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pick-me-up-im-scared · 1 day

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Call Me When You Need Me (Ellie Williams x Reader) (Fluff)

Short Summary: When your best friend Ellie has problem sleeping you come over to help her. Like you always do!

Author´s Note: Another random idea I got that I thought would be waaay shorter. It´s not that long, but it's longER than I planned to. Istg, the universe wants me to write +5k fanfics. Everythime I come up with an idea for a blur (cause they're way quicker to write) I end up adding so much to it you can't even call it that. Anyway, hope you'll enjoy just a super cute little story! (I'm the person who tries to fill the "ellie x reader"-tag with stuff that isn't smut. Like I didn't just post two smuts right after each other a week ago.................)

Also! Ellie lives in the same house as Joel in this. Even though I'm well aware she has her own "hut" in the game

Words: 1473

(Pictures aren´t mine! I found them on Pinterest)

The empty streets felt oddly peaceful as you wandered down the oh, so familiar road. Only the streetlights lighting up your path as your sleepy feet stumbled on the sidewalk. It wasn’t unusual to find you walking down these streets at 3 am. You found yourself in this situation a little too often. Not that you complain! When your best friend needs you, she needs you. The crispy night air forced you to cross your arms in order to keep some warmth. Despite being near fall you decided to skip out on a jacket and just go with your outwashed hoodie. Big mistake. But it’s not that bad. Though you’d lie if you´d say you didn’t miss your warm, cozy bed. Just the thought was enough to put a drowsy smile on your face. You continued to kick rocks you stumbled upon on the sidewalk as you, trying to not hit any of the parked cars beside you, cause you know.......karma. Soon you noticed the familiar fence you helped painting white one summer. By the looks of it, it could use a little touch-up. Getting onto the lawn you quickly made your way to the back. The house was completely pitch black apart from one single window on the right corner.

You walked over to the corner of the porch, making sure to sneak a few glances through the dark windows, just to make sure Joel wasn’t up to grab a glass of water or something. But you’re just met with your own reflection in the surprisingly clean windows. You jumped up on the fence that tastefully decorated the porch to reach the edge of the roof. You took a sturdy grip around the aged wood before pushing yourself up the brick plated surface. This was nothing new to you. It was more of a routine. Getting called over to your friends house at least five times a week you kinda start to come up with a few tricks to make your arrival more smooth. Why are you climbing the house like you're a fucking monkey? you may as. The first time Ellie called me over you both thought Joel would be pissed if he knew. So you came up with the brilliant idea, with your life at risk, to climb up from the back. Yes, Ellie tired to prevent you from doing it, but you're too stubborn. She knows that damn well. And yes, you're pretty sure you've got a six-pack from all the times you've pushed your whole body onto the porch roof. But by the morning neither of you considered Joel's daily visit. So when he came to tell Ellie it's breakfast he was sure surprised to see you laying there, holding her. But he wasn't mad.....not at all. And when it was time for you to leave he made sure to throw out "You can take the door next time!". Despite that you continued to take your not-so-convenient way into Ellie's room. You saw it more as a fun thing, and you like to believe Ellie enjoys to too. Even thought she mumbled a "You're so dumb" before giving you a welcome hug.

You carfully got up from your crunched up position, being careful not to strainght out your back too much or you'll probably fall down and break your neck. At this height you could outline more details in the only lit up room, as if you didn’t know it by memory. You noticed the small crack Ellie always made sure to leave every night incase she got the urge that’s currently the reason you’re here. She didn’t want to have to get up and open it when you got there. Also, she’s been very clear that you can come over whenever you feel like it. Day as night. You used your finger to loop around the thick glass and push it up enough to give you the opportunity to get a better grip. You slid the glass into the slit, just enough to squeeze yourself through. The noice made Ellie quickly turn her head from her position on her bed. Just the look of you made her smile. "You came!" she happily exclaimed. You giggled "Of course! You said you had problem sleeping”.

Your beaten up sneakers barely got to touch the floor before Ellie threw herself at you, slamming you into the nearby wall. She continued to hug you, tighten up her grip. You chuckled, "Hey, hey! You shouldn't try to mush me like ground beef. Who´s gonna keep you company then?". Ellie let go off you and took a step back, giving you the chance to get away from the wall. "I'm sure you can take it" she snarky remarked "Weren't you the one who's got a six-pack" she sarcastically asked while slapping her hand against your clothed stomach. "Ow!" you screaked while backing way from her hand. Ellie just chucked before making her way back to her bed, signaling you to take place beside her. You let the strap of your backpack slide down your arms before leaving it by the end of Ellie's bed, to then quickly kick off your lazy tied shoes before crawling up the comfy bed.

You let out a deep sigh as your back hit the mattress, "I´ve told you to just call me whenever you need me". "I know" Ellie mumbled before looking to the side, "But you deserve to sleep too". "I never sleep as good as I do in your bed" you reassured her as. She smiled a little, but she wasn't convinced. She's tried to fall asleep by herself when she has one of these...nights, but it's impossible! There's been times where she hasn't called you even thought she should have. Just cause she feels bad for forcing you out of bed. She never told you this or you'd kill her. She's lost count of all the times you've told her to just call you when she feels down or can't sleep.

You place your hands behind your head, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stickers Ellie swore she'd get rid off, but hasn't "had the time to". But you swore she was lying. She's always been such a bad liar. But you think it's adorable, so you don´t mind. "I swear I'm getting us a house someday. That way you wouldn't have to call me whenever you have problem sleeping", Ellie smirked at you. "Yeah?" she asked while shooting herself closer to your laying from. "Yep! Then you could just come over to my room" you frowned a little "Or we might share the same bedroom...". You shrug "Or I mean, we're sleeping in the same bed now, so we could save a lot of money if we just get one". Ellie smiled at the thought but soon her face fell a little "How would that work when you bring a girl over?". You shot your head to give her a confused face "What the fuck, Ellie?" you grabbed a pillow from behind you to hit her playfully "I don´t even bring that many girls over!". "Suuure" Ellie playfully rolled her eyes while wearing that shit-eating grin.

You huffed before pushing her back against the bed so you could straddle her. Ellie had to stop herself from blushing at the sudden contact, but she's pretty sure you'd still notice if you weren't busy continuing hitting her with the pillow. You giggle "You play me out to be some type of slut!". She just shrugged "Maybe you are". You huffed once more, louder this time, before getting off Ellie's lap with a defeated look. "Fuck you, Ellie" you mumbled before throwing the pillow at her. She just laughs as she catches it and put it back to its original place. "Should we get to bed now? You know, the reason I'm here?". "Oh!" Ellie quickly adjusted herself "Yeah, that'd be nice". You grabbed the cover that was messily tossed to the side and placed it over you to. "You want me to read you a bed time story?". Ellie laughed "Fuck you, (y/n)". You smirked as you reached over her to turn off the lamp on her beside table. The feeling of your body being pressed against her made it hard for Ellie to focus, but thank god you soon got back to your previous position behind her.

You wrapped your arms around her frame before pulling her into your embrace. Transferring your warmth onto her. “You don’t have to come here every time, you know?” Ellie clarified. “No, I know” you answered “But I want to” you added before burring your face in the nape of her neck, automatically squeeze her torso a little tighter. Ellie couldn’t help but release a relaxed sigh, finally at peace.

#ellie x reader #ellie williams x reader #ellie x fem reader #ellie williams #tlou ellie #ellie williams tlou #tlou #the last of us #tlou2 #the last of us part two #ellie x reader fluff

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nyxshadowhawk · 20 hours

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A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

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This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

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the-cat-and-the-birdie · 16 hours

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Jessica didn't threaten Gwen - y'all are just mean.

I don't know how to tell y'all this but Jessica did not threaten Gwen. Ever.

She said 'If Miguel finds out I let you come-'

As in 'if Miguel finds out (on his own) that I let you come (here) (it won't look good for either of us)'

And then GWEN reacts as if Jessica threatened to rat her out, even if Jess never did that.

Her saying 'finds out' instead of 'if I tell him' implies that Jess never planned on ratting to Miguel. She was afraid he'd find out some other way - which he did.

Like, yes - Jessica is exasperated here. But not because Gwen saw Miles, she's pissed because The Spot has now escaped.

But she never threatened to rat Gwen out, she never tipped of Miguel about anything. Miguel only found out once the hole opened in Mumbattan.

Even at the end of ATSV, Jessica doesn't rat Gwen out - when she sees Gwen using Hobies portals.

Jessica is the only one that sees Gwen leaving on the rooftop. And because Hobie's portals look different, she knows it's someone close to him. But Hobie doesn't know where Miles lives - Gwen does.

So in this shot, she knows whoever is up there is 1) close to Hobie and 2) knows where Miles lives. That can only be two people - Peter, or Gwen. And Hobie is way closer to Gwen.

Jessica has all the info to know that Gwen is now universe jumping with technology she got from Hobie. That's HUGE information, considering Miguel has no idea that other people can universe jump without his assistance.

Jess still doesn't rat Gwen out.

Jessica isn't perfect considering she was beating the absolute dogshit outta Miles for no reason - but I think people REALLY mischaracterize her relationship with Gwen.

Jessica never threatened Gwen. She never told Miguel anything.

Jessica was the one who let Gwen come to 1610 - hence the 'If Miguel finds out I let you come-'

And when things went south, she still gave Gwen a chance to try and clean up her own mess, by sending her to Mumbattan.

I see a lot of Jess slander and idk man - I just don't get the hate for her.

Jessica did FAR more trying to help out Gwen than Peter did for Gwen or Miles. While Peter physically restrains Miles (ITSV) and gets him caught (ATSV) -

Jessica talks Miguel into accepting Gwen, gives her the mission to 1610, and gives her multiple chances to clean up her mess. All while keeping the info from Miguel until the last possible second.

Was she wrong for kicking Miles in the chest. Yeah. That's unarguable. 😐

Is she a shit mentor? I don't think so!

--------------------000---------------------

I've been meaning to write a longer post about this but it's 2am and I just needed to yell this!!!

I feel like a year out, it's really easy to misremember what exactly was said despite remembering the overall gist of it - but I think small things like these matter in dialogue.

We're meant to react like Gwen - the kneejerk reaction of 'Don't tell Miguel!'.

But Gwen saying that was a reflection of her own fears, NOT a response to a threat given by Jess. Jess never intended on getting Gwen sent home.

Put some respeckt on Jess' name alright 😤😤 She ain't perfect but some of the beef y'all got with her is unfounded frfr

Anyway if you read this far ily here's Hobie

BYE.

#in conclusion.. fuck Peter B.#spiderman #atsv #spider man #marvel #across the spiderverse #jessica drew #jess drew #gwen stacy #spider woman #spiderwoman

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swordmaid · 23 days

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i am wide awake thinking about that post canon jb au again when I should be sleeping …!!! such is the nature of the jbrainrot…

#the whole setting is jb hanging out in the rock post war #and tyrion became lord of the westerlands / the rock is his but he’s off doing stuff in kingslanding and jaime is just filling in for him #atm . but after tyrion comes back his original plan WAS he’ll get married to brienne right away and they can move back to tarth or be #travelling hedge knights together or whatever brienne wants to do he’s down for it. but the important thing is that he wants to stay with #her .. so he’s using the time they have together currently to court her bc she deserves that at least !!#so jaime goes off trying to court and woo brienne but she just thinks they’re hanging out bc they got relatively close in the war #so jaime being touchy feely isn’t anything new. jaime making innuendos and being kinda flirty isn’t anything new either #but this time he means it LOL he’s like I want to kiss you SO badly and brienne will be like lol silly jaime (:#I was also thinking they’d help rebuild lannisport just bc it’s a time for healing now and it would be good for the people to get to know #jaime and the lannisters in general bc of how they would just used to sit high above the rock looking down on everyone #but now jaime is like. actively helping and being known and being with the people rather than just being that absent distant lord #also he’s thinking he might as well try and foster some relationship with the commoners to his house bc it’s for tyrion anyway #so he’s off doing that and brienne is tagging along bc she does not want to go home yet #she wants to stay with him and she’s helping out as an excuse to stay a little longer but she doesn’t exactly want to leave him #but how do you tell someone that and ignore the big glaring part that she’s actually in love with him and the fact that they both survived #the war is getting her hopeful???? u want her to admit that?? like a normal person??? no..!!#so she’s just staying and helping out bc a) it’s the sensible thing to do b) so she can bask on the sun that is Jaime Lannister #for like a few more days. weeks. maybe a month bc the weather is soooo bad in the stormlands rn 🙄😳#anyway jb hanging out! and everything is going well and good but jaime is now getting popular w the people and he’s also looking quite #rugged and handsome post war now that he’s thirty flirty and thriving and he also has a new scar across his lip that makes his #smirks even more ! rogueish … ! and he looks quite nice with the greying hair 👀 so now there’s gossips around him #not to mention he’s single too and I think if you were one of the heroes who helped win the war they’ll forget the kingslaying #man with no honor business so lo and behold brienne eavesdrops a group of ladies bc she’s a chismosa at heart and they’re talking about a #potential marriage for a lord lannister (!!!) and there’s going to be a big tourney held in Kingslanding for it (!!!)#and brienne remembers jaime mentioning the ought to go to Kingslanding in the next few weeks (!!!) and now she’s remembering jaime IS a #lord though not theee lord of the westerlands STILL a lord from one of the seven houses and he’s single and very eligible for marriage rn #and now she’s realising everything is returning back the way it was before the war where society rules matters and she has her own role as #now the evenstar bc rip selwyn and jaime has his own role too and the court is a whole different battlefield #one that she isn’t equipped in and even though she had found some new confidence in herself bc killing a bunch of ice invisible zombies #with your own magic sword will do that for you she doesn’t think (and she’s being objective not negative) she stands a chance in THAT

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mirai-desu · 3 months

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I agree with this article 💯, as Rachael New et al. are now undermining the entire premise of the show, and I want to highlight and comment on a few parts of this excellent take:

We're losing a central character whose emotional journey we were invested in and a vital piece of the primary reason we were told to watch Miss Scarlet & The Duke in the first place. Whether you want William and Eliza together romantically or not, the show was always predicated on and grounded in their relationship, and to pretend otherwise is to deny the original premise behind its very existence.

Exactly this. "Miss Scarlet" might be considered more lead than him, but he was still a titular character, and we were invested in his journey as well as hers. Their bond is the foundation of the show. The teenage flashback episode in particular proves this to us--and proves William’s importance to the greater story. But even before that, it's been there all along:

And, honestly, the official description of Season 1 is blunt about what’s happening: “Eliza and The Duke strike up a mismatched, fiery relationship that will crackle and smolder with sexual tension as they team up to solve crime in the murkiest depths of 1880’s London.” So let’s say it as plainly as possible: No one planned to tune in to this new program simply because it promised a crime drama in period dress. The series’ hook, apparent from its first marketing materials, was this unique relationship at the show’s center. The real story of Miss Scarlet and the Duke has always been just that: Miss Scarlet and the Duke.

While RN et al. can dig in their heels and claim that the story has always just been Eliza's, but we know better than that. Since Day 1, the promotion and the interviews all catered towards the UST. As time wore on, Stuart really began championing the romance in earnest, and it was a logical next step. He was not wrong to do so. What was actually happening on screen was heading that way, as part of a beautiful slow burn.

After literally years of dancing around the rarely mentioned but blatantly obvious feelings between them, this season finally pushed their relationship forward. We got a whole flashback episode dedicated to how they first met! There was a kiss! William said the L-word! The genuine forward relationship progress that so many fans had been waiting for was finally happening! [...] What makes this even more painful is that Season 4 finally felt like the show was moving forward, at last, at least where its central relationship was concerned. Yes, William left, but it was for a good reason: to give Eliza the space and opportunity to decide what she wanted from their relationship on her own terms. (That, as the kids say, is growth.) But if he was never coming back, why bother with most of Season 4?

While we know that in part we got some of the romantic moments in S4 due to Stuart's requests, but I think ultimately, RN's reluctance to move things forward with Wiliza is what put Stuart at odds with her, as she likely did not take too kindly to him suggesting his own input (even when he became an EP) and perhaps felt like he was telling her what to do with her own show. And her goal is to keep it stuck in a cynical pattern; one that William wanted to resolve, and one that Stuart had to remove himself from, because RN favors rinsing and repeating, versus actually diving deep into longer character arcs. That's how she think she can keep the "longevity" of her show, or so she thinks.

Because look, I love Eliza. But I realize it's really because of the potential of who she could be. William never returning prolongs her characterization being stuck. She was supposed to spend the year thinking about what changes she needs to make so they could be together. If he never returns, then what's the point? The catalyst for change is gone. William staying on the show should have actually forced her to grow, not kept her stuck. Removing William entirely reinforces the patterns versus ending the cycle. Especially if he is just replaced with a new love interest, who just flirts with Eliza to keep a "will they / won't they angle" that's never moved forward.

Any writer worth their salt would have Eliza grow in interim and have major development upon William return. But that would end the "put them together / pull them apart." Which is not what RN wants, hence why she refused to put them together. She thinks these patterns are what maintains the show vs spending time on actual storytelling. And this is also why I cannot believe the party line, and truly feel that we haven't gotten the whole truth on why Stuart's exiting.

Thinking about the scenes in the flashback episode of William and Henry, and how important they were, it makes me sad that apparently in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter to RN. And it's sad they keep trying to paint it that the two most important people to Eliza were “overshadowing” her all the time.

I fear is that this new retooled version will just ignore and erase the importance that William has had on her life. At least in the S4 finale we saw how his words still affected her, even when he wasn’t there, encouraging to reopen her own agency. But I can’t see them continuing that, when clearly they want to reboot the show without him.

I had been working on my post S4 fanfic before the news of Stuart's departure hit, and I looked back on how I was developing Eliza from where we left off and how I wrote William's return. When I was outlining it, I was thinking about how RN only just barely has touched the surface of Eliza's psyche. I wrote her as torn up about William leaving--and how he left not long after he almost died. Eliza should have grown from the trauma of almost losing him and we seemed to be on that path in the show, with her at his bedside, and having him recover in her home. We could have dived into how the lost of her mother at a young age affected her, and how Henry's death still was painful. At her father's funeral (which mind you, is in the very first episode) she talked about being alone, and William wiped her tears away. And now... Eliza has lost another person close to her. Literally, it's not William's existence stopping Eliza's development--it's RN's lack of talent, I'm afraid. And who knows, maybe that statement that she cannot be developed while he is around is just a cover to explain his exit, as it's clearly not an actual reason.

Likewise with William, in addition to dealing with his feelings for Eliza, there's so much they could done with him leaving Scotland Yard and the trauma he survived. He didn't have to have PTSD, but he's already had a pretty traumatic life and survived so much (which again… why show all that in the flashback if they were ditching his character - Ben, not RN, wrote that episode so maybe that was a sign). But he held onto the identity of being part of the police, because of how he came get that job (i.e. Henry) and get off the street, and they could have explored what would it be like to shift away from that identity. There just was so much potential and so much richness that could have been written, for a man who came from nothing, but wanted to belong, and wanted to be loved. And maybe Stuart was just so very aware that the show was refusing it take it there. He took William as far he was allowed to, but not as far as the character could have gone, if written by the right people.

Frankly, both William and Eliza deserve better. Stuart deserves better, and we the Wiliza fans do as well. Ultimately, regardless of what (and at what point in time it) really went down between Stuart and RN, the series should have ended with S4, but with a happy conclusion. All signs pointed to William joining Eliza at her detective agency, but now we just have to imagine them there, working together as equals and in love.

#this got way longer than I planned but at least read the link if not all my ramblings #miss scarlet and the duke #msatd spoilers #mirai's text posts #(also for those of your on other platforms yes I did borrow some of my own wording elsewhere to share here lol)#edit: I'll add a caveat that they simply could just straight up change Eliza's characterization in S5 - been there seen that.#anyway remains to be seen but not by me bc I'm out

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seth-burroughs · 8 months

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The last thing you see before you fucking die. That or you're just Makoto.

Yomi birthdayposting..... part 2!

#fake zilch's clothes are based off of agent 47 because haha get it. hitman #quote unquote zilch's existence is either hitting men or hitting ON men they're the only activities he partakes in.#i gave him longer hair because why not? also he's got the harukawa scrunchie :)#i love shading but shading doesn't love me. unfortunately....#mine #art tag #rain code #yomi hellsmile #fake zilch alexander #hellxander #day i drew this: october 3 #his zilch disguise looks way more like him than the real zilch since the MD's don't really meet each other that often.#he just got his clothes and glasses and was like ''aight that should do it'' and was literally right #i said this before but hitman's plan literally almost succeeded the only reason why he got found out by yuma was because of the ML #and even if yuma did solve the case without the ML. the only reason why he didn't get arrested anyway was because of yakou #anyway! i don't really care about real zilch but if i ever were to draw him he'd have 1. no tattoos 2. izuru-smooth hair 3. cat eyes. shrug!#sooooo many thoughts about hitman zilch......... yet not enough tag space..........

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amee-racle-ofmyown · 5 months

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Csptaineer art request 5. admiring them from afar

dear anon, I know you asked for art but I had intended these as writing prompts! however!! I may doodle something for this later anyway, because it's cute :3

and still, never do we tire of watching stars glow

head engineer mark x reader (the captain) | words: 877

For as long as you'd known him, he'd always had a certain look of awe about him when it came to space:

When you were kids, huddled up in blankets watching a documentary about The Solar System while you shared a bowl of cookies.

And as teens, laying side by side in the dry summer grass, gazing up at the stars dotting the sky, laughing and pointing out constellations and making up stories about what it would be like when you got to be among them.

And as cadets, the first time you voyaged beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Now the Captain of a ship he'd built from the ground up, it took you by surprise when you looked up from your data tablet one day to see him gazing at you with that same look of wistfulness and wonder.

His expression lasted for the briefest moment before he registered that you'd seen him, eyes widening and cheeks flushing almost imperceptibly from this distance. He immediately averted his gaze to anywhere but yours, busying himself with whatever he could.

You let out an amused huff, an incredulous yet flattered smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

It was far from the first time you'd caught someone giving you a starstruck or near-mesmerised look, especially within your own crew. But for him to be the one staring like that? The same admiration and fascination that you'd seen in his eyes when he beheld an eclipse, or a meteor shower, or your new home planet, directed at you…?

You couldn't deny the small flutter in your stomach, or your heartbeat slightly quickening its pace.

You brushed off the thought and continued working, but from then on you couldn't help but keep noticing the awe and longing when he looked at you, whether it be from across a room or in conversation. It made you wonder if this was a recent phenomenon, or if you had simply been blind to it for a long time.

It was one of those moments of catching his warm, starlit gaze in which you were caught off-guard once again.

You met his eyes with the same intensity once you realised he was watching you, raising your eyebrows slightly to get his attention. He looked embarrassed and a little taken aback, as he always did in such scenarios, and you could practically see the gears turning in his head as he decided whether or not to abandon ship. Instead, his mouth curved into a smile that crinkled his eyes with fondness, followed by a quick wink.

Now it was your turn to look surprised.

It's not that the gesture was out of character or that he couldn't be bold when he wanted to. You just hadn't expected it now.

Later, you found it in you to be direct.

‘What's with all the staring lately, Mark?’

His eyes widened at the question. It wasn't particularly like you to be so upfront about something like this.

You watched as your head engineer’s expression turned apologetic and a little guilty, like he'd been caught red-handed.

‘Uhh- I'm sorry. Am I in trouble, Captain?’

You giggled quietly. ‘Nah. I never said I minded, just wondering…’

He visibly relaxed at your response.

‘Oh, well in that case. To be honest, Cap, it's sorta hard to look away sometimes.’

You felt your face flush at this, but were given no pause to utter a reply even if you’d had the words; he continued quickly, as if just realising what he'd said aloud and in the same moment deciding to fully commit to speaking his mind, before he could let himself back out.

‘I just- I love seeing you doing your job, you look so happy and assured. And proud — of everyone you work with, proud that you're part of the team. You're always so willing to help out and listen to what everyone needs. And watching you take command of a situation- You just– you have this aura that screams that you belong here, this is what you were meant to do, and you have a positive effect on everybody around you. We're so lucky and grateful to have you as our Captain.’

And here you are, stunned into silence for a moment.

He stands there, trying to gauge your reaction, a little flustered himself but steadfast in his confession.

You feel a little giddy, but take a breath to soothe your racing heart, finally composing yourself again as the smile you can no longer hold back paints your face.

‘Thank you, Mark. That's… that's really sweet.’

He grins. ‘Just being honest.’

‘And I feel exactly the same about you, by the way.’

He tilts his head in confusion.

‘Watching you in action, it's the same.’

You can see it in his eyes when it clicks.

‘Wait, Captain, are you saying you-’

‘Almost as much as you,’ you chuckle. ‘Except I don't get caught. You could definitely use some improvement in that area.’

He looks away, smile becoming sheepish, the tint on his cheeks you are sure matches yours from only moments ago.

‘But… like I said,’ you speak up again, drawing his attention back to you. ‘I don't really mind. It is kinda cute seeing your reaction when I catch you.’

#I'm sorry this took a lot longer than I was planning #at first I was just struggling then when I got into it stuff was happening irl and I was too busy😩#but anyway I hope you enjoy!#hope this doesn't read as too ooc or anything😬 I just want super sweet fluff rn #maybe I am just overthinking but lmk what you think y'all think #as always reading your comments makes my entire day or week even #ALSO CHILDHOOD FRIENDS CAPTAINEER WOOO #I AM SUCH A SUCKER FOR THE TROPE #AND I THINK ABOUT MARK AND THE CAPTAIN AS KIDS ALL THE TIME LIKE WAY TOO MUCH #also about the title bc I was feeling a little poetic :0 just think.#humanity has been gazing at the same stars for eons #and yet we still do it #we don't ever get bored #maybe some like to more than others but #I think it's fair to say that it's a pretty universally shared and agreed upon idea that stars are beautiful #and looking at them is nice #and we probably won't stop any time soon #I think that's a nice sentiment :) and it literally just came to me as I was trying to think of a title #amee writes #blooming romance prompts #asks #anonymous #iswm #in space with markiplier #captaineer #engineer mark x captain #engineer mark x reader #head engineer mark x reader #head engineer mark #engineer!mark

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aro-aizawa · 6 months

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I think Mirabel & Izuku would be besties tbh. This is prompted by anything but I thought you might agree

mirabel from encanto? oh ye i can get behind that ahah

#shut up danni's talking #i have a vague hc of characters from various fandoms i think could be siblings #i call it my mega sibling au #i don't think i see mirabel as part of it but i can deffo see her being familiar w them #the mega sibling group btw is danny from dp; izuku from mha; mari from ml; usagi from sailor moon; and damian from batman #those are the core of the au tho i can loosely see a few others be included but not enough to officially induct them y'know?#those are hiccup from httyd; aang from atla; steven from su & haruhi from ouran #others than i can see being friends w the mega sibling group are: team rocket from pkmn #that list was gonna be longer but i couldn't think past team rocket i love them too much #i guess mirabel would be there lol #hm maybe ron and kim from kp.....#this isn't necessarily my favourite characters from these specific shows/movies/comics/whatever just who i think would vibe together #like otherwise keith from voltron; zuko from atla and todoroki from mha would be there #instead they have their own thing going on where i can 100% see them as brothers #todoroki and zuko being twins w keith their elder brother #this is proto-mega sibling au tbh #anyways no plans for all this btw just vibes and good feelings there is no WAY i could handle anything solid w this big a cast lol #exactly a minute after i posted this i realised that tim from batman would also perfectly fit the proto-mega sibling group #then i got distracted when i couldn't edit this post from my mobile so in the time that my computer booted up #and w the annoyance of my phone not working i forgot who i was gonna add and was trying to think and i realised #ed from fma would also fit well into this proto sibling group and im now mad i made two crossover sibling groups

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opens-up-4-nobody · 6 months

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...

#tfw u spend the day being catastrophically depressed then u remember how kush1na uzumak1 is treated by the plot of #narut0 and u get so fucking angry that u stop thinking abt how miserable u r for 2hrs as u furiously draw out an idea #it makes me so fucking mad. but like in a way that fun bc its like who cares its not that serious #and when i get depressed i just like. i dont give a fuck abt anything. there is a film between me and everything and nothing can touch me #except apparently my fucking insane feelings about narut0. like im genuinely so embarrassing when ppl irl make the mistake of talking abt #narut0 to me irl. like i get SO excited. i move my arms a lot and stamp my feet and just get real enthusiastic and my voice goes all weird #and i cant get my thoughts straight bc i have so so so much to say. which is like fine. its just embarrassing to me personally #bc i kno i tent to stay on the subjects im interested in for way longer than most ppl would probably enjoy #and after i watched star trek into darkness in hs i was like at my peak star trek phase and i was talking a mile a minute #and then my sister was like: y is your voice all weird? and it was like she slapped me in the face. slapped me thru time. u bitch 😭#this is y im not allowed to enjoy things 😭 also bc im annoying abt it. ugh. anyway. point is i got so mad abt the misogyny of kishimoto #that i forgot how fucking awful i was feeling for a minute. so thank u for hating women so much u fucking bastard lol #when will i post the idea im planning? who tf knows. its gonna take. well idk how long itll take #unrelated

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yeonban · 28 days

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It's lovely when I read a book and some random paragraph in it hits me in the face like a train at mach speed

#◜✧ . ❪ muse. tobias. ❫#ask to tag #Before this I was catching up with the Doctors are Out webtoon too and atm it's an arc where an abuser #got back to his victim bc he and the authorities dgaf about upholding his restraining order like bro I GET it. I get it. I KNOW #Tobias showing up like that one surprise 'heyyy' girl meme gif bc he's the solution (<- getting rid of them Permanently): >:)#No matter where I look this guy manages to weasel his way in. I cannot escape #Now I'm thinking about how Wammy's orphans have such different perspectives on what they should do and what justice means...#to some of them (ex Near) it means catching sb legally by mostly lawful means and yeeting them into prison #to others (ex Mello) it means catching sb by any means necessary but still trying his best to avoid murder #and then to others (ex Tobias) murdering these people who he knows will escape sooner or later anyway is justice in itself #You try to put Wammy orphans down at a table to come to a collective agreement on how they should operate and they simply Cannot #Watari mildly fucked up when he made them ALL headstrong and under the belief that they're always the right one in the room #I bet any of them comes up w a cohesive plan and there's sb in the room IMMEDIATELY pointing out why that plan isn't it 😭#Obviously they'd still synch with each other if need be (ex Mello & Near) but forbid they work TOGETHER together as more than ~2 people #Tobias and Near would be such a funny duo esp. bc Near sees people resorting to murder as wrong and disgusting no matter if it's valid #meanwhile Tobias sees lawful justice as nothing but a farce because 99% of the time it does nothing besides giving a momentary #ego boost to the person who caught the criminal. and then beyond that it's no longer their business if the criminal escapes or not #but it IS very much everyone else's business; and why many live in terror daily wondering if their nightmare will return tomorrow #to be fair Tobias couldn't care less about their feelings 99% of the time either but Watari DID teach him to enact justice. and to him #getting rid of the root of the problem rather than locking it up IS justice. He perceives the problems from much closer than #other Wammy orphans ever have. He's RIGHT THERE in the middle of it whereas they're in some safe place far away from the victims #plus their backgrounds are far too different from his own to reach a consensus too... you can't make him believe prison = justice #just as you can't make them believe murder = justice. But I do think people would prefer Tobias' approach far more than idk Near's #again it's not like Tobias cares about how he's perceived by the people he saves! (or if he's even perceived at all) but I can imagine #going to sleep knowing the person/people/group/etc having it out for you no longer exists is a much more heartening sentiment than #hearing they've been sent to prison; from where they can send sb else after you or from where they can escape in due time

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zemnarihah · 3 months

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sorry but like if my schedule isn't given to me until two weeks in advance sometimes not even then i feel like i should be able to call out w no penalties like.... a week in advance. but at my job even if i request time off MONTHS in advance it's not always guaranteed. like that is literally enough time for you to hire and train someone to cover for me. it's actually insane

#i'm sick rn so like. it's not like getting the schedule ahead of time or anything like that would help me rn but. i wouldn't CURRENTLY have #a strike on my record from calling out for an event i literally requested time off for um. more than 3 months in advance?#if i could fucking. get guaranteed time off. literally all i want is to be able to request off like. 3 months ahead of time. that's totally #reasonable but if a bunch of people also want it and request it 6 months ahead of time... i'm not getting it #but i just feel like. idk we have a huge company and so little time off availability? i swear only like 4 ppl can request off on one day #before we start getting waitlisted. anyway idk it's not like #the attendance policy is that strict like if i called out now i wouldn't be at risk of getting fired but i would be getting like some #additional disciplinary action. so because i feel like vaguely okay enough to work i AM but i fucking probably shouldn't and it's definitely #going to take way longer to get better bc i'm constantly talking on the phone with a sore throat. idk man it's just frustrating i've been #frustrated forever abt how hard it is to make any plans around this job but it's just extra frustrating rn bc i KNEW. if i called out for #that concert bc they wouldn't give me the time off and then i got sick or smth later and couldn't call out bc of it i would be so pissed...

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waluigisgaybf · 6 months

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Im literally so fucking antsy and impatient to finish and beat BG3 also just so that I can do a hard fresh reinstall of the game so that I can FINALLY fucking kiss Astarion and Halsin again and with the new animations 😭😭😭

cause I also have a few customization/texture mods the game for some reason wont run without them activated now, and at least one of them broke my shit even more than the normal bug that occurred from the kiss animations and I get literally NO animation- it just closes out the conversation after I ask for a kiss 😔

#and because now I know my character more I feel like I can better do a play Im happiest with and also fucking blast through it on easy mode #Im want to do an evil Durge run FOR FUCKING SURE at some point with my boy #but Im planning on replaying once more with the exact same character and for the most part main game plan- after I beat it this first time #AND THEN MY ASS IS GOING TO MAKE SO MANY FUCKING CUSTOM TAVS FOR DIFFERENT RUNS AND SO I CAN ROMANCE EVERYONE AT LEAST ONCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#Ive played SO MUCH FUCKING DRAGON AGE #like all 3 games so so so many fucking times over and over #with the same character mostly-#and then at least one run with a different character to do a different romance and maybe story #AND HAVE DONE ALMOST EVERY SINGLE ROMANCE IN DRAGON AGE #(aside from Cullen cause I FUCKING HATE HIM and then-#SOMEHOW HAVENT EVER ROMAMCED BULL YET BECAUSE LAST TIME I WAS PLAYING I COULDNT #FUCKING FIGURE OUT WHAT KIND OF INQUISITIOR I WANTED TO MAKE FOR HIM 😭😭😭😭😭#BUT ANYWAYS I GOT OFF TRACK-#IVE DONE ALL OF THAT AND REPLAYED THEM ALL SO MANY FUCKING TIMES #THAT IM SO FUCKING CONFIDENT I WILL AND I AM GOING TO #BE ABLE TO COMMIT THAT HARD TO BG3 #GIVEN IT TAKES WAY FUCKING LONGER TO BEAT BG3 THAN ANY OF THE DA GAMES-#BUT STILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#bg3 #personal #? kind of??#I think Im just going to tag anything thats not specifically about a plot or character (or art) thing I’ll just tag it as personal I guess 🤷#IM TRYING TO START TAGGING THINGS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER #CAUSE IDK #I HALF ASS TF OUT OF THE ACTUAL CONTENT TAGS #BUT IM TRYING MAN #bg3 bugs #bg3 patch bugs

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bohemian-rhapsody-in-blue · 2 years

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Beboptober Day 4: Hitchhiker on the Space Highway

Thanks to @thestarlightsymphony for the prompt list, and to my lovely roommate for, when I was blocked on what the heck to do with this prompt, suggesting the idea of writing something from Faye’s point of view around Session 4! I guess it makes sense, since I’d noticed that the prompts list was loosely organized by episode, which is really cool! In particular, this is set before and during the events of Session 4, “Gateway Shuffle.”

“Hi! Are you there? I just picked up your signal! I’m out of fuel at the moment, and I’d just love it if you could just take me to Ganymede, and I’d—”

Quick as a flash, the ship in front of Faye vanished.

She frowned, wrinkling her nose, both at the stranger’s rudeness—didn’t they know it was bad manners to take off in the middle of a conversation?—and at the situation in which she found herself. She hated having to hitchhike, to be dependent on others. It wasn’t like she was any stranger to manipulating people to get what she wanted, using her feminine wiles (however one defined them), but she at least liked having some choice in the matter, y’know? And that was a luxury she didn’t have right now—when she’d gambled away all the money she’d stolen from those two bounty hunters, Spike and Jet, and had nothing left.

But it wasn’t really so bad. Okay, so maybe her ship was completely out of fuel. Maybe it would take an interminable time of drifting through empty space for her to get to Ganymede, where she could refill it; maybe it was even farther from any Gate locations that would let her hightail it the hell out of here. But her ship had plenty of stores of food, water, and emergency supplies should it come to that. She could survive until she got help—which, would any luck, would hopefully be soon. In the meantime, she’d open up communications with every ship she came across, putting on her perkiest and most alluring voice, and she’d get help in no time.

She was strong. She’d survived worse.

She’d be fine.

~~~~~

“Hel-looo! I just picked up your signal! I, er, have a slight problem. I’m kind of out of fuel right now. So if you could just drop me off at Ganymede, I’d—”

The zoom of the ship flying off. The crackle of static that showed up on her end of the transmission. And then, silence.

Well, maybe she wouldn’t be so fine.

Her outlook on the situation was getting gradually more bleak. She’d been drifting for hours without any success or help. Ship flybys were few and far between in this desolate part of the solar system—pretty much a long, desolate stretch in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, a thought that wasn’t even dispelled by the sight of Jupiter looming grandly above her—and the few people who had flown her way had been too busy, or wary, or absorbed in their own problems, to pick up a poor hitchhiker on the space highway.

She was beginning to run out of rations; she’d eaten many of the freeze-dried, packaged meals she had in reserve. She could probably hold out a little longer with what remained, at least until she made it a good ways to Ganymede on just her ship’s inertia, but she wasn’t getting her hopes up. Her one bright spot, her little stash of chocolate, was long gone—maybe someone with more self-control would have saved it as a treat to eat little by little, but Faye thought that in the situation she was in, she pretty much deserved something sweet immediately. And lots of it.

She wished the spaceship had booze. And that she hadn’t used her last cigarette ages ago. Or that she’d bought more in the casino with the money she didn’t have.

Maybe she could ask someone for one. If anyone bothered. If they weren’t too goddamn selfish—too much so to even give her the time of day.

But annoying as everyone else was being, she’d keep trying. Her woman’s intuition hadn’t failed her yet.

~~~~~

“Hi! I’ve just picked up your signal! I’m having a bit of a problem here. I’m a little out of fuel. So if you could just maybe take me to Ganymede, I’d—”

“Sorry, lady,” came a nasal, querulous voice from the other end of the transmission. “I don’t pick up hitchhikers.”

Without further discussion, the ship zoomed off.

Well. Faye rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair with a sigh. At least that was a conversation.

It had been a while that she’d been drifting, and she was beginning to go stir-crazy. And who wouldn’t be, she reasoned, in her circumstance? Being trapped in a tiny, claustrophobic space surrounded by your own trash floating around you, your sole view the endless blackness of space punctuated only by Jupiter and its moons maddeningly out of reach, with no one to talk to except the occasional ship (and those conversations tended to be pretty one-sided)—well, that could really do a number on you.

She’d been making a perfunctory effort to avoid putting on her spacesuit up until now—somewhere in the back of her mind was the vague idea that it would use up valuable energy, and if a ship passed by while she was out on a spacewalk, she wouldn’t be able to communicate with them until it was too late. (Although she was pretty sure they’d notice someone outside a ship in a spacesuit, jumping up and down and waving their arms frantically). She’d resolved not to use it unless it was absolutely necessary.

Well, it was absolutely necessary now. Absolutely necessary to ensure she didn’t go insane in this teeny-tiny tin can!

As she suited up and performed the spacewalk—a quick one, she promised herself, in case she really did run the risk of missing out on communications and the possibility of being saved—she was amazed at how much better she felt already. Still constrained within her spacesuit, but so much more free. She wasn’t confined to the cockpit of her ship now; she was in…well, she was in the whole of space, really. The entire solar system. Vast and wide and open and…

And with endless miles of drifting along to go before she reached Ganymede. Or any form of civilization.

Dammit. Now this was just depressing.

When she climbed back into her empty cockpit, with no change from before—no new sights, no passing ships—it was almost a relief.

~~~~~

“Hi! I just picked up your signal and, well, I have a slight problem. I’m a little out of fuel at the moment. So if you could just take me to Ganymede, I’d really—”

Zoom!

Whoever thought space travel would bring humanity closer together was crazy.

She wasn’t sure anyone had said that, but someone must have, right? Not a lot of records existed from the time before space travel—she knew that firsthand. But there had to have been a reason people on Earth invented hyperspace gates and spaceships and all that crap. It probably wasn’t for the purpose of having people drift along aimlessly while surrounded their own trash, roughin’ it, hitchhiking.

She really was roughin’ it, wasn’t she? Her food and drink packets were almost all exhausted, her ship had been pathetically flashing its FUEL EMPTY light at her for forever, and she hadn’t washed her hair in days—she was in desperate need of a shower. Just being here, existing in the tiny cockpit of the Red Tail surrounded by empty food wrappers and trash, made her feel gross and grimy.

She didn’t know how much more of this crap she could take. She’d kick the dashboard in frustration if she had any room to in this goddamned prison cell. Which only made her more frustrated.

Dammit, she knew nothing good would ever come of trusting others.

Oh, well. All she could do now was keep going, right? Keep trying? However annoyed she was about it. A hitchhiker never got anywhere by just giving up.

~~~~~

“Hi! I just picked up your signal and, well, I have a slight problem. I’m kind of out of fuel at the moment. So if you could just take me to Ganymede, I’d really appreciate—it…”

Before Faye had even finished her sentence, the ship behind her that her ship had picked up was gone. She trailed off in dismay, then groaned in despair. “Dammit!” she exclaimed. “Why is everyone in such a hurry all the time? Don’t they know it’s unhealthy?”

Suddenly, she was alerted to another ship drifting through space near her—or, more accurately, the wreckage of another ship. It looked completely ruined, and she couldn’t immediately see evidence of anyone inside.

Maybe another space hitchhiker, like her. Someone who had met a more tragic end. Or maybe the victim of a criminal.

Her curiosity was overwhelming. She went to investigate.

After all, who could resist?

~~~~~

“Hi! I just picked up your signal and, well, I have a slight problem. I’m kind of out of fuel at the moment. If you could just take me to Ganymede, I’d be really appreciative…”

Silence. Not that this was any shock to Faye. But she was a little surprised at the fact that the ship she contacted wasn’t taking off—it was just sitting there, in empty space, listening. As if it was taunting her. She groaned and began to shake the monitor in a fit of anger. “Are you listening?!” she yelled. “I know you’re there! Say something!”

It was then that she fully registered the ship in front of her—and recognized it. In her shock, she straightened up, banging her head on the ceiling painfully. She let out a cry of pain, then a groan of exasperation.

It was the Bebop. The same ship that belonged to the bounty hunters—Spike and Jet—from whom she’d just escaped.

Oh well, she reasoned. A rescue was a rescue. And now she wasn’t completely out of assets—she had that strange case that the ISSP man in the wrecked ship had given her, the one she wasn’t supposed to open. And she had the mysterious, tantalizing gold thing inside.

Now this would be interesting.

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