#when reality tv adds in new people for the hype

[qsmpbutwithsignlanguage]

Hear me out. And really, hear me out here, but QSMP Purgatory Reality Television A.U.

Hit reality television show 'The Purgatory' produced by up-and-coming Quackity Studios introduces an entirely new aspect to reality television-live streaming the events of the show. With a cast of everyday characters stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere, fans across the world eagerly tune in every night to see how their favorite players band together, plot, and plan in order to try to win. Once every week, there will be a mandatory elimination-unless, of course, there is a special event.

'The Purgatory' is a hit across the internet from the moment that it rolls out, and while controversial among some of the more critical rings of the internet, it is without a doubt one of the most successful shows in a while. Fans especially enjoy a budding relationship between Tubbo, the youngest contestant on the island at only twenty years old, and his faceless cameraman by the name of Fred.

However, as time goes on, people begin to realize that there's something strange about the island. The contestants seem truly terrified at the concept of loss. It's as though they genuinely believe loss means death (though Purgatory fans know that the show is staged, just like all reality television is).

It's brushed off-good acting, many chalk it up to. Until it isn't.

Maybe the critics had something going for them, the skeptics smarter than your average Joe to look a little closer into the birth of Quackity Studios, and the viewers a bit dull to take everything at face value.

Maybe nobody expected a camera to flicker to life just to show Maxo shot through the head, crumpling lifelessly to the ground.

(Where is Quesadilla Island after all? Why had it taken so long for people to notice the contestants had been reported missing? And who even is ElQuackity?)

[Basically reality tv purgatory au but everybody was legit just kidnapped and now the 'contestants' have to pretend they're just having a good time on the island so that they don't just, y'know, die.]

#qsmp #alternate universe #story idea #do what you want for this idk i'm rambling #tubbo #qsmp tubbo #elquackity #qsmp elquackity #quesadilla island #quackity studios #just tagging the things I mention by name #qsmp fred #frubbo #ig #qsmp maxo #qsmp maximus #cellbit would be a random criminal just grabbed off some prison in brazil that nobody gives a crap about #and the later arrivals come in like special new competitors #you know the type #when reality tv adds in new people for the hype #not sure how the eggs would come into play #outside family maybe?

[thenickgirl]

BSF!Nick HeadCanons

nick x fem!reader

disclaimer: this is all fictional, and based on my own conclusions.

warnings: kinda long, very very self-indulgent, pure fluff, swearing.

Nick as your best friend:

⚤ he loves to spend time with you, always asking you to come over and keep him company.

⚤ the two of you are so close and so comfortable with each other that you tell each other everything, the good, bad, and the ugly.

⚤ he’s protective, not overly, but you always know that you’re safe with him. he’s not letting any hate get to you, and if it does he’s always there to comfort you. he doesn’t hesitate to put haters in their place when it comes to you, not caring about any backlash it could cause him.

⚤ you both send tik toks and instagram reels back and forth all day long.

⚤ you share locations with each other, and anytime he checks and sees that you’re somewhere he doesn’t recognize he’s calling you immediately:

“bitch! where the fuck are you???”

“nick, are you fr checking my location again?”

“yes, now take your fast ass home”

⚤ when you’re sick, he’ll come over and help take care of you. attempting (failing) to make you soup, but then decides to just order in from panera. he’ll cuddle up with you while you watch movies or some reality tv show.

⚤ he’s always teasing and making fun of you, you both playfully argue so much that people on the outside think you actually hate each other.

⚤ you’re on the phone with each other for literal hours, whether it’s texting, on a call, or on FaceTime.

⚤ if you’re in college, he’ll make sure you stay on top of your studies. he’ll never let you put off schoolwork just to go hang out with him:

“nick come onnn, i can study when i get back, it’s fine i promise”

“un uhh, nope! you’re not gonna blame me when your ass fails”

“but ni-“

“GO STUDY Y/N”

⚤ he loves when you go shopping or thrifting together. he’ll pick out outfits for you to try, and you do the same for him. the both of you hyping each other up when you come out of the dressing rooms.

“yesss girl, you look so amazing in that dress!”

“says you, i love that shirt on you, it’s definitely your color!”

⚤ he’s a big foodie, and so are you. so breakfast and/or lunch dates are a staple in your friendship. he loves going to your favorite restaurant or cafe to just sit and talk about whatever and whoever. sometimes you like to try out new places and add them to your list.

⚤ he’ll send you flowers or candy on valentine’s day because he’s such a sweetheart, and never wants you to feel alone or unloved.

⚤ he’s always gassing you. he never hesitates to call you pretty or gorgeous, saying how much he loves your outfit, your hair, or your new bag. he’s your number one hype man for sure. you of course, are the same way with him never passing up an opportunity to let him know he’s so handsome and the baddest bitch.

⚤ you’re pretty much the ceo of the nick defense team, always on go when it comes to people being disrespectful towards him.

⚤ he’s basically your personal photographer. he loves taking your pictures for you, and you love to brag about his skills. he loves when you take pictures together as well, adding them to his photo dumps, giving very much bff goals.

⚤ since he doesn’t drive he loves riding with you, he even bought a “passenger princess” sticker to put on your glovebox just for shits and giggles. sometimes you guys would just spend the day riding out, blasting music and singing along, snacking on the random goodies you pick up along the way, just simply enjoying each others company.

“bitches be quick but i’m quicker”

“bitches be thick but i’m thicker”

*both*

“SHE COULD BE RICH BUT IM RICHER!”

⚤ if you’re in a relationship or get into one, he’ll be very protective over you, yet respectful of your relationship. he’ll make friends with them, and try his best to get along for the sake of your friendship. he’ll even plan group outings so you all can hang out together and get to know each other.

⚤ however, the second you call him in the night crying, he’s ubering over to your house to comfort you. he’ll hug you and wipe your tears, reassuring you that you deserve so much better than them.

“you’re amazing and i love you so much, y/n. you didn’t deserve that, and if you want, we can go egg their car right now”

“you get the eggs, i’ll start the car”

“BET!”

⚤ he doesn’t believe in fighting with friends. any arguments between the two of you wouldn’t last very long, you’ll always end up talking things out and laughing about it later.

⚤ he loves to include in the videos, especially any challenges they do like the baking videos. you always get front seat if you’re ever in the car videos, and he makes sure you get to speak.

⚤ he absolutely loves the bond you have with his brothers, and you would tease him about liking one of them solely to get on his nerves:

“matt has been looking really good lately..”

“y/n i swear to god…”

“what?? i’m just being real”

“i’ll actually kill you both”

“bitch, shutttt up! you love me too much”

“you’re right. now stop talking about matt before i throw the fuck up”

⚤ if the stars happen to align where you and one of his brothers fall in love and actually get together, he’ll be so annoyed at first, not willing to share you. eventually he’ll be okay with it, just happy that you both are happy, as long as you keep the pda out of his line of sight.

⚤ he fucking loves your cooking. he knows better than get in your way by trying to help so he’ll sit at the table and watch you. you don’t mind his company at all while you’re cooking, even letting him taste test which he never refuses. he’s constantly calling or texting to see what’s on your menu:

“please please PLEASE tell me you’re cooking tonight. i cannot eat in n out again”

“well, i guess i am now”

⚤ you always have him, matt, and chris over on Sunday’s. you love giving them the ultimate sunday dinner experience. you make sure you cook more than enough so they have some to take home as well.

⚤ any time one of you sees those cute and fun best friend date activities on tik tok or instagram, you’re instantly texting it to one another, making plans to try it out.

⚤ when you take him out to the club or a just night out with the girlies, he’s having the time of his life. he’s hyping you up while you’re dancing and throwing it in a circle. he’ll capture every second to show to you later cause you’re so gone you won’t remember a thing. the next day he’s asking you to teach him how to twerk like that for the next outing.

⚤ since you have similar music taste, you love going to concerts and festivals together. all in coachella with your matching crop tops and boots, turning heads left and right. you two are literally glued to the hip the whole weekend, holding hands and jumping around, dancing to the beat just loving the experience.

⚤ he absolutely loves sleepovers, and he’ll always be the one to suggest them. he’ll have a space for you in his closet and at his sink because of how often you stay over.

“bro is there a reason you called me 15 times??”

“uh is this the body scrub that you use? i’m gonna get it for my bathroom so you don’t have to keep bringing yours every time”

“nick, you really could’ve just tex-“

“YES OR NO??!”

⚤ whenever you sleep over, you always do your nighttime and morning skin routines together. ‘faerie soirée’ playing softly on the portable speaker while you go through your skincare steps, singing along, and swaying your hips to the beat.

⚤ he is obsessed with the different ways you style your hair. his jaw drops every time you pull up with something new. he was completely gobsmacked when you showed up with a 30 inch bust down after just rocking your natural fro, then two weeks later in some knotless braids down to your knees. he’s always asking your opinion on his next hair color, but you beg him to keep his natural hair for a while longer.

⚤ he always waits to get his nails done with you so you both can match. in the days before your appointments with analysse, he’s sending you different ideas he sees on pinterest for you both to choose from only to ultimately decide to just let analysse freestyle.

⚤ when it comes to his brand, space camp, he’s always giving you the sneak peeks. he’ll let you be the first one to try the newest flavor because he trusts your judgment, and knows that you’ll always be honest with him:

“okay, what about this one? did you like it?”

“friend, i ain’t gone hold you…that shit nasty as fuck”

“well damn bitch, tell me how you really feel. okay, we’ll scrap that one”

⚤ he loves when you come to boston with him to visit his family. mary lou and jimmy absolutely adore you, and so does all his hometown friends nate, mckayla, and chloe.

⚤ the snap streaks between you two go crazy. you’re both constantly snapping each other the most random shit.

⚤ he’s always telling you about the guys he’s crushing on or talking to. he’ll ask you if you think they’re cute or not, and wants advice on what to say to them. if they send him nudes, better believe he’s immediately sending them to you for you both to talk (or laugh) about:

“girl you won’t believe what he just sent me”

“ouuu how big is it?”

“bitch, i’ve seen baby carrots bigger than that”

“BLOCKED!”

⚤ on halloween, you guys love to find matching costumes (when he’s not matching with matt and chris) and sometimes the four of you would find costumes to match together.

⚤ on your birthday, don’t be surprised to find yourself plastered all over his story. he’s posting a photo dump of you together with a lil paragraph, going on and on about how amazing his best friend is. you’ll have gifts galore from him, matt, and chris.

⚤ he’s super supportive of whatever you do, helping you in any way you can to achieve whatever it is you need to.

⚤ he’s the perfect best friend and he takes the bond that you have very seriously, never letting anyone or anything jeopardize it.

🏷️: @muwapsturniolo @mattslolita @guccifrog @luverboychris @freshloveforthefit @matty-bear @sturniolossss @imsosillygoofylol @nickgetsmewetter @mybelovednick @moonk1ss3d @ghostking4m @certifiednatelover @meg-sturniolo

#mr stromboli #stromboli hc #sturniolo triplets #sturniolos #sturniolo #nick sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #nick sturniolo x reader #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #chris sturniolo #christopher sturniolo #a headcanon #bsf!nick hc

[munsonssub]

Well shit- Joseph Quinn x fem!reader

Prompt: you mistake joe for friend of a friend on a night out. Luckily it leads to a meet-cute

A/n: okay this is the first fic I have written in 7 years! Plus it’s my first ever reader insert so I apologize if it sucks but THERES LIKE NO JOE FICS SO I HAD TO WRITE MY OWN. Also I wrote this on my phone so idk how to edit italics to post if someone could help me. I also don’t know how to add a read more on mobile either so that’s fun. Help me pls

My husband proof read it so if there’s mistakes blame him.

Warnings: smoking, drinking, idk if there’s anything else.

Word count: 1,975. (Whoops)

A normal Saturday night. That’s what your friends promised you when they showed up at your flat three hours ago with two bottles of wine and a glint in their eyes. You should’ve known, should’ve picked up on the fact they showed up ready to go out. Maybe it was blind optimism, thinking they wouldn’t force you out of your cocoon of misery.

Listen, you know they want what’s best for you, with things at work piling up and your stupid now ex boyfriend always texting you, you know you need this. One night off, one night of freedom, one night to say fuck you and just party. But fuck man you just wanted to be back on your couch, watching shitty reality tv, probably snacking on too many sweets to be healthy. Instead you are sitting at a new bar that your friend swore up and down would be chill vibes.

Liar.

People were everywhere. You had lost half of the group when you got here, Already a bottle and a half of wine in.

So here you are, waiting to grab a couple shots while your friend Chloe stands beside you flirting with anyone who will give her a moment because the best drinks are free drinks. Which she isn’t wrong, but you’d just gotten out of a four year relationship, flirting is a foreign language now and you weren’t about to embarrass yourself like that.

When the bartender finally came over to you, you quickly ordered four shots, if you were here to have fun you were having fun, quickly sliding your cash to the bartender you nudged Chloe so she’d take her two shots while you took yours. Honestly you wouldn’t hate this so much if it was just you and her and the friends she showed up at your house with, but as you were getting in your cab to come to the bar she informed you that they were meeting up with other people there. It was quick when you met up barely getting glances of some of the people, as you struggled to light a cigarette. It was fine though as long as Chloe was with you, you knew you could make it through the night.

Finally letting the burning of the alcohol subside you grab Chloe’s hand to go to the dance floor, the next hour passes in a flash of bodies and drinks. Stumbling, very gracefully, you yelled to your other friend, Shelly, that you were going outside, needing a smoke and a break from the music. Pushing through the bodies you made your way to the door, mumbling apologies as you went.

Finally you could breathe once you were outside, mind numb and limps tired you started searching for your smoke pack, you know you put it in your pocket after the one you had when you arrived. Quietly mumbling to yourself you finally gripped it your back pocket. Pulling it out you let out a breath of relaxation only to groan when you flipped the top and realized it was empty.

“Mother fucker, I knew I was forgetting something. Stupid wine.” You sighed leaning against the wall.

Then you saw him. Standing a couple metres away, smoking a cigarette, you recognized the outfit, white button up with loose light wash jeans. You swear he was with your group, or at least a part of the half you met up with. So with the energy you could muster you pushed yourself off the wall, wrapping your arms around yourself and silently hyping yourself up.

Not fully paying attention to what he was taking about you wandered over. you patted his shoulder like a friend who hasn’t seen him in a while would. Smiling as he cut his sentence short, turning to look at you, smoke half way up to his mouth, big brown eyes staring at you as you smiled back.

“Hello good sir,” You mock bow, slightly stumbling towards the wall.

Fuck I swear I’m smoother than this. You thought to yourself.

You look back up at him and smile again as he subtly checks you out, probably wondering why a random drunk girl had wandered up to him.

“So funny thing. Chloe and Shelly made me come out tonight because work is fucked and max non stop texting me is fucked so they decided that I needed to come out and have a good time but my smart self forgot to get smokes before,” you flash him the empty pack with a pout. “And I was wondering because you know them apparently if I could steal a smoke off you.” You ramble, barely noticing his empty hand coming to steady you at your waist as you looked back up at him.

He had a smirk and for a second you wondered if he was apart of the group because you swear you would’ve remembered him, with his beautiful eyes, curly hair, and slight facial hair. Must’ve been one of the guys at the back.

“Uh yeah yeah, sure love, here yah go.” He handed you the lit half smoked cigarette for you to take a drag off of.

Jumping with excitement to finally have a sweet hit of nicotine you grabbed it from his fingers, your warm skin slightly rubbing against his cold fingers. You mock bowed again then took a long drag before blowing it up between the three of you.

“Fuck I’m so rude, I’m Y/N, Chloe didn’t introduce us. Not surprised that girl knows everyone.” You slurred, sticking your hand out for him and his friend to shake.

A moment of realization hit him and his friend, looking at each other as you took another drag before offering it back to him.

You thought they were someone else.

“Nice to meet you love, I’m Jamie and this is Joseph,” his friend gestured to himself then to the man at your side.

Joseph.

You quickly looked over his friend as Joseph grabbed the smoke from your hands. Longish blonde hair, sharp features, beautiful blue eyes. Damn you gotta give Chloe more credit, she sure knows how to get pretty people to be her friends.

“How’s your night been going?” Joseph asks you, turning more towards you as you lean on the wall, his hand slowly leaving your waist. Quickly grabbing his cigarette pack and offering you a full one as you fish for your lighter in your other pocket. Thanking him you took it and quickly lit it up, taking a full pull before exhaling.

“You’re a fucking lifesaver,” you flick the smoke. “It’s going, my feet hurt, and I have done enough shots to probably kill a small horse, but hey, at least I still remember my name. But you Joseph I’m curious about, how’s your night?”

“Could say the same, though I’m nowhere near as drunk as I want to be, this sap here,” he pointed to Jamie, you followed his hand looking at the sole ring on his finger before looking at Jamie. “Wanted to call his girlfriend to check in on her.”

“Oh that’s so cute, fuck I wish my boyfriend did that. All he did was cheat on me during night outs,” You rambled, not noticing how the two men slightly winced at the harshness of your voice, taking a puff and continuing. “Anyways, that’s why I’m out tonight because fuck that guy, you guys wanna do a shot with me?” You spoke quickly before losing your confidence.

“I would, but speaking of my girlfriend she’s almost here to get me but you can steal this man for the night I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” Jamie winks at you. You giggle slightly, turning more towards Joseph and putting your hand on his chest.

“What do ya say josi? Wanna do a shot? Join me on my level?” You flirt, well you hope you’re flirting, if Chloe knows these guys you know they are used to good flirting.

Joseph laughs to himself, rubbing his thumb on his lip before dropping his cigarette and squishing it out.

“Finish that up and I’m all yours.” He winked at you while pointing at your now half a cigarette.

“Hell yeah, hope you are ready to party.” You drunkenly finish the smoke as Joseph says goodbye to Jamie.

Waving at Jamie as he walks down the street to meet his girlfriend, Joseph pushes himself off the wall to stand in front of you. You giggle slightly before dropping your cigarette and stamping out as he did before. Wiggling your eyebrows you stand to your full height, still a few inches shorter than him.

“You ready for the night of your life?”

“Do you worst darling.” He sticks his hand out for you to start leading him inside.

Another hour passes, filled with Joseph catching up with shots as you tried to keep your buzz at the same level. You had filled the time with talking and getting to know him, he told you about his week that was full of work, never really telling you what he did for work though. You told him about you too, about your job that honestly at this you point you just wanted to quit just so you didn’t have to see your bosses face anymore. Giggling and smiling at each other as you slowly inched closer around the table you were sitting at as you talked. Honestly you were a little peeved Chloe kept this man hidden for so long with how well you were getting along.

Suddenly you felt a weight on your back and the smell of Chloe’s sweet perfume.

“Y/N! There you are. Shelly said you went for a smoke and then you never came back! I thought you died!” She slurred into your ear, hanging off you.

“I’m good clo, met one of your friends outside.” You gestured to Joseph, who looked a little panicked as he sipped on the water bottle he grabbed for the both of you.

Chloe looked over at him, sizing him up for second before turning to you.

“Y/N babe, I don’t know who this is,” Chloe giggled. “though you do have the same style as our friend Scott.” She directed at him.

Joseph paled as you shook your head stopping for a second.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck OH FUCK

That’s why he looked familiar, Chloe’s friend Scott, Scott who wore almost the exact same outfit. Scott who you had only met once. Your eyes widened before you full on started laughing.

“Oh my god. I am so stupid,” you got up and leaned over Joseph, wrapping your arms around his shoulders as his hand came to sit at where they crossed. Leaning down you kissed the side of his head. “You are such a sweetheart, letting me have a cigarette when you don’t even know me.”

“Oh thank god I thought you were going to be mad, I’m sorry love. Didn’t know how to tell you I didn’t know your friend here when you told me about her dragging you out.” He breathlessly said into your ear and you leaned on him. You looked a Chloe and gave her a quick look of ‘get out of here ma’am’ before leaning back up and patting Joseph’s shoulder.

“Well charmer, we can either pretend this didn’t happen, or we can go back out for a smoke and see where the night takes us.” You say to him as he turns in his chair.

“How about this. We go for a smoke,” he hands you his pack as he stands. “And, I take you out on a date next week to apologize for not telling you I don’t know you.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal josi.”

#joseph quinn x reader #joseph quinn #Joseph Quinn x you #eddie munson #eddie Munson x reader

[benkyoutobentou]

I Failed My 2022 Language Learning Goals- And Why That’s Okay

At the end of last year, and the beginning of this year, all the New Year’s hype surrounding language learning and goal setting got to me. On important thing: I’ve never been much of a goal setter. I wanted to set goals to stay on track with my language learning in 2022, and I had to research how to set goals; what was a realistic goal, what types of things are usually goals, things like that. The concept was almost completely foreign to me. Despite that, I sat down and wrote my goals. Some were easy, that I could complete early on in the year, such as finishing a TV show in Japanese. Some were more difficult, like finishing a novel in Japanese. Others were long term goals that spanned the whole year. I failed a lot of them, but I learned a lot, too.

At the beginning of the year, I started a language learning journal. I loved that journal, while I had the time for it. I had lofty ideas for it, such as writing reviews for everything I watched and read. It was fantastic output practice, but in reality the ideas that I had were just way above what I could realistically put into it, and that had nothing to do with my language abilities and entirely to do with my spare time. I’m a full time student who only studies languages as a hobby, and when things get tough, things like writing paragraphs per day in my second language are what get cut. This journal lasted probably about five months. I still think that it helped me improve my Japanese, though, and I would like to get back into language journaling, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Another one of my goals was to “finish” studying all vocabulary from the JLPT N3 level. By around February, I was about halfway through my list and it was looking like an easily achievable goal. Then I got bored. I’ve fought with vocabulary study throughout my whole language learning career and even written about it before (apparently what works for me is jumping from resource to resource. I’m currently loving jpdb), and this is just another example of that. I let myself fall off and just hope that the urge came back, but it never did. Ultimately, taking the JLPT was never a goal (hah) for me, although it’s looking more and more like a possibility now, so dropping this wasn’t detrimental to my language learning, especially because I study vocabulary elsewhere. And that’s really the point of this failure, in my mind. I don’t need to stick to arbitrary lists and just kind of hope they appear in my immersion. Immersion itself is studying vocabulary, especially when using other resources in tandem.

I feel like the biggest “failures” from this year’s goals were my monthly goals. One was to learn the lyrics to a song each month. I really enjoy this method of studying, but it died along with my language learning journal. Another goal, a big one, was to go through a chapter of my textbook, Tobira, each month. This goal was doomed from the start. The first textbooks I used to learn Japanese were the Living Language series, and I hated them. Add that onto the natural hesitance to start something new and you have a disaster waiting to happen. I think I started studying from Tobira in around June, far from my chapter-a-month goal. And as of writing this, I am on chapter three. I doubt it’ll move for some while. Lots of this was also due to time constraints. Most of my textbook study happened during the summer, and I think I only cracked it once or twice this past semester. I’m at a point where, while I do think studying through textbooks and other study resources is important for me personally, immersion has been my main focus, especially as it’s less time consuming and less mentally taxing than “traditional” study. So, although this goal was a bust, Tobira, and textbooks in general, are not things that are going to be leaving my language learning in the long term.

So why have my failures been important? People always say “learn from your mistakes,” and that’s exactly what I’ve done. For the most part, I feel that my main take away has just been to be kinder to myself. Even now I still have to remind myself to be easier on myself and what I want to accomplish. I don’t have all the time in the world, and even if I did, I still need to rest. I’ve learned my limits, and I’ve learned what works for me, and what doesn’t. I’ve learned that what you drop in one place, you can make up for elsewhere.

Of course, this isn’t to say that I don’t plan on setting goals for next year, but I do plan on having less intense goals and a lot less of them. After learning what has worked for me in this past year, I can adapt and shift my goals to be more reasonable and fit neatly within my capabilities while still working to improve my language learning journey.

#sorry if this is formatted like an essay like i said im a student still #not for long though im boutta be outta here #okay sorry im not proof reading this #langblr #studyblr #language learning #polyglot #studyinspo #languages #studying #benkyou posting #i almost feel dumb for saying publicly that i didnt know how to set goals #but

[alwayswriting101]

You already know, I’m asking about Flora and Helia ❤️☺️

Both in a way. Flora reaches for him unconsciously and Helia just happens to wake up in time to catch her doing it and pull her close.

Cuddles in each other’s arm.

I actually think that in a case like that they’d be drawn to reality TV, like “The Real Housewives of…” Something about watching rich people having fights over complete nonsense really grounds them somehow haha.

Helia makes the pun, but Flora laughs (even though it isn’t funny. It’s just to encourage him).

They both give each other encouraging words (you’re so great, you’re ready, you can do this etc). Helia encourages Flora more often than she does to him (because she requires it more).

Slightly off topic but one of my headcanons for this couple is that Helia is super wealthy and Flora isn’t/wasn’t. So I imagine whenever Flora (has to) buy some elegant clothes for like a gala or something Helia brings her to a high-end store and insists that she shops there and doesn’t focus on the price tag. She feel uncomfortable wearing the clothes but Helia hypes her up and insists that she deserves them. So Helia hypes up her new outfits.

There’s this once scene in the Hallowinx! comics where Helia is dressed like a werewolf and tries (and fails) to scare Flora. So i imagine most of their interactions are like that. On the rare occasion Flora does try to scare Helia he is actually scared but pretends that he knew she was there and she didn’t scare him.

The art section. Mostly Helia explains why this paint brand is better, or the purpose of X tool, and Flora stands there writing with the sample pens on the paper pads (something I LOVED doing as a child)

Helia picks Flora up some seeds or tools; things she can use to improve her garden. Flora gets Helia food from his favorite resturant (I imagine he’s a foodie at heart).

Lmao, it’s so funny because Flora canonically runs into his arms all the time. I think it’s adorable.

I’m actually not sure, I’m not into music like that. But something cute and romantic for the each of them. And also I’m getting strong Hozier vibes from Helia (not relevant to the quetion at all but something to add in)

Helia teases Flora by kissing every part of her face before going for her lips.

Flora loves the small quirks Helia has as he paints. The arch of an eyebrow while focus, the strokes of his hands, the crazy standing/sitting positions. She finds it cute. Helia enjoys it when Flora talks to her plants like babies, he finds it funny and adorable.

They both snort at each other making the other laugh harder and soon enough they fall into a fit.

Helia can cook (actually pretty well), but hates cooking, so Flora does the majority of it. Helia will clean her tools and beakers from her garden/lab.

Thank you for the questions!

#winx flora #winx helia #winx aisha #winx headcanons #I’m sorry I got this up after you deleted your blog #but hopefully you’re still around (somewhere) to see this #if you made a new blog send me a message sometime! #I love all your prompts/questions #it takes me a long time to get to them but i love seeing them #(and that applies to everyone! Send me prompts if you want to) #anyway thanks shelzyray

[ukaiknowsbest]

breaking down Ace of Diamond - the "Hero's Journey."

Using the model/guide presented by Overly Sarcastic Productions in their youtube video Trope Talk: The Hero's Journey, I will attempt to discuss how Sawamura Eijun's story in DnA is his Hero's Journey to becoming an ace pitcher in the Japanese HIgh School Baseball environment.

Blue from OSP put forward the 12 basic parts of the Hero's Journey Cycle. The illustration below will be our reference. I simplified a graph made by Signy Wilson in order to match OSP's less rigid guide.

disclaimer: I am by no means any kind of expert. I was just fascinated when I learned about the Hero's Journey as a general trope/framework when it came to writing stories. I want to apply what I learned by breaking down the story created by Terajima Yuuji in Ace of Diamond.

A. ORDINARY WORLD

STAGE 1. THE HERO IN HIS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

Hero: Sawamura Eijun. Captain and Ace Pitcher of middle school baseball team. He has no formal training in baseball whatsoever but was the one who gathered and convinced his friends to start a baseball club. He's the best player in their small team. Good at sports but bad at academics .

He is generally a baseball idiot and quite a naive/simple guy with a strong heart. He does not have any idea what competitive and pro baseball looks like because not only does he not have experience but also he does not watch the broadcasts on tv/radio at all.

Ordinary World of the Hero: rural town in Nagano Prefecture, where Sawamura formed a small baseball team with his childhood friends. Acording to him, as long as they all stay together they can always play baseball anywhere.

STAGE 2. THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

2.1 Problem/why hero's ordinary world is going to crumble: - He lessened his chances of being scouted/accepted in a good baseball school after he btchslapped an entire opponent team and the umpires in their first and only match as middle school team in Saitama Stadium.

He also has low chance of being accepted into the high school in their area (where his friends are all going to) because he struggles with his academics a lot.

Unless he does something he won't be able to be together with his friends and/or play baseball at all.

2.2 Caller of the adventure - Takashima Rei pursues Sawamura into Nagano Prefecture in order to scout him as a sports scholar for Seido High School, a baseball powerhouse school located in the West Division of Tokyo Prefecture.

2.3 medicine/ solution to hero's crumbling world: being a sports scholar for Seido. This would solve almost all of Sawamura's highschool enrollment problem and also give him the chance to play as much baseball as he wants.

STAGE 3. REFUSAL TO THE CALL

3.1 reluctance to go: Sawamura refuses to leave Nagano despite Rei's "sales pitch" to him and his family. He doesn't want to leave his friends just to play baseball in a stronger school far away because he had promised his friends that they would always stick together.

3.2 hero punished for this - his grandpa literally smacks/slaps him in being stupid and doubting his friends.!!! / technically circumstances are already punishing him for being a hotblooded baseball idiot in the first place.

3.3 do you think you have a choice - this is probably the only chance he'll get to play baseball with all his strength AND finish highschool.

B. EXTRAORDINARY / UNKNOWN WORLD

Venturing out into more competitive/pro baseball is a world beyond him. It's scary and unknown and he'd rather defeat bigger teams than leave his friends.

STAGE 4. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

4.1 crossing physical threshold - Rei persuades him to at least check the school out with his own eyes. They leave Tokyo together for one visit.

4.2. crossing a metaphorical threshold - in that visit, sawamura, picks a fight with a senior who's bound for baseball drafts, works together with a nationally acclaimed catcher in defeating the senior player, thus changing his worldview because he had so much fun.

4.2. conscious and irreversible decision - Because of the experience he goes home conflicted. His family encourages him in their own way to follow his guts and heart and go to Tokyo.

STAGE 5. REALM OF ADVENTURE

5.1 hero learns to navigate the unknown world - Sawamura learns the harsh realities of being in a baseball school once he actually starts to live there. Our boy also gets educated in Baseball and Pitching 101. He also finds out the true personality of the catcher he played with before.

5.2 meeting allies/rivals/mentors - he learns about the team better when he meets a whole bunch of people: batchmates, coaches and senpais. He builds interesting dynamics with all of them.

5.3 trials and initial failures - Sawamura undergoes difficult initial training and is barely allowed to play in matches.

5.4 meeting enemies - Sawamura being allowed to play as relief pitcher in the games and face talented pitchers and scary batters mostly in tense situations.

5.5 growth, new skills - Sawamura grows with each match, thus bolstering his confidence. Sometimes he falters but he learns from his mistakes.

5.6 first major success - striking out scary batters with each new thing he learns.

5.7 major challenge that leads to downfall - seido vs inashiro finals match where he goes in full of confidence and courage but then he and his team gets defeated in a devastating way.

STAGE 6. BELLY OF THE WHALE

6.1 lowest point of hero where hero physically or metaphorically goes down - one month after their major defeat, a lot of intense practice matches and change in team dynamics, the team find out that Sawamura has the YIPS. This condition took away Sawamura's ability to pitch in his trademark style/ the only thing he was good at.

6.2 hero's darkest hour - without the ability to pitch, Sawamura questions his reality and why he is still on the team.

6.3 Face and overcome inner demons - with a lot of help from allies and mentors, Sawamura finds a way to bring back a bit of his ability.

STAGE 7. ROAD OF TRIALS

7.1 Discarding old self - In the duration of his downfall and eventual healing, Sawamura turns to books, meditation and becomes even more careful in maintaining his form and body.

7.2 Accepting the new role - instead of fixating on the ace position like before, Sawamura is just glad that he is still allowed to pitch as relief.

7.3 Finding path out of the belly of the whale/The road back - After figuring out a solution to fix his pitching, he focuses on it and regains some of his ability. Sawamura is then allowed to play in matches. Just like before, he improves little by little as he recovers from each failure. He gains fresher mindset and new weapons, thus becoming an even stronger pitcher than he ever was before.

7.4 more trials - they face new opponent schools and old but improved opponents which test the best of Sawamura and the team's ability

STAGE 8. PRE SHOWDOWN BREATHER

every major match in ace of diamond has this part of the story but usually the most critical breather episode is the one before the final match.

8.1 show humanity of other characters - Somethng bad happens to the other mc without Sawamura knowing. This could absolutely wreck their chances of winning the final match. This shows that the other guys are not 100% invincible after all.

8.2 last chance to relax. - calm before the storm. It is also the time where they finalize sawamura's weapons.

8.3 quiet moment to reminisce - usually happens before each match. However the night before the finals was the major one because their old senpais went to visit their practice and encourage them.

STAGE 9. CLIMAX / STEPPING UP TO THE CHALLENGE

9.1 Final Showdown - Sawamura helps in the team defense with the best of his ability and weapons and he succeeds. Their team eventually wins Fall Tournament even with a few setbacks.

9.2 Apotheosis - Sawamura's worldview changed once he realises that even with his improvement and skill, his goal of being the ace is still out of reach for him.

9.3 Ultimate Boon - Sawamura gets to be a pivotal member of their baseball team and can play baseball as much as he wants with his team.

STAGE 7. ROAD OF TRIALS start again after the Fall Tournament Act 1 because Sawamura faces new challenges in Ace of Diamond Act 2.

Meiji Jingu Tournament - Play in matches without Miyuki

WInter camp and break - Intense Physical Training and development and improvement of his weapons which he will use and improve on throughout the rest of Act 2.

Spring Koshien where he realises that he has to do more in order to surpass the current ace which was Furuya.

Start of New Term/ Practice Matches - Sawamura and co. meets their new kouhai and team dynamics shift once again.

Spring Tournament / Summer Tournament - Sawamura meets old foes and new enemies. He also becomes the Ace Pitcher of the team, which adds more pressure on his part.

ACT 2 STAGE 8. PRE SHOWDOWN BREATHER

This is the big and long one before Summer Tournament Finals match where injuries and problems were discussed and feelings were explored.

ACT 2 STAGE 9. CLIMAX

Final (Or most hyped and awaited rematch) Seido vs Inashiro in order to qualify for Summer Koshien Nationals.

**everything after this point will be prediction and just my opinion

STAGES 7-9 start again

Koshien Nationals Arc.

STAGE 10. CROSSING THE RETURN THRESHOLD

Miyuki/3rd years retirement/graduation. Sawamura and his batch will have to lead the team.

STAGE 11. THE REWARD

Sawamura gets to play with his team as ace pitcher.

STAGE 12 / STAGE 1. THE HERO IN HIS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT

Sawamura may become both ace and captain, same as his role back in his middle school team, albeit in a stronger school. Even if he won't be the next captain, as ace he will still be in a strong leadership position.

CONCLUSION

That's how Ace of Diamond is written in the style of A HERO'S JOURNEY.

Act 1 writing especially followed the trope quite rigidly.

Notes:

I still don't want Sawamura to be the next captain. I hope that does not happen. However if it does, it means the story will have gone back full circle. That would be quite poetic ngl.

Gotta applaud Terajima's pacing. Can you believe that the story only reached its lowest and most pivotal point at around episode 70 of the anime???? thank godt that after ep 63 I read spoilers about yips arc in tv tropes or else i would have dropped the series completely.

I had difficulty in classifying the events after the climax stage into hero's journey stages because technically sawamura has not gone "home" yet. Moreover the challenges and trials just kept on piling up after Fall Tournament.

In this whole story, Sawamura has experienced only one true "Belly of the Whale stage" during his YIPS arc. I don't think he really came to a low point in Act 2 other than his first official match as Ace Pitcher. I treated that in the same vein as the effects of Raichi's first homerun off Sawamura back in Act 1.

I realized that having stages 7-9 recur starting from Meiji Jingu to the current summer tournament is what made reading Act 2 quite frustrating for me. That's at least 5-6 arcs of endless roller coaster ride loops.

I consider Miyuki's departure to be the "CROSSING THE RETURN THRESHOLD" moment because playing with him was the major reason for Sawamura's decision to study and play in Tokyo. Something will change Sawamura when this eventually happens.

As Blue from OSP said, the Hero's Journey is just a general guide/framework to writing stories. It is flexible, writers don't even have to use it or all of its parts to make a good story. Terajima just seemed to have adopted A LOT of the hero's journey trope in his baseball series.

I wanted to add more pictures tbh but tumblr is a killjoy :(

This was a fun thought exercise. There were probably even some parts which I have used the tropes wrongly. Please feel free to dispute me.

I talked about Sawamura's mentors here (x).

#sawamura eijun #sports anime #ace of diamond #daiya no a #daiya meta #daiya discuss #hero's journey #long post #daiya thoughts

[thosewickedlovelies]

AND THEY WERE WALLMATES: Banana Bread (part 1)

Pairing: Javier Peña x F!Reader

Rating: probably T for mature themes (implications of sexy times and violence). It will go up later ;)

Summary: You share an apartment wall with Javier Peña, but that doesn’t make it any easier to get to know him. You didn’t think your baking would be the catalyst (read: Javi is jealous that Connie gets all the extras).

Tags: Mention of blood; super vague description of wound care; alcohol; TW for Javi: you have FEELINGS bby

Word count: 2,791

A/N: I guess technically this starts at the beginning of season 1, but I don’t plan on referencing the events of the show, so imagine they’re working on things less intense than trying to catch Escobar. I found Javier really tricky to write for, so I hope this reads okay! I’m so excited about the future chapters I have outlined for this lol pls get hype.

Masterlist

---

You had only been living in your new place for about a month when you got new neighbors. You were glad for the company- the four-apartment building was fairly new, and didn’t feel very lived-in. You did your best to add some personal flair to your apartment, but it still had the effect of reminding you of your own newness to this place, your lack of any deep personal connections.

Your other neighbor didn’t exactly help with that. Javier Peña had lived here for awhile before you moved in, but that was all you knew about him; you didn’t speak much beyond your neighborly greetings and his insinuating smiles. He never hides his lingering glances, but nor does he make any other moves- you sense he’s a safe type, all bark and no bite (without consent). So you always amusedly but politely ignore the invitation implicit in your exchanges. They don’t seem to have a lot of depth anyway, as if he’s just trying for the sake of trying. Granted, he probably never has to do much more than that- you’re very aware of how attractive your neighbor is on the surface. You just prefer to feel a connection slightly deeper than surface level before going home with someone.

You learn more about him from Connie, who tells you that he works at the embassy with her husband, Steve. In “janitorial services.” You raise a bemused eyebrow at that, but respect your neighbors’ privacy and don’t ask further questions. You help Connie get a job at a hospital a few blocks away from the one you’re a nurse at and promise to help her practice Spanish.

The building feels more lively now, and you’re happy to have a confidant upstairs, especially one who’s more privy to the life of your enigmatic hall-mate. You don’t know if it’s the neighborly care you feel for your new friend or if there’s some other unconscious change, but you begin to keep an ear out for Javier. You do share an apartment wall, although you don’t glean much through it. Some standard kitchen rummaging, television noise, the occasional bedroom guest (whose enterprises you try not to listen to, but damn if the man doesn’t have a perfect voice for after-dark activities). The most noticeable thing about him is the odd hours he keeps: sometimes in tandem with Steve’s schedule and sometimes not, you can never predict when he’ll be in or out.

--

Little do you know, you’re not the only one paying attention. Javier has spent many an evening alone with only whiskey and the television for company, but now there are other things to stimulate his senses. The smell of your baking filtering through the wall, even lingering in the hallway the next morning. The sound of you singing to the radio while clattering about the kitchen. Sometimes he turns the tv down to listen and imagines there being no wall between your two homes. What would his life be like with someone to infuse that kind of sweetness and light into it?

He doesn’t mean you specifically, necessarily. If, once or twice, your face jumps to mind while he’s taking care of himself in bed, he thinks nothing of it. You’re his beautiful neighbor- it’s a fantasy begging to be played out.

But damn if he hasn’t been tempted to make it a reality. He gets to taste your baking sometimes when you leave extras with Connie, and one day she catches his brow creased in a frown, distracted halfway through a slice of walnut banana bread.

“Javi,” Connie repeats, trying to get his attention.

“Yeah.” Javier snaps out of it, looking up.

“You’ve been staring at that piece of banana bread for a full two minutes. Is it gonna do a trick?”

He decides to lean into it, see what Connie’s reaction might be. “Only if the trick is getting me out of my pants. I don’t know a man alive who could resist the shit she makes.” He scoops another forkful into his mouth to prove his point, letting the rich, nutty flavor remind him of other places. Homes. Real homes, made of people, not the solitary kind he lives in now.

She rolls her eyes at his crudeness, but agrees. “You’re right about that. I don’t know where she gets the energy to do this after hospital shifts.”

Javier hides his next thought with another forkful of bread and a noncommittal noise. Wonder if she’d have as much energy for it if she had a man to tire her out. It was automatic, a question he couldn’t help debating with himself. Surely no one who spent that much time in the kitchen could have energy to spare on…other pursuits.

Connie is regarding him shrewdly. He avoids her gaze, focusing on finishing his plate in large mouthfuls to avoid the questions he can feel brewing. But he’s not quick enough. “Has she always brought you extras too?” she asks. Too casually, idling with her fork.

“No,” Javier says dismissively, and it’s not quite a scoff. “She wasn’t here long before you showed up. We’re not as close as you two.” Understatement. Did he sound sour about the fact?

Before Connie can ask any more questions he rises from his seat. “Well, don’t let me keep you. Tell Steve what I said.” With a nod of farewell, he turns and strides out the door.

--

One night you’re awoken with a start from where you’d fallen asleep on the couch. Heart pounding, you sit up, listening intently. You’d never felt unsafe here, but you’re aware of the potential dangers. What had woken you?

You hear a swear from the hall, and your muscles relax as you recognize Javier’s low voice. There’s a beat of silence, then a scraping, clinking sound. He must have dropped his keys. But then he grunts, and concern sweeps over you. You’re a nurse- you recognize the sound of a man stifling his pain.

There are long delays before each new noise that indicates an action. The doorknob twists as he grunts again, but it’s a moment before the key turns in the lock. It seems to take an age for him to get through the door; his motions sound clumsy before he closes it. Safe in the privacy of his home, so he thinks, he lets out a longer sigh, the pain and exhaustion now obvious in the sound. But you can hear his fumbling through the wall, and you worry your lip between your teeth. It is your place to go see if he’s alright?

Finally you decide that it is. You’re his neighbor and a healthcare professional, and it is your professional opinion that he sounded in-pain enough to warrant a check-up. Plus, you heard him that way before he got inside, you reason. So it’s not as if you were just being snoopy through the wall.

Just in case, though, you grab some muffins you made earlier as a backup excuse (once again mentally thanking whoever left the cookbook in your apartment). 11:30 isn’t too late for a friendly drop-by, right?

You knock softly on his door. “Javier? It’s me.” Nervous energy taps in your fingers. You’re never even been on his side of the hallway before.

There’s a shuffling sound, and the door unlatches. A narrow gap opens, into which Javier plants himself, and you immediately zero in on where he keeps one leg wedged behind the door. He leans into the elbow propped against the doorjamb above his head, while his other hand already holds a glass of what you can smell is whiskey. He looks like he would rather be anywhere but here at this moment. “Neighbor,” he greets dryly, a neutral expression on his face.

“Uhh.” You’ve never been this close to him before, and his appearance catches you off-guard. His usually combed hair is messy, waves tangling over his forehead, and he’s sweaty, the open collar of his shirt damp and the exposed skin gleaming with moisture.

Javier raises an eyebrow expectantly, taking a sip of his drink. His glances down at the plate in your hands, and it prompts you to speak.

“Hi, Javier. Uh, sorry, I know it’s late, but I thought I’d bring you some of these-“ you lift the dish “-before they come with me to work tomorrow. They’re banana bread muffins.” Your voice falters with your confidence. Your eyes can’t help but flicker over his face and chest, taking in the smear of dust on his jaw, the redness of the knuckles wrapped around his glass. Mostly you’re trying not to look at the leg he’s definitely hiding, which you can tell he’s keeping his weight off of.

--

Javier stares at you, not buying it for a second. His lips purse for lack of a cigarette to wrap around. He shifts the weight he has on his arm- damn, his leg hurts- and wonders what could have possibly prompted you to start bringing him baked goods now of all moments. “Why aren’t you bring those to Connie’s?” Like usual.

“Um, well-“ He sees your gaze finally drop to the leg he’s kept out of view, and too late remembers who got Connie the hospital job.

“I heard you drop your keys, and it sounded like you were in pain,” you confess. “I’m a nurse, Javier. I can help if you need it.” Though apologetic, your tone is firm, face sincere as you offer him aid. Him, your grumpy neighbor who does nothing but leer at you.

Well, he isn’t that proud. Javier sighs, and opens the door further. Your eyes widen as you see the long slice in his pant leg, blood still damp around the wound beneath. “Shit, Javier, what happened? It doesn’t matter, shit, sit down.” You surge forward without waiting for permission, tucking yourself under the arm of his uninjured side and steering him toward a dining room chair. Where he’d been about to sit down down and tend to the cut himself. He supposes your apartments mirror each other, but your familiar reaction to the layout still surprises him.

“Whoa, hey, watch the whiskey,” he exclaims, flailing out the arm holding the glass, taken aback by your sudden manhandling. With one hand still occupied by the muffins, you direct him solely with an around his waist and your shoulder propped under his armpit. He couldn’t have resisted if he tried. If it weren’t for the fiery pain in his leg, your hold would have him feeling a very different kind of heat.

You give him a look that says you won’t be fooled by his blustering as you deposit him onto the chair and the plate on the table. “May I?” you ask, kneeling, hands hovering above his wound.

“Oh, now you’re asking permission?” He scoffs in disbelief but waves a hand in consent, leaning back in the seat.

You scoff right back at him. “Look, I see blood, I make the macho men sit, okay? Why didn’t you go to a hospital with this?”

Javier studies you as you carefully lift the denim to peer at the cut on his thigh. He takes a sip of whiskey to buy time (as well as dull the stinging pain). You’ve put on a robe over what looks like pajamas, but you seem too alert to have just dragged yourself from bed. And yet...was that a pillow mark on your cheek? Just there, arcing from your temple to your jaw…

“Javier?" you're looking up at him, a touch of confusion on your face.

“Did I wake you up?” he hears himself asking.

Her gaze drops again. “No,” you answer. “Well, yes, but I fell asleep on the couch, so it was a good thing.”

Ah, that explained the pillow mark.

Finally you stand. Your hands rest on your hips, heedless of your fingertips smudged red with his blood. “It doesn’t actually look too bad. I have enough supplies here to fix you up. You stay here, take off your pants if you can manage it by yourself, and I’ll be right back.” And with that you whisk away, robe swishing through his front door.

Javier remains where he is, a bit stunned by this turn of events, your sudden insertion into his life. He shakes his head. Maybe whiskey and blood loss shouldn’t go together. He tosses back the rest of his glass anyway in order to wrangle off his jeans.

By the time you return, he feels more composed, if rather uncomfortably vulnerable, sitting in just his boxers with a bloody slice across his thigh. He watches silently as you arrange various medical supplies on the table and pull up a chair across from him. You perch on the edge of it and look at him before doing anything else. “Are you gonna tell me how you got this?”

He’s not about to tell you it was a fluke accident during one of Carillo's interrogations. Somehow, while his back was turned, the guy got free and tried to escape, swinging a knife wildly as he hurled past Javier. The cut was long, ugly, but shallow. He’d live. He couldn’t say the same for the man who delivered it.

--

Javier considers his answer. “Can’t,” he says. “It’s better if you don’t know.” His gaze skitters away as he speaks.

He works for the government with a poker face like that? “Janitorial work, huh?” you say dryly. Sighing, you reach for the antiseptic. “At least tell me what made it. So I can treat it properly.” You look at him steadily.

Javier looks back for a long moment. “A knife,” he says at last.

You nod, and rip open a packet of gauze. He sucks air through his teeth as the antiseptic sears the wound clean, but otherwise doesn’t speak while you work. Which is fine. You notice he’s drained his glass, and you empathize. Frankly you wish you had a drink yourself right now.

Once you’ve cleaned the cut it’s easier to see the damage. Which is minimal, thankfully. Most of the blood was probably from him moving around when it happened. You explain what you’re doing as you seal the wound closed. Only when you’re almost finished does he speak.

“Why don’t you ever bake me anything?”

It’s so unexpected that your hands still. You stare at him in astonishment, waiting for him to elaborate.

“What I mean is…christ,” Javier mutters. The unflattering fluorescent light overhead highlights the dark circles under his eyes as he scrubs a hand over his face. “You always leave extras of stuff at Steve and Connie’s. Never here.” With me.

You resume your work on his thigh, surprised to feel a tinge of guilt. “You didn’t seem like a baked goods kind of guy,” you reply, hoping you don’t sound too defensive. It was true, after all. Though you never got a sense of threat from Javier, neither did he seem the type who would appreciate domestic gestures of friendship.

He didn’t look offended, however. I’ll try anything once,” he says, the ghost of a familiar smirk suggesting he’s feeling better. But then he leans forward, all traces of smirk vanishing. “And your lemon drizzle cake was incredible.” Javier looks at you seriously. His face is too close for your level of acquaintanceship, but you don’t move away.

Surprised, you assess him anew, wondering if you’re catching a glimpse of the man beneath all the masculine posturing. He’s nicer-looking this way, you muse. His face softer, brown eyes wide and sincere. You hide just how pleased you are at this insight (which you’re sure he has no idea he’s giving you) beyond allowing yourself a small smile.

“Well, maybe next time I’ll bring you some.”

--

Javier can’t quite find another quippy response, so he just gives a small nod, finding it hard to draw back even after you break his gaze. He tries not to fidget as you place a final strip of tape over the gauze bandage.

“There,” you declare, your work complete. “That should hold you for tonight.” You stand and gather up your supplies, giving him care instructions as you go. “Got it?” You seem much more relaxed than when you first arrived, confidence in your work squaring your shoulders. It’s…compelling, much more so than your usual reserved smiles in the hall.

“Yes ma’am.” Javier nods, not having heard a word. “…Thank you,” he adds, begrudgingly grateful.

You smile wryly at him. “Goodnight, Javier.”

You’ve nearly reached the door when he speaks again. “Javi.”

“Hm?” Pausing, you turn back to him.

He clears his throat. “You…you can call me Javi.”

Your smile is much warmer this time, brightening your eyes, and Javier feels his heart pound. “Goodnight, Javi.”

#javier peña x reader #javier peña x you #narcos fic #narcos #javier peña #pedro pascal #pedro pascal characters

[random-french-girl]

Could you do Martha and Fatin for the brotp?

Hi friend! Thanks!

What in-jokes do they have with each other?

They rate every guy Martha meets and finds cute on a scale “from zero to Marcus”. The scale is NOT scientific, and none of the other girls really understand it. But it’s hilarious.   

Are they the “I’ll pay this time if you pay next time”-type friends, or the “I’ll pay for my food and you’ll pay for yours”-type friends?

First option. Fatin always insists to pay for Martha’s drinks though. 

Who’s more prone to pranking, or otherwise messing with, the other?

Martha, actually :) She’s wickedly sneaky when doing pranks, and a lot of them involve using various animals (mostly insects and the likes) to scare Fatin. She has to be careful, though, because Fatin has no qualms about squashing a spider with a rolled-up Vogue Magazine. Which is not what Martha wants. (What she wants is to add to her collection of videos of Fatin screaming at the top of her lungs because there’s a harmless beetle on her bed. It makes for a great pick-me-up whenever one of the girls is depressed.)

How do they text/message each other? Proper punctuation and capital letters, egregious overuse of emojis, mostly in meme format…?

Oh my God, they are the most CHAOTIC texters, there’s emojis EVERYWHERE, new abbreviations daily, their texts are absolutely unreadable by anyone else. (Even Toni, who’s used to Martha’s style, can’t decipher what the fuck they’re talking about.) They basically have invented a whole new writing system. 

Do they exchange jokey birthday presents, or deeply thought-out and meaningful presents? Or both?

Both, but mostly meaningful? Fatin also loves organizing Martha’s birthday parties. She does The Most. Martha is delighted. 

They go on a road trip together. Who drives, who picks the music, who’s in charge of snacks?

Martha drives - she, gently, leaves No Room for argument. Fatin is in charge of the music - which works great, they like the same stuff. They’re both in charge of snacks - lots of chocolate, lots of juice. 

What do they think of each other’s family?

Fatin adores Martha’s family, and is, weirdly, a little scared of Martha’s mom, in the “I never want her to be disappointed in me” kind of way. Martha is very impressed with Fatin’s parents at first - they’re so elegant and stylish!-, not so much when she learns the whole story. She loves Fatin’s little brothers though, and they love her too :)

Do they have any nicknames for each other?

Fatin has a million pet names for Martha. I don’t think Martha has any for Fatin, however. 

Who’d be the first to try and patch things up if they had a fight?

Honestly... they rarely get into fights. But when they do, Fatin tries to patch things up first. There’s nothing worse than knowing that Martha is mad at you.

One of their phones goes off in the middle of the night. Who’s calling whom, and why?

Fatin actually calls Martha when she gets sad in the middle of a party, and she doesn’t want to bother Dot and Leah, or they’re not available, or she’s feeling self-conscious and needs Martha’s specific energy. 

What’s their favourite funny story about something that happened to the two of them?

Getting high on the beach for sure.

Would they do a joint cosplay? If so, who would they dress up as?

Oh, they would. For Halloween, they dress up as a devil and an angel. Martha is the devil. Fatin is a very sexy, probably not Bible-accurate angel. 

Do they have any TV shows that they watch together? Are there any shows they have wildly different opinions on?

So many shows! A lot of reality TV, first of all. Martha also gets Fatin to watch the entirety of Pretty Little Liars, Fatin is. Obsessed. And furious about it. She rants about the outfits constantly.

Which one is the “fight me” friend and which one is the one who tries to keep the peace and prevent their friend from punching a total stranger?

Fatin is the “fight me” friend. Martha tries to keep the peace. 

One of them comes up with an ill-advised but mostly harmless idea. Does the other one egg them on because they think it’ll be funny, or try and talk them out of it?

In both cases, they’d try to talk the other out of it. 

Who would win if they arm-wrestled?

Martha.

Who’s better at what type of video games, and how competitive are they when they play together?

Martha is leagues better than Fatin. They aren’t very competitive with each other, but if they are together in a team against some of the other girls they get HYPED UP and WILL destroy their competition. 

One of them ends up in hospital for something serious but not life-threatening. What does the other bring along when they visit in order to cheer them up?

Martha brings homemade food that she cooked with her mom, UNO, Fatin’s emotional support makeup case, and has all the girls send a heartfelt card for Fatin. Also, a vibrator, which prompts Fatin to propose on the spot. (She may have been a bit delirious from fever, but still.)

How huggy are they?

It’s interesting, they’re very huggy with their respective people (Toni, Leah), but I’m not sure they hug each other all that much? They do physical affection, but maybe not via hugs? Like, Fatin will put her arms around Martha’s shoulders, and they’ll sit together with their knees touching, and they’ll touch each other’s hair and face, and hold hands. Not that many hugs though. 

What was the moment when they first realised that they’d become friends?

They start bonding pretty early on the island, but probably that one moment where Martha asks if she’ll have Romeos in her DMs too, and Fatin’s like MARTHA ANGEL YES OF COURSE <3

#the wilds #martha blackburn #fatin jadmani #fatin x martha #random meta #classicsnerd

[buryyourfavouritestrope]

May I walk you home? - Arima Kishou

A gentle hum settled within the corridors of the CCG Main Office; all the hype that had been built throughout the day had fizzled out hours ago.  Almost every employee had returned to their homes, leaving only the skeleton crews occupying the building.

He hadn’t meant to stay this late; Yoshitoki had pleaded with him earlier in the afternoon, when he’d visited Arima’s office spontaneously and found the man half asleep behind his desk, to go home and sleep in an actual bed. With a sigh he tore himself free of his chair, the material whined as it sprung back to its original form.  In his mind he reminded himself that he’d go home to shower and change before returning. There would be no point in resting; by the time he planted his head on his pillow he’d be beckoned back.

Kishou almost missed the sound of pen scratching at paper. If he hadn’t become so fine tuned to every creak and hushed whisper this level of the building emitted, he probably would’ve overlooked the simple noise. Yet, the soft sigh caressing his ears enticed him into finding the source.

Peering through an empty doorway he spotted her, a small frame hunched over a desk, with a pen cocked to her temple as she focused on the file before her. By the way her eyes would occasionally slid shut and stay there for a second before opening wide she was struggling to stay awake. Arima chose this moment to check the time once again.

“Normally people finish a write up of the day on the opposite side of midnight.” Arima theorized, to say the way she bounced in her seat and dropped all items in her hands didn’t amuse him would’ve been an understatement. He was attempting, rather poorly might he add, to contain a smirk.

“Special Class Investigator Kishou,” She yelped. “I just wanted to finish one file…three or six files ago. What time is it? Oh god, I had to visit-“Her eyes glanced towards her phone, the screen illuminating as the numbers burned into her retinas. She hadn’t meant to stay this late. She hadn’t meant to still be in the office after a thirty-six-hour shift.

“It’s ok, I’ve had my fair share of late nights. But you really should go home now, I hear your last investigation was difficult. It’s not uncommon for a ghoul’s threat level to rise in the field but to go from a lower-class ghoul to an SS rating.” He surmised. Her frame jumped from her seat as she began to wave her bandaged arms at him. As if to stop him from speaking any further.

“It was all the other members of the team, in fact I came away with only light injuries, I can’t say the same for the others.” She blurted. Arima let himself smile gently; he hadn’t met an Associate Special Class Investigator who was as humble as she was. Nor had he seen one with as much untainted innocence at their rank. “I offered to finish their case notes, as a way to help them.”

The room fell into the same gentle hum, Arima had found himself used to, once more. Her weight shifted on her feet as she chewed at her bottom lip. He could see her contemplating something and if he had to guess it would be whether to abandon the paperwork and leave or remain dedicated.

“May I walk you home?” Kishou questioned; it was an attempt to settle her mental debate. “if not now, I can wait for when you’re ready to leave” He added. Arima was curious. He’d always heard everyone’s praise for the Investigator but up until now he’d never conversed properly with her.

“We live in opposite directions” She spluttered, her hand lifting to her lips. “Not that I know where you live, I just meant that I would’ve guessed you lived in the nicer part of the city. I mean the guys in my team tend to call where I live a Ghoul hotspot, I mean I’ve only witnessed one incident outside of work” Her babble made him laugh. A rare noise indeed and it took her a second to notice as she continued talking.

“Even more reason to, plus a perk of being called the White Reaper means ghouls tend to steer clear of me” He jested. Another rare occurrence. The second in the space of five minutes, maybe he was exhausted. Still, he stood firm in the doorway. His eyes watching as she gathered her belongings without hesitation. Clearly, she’d given up protesting.

Before they knew it, they’d wandered further from the ominous Main office. Arima had listened as she stammered her way through the previously mentioned Ghoul case. Occasionally she would brush her fingers over one of her bandaged arms, he assumed she was doing it to remind herself that she wasn’t dreaming.

“What made you want to be an Investigator?” Arima inquired; her movements paused and for a second Arima doubted whether he’d asked the right question. He was curious, everything about her screamed that she was in the wrong profession. From the way she smiled to the way her eyes sparkled when she was nervous. Out loud he wouldn’t admit to it, but he found himself wanting to protect her from the harsh reality of the CCG. From the horrors of the world. Even in this short amount of time she had wiggled beneath the surface of his soul and infected him. He understood why everyone liked her so much.

“My brother,” The syllables held a weight he knew all to well. The numbness that consumed him hung from every letter as he turned his gaze to her. The shadows perfectly masked the emotions scattering across her features. Normally he would pry, a desperate attempt to study the joy people usually held when talking about their motivation. He wanted to be able to imitate it, perhaps to fool himself into believing he could be the same.

“I’m sorry” He found himself apologising, his eyes shifting to watch the surroundings. He’d taken note of almost everyone who had crossed their path. It was a precaution, should he need to fight.

“No, don’t be. If he were here, he’d be fanboying over you, I mean the sort of jaw to the floor type of excitement kids get with tv. He was insanely obsessed with Investigators, he got it from watching our mother. They both had a bizarre joy for dangerous situations. Finny was always an adrenaline junkie, he used to use balcony railings as tightropes, or play chicken in the roads near our home. My mother was always out, so it was my job to watch him. As a teenager he became hyper fixated on Ghouls and Investigators and for a while it was an innocent intrigue into how they fought. As a teenager he wanted to watch our mother in action. He wanted to watch Investigator’s fight in all their glory. So, at night he’d go paroling the back alleys for any Ghouls in our Ward. I used to follow after him just to ensure he didn’t get into any trouble or injured. Most of the time he’d only stumble on human crimes, a few times he’d stumble across a long-abandoned Ghoul attack. Our mother died on a mission years before I thought about joining. In fact, I only really wanted to be a bookstore clerk. Her death though sparked something in Finny, it drove him. He would go out longer, he’d go to the rougher areas. Every time I’d follow after him” She faltered briefly.

“Did he ever get into trouble? I can’t imagine all the time he only saw the back end of a ghoul hunt” Arima asked. It was stupid. He knew that the second he spoke, but his mouth moved quicker than his thoughts. She gave him a false smile. The type he’d used a few times.

“Oh boy, there were a couple close shaves. I used to throw him into a dumpster and cover his mouth to stop us from getting caught by a Ghoul. When we got home, he’d be angry but apologise and promise me he wouldn’t do anything reckless. He died shortly after our mother. For the longest time I blamed myself, he went to parole at the height of Ghoul activity back then, if I remember correctly you were just starting out at the CCG, and he used to rave about a certain blue haired investigator that he occasionally caught site of. I refused to go the night he was injured. I was exhausted from school and a part time job, so I begged him not to go. Selfish am I right?” She croaked. By now Arima should’ve stopped her. He should’ve placed a hand on her shoulder and hushed her as tears slowly fell down her face. Instead, he followed her steps as they turned the corner. The older Investigator wanted to disagree with her. It wasn’t selfish to value her own rest.

Kishou’s mind threw itself back to his beginnings with the CCG, he vaguely remembered hearing about an ordinary human turning up at fights. No-one quite understood how they kept finding them, but they had. The muffled whispers in his memory, caused him to step closer to the younger Investigator. It hadn’t been as though the pavement had narrowed beneath their feet. Arima had done it out of instinct as he listened to his own teenage voice in his memories. He remembered calling the unknown witness a fool, who would find himself dead.

“A bookstore clerk” Arima mused, he had meant to say it in his mind. Once again, his mouth betrayed him. He listened to her soft laugh. “I could see you doing that, just from everything that happened I would’ve thought you’d stay as far from the CCG as you could get.”

“Believe me I wanted nothing more than to move to a new country at that point, start a fresh somewhere less influenced by Ghoul’s but I kept hearing Finny, I kept visualising how happy he would get whenever he saw Investigators out and about. I’d never seen him happier, so I guess I joined to keep his memory alive. Especially after he died, even dying he was smiling as he clung to a piece of what I think was a Quinque” She recalled. “I found him the next morning, I almost fell over his half dead body as I left my room. He was gripping this Quinque shard as I tried to stop the bleeding. I think he accepted it, he just kept saying that the Investigators were beautiful. Apparently, he’d watched two Investigators take down a lower ranked Ghoul and they’d seen him. As they went to yell at him for putting himself in danger, some SS rated Ghoul turned up. Before they’d reached him, one of them had been killed. So the second one did his best to protect Finny. I don’t know how he got out. But he did. I was the only one he knew at his funeral. Just me and the Investigator who told me about the events”  

“I’m sorry,” Arima apologised once more. This time he placed his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s ok, it’s how life is sometime, I haven’t really told anyone that story, you’re the first.” She smiled at him. Her hands pointed to the home beside them and Arima found himself questioning when they had arrived. Or when his thumb had begun to rub circles into her shoulder. “This is me”

“Yes, then this is where we part ways. Thank you for answering my question. Good Night Asso-“ She cut him off.

“It’s really late, and I’d feel really bad if you had to walk all the way home. I mean the sun would be up before you arrived. So can I offer you the guest room. It’s not much but the bed’s better than the sofa. I have some of my dad’s old shirts in a box that I can fish out for you tomorrow morning.” Her words caught him by surprise. His eyes widening at the offer, he should’ve refused. He really should’ve refused but he found himself nodding.

He was staying because he was tired, because she had spoken to him as though he were her friend or family and because he could’ve sworn, bathed in the moonlight, he could see the vulnerability that encircled her eyes. She needed the company, he convinced himself, and though he knew he wasn’t much in the form of comfort he followed her inside.  

#arima kishou #arima kishou/reader #arima kishou x reader #kishou arima #tokyo ghoul imagines #Tokyo ghoul:re imagines #enter the I just think he's neat meme #I'm a sucker for stoic characters #also yes i chose Finny as the brothers name because of Black Butler don't @ me

[love-geeky-fangirl]

Ranking every Teen Drama I have ever watched

(Updated)

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

+ young Shailene Woodley and Molly Ringwald I guess

- everything else. Even Shailene Woodley's and Molly Ringwald's performances weren't that great because the writing is just oh so bad. The background music is bland and repetative and it sounds like out of some teenager's YouTube chanel. The plotlines are ridiculous and convoluted, which isn't neccessarily such a bad thing, because it is a teen drama show after all, the problem is the show seems to take itself too seriously. Other entries on this list also have ridiculously convoluted plotlines, but I'm ranking them highed because they don't take themselves too seriously and don't claim to be realistic like this show does. Seriously, from the title it suggests like this was going to be a real, uncensored look into high school but it's the furthest thing from it. Not to mention how problematic it is- God forbid someone suggests that a 14-year-old pregnant girl gets an abortion or gives the baby up for adoption without being seen as a terrible and despicable person.

Otp: Marc Molina x a job somewhere far, far away from these kids

Notps: every single pairing on this show

Best moment: literally none

Weirdest moment: "I'm such a whore!" "Well, you're my whore." What were the writers thinking??? Was this supposed to be romantic??

We Children From Zoo Station

+the aesthetic, the casting of Christiane, Detlef and Axel

-this was such a letdown. Honestly I was so hyped for it after seeing the trailer since I've read the book and didn't particularly like the movie- I feel like it's hard to fit all of Christiane's story into 90 minutes. That's why I was so excited about this show. Christiane's story covers so much, so it's easier to make it into a TV show when you don't want to ommit anything and butcher the story. But they somehow managed to do it anyway. They changed so much for no reason and completely erased Christiane's childhood trauma, which was important in the book. Now, I know you can say that it's just a loose adaptation, so it doesn't have to follow the book word for word. But I feel like if you already decided to tell her- a real person's story- you should at least do it authentically. Imo they shouldn't have tried to make the setting vague. It worked with Sex Education because the story of Sex Education is timeless. However, Christiane's story is not timeless. It's a true story set in the 1970s. If they were making a new show from scratch, I would have liked it. But this is an already existing story and they’re supposed to be just retelling it. My last issue is a nit pick but I wish the actresses playing Stella and Babsi were reversed. It just would've fit better.

Otps: all those kids x sobriety

Notp: Christiane x Detlef

Best moment: Christiane's first time in Sound was pretty true to the book

Weirdest moment: when Detlef became a gigolo because he needed money for his dog. Who tf thought of that?

Pretty Little Liars

+ makeup, style, the theme song, the drama and mystery that always kept me guessing, the cliffhangers at the end of each episode that made it so addictive, Emily's coming out story, Hanna and Spencer had some good lines

- the mishandling of some serious issues (namely eating disorders), romantization of student-teacher relationship, the timeline not making much sense, these writers seem to put more thought into the characters' outfits than the storylines

Otps: Emily x Maya, Hanna x Caleb

Notp: Ezria

Best moment: Hanna and Caleb in the shower (the sexual tension was cuttable with a knife)

Weirdest moments: Aria asking Ezra out in the middle of a make-up test (it was supposed to be cute but it was just cringy), Spencer trying to block A's text messages on a laptop, in the middle of a park (what? Spencer, you were supposed to be the smart one!)

One Tree Hill

+ Brooke, the theme song, Chad Michael Murray

- the casual drinking and driving (I mean seriously these kids play a drinking game at a party and then casually hop into a car and drive home??), too much basketball and cheerleading (that's not a bad thing per se but I just don't really care about neither of these things), it just seems too stereotypical and kinda bland?? I couldn't really get into it

Otp: Naley

Notp: Peyton x Nathan

Best moment: Naley by the dock

Weirdest moment: "I guess I'm just a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside a bitch." It's not really a bad moment but a cringy line. I guess the writers though they were being clever but it just sounded bad.

Dawson's Creek

+ the clothes, the 90s aesthetic, the 90s soundtrack, many movie references, Pacey is a sweetheart, Jen is a feminist icon, dealing with mental health issues through Andie (it's rare to see in shows as old as this)

- the slutshaming of Jen really hasn't aged well, the storyline of Pacey being statury raped by his much older teacher was mishandled (it was either treated as scandalous, cool or in Andie’s case somehow shameful), same goes for Jen’s backstory- it was mentioned she was raped at 12 by an older man and then never brought up again, Dawson is the most unlikable protagonist ever and his friendship/relationship with Joey is codependent and possessive, the dialogue is sometimes pretentious and unrealistic, the timeline doesn't really add up- I can never tell what time of the year it's supposed to be, because it looks like it's always fall for some reason. And how did they sophomore year have two homecomings?

Otps: Pacey x Andie, Pacey x Joey (yes, both at the same time)

Notp: Dawson x Joey

Best moments: Jen helping Joey when that jerk was spreading rumours about her and then Jen and Joey locking Abby in the closet together (I love it when they stick together instead of tearing each other down), Pacey and Joey bickering

Weirdest moments: when Joey was upset because Dawson didn’t want to tell her how often he “walks his dog”, when Jen was about to have a treesome at a party and Dawson walked into the room and carried her out despite her kicking and screaming

Glee

+ funny, Sue Sylvester's iconic, great covers and a way to find new songs, the performances are aesthetically pleasing, lgbtq+ representation, tackling of serious issues, coming out story, a father who’s accepting of his son’s sexuality right away despite not really understanding it (it’s so rare to see, that’s why it’s so refreshing), the plotlines are ridiculous but at least the show doesn't take itself too seriously

-as I already said the 1st season was great but after that it just seemed like the writers made up a checklist of hard issues they should tackle and tried to tackle every single one of them while covering every single song and it just fell flat. Prime example- Quinn ending up in a wheelchair getting into a car crash to warn us from drinking and driving, singing I’m Still Standing and then suddenly being able to walk normally after. a few episodes Rachel and Finn got almost all songs, while other characters were criminally underrated and underused (Tina, Quinn, Mercedes). The teachers are questionable to put it mildly. Cringy moments- Finn singing You're Having My Baby to Quinn in front of her parents when it wasn't even his baby! Also no one except of Kurt looks like they could be in high school. And why are these cheerleaders wearing their uniforms 24/7??

Otps: Brittana, Sam x Quinn, Tina x Artie (unpopular opinion, I know), Mr Schue x unemployment

Notp: Quinn x Finn

Best moments: Quinn giving birth to Bohemian Rhapsody

Weirdest moment: Rachel's gross and painfully awkward crush on Mr Schue, Mr Schue joining the Glee club on the stage for a performance of Toxic and girls in the audience cat calling him (Ewww)

Euphoria

+ Zendaya's and Jacob Elordi's performances, tackling of serious issues such as drug addiction and overdose, anxiety and depression, abusive relationships and abortion in a better manner than most (if not all) teen dramas, the aesthetics, makeup and wardrobe, the musical number in the finale, the special episodes giving us insight into the characters' psychology, toxic relationships not being romanticized (which is sadly rare), teenagers sounding like actual real life teens (no "I reject reality" crap)

- lack of comic relief (why so serious all the time), sexualization of teen characters (I know this is something many teen dramas are guilty of but it's the most evident here), too much nudity (I know some of you are going to come at me with: "But it's realistic!" So what? It is realitic that teenagers get naked when they go into shower but does it mean we have to see it?? It seems to me like this show is trying too hard to be "boundary pushing" at times and ends up being scandalous just for the sake of being scandalous), these characters just aren't believable as high school juniors to me (they sound like high schoolers but they certainly don’t act, look or dress that way). There's no reason this show couldn't have been set in college.

Otps: Rue x sobriety, Nate x prison

Notps: Nate x Maddy, Cassie x McKay

Best moments: "You did this to me!" and the musical number in the season 1 finale

Weirdest moment: the fact that Maddy lost her virginity at 14 to a 40-year-old man being mentioned so casually because apparently she was "totally in control". Excuse me what??

Skins

+ style and makeup- each character has a signature trademark (Sid and his beanie, Effy's eyeliner, Cassie's soft eyeshadow), their British accents, I'm pretty sure this is the only teen drama that follows multiple classes, teenage characters being played by actual teen actors, the characters looking like average people you meet in high school and not as if they just walked off the runway, dealing with serious issues such as drug abuse, eating disorder, parental abandonment etc (yes, some people claim the show romanticized it, but I disagree. It's not the show that romanticized it- it's the fans. The show tried to portray the dangers of drugs as well as possible. Think about it- every time characters used drugs it ended in a disaster. In the pilot they thought that Cassie overdosed and ended up crashing a car while rushing into the hospital. In later season Effy hit her friend in the head with a rock because she was having a bad trip. That's not romanticizing drugs.), Effy is iconic and honestly the first episode was enough to get me hooked

- every single teacher being a creep and having a thing for a student at some point, the show can get too dark and unncessarily dramatic at times. Did that many people have to die? Did Chris's death really have to be this graphic? Timeline doesn't really add up- are 8 episodes supposed to cover the whole year? It would've made more sense if there were more episodes in a season.

Otps: Chris x Jal, Emily x Naomi

Notps: Sid x Michelle

Best moment: ooh baby it's a wild world

Weirdest moment: Chris's graphic death

The OC

+ more grounded in reality than many others on this list, the theme song, the love stories, Seth and Summer are funny, the friendships are believable and the whole group has great chemistry

- too many unneccessary fights, Luke is the worst, everyone is way too casual about drunk driving, these parents are WAAAY too chill (I know this can be said about many teen dramas but it's the most obvious here. How did the Roberts and the Coopers let two 16-year-old girls go to Mexico alone?? With no supervision?? What?)

Otps: Seth x Summer, Ryan x Marissa

Notp: Luke x Marissa

Best moments: the “oh no, there’s only one bed” in the Mexico episode, Seth and Summer's first kiss and that kiss at the yacht, Ryan and Marissa's first date by the pool

Weirdest moment: these parents letting their teenage kids go to Mexico alone. It's irresponsible when they're 16 but apparently they let them go there and party every year. What?

Gossip Girl

+ every episode having a clever title, the style, the makeup, the 00s soundtrack, the glamour of it all (it feels like reading a very gossipy magazine!), all the scandals, this show never pretends to portray the realitic teenage experience so it can pretty much be as far-fetched as it wants to and you can’t question it, it gives you a chance to live the fantasy of being super rich, living with a penthouse, riding a limo to school and going to parties in New York City every night

- the final reveal doesn't make any sense, just like with PLL these writers seemed to have put more thought into the outfits and makeup than into the plotlines, romantization of a toxic relationship, having every two straight characters date or hook up at some point, which just felt forced, mishandling of serious issues (Blair's eating disorder, Eric's suicide attempt and Serena and Jenny's sexual assault from the pilot being brought up when it's convenient but not really dealt with and brushed off at other times), sexualization of teen characters

Otps: Dan x Blair, Serena x Nate

Notps: Chuck x Blair

Best moments: the Thanksgiving flashbacks, Blair and Serena running around New York and taking selfies in stolen dresses, Nate and Serena’s first time (although it was better in the books) and then their kiss at the white party, the sheer scandal of "I killed someone", Dan giving Blair a plastic tiara to make her feel like a princess

Weirdest moments: Chuck's father returning from the death and then dying again, by yeeting himself off the roof

Freaks and Geeks

+ probably the most realistic teen drama there is, the characters dress the way I can see actual teens dressing, funny, but also heatbreaking at times, probably the only teen show that included an intersex character, the characters being a little stereotypical but self-aware at least, young James Franco and Jason Segel

- the bullying being a bit too much at times and it's a bit unrealistic that the teachers would do literally nothing about it, too short- I will never understand why this got cancelled

Otps: Daniel x Kim, Lindsay x Nick, Amy x Ken

Notps: Sam x Cindy

Best moments: Sam breaking down at the end of Garage Door, Daniel and Kim getting back together in the rain

Weirdest moment: Cindy doing a 180 and becoming super mean when she started dating Sam.

Gilmore Girls

+ so many movie, literary and music references, the quotable lines (what a great way to learn about new movies, books and bands! It’s so unique for a TV show to make you smarter), the witty banter, the comfort of the first few seasons (it really feels like wrapping a warm blanket around yourself while holding a hot cup of coffee, I can’t explain why, but it’s such a comfort show), the quirky small town with many unique festivals, many entertaining and snappy fights where everyone has a point, characters dealing with real world problems (seriously, how often do you see a storyline about termites? Or a teenager with zit cream on a teen drama show?), this is also one of the few shows where teenagers are shown to have rules and restrictions and curfews (finally some kids growing up with strict parents representation) and doing homework and studying and not just partying and drinking and having sex all the time and that’s so refreshing

- but while it is refreshing to see teenagers waiting to have sex and not doing it behind every corner, the show is kind of sex negative. Every single time a (female) character loses her virginity it ends in a disaster. Even when she loses it after she’s married! It doesn’t make any sense, unless the writers just really hated women. Also slutshaming (”I got the good kid!”) ewww. The money and budget doesn’t make much sense on the show either and the girls seem immune to calories. I know some people might come at me for this with: “But it’s just a show!” but I think it’s harmful to show beautiful, thin women eat nothing but tons of junkfood all the time and never excersize and then fatshame people who do excersize but aren’t fortunate enough to be blessed with amazing Gilmore genes, and then throw around tactless references to eating disorders.

Otps: Lane x Dave, Jess x Rory

Notps: Lane x Zach, Rory x Dean, Lorelai x Christopher

Best moments: Then She Appeared, Rory’s valedictorian speech, Lorelai’s graduation

Weirdest moment: Lorelai and Christopher getting married in Paris at 4am. That’s not how it works in Europe. Do Americans think every single Europian country works like Las Vegas, where you can just get married whenever you decide??

#teen dramas #these are just my opinions #so don't take it personally #u might disagree #but idrc

[hysteriium]

Doctor’s Orders

(Gif isn’t mine)

(A/n): I had a request for some Dark Knight nurse Joker action so,,,,, here! Hope it satisfies! :) @pennyship​ is my HYPE she is the light of my LIFE she helped me make sure this was coherent and lmk if I was being too much of a self-deprecating asshole HIFSHDFUIS. Enjoy!

(Summary): A deal’s a deal. 

(Pairing): DK!Joker x Reader

(Word Count): 7,200k+ 

(Warnings): Smut (18+), swearing, dub-con, implied stalking.

———

The sea of people your shoulders were ramming up against seemed to be a never-ending stream of mayhem; a faucet that desperately needed to be turned. Truthfully, you were surprised you hadn’t been dunked, swept under the furious stampede of shoes and trampled on. 

Ever since the threat was made by Joker, the hospital had been thrown into panic mode. Staff, law enforcement, and the clamour of patients added to the suffocatingly anxious air. It was proving to be a very tolling day, the cherry on top – a sour, bitter one might you add – was that somewhere in between you'd lost your necklace. You remembered twirling the small pendant between your thumb and forefinger while everyone, you included, crowded around the small TV in the waiting room. 

Just minutes after receiving the news, after hearing that soul-chilling voice announce its equally as cold plans, the jewellery vanished. During the rush, there was the possibility someone had snatched it off you. Too distracted by the waves of patients you had to tend to, you guessed you failed to notice its absence until too late. Alternatively, your meddling could have loosened the delicate piece, rendering its tumble inevitable. So much so, that when you were practically slamming into people, like a typical game of bumper cars, it may have fallen. 

Regardless, it was gone, irrespective of its sentimental value. For now, you had more pressing matters to worry about. 

Lives.

Coworkers tried their hardest to lead subjects to safety, whether by their beds or by feeble arms. It looked like an accident in itself waiting to happen, a ticking time bomb which no one would have the luxury to clean up after. A dramatic number of personnel had dropped off the face of the earth within minutes of the news broadcast and so you all tried to make do. There was no doubt the hefty chunk had left to escape the danger, fearful for their own lives. 

Irony at its finest. 

As you attempted to escape the barrage and locate your next patient, a sharp turn took you into one of the rooms. The cubic area wasn’t large and its walls were coated with a particularly unappealing shade of mint green – a style which after all these years seemed as hideous as the first time your poor eyes made contact with it. The empty bed settled within the middle told you the patient had already been assisted, and you were about to leave when a flash of white and copper caught your vision. Upon second glance, you realised it was another nurse. With her back turned, you could see the glistening of her short framed hair. She looked to be occupied, her posture odd and hunched over, hiding whatever she was doing. You could also hear... mumbling? 

Curious.

Clearly not hearing you enter, you promptly cleared your throat, trying not to startle her. Then, you approached.

“Everyone’s crazy out there…” you started with a bitter laugh. 

The further you travelled, the more obvious the grumbles became. The clacking of something metallic emerged with your increasing proximity, a clamour from a fidgeting of some sort. After a quick flicker, you noticed that her shoulders were quite broad, along with her seemingly defined biceps. While it was more of an observation, the pit in your stomach told you something about her was off.

No response. Not even an acknowledgement.

Your amusement subsided when it was met with the ever-so-reassuring retort of silence, your smile falling as well when your next words received the very same. 

“Especially since everyone’s ditched.” 

You were about to ask if she was alright, considering your existence had apparently been downgraded to ‘invisible,’ when suddenly, you froze. 

A pool of crimson had seized your attention.

The woman who was yet to speak, let alone turn, went rigid when she heard you gasp. Your hand had automatically flown to your mouth then, the distinctive whack of skin slapping echoed throughout the room. Though, such a change was lost on you as your instincts immediately kicked in. The source of the sinister liquid was hidden behind the bed, but you didn’t need to see any more of the scene to already make a conclusion. A little shuffle to the right had informed you that the man had been an officer, his uniform soaking up the seemingly fresh bullet wound wedged just above his heart. 

Immediately, your gaze returned to your questionable coworker, the adrenaline rushing through you tingling your fingertips. In one swift movement, you had forced yourself up against the wall opposite her, your shaky figure slowly sidestepping towards the exit, ready to pounce for the door. The disturbing reality of the situation washed over you when the new angle enabled you to view what her frame was protecting – what she had been playing with all along. 

A gun.  

“M-ma’am?” The whimper that left you was a pathetic sound, one that coincided with the wavering of your lips. To top things off, like the legendary klutz you were, you stumbled over one of the metallic bins, a small rectangular thing that only served to signal your intent to escape. 

That had been the last straw.

“Ah-ah-ah!” She sung, abruptly whirling around. 

Or, more accurately, he. 

Dressed there in all his glory stood the very man who’d threatened to blow up the entire building. Threatened to kill hundreds of innocents in the process. To say you saw your life flash before your eyes when he reared his gun towards you was an understatement; all colour draining from your face as if it had merely been coated on like his own face paint. The glaring abyss, angry and entrancing, was reminiscent of the gaping hole in your heart, decaying from the ever-so-acidic weight of terror. And, even though half of his face was concealed by a white surgical mask – an absurd combination with the makeup – he still succeeded to emit a viciously deadly aura.

He had snuck in and hidden right under everyone's noses.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

With a cringe, he yanked off the mask. The 'snap!' of its elastic strings bouncing back emanated as he flung it behind him uncaringly. Peeling off the copper wig and discarding it similarly, he snickered at your expression, “well, helloo, beautiful.”  

Involuntarily, you felt ice glide down your spine, branching throughout your body and leaving its distinctive mark in the form of risen skin. The sound of his voice was enough to strike fright in anyone. He'd proven as such from his inception. The very thought of what he'd do to you was even more disturbing.  

“D-don't.” 

“Awww, scared of this lil ol' thing?” Sadistic giggles spilled from his lips as he jiggled the weapon. 

“She won't bi-te,” the last portion had his tongue flicking off the roof of his mouth.   

Your eyes had been darting from him to the firearm nestled loosely in his grasp, his hand worryingly relaxed for such a weapon of butchery. Contemplating whether or not you had an opportunity to run for it, a sudden cry rippled the silence. 

A sharp inhale followed by another moan to your left had you twisting your neck, deviating from the oh-so-dangerous man in front of you. Similarly, the gun locked in his clutch was flung towards the origin. The slant of his weapon – downturned towards the floor – spoke volumes; told you all you needed to know.  

The man was still alive. 

“You know what the, uh, funny thing is about people?” Joker started, his voice dangerous and spoken with an edge, a serrated knife slicing into the well-bolstered tautness of the air. 

“They're like,” he paused, looking up at the ceiling as if to remember. The whole charade, his wiggling fingers and his drawn-out words were all to drag out the gut-churning anticipation, “insects.” 

You knew he was talking to you, even if his focus was elsewhere and occupied by the man who he’d previously shot. It didn't take much observation to pinpoint the man's strange idiosyncrasies. The way his tongue darted out, speedily scaling the risen tissue on the corners of his lips, the unpredictable fluctuations in his tone, the controlled gestures of his hands. All screamed erratic.  

Suddenly scrunching his nose, he dragged back the hammer with his thumb, the small clacks from the small extension exacerbating the wild drumming of your heart. 

“Theeey. Just. Don't. Die–”

“WAIT!” You shouted, shooting out your trembling palms. 

It had been an improvised move, one that could have gotten you killed, but the innate tendency to prevent bloodshed (well, more), seemed to override logic. You had trained all your life for this job – to be a nurse and help people. Like hell you were about to just stand by and let him kill another innocent on your watch. Either you'd succeed or die trying.  

Leaning over the bed to view the state the man was in, you recognised positive signs. Like always, things could be better, but he was still fighting. Meaning, there was still a chance you could bring him back from the brink of death and get him to safety. You just needed to convince the other male waving the firearm around somehow. Surprise him. 

“Ju-just–” you swallowed the lump in your throat and shut your glassy eyes for a brief moment to release a steady breath, “take me instead.”

“A-and then–” you riskily took a step forward, your palms still raised defensively, “the-then you can do anything you want. Please. Just let me help him.”   

The man who had his head angled, essentially letting it hang, perked up his eyebrows at your proposal, the prominent creases of his forehead no longer fully concealed by his smudged greasepaint. Slowly, like a big cat toying with its prey, he prowled forward. His steady approach had you shrinking back into the wall behind you, your arms firmly planting themselves against its chilly surface while the trickle of laughter revealed his wicked pleasure. The taunting voices in your head told you that you’d worsened the situation and further cornered yourself into his vile trap – playing right into his hands. 

With no concept of personal space, he then hovered over you, face only centimetres away from your own. You could tell this was just one of the ways he intimidated people – gained control. By some miracle, you endured eye contact. 

“Hmm, are ya willing to shake on that, sweethear-t?” He drawled, the sudden weight shoved against your stomach involuntarily coercing you to look down; down at the handgun practically connected to you, the point of its muzzle hiding in the fabric of your uniform. When you naively tried to create more distance, the attempt ended up as a pathetic, miserable display. Soon, you gave in, your fingers reaching around the gun. Slow, stuttering motions manipulated your wrist as you worked to mimic the action of a handshake. 

The hum he emitted at the interaction was deep and reverberated – almost like a purr – the sound igniting an unimaginable yearning you tried with all your might to suppress. You didn't even want to acknowledge it, mentally kicking yourself when you instinctively glanced at his lips. You prayed he didn't notice, but a part of you knew better. The way he inched closer, your noses nearly touching confirmed this, coaxing you to look back up at him. Focusing into those dark, glittering eyes, you saw the hellfire behind them, a black hole which sucked out any form of innocence; a cesspool which bred corruption. Speckles of intrigue swam in them. 

Or was it excitement? 

You couldn't exactly tell, but you knew it was bad news. Knew that you had, most likely, made one of the worst deals in your life. 

To compare this man to the devil, the master of deals, was inaccurate. With only just one, tiny, interaction, you could infer this. No. He was much worse. Worse because unlike fairytales, unlike the mystic, this man existed. He could, if he so very willed, demolish you in an instant. 

“Welll,” his gaze lingered on for a split second – just enough for you to notice – before he reared himself back, “that settles it.” 

Joker, who was much taller, was able to effortlessly shift his focus to the policeman struggling to push himself up against the wall. The injured man shimmied back into its cold reinforcements while one of his hands desperately fiddled with his belt. 

Entirely shielded from the scene due to your angle, the most visible section being his head, you missed the way the wounded man drew his firearm and aimed it for the anarchist in front of you. The only sign something had transpired was the blur of white in front of you bobbing low, as well as the dizzy scent of smoky gunpowder. As the shot rang out, echoing throughout the room like an explosion, causing brief deafness, Joker ducked down just in time. The bullet whizzed above him, wedging itself into the wall behind, just missing the glass of the door; a permanent, antithetical imprint.   

“Op– and that's my cue,” with a quick wink, he grabbed his previously discarded attire. 

“See you around, doll,” he said, zipping out of the room entirely.

The officer slumped up against the wall when he realised he hadn't hit his target, exhaustion enveloping his form. You made your way to the dying man as fast as you could and began to tend to him. 

“Oh!” 

You jolted away from your patient when Joker suddenly appeared again, head peeking from the corner. He had the surgical mask, although this was lowered and the wig was back on, concealing the scraggly strands of dyed hair. 

“And – heheh – you mayyy want to, uh, make it fast,” he shook the detonator in his hand, clicking his tongue twice with a crooked grin before he took off for good. 

With the door now wide open and the overwhelmingly white hallway visible, you quickly noticed how empty it was. It was virtually a ghost town. While this meant it was easier to navigate him to safety, it also spelled trouble. After halting his bleeding, you were going to need to move him, this being problematic since you weren't exactly the strongest. 

You weren't up to that part yet, however.

"Stay with me okay? Can you hear me?"

The dazed look in his eyes and the expansion of his pupils told you that he was experiencing head trauma. Assessing the small bloody mark against the green paint and the gruesome splatter near it, you were able to figure out a rough idea of what happened. The force of the bullet had propelled him backwards and whipped his head back, it rutting up against the wall while it tried to catch up with his body. The aggressive hit to the cranium was what finally knocked him out, rendering him limp until he later regained consciousness. 

Ouch.  

It took a moment, though the gentle nod of his head answered your question.

"Good," grabbing scissors from one of the tables nearby, you tore into his shirt, finding the source of the wound. Another positive – just from the way the crimson liquid was flowing, it was clear no arteries had been hit.

"What's your name?" 

It was essential to keep the victim as awake as possible, your questioning aiming to do just that. 

No longer at his side, you rushed around the room like a chicken with its head cut off, frantically trying to find a tourniquet or any sort of compressor. 

“Daniel," his voice came out strained and delayed.

"Well Daniel, we're going to get you out of here, alright?" You said, hoping he could hear your reassurances over your wild searching.  

The room was more of a mess than when you entered, bits and pieces of equipment decorating the floor as if a twister had come through and hurled them there. You found it funny how in times of great urgency the things you needed most you could never find. 

You were about to give up and tear Daniel's uniform, using the shreds of his suit when your quivering digits stumbled across precisely what was needed. When you found the tourniquet, you had to literally hold yourself back from screaming eureka. You hastily returned to the disoriented man and dragged along one of the wheelchairs which had been abandoned. In no time, the wound, both entry and exit, had been covered, the utensil applying a great deal of pressure. Daniel's cries hadn't been easy to listen to but as you gently eased him into the wheelchair, they lessened. 

The home stretch. 

Fiercely clutching the push handles, you flew into the corridor, extremely conscious of the time and the tiny device which had been attached to Joker's palm like superglue. The mental image motivated you to maintain your swift pace, Daniel's head lolling to the side, jostling with each sudden movement. 

By some miracle, as you pushed through those automatic glass doors, you saw the last of the patients being loaded into the yellow school buses. Using the ramp, relief washed over you like a chilled breeze on a hot summer's day. The closest bus was where you headed, and you flagged down one of the doctors to get immediate help for Daniel. Within minutes, he was moved into the bus receiving treatment. 

About to dispose of the wheelchair, an enormous roar had you rearing your head back to the hospital. The ground shook with each stuttering explosion, the surreal view forcing you to look on with wide eyes. It was a distressing sight to process, but for some reason, you were unable to look away from the tragedy. 

This was especially the case when a familiar blob of white waddled out of the building with outstretched arms, his painted smile wider than ever. As if everything had been predestined, he knew exactly where you were, immediately noticing you gawking. Stuck between the weird limbo of boarding the bus, he gave you a wave. It wasn't fast, nor one in which required his whole limb. It was a slow, controlled one, only the tips of his fingers obliging. Time seemed to slow with the movement, each drawn out wiggle adding to the deep-rooted layers of terror and astonishment. A staring contest ensued. 

Before you could intake the sight anymore, let alone process it, you felt the distinctive clutch of hands from behind, pawing at you. As you were hauled into the bus by your underarms, the doors slammed shut with a hiss. Then, the bus booked it, your eyes never deterring. 

Nor his. 

———

Hours after the event, Joker had been captured and thrown into Arkham Asylum like most criminals in Gotham. While your job was more or less blown to smithereens and unsalvageable, forcing you to look elsewhere, you were sure it had marked the end of your interactions with him. 

All in all, life seemed to revert back to normal. Weeks passed as you hunted for another position, and ultimately, your searching paid off when you found another hospital. Resuming your duty as a nurse, Daniel had been transferred to the same institution for treatment as chance so happened and in a weird twist, you were assigned as his carer. His recovery wasn't very long but within that small time frame you knew him, you’d come to enjoy his company – perhaps a bit too much. Time revealed the feeling was mutual by how, as he so eloquently put it, he owed you dinner for 'saving his ass'. 

How could you have resisted?

However, like the venomous serpent it was, fate appeared to strike when you least expected it; baring and infiltrating with its noxious fangs. This much was proven when you arrived back home from said ‘dinner.’ Expecting a night filled with laughter and shy glances, reality was disappointing. Instead, you were met with a boatload of anxiety and stress. 

For starters, the dress you had laid out earlier in the morning had magically disappeared when you returned from work, and you eventually gave up searching after a ridiculous amount of time. Opting to leave the house with a backup, you hadn’t dared to peek at the time. Yet, the worst was yet to come; the straw that broke the camel's back was the amount the traffic jam you wound up in. 

Everything that could’ve gone wrong, went wrong. 

In total, the high of the night, came screeching to a stop when you spotted blinding flashes of red and blue. Combined with the waving, directing hands of law enforcement, the weight of dread compelled you to roll down your window and ask around. A few ignored you, though you had gotten some one-worded answers – ‘accident,’ and ‘crash’ being the mains. Yet, none of their explanations, underwhelming and dismissive at best, prepared you for the shock which cocooned your worn form as the culprit revealed itself – a firetruck. 

On fire. 

It was almost like a sick joke. 

The truck was completely destroyed and wedged between the entrance of the bridge, blocking exactly where you needed to go. In summary, it looked like you weren’t seeing Daniel anytime soon.  

Heaven only knew how long you sat in the car for when you arrived back home again. Resting your throbbing forehead against the leather steering wheel in a pathetic attempt to fight the manifesting tension headache. You had practically driven in one giant loop. It felt as though the Gods were laughing at you, all huddled around each other in their perfect utopia looking down, pointing and snickering. 

You needed a drink. 

When you finally did stumble out of the vehicle, you just managed to make out the small rectangular object placed ever so delicately on your doorstep. Then, with the automatic sensor light flickering on, you were able to identify the material it was sheathed in: recycled wrapping paper. Purple tinted and crinkled, the colour complemented the vibrant green bow criss-crossed on top. 

The hues alone communicated enough.

Hey, at least Joker was an environmentalist. 

Even rotting in a cell, he was still able to pull strings, sustaining some semblance of terror. He must’ve had men on the outside, eager to do his bidding. 

The strange feeling of being watched, the apparent echoes trailing your footsteps, the disordered internal debates sparked by open windows over the past few weeks finally made sense. You had merely chalked off the occurrences and the growing collection of missing items to your overactive imagination. To your paranoia. 

The naive belief that Joker was too busy wrapped up in a straitjacket to chase up on the deal you’d idiotically settled on had been shattered, thrown to the ground and stomped on. Originally, you doubted he even remembered the agreement; he certainly didn't seem like a man capable of holding down a thought – the chaotic energy emanating from him so astounding it was almost a phenomenon. Though, this had been wrong. Foolishly, you had thought yourself safe. 

Foolishly, you were mistaken. 

The joke was on you. 

You wanted to go to the cops. You wanted to turn in the little gift of death. The hovering worry of it being tampered with in some way, everlasting. Running rampant and wild with possibilities, your imagination outrageously tried to guess what was inside while your curiosity simultaneously nagged at you. 

Overwhelmed by the two shrieking entities, you reached down to pick up the small package, most likely adding to your list of dumb decisions. A small Joker card was attached to the bow, the bottom-half dangling, while tiny, messy crimson writing demanded the card to be flipped. It read:

'Tick tock!' 

The phrase was repeated in scratchy, crazed scribbles, decorating the card in a rather unsettling fashion. 

Swamped with confusion, itching fingers coaxed you to look inside the ambitiously innocuous box. Within its cardboard confounds laid a circular pocket watch – withered and deteriorated. You could barely make out the thin hair-line cracks in the glass. Although deceivingly harmless at first inspection, further scrutiny revealed they were deep-rooted and hardly repairable. 

Your heart skipped a beat when the sensory light suddenly shut off, but you didn’t need it any longer. Not with the harrowing imprint of the card cruelly carved into your brain. Ultimately, the message was loud and clear:

The end was nigh. 

Your end. 

The very words Joker had uttered to you haunted your thoughts like a spectre: a promise of your finale. Of your very last, spectacular, blue-faced, gasping breath. You were about to pull out your keys to unlock the door and barricade yourself inside when you noticed something horrifically disturbing. 

The door was slightly open.

With a hand reaching for the phone and ready to dial the police, your shoulder served to nudge it open. No groans emerged from its hinges as you pushed yourself inside, immediately heading left in the darkness to the kitchen. In the hopes of reducing any noise, you'd taken off your heels before you entered the house, mindfully placing them away from the door in case you needed to make a quick exit. 

Your go-to stop was the cutlery drawer. Gently sliding it open, you felt around for a knife, snatching it away when you found the right one. As if on cue, the kitchen light flicked on, rendering you momentarily blind from the dramatic shift in luminance. Like a newly birthed animal, scrambling to comprehend its surroundings, you flipped your body against the counter and wordlessly threatened the intruder. Pretending like it would make a difference, you waved the weapon around carelessly, eyes attempting to adjust.

"Sorry for the deee-lay," a familiar voice drawled, one that shook you to your very core. Within the few seconds of focusing, you observed how Joker mimicked a cringe, dragging out his 'e's'. His figure was resting against the second door frame, opposite of the way you had snuck in. The plum coat he often wore was lost and his sleeves were hastily rolled back to his elbows, exposing his toned arms. Along with all this, the infamous green vest was no longer hugging his waist, instead the tucked in hexagonal blue patterned shirt made a firm appearance, with olive diamond ridden suspenders. 

"I've been a bit… busy."

"And, uh, by the looks of it," he paused as he eyed you up and down, scanning the form-fitting dress you completely forgot you had on, "you have too." 

In an attempt to shield yourself from his sweeping, to hide how begrudgingly exposed you felt,  you crossed your arms against your chest. It was a gesture he ignored. 

"How did your little play date…" He clicked his tongue, waving his hands in gestures of quotations, “go, hmm?” 

You couldn’t help the involuntary falter in your expression when the words left his mouth. The series of unfortunate events which appeared to plague your day no longer resembled coincidence. The thought that he had been monitoring every movement was disturbing to say the least. 

“Not so well?” He continued with an all-knowing grin, tilting his head until it was properly angled against the door frame, following the lead of his body. The only divergence was in his suffocating gaze, displaying ponderance.

“Seems like poor Daniel, uh, missed his chance." 

The way his name rolled off of Joker’s tongue contained deep-seated malice, a guttural growl which had you rutting back into the counter with a jump. Bruises were sure to form on the tender flesh of your backside by morning. 

“Wh-what did you do?” The words came out mumbled as if you were afraid to know the answer, and in a way, you supposed you were. Still shaking, you hardly deterred the point of the knife from the criminal in front of you, the blade wavering so much it almost looked like its length was vibrating on its own accord.

"Ohhh, nothing a little gasoline couldn’t fix…”

It was only then when you realised he was slowly making his way towards you, slow and calculated and ready to pounce. With each one of his steps, you could feel every agonising jolt from your heart – feel it pick up its pace.  

Then, you mulled over his comment, recalling the terrible traffic, the ember hellblaze engulfing the raging red of the firetruck, and the amount of time it took you to maneuver out of the driving nightmare. 

It was all because of him. 

“And now that I have you allll to myself, we can get down to business," by now he had already inched halfway into the room.   

"I swe-swear to God, I will use this if you don't step back." 

Regardless of how many times you swiped the knife – to get it to look like you were actually serious about using the weapon – Joker remained unperturbed.

"But all I wanted to do was say hiii," he paused his advances, his hands shooting up to display his palms while his scarred mouth fell into a mocking pout, "especially to my favvvvou-rite nurse."

“I-I’m warning you–” 

He was barely a meter in front of you now as his towering figure practically cornered you like your first encounter. The wave of déjà vu flooding your senses drove you to raise the knife and plunge – or at least try to. Stopped midair was the kitchen utensil, along with your struggling arm by his forceful grip. He hadn’t even cared to toss a glance at the incoming weapon, maintaining composition as he swiftly and effortlessly succeeded in capturing your wrist. Only after did he shift attention, a low whistle of feigned surprise his barbed acknowledgment. He had drained all your hope, then. Killed whatever shred of optimism you had left in the process; hell, it didn’t even look like he was trying.  

In one swift maneuver, he ripped the blade out of your hands and quickly tossed it to the side, pinning your lower half against the counter as he did so, "did you – heeheh – really think I was just gonna let you go? Hmm? Forget about ya?” 

You tried your best next to use your hands – to slap him, to push him away, to wriggle out of the trap his body had forced you in. Yet, tricky vine-like hands excelled in capturing your own. Then, acting like nothing happened, as if it were a mere momentary hiccup, he continued, his tongue flickering out to dab at his scars, "no no no, you see, you caught my eye."

"A selfless little bird!” 

“Willinggg to sacrifice your life for another,” he spat, vicious and gruff; the volatility of his tone made it hard to decipher his thoughts. Though, it wasn’t as if you were well versed in such a thing to begin with. One moment revealed mockery, the next, disdain. 

What was real?

Maneuvering his hold on your wrists into one hand, his unoccupied digits reached for your hair, twirling a small strand that had fallen in front of your face during the struggle, “I've come to coll-ect.” 

“P-please-” Your breathing came out uneven through your nostrils as you clamped your eyes shut, still attempting to create distance. The feeling from last time, the shame woven into the forbidden craving had arisen again and you essentially prayed that he chalked off your squirming to fear and not to a specific… discomfort.    

"Noww, relaaax – doctor’s orders,” he hummed, wiggling his eyebrows. A trickle of joy spilled from his scarred lips, “what happened to that bravery?” 

You had shied away from his stare up until then, the rough hold which had migrated to your chin forcefully wiggling you closer. When your eyes met his dark ones, his eyebrows flicked upwards in what seemed like a tic. 

 “I-if you’re going to kill me, just do it,” you forced out. Gloved fingers squeezed at your cheeks.

“I’ve had a change of heart.” 

His thumb swiped your quivering lower lip, a sight he was thoroughly engaged in. Mere centimetres apart, it was there when you realised, with his breath sweeping against your mouth, that you wanted to kiss him. You really had sunken.

“Though, I am looking forward to – oh how did you put it? Letting me do what I want?" 

In one sudden, erratic movement, he wedged his knee between your legs and lifted the limb slowly, sliding it up until he reached your cunt. With your lungs feeling like they’d been robbed of air, you inhaled sharply, dizziness overtaking you. The tightening pressure around your wrists acted like a constrictor knot, its bindings strengthening the more you writhed.

“Do you remember that, sweetpea?” 

He rocked his knee which in turn rutted against the cabinet, enabling his thigh to brush your clit through soaked panties. Your dress was bunched up and pooled around his leg, hiding a good portion of his pinstripe trousers and in a response you weren’t particularly proud of, you released a choked moan, his actions providing the semblance of the relief you were chasing – craved.    

"Hmm, yeah?" He cooed, high pitched and almost like he was talking to a child.  

Protests – a whole bouquet of them sprouted from your vocal cords, their great green stalks filling the width of your throat, clogging it. So much so that instead of frantic clusters of ‘no,’ ‘stop,’ ‘get away from me,’ strangled noises and gasping moans trickled out. At least that's what you told yourself; because to face cold harsh reality would have proved to be too much. To realise that so much as one nudge from the cold criminal could reduce you to putty, a hot melting mess would be repugnant! To realise that those flowers hardly represented your innocence and more so the blossoming of carnality was a hard seed to swallow. 

And so, perhaps it was better to hide behind the excuse of obstruction even though the weakness in your knees told you different, even though you were leaning into him and transfixed on his lips. And maybe, just maybe, it was better to ignore how your stomach leapt at his resonating growl and how he pulled you by your wrists, and how you continued to ignore the auspicious swell in your chest as the risen skin of his scars brushed your cheeks and how the quick prod of his tongue coaxed you into a sloppy open-mouthed kiss and how your honeyed hums pressed against his mouth and how he darkly chuckled and–

Fuck. 

Fuck it. 

Melting into the way his tongue teased yours, you rolled your hips, meeting the occasional bounces as you rode his thigh. His free hand began its slow ascent up your dress, squeezing greedily at the flesh and when he knew you weren’t going anywhere, he relinquished his domineering hold on your wrist. In a move that seemed all too comfortable, natural even, your arms reached up to rest on his shoulders while the wandering hands nearing the waistband of your panties suddenly yanked the material – a fierce ‘snap!’ forcing you to jolt. 

You had no time to recover when he hoisted you on top of the kitchen counter. The sudden liftoff was rough considering his handling but the landing was even more so when he plopped you on its surface; the small squeak of pain followed by skewed mimicking and taunts. Regardless of the humiliation, the sudden loss of contact had you whining pitifully in the middle of the room, a reaction you were positive only urged his sadistic inclinations. 

“Wooould ya look at that,” Joker smirked, directing you to the sizable wet spot in his suit pants.  

The heat rushed to your cheeks instantly at the vulgar display, a rose dusting sweeping the area. With his knee still propped up against the counter, he was able to push his way between your thighs losing your ability to shut them knee to knee. 

No matter how much he tried to poke at your eagerness, shame was void. Such a point was proven when you leaned backwards slightly, adjusting your position, never straying far from his lips. Once done, you reached for the digits circling the skin of your hips. Joker hardly seemed fazed by the sudden contact, though he watched you intently with squinted eyes – intrigue the dominating emotion. Said narrowing was so subtle that if you hadn’t been looking up at him the whole time, you wouldn’t have picked up on it at all. 

The gentle trail you led him down, from your hip to your inner thigh, and then, finally, to your slit had been drawn out, the pleasured groan he emitted a forbidden delight submerged in concupiscence. Slickness coated the tips of his gloves as they toyed with the area, his long digits sliding easily inside from how wet you were. 

“One second you’re scared stiff,” he grinned, eyes flicking between you and the way his unhurried fingers filled you up. 

“The next you’re allll ho-t and bothered.” 

With no time to adjust, he ditched the leisurely act and started a much more impatient speed. You eagerly leaned into the sly, slithering touch which happily found you were braless. Curled markings scratched into the edges of the counter, coinciding with the tortuous ascension of poisonous fingers – a poison in which seemed to seep its way into your bloodstream instantly, manipulating every feeling, every thought, every sensation to the firey, prickling rush of desire; of him.

“What does that say about you, huh?” 

Knowing exactly what you needed, his thumb promptly found your nipple. With both hands busy, the sheer euphoria they propagated brought on a daze. 

“It says I’m a nurse,” you warbled, breathing heavy. 

Jokers eyebrows furrowed, though quickly reverted in seemingly the very same twitch; it appeared he always wanted to have the upper-hand. To control. Nonetheless, he was eager for your continuance, the way his skilful fingers glided inside you, exploring, not stopping in the slightest. The swell of pleasure which forced your toes to curl and your hips to rise let you know you were close.

“I’m built for high-pressure situations.” 

“Is that so?” He said, his voice as smooth as silk. He leaned in again, so close that measuring the distance would have been redundant. Strands of green, which were once woven neatly (or more, as neatly as they could get for the man), deviated. Each curl bounced along with every thrust. 

“Care to put your money where your mouth is, sweetheart?” He grunted, pinching the sensitive nub between his thumb and forefinger, drawing out a sharp mewl.

“Another deal?” You forced out, breathing a laugh.

“If you, uh, think you can handle it,” he flopped his head to the side and performed his idiosyncrasy with an impish twinkle in his eye, “you know I’m a man of my w–”

You both paused.

During the exchange, you swore you had heard something. Considering Joker’s sudden halt too, you were certain it hadn’t been your imagination. The only thing louder than the silence was the furious ‘rap rap rap’ of your heart, a thunderous drum calling out for something – anything to mask its bellows. 

‘Mass hysteria’ was doing rounds in your mind as an explanation for the sudden, unexplained noise until finally, it repeated. Short, sharp, and distinguishable. 

This time, you heard it clear as day.

Your name. 

“(Y/n)?”

It seemed you were the only one who remained in your fixed state as Joker clamped a hand over your mouth. However, he continued with his thrusts, controlling them into a slower pace; a patience you didn’t think he had. With your tongue, you ran the muscle against his gloved fingers, biting into the material, a signal to ditch the covering. It appeared to work too, because within seconds his bare flesh replaced it. He slipped two digits into your mouth instead and pressed the pads of his digits of your appendage. Immediately, you hollowed your cheeks, looking up at his lust ridden gaze as you sucked. A delighted purr resonated from him. 

“Good girl,” he growled, curling the fingers still inside you; marking the end of his teasing. Joker, more agitated by the second, returned to his previous rhythm, the kitchen counter groaning.

 So much for patience. 

The interruption was almost forgotten as you began to reach your peak. Arching your back, you forced Joker closer to you and clung onto him, ensuring each rapid ram reached his knuckles. In a flurry of desperation, you pawed at his arm, trying to redirect the hand not currently busy fucking you into oblivion. With a small ‘pop’ he left your mouth, finding your neck with your guiding. His fingers wrapped around the area perfectly, squeezing while a laugh left him.

“Well, aren’t you just full of surprises.”

“(Y/n)?” The voice repeated. You heard your door slam shut soon after, only just now had it occurred it had been left open the whole time.

“Hey, the door was open,” they confirmed, continuing as you heard the distinctive thud of boots searching the house, presumably searching for you.

Mumbled, nonsensical phrases left your mouth in the violent flurry of release, suppressed by the pressure around your throat. In the midst of things, the top half of your dress had fallen and bundled around your waist. As you went rigid, your nails clawed and sunk into the back of his shirt, stealing a few grunts. Too wrapped up in your own pleasure, you missed how Joker intently watched your climax, mischievous eyes deviating to the exposed flesh of your shoulder. 

“I heard about the accident, and I guessed you wouldn’t have made it so I decided dinner here would be–”

Joker without warning had bitten into your shoulder, the unexpected intermingle of pain and pleasure coaxing you to cry out. Such an interruption warranted the frantic footsteps heading your way.

Shit.

“Is everything ok–”

Splat.

Both you and Joker whipped your heads around to the source which was now in one of the doorways of the kitchen. There stood Daniel, horror stricken and trying his hardest to comprehend the scene before him. A demanding contrast of colours – flowers, wrapped and nicely presented, had fallen to the floor in surprise, explaining the slap of sadness.

No one said anything. 

The thick mist of unease permeated through the kitchen, suffocating everyone inside. Well, at least those prone to embarrassment. Although you couldn’t see the cocky smirk on the jester’s face, you could feel the distinctive rumble of laughter brewing from the way you continued to cling onto his back. 

In short, Joker was shameless.

No sooner than when you had realised such a thing was festering – it erupted, breaking the spell time had cast on the small box of a room. Hysterics was contrasted with Daniel’s visible confusion and, dare you say, hurt. The blood had rushed to his face, whether in anger or embarrassment it was clear it was both. A small part of you felt bad, it truly did, though it was difficult to sustain when Joker, without even so much as looking at you, forced you back further to a 130-degree angle until your upper half was leaning against the kitchen wall. Without missing a beat, he started to fiddle with his pants, a vicious, sharp smile delivering the final slice to the intruder’s heart.  

“The early bird gets the worm, Daniel.”  

#Joker x reader #The Dark Knight #Dk!Joker #Heath Ledger Joker #My writing #joker x you #The Joker x reader #Joker x y/n #Heath Ledger #Joker #Fanfiction #Nurse Joker #Nurse Joker x reader #Christopher Nolan Batman

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/7/2020

I missed THE GOLDEN GLOVE at Fantastic Fest last year. It was one of my only regrets of the whole experience, but it was basically mandatory since the available screenings were opposite the much-hyped PARASITE. As annoying as that sounds, it was actually a major compliment, since what could possibly serve as a consolation prize for the most hotly anticipated movie of the year? Needless to say, I heard great things, but I could never have imagined what it was actually like. I'm still wrapping my mind around it.

Between 1970 and 1975, an exceptionally depraved serial killer named Fritz Honka murdered at least four prostitutes in Hamburg's red light district. Today, we tend to think of the archetypal serial killer in terms of ironic contradictions: The public is attracted by Ted Bundy's dashing looks and suave manner, and John Wayne Gayce's dual careers as politician and party clown. Lacking anything so remarkable, we associate psychopathy with Norman Bates' boy-next-door charm, and repeat "It's always the quiet ones" with a smirk whenever a new Jeffrey Dahmer or Dennis Nilsen is exposed to the public. The popular conception of a bloodthirsty maniac is not the fairytale monster of yore, but a wolf in sheep's clothing, whose hygienic appearance and lifestyle belie his twisted desires. In our post-everything world, the ironic surprise has become the rule. In this light, THE GOLDEN GLOVE represents a refreshing return to naked truth.

To say that writer-director Fatih Akin's version of the Fritz Honka story is shocking, repulsive, and utterly degenerated would be a gross understatement. We first meet the killer frantically trying to dispose of a corpse in his filthy flat, wallpapered with porno pinups, strewn with broken toys, and virtually projecting smell lines off of the screen. One's sense of embodiment is oppressive, even claustrophobic, as the petite Honka tries and fails to collapse the full dead weight of a human corpse into a garbage bag, before giving up and dismembering it, with nearly equal difficulty. The scene is appalling, utterly debased, and yet nothing is as shocking as the killer's visage. When he finally turns to look into the camera, it's hard to believe he's even human: the rolling glass eye, the smashed and inflated nose, the tombstone teeth and cratered skin, are almost too extreme to bear. Actually, suffering from a touch of facial blindness, I had to stare intently at Honka's face for nearly half the movie before I could fully convince myself that I was, in fact, looking at an elaborate prosthetic operation used to transform 23 year old boy band candidate Jonas Dassler into the disfigured 35 year old serial murderer.

Though West Germany remained on a steady economic upturn beginning in the 1950s and throughout the 1970s, you wouldn't know it from THE GOLDEN GLOVE. If Honka's outsides match his insides, they are further matched by his stomping grounds in the Reeperbahn, a dirty, violent, booze-soaked repository for the dregs of humanity. Though its denizens may come from different walks of life, one thing is certain: Whoever winds up there, belongs there. Honka was the child of a communist and grew up in a concentration camp, yet he swills vodka side by side with an ex-SS officer, among other societal rejects, in a crumbling dive called The Golden Glove. The scene is an excellent source of hopeless prostitutes at the end of their career, who are Honka's prime victims, as he is too frightful-looking to ensnare an attractive young girl. These pitiful women all display a peculiarly hypnotic willingness to go along with Honka, no matter how sadistic he becomes; this seems to have less to do with money, which rarely comes up, and more to do with their shared awareness that for them, and for Honka too, it's been all over, for a long time.

Not to reduce someone’s performance to their physical appearance, but ???

To call Dassler's portrayal of Honka "sympathetic" would be a bridge too far, but it is undeniably compelling. He supports the startling impact of his facial prostheses with a performance of rare intensity, a full-body transformation into a person in so much pain that a normal life will never become an option. His physical vocabulary reminded me of the stage version of The Elephant Man, in which the lead actor wears no makeup, but conveys John Merrick's deformities using his body alone. Although there is an abundance of makeup in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, Dassler's silhouette and agonized movements would be recognizable from a mile away. In spite of his near-constant screaming rage, the actor manages to craft a rich and convincing persona. During a chapter in which Honka experiments with sobriety, we find a stunning image of him hunched in the corner of his ordinarily chaotic flat, now deathly still, his eyes gazing at nothing as cigarette smoke seeps from his pores, having no idea what to do with himself when he isn't in a rolling alcoholic rampage. The moment is brief but haunting in its contrast to the rest of the film, having everything to do with Dassler's quietly vibrating anxiety.

Performances are roundly excellent here, not that least of which are from Honka's victims. The cast of middle-aged actresses looking their most disastrous is hugely responsible for the film's impact. These are the kinds of performances people call "brave", which is a euphemism for making audiences uncomfortable with an uncompromising presentation of one's own self, unvarnished by any masturbatory solicitation. Among these women is Margarete Tiesel, herself no stranger to difficult cinema: She was the star of 2012's PARADISE: LOVE, a harrowing drama about a woman who copes with her midlife crisis by pursuing sex tourism in Kenya. Her brilliant, instinctive performance as one of Honka's only survivors--though she nearly meets a fate worse than death--makes her the leading lady of a movie that was never meant to have one.

So, what does all this unpleasantness add up to, you might be asking? It's hard to say. THE GOLDEN GLOVE is a film of enormous power, but it can be difficult to explain what the point of it is, in a world where most people feel that the purpose of art is to produce some form of pleasure. This is the challenge faced by difficult movies throughout history, like THE GOLDEN GLOVE's obvious ancestors, HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, MANIAC and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. Describing unremitting cruelty with relentless realism is not considered a worthy endeavor by many, even if there is real artistry in your execution; some people will even mistake you for advocating and enjoying violence and despair, as we live in a world where huge amount of movie and TV production is devoted to aspirational subjects. (The fact that people won't turn away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, no matter how monotonous and condescending they become, should tell you something) How do you justify to such people, that you want to make or see work that portrays ugliness and evil with as much commitment as other movies seek to portray love, beauty, and family values? Why isn't it enough to say that these things exist, and their existence alone makes them worth contemplation?

A rare, perhaps exclusive “beautiful image” in THE GOLDEN GLOVE, from Fritz Honka’s absurd fantasies.

You may detect that I have attempted to have this frustrating conversation with many people, strangers, enemies, and friends I love and respect. I find that for some, it is simply too hard to divorce themselves from the pleasure principle. I don't say this to demean them; some hold the philosophy that art be reserved for beauty, and others have a more literary feeling that it's ok to show characters in grim circumstances, as long as the ultimate goal is to uplift the human spirit. Even I draw the line somewhere; I appreciate the punk rebellion of Troma movies as a cultural force, but I do not enjoy watching them, because I dislike what I perceive as contempt for the audience and the aestheticization of laziness--making something shitty more or less on purpose. A step or three up from that, you land in Todd Solondz territory, where you find materially gorgeous movies whose explicit statement is that our collective reverence for a quality called "humanity" is based on nothing. I like some of those movies, and sometimes I even like them when I don't like them, because I'm entranced by Solondz's technical proficiency...and maybe, deep down, I'm not completely convinced about "humanity", either. However, I don't fight very hard in arguments about him; I understand the objections. Still, I've been surprised by peers who I think of as bright and tasteful, who absolutely hated movies I thought were unassailable, like OLDBOY and WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN. In both cases, the ultimate objection was that they accuse humans of being pretentious and self-deceptive, aspiring to heroism or bemoaning their victimhood while wallowing in their own cowardice and perversity. Ok, I get it...but, not really. Why isn't it ever wholly acceptable to discuss, honestly, what we do not like about ourselves?

The beguiling thing about THE GOLDEN GLOVE is that, although it is instantly horrifying, is it also an impeccable production. The director can't help showing you crime scene photos during the ending credits, and I can't really blame him, when his crew worked so hard to bring us a vision of Fritz Honka's world that approaches virtual reality. But it isn't just slavishly realistic; it is vivid, immersive, an experience of total sensory overload. Not a square inch of this movie has been left to chance, and the product of all this graceful control is totally spellbinding. I started to think to myself that, when you've achieved this level of artifice, what really differentiates a movie like THE GOLDEN GLOVE from something like THE RED SHOES? I mean, aside from their obvious narrative differences. Both films plunge the viewer into a world that is complete beyond imagination, crafted with a rigor and sincerity that is rarely paralleled. And, I will dare to say, both films penetrate to the depths of the human soul. What Fatih Akin finds there is not the same as what Powell and Pressburger found, of course, but I don't think that makes it any less real. Akin's film is adapted from a novel by Heinz Strunk, and apparently, some critics have accused Akin of leaving behind the depth and nuance of the book, to focus instead on all that is gruesome about it. This may be true, on some level; I wouldn't know. For now, I can only insist that on watching THE GOLDEN GLOVE, for all its grotesquerie, I still got the message.

#blogtober #2020 #the golden glove #fatih akın #heinz stronk #jonas dassler #margarete tiesel #difficult cinema #horror #slasher #serial killer #period piece #adaptation #historical #biopic #fritz honka #i may have been watching a lot of powell and pressburger movies recently #sorry...

[raayllum]

So I've been trawling for ttm and post ttm fics on ao3 because that ending hurt my soul a bit and I was surprised how little I found, not just on ao3 either, there doesn't seem to be much discussion about it, granted the thing's only been out for 2 months but I would've thought that new material would've led to a bunch of new works and an upsurge in interest. I'm curious about your thoughts on this, care to share?

i mean for a lot of the fandom, it’s been out since early september (if people read the leaks). there was a lot of discussion then and also discussion in the immediate two weeks following the official release (october 6th). 

there’s two pages (31 works) total of just people who used the tag “book: through the moon” on ao3, let alone people who didn’t tag the graphic novel at all even if their fic was set after/during it, or people who used different tags, like “ttm spoilers” or “post ttm” or “post through the moon.” there’s also a sizeable amount of fic that gets posted on tumblr - shorter pieces, definitely, but they still add up eventually - that don’t get posted on ao3 or ffn (or only one or the other). so in the 2-3 months since the graphic novel dropped, there’s been a far bit of specific content. 

there’s also a difference, i think, in all the promotion and hype of a season VS an extra additional material. i think if TTM had come out 4-6 months post-s3 there might have been more works inspired by it - people naturally ebb and flow in fandoms, especially when they’re in hiatus - but it came out 10 months into hiatus. that’s a long time. 

and in an active tv show fandom like this, there tends to be two types of fic writers.

seasonal writers, who update projects and create them based around new material every season. think fan seasons, canon divergences, projects started and finished before they’re made AU, etc. very common for slowburn / non canon ships in on going series (especially when a show is released weekly). this was the bulk of the rayllum fic content following s2, as pining and non established relationships gives a lot of different ship centric fic flavoured options (i.e. how long the pining lasts, who kisses who first and under what circumstances, etc).

we’re gonna call the second group regardless writers. these are the people who write stuff they know is gonna be au in future seasons (or already is) and plod along well after that point passes. usually deals with established relationships (canon or not). these were the people writing about rayllum getting married post s2 or pre-s2. nor do they try and tailor or update their fics to fit the latest content; they’re more concerned with exploring the being (fanon possibilities) than the happening (canon realities).  think writing a fan season but like, three seasons down the line (s6) instead of the next one (s4). 

the main reason i make this distinction is that post s3 rayllum shifted from having mostly seasonal writers (by proxy) to regardless writers. there were fics of staying in xadia, fics of going back to katolis, fics just about fluffy scenarios, de-coining fics, etc. what s4 could hold was absolutely anyone’s guess, especially for rayllum. would they be in xadia or katolis, would there be a separation arc, how long would the timeskip be, etc? we sure didn’t know, and were making all of our stuff regardless.

which is a long way of saying that most people who are seasonal writers probably started writing their fan season fours 8 months before TTM came out, and given that the comic fundamentally changes where rayllum left off as compared to s3, changing possibly 100k+ of what you’ve already written is basically impossible. and those who are non seasonal writers wouldn’t have changed it up regardless. 

there’s also the fact that TTM’s ending, while it opens up a lot of possibilities for them as individuals (travelling separately, running into OCs or canon characters like nyx or ethari, etc), from a ‘ship centric’ fic lens, there’s like, two possibilities. 

either callum goes after her (possibly right away, possibly after a duration - but again, that’s overall a very small detail) and eventually finds her, or rayla chooses to come back of her own accord. the conclusion from that point onwards is pretty self explanatory. callum is hurt and angry, something has changed rayla’s mind, and they work on reconciling. 

it’s a very angsty premise we know the show is most likely going to explore in detail (cause they’re two of three Main Characters) nor is it everyone’s cup of tea to write. 

after all, compare and contrast that to all the established possibilities that were previously set: fancy balls in katolis; cute date shenanigans in the pentarchy or xadia; characters reacting to seeing the two together; engagement or fluff set after whatever reconciliation there would be (which therefore TTM really doesn’t have that much bearing on by default), etc. just to name a few, and yeah - post-ttm has a very narrowed focus of what’s an emotionally compelling next step by comparison. which is not bad - but there’s only so much people are gonna want to write about a reunion before they wanna move on Beyond that in some manner.

i also think there’s more factors as to why, following s2, there were a plethora of “fan season 3 rayllum fics” and not nearly as many “fan season four” fics which is that post s2 was like, fans knew for a decent chunk of s3 that rayllum 1) had the main plotline of bringing zym home, and 2) the importance of them taking zym home meant keeping them isolated from the rest of the cast / plot for the majority of the season/fic made sense. you could write a fic all about just these two kids pining for each other and exploring xadia and it was very easy to make a coherent narrative out of it.

post s3, they’re suddenly connected to everyone else again. or that rayla has to connect to someone else in order to have a sustainable storyline, and if callum is in katolis to help ezran politically, it’s delaying the natural emotional conclusion people ultimately want from post-ttm work (as a reader and a writer) because they’re not going to be seeing each other any time soon. 

as a fan, sitting there and watching everything that s4 could include beyond rayllum is a really fun, engaging experience that requires significantly less brain work than plotting and balancing however many plot lines are gonna collide when, from a creation aspect, you really might just be there for one.

and given that we’ve been on hiatus now for over a year, we’re likely more than halfway through the hiatus. and for all the reasons i’ve started before, seasonal writers have either already started their stuff a while ago or have naturally drifted. regardless writers are still here, but activity always drops up past the 6 month mark of hiatus (july in particular tends to be the last hurrah because it’s their joint birthday month and is a bit of an annual thing). 

TLDR; ttm doesn’t actually change that much in the grand scheme of things (at least not when it comes to ship wish fulfillment), people defaulted to the general layout of what the reunion would be like very quickly (and rather correctly tbh), and fic writers who try to keep up with the new content likely hadn’t changed anything hardcore since s3 and it’s too late to do so now. 

#my best guess anyway #thanks for asking #god this got longer than i expected #post ttm #rayllum fandom #risingvaliant #fandom history

[duhragonball]

‘21

Amidst all the popular hype for seeing the end of 2020, it didn’t hit me until about lunchtime what the real highlight is that I’ve been waiting for: For the first time since 1999, the year finally ends in “numberty-number” again.    It low-key irritated me that we had to call it “two thousand three” and I was relieved when “twenty-thirteen” caught on, but it still wasn’t right because it was too short, and now we’re back in the sweet spot, and I should be safely dead by 2100, so that’s one less thing I gotta deal with.

Really, even “numberty hundred” rings true to me.    “Nineteen hundred” sounds like a year.    “Twenty-one-oh-six” sounds like a futur-y year, which is even cooler.   So did “Two thousand five”, until I was actually living in it, and it sounds even worse now that it was a long time ago and adults will talk about their childhood happening in that year.    Daniel Witwicky would be old enough to get married and grow a fancier beard than me.    That’s nuts.    My point is that, honestly, it’s the year 3000-3019 that I have to worry about, so if I ever decide to go vampire, those will be the years I hide in the ocean or force society to reset the calendar, whichever’s easier.  

I spent New Year’s Eve finishing Superliminal, which I bought on Steam after I watched Vegeta play it on YouTube.  It has a similar look and feel to the Stanley Parable, so if you liked one you’d probably enjoy the other, although Superliminal has a different theme.  I kept hoping I’d find some secret passage that I wasn’t supposed to take, and a narrator would scold me for finding the “Chickenbutt Ending”, but it doesn’t work that way.    Superliminal’s all about puzzles and awesome visuals, but it does have the same soothing design aesthetics as TSP.   Honestly, I enjoyed just wandering around in Stanley’s office, and Superliminal does the same thing with a hotel and several other settings.   It’s nice.

This got me thinking about how I kind of did everything there was to do in The Stanley Parable, and I sort of wished they would add new stuff to the game, but I’m not sure there would be much point to that.    I could play the older version, but it presents the same message, just with different assets.   The Boss’s Office would look different, but it’d be the same game.   And this got me thinking about various “secret chapters” in pop culture.  Secrets behind the cut.

I first heard about this idea in the 2000′s, when fans invented this notion that there was a secret chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.    I read a website that tried to explain the concept, and of course it lauded J.K. Rowling with all this gushing praise for working an Easter egg into the book, a literary work of “well, magic.”  

That pretty well sums up my distaste for Harry Potter, by the way.    These days, JKR has thoroughly crapped all over her reputation and legacy, but in the 2000′s it felt like half the planet was in a mad rush to canonize her as a writing goddess, to the point where fans were congratulating her for writing secret chapters that didn’t actually exist.   The idea was based on lore from the books about Neville Longbottom’s parents.    They were patients in a mental hospital, and he’d go to visit them, and they would give him bubble gum wrappers, intended to demonstrate how far remove they’ve become from reality.   The secret chapter lies in those wrappers, which all read “Droobles Best Blowing Gum” or some such.    What if Neville’s parents were only pretending to be mentally ill, so as to throw off their enemies?   Naturally, they would want to stay in contact with their son, so the bubble gum wrappers would have to contain coded messages.    Said code involves unscrambling the letters on the wrappers to make new words, like “goblin” or “sword” or “Muggle” or “Dumbledore”.    The problem is that you can also use it to make other words like “booger” or “drool” or “booobbiess.”   Play with it enough, and you can make the code say anything you want it to say, which means it’s no code at all.   

But the idea was that the not-yet-published sixth HP book would reveal all of this gum wrapper nonsense, and Neville would decode the messages and discover all of his parents’ super-cool adventures.   I’m not sure why we needed a secret chapter if Book 6 was going to explain all of this anyway in several not-secret chapters, but that was the whole point.   Fans didn’t have Book 6 yet, and they were so desperate to read it that they started trying to extrapolate what would happen next based on “clues” from the previous five.    That’s like trying to figure out what Majin Buu looks like by watching the Androids Saga.   I guess some wiseguy would have guessed that he’d resemble #19, but that’d just be blind luck.  

And when you get down to it, this whole secret chapter business is really just a conspiracy.   This is literally how Qanon works.   Some anonymous jackass posted vague “hints” on an imageboard, and people went goofy trying to interpret them and figure out what would happen in the future.   They call it “research” because they spend a ton of time on this, but there’s no basis to any of it.    It took me a few minutes to figure out that you can spell “Muggle” with the words in “Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum”, but that’s not research and it doesn’t prove anything.   But all these guys keep looking for “Hilary Clinton goes to jail next week” and lo and behold that’s all they ever find.   

In the same vein, the gum wrapper thing was really a complaint disguised as a conspiracy, disguised as a “magical secret chapter”.   At least a few fans wanted to see more Neville in their Harry Potter books, they wanted Neville’s parents, or someone like them, to have cool spy adventures or whatever else.   The point is, they clearly weren’t getting what they wanted out of the printed works, but they didn’t want to turn against their Dear Beloved Author, so they started casting about for an alternative reality, one where J.K. Rowling wrote a cooler story and hid it in the pages of the one that actually went to press.    So instead of just saying “Hey, Order of the Phoenix was kind of a letdown, I hope there’s more ninjas in the next book,” they said “Rowling is a genius because I wanted ninjas and she’s definitely going to give them to me, I have the gum wrappers to prove it.”

The same thing happened all over again when the BBC Sherlock show took a turn for the nonsensical.    I don’t know from BBC Sherlock, but I watched the fascinating video critique by Hbomberguy, and it sounds like the show did tons of plot twists until it stopped making sense altogether in the fourth season.    If you skip to 1:09:00 in the video, you’ll hear about fan theories that suggested that season four was supposed to be crappy, as part of a secret meta-narrative plan that would be paid off in a secret, unannounced episode that would not only explain everything, but retroactively justify the crappy episodes that came before.    But it’s been a few years and it never came to pass, so I think we can call this myth busted. 

Most recently, I think we’ve all seen a lot of talk about the final season of Supernatural, where I guess Destiel sort of became canon but only one guy does the love confession and the other doesn’t respond.   But I guess he does say “I love you too”  in the Spanish dub, which means the English language version was edited for whatever reason.    It’s not exactly a secret episode, but the implication is that there’s more to this than what made it to the screen.    So the questions turn to what the screenplay said, what the writers and actors wanted to do, etc. etc.    My general impression is that SPN fans are a bit more used to crushing disappointment, so they’re not quite as delusional about this show being unquestionable genius, like Sherlock and Harry Potter.     Maybe this is an Anglophile thing?   Like, if you suck at something with a British accent, people will accept it more unconditionally?   

I had seen something on Twitter about how there should have been a secret Seinfeld episode in the 90′s.    Someone suggested it at the time, they tape a whole episode, then wait until 2020 to air it, because by then it would be worth a fortune.    But they didn’t do it, because it costs a lot of money to make a TV episode, and if you don’t air the show right away, you aren’t making that money back any time soon.    Yeah, you might recoup a fortune someday, but Seinfeld was making a ton of money then.    It exposes the fannish nature of the idea.    A fan would love to discover a cool secret chapter, but a content creator isn’t necessarily keen on making a cool thing and then hiding it where few people would find it.  

I thought about doing this myself recently.   Maybe Supernatural gave me the bug, but I thought “I’m writing this big-ass story, so what if I wrote me a secret chapter for it?   Wouldn’t that be cool?”     But no, it wouldn’t be cool, because it’d be the same work as writing a regular chapter, and the same stress I feel when I hold off on publishing it.    Except I’d just never publish it, I’d put it in some secret hole on the internet and hope that some superfan who might not even exist can decode whatever clues I leave.  

I mean, it’d be awesome if it got discovered and everyone loved it.    “Hey, I found this hidden chapter!   Mike’s done it again!”   And I could bask in the glory.   But what if no one finds it?  Then I just wasted my time, right?   I want people to read my work.   My monkey brain needs the sweet, sweet validation of those kudos and comments, folks.   Once I realized that, I understood why no one else would want to do a secret chapter either.    Easter eggs are one thing, but the bigger bonus features they put on DVDs were pretty easy to find, and with good reason.

I think that’s what made the Stanley Parable so appealing to play, because it teases you with the idea that you can “break” the game and find some extra content that you weren’t supposed to see, but as you go exploring all those hidden areas, it gradually becomes clear that this is just part of the game; you were meant to find all these things, and that’s why they were put here.      It’s hidden, but he secret aspect of it is just pretend.   

I suppose that what I like about games like TSP and Superliminal is the illusion of secrets more than the secrets themselves.    I like roaming through the hallways, having no idea what I might find ahead.    I kind of wish I could open all the doors, and not just the ones the game designers put stuff behind, but the reality is that there’s nothing on the other side.    I used a cheat code once  to explore the unused doors in TSP and it’s just a bright white field on the other side.   Interesting to look at, but not much of a reveal.   Honestly, the doors themselves are more appealing than anything that could lay behind them.  

And that’s probably what makes secrets so fun.   They could be almost anything, but once you open the present, the number of possibilities drops to one.   If they had ever made that Secret BBC Sherlock Episode, I doubt it would have lived up to expectations, but fans could amuse themselves by imagining what could have been in it.    In the end, though, things usually don’t justify the hype.  For every Undertaker debut at Survivor Series 1990, there’s a Gobbledygooker debut at Survivor Series 1990.   It’s impossible to manufacture a secret with a guaranteed payoff.   

[gaklz]

The Side Hustle: Second Jobs To Make Extra Money

A side hustle is a part time job, a second job, or alternate way to earn money – outside of your 9 to 5 career. The economic downturn left many well-qualified adults scrambling to earn wages that would continue to put food on the table, with many taking on a second job just to make ends meet.  According to FOX News and the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. job outlook remains dismal, with wage incomes improving by just 1.4%, and the economy expanded by only 1.9% during the first quarter of 2012.

Whether you’re trying to pay off bills, add to your children’s college fund, or save for a special event, taking a second job is a route many working adults take in order to get ahead financially.

Freelancing Freelance jobs are plentiful across the World Wide Web. However – unless you live in Pakistan and are able to work for pennies on the dollar – quality freelance jobs take some digging to find. I have freelanced for Yahoo and Demand Media Studios, edited web sites for small web publishers, and worked as an independent freelance writer. Of these choices, editing web sites paid the most… writing web content as an independent was the most flexible and pays well, and working for the “content mills” pays – but does it pay what you’re worth?

Demand Media Studios strict content form and requirements hardly make it worth the $25 per article you’ll receive… if you’ve spent an hour writing the article and it’s accepted as-is, $25/hour is awesome. However, this is rare with DMS, so in reality is takes more like 2 – 3 hours to earn the $25. Yahoo Contributor Network is the most user friendly place I have found to write for money… but at $15 per post you really need to have the concept down pat, write fast with few errors, and produce cookie-cutter content that can make your eyes cross by the end of the day. Freelance writing for blogs and websites is a good choice as a side hustle – IF you have the skills needed to turn content fast, and with few mistakes.

Blogging For Money – Side Hustle or Hype? My full time career is as a Blogger. I blog across several websites, and those sites make money through paid advertising, reviewing products, and creating interesting articles and content that make readers want to come back for more. When I first began blogging, I was also doing a lot of freelance writing and editing to put food on the table. I could go on and on about how to become a successful pro blogger, but the truth is that I followed the wisdom of another highly successful blogger, who recently rolled out an e-Book on making money as a blogger.  The eBook, How I Make Money Blogging, is a no-holds-barred tutorial on how to start, and how to create a viable income as a blogger. Since I know the author – Crystal Stemberger – have worked with her as a colleague on several projects, and have personally followed her success on Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, I highly recommend buying this eBook. Her actual website, How I Make Money Blogging, gives details weekly, but the book is one of the best places to start for newbies… of an excellent way for current bloggers/freelancers to get back on track and tuern their blogs into a lucrative business. I know that this eBook is in the up and up, and I couldn’t even say it better – or detail the steps Crystal outlines –  myself. I have watched as Crystal’s monthly earnings went from a level where she could quit her day job… to the point where her husband has been able to quit his own job to work alongside her from their home office. These people are solid, intelligent, hard working folks – and Crystal’s template for success is not to be overlooked. If you’re even remotely interested in creating a work-from-home career, please take a moment to check out the eBook… Click here to visit How I Make Money Blogging.

I do earn a commission for telling you about the eBook — so let me thank you in advance for clicking through my link (above) when you go to buy the eBook. Be sure to come back here to Thriftability and comment on your success with the tips in the book – or email me directly to share your story. If you are having trouble getting started, I’m happy to help. I have 8 years experience as a web dev/web editor, and have been a professional (paid) blogger for the last 3 years. I know that sometimes getting started can be frustrating, but it is definitely worth it for people who have the drive and determination to make it happen. so if I can help or answer a question, feel free to email: Lisa {at} Thriftability {dot} com. The book, How I Make Money Blogging is the true story of Crystal Stemberger’s experience in leaving her day job to work form home as a full time blogger and web ‘preneur. Definitely worth the read!

Side Jobs: Seasonal and Temp Work Taking a job during the holiday season is a good way to earn money in a short period of time. As long as you’re not paying for child care while you work (perhaps your spouse or a relative can keep the kids), you can earn decent money in retail during the holidays. Seasonal and temp work can pay off as well – as long as you’re OK with the reality of becoming involved with a company or project for a short term period. Keep in mind: with the unemployment rate hovering at 8.2% nationwide, you’re up against other adults who have no jobs at all, while those looking for the side hustle are out to supplement their primary source of income. Bring your “A Game”, and treat the interview for a second job as seriously as you would for any other. Dress for success, and be enthusiastic.

Put Your Skills To Work For You Perhaps taking a second  job is out of the question, because you have kids at home, your primary job is time consuming and you only have random hours in which to work, or… (be honest) the thought of taking on a second job makes you feel ill. I can relate to this! This is why I started working from home in the first place: I needed extra cash, but I was also needed at home as a single mom with three pre-teen and teen-aged kids. Think outside the box. Maybe you have valuable skills that could bring in a secondary income without ever leaving the house. Can you sew? The number of young professionals who have mastered the tasks once taught in Home Ec has dwindled sharply over the years. One of my neighbors takes in ironing – clean clothes brought over just to be presses – and makes $40 in an evening… ironing while watching her favorite TV shows or movies. Lawn care, auto maintenance, child care and supplying home-cooked meals are other ways to earn money from home. My latest hobby has just started bringing in extra (unplanned!) cash… I have a large organic garden, and sell produce at the local Farmer’s Market. Regardless of where, how, or how much, the side hustle is becoming more the norm for many Americans.

Do you have a side hustle? Tell us about ways you make extra money  – leave a comment below!

[mrjat396]

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THE MANY HEALTH BENEFITS OF METH

In low, pharmaceutical-grade doses, methamphetamine may actually repair and protect the brain in certain circumstances. But stigma against the drug could be harming patients and holding back research.

TROY FARAHMAY 15, 2019

D-methamphetamine is what generally appears on the street—although it's often cut with other chemicals—whereas l-meth provides a less addictive, shorter-lived high that is less desirable among drug users.

(Photo: Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Ask your doctor about methamphetamine. It's not a phrase you'll ever hear on TV or the radio, but here's a secret: Meth is an incredible medicine. Even the Drug Enforcement Administration admits it, and doctors are known to prescribe it for narcolepsy, obesity, and ADHD. Historically, meth has been used to reverse barbiturate overdoses and even raise blood pressure during surgery. Some preliminary research suggests that meth can be neuroprotective against stroke and traumatic brain injury, even stimulating the growth of brain cells.

Yet we're constantly warned never to try meth—"not even once," goes the refrain—or it will instantly cause addiction and ruin your life. Before fentanyl was the demon drug du jour, meth was seen as the worst, most destructive, most evil chemical you could find on the streets. Even of late, if you ask the New York Times or NBC, you'll learn that meth, "the forgotten killer," is back with a "vengeance." Other outlets, from Rolling Stone to CNN to The Daily Beast, have raised the alarm about meth use in the context of the opioid overdose crisis.

Stimulant-related deaths are indeed on the rise in North America—in some regions, meth is even more prevalent than heroin. Surveying drug overdoses in America from 1979 through 2016, researchers wrote in Science in September of 2018 that "Methamphetamine deaths have increased most dramatically in the western and southwestern United States."

Meth poisonings accounted for an estimated 14,845 hospitalizations in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and another 15,808 emergency room visits. In 2016, around 7,500 people died from overdosing on stimulants, including meth. If you ask most people, including policymakers, you'll hear that meth is a scourge that can do no good.

But if you've ever used something like Vicks VapoInhaler, you've experienced the healing benefits of meth firsthand. That's because the over-the-counter nasal decongestant contains levomethamphetamine, the levorotary form—or "mirror image"—of the same stuff from Breaking Bad. Procter & Gamble tries to obscure this fact by spelling the active ingredient "levmetamfetamine." Selegiline, a drug for treating Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, also metabolizes into levomethamphetamine.

There is a significant difference between these two opposing molecules. D-methamphetamine is what generally appears on the street—although it's often cut with other chemicals—whereas l-meth provides a less addictive, shorter-lived high that is less desirable among drug users. But people can and do use it recreationally. Abuse is rare, however, in part because the high is shitty, but also because d-meth is so widely available. It's easier to buy a more powerful form of the drug on the street than it is to try to extract it from over-the-counter medications.

Other Americans are prescribed actual, pure meth by their doctors. It happens less frequently these days, but in ADHD, obesity, or narcolepsy cases where nothing else has worked, a drug called Desoxyn (methamphetamine hydrochloride) can sometimes help. It can even be prescribed to children as young as seven.

It's important to make these distinctions. Meth didn't make a "comeback"; it never left. It can't return with a "vengeance" and it can't be "evil" because we're talking about a chemical compound here. It has no personality, no feelings, no intentions.

Thus it does a disservice to science and to medicine, as well as to the people who use these drugs responsibly, to treat a molecule with dualistic properties purely as a poison. And as recent research has shown, we're still uncovering some of the potential therapeutic benefits of methamphetamine. Confronting the stigma associated with meth and highlighting its benefits can better inform drug policy and addiction treatment.

(Photo: HO/Royal Thai Navy/AFP/Getty Images)

'IT'S JUST A STIMULANT, LIKE ANY OTHER STIMULANT'

For Jordan*, the meth he's prescribed works better against his ADHD with fewer side effects than the Adderall he'd been on for 20 years. About five years ago, Jordan asked his doctor if he could try methamphetamine. The doc said sure.

"The first time I brought it to the pharmacy, the pharmacist actually said to me, 'Oh, your doctor wrote this prescription wrong, this is the stuff that they make in meth labs,'" Jordan tells me by phone. "I told him to type 'Desoxyn' into the computer, and he did. He kind of backtracked, [but] he obviously had no idea."

Jordan, a middle-aged man from North Carolina who works in clinical research, now switches every three months between Adderall and Desoxyn to prevent building a tolerance to either stimulant.

Methamphetamine and amphetamine (one of the active ingredients in Adderall) are almost identical chemicals. The main difference between the two is the addition of a second methyl group to methamphetamine's chemical structure. This addition makes meth more lipid-soluble, allowing for easier access across the blood-brain barrier. Meth is therefore not only more potent, but also longer-lasting.

"The medications have definitely been important for me, to be productive, to be successful, not just at work but also in my personal life," Jordan says. "I've been on the medications for years, but I can take Adderall or methamphetamine and take a nap afterwards. I don't have any noticeable side effects."

Jordan also doesn't feel "high" from the doses he takes—approximately 10 to 15 milligrams of meth per day. Doses at this level are well tolerated by most people. It's very difficult to estimate the typical dosages of illicit meth taken on the street, but they are generally many times higher and taken every couple of hours. Further, the route of administration—typically, users smoke or inject illicit meth—allows for more of the drug to enter the bloodstream than taking a prescription pill.

At high doses, meth gives a rush of euphoria, boosting attention span, zapping fatigue, and decreasing appetite. Intense sexual arousal, talkativeness, and rapid thought patterns are also common. Body temperature and heart rate shoot up, which can cause irregular heartbeat, increasing the risk of seizures. If taken repeatedly over long periods, street meth can be highly neurotoxic, inducing paranoia and psychosis.

But illicit meth is also often used to self-medicate, according to Mark Willenbring, an addiction psychiatrist from St. Paul, Minnesota, with over 30 years of practice treating substance-use disorders. In Willenbring's experience, most of his patients who use illegal meth are treating undiagnosed ADHD.

"There's a high degree of comorbidity between substance-use disorders and ADD," Willenbring says. "They used meth for years in a controlled way, they never over-used it, they just used enough to get an effect, and then they stopped. One misconception is that it's always very addictive."

With most people who are addicted to meth, Willenbring says, you can't tell it just by looking at them. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist in Columbia University's Department of Psychology, agrees that the image of a snarling meth addict with bad teeth is a false stereotype. The dental damage so prevalent in anti-drug propaganda, he says, is more likely due to poor nutrition and lack of sleep—not to the drug. "There is no empirical evidence to support the claim that methamphetamine causes physical deformities," Hart wrote in a 2014 co-authored report.

"It's just a stimulant, like any other stimulant," Willenbring says. "It's a marketing issue."

Part of the reason Jordan asked to try Desoxyn in the first place was to see if he'd develop any of the "stereotypical meth addict problems," as he puts it. He hasn't.

"Those of us that know the reality have a responsibility to say, 'Hey, not that shooting up meth isn't bad, but the chemical itself isn't bad,'" Jordan says. "It's just misuse of the chemical that's bad."

For Joan*, a 66-year-old grandmother living off the grid in northern Georgia, Desoxyn makes her feel normal. "Not high, not hyped up, just normal," she tells me. She's been taking prescription meth since 2006, but first tried many other ADHD meds, such as Ritalin and Concerta, with poor results. But Desoxyn has not only helped her socialize, manage bills, and finish her master's degree in social work; it's also helped with Joan's depression and self-esteem.

"The only downside is the cost," she says. "It's one of the oldest drugs on the market, but even generic, it is outrageously expensive."

Still, meth isn't for everyone, of course. Kevin*, a 31-year-old artist from the Midwest, was first prescribed Desoxyn at age 15 to treat extreme fatigue and trouble focusing. But misdiagnosed mental-health issues—his doctors thought he had bipolar disorder, when in fact he had post-traumatic stress from childhood abuse—led to worsening symptoms.

"Being able to just take a bunch of pills that made the exhaustion go away for a while felt like a blessing, but it was just a Band-Aid on the problem," Kevin says. "I became completely dependent upon Desoxyn to function, and any lapse in taking my dose would result in a terrible energy crash."

"In retrospect, my neurologist at the time would have done well to consider the effects of intense stimulants on someone already prone to mania, insomnia, and hallucinations," he says. "I think Desoxyn has its merits as part of a treatment plan for attentive disorders, but that's the thing—it needs to be part of a larger understanding of how and why it might have a negative impact upon the patient's overall health, and should remain closely monitored throughout."

"Stigma is the lens [through] which we see all drug issues. It keeps us from making the best decisions. It is fear-based, not rational, not creative. Because of stigma, we have not fully addressed the opioid crisis."

(Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images)

HOW METH CAN TREAT BRAIN INJURY—AND MUCH MORE

Street doses of meth can be extremely damaging to your health. The purity of such drugs is often unknown, and repeated, high doses of meth have been proven to be neurotoxic. But in low, pharmaceutical-grade doses, meth may actually repair and protect the brain in certain circumstances.

This was first discovered in 2008, when researchers at Queen's Medical Center Neuroscience Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii, analyzed five years of data on traumatic head injuries. They unexpectedly found that patients who tested positive for methamphetamine were significantly less likely to die from the injuries. The authors suggested that meth could have neuroprotective benefits.

To learn more, in 2011, a different team from the University of Montana applied meth to slices of rat brain that had been damaged to resemble the brains of stroke victims. Then they induced strokes in living rats, using a method called embolic MCAO, and injected them with methamphetamine. At low doses, the meth gave better behavioral outcomes and even reduced brain-cell death. At high doses, the meth made outcomes worse.

Because meth stimulates the flow of important neurotransmitters—dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine—the Montana researchers theorized that methamphetamine may provide neuroprotection through multiple pathways. David Poulsen, one of the researchers involved, says this was a "serendipitous discovery."

"So we decided, well, if it worked in stroke, it's probably going to work really well in traumatic brain injury," says Poulsen, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Buffalo who specializes in treatments for protecting the brain after severe damage.

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, occurs after a violent smash to the skull. Its consequences include concussions on the mild end and coma or death on the severe end. TBI kills around 50,000 Americans annually, according to the CDC, while about 2.8 million of us visit the emergency room for TBI-related injuries every year. There is currently no Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for TBI.

So, Paulson and his team reasoned, if meth can already be prescribed for children, why not to adults with TBI?

To test the proposition, Poulsen and colleagues gave TBI to rats. Giving an animal brain trauma isn't easy, but for more than two decades, there's been a trick called the rat lateral fluid percussion injury model: Simply cut a hole in the skull of a rat and apply water pressure to the brain.

About half the rodents—19 male Wistar rats—were given this treatment, and eight of these were then given meth. The rats given meth performed better at a task called the Morris water maze, a widely used experiment that involves plopping a rat into a pool of water with a hidden platform. By tracking how long it takes the rodent to find the platform, scientists can measure many different aspects of cognitive function.

"By the third day of training, there were no statistically significant differences between the uninjured control rats and the injured rats that had been treated with methamphetamine," Poulsen and his colleagues wrote.

But the team also found that low doses of meth were protecting immature neurons, while also promoting the birth of new brain cells that are important for learning and memory. The same was also true for rats that were given meth, but not injured.

"We see not just little, but very significant improvements in cognition and behavior," Poulsen says. "Their memories improved, functional behavior is improved.... It's not a trivial difference."

"In light of the fact that low-dose methamphetamine is FDA-approved for use in juveniles and adults, we see no valid reason why it cannot be utilized in human clinical trials for stroke and TBI," Poulsen and colleagues concluded in 2016.

But those clinical trials, considered the gold standard for testing medication, have yet to materialize, even while a 2018 retrospective study found similar results to the Hawaiian neuroscience report: Out of 304 patients with TBI, those who also tested positive for meth had better recovery results than those who did not. "The potential neuroprotective role of meth and other similar substances cannot be ignored," the authors wrote in Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery last July.

There are limited conclusions that we can draw about these rodent and retrospective studies, and it's probably unlikely that nurses will soon start giving meth to people who have cracked their skulls. Still, a wide variety of stimulant therapies for TBI is being explored, with positive results. These include trials with modafinil, a narcolepsy drug; amantadine, a Parkinson's drug; and dextroamphetamine, one of the components of Adderall. But there's still no indication of a single clinical trial for methamphetamine for TBI registered with the National Institutes of Health.

Methylphenidate, also known as Ritalin, seems to be the stimulant most popular in these trials. For example, in 2004, researchers at Drucker Brain Injury Center at MossRehab Hospital in Pennsylvania gave methylphenidate, better known as Ritalin, to 34 patients with moderate to severe TBI. They reported significant improvements in information processing and attention.

Twelve years later, in Gothenburg, Sweden, another 30 patients suffering from prolonged fatigue following TBI were given methylphenidate and observed for six months. They also showed improved cognitive function and reduced fatigue. But a 2016 meta-analysis of 10 controlled trials found the main benefit of giving methylphenidate for TBI was increased attention, "whereas no notable benefit was observed in the facilitation of memory or processing speed," the authors wrote. They encouraged more research into appropriate dosages and length of prescription.

Birgitta Johansson, a neuroscientist at the University of Gothenburg and lead author of the Swedish study, suggests caution whenever treating someone with a brain injury. "With methylphenidate, it is important to be aware about possible side effects, [such] as increased blood pressure and heart rate and also risk of anxiety," she says. "It is always very important to prescribe medication with care and follow the patient carefully."

But the reason meth isn't studied more rigorously—for TBI, for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, for stroke—could also come down to money. Methamphetamine is off-patent, meaning there may be less financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to explore the drug's potential uses. Consider Vyvanse, a drug first marketed in 2007, with a new formulation introduced in 2017, that racked up $2.1 billion in sales in 2017. Desoxyn, which is sold by three companies, only earned about $9.3 million in 2009.

While Methamphetamine may not be widely recognized as medicine, it clearly has potential to heal as well as harm. Recognizing the duality of meth is arguably all the more essential in the face of a rising stimulant overdose crisis.

"Stigma regarding any substance use or substance use disorder is counterproductive," says Dan Ciccarone, professor of family medicine at the University of California–San Francisco. He says the overdose crisis is shifting from opioids to stimulants and that we are not prepared for the next wave. "Stigma is the lens [through] which we see all drug issues. It keeps us from making the best decisions. It is fear-based, not rational, not creative. Because of stigma, we have not fully addressed the opioid crisis."

That stigma remains a major hurdle, and until doctors and public-health officials counteract this kind of messaging, it seems unlikely that a multinational pharmaceutical company would risk marketing a substance only believed to be toxic and deadly.

"Everything will kill you, if you take enough of it," Poulsen says. "Some things don't require a lot to do that. Meth is one of those things. But just like any drug, the difference between a poison and a cure is the dose."

*These names have been changed.

TAGSALZHEIMER'SADDERALLTRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURIESFEATURES & INVESTIGATIONSMETHAMPHETAMINEMETHTOPIC: HEALTH CARE

BY TROY FARAH

Troy Farah is an independent journalist and photographer in California. His reporting on science, health, and narcotics has appeared in Wired, Ars Technica, Smithsonian, Discover, Vice, and elsewhere. He co-hosts the drug policy podcast Narcotica. 

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