I’d never do that, Sakura-chan would hate it if I held back against her, as her friend I will fight her with my all!”

“I do not believe Kiba means your feelings as her friend? Why? Because it is clear he is speaking of the deeper connection you two share.”

“Ano– Ino-san is her best friend, though Sakura-chan and I are certainly good friends.”

Cue two more minutes of them tryna coax Hinata to admit her and Sakura have something before they realise Hinata doesn’t know about Sakura’s crush and looking at each other in amazement because like. Now that they’re genin, Sakura is way less subtle because she misses Hinata and wtf, how had Hinata not realised yet?

Also Sakura wins her fight with Ino bc Ino’s strong af but she doesn’t have any concrete goal in mind, she’s just getting strong to be Sakura’s equal and Sakura’s like ‘giiiirl I’m tryna be the strongest to protect my wife you hear!’

When Sakura meets Neji she understands what true hatred is and it’s only Kakashi’s warning her that Hinata would hurt more if she jumped in that stopped her from trying to fight him. She doesn’t speak to Kakashi for the whole month she trains, trying to justify if Hinata’s pride was worth her life.

She totally trains with Gai for that month because Kakashi is lazy and Gai was around and Sakura is hella strong, she just needs motivation like Gai!

Hinata still has a big fat crush on Naruto until shippuden and when she canon confesses and nearly dies, Sakura confesses to her and says shit like “You don’t have to love me/ I’ve accepted that you won’t, no matter how hard I try. But as your friend I want you to promise, you won’t ever do something so reckless. I don’t wnt to lose you Hinata. You’re my special person I can’t lose you.”

Hinata is 140% confused and then like. She just notices Sakura. How fucking cool and kind she is and she’s always appreciated Sakura and thought she was beautiful but. She’s never really looked at those arms and damn are they defined. And her smile just makes Hinata feel at ease?

There’s no big crisis for Hinata, she realises quite quickly she’s getting feels for her bff but like shes Hinata. Sakura confesses a crush she’s had for years on this girl with the self confidence of a potato chip and said potato chip pines bc shes an idiot potato

everyone is Big Mad, even fucking Naruto

hes like ‘girl i cant like u. its against the bro code, pls talk to my bff’ and hinata is thinking ‘i know u ass. i just cant tho. shes legit perfection and ive hyped her up my whole life even if we like eavh other it wont work and family and a motherfuckn war’

Gaiden Arc:

THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER OKAY! STRONGEST KUNOICHI COUPLE EVER! 10/10 ADORED BY EVERYONE. HINATA ISN’T CLAN HEAD BUT SHE’S ONE OF THE BEST DIPLOMATS IN TOWN, SAKURA IS THE TOP HEALER AND THEY’RE BOTH BLACK OPS MEMBERS. HINATA TRAINS ANBU IN INFILTRATION AND SAKURA TAKES THEM IN MEDICAL STUDIES. THEY ARE HAPPY ASF

#sakuhina #headcanon #hinata hyuuga #sakura haruno #im bored and going thru my drafts #big gay mood #i dont even care about what i find at this stage #if it sits untouched in any of my drafts #imma post #naruto headcanons #naruto

[labyrinth-runner]

Can u do a Obidala fic based on the song “Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps” by Doris Day?

Based off This song

Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps

Padmé didn’t know why, but somehow she was looking forward to her week away with Master Kenobi. She knew it was just for a mission, and that he was there to protect her, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about how nice it might be to spend some more time with him. She’d barely seen him in passing since they parted ways on Naboo all those years ago.

She tried not to bounce on the balls of her feet while she waited for him. No, she would be every bit the dignified leader that she has always been near him. She just didn’t understand why her heart felt erratic at the thought of seeing her old friend again. The door opened and her friend walked over to her.

“Senator Amidala, it has been too long,” Obi-Wan smiled, giving her a hug.

“Master Kenobi, I see you’ve grown a beard,” she smirked. “It suits you.”

He let out a melodic chuckle as the skin above his beard tinged pink. “Thank you, Senator.  You’ve grown into quite the accomplished woman since the last time I saw you. I heard your people wanted you to reign for another term. Although, I’m hardly surprised. You would do anything for your people. I’m sure that they would do anything for you.”

Now it was her turn to try not to blush. The silence was deafening.

“I suppose we should get going,” Padmé murmured.

“After you, Senator,” Master Kenobi nodded as he followed her into the cockpit.

The trip to the planet they were visiting went smoothly. The two of them chatted about the different aspects of their life that they’d missed out on.

“How is Annie?” Padmé smiled.

“He’s… a teenage boy,” Obi-Wan smirked. “Sure of himself and thinks he knows best. He has a bit to go before he becomes a Jedi Knight. Reminds me a lot of someone else when I first met her…”

“Hey, I did know best!” Padmé gasped. “I saved my people, did I not?”

Obi-Wan shook his head at her. “We’re dropping out of hyperspace.”

“Obi-Wan, can I ask you a question?” she ventured.

“You just did, Senator, but I’ll allow you to ask another,” he teased.

“Would you ever leave the Jedi Order for someone?” her eyes shone brightly. She didn’t know why, but she was holding her breath waiting for an answer.

He looked at her oddly as if seeing her truly for the first time, taking a thoughtful pause. He rubbed his beard in thought. “Perhaps.”

Padmé swallowed, turning away from his intense gaze. She brought their ship down to the planet’s surface.

“Just a reminder of our cover stories,” Obi-Wan suddenly said.

“What cover stories?” she asked in confusion. She had not been made aware that she would be going undercover for this.

“They didn’t tell you? We’re pretending to be a newly married couple on our honeymoon tour. This should allow us to investigate how the slave trade is profiting from the Trade Federation dealings without raising suspicion,” Obi-Wan replied nonchalantly.

“Master Yoda had not told me about this,” she replied.

“Well, it’s the plan, darling,” he purred, offering her his arm to take as they left. “Now, stick close. This isn’t the place to go off on your own.”

The two of them checked into their hotel and made their way to the room.

Padmé opened the door. “Oh… there’s only one bed.”

“Well, we are supposed to be a couple,” Obi-Wan replied. “But, you can have the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Obi-Wan, you’re not sleeping on the floor,” Padmé deadpanned as she went to sit on the bed. She looked at the floor as she addressed him. “We’re both adults. We have self-control. We can share a bed and stay on our respective sides.” She looked him in the eye and raised a challenging eyebrow at him.

“Alright, Senator. If you’re okay with it, then we will,” Obi-Wan nodded.

She nodded back. The matter was settled.

They went about their day as normally as they could.

That night they both slid into bed.

“Good night, Master Kenobi,” Padmé murmured as she shut off the light on her side and turned away from him.

“Good night, Senator,” Obi-Wan replied as he shut off his own light.

Sometime through the night, Padmé started shivering. It woke Obi-Wan up. He let out a groan. He knew they’d insisted on staying on their opposite sides, but he needed to protect the senator. That included keeping her warm. He turned in bed so that her back was to his chest and pulled her against him. She immediately relaxed into his warmth. He smiled softly at her. She really was beautiful. Soon, he settled himself in to sleep again.

Neither of them discussed the fact that they woke up in each other’s arms the next morning.

The day was spent following leads and tracking down information. When they returned to the hotel lobby, they ran into the hotel owner.

“You know, for two newlyweds, you don’t seem to be very much in love,” he said.

“W-what do you mean?” Padmé chuckled. “Of course we love each other! This is our honeymoon!”

“You don’t seem like you’re on your honeymoon. You’ve never even kissed.”

Padmé stared at Obi-Wan. They couldn’t blow their cover. Before Obi-Wan could protest, she kissed him. It was supposed to be a quick, sweet kiss, but then he kissed back.

“Alright, alright. Clearly you’re both very much in love,” the innkeeper said waving them off. “Now get out of my lobby.”

Padmé pulled Obi-Wan back into the room like he really was her husband. She giggled slightly as the door closed behind them.

“I can’t believe that worked!” she smiled as she rested her arms around his neck. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her, his crossed hands settled on the small of her back.

“You’re very convincing,” he smirked.

“Obi-Wan…” she trailed off, a blush coming to her cheeks. “That kiss…”

“What about it, darling?” he asked, the pet name slipping off his tongue.

“It felt real,” she sighed. “I know that sounds silly, but, do you think that in a world where we weren’t defined by our duties, we’d be together?”

Obi-Wan sighed, letting his arms fall back to his side. “Perhaps, Padmé, perhaps.”

He gently untangled himself from her and moved further into the room. Padmé raised a hand to stop him but let it fall to her sides. She’d give him space.

“I’ll be out getting something for dinner,” she murmured before leaving.

Padmé was alone in the streets, but she felt like she was being watched on the way back from picking up dinner.  She turned a corner and noticed two of the slavers they had been gathering intel on following her. She passed by an alley when she was pulled in. Panic set in as a hand covered her mouth and held her against a hard chest. She tried to scream, going to kick the person who grabbed her.

“Shh, darling, it’s just me,” Obi-Wan murmured as he uncovered her mouth.

Her breathing evened out. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry. I saw those two tailing you and needed to make sure you were okay.”

“But I left you back home.”

“And I told you it was unsafe for a woman to wander here alone when we first landed,” Obi-Wan replied. “I wasn’t going to let you do it.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I don’t doubt that, Padmé, but its my job to protect you-“

“Is that all this is, Obi-Wan? Am I just a job to you?” she asked.

“Padmé,” he pleaded.

“Answer me,” she demanded. “Do I mean anything to you?”

“Perhaps,” he sighed.

She shook her head at him. She shoved her basket into his chest. “Here’s your dinner.”

“Padmé, please,” he replied, but she was already out of the alley and heading back to their hotel.

Neither of them got much sleep that night.

Their mission was a success, in the way that they had found out what they needed by day three, but they had budgeted for a week.

“Obi-Wan, let’s stay the rest of the week,” Padmé ventured that next night at dinner. “When is the next time you’ll get a break or pretend to be normal?”

“Are you suggesting we stay here and play house for the rest of the week?” Obi-Wan asked.

“Why not?” she asked, accidentally running her foot up his leg when she went to cross her legs under the table.

Obi-Wan took in a breath at the contact. “It would be nice… Fine, we can stay.”

Padmé smiled.

The rest of the week felt like they got into a rhythm with each other. It was almost as if they had actually been married for years. On the night before they left, Padmé decided to talk to him again.

“Obi-Wan, I need to discuss something with you,” she asked, gently sliding into his lap. The action felt natural.

“What is it, darling?”

She blushed. Hearing him call her that more and more often as the week went on made her heart do somersaults.

“When we go back… what will happen to us?” she asked.

“Well, I’ll go back to the Order and you have your duties,” he said as he studied her.

“That’s not what I meant,” she sighed as she took one of his hands in hers. “I meant what about us.”

“But Padmé, there isn’t an us.”

“Obi-Wan, can you honestly sit here and tell me you don’t feel anything for me?”

“Perhaps,” he sighed.

“You’re many things, Master Kenobi, but I didn’t think a liar was one of them,” she seethed as she got up and went into the bathroom.

Obi-Wan sighed, getting up to wrap a knuckle on the door. “Padmé, you know the Code.”

“Obi-Wan, if you love someone enough, then you do whatever it takes to be with them,” she said, resting her forehead on the other side of the door.

“Are you saying you love me, Senator?” Obi-Wan asked. He was glad she couldn’t see him, because he was blushing profusely.

“Perhaps,” she shot back.

Obi-Wan sighed. He deserved that.

“Obi-Wan, I don’t want to get back to Coruscant and live my life not knowing what could have been,” she said, opening the door. “I don’t want to wind up being parted and broken-hearted. But, if you really love me, I need to know.”

“Padmé, what difference will it make?”

“Obi-Wan, I’m willing to fight for us. I think deep down, you want to do the same, and I swear to the maker that if you say ‘perhaps’ one more time, I will deck you,” she shot back.

“Fine, Padmé!” He said exasperatedly, “I do love you. Being with you this week just makes me think of everything I could have, but I have a Code, and I have always followed it. Although, Maker above, you make me want to break that Code every day since I’ve reunited with you. Little by little, you’ve worn down my resolve, and I am so close to cracking that it scares me. These are my values! The things I’ve held dear, but you’ve become so much more important to me.”

Padmé sighed, stepping forward to cup his cheek.  “Obi-Wan, I don’t want to leave you after this.”

He reached a hand up to place over hers. “I know, darling. I don’t want to lose you, either. Not when I feel like I’ve just found you.”

“What are we going to do?” she murmured.

“We’ll find a way to make it work,” he told her. “All I know is that I love you and that’s not going away any time soon.”

He scooped her up in his arms and kissed her properly, not for show, but because he meant it, and in his arms, she found that she knew everything would be alright.

#obidala #SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG #also there's no smut. It's just long #IDK WHY THE READ MORE IS BEING STUPID

[aliferous-ly]

Forgot

WOW I TOTALLY DIDNT FORGET ABOUT SECRET SANTA AHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHA ME??? FORGET??? NEVER

Summary: “Logan, meanwhile, was struggling to suppress the growing panic in his chest. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Logan chastised himself, rubbing his gloves together, breaths making little puffs of white in the cold air. What would still be open? Walmart? Probably? For those as irresponsible and foolish as he?” 

Words: 3866 bc i’m uncontrollable

Genre: fluff??? idk my man

Pairing: there’s no explicit romance. logicality if you squint but its like, heavy platonic shipping ig? i’m a mess forgive me

warnings: uhh ghosts implications, there’s a cancer mention, self deprecation, i think that’s it?? if there’s something else let me know!!

tags: @sassy-in-glasses @rose-gold-roman @justanotherpurplebutterfly @echomist13

THIS IS FOR @kaana-the-ace-witch idk who else to tag for the secret santa thing but UR THE MOST IMPORTANT GOTTA MAKE SURE U SEE THIS

Logan wasn’t a forgetful person. He kept a very specific itinerary, thank you very much, and it was color coded (no, it wasn’t a bullet journal, Roman) for easy reading. Really, nothing could go wrong, if he followed the schedule.

But when Virgil said, “Oh, hey, we’re going over to Pat and Ro’s room for Christmas tomorrow morning, Pat said they’re putting together a huge breakfast,” at eleven thirty pm on December twenty-fourth, Logan felt like a bucket of ice water dumped down his back and trickled through his veins.

“O-oh, alright,” Logan said, like his world hadn’t just fallen apart at the seams.

“You good?” Virgil asked, eyes flicking from the TV displaying Uncharted IV to Logan’s face.

“Peachy,” Logan said. He abruptly stood. “I’m going to turn in. Goodnight.”

“Um, okay, Logan–” Virgil paused the game to face him fully. “Are you sure you’re okay–”

Virgil blinked at the empty room, eyes narrowing. Had he just seen the front door closing, or was that just his imagination?

The sounds from the television drew him back to the screen and Virgil settled back down. If something horrible was going on, Logan would give him at least some sort of warning. Maybe he just forgot sleep existed, and being reminded of the next day’s activities sparked that well-known responsibility.

Virgil shrugged, ate some chips, and unpaused the game.

Logan, meanwhile, was struggling to suppress the growing panic in his chest. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Logan chastised himself, rubbing his gloves together, breaths making little puffs of white in the cold air. What would still be open? Walmart? Probably? For those as irresponsible and foolish as he?

Logan couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe himself. How could he forget – no, how could he neglect to receive any form of gift for the gift-giving season? Hell, he gave Virgil a Hanukkah gift on the first and last day, with Patton and Roman filling the days in between.

Not a single gift. Not for Roman, not for Virgil, and most importantly, not for Patton.

Undoubtedly Patton had gotten him the best, most thoughtful gift he could think of. What if he spent hours and hours focusing on his gift, only to be presented with a last-minute dump of a present? Logan could hardly live with himself. He simply couldn’t believe...

Walmart wouldn’t have a decent gift. It would be picked clean. Could he buy something of worth before tomorrow?

Maybe he had something at his parents house? But that was three hours away, he would get little to no sleep on a gamble. He couldn’t call Roman, he would tell Patton – they lived together, after all – and if he didn’t intentionally tell him, Patton would figure it out – he was much smarter than he let on. Plus, Roman would just have to be overly dramatic – “I can’t believe you forgot to gift the most wonderful human being, me, with a present! The audacity!”

He couldn’t tell Virgil, Virgil was... Virgil. Virgil didn’t need any added stress in his life, he’d finally relaxed, and Logan knew how empathetic Virgil was. Virgil would definitely get himself all wrapped up in Logan’s issues and ramp up his own stress in the process. Logan couldn’t – wouldn’t – do that to him.

And obviously Logan couldn’t tell Patton. Never. Logan was well aware of his shortcomings as a friend, and expressing love was definitely fell into the “needs work” category. Patton... Patton was the best friend anyone could ever have, and Logan couldn’t stomach presenting his failures to Patton, let alone deal with his “it’s okay, Logan. No, really, don’t worry about it!” Mostly because Logan wanted to be a good friend, he wanted to be the best friend anyone could ever have but it was so hard, none of it came naturally to him.

Logan walked through the park to reach downtown, but paused when a figure slide across the pond, the metal of their skates glinting in the moonlight. They slid over to the edge of the pond, mere feet from where Logan had paused.

“Whatcha doing out this late on Christmas Eve?” they asked, their voice gravely but soothing.

“Finding a gift,” Logan said, the words falling unbidden from his lips. He shoved his hands further into his pockets, fighting the urge to defend himself with I swear I love them, I’m just foolish, please don’t think I’m some deadbeat...

“Ah. Forget?” they said, eyes shining with the reflection of the snow. Logan supposed their eyes must be a lighter color, maybe blue or green. Wrinkles lined their cheeks, or what Logan could see of them. “Or did someone finally convince you?”

Logan scrunched up his nose. “I forgot. I have no idea what to get them.”

“More than one person?” they asked.

“Yeah,” Logan released a puff of air, frustrated. “I can’t think of anything for any of them. It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late,” they said. Their skates touched the snow and they walked, gait smooth despite the blades on their feet, and approached a bench.

“What about you?” Logan asked. “What are you doing out so late?”

“It was a tradition of my daughter and mine to ice skate on the Eve,” they said, lowing themselves onto the bench with an oof. They patted the spot next to them. “Humor an old man for a few minutes?”

Logan nodded once, twice, and then delicately sat next to him. The man sighed. “She was gorgeous, my daughter. Hair was always chopped short, the sharpest eyes you’d ever seen.”

“What happened to her?” Logan asked.

“Cancer,” the old man said, smiling softly. “Hated wearing wigs, so she never did.”

There was a beat of silence, and Logan had no idea what to say. I’m sorry for your loss?

“What about your gifts?” the man asked. “Who did you forget?”

“My best friends,” Logan said, that twinge of frustration twisting in his gut. “All three of them.”

“Tell me about them,” the man said. “While I rest my old feet.”

“Okay,” Logan said, taking his hands out of his pockets to rub them together. “Um, one of them is as quiet as the night, and he’s insanely clever while being obscenely obtuse at the same time. He loves to write... and another is loud, loud as the sun and just as bright, and he doesn’t like to be called a nerd, but...” Logan’s lip twisted. “And then there’s... well. He’s like... he’s... inexplicable. He’s smart, so smart, but in every way I’m not. He could make friends with just about anyone, and he cares, so much, about everything.”

“Ah,” the man said softly. “They sound wonderful.”

“They are,” Logan said, the words landing woeful instead of wistful. “And I can never live up to that. I can never give the best gift...”

“Well, I might have a little something for the first friend of yours,” the old man said, fishing through his pocket. He pulled out a small colored pencil set, with five colors – red, yellow, blue, black, and white. “Of course, it doesn’t seem like much at first glance.”

“Oh, I... I can’t take this,” Logan said. “Um, it’s yours, and it looks... important.”

“Oh, everything has its own importance,” the man said.

“Also...” Logan frowned at his hands, not wanting to burst the man’s bubble. “I think Roman is getting him prismacolors for Christmas. It would pale in comparison.”

“Oh, but this isn’t any regular old pencil set,” the man said. “It’s magic.”

Logan snorted softly, holding the pencil set carefully. The cardboard was worn and didn’t seem to have any brand logo on it. They were obviously used but still had a good amount of lead left, and Logan couldn’t figure out why he loved them so much.

“Magic, hm?” Logan turned the pencil set over in his hand. “What’s so magic about–”

Logan blinked at thin air, lips parted. He tentatively reached out and touched the wood, furrowing his eyebrows and frowning.

Where...

He looked back at the pencil set in his hand and pocketed it, standing slowly. The world felt off-kilter, like he’d just woken up, and a street light flickered.

“Okay,” Logan murmured to himself. “Maybe you just blacked out and missed the goodbyes. That’s fine. That’s normal.”

He started walking down the path, fingers running over the small, angular box. Weird...

He almost tripped on something, catching himself just before hitting the hard concrete.

“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry!” a tinny voice cried out, a small girl appearing in his line of sight and picking up a wooden ball. She cradled it to her chest, curly brown hair framing her face.

“Uh, hello,” Logan said, rigid. He did not know how to handle kids. “Um, what’s your name?”

“My name?” the girl cocked her head. “What are you doing out so late?”

Winded, Logan took a breath. “What are you doing out so late?”

“Waiting for my Gran,” she said. “She’ll be here soon.”

“Okay,” Logan said uncertainly.

“She really loves me,” the girl continued. “I love her, too, but sometimes I feel like I’m invisible. Do you feel invisible sometimes? I do. It’s her birthday next week and I don’t know what to get her. What do you get your friends for their birthdays?”

“I... don’t know,” Logan said. “I’m trying to find Christmas gifts for them right now.”

“Right now?” the girl cocked her head to the side. “Okay. Can you find them?”

Logan shook his head. “Not very well.”

“What are they like?” the girl asked, expression open and vibrant.

“Um.” Logan cleared his throat, feeling an odd sense of deja vu. “One cares so much about everything but pretends he cares about nothing, another is passionate and vigorous, and he does everything all or nothing. The last is... he’s... he’s like a blanket, or the smell of baking cookies, and he’s so talented at so many things I don’t think I can live up, sometimes...”

Logan’s throat closed and he settled his gaze on the ground. Why... how... where did all that come from?

“Oh!” she said, delighted. “I have something for your second friend!”

“What?” Logan said, barely managing to get the word out before she shoved the ball into his hands. Smooth, round, with chipped red paint... it didn’t look like much.

“I can’t take this,” Logan protested. “This is yours!”

“But it’s magic,” she said sagely, voice whisper-quiet, lips stretched into a secretive grin. “Touch it, and all your wildest dreams come true!” She wiggled her fingers, making small explosion noises with her mouth.

“Um,” Logan twisted the ball in his hands. “Like a magic eight ball?”

“A magic eight ball?” she repeated. “What’s a magic – oh!” her eyes widened comically, gaze darting around her body. “Oh, oh!”

“What’s wrong?” Logan looked around him, searching for danger. “What’s...”

Logan froze. “Where’d...” he said into empty air, cold and sharp. “But...” he looked at the wooden ball, feeling the grooves and chips against his fingertips.

He pocketed the ball and slowly got to his feet, stretching his fingers and rolling his wrists. Everything seemed... off. Off in an indescribable way.

Okay, he told himself. Get to walmart, find something for your friends. Or... he ran his fingers over the pencil set, over the wooden sphere. For Patton...?

Logan shoved his hands deep into his pockets and continued on, keeping his gaze on the ground so he didn’t see any ice skating men or little girls with wooden toys. He had to keep staring at the path, get to walmart, maybe buy and obscene amount of candy to cover up his complete and utter incompetence.

“Hey!”

Logan flinched. He didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to see someone else, didn’t want to –

“Hey!” a rough hand pushed at his shoulder and he almost fell over, slipping on ice only for the same hand to catch his arm, whirl him around and spin him upright again.

Logan heaved a few breaths, eyes wide as he stared into golden brown eyes.

“What’s a guy gotta do to get someone’s attention, huh?” he said. He released his hold on Logan, crossing his arms and scrunching up his nose. He appeared the same age as Logan, maybe even younger, but...

“You’re in college, right?” he said, voice sharp and snarky.

“Yeah,” Logan said. “You?”

The guy shrugged. “Never made it out of highschool.”

Logan furrowed his eyebrows. “What...?”

He glanced at him, and unreadable expression in his face. “Why’re you out here, man? You look like you got friends. It’s like, midnight.”

“I forgot to get them gifts, so,” Logan shrugged. “I’m getting them some.”

“Wow,” he laughed, raucous and loud. “That’s awesome. Great. Fantastic. You sound like the most wonderful friend of all.”

“Yeah, I know,” Logan said. “I gotta get to it, so...”

“Wait,” he said, reaching out but drawing back at the last moment, fingers curling in. “I... kinda know what that’s like.” He scuffed at the ground. “Not knowing what to get friends, I mean. Or...” his face twisted. “Boyfriends.”

“Boyfriends?” Logan said, blinking.

“Hold onto them,” the boy said, glancing at him and trapping him in his gaze, eyes blazing like fire. “Hold onto your friends because one day you’ll disappear.”

“You mean they’ll disappear?” Logan said, leaning back.

“Y... yeah, of course,” he said, pulling away and leaning against a tree. “Sure.”

“Um, I’ll be...”

“Wait, just...” he sighed, looking far more dejected than any teenager had business being. “Tell me about them? I miss having friends.”

“Okay, well...” Logan almost denied his request but after seeing his downcast gaze, his frustrated scuffing, he relented. “One is... one is soft and sharp at the same time, one is angry and freakishly patient, and the last is... he’s, just, he’s clever and thoughtful, and he tries so so hard to help other people but he forgets to care for himself, too, and we forget to care for him sometimes...” Logan snapped his mouth shut. Why oh why did he always start to ramble about them?

The boy’s mouth flickered into a smile before he schooled it back into a scowl. “Yeah, okay. I think I got something for the last one.”

“What are you talking about?” Logan asked, reaching into his pockets in confusion. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“It never matters if you want anything, does it?” the boy said. “Not now, anyway. This is about them.”

“I... yeah,” Logan said. “But...”

“Okay, let’s just get this over with,” he sighed and reached into his sweatshirt pocket, pulling out a gilded bracelet. “This... yeah, whatever, you’ve heard it all, yadda yadda.”

“What?” Logan said, feeling winded.

The boy shoved the bracelet in his hands. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

“I’m not, I’m just...” Logan looked down at the bracelet, a golden chain with small leaves hanging off like a mini flower crown. With... leaves instead of flowers. So not really a flower crown more of a leaf crown and Logan should really, really stop thinking.

“Thanks,” Logan said, looking up. He took a step back at the complete emptiness that greeted him, but he wasn’t completely surprised, either. Somehow he knew the teenage boy would disappear, just like the old man and the little girl.

“Thanks,” Logan said again, softer. He gently placed the bracelet with his other three gifts and turned around. Undoubtedly they would be disappointed with his gifts and would have that “thanks...” tone, of subtle disappointment, but Logan couldn’t bring himself to take a trip to some capitalist department store to grab some cheap gimmick.

They would be disappointed, but at least they wouldn’t be disappointed in a cheap car charger.

He trudged home, watching his step. He heard the giggle of a girl but saw nothing when he turned, and he noticed a figure moving across the pond but when he raced through the path to the edge there was nobody there. A scoff followed him home, and Logan carefully opened the door to his dorm, peaking to see if Virgil was still awake.

Bright lights spilled across the carpet, the intro screen to Uncharted IV dancing across Virgil’s face. Virgil, however, was dead asleep, mouth hanging open and light snores falling from his mouth.

Reaching down, Logan carefully picked him up and carried him to his room, gently setting him down on the mattress and pulling the comforter. Come morning, Logan would have to drag him out of bed, and Virgil would hang off of him until they got to Roman and Patton’s room, where he would promptly hang off of Roman for the better part of the morning.

But until then... Logan had some gifts to wrap.

—

“Okay, I know I sounded like, hella ungrateful when I opened those pencils, but they’re magical or some shit, I swear to god,” Virgil said the moment Logan opened the door.

Logan froze, halfway through taking off his coat and shoes. “Oh?”

“Yeah, like,” Virgil waved around the black pencil emphatically. “I always get the color I’m trying to blend! And I used to hate coloring with colored pencil because it’s not like acrylic paints where you can test the color before blending so I always hated using colored pencils but these work like god herself crafted them.”

“Um, I’m glad,” Logan said, a grin twitching onto his lips. “I’m... I’m really glad.”

“Yes, bless these freakish colored pencils,” Virgil said reverently. “Also, Roman called me, he’s looking for you.”

“Why didn’t he just call me?” Logan asked. Virgil gave him a look. “Right, okay, he didn’t just call about me. Thanks.”

“Sure,” Virgil said, chewing on the back of the red pencil.

Logan finagled his phone out of his pocket, dropping some books on the counter in the process, and called Roman. He picked up on the third ring.

“Logan, my favorite person in the entirety of the world!” Roman greeted him.

“What do you want?” Logan asked flatly, holding the phone up with his ear and flipping open his chemistry book.

“You wound me,” Roman declared. “Insinuating I only call when I need something, that’s cruel.”

“Mmhmm,” Logan said.

“I just... wanted to let you know, or, I mean,” Roman’s voice lost the exuberance and settled into something softer. “Thanks for that wooden ball thing. Like, I thought it was the lamest thing at first, because, a wooden ball, really? But every time I’m nervous for an audition, or I don’t think I’m going to pass a test, I just... wish on it, like you told me to, and it’s like all my hard work pays off. It’s weird and there’s probably no correlation but it happens too often to be normal so I thought I’d just... thank you.”

“Oh,” Logan said. His phone almost slipped from his shoulder but he caught it before it fell too far. “Um, that’s... that’s crazy. I mean–”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Roman said, voice slipping into ramble mode. “I mean, it’s crazy, right? It shouldn’t matter, because it’s a wooden sphere, like one I could buy at Hobby Lobby, and the paint is chipped in lots of places like my mom painted it when she was seven or something, and–”

“Roman,” Logan said.

“But it’s really very great,” Roman said softly. “Thank you. And sorry for being a jerk on Christmas.”

“You weren’t a jerk, Roman,” Logan said. “Trust me. I know when you’re being a jerk.”

“Okay,” Roman said, uncertainly.

“And, you’re welcome, I’m glad it’s working so well,” Logan said, flashing back to the little girl. Your wildest dreams will come true indeed.

“Oh, and Patton’s at Crimson Valley, you should go say hi,” Roman said. “He mentioned thanking you for his gift, too, but wanted to do it in person. Said it’s more authentic?”

“O-oh, okay,” Logan said. He sat still for a few solid moments. “I mean, I was going to start studying.”

“Dude, we don’t have school, what are you doing,” Roman said, words edged with disbelief.

“I’m behind on some stuff,” Logan said, running his hands through his hair. “And I don’t want to fall behind.”

“Do you want Patton to be alone at the cafe?” Roman asked, and they both knew Logan’s answer before Logan opened his mouth.

“Of course not,” Logan said. “I’ll be there in ten.”

“Yayy!!” Roman said. “I mean, I’m not going to be there, but Patton’ll be happy.”

“I’m sure,” Logan said, sighing. “Okay, talk to you later.”

“Bye!” Roman cheered. For what, Logan couldn’t say.

The phone clicked underneath his ear and Logan resigned himself.

“I’m going out,” Logan said.

“Again?” Virgil asked.

“Yup, Patton’s alone at a cafe,” Logan said. “Roman enlisted me to keep him company.”

“Sounds like Roman,” Virgil said. “Good luck.”

“Good luck?” Logan repeated. “I’m not going into war.”

Virgil turned towards him, shifting his whole body so he could give Logan another look.

Logan rolled his eyes, shrugging his coat on. “Fair point.”

“See ya.”

“Bye.”

Logan walked steadily to the cafe, and braced himself the moment he opened the door. When he wasn’t instantly barraged by an armful of Patton, he opened his eyes.

Patton, tucked into a corner of the cafe, was quiet.

Logan walked up to him and slid into the seat opposite him. “Hey.”

“Oh, hey!” Patton said, expression instantly shifting from pensive to happy. “How are you? I wasn’t expecting you here!”

“Roman told me to come,” Logan said, and then instantly regretted it. “Um. He said something about my christmas present...?”

“Oh, this!” Patton said, lifting up his wrist to display the glittering bracelet. “I... the weirdest thing happens when I touch it. I’m just overwhelmed with this... this affection and wonder for everything, especially my friends.” Patton stared him dead in the eye. “Especially for you.”

Heat rushed to his cheeks and Logan stared pointedly at the table.

“And it’s so magical, and wonderful, that I thought I’d let you know,” Patton said, smile gentle and soft.

Logan glanced up at him, ears hot, and noted the pink dusting on Patton’s cheeks.

“Um, you’re, you’re welcome,” Logan said, coughing.

“It’s so strange,” Patton said. “All of your gifts seem so simple, but they have such a large impact.” He held the bracelet up to the light and admired the way the gold glittered in the sun. “Where did you find them?”

Logan smiled. From an old man with nostalgia, a little girl with wishes, and a teenager with hopes.

“I found them on Christmas Eve,” Logan said instead, and when Patton turned to look at him, the light shone through the window and ignited the deep browns and golds of his irises.

Something crashed, and they looked to the left. A little girl frowned at a shattered cup but laughed when someone who looked like her grandfather gave her candy and promised her another cup. A teenager rocked on his chair, pressing his feet against the table and scowling.

Patton blinked at them and giggled before turning back to Logan.

“I’m glad you love it,” Logan murmured, touching the gold of the bracelet lightly.

Patton smiled, cheeks red, and Logan grinned right back.

#sanders secret santa 2k18 #logan sanders #logan centric #sanders sides fic #patton sanders #roman sanders #virgil sanders #brabbles #wow i cranked this out in one day im proud?? between all the family things??? hell yeah #sfhkdshf im sorry i forgottt but its lowkey on time!!

[leggigoesabroad]

skipping down sixteenth avenue

We woke up the next morning honestly fuggin AMPED because it was a full day at sea.  We had big plans to get some work done, explore the ship, day drink, revel in it all, etc.  But immediately we all felt so seasick that mid-meeting in Brooke’s room she just said “this isn’t happening. Let’s all go back to bed.” And we snorted lines of Dramamine and napped (essentially.)  We got an invitation that morning for dinner with the captain that night, which just so happened to be the ship’s formal night that we didn’t know existed.  Cue PANIC as I accused them all of trying to haze me by not telling me I needed to bring anything other than athleisure.  The nicest thing I brought with me was a floral jumpsuit so I tried my best to blend in but goddamn it these women were wearing like, sparkly evening gowns, strapless bodycon dresses, etc.   Couldn’t even go shopping anywhere since we were at sea all day.  Brooke says it was Nick’s fault, Nick and I secretly remember it was Brooke’s fault as she was the one who told us that Alaskan cruises don’t have formal nights…. Sigh. I’ve only just now started to get over it.  Combined with feeling like death all day and then having to be on good behavior for the very peculiar captain, things were dire.  The lack of formalwear also of course meant that I felt the need to get ahead of it to everyone I encountered the entire night.  “Just so you know I was told there wasn’t a formal night!!” **manic laughter drawing attention to myself** “I would never think this was appropriate for a formal night or dinner with the captain, we didn’t know! We’re here for work! It was a miscommunication!” **more manic laughter and essentially forcing people to say I look nice** “I dress way better at home, had I known I would have fit right in!! You can imagine.  I compensated by getting rip-roaring drunk and OD’ing on Dramamine which led me to a coma-like state I tried to Adderall-away the rest of the cruise.  Hate me cuz u ain’t me.  

The captain was ssssssooo strange – pleasant, but just on a different level of awareness than most normal people.  Lived in his own little captain world.  Old and British and told stories that made no sense and weren’t really relevant. Overly polite but also we felt like he didn’t want to be there.  By the way, I saw captain multiple times a day and at EVERY meal.  I swear he’s just a figurehead who never drives the boat himself. We did a bridge tour later in the week and he made a point to roll on through and look like he was “captain-ing” at one point when we all know he just chills and makes his officers do it. Towards the end of the trip we were talking to him one day and asked how his day was, and he said he had to get up at 4 am to dock and was exhausted and slept all day afterwards.  First of all, 4 am isn’t that much earlier than a normal early wake-up time.  Second of all, docking start to finish only takes like 45 minutes MAX.  Third of all, it’s your job!!!!!!!

We finally pulled into our first port in Ketchikan on Thursday morning.  The boys each had a fun shore excursion to do (bear sanctuary, ziplining) but Brooke, Yolanda and I had a day of running from vendor to vendor to spend about 15 minutes each just learning what they offered and asking questions.  Yolanda used to travel in Alaska with Seabourn back in 2013, so she greeted every tour operator in every town as if they were her long-lost brother or sister and reunited after being away at war for six years. You’ll hear more about it as these blogs go on but lord she is the most dramatic person I have ever met and also not self-aware whatsoever but it’s fucking hysterical.  Today when we said goodbye I said, “honestly, Yolanda, I can’t remember a time before I knew you.” And that’s about how I can sum up our relationship.  

The bopping around was not as fun because we didn’t actually participate in any of the activities, and it was pouring rain.  But all things considered, not as bad as I expected it would be.  We met two super-hot fishermen (each of whom had a baby with their wives in the last week smh where do I get one) and heard all about their different excursions.  They sounded dope but there was freshly caught fish all around us on the docks and their eyes stared at me during the whole spiel and I couldn’t focus.  Why are fish eyes SO CREEPY? After a few more stops around town, our local tour operator Kari drove us to the end of the island to George Inlet Lodge and met one of the owner/operators, CANDI, who gave me a real “mom in Justified /Aunt Lydia in Handmaid’s Tale / whatever her real name is who just won an Emmy” vibe, except less cold blooded murder-y. They showed us their boats and excursions and then fed us an authentic meal just like the members would get, which included Dungeness crab legs.  I told myself before the trip started that I’d HAVE to try and eat more seafood because a) it’s fresh AF in Alaska so this is the place b) my excuse of “but it’s too expensive at restaurants” can’t apply here #freeunlimitedfood and c) I should try to immerse myself in the culture. If Kitty ever reads this she’ll die, also Kitty you should never go to Alaska.  We’re going to keep a running tab on all the seafood, I tried, okay?!  First: the “dungie” crabs.  Learned how to crack them open and everything.  They were relatively tasty, but I still don’t get why people lose their shit over crab legs, especially because it’s soooooo much work for so little payout.  I’m more of a low investment, high reward type.

After the lodge we drove to the opposite end of the island and got on a boat to drive out to Hump Island (lol) Oyster Farm, where a 20-year-old kid named Sean showed us around his dad’s operation.  He was the epitome of what I imagine an Alaskan braaaaaaaah to be and he was cracking me up. All self-deprecating humor about how no 20-year-old should know as much about oysters as him and all he wants to do is chill with his friends in the summer, not tumble oysters 12 hours a day. There were tons of pots all around the little floating island and he explained it takes an oyster about 3 years to grow to maturity and be ready to be eaten/sold, so I asked him if the pots were organized by relative age so you know which ones are new and which need more time, etc.  He said, “honestly we’re just oyster farmers we’re not the brightest most organized guys in the world but that would make sense, wouldn’t it” but all with a sweet douchey little smile only a college kid could get away with.  The thing that struck me most was just how different “summer jobs” in Alaska are for kids than in say, DC.  They don’t work at fast food restaurants or for their dad’s law firm or at daycare blah blah blah, they work on boats or on oyster farms or fishing or logging or giving tours to cruise passengers.  Builds character! And calluses!  They fed us fresh oysters after that which I really didn’t want because I had an oyster one time and I thought it was gross, but again, had to.  And it tasted better than I remember probably because I was literally on the farm where it was grown, kinda like how beer tastes better at a brewery because it never has to travel. 

Back on the ship that night, we ate at what is literally called The Restaurant.  The ship only has a few dining options – The Restaurant, which is pretty shmancy and requires a reservation (but not for us VIPs of course who had the same table reserved for us every night), the Colonnade (buffet-style, ate all of our breakfasts and lunches there) and the Grill, which is a VERY SHMANCY Thomas Keller restaurant that has cut-throat competition for reservations and apparently our members lose their minds over.  We ate there a few nights later and I accidentally got hammered on my new favorite drink, Old Cubans, and had to be essentially rolled out of there in front of the Super Hot Waiter I’m in Love With, Thomas from Belgium. Literally just conjured his face in my mind when typing this and felt an internal swoon.  I miss him so much.  ANYWAY we ate at the Restaurant each night, which had fixed menu options on the right hand side and a rotating left menu.  I tried to be ~adventurous but mostly ate a lot of steak.  Had a black truffle risotto one night and literally loved it so much asked for a second portion.  Going to the lake this weekend and stuffing myself in a bikini is going to be like, a three-person job. We had the same two servers each night – Anastasiia, a 25-year-old Russian girl who love/hated us and today tried to do a bike excursion after never having ridden a bike before and eventually gave up because she crashed too much (I said, “Anastasiia! You can’t just try and ride a bike and hope it goes well, you need someone to guide/teach you until you’re comfortable!” Smh) and Simba, a South African angel who had a crush on me and calmly put up with all of my Lion King jokes.  Listen, other than Super Hot Waiter Thomas, they all had a crush on me.  Maybe they found my complete lack of adherence to their dress code sexy in a “fuck the rules” kind of way?? (How is one supposed to dress for “elegant casual” nightly anyway…) Maybe it was how I insisted night over night that I was “one of them” and not a client because I was here for a site visit and begged them to let me hang out with them?  (The assistant Maitre’D Marius tried to pull so many strings to allow us to be invited to crew Bingo night but alas, we were rejected.) Or maybe it was because I was one of the only people on the ship under the age of 60 and I shamelessly chatted and flirted with everyone I saw, at every meal… It’s hard to say. Simba even publicly sang me a love song at the last night at dinner.  

Slept that night and woke up to the most magical, mystical, ethereal scenery of the Misty Fjords surrounding us.  I’ll post a picture so you can truly understand how magical these were.  Pouring rain but gorgeous and foggy and tranquil. TO BE CONTINUED!