#this turned out mostly kinda sweet camping vibes

[prince-liest]

inspired by a series of convos in the 3zun server and also my own recent camping trip:

please imagine mundane modern au nieyao going camping

meng yao is like twenty-three, freshly graduated from college after having to take a gap year to take care of his ailing mother. nie mingjue is in his thirties, and knows meng yao as the responsible young man who befriended his brother and is probably one of the driving forces preventing nie huaisang from having skipped too many classes to actually earn a degree. he's not technically meng yao's boss, but he works in the same organization and he thinks it's perfectly acceptable to mosey on over to meng yao's actual boss during the interview process and give them a stellar review of what he knows of meng yao's work ethic.

the fact that meng yao eventually (read: very rapidly) gets promoted to work at nie mingjue's right hand is... probably fine. it's not too strange. in fact, they're friends! good friends! good enough friends that when nie huaisang finally puts his foot down and downright refuses to go on the nie annual camping trip, citing that he is a "real" adult now (whatever that means) and that means he doesn't have to spend a week in the woods every year getting bitten by mosquitos and hunting down the nearest wifi connection if he doesn't want to, da-ge, maybe it'd be cute for taking photos if they just went for the weekend - well, then nie mingjue retorts that he doesn't see the point in driving all the way out to yosemite for a single weekend and invites meng yao instead.

meng yao, on the other hand, is thinking: hm. he is pretty sure he has seen this porno. a week out in the woods with his hot older boss who is also his best friend's big brother. you couldn't fit more tropes into it if you tried. maybe if there were debt collectors after him and nie mingjue was a mafia boss.

(there are no debt collectors. meng yao has made certain of it. he has been very financially responsible in the aftermath of his mother's passing.)

nie mingjue is a responsible hiker and at least somewhat aware that he's taking somebody with no experience on a camping trip, largely courtesy of nie huaisang. meng yao ends up dressed mostly in nie huaisang's unused hiking clothes, packing his things in nie huaisang's unused hiking backpack, and sleeping in nie huaisang's unused sleeping bag. he looks up the price of the socks that nie mingjue handed him and then decides not to look up any more for the sake of his emotional wellbeing.

they make it to yosemite. meng yao has looked up all the things to do in yosemite valley, but for some reason they end up driving way farther north through some winding mountain roads that make him wonder if the car is just going to... tip over the side and neither of them will ever be seen again. for some reason there's a random porta-potty around one of the bends that meng yao silently stares at as they pass. it takes several hours to arrive, but there's a surprising amount of gas left over in the car for how much time the trip took.

the camp grounds are a little...

"isn't this a little crowded?" meng yao asks. "why don't we go farther into the woods?"

nie mingjue looks at him like he's the strange one. this is how meng yao learns that you cannot camp just anywhere inside of a national park. apparently it's okay, because most people are respectful of the common spaces. also, there is no shower in this specific camp. nie mingjue brought wet wipes.

these are not the ideal circumstances for fucking in the woods, but meng yao is a trooper and he understands that sometimes reality is a little more complicated than not safe for work media.

it's fine. besides, they get there pretty early in the day, all-considered. and it's spring, so it's still cool enough to go hiking at midday. a waterfall sounds pretty romantic, he thinks, watching nie mingjue work some kind of eldritch magic with tent poles while taking mental notes so that he can prove himself competent should he ever need to set up a tent again in his life.

an hour and a half later, meng yao is soaked through with sweat and half-convinced that he's developed adult-onset asthma. nie mingjue is glistening attractively. for some reason the incline of the 'easy' hike to a nearby waterfall that they're on suddenly turned into a rock climbing challenge in the last quarter mile. the worst part about going down it is knowing that he will have to go back up on the way back. there aren't that many people around, but if nie mingjue is taking him here to fuck him, then meng yao is going to simply have to throw himself into the river rapids and drown. it would be a kinder form of death.

they get to the waterfall. it is spring, so the river is flowing so strongly with icemelt that it's too dangerous to truly swim. meng yao considers at least dipping in, but when he puts his feet in, the water is so cold that he decides that he likes having physical sensation above his ankles, thank you. nie mingjue smiles proudly at him and tells him that nie huaisang usually complains up a storm by this point and that he loves his brother but it's nice to be with a more appreciative partner. something in meng yao's chest squeezes a little bit.

it gets a little tighter when he realizes that he's finished all of his water and nie mingjue crouches down to show him how to use the iodine water tablets on the river water. they make the water taste strange, but meng yao is mostly distracted by the fact that nie mingjue's mouth was just on the lip of the water bottle that he's about to drink from.

he drinks, tilting his head back. his hands are shaky with exhaustion and some of the water spills. it's cool on his chin and throat and he doesn't bother brushing it away - he's so sweaty that it's probably impossible to discern what's sweat and what's water anyway. when he opens his eyes again, nie mingjue is watching him.

they hike back. by the time they arrive at camp, meng yao's legs have entirely turned into jelly and nie mingjue takes pity on him, sitting him down in a camping chair with a beer and going off to pick up dry wood ("why would I buy firewood when deadwood is free?"). he teaches meng yao how to start a campfire, stacking small twigs in increasingly larger sizes until there's enough kindling to set the big logs ablaze. meng yao finds himself shivering in the dark, pressed up against nie mingjue's side and leaning towards the flames. funny, how he thought he would never feel cooled down again just an hour ago. his face burns, and his back is only cold until nie mingjue offers him a blanket.

they absolutely do not fuck that night, nor any other night. but meng yao has fun: he hasn't felt so free to learn and mess up and explore since he was a kid, and the absolute newfound freedom that he experiences when he once asks if they could go look at something off a path and nie mingjue says yes - says, in fact, that the whole point of going off into the woods like this is being able to do and see whatever you want, as long as it's within legal boundaries - means meng yao basically forgets his initial plan entirely.

they nearly get lost on their next hike, missing a turn in the established path and only turning around when they reach what could best be described as a ravine. there are more waterfalls - meng yao didn't know there were this many waterfalls anywhere in the world. they move campgrounds a few times, too. apparently it's quite difficult to get seven straight days booked in a yosemite campground. meng yao sets up the tent the second time. some of the campgrounds have showers, wooden buildings with cool water and moths fluttering around the lights. the most delicious meal meng yao swears he's ever eaten is the cheese-filled sausages nie mingjue roasts over a campfire, combined with cup noodles that they cook using water from the same camping stove tea kettle they use for their tea in the mornings.

eventually, it is time to go home. meng yao hasn't washed his hair in two days and doesn't remember the last time he heard the ping of his phone demanding that he put out yet another fire at work. he'd been asked to keep his phone on and check his email when he can during his vacation, but most of the places they've been don't actually have service.

they drive back through the same mountains as before. the porta potty is still there. meng yao actually points out its strangeness this time, and nie mingjue laughs. meng yao smiles. he's been smiling a lot during this trip. he feels vaguely like a new person. it's fresh air and endorphins, nie mingjue says. good for the soul. meng yao is pretty sure it's nie witchcraft, too.

(or maybe it's endorphins. he certainly gets a hot flood of those when, dropping off meng yao at his doorstep, nie mingjue finally hesitates - and steps close, mumbling, "didn't wanna make you uncomfortable while you were trapped in the woods with me, but..." before kissing him. his hands are so big on meng yao's hips.)

(they do fuck that night. but not before meng yao drags both of them into his shower and scrubs himself from top to bottom. yosemite was great, but he has standards.)

#mdzs #the untamed #nieyao #nie mingjue #meng yao #jin guangyao #my writing #long post #disclaimer: I love camping. i am nie mingjue in this scenario. LMFAO #my last birthday I literally fucked off into the woods on my own for a weekend with my own and it was glorious #I still don't know what that porta potty was doing in the middle of the barren mountainside but whatever it was appreciated #also ik my is normally more of a planner but please imagine in this situation he trusted nmj to have it all taken care of #this turned out mostly kinda sweet camping vibes #and also cured my writing bug so I am satisfied #storytelling post

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

[virghogh]

NCT Birth Charts x Hexaco Results Analyses pt. 2

recently NCT Dream were on a new reality show called Mental Training Camp where they are doing a variety of activities and all of their behavior and interactions are being analyzed by professional psychologists.

ofc my virgo sun mercury ass was thrilled and I had their birth charts pulled up the whole time to cross reference.

I wanted to share some of my personal thoughts on how the 2 might connect!

p.s. Thank u for all the likes on part one !!<3

part 1 // part 2 // part 3

**key: in the hexaco charts the blue represents the Dreamies, the orange is an average result of 300 college students who took the same test**

Renjun - “An artist down to the bones”

✨aries sun // scorpio moon // pisces mercury // pisces venus // taurus mars✨

can i just start with a wow cause!! This title is so bold and what they continued to talk about with him, and when looking at his chart... there is much to unpack here so let’s get into it

they started off his analysis focusing on how much of an “artist” he is. They said 2 qualities a great artists needs is openness and emotionality and he scored way above average in those areas, and the highest of those in his whole group. Looking at his placements I think anyone could tell this person is highly creative. With his 2 pisces placements and water moon in scorpio. There’s a lot more going on with that moon sign than just creativity, but it is a common trait amongst water moons!

I feel like his water energy is responsible for more of his imagination? If you watch a lot of NCT content you can see just how imaginative Renjun is. Especially in the relay vlogs when he was taking us through his art all I could think was wow this guy has crazy (good) imagination! the reason I mention this is because he has a taurus mars. taurus is ruled by venus where we get a lot of our creativity from and it’s a known thing that taurus placements always bring natural creativity. I really think the combination of water imagination with taurus art is a beautiful combo.

 On top of his natural talent in creativity and imagination, scorpio moons absolutely need an outlet. He was truly blessed with placements that give him that outlet <3 They mentioned he could be a poet and scorpio moons are always being recommended to write poetry. His art is essential to his mental and emotional health. 

something really interesting is how they mentioned that mark has traditional leader energy, but Renjun has a “mother-like” leader energy. I thought that was so sweet and really accurate for him. They mentioned how throughout the intro he would scan the others eyes a lot and make contact very subconsciously and with ease. Taking everyone into account. I see this a lot in his 2 pisces placements. I feel like a lot of pisces makes someone very sensitive, in-tune with people and caring/compassionate. And with the slower, calmer taurus mars it gives him a gentle approach. He has this strong bull/ram influence from his aries sun and mars, his driving forces, that gives him initiative and a strong voice. when these 2 connect I feel like it makes a mom bear kind of thing. 

They also said it seems when he scans like that he is almost analyzing and observing, “gathering opinions”. Scorpio moons have hawk eyes, they’re always observing micro-actions and reactions. He is mostly observing with care so he can pay attention and accommodate! But I think having a scorpio moon just makes him naturally tune in to people a lot more and gives him a sharper eye. 

I wanted to put him and Jisung in the same post because they’re both scorpio moon kings, and I wanted to talk about how this really intense moon sign plays out in 2 very different people. I have a scorpio moon too, so seeing 2 idols I like with their own scorpios moons is very interesting to me! 

at one point the psychologists verbal report took a turn and all i could think about was that scorpio moon! After they finished telling him about his artists traits, they said “there is one thing you should look out for”, and it was that people like him tend to get lonely easily and often/a lot and Renjun quickly agreed! They said that since he’s with good friends a lot, it helps, but in the future he could get very lonely and experience it more than the average person. This is so textbook scorpio moon I honestly felt like he was speaking right to me and my scorpio moon for a second. From one scorpio moon to another, I’m so glad he has people around him. 

then they asked him when he typically gets lonely the most and he responded with “it just comes to be out of the blue” u poor scorpio moon bb😭. I don’t know how serious he was about this word but he said he will be depressed on the nicest days sometimes. 

there was another story Mark was telling thin time about Renjun. They went out to a meal together on a beautiful day and Mark comments on how nice out it is and Renjun just responds with “I’m depressed”. There are so many traits of his scorpio moon coming through here. With the moon being in such an intense, deep and dark sign, it is in detriment here. It’s a really rough placement for your emotions. Water moons in general are known for being quite moody and sulky, sometimes it just comes out of nowhere and very randomly. There doesn’t always have to be a trigger. I feel like his pisces-scorpio are really like teaming up a lot when it comes to his expressions and emotions. 

In the last post I mentioned how I think Jeno and Mark are lucky to have fire moons because they could get really hard on themselves or down/depressed if they had earth or water moons. Renjun is a good example of what I meant. With his Taurus mars, earth signs are known for being down and hard on themselves a lot and I think the combination of a earth mars and scorpio moon is tough. taurus likes to be alone a lot too and I could see him maybe in the future develop a tendency to isolate when he’s having a scorpio moon moment and feels like the world is ending (again, being around people must be really helping him). I also see his aries sun maybe being another way to help express that scorpio moon. It might feel less like he has to keep all of these scorpio feelings to himself, it’s easier for him to let it out. It’s also worth noting that having a scorpio moon and taurus mars means they’re in opposition! Giving him even more depth and intensity. 

as for the hexaco chart, based off just his chart I don’t know if I would have guessed his openness was that high with his scorpio and taurus?? But other than that I think his hexaco is very spot on for him! His agreeableness is slightly below average👀 umm yes hi aries sun and fixed moon and mars. His extroversion is pretty much average but that average to me tells me someone is more on the extroverted side or maybe in the middle? Being in the middle would make sense to me because I think he definitely has potential to isolate. I’m curious to see what his houses are! I’ve seen a lot of talk that he’s a cancer rising and I buy it because it would put his sun in 10th, and moon in 5th but that’s a whole other topic...

That emotionality is wonderfully high. His openness and expression/ reactions are one of my favorite things about him. He’s truly a little aries hot head at times. I feel like aries in big 6 often gives this kind of ease with expression and straightforwardness like I was saying about mark. Similar to Chenle though, I think even though Renjun is open, he isn’t an open book and has his deep thoughts and secrets. I see his openness more in that he will always be there for people and listen/help peoples problems. He’s the kind of person to meet someone and if he can tell they’re struggling he’d offer his ear or shoulder even if they’re not close. He’s welcoming. 

tldr; has intense imagination and creative abilities, he is very welcoming, compassionate, attentive and caring. Mom vibes. He is very moody and gets down a lot, his friends and artistic expression are essential. He is very expressive, passionate and hot headed but has a lot of patience.

Jisung - “Shy Perfectionist” 

✨aquarius sun // scorpio moon // aquarius mercury // aquarius venus // aries mars✨

Jisungs section in this show was reallyyy short they didn’t say much and moved on kinda quick😅 I’ll be honest Jisung has always kinda confused me especially when I try to understand his chart and what i see in the videos. So not getting a lot of information from this episode either (yet! the show is ongoing) is tough

As far as the title they gave him🥺chart or no chart I think it’s a good title for him and how he appears in content and stuff he is true baby. In their verbal report they basically just said he’s shy and then talked a lot about how he has very good “follower” qualities. They were saying having a good follower is also a really important quality in a group though. And jisung agreed with what they were saying. That’s pretty much all we got from them😅

Honestly if I could only have one members guaranteed full chart I’d want it to be Jaemins or Jisungs because Jisung has an aquarius stellium! And the house it’s in could tell us so much more about him. Typically when I think of or meet aquarius I don’t pin them as a shy type? I could see some of them preferring to stick to themselves but they still operate pretty well in social situations. So Jisung’s painfully shy personality we see is interesting to me. Where I definitely do see his aqua and scorpio working together is in how anxious and nervous he is. He’s a worrier too and has admitted it. Also I’ve heard the combination of aquarius and scorpio makes someone intensely intuitive to future events, so I feel like if jisung is unaware of this gift it could contribute to his high anxiety. Maybe he gets feelings of “something bad is about to happen” a lot for seemingly no reason👀

Another very aquarius trait is of course they’re weirdooos through and through! And what I’ve noticed about the aquarius weird trait is how many different kinds of weird there are because aquarians are always weird in such different ways. I definitely think Jisung is a weird guy, or quirky? You can almost see the gears grinding in his head when he’s contemplating and then he’ll do something “weird” after that! Weird, or just off beat. And what I love about the way jisungs lil aquarius mind works is you can tell those weird moments are purely just how he really is and thinks, and it’s not to be funny or for the cameras, he just processes information and thinks completely different from everyone else. 

Since we know jisung is shy I feel like a lot of his aquarius and scorpio mood comes out off camera so we won’t get to see that side! But I’m sure it’s there.

I think Jisung’s scorpio moon is a good example of how different it can be. To go from a very emotionally charged chart to one that is being dominated by air is quite different. With Renjun, I was talking about how his water and fire give him the ability to be in touch with and express his scorpio moon more. But with an air dominant chart I feel like hinders that ability and creates a more detached person. Not that he’s cold, not emotional, or not compassionate. But just that he probably prefers to “just not think” about certain stressful or emotional topics. But the problem with that is it doesn’t mean emotions are gone and scorpio is very hard to ignore, so he’s probably internalizing a lot of stuff v deeply or is surprised when emotions come, what feels like, out of nowhere,.. Jisung also has an aries mars though! I feel like the openness of the aries mars combining with the detachment of Aquarius sun could also contribute to sudden releases of emotion🤔 but be back to normal in minutes

I also wanna add that I feel like jisungs very follower personality and ability to just kinda let things happen or not take charge must be a result of the industry and being the maknae tbh, or it at least accentuated it 

For the hexaco chart I really want to comment on how high the honesty-humility is! In the first part I mentioned how aquarius and aries can be quite righteous signs. So this trait must be really played up in his chart because it seems he cares a lot about following the rules (could also be a result of industry). His emotionality is higher than average! For his chart I don’t know if I would have expected that but from watching him I think it totally lines up, maybe his aries mars is proving more of an outlet. 

I also wanna finish by adding that jisung is still super young and has been in this “baby” position for most of his life, and is literally the youngest out of a 23 person group lol and grew up in the industry so there’s more going on with that than just astrology <3

tldr; very shy, anxious and nervous, intuitive, an oddball, his community is important and helpful to him, easily reactive, but not very emotionally expressive, he’s level-headed, has a lot of growing to do🥺<3

part 3 coming soon!

feedback and thoughts are always welcome!

#astrology #kpop #nct 127 #nct u #nct dream #jaehyun #jaemin #lucas #taeyong #yuta #jisung #mark #ten #haechan #jeno #jungwoo fluff #renjun #johnny #shotaro #winwin #doyoung #sunchan #chenle #yangyan #xiaojun #taeil #kun #birth chart #zodiac signs #mine

[paintedlight]

Supernatural Season 15 & Sufjan Stevens' “The Ascension”

Teaser: there’s a song on this album called "Die Happy” where the lyrics are just “I want to die happy” for 5 minutes and 45 seconds. yeah. yeah.

Disclaimer: yes it’s all a stretch and I’m overthinking it but also… am I? (yes) 

long post time! know that reading ahead may hurt you and yes it does get worse the further down the track list you get 💕 have fun kids

So just to start off, I think it’s funny that something Sufjan’s discography & Supernatural have in common is the 15+ years of the internet arguing if it’s gay or not, and the answer ending up being yes. PLUS there’s the obvious connection of American mythos + mythology + calvinist themes (I am hissing) + religious trauma prevalent in both. 

If you’re a fan of both like I am, it’s easy to connect them— notable connections being songs like “John My Beloved” and “The Owl and the Tanager” or even “John Wayne Gacy Jr.”, but I’m going to focus on Sufjan's 2020 album, “The Ascension” since even the arc itself seems so connected to season 15 of Supernatural, specifically. 

At least in my head it does <3 enjoy 

MAKE ME AN OFFER I CANNOT REFUSE

When interviewed about the meaning of this track, Sufjan explains that this song is about asking God, “what do you have to say for humanity?” That it’s about desperation, creation, and devastation. It’s about frustration with divinity. Also the vibes are 10/10. Need I say more 

RUN AWAY WITH ME

This song is beautiful, it makes me want to sit in some grass and stare at the sky. 

Some lines that make me Dean/Cas crazy are the two lines in verse 1 and verse 2 that mirror each other by being in the same place melodically:

Verse 1: they will terrorize us / with new confusion / with the fear of life that seeks to bring despair within

Verse 2: I will bring you life / a new communion / with a paradise that brings the truth to light within

Yeahhh so the words “Despair” and “The Truth” were mirrored in this song yes it was coincidental yes I’m clinging to it. It fascinates me 

But this song is about begging someone to stay with you.

sweet falling remedy / come run away with me / you’re all I ever need

VIDEO GAME

My first thought when I heard this song was about how it was such a song for enneagram 4s. If you don’t know what that means, I think Dean is a 4 and wrote a post about it here. 

AND @trapperjohnmcintyre also made the connection between these lyrics and Dean in this post, and honestly I don’t need to say much more than that??

The song is about feeling paranoid and angry that God is controlling your every move and you can’t escape it (aka hating the doctrine of predestination). Of course it’s also about not wanting to follow societal scripts. 

You just want to have an easier life instead of the weight of good and evil resting on your back!!!

I don’t want to put the devil on a pedestal / I don’t want put the saints in chains / I just want to make my life a little easier / I don’t want to play your video game

Also these painful lines, as a treat: 

I don’t want to love you if you don’t receive it / I don’t want to save the world that way

Oh, I almost forgot, also. At the end, the narrator gives up. He’s like well I guess I can’t escape. Gotta follow the procedure. Gotta be a puppet.

I don’t want it to go down that way / but in a way you gotta follow the procedure / so go ahead and play your video game

  LAMENTATIONS

I don’t have much to say about this one but this line always makes my heart ache idk:

I was only thinking of human kindness

TELL ME YOU LOVE ME

Here we gooooooo. Y’all aren’t ready.

Thesis: Tell me you love me despite the primordial darkness about to overtake me. And even if you don’t, I’m going to love you. 

15x18 Despair anyone?? 

I want to just paste the whole song but, here—

DIE HAPPY

Yep, "Die Happy" immediately follows "Tell Me You Love Me." Yes, the lyrics are just “I want to die happy” over and over for almost 6 minutes. 

First of all, the repetition mirrors the end of the song Fourth of July, from Sufjan’s previous album Carrie & Lowell, where Sufjan sings “we’re all gonna die” over and over.

Parallels, baby.

But I noticed something else about this recently though— in Die Happy, if you are listening to it in your headphones, there’s this weird sound that sounds like a wasp flying around your head (it made me uncomfortable which is why I noticed it, haha). After I felt unnerved for a moment, I had a realization— that this could be referencing one of Sufjan’s most beloved songs, “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us!!” (yes that’s a real song title lol)

The Predatory Wasp is about how Sufjan fell in love with his best friend at the Bible Camp he went to as a teenager. The wasp is a metaphor for internalized homophobia and also his love and how he fears his love will hurt the boy he’s in love with. 

So, Die Happy references an iconic song from Illinois (2005) with these notable lines:

Tl;dr: 

I want to die happy vs. I can’t explain the state that I’m in / the state of my heart / he was my best friend

Here’s an Despair photoset with Predatory Wasp lyrics via @toneelspeelster. 

ATIVAN

So your best friend has just died happy by being in love with you. You feel like the primordial darkness is on YOU now:

I woke up in stereo—I spent the day in vertigo / I could not get the spirit off my back

You’re once again tossed in the waves of thinking that God is fucking with you. But either way you just want to be tranquilized at this point. 

Is it all for something? Is it all part of a plan / tranquilize me, sanitize me, Ativan

Is it all for nothing? Is it all part of a plan? / make my death wish, mind my business / do the best I can with what I am

Ativan asks, was the true leading woman all this time… substance abuse?? 

Ativan / my leading woman

Long story short, you’re drunk on communion wine, asking the shadows to come back.

fill me with the blood of Jesus / clean my plate 'til he receives us / separate the colors from the black / ... / tell the shadows near us to come back

 URSA MAJOR & LANDSLIDE

Not a lot to say about this (even though I love these songs) so I’m gonna skip mostly, but the narrator has decided he wants to love you, he can’t help it <3 

GILGAMESH

Oh boy. 

I mean you kinda know what’s coming because of the title. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world’s oldest piece of epic world literature, and Gilgamesh was “the first hero of human history.” 

In the world’s oldest story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are “very close friends” (their relationship is very homoerotic and this is barely disputed). Gilgamesh calls Enkidu his brother, and they are mutually selfless towards each other but when Enkidu dies, indirectly because of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh has a breakdown and mourns him like that of a spouse and then has to come to terms with his own mortality. 

The meta level of this is so obvious I’m not even going to go into it. Anyways… here are lyrics that make me want to scream! 

the repetition of “my heart”... the concept of singing a eulogy.... saying your heart is chained to Your Angel............ it hurts

DEATH STAR

Star Wars reference my beloved. Like many of these songs this has Fuck You God energy.

what you call the human race / expedite the judgement day / it’s your own damn head on that plate

vandalize what you create / ... / witness me resist your fate / it’s your own damn head on that plate

 GOODBYE TO ALL THAT

This song is a bop honestly 

When the lyrics were released a bunch of Sufjan fans contrasted Goodbye To All That’s here I am alone in my car / hopelessly infatuted / and I’m driving to wherever you are to Sufjan & Moses Sumney’s song, “Make Out in My Car”.

Yeah, I know, we’re all thinking of this:

Make Out in My Car is basically where Moses gave Sufjan a horny car guy chorus and told him to write the verses, and Sufjan proceeded to write the most liturgical shit ever (and we love him for it). ANYWAYS… Goodbye To All That also reminds me of Dean’s depression and the weirdness that started in 15x19 and goes into 15x20. For some reason he makes it seem more upbeat and happy than it is...

Despite this song being a bop, the lyrics are depressing. He’s alone in his car. He’s hopeless. He realizes it’s too late to have died a young man. 

He’s going to try to move on, even though nothing is left of him, he’s begging someone to turn around and show me his shadow.

He also references substance abuse again—

love me / and leave me / intoxicated

  SUGAR

The music video? Iconic. The mom of a family is making a pie, or she’s trying to. She ends up rubbing the filling all over her face, crushing the fruits, the oven catches on fire. 

But she does it! She makes the pie. 

Meanwhile the other family members are in their rooms, overindulging in sugar in all its forms. And then as she and her family eat around a dining table, occassionally being seemingly marrioetted by some unseen force, she looks angrily over her family, they all seem to kind of lose it, then the house starts to come apart until the chandelier falls on the dinner table. 

It’s the making pie + overindulgence in sugar + marionetted family metaphors for me ❤️ 

Ultimately, the song is about begging for affection, being desperate for domesticity, but you feel doomed, you feel like your defeat is predestined, that you can’t escape it.

You just don’t want to be heartbroken & you don’t want to be angry anymore!!!!

  THE ASCENSION

So you may be asking… does this guy get the domesticity he’s longing for?? Does he get his love back?? 

No. He dies. :/

The Ascension begins with just that. He’s dying.

THEN Sufjan decides to rhyme “confess” with “confess”, in two lines that mean almost opposite things:

When I am dead / and the light leaves my breast / nothing to be told / nothing to confess / let the record show / what I couldn’t quite confess

So does this guy have something to confess or not??? 👀

Moving on… 

He goes back to thinking about how his life was predestined all along, and now after all that, he’s dying. So he thinks about all the times he was kind of like this Mythological Icon. That he always had to be the one to show what was right, to lead by example. That that had been his entire identity. 

And he realizes he needs to answer for himself. 

Then he is frightened— realizing he was always asking what everything meant, what it all was for, but that all along he was just angry and depressed.

But even though he feels a like he should have just resigned himself to meaninglessness, that he only thought he could change the world for the better… it strengthened him to know the truth.

And even through the absolute shit of it all, and even though God & others did things from a place of so-called holiness and hopelessness...

He did everything out of love ❤️

So then he dies 🙃

AMERICA

So, as the end of The Ascension asked, what now? 

The album ends on this long track, which Sufjan describes as a protest against all that America has been and has become. 

It’s a protest against capitalism, of destroying humanity for the sake of some cold machinery. 

I have worshipped / I believed / I have broke your bread / for a splendor of machinery

And in true Sufjan fashion, he makes this song about protesting somehow both horny and religious, god bless

I have loved you / like a dream / I have kissed your lips / like a Judas in heat

I have worshipped / I have cried / I have put my hands in the wounds on your side / I have tasted of your blood / I have choked on the waters / I abated the flood / I am broken / I am beat / but I will find my way / like a Judas in heat

I am fortune / I am free / I’m like a fever of light / in the land of opportunity / don’t do to me / what you did to America / don’t do to me / what you do to yourself

  to finish out, here’s a DeanCas post by @eggcessive with lyrics from America ❤️ I HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY WEBWEAVING :)

#sufjannatural #sufjanatural #destiel meta #spn #deancas #sufjan #here it is.... my masterpiece #this didn't take as long as you'd think considering all of this has been on the tip of my tongue for months #<3 I hope others freak out along with me <3 I'm obsessed with the album and his voice #I feel kinda weird posting this bc this album also had like a ton of personal spiritual significance to me.... but it's fine #those things can be connected

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Making cookies at the Nova Aeria Clock Tower

When it comes to being creative with cookies, Addie and Ginger are always up for the challenge! Since rebranding and opening shop at the Nova Aeria, things have been going super well for them. They went from a small cookie stand in their neighborhood to a traveling cart and now they have a full fledged bakery in the city.

Today the bakery was busy because of the monthly cookie contest, which has been a huge hit since it started earlier this year. Like I said, Addie and Ginger like to think outside the box when it comes to unique cookie recipes!

A lot has changed since I last saw them at the camp. At the time they were rebranding, taking time off to reevaluate things after realizing that the direction they were going in wasn't working out. By reinventing themselves and starting over from scratch, they were able to make something that aligned more with their dreams. It wasn't easy, but they took the plunge, knowing when to bail out when they realized that they deserved better.

The Nova Aeria Clock Tower feels like it exists in a space of its own. I don't know, it just gives off this starry, otherworldly vibe. I can also see why Addie felt that this was the perfect place to settle down in. She always has a knack for being intuitive like that. The moment she stepped inside, she knew that it was meant to be. And that's not something Addie says lightly so if she's somewhat certain about anything, we gotta keep that in mind.

For now, it's just Addie and Ginger running the bakery, though now they're in the process of building a team. Bree and Lyn were gonna start training soon but they're needed at the funeral parlor where Lyn's brother Ry works as undertaker turned temporary director.

Bree and Lyn have always been Addie and Ginger's biggest supporters so it was a matter of time before they joined the team. They're creative bakers too - Bree's baking videos are always relaxing to watch and Lyn likes experimenting will all kinds of complicated recipes. Problem is that their families aren't as supportive of their baking aspirations so it's a case of them waiting for the right opportunity to take a plunge and pursue their dreams.

So now they're one step closer! Except they can't quite take the step yet as poor Ry's overwhelmed since the funeral parlor director and consultant are out of commission. Lyn says it's not as bad as it sounds - basically, the director and consultant occasionally work with an adventurer's guild so they sometimes tag along on a mission with their investigator friend. Rarely they both go together and for that particular mission, things went horribly wrong, as Lyn puts it. The director, who Lyn describes as a bit of an eccentric prankster who seems too cheerful despite her family's business, should be out of the hospital tomorrow so she'll probably be back in a week or so. As for the consultant and investigator - an old fashioned gentleman and a headstrong young adventurer - it'll be a while before they're back up on their feet again, but at least they're recovering from their injuries.

Lyn always has stories relating to the funeral parlor - mainly about the director being weird and causing trouble. She seems like an interesting person, someone full of dark humor and can be a bit much, but a nice person overall. Lyn's family and hers go way back, and she has been supportive of Lyn and Bree while Ry seems to be on the fence. The consultant and investigator sound like cool people too - Lyn doesn't know them too well but they've always been nice to him. Bree says the consultant's super knowledgable about a lot of things so he always has a lot of interesting things to say.

The funeral parlor business was never for him so Lyn only really works there if they're short handed. Bree is basically the on call undertaker - probably the only one in the world as far as I know - though she mostly does cleaning and sometimes clerical stuff. To keep things lively, she bakes treats for the staff, which they appreciate, especially the director. She also learned a bunch of new recipes from the consultant, who also taught her a bunch of obscure and valuable baking techniques that most professionals have never heard of.

Since it's the monthly cookie contest, Ry gave Lyn and Bree the day off. So Ginger felt that this was the perfect opportunity to start their training - by being contestants! Normally Bree bakes something at least once a week but since the funeral parlor situation, she hasn't baked in almost a month, which is almost sacrilege to her. Of course, she was totally up for the challenge of coming up with a brand new recipe on the spot.

I was surprised at the turnout of the contest - thirty contestants! The bakery was packed so Addie had to break everyone up in groups. I didn't participate in the contest myself while Fauna and Mira did. Daisy Jane and I were behind the scenes, helping out contestants and cleaning equipment. It was cool seeing the kitchen as well as get some sneak peeks behind upcoming recipes.

It was fun watching everyone come up with all kinds of cookies. Everyone had such a unique spin on their creations so trying over thirty kinds of cookies didn't feel like a hassle. There were sweet cookies, savory cookies, and a lot of in between. Even things that you wouldn't think would go in a cookie came out well. Addie and Ginger sure know how to get everyone creative!

Fauna made a passionfruit matcha mochi cookie that screams tropical vibes. It was a recipe she came up with on the spot so it took a couple trial batches to get things going. The matcha cookie dough texture is like a mix between shortbread and chocolate chip, resulting in a flaky, buttery, and rich flavor. Then she bakes the cookies for a bit while making the passionfruit mochi. Before the cookies finish baking, she tops them off with the mochi, like putting chocolate chips on top, and put it back in the oven for a minute or two. That way, the cookies are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside while the mochi is chewy and flavorful.

Mira came up with colorful chocolate cookies with a black sesame custard filling. They taste as good as they look, especially with the rainbow sprinkles. The cookie is made from a mix of coconut and almond flour, resulting in a nutty flavor that goes really well with the custard and chocolate. The flavor's not overly sweet thanks to the black sesame and a touch of flaky rock salt, which really elevates a dessert. I can totally see this cookie being served at a rainbow themed party for its looks alone.

Lyn went experimental with a super duper chocolate cookie. Basically a super rich brownie in the form of a cookie that's made from three different types of chocolate. To balance out all that chocolate, he topped them off with roasted pecans flavored with lime and chilis. He got the inspiration from hot chocolate with chilis and the flavors go surprisingly well together. I mean, along with the rich chocolate ganache drizzled on top, without the spicy pecans, the chocolate would've been way too much. Only Lyn can pull off something as indulgent as that!

Bree's creation is like a fusion of a focaccia and quiche in the form of a cookie. The dough is similar to focaccia, except with some tweaks here and there to make it more cookie like. The topping is a cream cheese custard with a blend of herbs, an unusual mix of sweet and savory flavors that balance each other super well. How she came up with this idea, I don't know. To add a bit of a personal touch, she decorated the cookies as various constellations. Creativity never ceases to amaze me!

There were so many cookies, more than enough to take home and give to friends. Bree and Lyn plan to stop by the hospital and funeral parlor on the way home to give away some of the sweet treats. I did a little baking myself with Addie and Ginger before they closed up and that was pretty chill. It's so good to see them thriving and I can't wait to come back, especially now that Bree and Lyn will be joining them soon.

While waiting for the cookies to cool, Ginger took us on a tour around the Nova Aeria. At first glance, the clock tower looks like a fancy shopping center. It kinda is but also isn't, if that makes sense. There are shops and cafes but there's also places like an archive building, an observation deck, the clock tower itself, a couple of HQs - it's basically the center of a lot of things. Even those who spend their days at the Nova Aeria for years - generations even - still don't know the full extent of the clock tower and what exactly its purpose is.

Being the curious cat she is, Ginger wants to learn more about the Nova Aeria. Lyn wants to know more about the place as well. Both say the consultant seems to have some knowledge about it so he seems like a good starting point. The director might know something too as her family has connections to the clock tower so that's another thing to look into. Hearing them talk about the clock tower's mysteries has made me curious too.

What stories does the Nova Aeria hold? That's another thing to look forward to on future visits.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

[punkpal]

Get To Know Me Better! (tag game)

@tidal-wav3s thanks for tagging me dude!!

Fav color: Lots of people get surprised when i say this but pink has and always will be my favourite colour.

Last song I listened to: Four Walls - While She Sleeps

Fav musicians/bands: God i have so many but the first few that come to mind are Parkway Drive, My Chemical Romance, Five Finger Death Punch, Green Day, Architects, All Time Low, A Day to Remember, Hellions, Slipknot, Secrets, Ocean Grove, Korn, In Hearts Wake, Awaken I Am, Whilst She Sleeps, Slowly Slowly, Young Lions, Trophy Eyes, The Plot In You, Queen, The Maine, Linkin Park, Hands Like House, AD/DC, Evanescence, Dream On Dreamer, Asking Alexandria, Crown The Empire, Camp Cope, Bring Me the Horizon, System of a Down, Disturbed, The Used, Brand New, Blink-182, Bad Omens, Tonight Alive, Stick To Your Guns and lots lots more. When i was putting together this list i was gonna make it a max of 10 bands but then i kept thinking of more and more and eventually i just had to stop otherwise this list would become novel length. Basically the consensus is i like lots of music and any of the band i reblog shit from are favs.

Last film I watched: Sicario and it was shit so take my word and don’t fucking bother.

Last tv show I watched: I just finished rewatching The Umbrella Academy season 1 to get myself psyched for season 2. I also just finished watching the netflix mini series documentary ‘Unabomber: In his own words’ which was pretty good. And I am also currently binging The Office (US) and am just starting season 8. 

Fav original character: So i am writing (admittedly mostly just in my head although a little less then a quarter has been written as a rough draft on a word doc) a rather length fantasy/vampire novel. Its part romance, part drama, part revenge fantasy, part anarchist vigilante revolution au and tbh part me just self projecting my trauma and dysfunctional life onto my characters... And whilst it likely will never see the light of day because of my lack of motivation to write the entire thing down and instead just reference it when i am day dreaming. I really vibe with the alternative universe as an escape from the real one i am living in and i have a vested interest in the characters i have created in it. And whilst there are numerous ocs from this that i have put an alarmingly long amount of time (literally years) into developing all of which i love and adore i do have two favourites. One named Taylor who is a gay 2946 year old idiot/himbo (vampire obviously). He is hot, sweet, kind, caring, funny, understanding, stubborn, the mum™️  friend, a romantic fool with a a hint of mummy issues and anger problems and a complete fucking allergy to guilt. And the other is his prodigy/person he turned vampire named Meredith. She is 354 year old hot mess and is kinda the opposite of him in that she is homicidal, manipulative, cunning, devious, fearless (almost to a fault), strong willed women. Who is very smart, has a strong/forward and somewhat off putting personality, low key a bit of a bitch but is very protective of those she loves and has good morals and the desire to right all wrongs even if through violent revenge if she sees fit. She is the leader of a criminal underworld revolution seeking to bring revenge and justice to the powerful and untouchable evils of the world. And he is her loyal side kick that lets her run the show as she is a natural born leader, but also works as a the voice of reason and logic to her. All the while having his own sub plot of being torn between chasing his love interest despite the danger it possesses. Or sacrificing his own desire for connection and love for fear of the consequences despite it meaning living a sad and eternally lonely life. Thats just a very brief summery of those two. They have a very close but complicated relationship with each other, like annoying siblings but imagine if you had to live with your siblings for centuries. And they all have there flaws (some more obvious then others) as well as dark, morbid and tragic histories but it makes them what the are today both the good, the bad and the downright problematic. And yeah i’d like to think one day i will write this out properly and others will read it and connect to or relate to these characters. Maybe love them, maybe hate them, maybe initially hate them, like is designed with Meredith, but come to truly love her once they begin to understand her and see her potential thats hidden under layers of ‘don’t fuck with me’. But until then they are my characters to play around with and build upon and thats exactly what i intend to do.

Sweet, spicy, or savory: Sweet!

Sparkling water, tea, or coffee: Can i say hot chocolate or juice?

Pets: Living with me is my son and best friend Gideon (he is a adult black male cat i adopted a year ago and he is the best thing that has ever happened to me.) Living with my sister is my family cat i grew up with named Maisey (she is a snobby fat cat with a beautiful coat and i love her although i don’t think she loves me/or anyone.) And then at my mums is her puppy Newfoundland Bentley (basically god combined a dumbass and a dog and made him) as well as my brothers turtle Pedro and my axolotl Voldemort (can’t fit his huge tank in my apartment so he stays with mum.)

I’m tagging: @bilvy @revradio @cxmeterydrxve @angryqueercrypted @prettyyy-boyyy @disenchanted-mona-lisa @burymeinpink @thotfrnk @r1ghtbackatitaga1n @solelll @gothbtchz @highhighhopless @re-imagine @x-give-em-hell-kid-x @greendayer @dramaticallydepressed @lyricsinmyblood-bloodinmylyrics & @imsopunkrxck obviously this isn’t a obligation, do this tag game only if you want. And if you weren’t tagged but wanna take part then do tag me in your own and i will read and like it as i love learning about my followers passions and interests!

#also this is the first time i have talked online about my alternate universe story and original characters #if you like what you hear and wanna know more as what i wrote was only the tip of the iceberg in regards to what there is to know about them #then hmu and ask any questions you have because i'd love to talk more about them because obviously they are both old as fuck #and therefor have a lot of back story and theres so many different aliments to the plot with a whole lot of side/sub plots #and other characters and i have done a load of research so as to have all of the stuff that i wrote based in the past to be historically #accurate and just yeah i know no one cares but if you do then please ask me about it because i have so much more to say! #also don't judge me even though i deserve it lol

[evan-hand-soap]

Basically my favorite characters to write for as your best friend headcannons UwU

Characters: Connor Murphy(DEH), Evan Hansen(DEH), Jared Kleinman(DEH), Freddy Freeman(Shazam), Shouto Todoroki(bnha), Hitoshi Shinso, Kyoka Jiro(bnha), and Peter Parker(mcu) *in that order*

A/n & TW: yeah it’s a lot, I know. Everything’s platonic and yes there’s some cursing and a small refrence of drugs in Connors if you squint.

My requests and matchups are open! Just please read my rules first!<3

Connor Murphy

He is oh so very protective of you

He doesn’t have many friends so he wants to keep you at his side as much as possible

Since his brains all fucked and tells him things that aren’t true, if you’re not around him he gets sad and starts to tell himself you’re out with other friends and he’s not good enough

Even if in reality you went to the bathroom

He overthinks so much

Hes a pretty goofy person though so he tries his best to lighten the mood or make you laugh when you’re sad

And it usually works

When you guys hang out you usually go somewhere like a park or your house rather than to his house because he hates his family and doesn’t want you around them

He’s too anxious to say things like “I love you” but he means well and you know he does

He starts saving money and not buying as much weed and such so he can have money to spend on both of you when you go out and hang out

His hugs are by far the best

He’s just so comfortable and warm and smells so good

Expect lots of calls at like 2 in the morning

Mainly just because his mind gets stuck in a rut and makes him upset and uses you as his lifeline which you have no problem with

He obviously gets very angry very easily but around you he goes soft

It’s impossible for him to get mad at you

His brain won’t allow it to happen

He secretly loves if you lock your arm with his because it lets him flex that he’s got such a great best friend without having to say anything

Any problem you have is his problem

Someone breaks a project you worked on for a while? Their ass is dust. Something happens at home? You live with him for the next week even if he doesn’t want you around his family. Hotel? Tivago

Having him as your best friend also makes everyone scared to do anything but be nice to you because they know he won’t hesitate to annihilate them

Just in general having him around and you being around him makes him a lot happier

He’s only vulnerable in front of you and Miguel

But he’s a lot softer and nicer with you

Evan Hansen

He’s an anxious baby

If he’s your best friend, he’ll be so at ease because he knows you won’t judge him or hate him or anything

He still stutters around you and can get pretty nervous but that’s just how he is

Hang out usually are at his house or at a park

He tries to keep you away from Jared because Jared’s a cocky bitch but Jared just means well

Most of the time..

But if you are around Jared, he panics because he’s scared Jared might say something about him and make you not like him and want to be Jared’s friend rather than Evans

That never happens though and to help Evan not panic about that, if you’re ever around Jared you make sure Evans there too

Evan loves hugs so much

He never has to say anything but just in general gives off a vibe of ‘I want hug’

He secretly really likes just hanging out in his room and laying down with his head in your lap and talking and ranting while you mess with his hair

It’s just so comforting to him to know you’re always there to listen

He’s very quiet so it’s best to always have an ear open around him so you can hear him mumble something like if he’s uncomfortable

He just really needs a person who can show him he’s cared for and loved

Like Connor, he’s too anxious to say “I love you” but for Evan, it’s mainly because he doesn’t want it to come off weird or something

But you know he loves you

Heidi once thought you were dating and it made him and flustered, anxious trainwreck as he tried to explain you two weren’t. It would’ve been a lot worse if you were there

(If he were to get into a relationship it would most likely be with his best friend because that’s who he knows he can rely on the most)

Jared Kleinman

He’s a cocky bastard

Like I’ve said, he mostly means well

But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a snarky asshole

He’s got a few nicknames for you but if you want him to stop he’ll try his best to

He’s a show off

He loves you a lot so if you’re his best friend he’s gonna flex about you so hard

Everyone’s gonna know you’re best friends

Literally no one cares

But they know

Like Connor, your problems are his problems

He will attack(verbally) anyone who does anything even as small as taking a pencil from you and not giving it back

Hang out are usually at his house or the mall

He secretly really really loves cuddling

He’ll be really cocky about it if you want to but he won’t say no

He teases you a lot but that’s just his way of showing he loves you

He, just like the other two, doesn’t actually say he loves you but his reasoning is he’s never had to say it to anyone so he just feels weird about it

If he says something actually insulting he’ll apologize

Something you’ve got to keep in mind though, is that regardless of what he says, he means well

He really does. He wants you happy but he doesn’t want to be different around you than how he actually is

He’s actually very insecure so if you’re good at making people feel better about themselves, you’ll be his ray of sunshine

He doesn’t actually have all those friends he met camp and a hot model girlfriend like he tells people so he doesn’t actually have anyone to keep his moral up

*DEH is such a sad musical wth-*

You can see right through his lies

When he feels like balling up and sobbing he smiles and cracks jokes instead of cocky comments

There’s been multiple occasions where he’s needed to sob and just huddled up in a ball and hugged his knees and cried while you just held him

That’s all he needs is a friend who can have a sense of humor to make him laugh instead of make himself laugh and have someone to lean on and not get judged for crying

His hugs are also amazing

Not as good as Connors but they’re still amazing

No matter how close you are, he’s still gonna be a cocky bitch but he’s nicer around you

Freddy Freeman

This boy is the best best friend anyone could ask for

Because of his disability he can’t do much but he really tries to make you happy

You do what you can to make him happy too because he’s a little depressed and a has mild anxiety and gets shoved around and made fun of a lot

If you love superheroes, he’ll be super stoked because... he is literally the biggest superhero nerd

Hang outs are always at his house because 1, his family adores you, 2, you don’t want him going places when its not necessary because of his disability, and 3 being that his home is just so cozy and fun

Billy is also really close with you because you’re around him a lot since you’re always in his room since they share a room

*His whole family secretly ships you two and it really pisses Freddy off since you two are, at this point, strictly plantonic*

He doesn’t say “I love you” or hug you around his family because it would just be endless teasing

If Billy’s not home and everyone else is downstairs he’s totally different

He does those one armed hugs because his other hand is always occupied with his crutch

If he does tell you he loves you, he kind of mumbles it since he’s pretty awkward and also in fear his family is around

He’s always on his toes when you’re at his house because he doesn’t want to let something slip and get teased about it because it’s already happened once when you were getting picked up from his house and when he walked you to the front door he just bluntly said “See you at school, love you.”

The second he turned around everyone was just smirking at him and started teasing him

He’s an incredible person to comfort you if you’re sad

He just always knows what to say

If you are sad he knows all you need is to be comforted which usually comes with physical comfort as well

If you’re in his room and just sobbing Billy promises not to say anything because he’s just trying being a good friend

The only times his family won’t tease him about it is if you’re sad and clinging to him

He’s very supportive and just all around great to have around

His best friend would probably be someone soft spoken and sweet rather than obnoxious and witty just because he needs someone sweet and kind in his life besides his sisters

He’s a big softie and anyone can fight me on this

Shouto Todoroki

Todoroki will be the best friend that gets very jealous if you’re around someone else

He just thinks he’s not good enough so if you’re around someone else for a little, he gets anxious and starts worrying and gets all down in the dumps

Kinda like Connor does

His hugs? The best on this whole list

His hugs are always so warm and tight but not too tight

Also,,, a literal living ac and heater

He’s just the best

Being his best friend, expect lots and lots of hugs when you’re alone in his dorm

Sometimes he’ll have nightmares and text you and ask if he can come to your dorm for comfort

And he just walks over to your room and hugs you and tries to calm himself down

He secretly really really really loves nicknames from you

Whether it be strawberry or candy cane or something else

He loves it

He’ll definitely need a best friend who can stop him from getting into fights because (I headcanon) he doesn’t like wasting his time in stupid situations like fights for no reason

remember when he almost threw hands with the chief of the police in the hospital? or when he shit on his licensing exam results because he was too busy fighting Inasa?

He’ll definitely need someone to be his common sense when he gets sucked into something and his won’t function

Hang outs are usually in his dorm, half of the time are just studying

Hang outs also don’t include much conversation because... he isn’t one to talk since he’s like on of the quietest in 1A

If you’re struggling with grades or training or something else, he will 100% help you but he’ll back off if you tell him to

Just like Connor and Jared, your problems are his problems

If he even hears your name mentioned in a negative way he’s all over it and won’t even mention what happened to you so you don’t have to worry or think about it

Kind of like Connor and how he saves up money to spend on the both of you, Shouto just steals his dads money and spends it on you both instead

You’re sick and need medicine? He skiddadles to the store and buys you some medicine and then a bunch of your favorite snacks or ice cream or whatever you like. You have a bad day? He takes you out shopping and spends Enji’s money like there’s no tomorrow

He’s that best friend that literally spoils you whenever they can

He will never ever judge you for things you like or do or anything about you

He’ll be a little awkward during the first few months of your friend ship and even when you’re close enough to be considered best friends

That’s just how he is

He’ll be very open with you so expect him to sometimes show up at your door and once you let him in just fall on your bed face first and ask for permission to rant

He’ll just mumble something like “Do you mind if I rant?”

Yes, he asks for permission. He’s very polite

He needs hugs. He’ll need someone who can initiate hugs because he needs wants them

He’s going to be the hugest softie around you, but other than letting down some of his aloof persona, nothing’s that different besides he’s a bit more open and goofy

Hitoshi Shinso

He’s honestly honored to be your best friend

At first, he was a little confused when you started becoming friends. No one ever tried to befriend him so he was confused. Did you want something?

When he realized you just wanted to be his friend, to say he was happy would be an understatement

He’ll definitely need support because growing up he was always told “sounds criminal, Shinso.” “You’re cool as long as you don’t manipulate us into being your slaves.” “Imagine how much stuff you could get away with!” And etc. so he’ll need support for when he gets depressed and insecure and lets his thoughts get to him

Once your best friends, he’s like your body guard

He’s supppeerrrrrrr protective

He doesn’t mean to be, he just loves you a lot and wants to make sure you’re okay

If he hears you got hurt during training, he’ll personally make sure you’re alright and then take you out to get ice cream

He kind of babies you but he knows you can protect yourself

He just doesn’t want you to feel like you’re alone

He refuses to use his quirk on you

It just seems wrong to manipulate you, which it is

He let’s you and only you touch his hair

Be honored

Like Todoroki, it takes him a bit to open up but once he’s open to you, you know basically everything down to his shoe size (?)

He’s not much of a ranter because he feels like he’s annoying you if he talks about his problems

You have to reassure him that you could never find him annoying and even after that, he’ll maybe rant once every month or two

Unlike the other few on this list and the whole ‘your problems are his problems’ for Shinso it’s a ‘you don’t have problems. I kill them before they become one.’ Kind of thing

Stressing over grades? Not a problem he stays up all night with you and does whatever he can to make sure they go up. Over worked yourself during training and made you sore and exhausted and go unconscious? He’s already convinced his teacher to excuse him from class and carrying you bridal style to the your dorm from the nurse

He’s on it, regardless of what it is

I headcannon he has a black cat in his dorm and it’s named is shadow, fight me

His cat loves you a lot

Being best friends with Shinso probably comes with Aizawa just generally appreciating your human more than others because Shinso talks to Aizawa about you and how you’ve made him happier

So of course, Shinso’s Dad™ is stoked

For the sake of this, I’m saying you’re in 1A

Since Aizawa likes you and the impact you’ve put on your best friend, you’re the only student in 1A that gets to leave to Shinso’s dorm whenever you wish because you’re not friends with anyone out of your class besides him

Shinso is a gifts guy

He’s that friend that is always thinking of his best friend when he’s out somewhere so if he sees something you might like, he buys it for you

He doesn’t shower you with gifts like Todoroki because he’s not rich, not that he’s poor, he just can’t afford spending money like it’s nothing, let alone if it’s not even his

Expect lots of calls or random texts at like 3am because his insomnia is always keeping him up

He’s definitely too shy to really show that he cares about you

If he does it’s in a way where he doesn’t need to look you in the eye or look at you at all because he gets flustered easily

He really likes Disney so one of his favorite things to do is just watch Disney movies

He’s the bestest best friend anyone could have ^‿^

Kyoka Jiro

This girl loves her music

She knows what it’s like to have someone insult your music taste so she will fight anyone if they discriminate you or your taste

She’ll definitely tease you about small things but nothing you’re insecure about

She’ll teach you how play the drums or guitar or whatever you want that she has because if you play songs with her, she will be super happy

She might not want a friend too dramatic or a drama starter but if you are like that, she’ll try an ignore it

Hanging out will probably be either in her dorm, an arcade, or doing something like kareoke

She loves kareoke so if you’re willing to play music with her and sing, you’re the best

Lots of inside jokes

Once shes open with you, you’ll know almost all of her secrets and opinions on things

But it might take a while since she has trust issues

Third most protective on this list (right under Peter and Connor)

She will not take anyone’s bs, especially if it’s even remotely at you

Every time Mineta mentions your name, he’s dead

She doesn’t care if you can defend yourself, there shouldn’t even be the case of needing to defend yourself unless it’s in training or hero stuff

You’re her favorite person to train with

Just cause she’s too scared she’ll get judged for something with someone else unless it’s Kami or Yoamomo

She’s not very affectionate so at first she’ll freeze up if you hug her or something

She’s just not used to it but once she is, she’ll hug you back or something

She’s pretty casual about it because it’s not like it’s anything further than plantonic

She’s not the best person to go to for academic help so if you ask for it, she’ll just refer you to Yoamomo or Todoroki

If it’s physical help you need, such as quirk or training stuff, she’s totally up for it

You’re the only person who she feels safe to rant around so it’s best that you’re a good listener around her

Her parents adore you

You guys rarely argue which she’s really happy about because she hates arguments

If you’re into the same music as her, she’s ecstatic

You two are jam buddies ヾ(＾▽＾)ﾉ

She never fails to make you laugh, whether she means to or not

It’s just her commentary thats funny

(You guys have custom ear pieces for your suits so during practice missions and training you guys can secretly talk with each other and hear everything that’s going on on each other’s ends and she’s always mumbles things to herself that you find funny)

Peter Parker(!FFH spoilers and gets a lil depresso!)

You know about him being Spidey

The poor baby has PTSD so you should do you’re best to not mention Tony around him

Sometimes he’ll just swing over to your apartment and give up on patrol and sneak through your window and sob and hug you

He just needs someone to hug and cry on

Your parents think your dating Spider-Man because they walked in on Spider-Man clinging to you and sobbing

You had to beg them not to tell anyone you know Spider-Man

Thankfully, he had his mask on, even if it was tear stained and sopping wet with tears seeping through it

Being his best friend, you should try your best not to worry about him out with bad guys, even if it’s super hard because he’s always face to face with death even if he’s just swinging around the city

What if he missed where he shot a web and slammed to the ground and got hurt?

Will definitely binge Star Wars with you

If you’re not into Star Wars, he’ll get into whatever you’re into so it’s not awkward when you hang out and just watch SW with Ned

He lets you try on his suit but only after he gets it cleaned because it always smells like sweat and tears and blood

Once it’s clean it smells like flowers and laundry detergent

He’s given you part control over EDITH so if something happens to him and you only have his glasses, you can protect yourself

When he needs to ditch class for something he either has you or Ned convince the teachers something, depending on which one of you is in a class with him at the time because every class he has is with one of you

He made you a braclet made of nanotech that can also go into the form of glasses, with an AI named Mila, but hasn’t given them to you and only plans to if he absolutely has to

He had Pepper make them since he knows nothing about Nanotech. He had it customized with ways to keep you calm in chaotic situations and can find the easiest and safest escape routes for you in a few seconds

I forgot to mention he’s very protective because he refuses to lose someone close to him again

He’s an awkward mess so please don’t make fun of him or tease him about something because he’s really insecure

Once his identity got out, you stayed at his side so if he were bombarded with with questions or the press or anything else you could help him answer because he gets super nervous and stiff around the press and such

He really appreciates you

He tries to save up some money to buy you gifts for your birthday and such but you always insist he doesn’t have to

The boys a bit stubborn though so he’ll still most likely do so

If something happens at home you’re more than welcome to stay at his apartment

May loves you so you’re always welcome there

He’s not to physical but he’ll hug you every once in a while and such but not much more

If you’re ever sad he’s one of the best people to be comforted by

Mainly because he’s dealt with a lot and never had many people or anyone to comfort him when he needed it so he always gets into the mindset of ‘when I’m sad, what do I need from someone else’ and knows what you need and what he needs to do

He’s just generally a really really great best friend UwU

#spiderman #spiderman x reader #peter parker x reader #peter parker #dear evan hansen #connor murphy #evan hansen x reader #evan hansen #jared klienman x reader #jared klienman #jared deh #bnha x reader #todoroki shouto #todoroki x reader #hitoshi shinso #shinso x reader #kyoka jirou #jiro x reader #freddy freeman #freddy freeman x reader #shazam #connor murphy x reader

[arks-self-ship]

The main Baby Blue Boys!

So I like to jump around AUs with my F/O N//ightcrawler, and with M//arvel’s multiverse that makes it easy! But I do have a few main base versions of my F/O that most of these AUs are built off!

Blue: Blue is the generic 6/16 base, He’s a sweet boy.

Goldy: Ultimates but if ignoring a lot of canon. Super gay and sometimes ends up leaving the x//men with my S/I so he can begin to actually heal from his tramua. I tend to use this one a lot because I like angst. Warning: due to the canon I pull from his behavior can often be considered borderline "yandere" so feel free to avoid that, but he's non violent just very possessive. My S/I knows how to deal with that and is very good at setting boundaries with him.

Three: Three is a version of Ultimates who was in the W//eapon X program much much longer. In canon it was implied he was there for less than a year (Even saying “all these months in this horrible place” and a scientist dude saying something about a few months ago too) but in this AU he was there for almost 3 years and it kind of broke him. He’s a lot tougher, stronger and scarier and often seems to be very distant and grumpy but he does have a huge soft spot for my S/I. Unlike Ulti and canon ultimates he has no problem with killing anymore, but tries to only do it if he has too. He usually has a knife made of mysterious material (not metal, but looks metallic and is as strong as a//damantium) that he’s very attached to and always has on him. The knife was sometimes given to him by my S/I sometimes it was stolen from the person who tormented him at W//eapon X. Very protective of my S/I

Nighty: Kind of a mix of E//volution and a bit of the A//pocalypse movie version. Just a really sweet goof who’s not always sure what he’s doing. Usually already struggling with his sexuality when my S/I shows up. Mischievous baby who just likes to cause (mostly) harmless problems. Very very casual best friend vibes with my S/I until whoops they kiss! (bro...) Still keep things very casual after though. Usually has a secret dating trope thrown in for extra shenanigans. Aged up, usually having just entered or about to start college but has known my S/I for a few years. (Please note I only ship with him because I was the same age as he was in canon when I first started shipping with him and he aged with me. It's the same storyline as back then)

Baddy (under construction, not available for asks): Villian AU and also kinda a Soulmate AU where Kurt works with his parents as part of a family "bussiness" that involves a lot of robberies and theft. When my S/I comes along and they finally meet he brings them into the family bussiness. They're more "be gay do crime" than world domination so it's mostly stuff like stealing from the rich, vandalism and random destruction of property, and just fucking with super heroes at random cause they get bored. They got a particular beef with the X/Men cause they were really shitty to my S/I when they first got there. VERY protective of my S/I

For Hire (Inactive, not available for asks): Kind of another Villain AU that's a combination of Three and Baddy. After escaping W/eapon X and learning it was shut down Kurt was left alone in the world with his only skills being sneaking and killing. In this AU he became a mercenary for hire, killing or stealing so he could have enough money to survive. When my S/I comes along they team up, constantly taking jobs just to meet rent each month and be able to eat. He does all the killings, but they work together for everything else. They're constantly butting heads with the X//men. In some storylines eventually get a redemption arc, joining the X//men but secretly whoever is in charge (be it X/avier, L/ogan or Scott) is having them take people who are to dangerous out (X/Force 2008-2012 style) so they can stay somewhere safe to live and not worry if they're going to be able to eat that night. Very very protective of my S/I, includes a frenzy mode where he sort of loses touch with everything around him and just kills anything that isn't my S/I.

Big Blue: Based on the 2015 X//men inferno S/ecret Wars thing where N/ightcrawler gets his soul ripped out and is turned into a monster by D/arkChild. Slightly different than canon where G/oblin queen doesnt kill off his mind and at some point my S/I is able to use their empath powers to sever the control D/arkchild has over him (although for plot reasons how they break him out of the control varies depending on what I wanna do). Usually involves them helping him find his soul again, and once he gets it his mind is still kind of broken but he’s closer to normal and able to transform back and forth between his beast form and a slightly different version of his normal self (look varies, usually has horns, longer fur on his forearms and claws). But hey hes got a bunch of sweet new powers! And after kind of going feral in his beast form and killing D/arkchild he becomes basically a scabbard for the S/oulsword, which both he and my S/I can wield. Tends to be extremely protective of my S/I and in constant need of attention

Kid: based on the Kid N/ightcrawler from the 2012 X/-treme X/men series, classic kid genius and usually around 14 like canon. Non-Romantic character!!! Usually a little brother figure for my S/I! Unlike in canon he did not die in the X/termination event (only x/avier did), instead having serious injuries and losing his left leg and messing up his ability to teleport to the point even a couple teleports will completely wipe him out. His Earth’s version of my S/I was a huge hero, considered one of the big five (alongside S/piderman, Capt M/arvel, T/hor, and B/lack P/anther) so he’s very star stuck and admires them a lot. Sometimes shows up if my S/I gets knocked out of their dimension and needs to go home, othertimes my S/I is a part of their team with a romantic version of NC on the team too cause I do what I want

Red: A/OA based K//urt D//arkholme, and follows canon up to the point of X/termination, where he also didn’t die but his reality was sealed off and he can’t go home. Due to what happened with X/force he instead takes up the offer to travel with the X/treme x/men and continue to dimension hop and help other realities. Not always romantic (but it depends on the AU) and is instead usually an almost mentor to my S/I. Often also is a mentor to Kid as the two are usually coexisting in whatever AU this is and helps him with his powers. Very stoic and kind of grumpy, but secretly cares a lot about this team.

Band: Kind of a mix of Goldy and Three, having left the X//men to join my S/I’s band, reasons vary depending on what I want to do, usually its due to the severe manipulation of X//avier and just how it was destroying his mental health. Tends to kind of split from here, sometimes he ends up the lead singer with my S/I on guitar, or my S/I as the singer and him as the drummer who likes to not be seen by the audience so his drums are kept in a dark spot of the stage. I generally default to two storylines too, sometimes he stays in his original world and trying to help m//utants as best he can and refusing to talk about his time in the X-men. The other storyline is for whatever reason the band ends up reality hopping, going from multiverse to multiverse and setting up camp for awhile and playing their music there. This is the angstier version and often ends up featuring Nighty or just general E//volution Kurt cause I like angst sometimes. Generally a very casual AU that i just like to think about when listening to music. Band is very much punk/ punk rock.

Real quick, when I talk about a U/ltimate’s universe I mean my own AU of it because what I do is ignore huge parts of canon because I feel the writers were trying to be edgy and tackle a lot of social issues of the time and sadly my baby blue in that got the shit end of the stick on being nice about some stuff because he was religious. I ignore all of that because Its my F/O and I’ll do what I want. I’m honestly not a fan of u/ltimates and just like to snag certain character dynamics, backstory and design and mix it with 6/16

#Noah•shush #F/O #fictional other #selfship #self insert #•Baby Blue Boy• #•ark world lore• #•Baby blue Goldy• #•baby blue Three• #•Baby Blue Nighty• #•Baby blue Kid• #•Baby Blue Red• #•Baby Big Blue• #•Baby Blue band• #•Baby blue baddy• #•Baby blue for Hire• #•Classic baby blue•

[buckyskorpion]

50 Questions tag!

i was tagged by @buckyland​ so thank you kat i am trying to procrastinate and this is PERFECT

1. What is the colour of your hairbrush? pink and purple pastels 

2. Name a food you never ever eat. peanuts bc im allergic lmao

3. Are you typically too warm or too cold? too warm! im a sweaty bitch

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago? watching a jamie genevieve makeup tutorial and wishing i had her accent because she sounds so sexy... scottish people man

5. What is your favourite candy bar? does this mean chocolate bar or like lolly bar..... chocolate would be a mars bar and lolly bar would be redskins

6. Have you ever been to a professional sports game? absoLUTELY state of origin game 2 last year baby 

7. What is the last thing you said out loud? “oi shit heads do you want a coffee?” i am a stereotype

8. What is your favourite ice cream? COOKIES AND CREAM YES ME AND KAT AGREE

9. What was the last thing you had to drink? coffee

10. Do you like your wallet? i technically dont have one my cards just be loose in my bag 

11. What was the last thing you ate? omg a bacon egg tomato and cheese brekkie roll it was DIVINE

12. Did you buy any new clothes last weekend? yes a bunch of sleep singlets, shorts, fuzzy socks, and a jumper

13. The last sporting event you watched? the last nrl game the dragons played before the season got cancelled

14. What is your favorite flavor of popcorn? sweet and salty baby

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to? my boss because i left my bag at work which has my nintendo ds in it and i wanna play animal crossing (dont ask why it was in my bag) 

16. Ever go camping? YES i literally camped overnight in my backyard last night and i camp every year when i go to splendour with my mates (big music festival in byron bay) 

17. Do you take vitamins? no and i should because im iron deficient lmao

18. Do you go to church every Sunday? oh bitch since i turned 18 and could legally say no to my crazy catholic parents i havent been to a sunday mass since. i do go for big events tho like lent, easter, christmas, etc. 

19. Do you have a tan? big no

20. Do you prefer Chinese food over pizza? this is hard but i would say pizza just because ive been to the hospital 3 times eating chinese food bc of sneaky peanuts and pizza has never done me wrong like that

21. Do you drink your soda with a straw? if its with alcohol, yes. if its not, straight from the bottle baby

22. What color socks do you usually wear? black or pink. i only have Useful socks which are black and one pair of Fun socks which are pink 

23. Do you ever drive above the speed limit? um every time i drive sorry popo

24. What terrifies you? being unremarkable. being forgotten. being left.

25. Look to your left, what do you see? my coffee, paw paw cream, my airpods, my scrunchie collection, my lamp, my meds, and my sunglasses (my bedside table is a mess) 

26. What chore do you hate most? dusting 

27. What do you think of when you hear an Australian accent? nothing.... i am australian this just be my life hahaha

28. What’s your favorite soda? soda is such a funny word to me but anyway my favourite is sprite

29. Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive? depends, mostly drive thru and eat in the carpark vibes tho

30. What is your favourite number? 4 or 14

31. Who’s the last person you talked to? my sister and her boyfriend

32. Favourite cut of beef? i hate red meat but i will eat it in spaghetti bolognese so i guess mince

33. Last song you listened to? number one fan by MUNA - its a BOP

34. Last book you read? in the middle of reading killing commentadore by haruki murikami as i have been for the whole of 2020 lmao

35. Favourite day of the week? friday 

36. Can you say the alphabet backwards? no absolutely not my brain hurts just thinking about it

37. How do you like your coffee? double shot espresso with almond milk or double shot espresso just black 

38. Favourite pair of shoes? my doc martens because im ~quirky

39. The time you normally get up? during normal time i was waking up at 7:30 but now its anywhere between 9-12 lmao

40. What do you prefer, sunrise or sunsets? sunsets absolutely 

41. How many blankets on your bed? three

42. Describe your kitchen plates. one full set of white ones, one full set of those blue ceramic looking ones, one set of fancy white ones with embellishment, one set from ikea that im allowed to use because i smash shit

43. Describe your kitchen at the moment? just did the washing up and loaded the dishwasher from lunch, so spotless because i have issues with dirty sinks lmao. coffee machine is pride of place, and the light above the stove stopped working last night so its kinda dark

44. Do you have a favourite alcoholic drink? t e q u i l a!!!!! or a pinot grigio

45. Do you play cards? hmm i play drinking games haha not really cards tho unless its with my family

46. What colour is your car? silver

47. Can you change a tire? yes because once i was taking an exit off the motorway at 110km/h and something fell off truck which i didnt see so i drove over it and ripped giant holes in both tires on the right side of my car and almost DIED lmao 

48. Your favourite state? state of being? asleep. state in australia?? nsw dUH. state in america?? i pretend i do not see

49. Favourite job you’ve had? my job i have now! disability carer, i love the girl i care for with my whole heart and i would die for her

50. How did you get your biggest scar? i have the stupidest scars ever, my biggest scar is probably the big ones on my knees from when i was running away from this girl on camp who locked me out of our shared room and i fell over and cut my knees and hands up sooooo bad lmao

#me #im also not tagging anyone becusaise i feel everyones done it #wow spelling

[monstersmutpeddler]

Smash & Grab: RELIC #1

By Maz Maddox

Monster Scale

Level 02: Mostly Human But Minor Differences 

Basically just regular guys who also can shift into dinosaurs. This one can turn into a utahraptor.

My Overall Rating For The Book

“I Bought The Book/Series And Want Them Signed Please Holy Shit”

This is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read in my entire life, it’s glorious. I haven’t even read the whole series but I’m going to buy every single book. 

Overly Simplified Summary

A Paleontologist named Simon is on the run from an illegal fossil hunters group (with ties to the cartel cuz why not) along with one of today's most prized fossils. His bodyguard is punk with a pink mohawk who also happens to be able to shift into a dinosaur.  

Just, hear me out. If you love shifters and dinosaurs (and then be open to people shifting INTO DINOSAURS), this is 100% maybe one of the greatest books you’ll ever read. It is so much fun, an absolute rollercoaster ride, omg. 

Keep reading for ‘This Book Has Everything’ and possible Trigger Warnings.

This Book Series Has Everything

[x] Touch them and I’ll kill you vibes

[x] Love interest and/or main character is hiding something 

Kinda hard to just tell someone you can turn into a dinosaur. 

[x] Love interest goes on a rampage when main character is either hurt or kidnapped

[x] M/M

[x] Main character gets chased in the woods by the love interest at some point

More like, the main character chases the love interest into the woods. 

[x] Couple bonds in a Bear Grylls survival situation

I mean, if you count camping? 

[x] Forced proximity 

[x] We’re escaping from the bad guys' prison/lab/etc.

[x] The side character steals the show and makes you want their own book

I want to see every single one of these dino guys fall in love, and it looks like that might happen. 

[x] Open communication 

[x] The couple has equal power in the relationship

[x] Love interest is an absolute cinnamon roll  

Dalton is a mad lad cinnamon roll omg. 

[x] Lead or love interest gets injured and the lead or love interests drop everything to take care of them

[x] Happy Ending Guaranteed

[x] Super scary/dangerous but very gentle and sweet with the one they love

Here’s a link/buy the book!

Trigger Warnings

[x] Kidnapped/held captive against their will

#Touch them and I’ll kill you vibes #Love interest and/or main character is hiding something #Love interest goes on a rampage when main character is either hurt or kidnapped #M/M #Main character gets chased in the woods by the love interest at some point #Couple bonds in a Bear Grylls survival situation #Forced proximity #We’re escaping from the bad guys' prison/lab/etc #The side character steals the show and makes you want their own book #Open communication #The couple has equal power in the relationship #Love interest is an absolute cinnamon roll #Lead or love interest gets injured and the lead or love interests drop everything to take care of them #Happy Ending Guaranteed #Super scary/dangerous but very gentle and sweet with the one they love #dinosaurs

[goforwardgreenwriter-blog]

The Worm Reads: Empire of Storms, Ch 1 - 2

 Book: Empire of Storms

Author: Sarah J. Mass

Ah, my dear readers, what can one say about SJM? While I do admit there is some value in a few of her books (I quite enjoyed the early t0g novels) to say her writing has stirred controversy is a bit of an understatement. There are arguments for and against why her series are problematic and toxic, why her world building is atrocious and her characters overpowered and unlikable, but I believe every author deserves a chance. Let’s see if we can give EoS a good fair shake to see whether it holds up or not, shall we?

The prologue of this book starts right off with Princess Elena Galathynius and her broad shouldered boy toy Gavin (we all know SJM does enjoy herself a broad shouldered man or two) angsting over the inevitable doom and deaths of their friends while planning to flee the battle to buy themselves more time. I won’t bore you with details; it’s separate from the main plot, short, and doesn’t offend me that much. Moving on!

Chapter One

The real story kicks off with Elide Lochan, a character from the previous novel, running through the woods. Elide was one of the few characters I found myself endeared towards, for her sweet yet strong personality and her relationship with Manon.

Weeks. It had been weeks since Manon Blackbeak and the Thirteen had left her in this forest, the Wing Leader ordering her to head north. To find her lost queen, now grown and mighty—and to also find Celaena Sardothien, whoever she was, so that Elide might repay the life debt she owed to Kaltain Rompier.

For those not aware, SJM is extremely found of em dashes. Like, she uses them a lot. I’m guilty of this too, but at least I have the sense to edit them out before publishing works! Also oof, I can smell Celaena gushing coming up.

Unfortunately, Elide had learned the hard way about what water to drink. Three days, she’d been near death with vomiting and fever after gulping down that stagnant pond water. Three days, she’d shivered so badly she thought her bones would crack apart.

While I like the imagery used here, since you get the full picture of how cold she was..... Shouldn’t the sentence be “For three days”? Just stating three days and what she was doing has no connection.

She’d run out of food a week ago and had taken to scavenging for berries. They were all foreign, but a whisper of a memory from her years with her nursemaid, Finnula, had warned her to rub them on her wrist first— to see if they raised any reaction.

I actually really like this, It shows Elide is smart, has a good memory, and is resourceful. SJM, please don’t mess her up.

Maybe she’d made a wrong turn. How would she know when she’d crossed Terrasen’s border, anyway? And how would she ever find her queen—her court?

Unghhhhh she doesn’t mean Aelin does she? If Elide is used only to gush and fangirl over what an amazing queen Aelin is I’m gonna be ill.

Elide hears wyverns flying by and hides, before realizing....

Not witches or wyverns or beasts. But someone—someone was watching her. Someone was following her.

Manon has come to sweep her girlfriend off her feet! Right...?

Lorcan Salvaterre had been running from those gods-damned beasts for two days now.

Oh god no.

Here’s the thing; I like Lorcan as a villain. He was a threat that at least made the main characters sweat a little in the previous novel, to my memory. Surely he will continue to be a villain, perhaps Elide’s main rival in this novel? After all we have a paragraph describing how he tortured and killed some witches, so surely-

He’d been hiding here first, listening to the clamor of [Elide’s] clumsy approach, and had watched her stumble and limp when she finally heard what swept toward them. She was delicately built, small enough that he might have thought her barely past her first bleed were it not for the full breasts beneath her close-fitting leathers.

I’M... SPEECHLESS. Why is that what Lorcan notices about her?? Not her mature vibe, perhaps the determination on her face, but her breasts? He doesn’t even know this girl!! Also, just because a girl has big breasts doesn’t mean she’s older. I know girls as young as 14 with huge breasts. And while I like that SJM does acknowledge periods, which so many YA authors act like they don’t exist, the focus of it here makes me... uncomfortable.

The demon-possessed girl limped up the streambed, that useless knife still out, her grip on its hilt wholly ineffective. Good. And so Lorcan began his hunt.

Oh, so maybe he is going to be an enemy during this novel? I’d read a showdown between them. Preferably with Elide outwitting and kicking his ass.

Chapter 2

Crouched beside the brook, empty skins forgotten on the mossy bank, Aelin Ashryver Galathynius extended a scarred hand over the rushing water and let the song of the early-morning storm wash over her.

*inhales* Oh Aelin. A character most hate, and one I just honestly don’t know. There’s times where I like how arrogant and show off she can be, but other times she aggravates me, mostly due to the whole lost queen thing. 

She breathed in the chill mists and fresh rain, dragging them deep into her lungs. Her magic guttered in answer, as if yawning good morning and tumbling back to sleep.

I actually like the way SJM describes magic, as if its its own sentient being that lives within its owner. Too bad there’s no magic system or anything actually done with this imagery. 

Across the brook, atop a mossy boulder tucked into the arms of a gnarled oak, a pair of tiny bone-white fingers flexed and cracked, a mirror to her own movements. Aelin smiled and said so quietly it was barely audible over the stream and rain, “If you have any pointers, friend, I’d love to hear them.”

The Little Folk illustrate my biggest issue with SJM; she comes up with cool fantasy concepts and characters, and never does anything with them. The Little Folk serve little purpose (ha), but I love them!! I love this scene with the Little Folk mirroring her movements. But I’m willing to wager SJM is never gonna bring them up again.

But they’d left small gifts just outside the border of Rowan’s nightly shields, somehow deposited without alerting whichever of them was on watch.

I’m stanning the Little Folk. They’re magic and skilled enough to outwit even Rowan and they bring them cute handmade gifts? Give me a Little Folk spin off.

Soggy leaves crunched behind her, and Aelin knew it was only because Rowan wanted her to hear his approach. “Careful, or they’ll leave something wet and cold in your bedroll next time.”

*inhales* Hoo boy, Aelin/Rowan time. This should be... interesting.

Strong hands slid over her waist, tugging her into his warmth, as Rowan’s lips grazed her neck, right under her ear. Aelin arched back into him while his mouth roved across her throat, heating mist-chilled skin. “Good morning to you,” she breathed.

And already they’re acting hornier than teenagers right now. Great. I mean, I’m not opposed to characters being in sexual relationships or expressing this, but God, these two take it waaaay too far. They think about sex 24/7 and it gets exhausting after a while. 

“If you want to take a bath so badly,” Rowan murmured against her neck, “I spotted a pool about a quarter mile back. You could heat it—for both of us.” She ran her nails down the back of his hands, up his forearms. “I’d boil all the fish and frogs inside it. I doubt it’d be very pleasant then.”

(...)

A dark laugh against her now-burning skin. It was an effort to keep from taking one of his hands and guiding it up to her breasts, to beg him to touch, take, taste.

Like, can we get them having a nice romantic moment without them being so sex hungry for once? I barely have any feel of a connection between them aside from the fact that they are DTF. I wouldn’t have an issue if this was an erotica novel, but this is supposed to be epic fantasy.

Aelin expositions about how they’re planning to meet some lords from Terrasen, and how Lorcan is under the impression that he has the real Wyrdkey. Hopefully this means we’ll be getting some awesome fantasy content soon.

He gave her a wry smile and aimed a pointed look at Goldryn, sheathed across her back, and the various knives strapped to her. “And besides: I thought ‘cloak-and-dagger’ was your middle name.” She offered him a vulgar gesture in return.

Wait, why is SJM censoring the middle finger? I’d understand if this was an actual YA novel, but this book has graphic sex scenes. Why can’t she write Aelin flipping someone off? Unless Aelin is doing some other hand gesture?

No matter that Aelin was the bearer of a weapon capable of wiping out this entire valley, along with the gray Staghorn Mountains watching over it. And that was just her magic.

*sigh* We get it SJM, Aelin is the most special powerful sorcerer to ever exist. 

“You trust nothing.” She met his eyes. “I trust you.”

If this was for a ship I liked, I’d be squealing with delight. But then the two of them proceed to make out yet again, and immediately the smile on my face dies as I am forced to yet again read paragraphs of Rowan forcing his tongue down Aelin’s throat.

So Aelin kissed Rowan gently, his hands again locking around her hips. “Fireheart,” he said onto her mouth. “Buzzard,” she murmured onto his.

Okay, I will admit. Couples having special nicknames for each other is one of my favorite tropes. I’ll admit, Aelin calling Rowan buzzard is kinda sweet if you ignored how shitty their relationship is.

Evangeline howled, “Fooooood!” Fleetfoot’s answering howl followed a heartbeat later. Then Lysandra’s snarl rippled toward them, silencing girl and hound.

Lysandra!!! Another character I loved. She is so strong and overcomes her abuser and her trauma to become a badass warrior, and plus she has girl friendship with Aelin! I’d read a series about Elide and Lysandra traveling around the world together.

When she looked back, Rowan was halfway to the camp, Evangeline’s red-gold hair flashing as she bounded through the dripping trees, begging the prince for toast and eggs.

....... eggs and toast? In the middle of the forest? Not what I’d expect, but alright.

And Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen, knew the time would soon come to prove just how much she’d bleed for Erilea.

Sure, sweetheart. Also, you’re not a queen yet. You haven’t been crowned or declared ruler officially.

We switch to Aedion’s POV. I suspect if SJM let him have a motive and personality outside of worshiping Aelin, he;d be a good character.

[Lysandra] had used these weeks of travel to try out new forms: birds, beasts, insects that had a tendency to buzz in his ear or bite him. Rarely —so rarely—had Lysandra taken the human form he’d met her in.

I love Lysandra. That is all.

[Aelin]’d grown quieter the farther north they’d traveled. Perhaps weeks on the road had sapped her. After tonight, depending on what the lords reported, he’d try to find her a quiet place to rest for a day or two before they made the last leg of the trek to Orynth.

Again, had this been any other characters, it’d be sweet of him to know his cousin so well that he knows when she’s tired and want her to rest. But like, Aedion’s entire character revolves around Aelin it’s tiresome.

“Darrow was your uncle’s lover,” he added, stretching his legs out before him. “For decades. He’s never spoken once to me about your uncle, but... they were very close, Aelin. Darrow didn’t publicly mourn Orlon beyond what was required after the passing of a king, but he became a different man afterward. He’s a hard bastard now, but still a fair one. Much of what he’s done has been out of his unfading love for Orlon—and for Terrasen. His own maneuvering kept us from becoming completely starved and destitute. Remember that.” Indeed, Darrow had long straddled a line between serving the King of Adarlan and undermining him.

Oooo, a LGBT character! Very nice! However, from that description of Darrow being a supposed bastard, I’m worried he might be the villain. Which wouldn’t be a problem if there were other LGBT characters, but since Darrow is the only confirmed one that comes to mind at current, this might turn out bad.

The flames pulled apart like drawn curtains to allow [Evangeline] and Fleetfoot, sensing the child’s fear and pressing close, passage to an inner ring that would not burn her. But would melt the bones of their enemies.

Um, why is that a fragment? Shouldn’t the phrase read, “(...) passage to an inner ring that would not burn her, but would melt the bones of their enemies”?

So they are startled by the arrival of a messenger and Rowan puts a knife to his throat. I’d understand if he did this until the messenger tells them who he is, but seriously? Keeping a blade at the guy’s throat? He’s the messenger of the people you want to be allies with!

Even as Rowan nudged him forward, that cruel knife still angled at his throat. Aedion jerked his chin at Rowan. “He can’t very well deliver the message with a blade at his windpipe.”

Lmfao it literally takes Aedion pointing this out for Rowan to chill out.

Her magic simmered in response. And that [amulet]—that hideous power hanging between her breasts—seemed to open an ancient eye at all the commotion.

Again, a nit pick, but why is SJM so fascinated with the amulet being between Aelin’s breasts? It seriously takes away from the impact of the sentence, which is trying to make the amulet sound dangerous but all I can think about is the amulet squished between her boobs. It would’ve been better to simply say the amulet around her neck or something.

So the messenger tells them the lords won’t be coming out to the forest, which is honestly understandable. They’re old and can’t travel as well as the younger characters, and it’s raining outside. 

So those were the first two chapters. Well, it isn’t too bad so far, but not great either. Honestly, I’m just weirded out by SJM’s focus on the women’s breasts. If this was an erotica novel, I’d have zero problems with it, but considering this book is supposed to be epic fantasy, it just pulls me out of the story every time it is focused on. But we’ll see if SJM can do better with the next chapters.

#the worm talks #the worm reads: eos #anti sjm #anti tog #anti eos #im not completely an anti blog but this is a critical take on her series so #into the anti tags it goes

[survivorgalaxysedge]

Episode 4 | Space Cadet Blasting Off Again - Jessie

We swapped. And what a wild swap it is. I want from the Andro Tribe to the Circi Tribe. And so did Jonathan, Ari and Zoe. Four of us stuck together on a tribe of 5. We also have Ali with us. I’m worried Ali has an idol so I just don’t want us to lose at all. Let’s keep the good vibes flowing. 

AND NOW IM AM ON CALL WITH JONATHAN AND HE'S TELLING ME ABOUT THE EXACT PLACE I JUST WENT AND THE EXACT RIDDLE I DID LIKE "SOMEONE ALREADY GOT THERE" HELLLLPPPPPPPPP honestly this is what he gets for going off script! i had the room search under control and he was supposed to be in the hallway so it's not my fault he found my mess!

I encountered an alien in the idol search! I sang them a song and viola! I have a special power. I have the ability to kidnap someone from another tribe, for a full round of the game. They compete in the challenge with us. They'll attend tribal council if we go, but can't be voted out. Kind of a neat little power. It has to be used before merge. So I guess we'll see what happens. If we started with 18, swapped at 15, I imagine that merge will be at 11. I've got a few tribals to figure out when/how to use this power, if I even decide to use it at all. Man, I am loaded. Hidden Immunity Idol and this now. On a DISGUSTING note, someone used a power on me to destroy 10 of my fuel. Thankfully it was only 10 and not a whole lot of it. 

I’m actually so annoyed Why the heck would you say “we should throw the challenge .” Like legit why. This is my favourite challenge and I’m not throwing . I get that Jacob hasn’t said a lot but seriously throwing a challenge to get rid of someone who seems kinda new is so stupid . I’m actually so annoyed rn so I’m typing my thoughts so I don’t yell at the person who said they don’t wanna take the time and edit because we are losing anyways . You know what maybe if you didn’t have such a negative attitude about the situation we could turn out a badass video . Did you ever think maybe the other tribe would be down right awful and we could pull out a win ? I’m so tired of my tribe constantly losing . Anyways updated thoughts or whatever because we had a tribe swap Jacob: said creative challenges aren’t his thing . Trying to talk to him more Cindi : we haven’t spoke I don’t think she likes me from our last game though which is fine I guess? Nathan : Original tribe loyalty I guess ? Jay: Jays pretty cool. Okay that’s it I just needed to vent so that’s why it’s confessional form I also still have my idol so flex I guess ? Idk that’s sounds kinda cringe This is Jessie the space cadet blasting off again 

I AM SWAP FUCKED

I SWEAR TO GOD MY GAME ENDS WITH THESE HOES

Keegan is going home

Fourth straight immunity win! This game is wild. I’ve never done so well before! And now I’ve got another 6 fuel, which is a total of 16 fuel from reward wins. With my hidden immunity idol, and my steal a player advantage, I feel unstoppable. But, things can change at a moments notice so I’m not going to stand on my high horse, I’m going to remain realistic. I don’t have any alliance chats, the only person who has straight up said they want to work with me is Jay who is now going to tribal. It’s almost a bad thing not attending tribal so many times, because I have nothing to test or prove loyalty. Who knows what will happen moving forward. 

https://youtu.be/dm7Kta2n7hs

Well we just lost the challenge. Not that I'm surprised, we pretty much lost it when we didn't communicate for a whole day. I tried to do my part and get people discussing but once it was clear this wasn't gonna be a win for us, I just used it for strategy. I wanted to do my best despite the circumstances to prove that this tribe needs me since I'm active and good in challenges. And I think it worked! The judges shouted me out twice for my part in the video (even tho it kinda sucked, but I guess my white boy dancing was good in comparison). But anyways, I do like this tribe and I'm sad we lost, but I have a little theory on why some people didn't try so hard. It was discussed before the challenge even came out that we wanted Jacob out. How this happened was Nathan approached me as soon as we got onto the new tribe and we called and had a good talk on how we felt about the game. Turns out that the queen herself, Jessie Flynn, advocated for me as an ally to Nathan before we even swapped. And us both, and Jessie, all felt good about Cindi too. And ever since then, Nathan's been in my DMs talking about voting for Jacob. So overall I think I landed myself in a pretty sweet spot on this disaster of a tribe and hopefully we can get our shit together for the next challenge, cause things won't be so clear cut next time.

https://youtu.be/dm7Kta2n7hs

WE WON. THANK *GOD.* after flying across the country yesterday and dealing with several minor life crises, i literally spent the ENTIRETY of today working on that video - meaning from when i woke up at 10 to fifteen minutes before when it was due - and also spent seven whole dollars at the dollar tree for props & costumes soooooo if we had not won i would've been quite embarrassed. i was nervous about the editing part, as i've not ever actually put together a music video challenge, just weird silly videos like me as zac efron.... but it turned out okay! i'm not 100% satisfied with my work (i wanted to put more transition effects & it needed more variety / staging to make it less repetitive) but hey it was a thousand miles above the other teams' submissions so i will take it!!! and i never have to listen to space jam again!! anyway, i guess this means another boring day around camp. winning reward got me two more adventure missions, which i used to mostly complete the outside portion of the quest and jonathan is i think gonna finish it off for us tonight. i am hoping/assuming he'll get whatever is there since it's been literally only 48 hours since this started and the door keypad had five zillion combos, and that'd mean that's the last thing in this adventure probably? oh wait nvm we still have a shit ton of stuff to check in the hallway i should do that next. but yeah so that'll be good and i hope it is an advantage or a disadvantage that he won't play on me LOL. if i wake up and all my fuel is destroyed.... i know where you've been jonny! not much else to report right now. it sounds like ali's doing a good job of getting himself in the good graces of zoe and jonathan, which is the most ideal scenario for me so we can say bye-bye keegan. i was a bit worried that if we lost this challenge i wouldn't have a plausible reason to argue to jonathan for keeping ali - or actually, more likely, i think he would have wanted to vote zoe? she hasn't been around as much and he did express concern on saturday about whether she's doing okay. luckily though, this W has bought me a few more days to work on getting the people i like to like each other.

https://youtu.be/F4_Sylzyxyw

UGH UGH UGH I GOT TRIBE FUCKEDDDDDDD IM WITH MJ WHO I JUST SLASHED THE VOTE OF AND LIED TO AND THE OTHER 3 ARE FROM THE SAME TRIBE. GOD DAMN IT. UGH but on the other hand we won immunity and it'll give me time to get to know my other tribe mates. I just hope this isnt a "tribe strong" battle in this game. I hope everyone are free agents

woo! ari and i are together in the swap as well as keegan and jonathan, and ali wound up with us as well on the new circi tribe. we won the music video challenge so the streak continues. i’m very tired!

so the tribe swap went pretty much the best it possibly could, as i got swapped majority with the two members of my tribe i talked to the most. we won immunity so i'm chilling for another week. unfortunately, mj and silver seem to have no interest in talking to me. both of them left me on read after i initiated conversation. so. sits.

So despite the easy seeming vote, I'm still gonna be nervous until the votes get read. These players are no joke, especially knowing that Alex was completely blindsided by Nathan and Jessie. I'm staying positive because I think it's like, a 90% chance I'm in the clear, but you really don't know until you know LOL. I'm just trying to set up my position on this tribe and for the future. I've gone to Cindi, Jessie, and Nathan individually and reassured them that I'm with them for the long haul. And for now I mean it, but if any of them get too dangerous then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sorry not sorry~ looking specifically at you Nathan 👀

nothing rlly to say tbh happy we swapped!!!!! and happy we won!!!!!! happy to be here with jules. havent really talked much since swapping honestly but i think i'd like to work with jules and asya and somehow get silver tf up outta here when we get the chance!!!!!

https://youtu.be/kt66vebpU4k

https://youtu.be/t5x52CJdhjI

TRIBAL AGAIN. I'm so nervous. I'm the only one from Circi so that's an easy swap screwed if you ask me. But I hope I'm ok. I think I've made a good bond with Jay Nathan and jessie and they all say we're voting for Cindi so fingers crossed it's not all an elaborate ruse on me

First tribal should be a unanimous vote. I told Nathan if he voted me out I'd block him and our 50 day snap streak would be toast and, like, tbh I think that would crush him. Jay and I want to work together. The only one who might've been sketched out is Jessie but she doesn't have the numbers. It feels insane to be this not paranoid before tribal when I know Jacob is pushing my name...but also I literally don't think that he could get me out?? Like, Nathan and I were/are a dynamic duo so I do not know how he would flip. Jay flipping makes zero sense. The ONLY people this would benefit or be a neutral for is Jessie and Jacob. The only way I go is if Nathan and Jay are two of the dumbest players on the planet.

Tribals in an hour we lost Big sad energy I guess my hearts really going to supernova 

#toinfinityandsurvive

[hansolmates]

170827 DIAMOND EDGE NYC: VVIP/HI-TOUCH & vernon moment!

disc. THIS IS A LONG AND COMPREHENSIVE post about my experience and mostly this is for me so i can look back at it in an hour and cry and i’ll probably add onto this later. im really really thankful that i had an amazing experience and i will love svt forever nd ever

During the day:

I woke up around 4am and arrived around 7.30 and they lined us up. My group of three vvip friends were around the 50s so we had a good line spot. The one thing I must say was that it was extra frustrating that the people who camped out (which is not allowed!) Were given PRIORITY tickets and cut the line! I can't even begin to explain how frustrated I was that they got special treatment for something they weren't supposed to do. We sorta just chilled around until 11 o’clock, we danced a little nd watched the carat ice cream truck go by!

But anyway there was nothing we could do and they sent vvip into the venue around 12 by then there were so many people and we stayed upstairs of the venue because having 3k people around one street was way too crowded. At first I didn't know what was going on but they were apparently preparing us for hi touch. We all lined up on the balcony and it was kinda sorta balls sweat hot. WE WERE BLASTIN MUSIC AND DANCING I WAS SCREAMING SO HARD lemme tell u less than 200 people on the rooftop that’s a party and then the staffer (who i will affectionately call J because she was amazing) was like “lol svt is doing soundcheck they can hear u downstairs and they think y’all are funny” and it was only 200 of us singing and stuff so they recorded us cheering for them and sent it back to svt. At the time she was filming i just came out of the bathroom and she filmed me and kris looking like absolute idiots dancing for svt by the bathroom LOL Afterwards mmt and svt sent us more water and snacks and soda because we couldn’t leave the venue to get food THEY'RE SO SWEET THE STAFF TREATED US SO NICELY!! J and mmt handled our fangifts with care and put them in sturdy boxes and made sure that we were hydrated and energized before we went back inside

HI TOUCH

OK THE HI TOUCH WAS A LITERAL BLUR they sent us to some stairs and was telling us the rules then all of a sudden we rounded the corner!! No warning!!! AND SEVENTEEN WAS THERE GIVING THE HI TOUCH!! The order thanks to haru peeps are as follows: minghao, vern, hosh, jun, jeonghan, woozi, seungkwan, dino, wonwoo, dk, scoups, josh mingyu. I wasn’t prepared for vern to go first nd I have an audio of me freaking out and going “oh shiiiii” when Vern was right next to me oh mah gah. I tried to pull it off and say “bro” and I did but Vernon kept staring at me until he got to kristine lol im so sorry vern!! But he’s even more gorgeous in person, his eyes are beautiful and his jawline can cut a bitch and he was wearing his cute red flannel that he always has on!! His head is big and his smile takes up his entire face and he’s just one big puppy you want to cuddle and im infinitely thankful for the eye contact!! Minghao is so hot oh my god he looks so confident and chill and he was givin those “yeaah babe” vibes. Their hands feel like lily petals. Boonseoksoon and cheol were very heartwarming, i squeezed all their hands until i was rushed off but i stopped to tell josh that he had pretty eyes and ended it off with mingyu and we jogged to our spot at vvip.

Concert Experience

I must say that i’m wholly impressed and happy that vvip did not push (it totally would’ve been fckin embarassing bc svt is really close to the stage so yes if they pushed it would’ve been awful) and i’m really sorry to hear that the rest of vip/p1/p2 had a really hard time trying to see BUT IT’S OKAY SVT IS NEVER COMING TO T5 EVER AGAIN. So im infinitely thankful that i was really really close to the stage and got to see the boys. BUT OKAY THE ONE THING THAT PISSED ME OFF? ??? CAMERAS. CAMERAS EVERYWHERE! I wouldn’t have cared if you were upstairs or in the back, but WE WERE LITERALLY FIVE FEET FROM THEM AND THESE PEOPLE ARE 6 FEET TALL and cameras were blocking my view because they were filming the whole damn concert. LIKE IT’S RUDE? GO TO THE BACK? DID YOU LITERALLY PAY TO SEE THRU A COMPUTER I DO THAT EVERY DAY!!! I ended up seeing the concert to its fullest so it’s fine BUT STILL SVT DOESN’T WANNA SING TO  BUNCH OF CAMERAS ESP TO THE PEOPLE IN THE FRONT? PEOPLE ARE PAID TO FILM THEM, THERE ARE FANSITES EVERYWHERE!! Enjoy the fleeting time you have with them!

But in the end it was more opportunity for me to soak up all the fanservice because *twiddles fingers* mwhahaahahahha there was enough room for me to dance for hoshi and going svt and i made eye contact with him, wonwoo during the dancing as well, mingyu, jeong *dies* it was too much 

Vernon (extended fanservice + rapping together!)

VERNON GETS A WHOLE DANG SECTION OKAY!!!! BECAUSE HE!! WAS NOT OKAY!!11! Kristine and i have been strategically preparing for MONTHS watching countless performances to stay in the corner where vern/jun would be performing on the most, turns out to be the right side so im two people away from the stage so i had a really good view of vernon’s beauty. I thought it was just me being biased but out of all the members Vernon’s stage presence is IMPECCABLE!! He doesn’t quote-unquote try to captivate you, he just naturally attracts people because his aura is so so so palpable. He was made to be on that stage!!!

Fanservice w/vern!

*sweats* after the whole hi touch fiasco i was convinced vern wouldn’t want to look at me but i held up my “vernon u lit” poster (dw i didn’t raise it high to block ppl) AND IT WORKED!!! My main highlight with him together was during check in (skip to 5:00) and since there was a lot of room I WAS GOING OFF dancing with him and rapping mingyu’s part along with him and shit i thought we had such a “feelin it” moment it was so surreal we were both in the song getting super super hype and the music was just immersed around us and i felt like the whole room melted apart and it was just the two of us sdlfjds;fjk;dsf im so gross my heart is warm my eyes are watery as i type this!! i miss him so much

anyway every performance after that, especially rock/if i and the ending ment i felt his stare and y’know that feeling when you pass someone attractive in the mall and you have that five-minute crush on them… i hope vern had that five minute crush on me because man i almost felt a way that boo or someone might feel when vern has that stare on you. He’s infinitely sweet and thankful at the ending ment when he thanked us for giving him new memories for his hometown i almost cried but he was lookin in my direction so i swallowed my feels

Final Details

Dino is the best. Performer. Like hosh performs really well when he dances! But shiii boy dino is on ALL THE DAMN TIME. i was told to be forewarned when u see dino AND Y’ALL WERE RIGHT

Lots of dk/minghao stans!!!! DK’S EYES ARE SO TWINKLY I UNDERSTAND WHY U LOVE HIM SO MUCH! A vvip had their gift as sunflowers with dk’s face on it IT’S SO FITTING

Performance unit IS WILD i used to think performance unit was just bc they did a lot of the choreo BUT NO. THEIR PERFORMANCE IS ALL THE WAY UP THERE you could feel every inch of their body carefully calculated and perfected even with OMG and highlight ND I WAS NEVER PREPARED FOR “MY I” WHY WASN’T THERE ARE TRANSITION FROM CRAZY LOVE TO THEN HOW DARE U

I used to go to concerts and from far away watch them spray water in the pit and u wish u were those people during healing cheol sprayed water and i felt CHRISTENED but all of a sudden ALL OF SEVENTEEN SPRAYED US IT WAS WET AND I FELT REBORN

At the ending ment hoshi screamed “I LOVE NEW JERSS----I LOVE NEW YORKKKK” lol my jersey self giggled

wonwoo/jun/scoups/jeonghan were definitely the most tired. Jun and Wonwoo were spacing out like crazy and coups literally ate his mic. Jeonghan was in another world most of the time, especially during the ballads he looked out to the crowd making exhausted eye contact. It looked like he was trying really hard to sing. Jeonghan and seungkwan had very visible cystic/stress acne, even through their makeup

*sigh* i guess i can’t avoid talking about the jeonghan situation amirite. From where i was everyone was v confused, sevnteen included. It lasted probably total of 10 seconds and we moved on. It was bad. We know it was very bad. Although Jeonghan seemed lowkey amused afterward THAT ISN’T THE POINT the concert was 99.9% perfect and i hope everyone remembers that and doesnt antagonize american carats (as american fans usually are for all the baddies)

All and all i feel honored that i was able to spend a comfortable night with svt, i know a lot of people aren’t able to say the same esp the people in the back. Its still replaying in my head and im infinitely thankful to stan such a wonderful group of boys and im glad to be a part of their tour

#seventeen #diamond edge #diamond edge nyc #diamond edge tour #this is totally uncomprehensive #im a fic writer i swear #jfdfjds; #i finally get some feels out #i'll probably add more later but #ye #ot13 #cami went to diamond edge

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Fireworks, paper lanterns, and glittering stardust

The Sea of Lights is so beautiful! Lanterns and fireworks decorate the sky like constellations, little specks of stardust scattered about. I enjoy taking the time to craft a lantern, make a wish, and watching the lantern float away until it's nothing but a little speck in the sky.

Prepping for the Sea of Lights was a lot of work. Once again, the camp has held the honor of hosting a big event so naturally, we had to go all out. Luckily, we have some friends helping out with the festivities - two who happen to be a part of the committee.

Rika and Elowyn have been part of the Sea of Lights crew since last year so they pretty much know how to make the festivities a hit. Alma and Milana aren't directly part of the crew but they've been to the festival a few times so they were also able to chime in.

Elowyn hopes to get the couple to volunteer for next year but since they have to do a lot of work for the annual cherry blossom festival at their hometown, I don't think they're too interested in helping run another big event. Let's be honest, Alma and Milana are mostly here for the food - I mean, who isn't? That, and also the fact that they're finally visiting the camp after all this time!

Things have been pretty much the same at Corentine, well for the most part. Alma said there's some new guy who's been scouting the outskirts of the village due to rumored abnormal supernatural activity. It's not unusual for them to have strangers walking around these areas though it's frustrating for everyone - especially the stranger - when the mission's unclear. Despite suspicions nothing's been confirmed so the poor guy's been scouting the woods for weeks with absolutely no progress or direction. And since he's gonna stick around for a while, the town council insisted on providing him a place to stay so he's staying in Alma's old room.

Rika hasn't had too much of a chance to get to know the guy but from what she and the others learned, he acts all tough but gets startled easily. Knowing these girls, they've been messing around with him quite a bit. Alma says he's cool, probably a bit shy and prideful, but once his guard's down he has a good sense of humor. Milana wants to use him to test out her latest contraptions as she's in need of a newbie to critique her inventions. RIP (or good luck?) to the new guy.

Alma and Milana are enjoying their new house, which is only about five minutes from Alma's family house. They both figured that now they've been married for over a year, it's probably time to leave the nest and finally give Alma's father some peace of mind. However that still doesn't stop Alma from using him to occasionally get away with chores. Milana says that if Alma keeps this up, they might as well hire him as a housekeeper and pay him by the hour. Then Alma promised that she'll try to do her share of the chores so they could instead use that money to either dine out in a fancy place or go on a fun vacation.

There's never a dull moment with these two. They can be a bit much, especially when you throw in Rika, Elowyn, Emerald, Jade, and Kei into the mix. It's been forever since I've seen the latter three - last I've heard, they joined Rika in Jamie's entourage for a bit before it disbanded. I think all three transferred to Seashore Path so I guess Emerald and Jade probably graduated or will be soon by now while Kei's probably got another year to go.

Rika's been working on some new projects, teasing us as usual. They're always up to something. As of last week Rika now goes by she/they, which feels right for them. The elders are a bit out of touch but they try to be supportive. Ojiichan started complimenting Rika by saying they look gnc af and now all the other elders are saying it, which is sweet! The big mystery though is who taught Ojiichan that and whether or not he fully knows what it means. Still, it's nice to hear how supportive everyone is.

They have also taken up pickling veggies, which sounds kinda surprising but isn't at the same time. Given how much she loves kimchi, it makes sense that she'd want to make her own. My mom sometimes makes her own kimchi and she says it can be a hit or miss. It also looks like a lot of work so kudos for Rika for being successful! It also takes some patience and even then you never know how they'll turn out until they're ready. They plan on doing beets next. After that it's daikon and carrots, and then garlic - all which sound good.

As for the kimchi, it's great! They like it super spicy though so I was only able to eat a little bit before I couldn't handle the heat anymore, but it's tasty. The veggies are perfectly crisp and it's not too liquidy and salty. Rika plans on refining the recipe as well as make a mild version for those who can't take the heat - she means a weakling like me - which is something to look forward to, Buuut Rika's definition of mildly spicy and mine's is probably very different so either way I'll be chugging a lot of water or tea between every bite.

Rika's also been helping Elowyn start her own Patreon, which is exciting! A friend's friend of theirs is also gonna launch a Patreon too so I'm gonna keep an eye out for that as her work seems interesting. The friend had just moved from Japan a few months ago and she's an artist who has an ongoing manga/webcomic about a high school girl who becomes bonded with a young ghost whose job is to keep order between spirits and mortals. According to Rika and Miki - who knows her as well - the story's inspired by true events that happened to the author.

The premise sounds interesting and an english translation by a friend of hers who also serves as an editor/beta reader is usually uploaded the day after so when I have time, I'll definitely read it. From first glance, the art style looks nice so I'm intrigued. It definitely has the vibes of a deceptively cute and lighthearted story that's complex and tragic underneath. The manga's ongoing and usually updates twice a month.

Elowyn's also gonna be in a short fantasy murder mystery film directed by her brother called The Scythe. A few weeks ago she appeared in a music video as a backup dancer for Avery Ronnie. In between gigs Elowyn practices magic with Rika by going on various missions. Though Elowyn says it's no different than being an unpaid intern, except with an increased risk of dying and things going terribly wrong.

Rika and Alma are alike as they're hard working but also kinda lazy. Without prompting they can accomplish something cool and badass but ask them to pick their things up from the floor or do some cleaning around the house and they'll make up some excuse. We roast them for it but at the same time we get it - and it's not like they can't take care of themselves but sometimes they do need a bit of prodding. Both also have this charm that let them get away with it half the time so it's kinda on us too.

We've been hard at work setting up the stalls and decor as well as making lanterns and planning out the fireworks show. To our surprise, Rika and Alma have been pulling their weight, though I think bribing them with food helped with that.

Rika got some glittering stardust from a friend and wanted to put that to good use by adding some spark to the lights. We tested out the fireworks with it and it produced some dazzling effects. Problem is that glittering stardust is super flammable so we have to be super careful. So that's why I left fireworks duty to Rika while the rest of us kept our distance.

Making lanterns was a lot of fun! A while back Pai and Connie sent me a lantern they made for a similar festival in Bonsai Harbor. Apparently the two really got into making lanterns so they started giving away a bunch of them to friends.

Yeah, I think we also kinda went overboard with our lanterns. But they're so much fun to make! Well, I could just give them away too - I know a bunch of people who would love to have a souvenir from a festival. I'm gonna keep a bunch to decorate the camp and cabin when we're in a festive decorating mood. As for the inevitable surplus - I'll figure that out later.

The fireworks and lanterns were easily the highlights of the night, second to the food. Thankfully there were no incidents with the glittering stardust - we did a bunch of test runs to make absolutely sure that there's no chance of the lanterns and fireworks colliding to create a possibly catastrophic explosion as glittering stardust is dangerous around anything that involves flames.

(I mean it turned out to be a great idea, but why the hell did we take such a risk by using flammable stuff around fireworks? Then again, it's Rika and when they overlook something, we tend to follow suit too because it's too easy to get caught up and carried away. It's not our fault that she makes it easy to get away with a lot of dangerous stunts - but it all worked out for the better so it's good.)

Being surrounded by fireworks and lanterns, I feel light on my feet. Wishes floating up in the sky, finding their way into the black night sky. I wonder how far will the lanterns fly before their lights go out.

I wonder how many wishes were released throughout the night.

#animal crossing #animal crossing pocket camp #Diary of a Junebug #headcanon ramble

[nieloxychen]

time to ramble abt a weird and super real feeling dream i had that ill now try to make a story and multiple ocs out of

important: takes part across several worlds with one single connecting character. most of the ocs exist in the last, most recent world (that main oc tries his fucking best to stay in bc its actually not a complete dumpster fire)

main oc is tito (he/him, they/them, it/its on occasion)

world 0 - 

doesnt remember much

his origin

died in a car(?) crash somewhere in a desert next to a broken down rv

world 1 -

 wakes up semi corporeal somewhere in a desert next to a broken down rv

something bad (not defined yet) happened and a young woman is hiding in the rv from the sth bad that happened

shes looking fr her sister

tito cant help but help her out and they look for her together since 2 is better than 1

she has been looknig for help for a while

no one has been willing to since she thinks her sister is in the middle of the bad thing

(also the big city. lots of gross stuff everywhere, lots of ppl trying to murder)

no one wants to go there

they go together and nearly die a lot

both get infected w a strange illness

shes geting better, hes slowly dying

they find the sister (why she was there idk yet) and tito basicly sacrifices themself so the sisters can escape the bad thing

badly wounded he crawls away into an alley and breaks down next to some trash cans

(just remembered that somewhere in this world there was like a hill made of grey bodies all weaved together and like tunnels in there and the arms were moving and shit what)

colour here were mostly grey and brown

world 2 -

wakes up in an alley next to some trash

hears music, its a festival!! 

he goes to check it out, its a sports thing w like speed and stuff! 

seems like a nice place right? wrong. 

that sport is forced, loser gets sacrificed to big weird monster thing

 kind of a hunger games situation happens, he offers himself up so a parent isnt seperated from a child (just cant not help, its a bad decision and they get that but they just *clenches fist* hero comlpex a bit)

obviously looses, he doesnt fucking know the sport, what did he expect? 

BUT the infection from world 1 did sth to him? (superpowers kinda, has no clue what anything is or does) 

hes still affected by it somehow and is able to escape the ppl leading him to the monster thing to eat

finds out they picked a rando instead and feels bad

tries to save the rando

figures out monster thing is basicly a big fungus that uses ppl to carry spores 

-> the infection he carries infects a spore carries and they die immediatly

quick plan: infect fungus w a disease it is completly unkonw to

doesnt work, spore carriers actually are connected to fungus, its building anti-bodies

he dies in the sewers trying to escape the ppl feeding the fungus.

world 3 - 

wakes up in the sewers

THERS WERE-PPL!! dont change into any specific animal, but tend to have a favourite

theyre kinda nice, help them out, give them food 

they accidentally get infected through shenanigans (it was very non-specific in the dream yo)

tries to figure out both infection based power systems here, quicker to get the were-thing since ppl aroung them actually know what that is. everything else is just weird to everyone

also - possibility of first infection evolving through each world change? didnt notice powers in world 1, only some in world 2, more here?

BUT also very little time to try and figure shit out till now

very chill for a while, hopes they can settle down and maybe not die maybe

SURPRISE children are getting kidnapped!!

by who?? to where? why??? no fucking clue!!

so tito goes to help bc thats just what theydo by now fuck

gets captured, basicly forced to do what kidnappers want w threat of children getting killed (im just gonna say they were able to do them damage for a while before the kidnappers figured out who he is/ a weakness. there was no reason anywhere)

they find a hole in the command chain, go out in a blaze of glory, all the kidnappers are gone (as far as they know)

theyre also very dead and bleed out in the middle of a field

world 4 - 

HOLY SHIT WHAT IS HAPPENING

flying vampires, flesh-goo ppl (idk, the pic i remember was a lady changing into a black-greyish flesh-goo to climb up 90° walls in a seond), theres slenderman maybe????? all kinda sorta want to kill tito for the reason of...

well there has to be a reason he keeps waking up in different worlds right?

but hes not super good at thinking and they dont stop to explain it so??

arent just trying to kill him though, theres also some old man theyre going after

helps the old man, is the grandchild (adopted) of some immortal lady

she is very thankful and gives him the gift of 3 very specific magic powers of his choosing (theyre like marbles and he has to pick 3)

1. Open any door anywhere (doesnt need to be connected) and just wish to go to a place (the more specific the better)

2. Change anything he wants to into a small marble though sheer will power. has to concentrate to keep the shape

3. basicly featherfall but more controlled. actually, more like steven universe floating powers

by now the first infection is basicly a magic system of its own but its all very instinct based. poor tito has no fucning clue

the colour here were very bright, lots of flowers and sunshine and stuff

and just a fucking slenderman flying behing dream-me, blasting through houses and trees and shit?

dies after being chased by flying slender-vampire and goo lady (wasnt fighting back bc they were proctecting sth? idk what though) in like an abandoned farmhouse

world 5 -

wakes up in farmhouse, theres a person!

ocs here we go

person is helke. shes nice but kind of scary sometimes. its mostly a joke for her though

she helps him get used to the world

his powers are by now vry fucking op. but there are SO many powers here too and she fills him in

silver minds: can sense things like weapons if theyre being carried w the intent to harm them or someone they want to look out for. can redirect them against their users, or just stop them alltogether. somewhat staticy voice when stressed, very cold to the touch. born this way

schalks: completly immune to mind intrusion based powers. somewhat of a pack mentality. cannot be located if they dont want to be, very selective in what contact they want. group together for social contact, and also: need contact to eachother bc they need to share excess energy between eachother or they kinda implode. infection based, 2 schalks can have schalk bbys but not often

werewolves: ya only wolves. helke is one! grow up in packs, but adults tend to seperate from larger packs to form their own. can change whenever, super strong always, also fast when changed. just really like raw meat yk? born this way, packs can be made up from basicly anything

more im gonna add, but these i remember. not including the names

basicly helke wants to start a pack and invites him to stay since she doesnt like being alone and wants to help, and ofc he wants to help her

they meet another young werewolf (i think. big fighty and a beard. might be sth else at some point) and he joins them. this is nikola

they meet a young girl, whos a silver mind and kinda running away from home bc bad home life. her names rita.

they invite her to join the pack, which she does and pack rules are kinda big so after proving themselves as reasonably good guardians for her shes officially adopted

she runs into a lonely (very lonely, kinda dying) schalk who lost contact to their group and the pack help them find their group.

their name is an

the group becomes kinda part of the pack, but the rest of the schalk group isnt a fan of big groups of ppl, so the 4 schalks and the 4-pack live in different locations

now /someone/ notices tito like how goop-slener-vamp did in world 4 and tries to capture tito (who was hanging out w rita while that happened.

thank fuck for marble magic, so rita is safe, tito can flee to the schalks (take us somewhere safe)

an turns tito into a schalk, so he wont be found anymore so now he has to kind of move between the 2 camps a lot

on their way to and fro they meet another kid called jacko (also running away, wont say why). is taken into the pack after more safety precautions

hes just a lil human, no magic nothing 

thats the story ig

tito - (he/they/it), roughly 25 (time is weird) not good at thinking, wants to be nice, wants to help, very op, kinda whimsical, very sweet person. DOES NOT WANT TO DIE AGAIN it sucks just want to be happy and make others happ, protective big sibling, everyone is their baby sib

helke - (she/her), 27 wants to help and have a big family/pack, big jokester, tries to be scary, only strangers will believe that, great at handywork and making every sort of meat food. also hunting. lumberjack vibe, chills w nikola, sports w tito, gmaes w kids

nikola - (he/him), 24 chill weed vibe. big fan of cleaning, lock your door if you dont want him to do your laundry. big into birdwatching. somehow in a pack w very intense or op folk which he finds a bit intimidating. doesnt realise hes also big intimidating. has gotten into 3 fights in his life but they were SCARY af, safe zone for tito, fun zone w tito

rita - (she/her), 15 good girl, can be kinda scary, very competetive, VERY COMPETATIVE, will draw hearts on your cast and help you and stuff, after having broken your arm, close w helke and tito

jacko - (he/him), 11 good boy, v shy, v opinionated. would have a blog if older. tried to make one but fled after 1 bad interaction. had to talk abt that a lot to understand it. arts n crafts boy, also climbing, looks up to nikola a lot

an - (they/them), 26 very quiet, thinks theyre right p much always, wants the best for everyone, but not super great at respecting ppls wishes. needs sense knocked into them every now and then. tries very hard. fails. plyam w leena and karim, not good w nikola

leena (she/them), 25, big into animals, big into food, big into random interest of the week. looses interest quickly though

karim (he/him), 26, big art, the one braincell between all the schalks (including tito bc omg BOY), draws creepy things on trees to fuck w ppl, prankster fuck

essek (he/they) 24, fashion and food, loudest of the schalks, goes into the city to get neccessities and general stuff, kinda crushing on tito, sib of karim

in general, the pack is very close. even an and nikola, but theyre kinda cold since an turned tito (tito is ok w it, nikola is big mad an didnt give tito an option, big fight 3, very fucking scary). but they do love eachother a lot, what ive noted were just the stand outs.

same w the schalks, theyre very close but i havent had any of these long enough to get a super good feel on the relationships between eeryone

but i love them already

#oc stuff #oof #very long post #the dream was seriously wild and this is much less so ig #idk what happens anymore i worked on this for like 3 hours now help #send asks abt the ocs if you wanna i could use the help to flesh them out

[salamanderergfanfictions]

Les Mis, Grantaire crushing on Enjolras, library lost and found, snippets, crack/humor

Grantaire notices Enjolras'--or, who Grantaire knows as 'Really shouty blonde guy who always wears red and drinks far too much caffeine and has no idea how reality works'—coat in the library's lost and found and claims it so he can give it to him.

Or, Grantaire steals clothing for meet-cute reasons.

(...Is what it was going to be, but, SHOCK, I didn’t finish it!  If you want it, drop me a comment first please.)

--

Grantaire will not go into depth about how he knows that is Shouty Blondes' coat, will not bore anyone who is stuck working the same shift (Eponine) or complain into his drink (Joly) or just bring it up randomly (Bossuet, punchy guy at the gym, yoga mom at coffee shop).  It has been in the lost and found for a week, just daring Grantaire to pick it up and return it to the blonde who obviously doesn't miss it since he's been in the library the past two days without asking if anyone's found a beautiful expensive coat the color of a child's toy fire truck.

Maybe he secretly hated the coat; it was a present from distant parents who tried to buy their son's love or an ex who broke his heart, but had really good taste (but obviously not because who would break up with that guy?).

Maybe he hasn't been bothered because the weather's been unseasonably warm this late in Autumn.

Maybe he's just really unobservant and doesn't notice it's missing.

Maybe he's super shy and left the coat there as an excuse to talk to Grantaire.

Grantaire's not admitting which theory he likes the most, but...the coat is really nice, and it's still in the lost and found.  He can only keep it out of Gavroche's sticky fingers for so long, though Eponine has started expressing an interest in it as well.  Grantaire mostly thinks she's kidding.

"What are you doing?"

Eponine shrugs, "Wanted to see how it would fit."

She holds her hands out to the sides, skeletal fingers only just peeking out of the sleeves of the red coat.  The shoulders are a few inches too low, the hem is around her knees, and it's basically like she's drowning in red, dry-clean-only, Italian wool.

"Do you think he'd notice if I walked right past him wearing his own jacket?"

"Probably," Grantaire shrugged. "Take it off, it's weird that you put it on in the first place."

"Why, are you super attracted to me now?"

"Yeah,” Grantaire answered bluntly, “You've cured my gayness, better than Jesus Camp.  10/10, would recommend.”

"Oh please, it's not like I go around trying everything on in the lost and found, we get some real sketchy people in here," She folded the jacket up and placed it back on the counter.  "Plus, he hasn't noticed it's lost, and he hasn't noticed you staring at him.  You fell for the thickest guy on the planet." Eponine took one last look at the table where the blonde and his friends were studying, "Also, the whitest."

Grantaire shot her a look and she rolled her eyes at him.

"I'm just saying, dude's channeling T-Swift."

"Just 'cause he's white, and blonde, and wears red, and has a personal microphone...”

"I bet he writes songs about those who've wronged him.  It'd be about the government and corporations and the library's closing hours and whatever else he likes to rant about."

"Coffee prices," Grantaire added. "And speaking of falling for really thick guys, as I change the subject smoothly, how's Marcus doing?"

Eponine smiled and let her hair cover her face, "Marius, is doing well, thank you for sarcastically asking.  We actually walked together this morning and he bought me coffee."

"Way to go, though you seem to be going backwards in having guys pay for you.  Usually you start with coffee and move towards rent.”

"That was a kind gesture, I was only fifty behind.  He's a sweet boy."

"He's a bleeding heart," Grantaire rolled his eyes.

"He's generous," Eponine insisted.

"He's here," Grantaire pointed to the door, "And he seems to have brought Shouty Blonde's twin sister.”

"What?" Eponine hissed and ducked behind the counter, before realizing how ridiculous that was and popped back up. "Don't say anything."

"Hey, Marco!  Or Marcus!  Eponine's over here!”

"My god, we work in a library, stop shouting," Eponine said quickly, nudging Grantaire hard with a bony elbow.  It got him right in the hipbone and he immediately stopped.

“Ow!  You need to eat more, can you hear your bones rattle every time you take a step?”

“Go bite a curb and die in a gutter, you absolute assh—hi, Marius.”

--

"Oh my god, Marcus—"

"Marius."

"—and Shouty Blonde know each other.”

Eponine huffed, "Shouty Blonde's name is Enjolras."

"What?" Grantaire turned to her, "How do you know that?"

"Marius talks about him sometimes.  He pointed him out to me one morning."

"Then why haven't you hooked a brother up?"

Eponine made a face, "Because I don't know him, and I get the feeling Marius is kinda...scared of him.”

-

"Wait, you know Courfeyrac?"

"I think everyone knows Courfeyrac?” Eponine shrugged.

“Courfeyrac knows everyone," Grantaire corrected.

"No, Bahorel knows everyone."

"Who's Bahorel?"

"Tall guy, super tall—” Eponine raised her hand over her head while standing on her tip-toes.

Grantaire waved his hand, "Everybody is super tall compared to you."

"Shut up, he's tall for a professional basketball player.  And dreads that he ties back with, like, flower scrunchies?  Or actual flowers?  I think I’ve seen both.”

"Oh, shoot, does he have really heinous mustard yellow jeans?"

"Yeah, they make my eyes hurt, but he manages to pull them off so I have respect,” Eponine nodded sagely.

"He's my sparring partner at the gym!" Grantaire exclaimed.

Eponine’s eyebrows crinkled in confusion.

"We spar, punch each other's faces, insult each other, never really exchanged names,” Grantaire said sheepishly, “He calls me Mexican Tom Hardy."

"You're not Mexican.”

"I know," Grantaire said with shrug and left it at that.

Eponine scrutinized him for a few seconds, "I also don't see the resemblance to Tom Hardy."

"I do a really good British accent?"

"No you don't.”

“I could.  If I really cared enough to, I could.”

--

“Hey, Shouty—” Grantaire immediately tries to swallow his words, “Shorty, hey shawty.”

“I’m…taller than you,” Enjolras replied, a puzzled look on his face. “I don’t understand.”

“No, no, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac butted in, a huge grin plastered across his face, “Obviously, this man is a time traveler and has come here from the early 2000’s.  The correct response to his greeting is, ‘It’s your birthday’.”

“But it’s not,” Enjolras said, turning to his friend and then back to Grantaire, “I’m sorry, you have me confused with someone else, it’s not my birthday.”

“Enjolras, no, I just want to hear you say it,” Courfeyrac insisted, fiddling with his phone before pointing it at Enjolras, “Alright, Filipino Shia LeBeouf, do it again.”

“What?” Grantaire started before leaving off in an exasperated huff and pointing to Courfeyrac, “I’m going to give you pass, but only because I have never heard that one before.”

“Combeferre, if you could just drop a beat, I think it will really elevate this,” Courfeyrac moved to stand in front so he could get everyone in the screen, then began pointing, “Okay, Enjolras, when you reply, say it more like ‘birfday’.  It will make me very happy.  Whenever Combeferre starts, that’s your cue to come in.”

“Is this for, like, a school project?” Enjolras asked.

“What kind of beat would you like?” Combeferre asked, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “I’ve been playing around with some new sounds, but I feel like you’re going for a more of the original vibe for this.”

“Original is good, we can do remixes later.”

#les miserables #les mis #grantaire #eponine #Grantaire and eponine friendship #crush #library #snippets #take it if you want it #crack #humor