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thesunicarusfellfor · 3 years

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Small Actions (Create Big Ripples) CC!Plat!Ranboo x GN!Reader

I've been thinking lately about this little drabble and it makes me a bit upset? Like.. I'm in this position high key but theres nothing I can do about it...

(R/R/n) stands for Ranboo's real name. Also if you're really tall.... No you're not. Shhhh. For plot purposes

You stayed away from social media as much as possible. Now, don't get me wrong, you used to love watching Youtubers play their games and happily interact with their fans.. But growing up, you never seemed to have enough money to donate when they streamed, or go to events where they were.

You had always wanted to tell them how much they've helped you through life, or shaped your personality.. Or saved you. But... They get told that every day by over hundreds of people.. So there would be no real sentiment behind it..

You'd probably just get a simple, "Aw. Happy I could help." Before turning back to their game without blinking twice.

So, you just watched silently. It hurt, you know? Wanting to thank them, or send them something to show your appreciation.. But you never seemed to be able to send it, with the thought that 'it won't really matter to them after five minutes.. You'll just be brushed over. It's pointless.'

Eventually it hurt too much to keep watching the content creators that raised you, so you just stopped and went on with your life.

It was hard, but at least you didn't have to deal with the fact that you would never be able to thank the people you watched for making your life that much better.

As time went on, while you still heard about the creators, it was just... less. Now people were non stop blabbering about these people from something called the DreamSMP?

Your sister was obsessed with it to say the least, and you always heard her mumbling about strange people like Technoblade? Or Sapnap? And apparently some people had children with inanimate objects?! Like a Samsung Fridge and a salmon?! Yeah you didn't even bother trying to understand what she was rambling about most of the times. It just spun your head in circles.

"Okay, I gotta take my mutt to the vet," Your sister and closest friend, (S/n), tilted her head towards the backseat to her dog as you sat in the passenger seat. "You think you'll be good to do the shopping for two or so hours? I'll call when I'm finished, and plus I know how you can get distracted with looking at some things."

"Yeah, I think I'll be good." You nodded slightly, going over the list in your hand of things to get for your classes, food and just some clothing for the changing seasons.

(S/n) pulled into the parking lot and looked you over briefly, "You forgot your mask didn't you?" She watched as your hands flew up to your face to feel for the fabric, but you didn't find it so you fished through the pockets of your sweater before smiling nervously at the driver. "Uuugggggggghhhh. Of course. Okay, I got a new one from the merch store that you can use, but do not damage it! I spent a whole $30 on it!"

Scoffing as you rolled your eyes, you snagged the half white and half black mask away from her, "You and your merch. Honestly, (S/n), your obsession scares me. But anyway, thanks. I won't get it damaged, I swear." You pulled the mask onto your face after giving her a smile and walked into the store as she drove off.

Sighing slightly, you walked in, sanitized your hands, and set off on your journey to find the things you needed. Surprisingly, today seemed to be a good day as you miraculously pulled the card that didn't have the busted wheel!

Humming a soft tune to yourself, you paced up and down aisles in search of (S/n)'s favourite coffee. Pausing for a moment as you scanned the shelves, you finally spotted it and made a noise of anger as you realized it was on the very top shelf. "Oh, I hate it here..." You mumbled, a phrase you had picked up from your sister who was really big on trends like that.

Grumbling to yourself, you stood on the tips of your toes, jumped up and down, even climbed the shelves a small bit, but it just seemed to brush by your fingertips every time. Apparently it had been long enough to the point where someone had wandered into the aisle as well.

"Hey... Uh.. Nice mask? You need help?" A male voice asked very hesitantly making your head turn towards him. He was t a l l and literally could tower over you if you got close enough. He had fluffy dirty blonde hair possibly? It looked a little damp so you couldn't really tell. Rain had been in the weather report, but guess it couldn't hold off long enough. Oddly enough, he was wearing dark sunglasses and the exact same mask as you?

'Maybe he's a fan of one of (S/n)'s fandoms?' You stepped back with a sheepish smile and a blush. "Oh! Yes please! Uhm.. Also, could you tell me about what these masks represent? This is my sister's... And I kinda want to make sure I'm not looking like I'm part of some gang or something."

The tall boy reached up for the coffee before pausing midway through and looking at you in surprise. "You don't know who... Oh, it's just from a Twitch Streamer.." He murmured rather softly as he got the coffee down for you.

With a cheerful "Thank you!" You placed the container in the cart. "Oh? Yeah that makes sense. My sister loves that kind of stuff. Are they... A good person?"

"I-I'd like to think so." He nodded quickly. "Are you not.. Like, a fan of content creators? Like.. Uh.. Dream or (P/F/C)?" (Past favourite creator)

"Well... I mean I used to really like (p/f/c) when I was younger. But it kind of... Saddened me, you know?"

He looked at you again and tilted his head a bit, "Saddened you? Did they do something bad?"

"No no! It's just... I try to avoid joining fandoms, even if they make me really happy while in them despite the toxicity. I really enjoy the people who create content, and I like watching them have fun... It's just.." Were you really gonna spill some personal stuff to some stranger who showed you the slightest bit of kindness? Not originally. But he kept watching you, patiently waiting for you to continue the sentence. "They'll... Never know.. How much they saved me."

"Oh.. I see. Yeah.. I've had that happen a lot. When, I watch this guy's streams," He pulled at his mask for a moment, "People always donate money and tell him how much they appreciate him for getting them through rocky times.. It's heartwarming to say the least but he does sound genuinely thankful."

"Oh that's sweet.. What does he do? Or what's he like?" You asked with a smile, although he couldn't see it, as you crouched down to get something from the sheleves. "Unless you have places to be of course!"

He looked a little surprised at first, "Ah... I got time. It's just.. Kinda nice being able to talk to people again after quarantine..." He trailed off briefly before taking something off the shelf as well and putting it in his basket, "Uh.. The streamer is a popular minecraft player. He recently hit a record during a stream and everyone lost their minds. He's a little painfully awkward at some points but he enjoys playing the games and interacting with his chat."

"Oh he sounds nice! I would definitely want to friends with someone like him!" You chuckled softly before frowning and glancing away. "Oh.. Popular.. So I'd be another comment in the flood of a chat.. Damn. I got a little excited. Oh! My bad, I'm (Y/n). Nice to meet you!" You laughed softly in an attempt to brush off the sad atmosphere you made.

"(R/r/n). But everyone just calls me Ranboo. Nice to meet you too." He sounded as if he was smiling but there was a soft sadness in his tone. "Do you not like popular streamers then?"

"No, it's just... that I had always wanted to tell them how much they've helped me through life, or shaped my personality.. Or saved me.. But... They get told that every day by over hundreds of people.. So there would be no real sentiment behind it.. I suppose it just left me feeling a bit hopeless and like a broken record of every other fan of theirs. So, I just watched silently. It hurt, you know? Wanting to thank them, or send them something to show appreciation.. But I never seemed to be able to send it, with the thought that 'it won't really matter to them after five minutes.. You'll just be brushed over. It's pointless.'.."

Ranboo seemed slightly more upset and he shifted his basket into his other hand, "I don't think it's like that at all.. I believe that streamers and creators truly cherish anyone who even interacts with their videos, and even though they know there's some people in the world who can't say anything or buy their merchandise, the creators still know that they're there. They appreciate everyone who comes along their path, whether they support them by giving them money, criticism or their attention!"

You blinked at how... Passionate your new friend was about this topic before smiling softly. "I guess... It never passed my mind.. Thank you Ranboo.. Hey, you wanna be friends and get to know each other more?"

His expression was unreadable due to the fabric covering his mouth and nose, and the glasses covering his eyes. "Oh! Sure!" He sounded quite happy, so you were guessing that you weren't being too awkward. "Here's my number, as long as you promise to never give it to anyone. Even if someone wants to get to know me, okay?"

You took out your phone and looked at him with a strange expression, but quickly nodded. 'Maybe he is just really strict about his privacy.' Once he gave you the number, you sent a quick text to him to give him your contact in return. "Great! It was wonderful meeting you, I hope we can hang out more often! After.. covid of course."

Eagerly nodding, Ranboo finished writing your contact into his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. "Oh yeah definitely! I'll see you soon, (Y/n)!"

Parting your separate ways, you looked down at the newly added contact, 🤍Ranboo🖤 (Platonic hearts), with a smile.

Maybe small actions weren't as useless as you thought...

#ranboolive #ranboo #ranboo x reader #ranboo x you #ranboo dreamsmp #ranboo dsmp #mcyt x reader #mcyt x you #reader insert #x reader

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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Watchmen Issue By Issue Retrospective: “The Judge of All The Earth”

Hello all you happy people and once again time’s up, times here for the Watchmen, courtesy as always of @weirdkev27 whose monthly patreon sponsored reviews have made this retrospective possible If you have something you want me to look at every month or just some fun one offs yourself consider joining my patreon here. 5 bucks a month gets you a review, a vote when I do my monthly polls, and other fun stuff.

Previously on Watchmen:

As it turns out the Comedian somehow slighted everyone related to both to the Minutemen and the almost team the Crimebusters. Neither were named the Watchmen because shut up, filling in the world while aslo filling us in on just how much no one would miss the attempted rapist and pregnant mother of his own child murderer, while also setting up important things for this issue: Dr. Manhattan’s slowly growing detatchment from humanity and one of his old foes having cancer. We also found out whatever’s going on is big and horrifying that again the guy who shot an unborn child for kicks was terrified by it. So join me under the cut as we pick up from there as things only get worse for our heroes and for the judge of all the earth. Content Warning: Violence and Sexual Assault will be discussed due to the material being reviewed.

We open with a black teenager reading a pirate comic next to a surly newstand owner ranting about how comics changed, how real life capes killed the superhero genre, about how we should nuke the reds. Standard “okay grandpa” stuff. I do find it a neat shift though that here superhero comics never got the second wind they did in real life after WWII, but died out.

The comic, Tales of the Black Freighter, was, like the various fictional book excerpts, added to pad out the comic while still enriching it, a story that parallels our main villians and his fears as a captain and the sole survivior of a ship wreck deals with isolation and corpses. Originally I just skimmed these bits.. and that was dumb as their still thoughly enjoyable and in my teenage idiocy, I was so focused on getting through the plot I didn’t stop to consider this extra stuff was vital to flavoring said plot.

Anyways the creepy redhead man who we later learn is rorschach scares the crap out of the guy as we cut to laurie in bed with Jon, who decide she has time enough before his confrence for a quickie... and to make this a three way as he decides to use TWO of himself which freaks her out. What I like is how Moore treats this: she’s RIGHT to be freaked out as he didn’t ask her first and her consent is king. While it’d be a fun treat if he showed he was cloning himself across two bodies, without her knowing it’s instead a terrifying invasion and he rightfully stops the moment she starts acting in terror. Given HOW LONG it took media to get consent right, I give moore credit here.

Laurie is willing to forgive though since it was a well meaning if still creepy mistake.. until she finds out Jon WASN’T EVEN IN THE ROOM, using two of his clones to stimulate her while he worked and got ready for his interview. It’s hugely unsettling too: the idea of making love to your partner only to find out he wasn’t even in the room, that he cared so little for your consent that taking care of your needs and pleasing you was just a box to check off while he did “more important things” it’s immensely creepy and Laurie’s walking out is understandable... while Jon is so detached he barely registers it.

And as she leaves we see contrasting shots of Jeanny Slater, Jon’s ex... and from her dialouge it’s easy to wager she ALSO has cancer, as she’s taken up smoking again simply because it no longer matters. And she’s talking to some paper called nova express, whose gathering a story on Jon... I see this ending ENTIRELY well for him and the world in general.

So Laurie naturally runs to quite literally the only friend she has.. Dan. Dan’s getting a new lock because he’s the only friend Rorshach has EVER had and he’d like this cycle to stop at some point. Also nice little mythological nod, the locksmith being from “Gordanian Knot” lock co..and one that if spotted you can probably guess how well this works out. Then again Dan Dreiberg, mechanical whiz who built himself a fucking flying ship and gadgets.. can’t be bothered to create an alarm system so this is more on him. Or on doors. They are the greatest foe of Vox Machina for a reason after all.

Either way Laurie needs a shoulder to turn to and very transparently having a crush on Laurie, and even if he didn’t being a generally decent man, with Laurie admitting she just thinks Jon sees her as a collection of Atoms.

So thus our big climax for the issue is two parallel stories and in a way so brilliant yet subtle I only noticed while doing this review: the dan and laurie half is in heavy red and yellow contrasts, while the Manhattan half is in mostly full colors but with a lot of purple and of course Manhattan’s blue (which is darker in this scene due to him darkening it for television). This allows a clear division between both stories besides content, contrasting colors without hurting the eyes or drawing too much attention to itself. The most clever trick though is that one panel is always bigger than the other and every page in this one has the same structure: jon’s side has one small panel, one double panel and one small panel, and lauries has double, small double. It also shows gibbons is ALWAYS working in the comics trademark 9 panel framework, something I never considered, simply expanding panels when needed but still keepign the same layout. While I always appricated Moore’s work on the book and always thought Gibbons was talented this readthrough has given me such an apprication for just how heavily thought out Gibbons work here is. How EVERY panel is placed perfectly, every gesture has a reason. I feel it’s gibbons why we’ve had artists like mike allred, jamie mckelvie and david aja since who truly use the panel as the canvas it waas always meant to be.

Dan and Laurie’s story is the easiest to cover so we’ll tackle that first. The two take a walk to Hollis.. but get accosted by muggers. Even with Dan out of shape and both likely long out of practice.. they still EASILY kick their asses and it’s glorious to watch. They also pant heavily afterwords.. and two thigns are clear: one that felt amazing and two..

So they awkwardly part glances then ways since Laurie’s tired enough for one night.. and clearly trying to ignore how she feels about dan as she’s still sorting the rubble of her previous relatoinship.

As for Jon his night goes even worse as has been building: the guy from Nova ambushes him at what’s supposed to be a palid, crowd pleasing press interview to say ther’es nothing going on in afganhistan for him to intervene on, usual goverment dribble... but is noticably affected as the pieces come together: his former assitant/jimmy olson, jeany, moloch.. they all have cancer.. and he’s the common thread. And despite his detachment... this CLEARLY rattles the guy, not wanting to answer questions not for the usual reasons but because this is a genine shock. and the crowd MOBBING the guy instead of letting him leave and process this.. goes about as well as you’d expect. (Rearranged the panels for this just as a heads up.. and for convience)

He simply teleported them.. but the sheer weight of everything is a lot. But it says a lot to Hollis’s character, as he tells dan the bad news, that despite Jon being so powerful.. he’s not afraid for himself or anyone in the audience.. but Jon.

We then get an absolutley GORGEOUS sequences as Jon announces to his minders, who were planning to quarnitine him, that since he dosne’t seem fit for humanity anymore, he’s going to the last place untouched by captalism.

And he’s going now after a brief stop in arizona to pick up an old photo of Jeanie.. and himself before he transformed, bidding one last look to the sky... as he goes away in a massive flash of light, a truly haunting sequence.

And the next day the news has hit.. and the implications are clear. The cold war was as hot as it was in the real world... but here they had manhattan as a living nuclear deterrent. Now he’s gone, things are bad and the once mouthy newsman.. is now shaken to his core and gives the kid at his stand the comic... figuring there’s not much time left.

Laurie faces bad news as she finds her room being scrubbed by men in hazmat suits, and the agent basically blaming her for it, asking if she put him under stress.. and while he’s right america’s nuclear deterrient being gone is VERY bad..... she’s not at fault, and it shoudln’t be her , or anyones fucking job to be someone sole emotoinal support. Especially a walking bomb. if you were geninely concerned about this, you should’ve gotten him a friend AND laid. But you only gave him one person so when he finally emotonally collapsed he had no one to help him.

Dan also gets the bad news his lock was broken by who.. but unlike last time where he was a condescnding ass about dan quitting.. this time Shack Attack seems geinely concerned.. as much as a human facebook post from my uncle chuck can be anyway. His theory their after heroes is no longer that... and Dan isn’t safe.

And the ending is as this issue has been potetic and striking... Jon arriving at the beauty and wonder of mars and for the first time in three issues.. smiling.. before frowning at his old photo. All this contrasted with President Nixon and his men in the war room seeing that an attack would at BEST take out the east coast, and that a “quirk of the wind” could doom them all and giving it only a week to think.. and the country possibly only one week to live. This ending hit harder for obvious reasons: with the ongoing invasion by russia and putin trying to use the nuke as a bludgeon to prevent other countries from doing more than sanctions and slowly draining his people’s economy and freedoms while trying to destroy an innocent country. I.. I wish.. I honestly wish things had gotten better and this story was no longer relevant. But until people get better and until madmen like putin stop existing.. that simply will never happen and it always will be. Thank you for reading.

A current ongoing games bundle to help the ukraine.

#the watchmen #watchmen #dr manhattan #dc comics #alan moore

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popatochisssp · 4 years

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This one’s a long one, sorry for all the backstory!

Potential tw for those who need it: body horror, loss of function, referenced violence and death

Horrorswap

A Fallen Human’s rampage has left the Underground in shambles. The monarchs and all of the collected souls are gone, many monsters are dust, the Royal Scientist has vanished, and the food supply is running out.

Alphys, the Captain of the Royal Guard, ascends to the throne. In spite of her grief over loved ones lost, she takes her new mantle with grim stoicism and makes a plan for the hope and safety of all monsterkind. They only need one more human to fall and then... she’ll take their soul and absorb it to cross the Barrier, the plan Queen Toriel had wanted to follow all along, but had been too afraid to; afraid of leaving her people without a leader in case she never came back.

Being left without a leader again is no longer the worst potential outcome for monsterkind and Alphys is willing to take the risk.

The waiting for that one last catalyst-human is...hard. On everybody, but especially the new Queen, thrust under so much responsibility with such high stakes, after so much loss.

Sans, one of the only best friends she has left, does his best to talk to her and to get her to open up instead of internalizing her feelings, but she’s in no way ready to talk and when he keeps pushing...

Well.

Even a little angry shove with Intent can do damage to a monster. Only half an HP in this case, but when the monster only has 1 HP to begin with, it’s still nothing to sneeze at.

Alphys is horrified, no matter that Sans is ready and willing to brush it off--his fault for pushing, he understands it was an accident, he’s usually a much quicker dodge--and however brief, the Incident just makes her shut down even more.

It also sets the stage for Sans to return home with half his HP gone to horrify his brother in equal measure.

Papyrus hadn’t liked the talk of killing humans when Toriel was alive Queen, but now it’s worse and everything else is getting worse by the day, sometimes by the hour. The Fallen Human betrayed them, Undyne is just gone, everyone is starting to go hungry, and now his brother’s at risk too?

Papyrus is scared and he’s not used to the feeling. He never thought about Sans’ 1HP before; he never had to. Sans was always just his tough and energetic big brother, and in their peaceful world it had never even occurred to him that something could... happen.

He can’t lose Sans too... Sans, expectedly, gives Papyrus the same ‘IT’S FINE’ speech he gave Alphys, to similarly dubious effect, but his pep talks just aren’t in top form these days--he’s got a lot on his mind too. In this plan of the Queen’s, for the Next Human, he’ll be the one with the responsibility of escorting them straight to the Capital to meet her axe. His sentry station is the first out of the Ruins, no one in the Underground can travel quicker than he can...and he was the Judge who let the Fallen Human pass, he didn’t stop them when he could have, it’s only right that this responsibility now should fall on him no matter how guilty the thought of leading a probably innocent human to their death makes him feel. Eventually, the Next Human falls. Sans does his duty and escorts them to the Capital, promising them a way out… And in the split second before Alphys pulls them into their final Encounter, after they realize the friendly skeleton has betrayed them, they swing on him.

Sans dodges it, just as he promised Alphys he could, and as he promised Papyrus he would...

But it’s close, and it digs the thorn of doubt just a little bit deeper. Alphys kills the human and absorbs their soul, subduing it beneath her will to save what’s left of her people. She crosses through the Barrier to retrieve more souls, promising to return in a few weeks, a month at most. If she’s not back by then...

.........

In the meantime…Sans stews.

He’s in charge while Alphys is gone. Another human could fall. They could fall at any time and it would be on him to...well he wouldn’t want to kill them but he’d surely have to contain them somehow, so they didn’t wreak the same kind of destruction that the Fallen Human did… And now, with everyone’s doubts in his head, layered on top of his own...

What if he can’t?

What if he needs...help?

Sans used to be a scientist, back in the day. He knows where the Royal Labs kept their DT, extracted but never used--deemed too dangerous to experiment with, even on monsters who were already Fallen Down.

It’s unfortunate that Undyne of Underswap never ran the DT experiments, because if she had, Sans might’ve used an even lower dose of the raw Determination he injected himself with in his anxiety-driven attempt to become stronger.

And Sans does get stronger. His HP increases significantly above the single-digit it’s been his whole life... but it’s... not without its drawbacks.

He doesn’t go home for several long days until he can get it all under control, and by then, Papyrus is suspicious, all too aware that Sans seems different somehow, more...muted and serious, intentionally calm... He doesn’t understand it, and he definitely doesn’t like it, but figures it’s stress getting to him or something… They’re all stressed these days, food growing scarcer and scarcer as they wait for the Queen to come back or not.

Papyrus doesn’t really understand what’s happened until another human falls, before Alphys has returned.

Sans sees the human too, and he’s frozen with indecision of what to do. He’s stuck between his pacifist code and the need to at least act, for the good of all monsterkind...! And right there, right in front of Papyrus, Sans starts to melt.

Papyrus, naturally, freaks out, launching himself into his first panic attack in literal years--and why wouldn’t he? This is obviously his brother dying, the last person he had to hold onto in all of this and Sans is dying, in a horrible, awful, messy way that he didn’t even know monsters could die, and…

Papyrus isn’t proud of it, but he runs away.

Beaten down by weeks and weeks of hunger, of worrying about his brother, of grieving for Undyne, of thinking about all the undeserving and probably innocent humans that were being hunted down and killed up on the Surface just to get them out, his body and soul are at their limit.

Papyrus Falls Down. By the time Sans, not as dead as previously suspected, finds his brother, Papyrus is already unconscious, his condition looking bad—already starting to disintegrate to dust—and there’s only one option that remains.

As much as Sans fears being wrong again; condemning his brother to his own semi-solid existence…

It’s Papyrus.

And he’d rather Papyrus be alive than not, so he gives Papyrus a dose of DT, too.

This time, it works.

Papyrus stops dusting and only remains comatose for another day before coming to and having a horrendously upsetting heart-to-heart with Sans, just a little too late to do either of them any good.

The hapless human who triggered the whole scene wanders straight through the Underground, all the way to the Barrier without ever encountering another monster—the survivors of the last human they remember too weak and afraid to even think of confronting the new one.

They arrive just in time to see Alphys’ only mildly overdue return through the now shattered Barrier…and quite naturally, panic and flee up to the Surface, never to be seen again.

Monsters are free.

Alphys turns herself in for the humans she killed as a gesture of goodwill and ensures that the rest of monsterkind can live peacefully amongst humans once and for all.

And everyone else just has to learn how to keep going with the scars of the experience.

Horrorswap Sans (Merc)

The DT injection destabilized his form, tied directly to his emotional state: relatively pleasant or middling emotions can make him drip a bit, while strong or negative ones can reduce him to a puddle making disturbing attempts to form limbs. He can still maintain structural stability, but only by staying in tight control of his emotions as much as possible

He’s researching ways to properly blend the DT into his magic to stop having to worry about melting at inconvenient moments, or at least to give himself control over when and how he liquidizes. It’s…a slow-going process…

Absolutely blames himself for his brother’s near-death experience and partial dusting (and the consequences therein), and for what he did to himself. If he’d just waited a few more days, if he hadn’t gotten so caught up in fears about the future and self-doubt, then… Well. It was senseless and there’s no changing it now, that’s what kills him the most

There’s a rift between him and his brother now and it’s jarring from how close they used to be. He doesn’t like it that he can’t get Papyrus to talk to him anymore, or spend time with him just…hanging out… but he figures it’s probably no less than what he deserves, for his own stupid hubris…

He gets into yoga at some point so he can still train his body in a lower stress way, and runs a small home cake-decorating business out of his kitchen, and between that and a deep, abiding love of all the science-fiction media there is on the Surface to engage with, he’s actually mostly hopeful about the future

Horrorswap Papyrus (Ell)

Not unscarred by his brush with Falling, low-energy and missing his legs above the knee, both turned to dust before he could properly stabilize. Wheelchair-bound and not too happy about it, but nowhere near ready to even have a discussion about prosthetics just yet

Definitely struggling with the loss, and the rest of the trauma of everything else that happened Underground, and doing himself a pretty huge disservice by figuring he should just ‘get over it.’ Grappling with a lot of bitterness and frustration over it all and trying to either blow it off or ignore it

Absolutely blames himself for his brother’s instability and the loss of his own legs—if he hadn’t psyched Sans out, if he hadn’t immediately freaked out and jumped to conclusions like an idiot when he saw… Well. It was senseless and there’s no changing it now, that’s what kills him the most

He hates the rift between him and his brother now too, they used to talk openly about whatever, they could just be brothers... but then The Human and the secrets and the lies… He wants to fix it all somehow but it’s so raw and he just doesn’t know what to say—he can’t read his brothers face like he used to anymore, and half the time it feels like he’s living with a stone-faced stranger…

He’s teaching himself some programming languages in his spare time around the house, thinking he might try to freelance someday. Still into writing and fiction, but his tastes have taken a turn for the darker fare, and horror/ghost stories are becoming a great outlet for him—he spends a lot of time with creepypastas from reddit playing in the background while he tries to figure out why his stupid code won’t work

#undertale #sans #papyrus #horrorswap #hs!sans #hs!papyrus #headcanons

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sneezefiction · 4 years

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could i have headcanons for oikawa, kenma, noya and tanaka for how they’d react if their s/o told them she wanted to break up as a joke ? thank you 🥺🥺🥺

Oikawa, Kenma, Nishinoya, and Tanaka x Reader - Fake Break Up Headcanons

a/n: have some goofy headcanons w/ some of the best boys, babe <3333 i hope you enjoy and thank you for requesting!!

warnings: slight language

total wc: 1080

---

Oikawa

there are times when Oikawa just won’t give you the attention you need

yeah, he’s a sweet boyfriend and all, but between volleyball practice, appeasing fangirls, and his social media platforms, he doesn’t have much allotted time for only the two of you

while trying to figure out how to garner some of Oikawa’s focus, a lightbulb goes off in your head.

you’re sure you’ve seen a TikTok or Youtube video of people breaking up with their s/o as a joke…

so while Oikawa is distracted by some form of social media, scrolling mindlessly on the couch, you’re tilting your phone camera up to video this moment

you come sit at the edge of the couch and utter some of the most terrifying words ever spoken

“Tooru, we need to talk.”

his head shoots up, body following with it

“What’s wrong, baby?” his eyes are wide and he’s unquestionably nervous

“I think we should break up.” you’re doing all you can to keep a straight face, waiting for a goofy reaction

but right as the words leave your lips, you feel instant regret

the most shocked expression adorns his features and you swear you can already see tears welling up in his eyes

“Wait, wait, wait it’s a joke I’m sorry! Look there’s a camera and everything, Tooru, I’m sorry!” you bounce forward, gathering him in your arms

you finally just let him know that you’ve been jealous and frustrated (baby needs attention)

he literally makes you promise to never prank him again, bc he insists “his whole heart shattered” and that “it was an act of cruelty”

y’all cuddle all night bc he can’t let you go after that scare

Kenma

ok so Kuroo has been trying to get a new reaction out of Kenma for the past 2 weeks

and nothing is working at all

so him, being his true scheming self, asks you to get involved

you accept bc he paid you you’re curious too and ask him what you need to do

“Just… y’know, break up with him or something?” he suggests nonchalantly

“What the hell, Kuroo!” your jaw dropping at his absurd request

“Bro, I already paid you! No take-backs.” he shrugs “Also, you gotta record it and send it to me.”

when you get home you feel like such a sucker for agreeing to it, but you’d rather not owe Kuroo any favors so you get everything set up as quietly as possible

Kenma, in his usual gaming position tucked under a blanket on your shared bed, scoots over to let you in, but you seat yourself at the edge instead

“Kenma…” wow you feel weird, “I uhm. I don’t think this is working out between us.” you’re cringing at yourself

you’re basically hoping he’ll make a weird face so that you can turn off the camera and explain everything to him quickly

eyes still glued to his game, Kenma simply states, “Kuroo put you up to this, babe.”

“I’m sorry plea- wait what, how’d you know?” you stutter out, confused

“He’s been doing weird-ass stuff for a long time, y/n.” he shrugs

“...okay… tell me more?” your focus completely shifting to storytime with Kenma

now you know all about Kuroo’s strange history with your boyfriend… and it’s all recorded, right there, on your phone

Noya

it started off with a seemingly harmless game of truth or dare w/ the Karasuno boys, including your boyfriend, Nishinoya

you’d agreed to go along with it because they promised it would be chill nothing is ever chill w/ these kids, i s2g

however, you’ve already used up your maximum number of “truths” so you’re forced to pick dare for this turn

suddenly all the boys, except Nishinoya, are huddled together

you two just stare at each other with great confusion

simultaneously, all the boys turn around, making you jump, and say

“Nishinoya, get out.”

well ok this is weird

once he leaves, and may i say very reluctantly, you’re faced with the most painful of dares

“Y/n, the council has decided. For your dare, you must fake break up with Nishinoya later this week.”

fools. absolute idiots. but who are you to deny the council of boys?

so when the dreaded day comes, you facetime the boys in, leaving them on mute on your kitchen countertop and make your way up to Noya who’s actively attempting to make dinner

so you begin, “Nishinoya I… I just, uhm…”

“Yes, baby what is it?” his eyes dazzle when they meet yours

lmao you can’t, he just looks too excited to see you and you know for a fact his funky, lil heart would break

“I, uh… just wanted a hug actually.”

“Why didn’t you just say so!” he responds, a grin stretching across his bright face, squeezing the absolute life out of you

“It was… supposed to be a dare from the boys the other day, but-” you try to explain

“Y’all’s dares are lame as hell.” Noya cuts you off finally realizing their presence on the counter, still pressed up against your body

baby had no idea

the council is displeased… and a little jealous

Tanaka

this guy has been on his Xbox all damn day

and it’s starting to wear on you

all the yelling, the thundering laughter, and weird code words were interrupting your reading, thinking, and ruining the cozy, weekend vibes

you’ve tried everything so far:

you made him his favorite meal? nothing. asked him to go out with you tonight? “Let’s do it tomorrow babe.” telling him to be a little quieter? somehow he managed to increase in volume.

so you text Kiyoko and ask her what she would do

homegirl literally suggested you break up with him, so that’s a no-go…

but maybe you could just… threaten it kinda? your babe can take a joke and it might finally get him to calm down

so you walk over to him and loudly exclaim,

“I swear if you don’t stop obsessing over whatever it is you’re playing, I’m just gonna leave.” trying your hardest to sound coldhearted

Tanaka yanks his headphones off and he’s on his feet, horrified

and now you’re just laughing, your sputtering boyfriend unsure of your contrasting words and emotions

“Sorry babe, you’re just… so loud. And I kinda miss you.” you hold out your arms, trying to draw him toward you

“Not funny!” now you’ve done it.

he’s gonna pout for a while and you’ll be the one to deal with it

but... if you give him a kiss and a real apology, he’ll snap out of it real fast

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

Note

(WLW anon) I really don’t like the “bad rep is better then none at all”. I hate that. We should want good rep, because bad rep has been used time and time again by homophobes as to say we shouldn’t get representation. To me it’s not “gay can have the same flaws as het”, it’s “fix the flaws in the het”. Also I know Renora being independent was a good, I was just saying in comparison BB. Also, yes, they were separated, but also didn’t stop thinking about each other. Especially bad with Yang.

Indulge me for a moment because I want to take a trip down memory lane and list some—just some—of the queer rep that has been important to me over the years:

Ellen comes out both as herself and as her character… years later, she’s a hated millionaire who is criticized for how she treats her staff

The wildly influential Buffy gives us two women entering a loving relationship… except then Tara is killed off, Willow goes evil for a time, and Buffy comes under fire for Joss Whedon’s everything

The beloved and respectable headmaster of one of the most popular book series ever published is revealed to be gay… except it doesn’t count because it wasn’t in the text and now all of Harry Potter is cancelled because JKR is transphobic

Kurt is an unambiguously gay teen in a hugely popular TV series, acting as one of the first overt representations a generation has seen… except he’s way too stereotypical and Glee is a joke now

Orange is the New Black gives us a number of queer women, including one of our first trans characters… but isn’t it problematic that they’re all criminals?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine hosts an out gay captain and gives us a bisexual coming out story that resonated with many, myself included… except now we’re supposed to hate all the characters on principle because they’re cops

Korra and Asami walk off into the spiritual sunset together… but they never kiss or anything, so that doesn’t count either

Steven Universe gives us a queer relationship and a wedding… but it’s an issue that this is just a kid’s show and, really, does it count when the rep is embodied by space rocks whose entire species only creates a single gender? Feels like a cop-out

Same with Good Omens. Yeah, Crowley and Aziraphale clearly love each other… but you never see them kiss or declare their intentions. It’s great ace rep though! Unless you want to level the criticism that asexual characters are always nonhuman

A character intended to be a minor guest becomes a show staple and eventually declares his love for one of the two main characters… except then Castiel immediately dies, Dean doesn’t respond, and they never meet on screen again

I finished Queen’s Gambit the other day and the main character had a one-night stand with a woman! … but everyone is talking about how bisexuality is used to represent her lowest point, so that’s bad too

I could go on for literal pages. Some of these arguments I agree with (Dumbledore), others I’ve pushed back against quite strongly (Crowley and Aziraphale), but all of them are valid criticisms depending on what part of the queer community you’re in and what your expectations are. My point here is that it’s all “bad rep.” I mean that seriously. If anyone reading this is scrambling for the comment section to say why [insert media title here] is actually fantastic rep, I guarantee that someone disagrees. Or if they don’t, give it some time. Just wait until the characterization becomes offensively outdated, or another part of the story ruins the relationship, or it comes out that the author did something truly horrific, or the terminology changes and it’s labeled as “problematic” now… just wait. At some point, any rep we feel is good rep now will be criticized, cancelled, and dragged through the mud. The rep that I personally haven’t seen much push-back against—like the beloved Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, or Schitts Creek that just won a ton of awards—is wrapped up in the criticism, “So it’s all just about able-bodied, cis, (mostly) white dudes, huh? :/” Even the argument that queer characters need to be written by queer authors doesn’t hold up. I absolutely adored Sense8. “Wow, a gay main character in a loving relationship with another gay man, both of whom enter a loving poly relationship with a woman, another lesbian trans main character who marries the love of her life on screen, an entire cast arguably queer due to them sharing orgy scenes centered around the emotional intimacy they share, everyone survives, and this was written by two trans women! Great, right?” Well, not according to the wealth of opinions explaining how Sense8 is horrible rep, actually. Every piece of rep we’ve got is either currently flawed or will become flawed in the future.

So what do we do with that?

That’s where my “I’d rather have bad rep than no rep at all” comes in. For me, that’s not waving the white flag. That’s not an oath that I won’t expect better rep in the future (I do) or that I won’t criticize the rep we get (BOY DO I), but rather just an acknowledgement of reality. The vast majority—if not the entirety—of rep is “bad rep” in one way or another, but I’d still rather have it than nothing at all. Because I’ve lived just long enough and studied media just enough to know what nothing looked like. It was watching all queer characters meet untimely deaths. Before that it was watching queer characters be derided and treated as jokes. Before that it was nothing but coding, where queer characters didn’t exist except in our own headcanons and interpretations. Obviously “bad rep” covers a very large range of issues and “They haven’t even confirmed this relationship yet” is a bigger issue than “This queer character embodies one or two, mild stereotypes,” but ultimately I’d take any of it over nothing at all. And enjoying what we’ve currently got doesn’t mean I’m willing to settle for it indefinitely.

To use an iffy analogy, imagine there’s a factory. This factory makes plates. So. Many. Plates. Big plates, small plates, plain plates, decorative plates, plates for every possible occasion in your life—and everyone with a steak for dinner is pleased as punch. You though? You’ve got soup. You need a bowl. Your entire life you’ve been struggling to eat your soup off a plate (it doesn’t work) and listening to friends and family claim that the plate with a slightly raised edge could be a bowl if you squint (it’s not). To say it’s frustrating is an understatement.

But then, one day, the factory starts producing bowls too. Hurray! Except as soon as you get your hands on one, you’re told you really shouldn’t be using it, let alone praising it. Look at the state of that bowl! It’s cracked right down the middle, ugly as hell, shoddily made all around… you’re not really going to settle for that, are you? And no, you obviously still want the factory to produce better bowls, but at the same time, this is a bowl. You’ve never gotten one before and you can finally enjoy your meal, even if the soup leaks at times. Sometimes a lot. But you’re still feeling better about your meal than you ever have before. And what you then begin to realize is that lots of the plates are a mess too. They also have cracks, they’re also ugly, many are also shoddily made. The difference is that the factory is producing so many plates at such a rapid pace that every steak eater is able to get by. One plate breaks completely? You’ve got a thousand fallbacks. Don’t like the look of this one? A thousand other options. You disagree about what “shoddily made” means? Luckily there are enough plates that everyone can find what they prefer! But the bowls… there’s only a few. Some are really expensive. Others are only available for a limited time before they suddenly disappear. Your bowl breaks and you have to wait months, years sometimes, to get another one. You’re constantly told to go buy this one obscure bowl no one else has heard about and yeah, you like it... but you’d also like to buy one of the bowls everyone is already enjoying. You find yourself looking at the plates and thinking, “I’d like that. I’d like to have so many options that the flaws, while still a problem, are much more bearable.” You’re still going to demand that the factory get its shit together, you’re still going to (rightly) complain about the awful quality of your bowl… but it’s still nice to have a bowl, period. There are still things you like about it, even if it’s a mess: the color, the size, the beauty of the shape of it. Its potential. You’re still pleased you have something to enjoy and that helps serve the need you’re looking to fill, even if that something is imperfect.

That’s “bad rep is better than no rep.” To bring this very long response back to Blake/Yang, I don’t think their problems negate their benefits. Is their relationship currently non-canonical and filled with a number of writing issues everyone has a right to be angry about? Yup. I express that anger a great deal. Are they still half of a team on a very popular show that is (presumably) set to be canonized as queer? Yup. I’d much rather live in a world where big shows like RWBY try to include queer rep and fail in a multitude of ways—with the expectation and hope that they’ll continue to improve—rather than in a world where authors a) don’t care or b) are too scared to try. Because that’s where a “good rep or no rep” stance leads. The danger isn’t homophobes because they’re, well, homophobes. It doesn’t matter if the rep is good or not, they hate it on principle. But if queer authors writing for other queer identities, or allies writing queer identities, or even queer authors writing their own experiences (like in Sense8) continually come under non-stop fire for their attempts… there’s a good chance that many people won’t ever try. We’re already seeing that here on tumblr with young authors admitting that they wouldn’t touch [insert topic here] with a ten-foot pole because just look at what happens when you get it wrong. And authors will get things wrong because authors are fallible people forever unlearning their own ignorance. So though it might sound strange coming from a blog that has turned into such a RWBY critical space, I am glad that RWBY’s queer rep exists, despite all the frustrations that I share about it. I think a RWBY with various types of “bad” queer rep is better than a RWBY with no queer rep at all, particularly when “bad” or “good” is so intensely subjective. There’s a middle ground between passively accepting whatever we’re given, and tearing into rep with such ferocity that we end up rejecting it all. There’s a space where we can be critical of rep and embrace the parts that work for us, simultaneously.

I hope and expect the het rep will get better too, but… that’s never going to happen instantly. To quote RWBY, there’s no magic wand we can wave to fix all our problems. Rather, it will take slow, plodding, meandering, lifetimes’ worth of work to see that change occur and I personally don’t want to spend the one life I have waiting for that perfect rep to show up. Because it’s unlikely that it will. While we work, I’d rather find the good in what rep we’ve already got.

#rwby #queer #mymetas #Anonymous

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tortoisenottortoise · 3 years

Text

Am I the only one who likes seeing muscular women in media more than muscular men?

Alright so, this one will probably end up much shorter and a little more ranty than I'd like, but this is kind of personal so be fairly warned.

Recently I've seen a few complaints about the new He-Man show and honestly, I fully understand and empathize with them. Whilst I haven't fully seen the show, from what I've viewed I can personally speaking agree (or at the very least understand) where most criticisms come from. I think it's incredibly shitty that the writer basically lied to his audience about how the show would run. Now normally I'd be fine with a twist such as He-man dying, but he's an important part of the show and the way the marketing & merchandising for it was running kind of comes across as him basically using He-Man's name to get people into the show. I also feel like it's fine to view Teela as obnoxious and annoying, nothing about her personality-wise seems likable to me. I also heard a few complaints about Orko's (I think that's his name, don't crucify me) backstory and how his character was handled.Yet as the title suggests one that didn't stick with me was the criticism of Teela and a general trend towards the criticism of women in media as being "masculine".

I've heard over and over that Hollywood representing strong women by giving them masculine traits is a bad thing and yet... I kind of don't get it? It feels odd to say, almost like I'm the dumbest man alive for admitting something which most people on the internet seem to be so sure about, yet I just don't understand where this is coming from. I've seen this thrown at She-hulk, Wonder Woman, Abby, and many other characters, yet when inquired it usually loops back around to, "Yeah they have muscles", and that's about it. This type of criticism in specific seems to overly focus on the appearance of said characters. It's the one critique I just can't get behind and it feels like at best it's a shallow criticism that fails to get its point across, and at worst it's actively demeaning to women who desire to or show masculine traits. But first, let me break this down into sections.

Section 1: Muscles =/= Masculinity (In my opinion at least)

Oh boy, I feel like this is a section that might rustle some feathers, but I'm going to try and explain myself best as possible. I simply do not view muscularity as a feature that is inherent to or should be inherent to men. I'm not going to pretend as if muscular men aren't more saturated in media and art, nor as if they're societally treated as masculine, but one of the reasons I fail to understand this criticism is that I see muscles beyond the horizons as being just a masculine trait.

I believe that muscles should instead be seen as a sign of hard work and determination. As someone who's currently trying (and struggling) to stay healthy and fit, it's much harder than a lot of media portrays it to be. It's a test where you push yourself to the limits, not just for the sake of doing it, but so you can improve as a person. Whenever I go to the gym and see a muscular gal or guy walk by, my immediate thought isn't, "how masculine" or anything like that my thought is, "wow! They worked hard to get like that, I should work hard as well!".

This interpretation tends to feel like it's just simply taking a piss on people who actively work hard to achieve higher levels of strength. Especially when society places and enforces these unrealistic standards onto people. If you don't have a six-quintillion pack nor can bench press a fucking house then you're worthless, of course, that is unless you actually attempt to pursue said standards which in that case you're automatically dismissed as cheating your way to gaining your muscles instead of putting any work in. And that's just for men who often don't have to deal with traditional idiots who are stuck in the year 1950 where I can't walk on the same street as them. My skin crawls when reading tweets from older men talking about how weightlifting women are "ruining their fertility" and I absolutely hate it when people in my life treat these women as if they're mythical creatures from a fairy tale, or when females who have trained to such a degree are simply dismissed as being inferior.

Obviously, I don't think the people who say this are like that, but whenever I hear this type of critique I can't help but think of the culmination of all these experiences I've gone through. But then again, this might honestly just be because I'm personally attracted to muscular women.

Section 2: Body type diversity

Another reason that I tend to like muscular women in media over muscular men is simply due to the sheer oversaturation of muscular men. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem if anybody likes muscular men. I totally get wanting to shove your face in between some man titties or get inspired by their physiques. In all honesty, almost everything I said earlier can directly apply to men, but one of the reasons I bring up body type diversity is that there tend to be much less muscular women than men. I

f anything, I'd have to say that muscular men are almost treated as the default when it comes to things like superhero comics, movies, video games, anime, etc. In a similar vein, the default for women tends to be slim and curvaceous, you get the drill. Whenever someone who doesn't fit into either body type shows up and isn't treated like a joke/gag or a character to rip on, I can't help but be happy about it. As much as I have no clue wtf is going on with TLOU2, I can appreciate that Abby's portrayal doesn't seem to exist solely as a joke meant to demean women for working out. I'm excited when an anime protagonist is a fat character who can go beyond just being a "fat guy" and is treated the same way a normal person would be.

Regardless of what you think about whatever trait you're criticizing, there's probably someone out there who fits it. If you're not into it or dislike it, then that's fine, but I'd rather have that expressed than it being actively made out as a harmful trope as opposed to just literally another body type that some women have.

Section 3: Muscular women inspire me more

Ok so, we've now blown into a full-on personal experience, buckle up boys, girls, NBs, anything in between, and I feel like I'm forgetting someone so apologies! But yeah, muscular women in media tend to be a lot more inspiring than people seem to give them credit for. This comes down to a mix of both the qualities I outlined earlier in what makes the characters inspiring but also plays into the idea of body diversity.

One of the traits that make amazons seem more inspiring is their inherent rarity/lack of screentime. As I stated earlier, whilst I do enjoy my fair share of man-titties, it kind of gets to a point where it's more depressing than inspiring when all you see is just super-models shoved in your face whenever you walk into a theater. If for every Goku I could find ten other guys who were on the chubbier side then I'd be able to take more from when I see Goku and other characters with his body type, yet it's so saturated that it no longer becomes something to aspire to, but simply the norm. It's not that you can work to become muscular or skinny with hard work and effort, you have to be muscular or skinny unless you want to be deemed a failure. Being chubby often isn't presented as a starting point but just treated as a defect. As someone who spent years battling with my own self-perception, that's just not a good message to get across.

Now, this obviously isn't to say that people can never make muscular characters. After all, it's their story so they can put whatever they want in it. The aim of the game isn't to stop people from making a specific type of character, but to encourage a diverse set of people to make a diverse set of characters. This is the reason why I view muscular women as so inspiring. Instead of coming across as just "the norm" or "the standard" they stand out from the crowd and despite knowing what they have to deal with, are still ready and willing to work out and improve their bodies. They had a goal in mind and set time aside to achieve said goal, that's something I can get behind.

Conclusion:

This will be another short section, but I just wanted to mention it because it caps off my thoughts on this post in general. What originally started as me just not getting the reason why people disliked Teela's design somehow turned into a passionate rant and I'm A) not sure if it fits on this particular subsection of the community, B) scared I'm going to get ripped to pieces, and C) somewhat unsatisfied with all that I said. At the end of the day, this probably won't be seen by too many people, but to those who do see it, I hope you have a wonderful day. I just wanted to talk about something that was near and dear to my heart and hoped that I made it clear why I view things the way I do.

P.S: Can we stop having this double standard where we act like women whose arms show the slightest hint of definition are "unrealistic" whilst men can look like tree trunks and be considered normal and healthy? please and thank you!

#rant post #character rant #please help I'm new to tumblr and a boomer when it comes to tags #tropes #trope discussion

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deepseavibez · 3 years

Text

Wave of Want_1 || KSJ

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Part 1

... maybe the past liked to visit too much and shadows were not as harmless as we thought. - A/N

Word Count - 2k

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It was a humid night. No breeze, no noise, no people, but then Town Road Plaza was not supposed to be busy at ten in the night - only you were. The hustle and bustle of the crowd around here usually died down by eight. Then the shops closed, cleaned and prepared for the next day. You’d waved off almost every acquaintance that worked in the kiosk across from your shop, and your neighboring clothing and accessory shops.

You would have joined them, but your supplier delivered your new selection of hats and caps late and they were set to be displayed and sold to customers for the new week. You had just recently got promoted too. Beside it being another achievement on your ladder of success, it has also added to your set of responsibilities.

There would be a huge backlog should it not be ready.

Plus, you weren’t one of those people where work was something to run away from. You loved your job and your life, no matter how much it actually did suck sometimes.

But it was all about dealing. And for the people around you? No way were you going to sport a sad face or a negative attitude when your loved ones needed you. You played your roles; good daughter to your dad, a motherly big sister to your baby sis and a best friend to the ones that you chose to make family.

You lived on a line of careful balance, where emotion was important, but logic helped you stay alive. You could cry, as long as you smiled after. You could scream and shout, as long as the voice of reason made an appearance at the end, and you could love and love and love so hard, but walk away when it just was not worth it.

Placing the last cap on the mannequin head, you sighed – a combination of relief and acceptance because it was too late to visit dad and Bee, but on the bright side, work was done for the night.

Turning away from the rich toned racks of matching jackets, coats and blazers you headed in the direction of your office. You didn't usually spend a lot of time in here; always hands on, a people person to the core, love for your job and your store always had you on your feet. It was a bit of a killer when heels were a norm, but beauty was painful.

Your desk had your laptop, a few bills and orders and a photo frame of your family. Smiling with a heavy heart, as the fleeting memory of your mom brushed past, you looked down at the light blinking on your phone.

Picking it up off the desk you typed in the passcode and noticed the notifications all coming from Twitter. The pop up detail showed it was from your girls.

It was not always about just being a fan on Twitter. There were a number of people you had met online and trusted with parts of you so deep you did not know they existed. That's what made it close to every person's heart.

They spoke about problems, family, life, languages and travel, talent and interests and hobbies. And everyone could be themselves. Anything could be said, whether it was about sex, about softness or even just about food, it was all meshed together by an emotion you wouldn't think to find on a social media group chat with everyone halfway across the world from each other, and that was love.

Total unconditional, uncompromising respect, love and support. And it was real. It felt real.

Right now the chaos was about a concept photo drop from a kpop group. Tapping on the Twitter icon, your notifications were wild with funny reactions and online screaming at how good the pictures and ideas looked.

Searching for their usernames you giggled at the responses. Your friends replies were exactly like their personalities.

Josie was the smallest of the group. She was the one that held the most power in tugging on the protective reigns of every one of them.

School being her worst enemy she still worked hard, still took up hobbies and interests and she had so many of them. She was so kind, really and there was a need in you to always stick around Josie.

Watching her grow up, adapt, be better than her original self and take care of her. Because every one of your friends here, were younger then you, but Josie was closest to your baby sisters age. And your heart could never say no to a feeling so old and embedded in your heart, to shrug it off would be tearing yourself open.

Stevie was the crazy one, but crazy in the most admirable way possible. Nothing stopped her; nothing and no one. She was eccentric really, her selfies at angles and moments no one would think to put out there, her messages and replies so on another perspective it was a need to have her around.

And she had a spine of steel - a literal spine of steel. Everyone had days honestly, but Vee was so strong, you wouldn't even notice something had happened. And that was scary, the people with the steely exteriors, needed the most love. And damn did they love showing it in their own way.

Believe it or not there were campaigners for Stevie being president. You knew there would be war if that actually ever happened, but hell; you'd just pull up a chair and a glass of wine and watch the show unfold.

You really would protect them, because what else did you need in the world except for the few good-hearted friends that could be a comfort in your world.

Eyes catching the clock in the corner of your screen it now said 10.30pm.

Getting lost in Twitter was a whole struggle.

Putting your phone back down and shutting down your laptop, you packed up to get ready to go. Making to grab your charger you found it not in its socket. Eyebrows scrunched up in confusion you looked around.

Where -

A fleeting memory, your eyes blew wide in realization, as you did a backtrack to help you remember. It was in the kitchen last. Macy had used it, because she forgot hers at home.

You scrunched your face up in disdain. She was always using your stuff. Whining about how your make-up was flawless and she couldn't apply it like you. She wanted your face creams and commented on your choice in clothing - it was the bomb apparently. You knew this already and Macy was on thin ice, you only had so much tolerance.

‘Stupid, bitch.’ You muttered and suddenly thought of Josie, because she would have definitely called her that.

Shaking your head with a smile, you figured you’d grab the charger when switching the lights off and locking up the back.

A loud scraping signified a chair being moved. The noise startled you. You held your breath, the laptop bag flap held in midair as you questioned if you actually imagined it or not.

There it was again.

Eyes blown wide, confusion plaguing your senses you tried to think over the dangerous thud of your heart. The only chairs were in the kitchen, but you were the only one left at the store.

'Hello?' You shouted. 'Is anyone there?'

You internally cringed at the question.

Like anyone would actually answer, the fuck

Partially recovered, you woke up slowly, the need to investigate overpowering fear.

Sending a silent prayer up for sanity, you looked around you. Eyes catching the light flashing on phone in your hand, you turned it over and saw the missed calls and messages coming through on the screen, one after the other. Opening the chat, you read the messages and got even more confused.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬You couldn't answer him right now, what if someone was actually here. You hoped that wasn’t the case, but if it was, he did say he was on his way.

Locking the phone, you clutched it tightly, trying to ignore the tandem of your heart. This was your store, your baby. You couldn't just run out. You were caught. You didn't want to make him worry, and you were scared, but this was your responsibility.

Trying to feel convinced from your thoughts you noticed the slight click in your black stiletto pumps. Kicking time off slowly, you adjusted to the cold of the tile seeping to your bare feet.

Atleast your toes looked pretty, freshly manicured in a pale pink.

Shaking your head to focus on the task at hand, you chided your stubbornness and ran a hand through your hair. You needed to think about how you would defend yourself and - you did a double take as you turned your head; attention caught on the the broom in the corner. You grabbed it and held it in front of you, as if preparing for war, you took a deep breath, steeling yourself to stop being a chickenshit and move.

Cautiously leaving your office and walking as close to the edge of the wall as possible, you tiptoed your way to the kitchen.

Walking to the last room in the hallway wasn't supposed to be this creepy; you had done it so often and at later times than this. But today your hair stood on end. You had to walk there, because you had to lock up. And the knives were in the goddamn kitchen.

Blood thundering in your ears, you leaned into the wall, hands clutching the handle of the cheap broomstick to your chest, you neared the open door of the kitchen.

Closing your eyes in a silent prayer, you huffed a breath and turned.

'Hyaaaahhhh!' Swinging wildly with the broom, you hit the air, the only sounds being the battle cry coming from your throat and the background hum of the running refrigerator.

You stopped and took in the empty room before lifting yourself from your almost crouch, and acted as composed as possible.

Eyes darting from left to right twice before being satisfied enough, your mood elevated. Pssht, no one's here. The broom shook in your hand however, a telltale sign of the blood rush in the minutes of heightened emotion.

The kitchen was compact. Cream coloured walls, a refrigerator and grey table with four wooden chairs; granite, grey counter on the wall in front of you next to the fridge and white cupboards below the counter.

Shaking your head at the empty room, you aren't going to die today, you told yourself, your lips curving down in the lame attempt to humor the situation.

You turned. 'Oh God! Fuck!'

Catching your reflection in the mirror on the far side wall, at the worst time possible you clutched at your heart. Shaking your head, you rolled your eyes at the overreaction.

'Breathe y/n, for fucks sake.' Grabbing your charger from the table, with a little more force than necessary you turned on your heels, and switched the light off before padding, barefoot to the doorway. Closing the kitchen door behind you, you grabbed the key on the door and twisted it.

No more randomly moving chairs for the rest of the night.

Breathing now evened out and the dead silence of night your only companion, you were ready to go home to your warm bed and open loving arms.

You sighed, a small smile gracing your lips at the reminder of the love of your life.

An ear blistering shriek left your mouth as you felt a heavy weight on your shoulder, a second later. The hand that caused it, twisted off as you spun around so fast it would have given anyone watching you whiplash.

Shaken and terrified you had the end of the broom pointed at your would be assailant.

'What the fuck are you doing here?!'

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

#Wave of Want #bts #bts seokjin #kim seokjin x you #seokjin au #kim seokjin x y/n #seokjin x you #seokjin fanfic #seokjin x reader #kim seokjin #kim seokjin x reader #bts fanfic #bts aus #bts au fanfic #deepseavibez

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portugalisinsa · 3 years

Text

In my desperate attempt to sleep I ended up thinking about copaganda and how the term as been abused and misused, so let me rant about it for a little bit

So “copaganda” means a specific thing, namely, a piece of media that pushes propaganda for the police, implying that the police is Great, Actually, and Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Head About It. Cops is an example of that. Blue Bloods is the poster child.

However, as it always happens, a specific term that is actually Important enters the mainstream and loses its meaning because of people, and now it’s being used by many as “movie and/or show that’s about the police and/or has a police character that isn’t a total dick, which obviously means that the movie and/or show is bad”.

That’s obviously bullshit, and I will show that with Edgar Wright’s great masterpiece Hot Fuzz.

On the surface, a complete dumbass would say that Hot Fuzz is copaganda. Nicholas Angel is shown as good! The final act is a big shooting! Of course it is, right?!

Wrong.

Alright, so, Hot Fuzz begins by showing us Nicholas Angel and how fucking awesome he is. There’s what you would expect (urban pacification, riot control, resolution of “Operation Crackdown”, highest arrest) but, most notably, there’s a degree in Politics and Sociology, and they specifically mention popularity within the community. In fact, in the rest of the movie, that is what he mostly does- community work. He checks the traffic, patrols, gets minors out of a pub, and tries to find a duck for a member of the public.

So Nicholas Angel is awesome, and he’s the best cop. it would naturally follow that the rest of the police would love him. That’s what we want- if you’re good, you meet your objectives, and do your best, you will fit in the police and make the world a better place!

But no, the others fucking hate him. His superiors are shipping him off because he’s too good. He’s making the others look bad, and the idea of, you know, holding everybody at a higher standard doesn’t touch them. No, Nicholas Angel makes them look bad, and looking good matters more than all the results he gets.

Now, it would be easy to make it look like it’s just a higher up problem. The higher up are lazy and image obsessed, but the common officers, the ones we all meet, they’re good and appreciate him. “Don’t worry, public, we’ll protect you even though our superiors are dicks.“

Nope, they fucking hate him too.

So already, not a glowing endorsement of the police. But hey! It could still be copaganda! Maybe, I don’t know, it’s just those city cops, and the country cops are actually the good guys!

Ahah lol, actually? The country cops fucking hate Angel too. Angel is a “city cop” who thinks too highly of himself and is there to show them how it’s done.

If you’re reading this, you may remember that Angel kinda never did anything other than, you know, be a by-the-book officer. The country cops don’t like him for completely bullshit reasons that can be summarized as “you’re new and also you’re trying to make us feel bad for not being as awesome as you by being that awesome and we don’t trust you go away”. Danny likes him, admittedly mostly because he’s a sweetie pie, but partly for the bad reasons- he wants soldier cop.

All of this is, needless to say, not a glowing endorsement of the police.

Eventually, we find out what made Angel want to become a police officer; his uncle was one. He admired him, and wanted to be like him. Now, Edgar Wright could have left it at that, and we would have had a nice, traditional “amazing cop comes from long, noble line of cops” story, but instead, we instantly find out that, actually, his uncle was corrupt, and that’s bad, and Angel is disappointed in him.

So, to recap- we’re basically halfway through the movie, and the only good cop is Angel. (Danny isn’t bad, but like... he’s not exactly good either, at least as a police officer)

The movie continues, and murders start to happen. Angel is literally the only one who thinks anything is wrong. A long, long string of “accidents” is happening, and none of the cops has even the slightest inkling that something is wrong. They’re just like “Angel, you nipped scarf, you’re a paranoid dum-dum“, and what little they do, they do after a lot of arm-twisting and with extreme disgruntlement.

Once again, not a glowing endorsement.

On and on we go, two thirds into the movie, with only Danny liking Angel and showing any kind of improvement as an officer, until we finally get to the revelation that the council is killing people for the greater good (the greater good)... Oh, and btw, who is also part of the council?

The Frank Butterman, AKA The Police Inspector, AKA THE FUCKING LEADER OF THE POLICE IN THIS TOWN.

So, to recap, by the final act of the movie, we find out that the higher ups are corrupt and the main body of the police are ineffectual.

Okay. Cool.

Nicholas Angel then proceeds to pack up for the final showdown. I see lots of people making the argument that this is an example of soldier cop, fixing everything with violence. Me, I think that’s bullshit. In real life, the problem isn’t that cops have riot gear, the problem is that they use it for everything. Riot gear is something you use only when strictly necessary, and I would argue that “murderous council that’s packing” is one of those times when it is.

So the riot gear and packing up is fine. But what about the violence, I hear you cry?

Well, here’s the thing- the man is responding with the appropriate amount of force. Everybody is trying to actually murder him, and he never, ever shoot to kill. He shoots to incapacitate.

Look at the final body count, people. You think Bad Boys would have ended such a show up with none dead, lots low-to-medium injured apart from one guy who was badly injured but did it himself by tripping on a pointy thing? Fuck, even outside of copaganda, what was the last action movie that had such a body count?

Also, the rest of the country police come around, after initially responding AGAINST Angel, and only thanks to Danny mediation. Which... I mean, good, it’s good, I’m very proud of them, but like, once again, this isn’t exactly glowing endorsement. This doesn’t scream “see, audience?!?! Cops may look ineffectual, but when push comes to shove, they’ll save you!” to me, this screams “yo, they’re finally doing the bare minimum”.

Anyway, the end comes. The London police wants Nicholas Angel to come back because now they look bad, but Angel wants to actually rebuild and direct the police here in the town. They all do paperwork, because that’s what the rules say and rules are important and cops should follow the rules, and more stuff happens but it’s not important for the purpose of this so, here, the end.

At the end, we get the song. The choice of music is important for a movie, it means stuff. Even a mediocre director knows that, and Edgar Wright is a goddamn master of the craft. Have you seen The World’s End? Check that soundtrack. It’s perfect. Hell, the man directed Baby Driver, which, you know, was half soundtrack. Edgar Wright cares about music in his movies and he chooses it carefully, is the point, okay?

So, keeping in mind that, what do we end Hot Fuzz with? Some bombastic “bad boys bad boys, whatchu gonna do, whatchu gonna do when they come for you”? Something that pumps you up, that makes you go “FUCK YEAH”?

We end it with “Caught by the Fuzz”, by Supergrass. Which, yes, slaps, it slaps my whole bod, and yes, it does pump you up, but, once again, is not a glowing endorsement of the police. It’s a song from the point of view of a scared teen having been arrested by the police who is thinking “fuck I should have stayed at home fuck”.

So what am I trying to say with this? Well, let’s start with what I’m not trying to say; I don’t think Hot Fuzz is an indictment of the police. Please don’t take all of this as me saying that Edgar Wright intended Hot Fuzz as a giant ACAB. That is what in the field we call a reach. Hot Fuzz isn’t an indictment of the police, and that’s fine, because it’s not trying to be. It’s showing the police as a highly flawed institution, and sure, it’s not showing it as flawed as it actually is, but that’s fine, because it’s not trying to be The Wire. What it is trying to be is a fun action movie, which it is, and it is so amazingly.

What I am trying to show is that it’s not copaganda. It’s a movie with a police officer as a main character, a main character who is awesome, but it isn’t copaganda. It’s not endorsing the police. It’s not whitewashing it. It isn’t saying “look at the police, aren’t they great? Aren’t we glad the police are around? Aren’t we better because of the police? Don’t you want to become a police officer? Don’t you think that what they do is excusable, at the end of the day, since they deal with so much?”

But what does this have to do with copaganda? So, look. I get that it’s very nice to tell other people that their favourite shows and/or movie is bad AND wrong, and to feel like you have the moral high ground while doing so. I also get that words change and at the end of the day who gives a shit about it. I really do get that- I will never, ever give a shit about ‘literally’ being used as an intensive and not just to mean ‘literally’, for example.

BUT, some words are actually important, because they do mean a very, very specific thing they are best at describing. And “copaganda” is important, because you read it, you hear it, and you instantly know what it means; it’s something that’s also cop propaganda. Got it.

Which means it’s a word that is important to try and keep for as long as possible, because, you know... the cops aren’t always great. And it’d be best if we weren’t constantly told they are.

I understand that it feels bad to have so many bad things happening around us, and so little power to stop it. But you do have a little bit of power. You have the power to call a spade a spade, and to say ‘that isn’t cool’.

Calling a spade a spade, however, means that you don’t go around calling everything a spade. If you call everything a spade, it creates confusion, and dilutes a message.

So please. Please.

Instead of just pointing at something that has a cop in it and say “copaganda!”, use your critical skills and, like I just did with Hot Fuzz, try to find out if it actually is copaganda before saying it is so.

#hot fuzz #copaganda #long post #now please let me sleep #i'm so tired all the time #man this movie is great #my favourite one is the world's end tho #i'm absolutely not sorry it gave me everything #it made me sad it made me laugh it made me happy it made me cheer #p.s. this is all to say that I'm also not exactly sure Brooklyn 99 is copaganda #but i honestly haven't watched it in years so i have no interest in defending it tbqh #not that i've ever seen anyone saying that hot fuzz is copaganda #i'm sure someone has if only because there's always that one person willfully misinterpreting things #usually the same person going 'uhm maybe if people don't have critical skills #it's because of english teachers not doing their job'#sure it's your english teacher's problem #not you ignoring what they're saying because 'the curtains are just blue' and then covering your ears

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jawritter · 4 years

Text

The Arrangement

Part 17

Summery: You are a young girl that was raised in a small church in Dallas, TX. One of the only churches left in the state that still practices arranged marriages. When your betrothed ran off to California you thought you'd escape the fate you were trained for ever since a small child. Now upon the death your parents your fate seemed to be inescapable as he's returned, and is ready to take you as his bride.

Book Warnings: Arranged marriage, loss of virginity, smut, unprotected sex, angst, language, suicide attempt, battles with anxiety, struggles with mental illness, age gap (about 11 years), I think that’s it, chapters will have warnings of their own!

Chapter Warnings: Angst, fear of flying, anxiety, social anxiety, some fluff in there, I think that’s everything.

Word Count: 1472

A/N: This book is a book about Christian and church based arranged marriages, I would like to take this moment to say that I DO NOT have ANYTHING against the Chirstian faith, and mean absolutely no harm to anyone! Especially Jensen’s family! This is a complete work of fiction, and should be treated as such!

Beta’d by the amazing @deanwanddamons who was awesome enough to do all this for me! It was a lot of work, and she deserves all the praise for it!!

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Reader

Want More? Check Out My Masterlist!!

***MASTERLIST***

***SERIES MASTERLIST***

"Baby, you get the chargers?" Jensen yelled at you from the bathroom where he was doing his hair, getting ready to head to the airport to fly out to California with Jared and Clif. Jensen had booked a hotel room for the two of you, sort of away from the fray of California. 'Where the two of you could relax, and spend time together.' he had said.

That part of it you were looking forward to, even if you were nervous about leaving the state of Texas for the first time. Jensen had reassured you enough that he would be there to take care of you, and that nothing would happen to you; that you had actually gotten a little excited about going to Califiorna to spend some time with Jensen.

It was getting in the plane, and going thousands of feet into the air, where if anything went wrong there was only one way to go, that was what scared you, that bothered you the most.

Jensen said more people died in a car accident than they did in an airplane. That didn't really help to sooth your fears.

What did help was the fact that Jared had a private jet, and you wouldn't be flying commercial. That cut down on your time at the actual airport going through security and all that hassle that you weren't really looking forward to either.

The one downside to that was that you were going to be stuck on a plane with Jared, a man that literally hates your guts, for several hours with no escape.

Your last meeting face to face was when you had gone over to his house right after you and Jensen had gotten married, and that hadn't exactly gone over well. So you were a little worried about being trapped on a plane with him to say the least. You had packed a book and some headphones, hoping to distract yourself enough to stay out of his way, and just let Jensen entertain him for the flight.

The sound of the front door slamming made you jump. Jensen, knowing Jared was on his way, just stuck his head out of the bedroom door and yelled down to Jared and Clif who were waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

"We will be down there in just a second. Clif, all the bags are packed and put by the door if you want to load them into the car?”

Shutting the door Jensen, crossed the floor to where you were standing, putting your purse over your shoulder.

"You okay sweetheart? Are you ready to go?"

Slipping his arms around your waist and pulling you to him, everything in you just wanted to tell the men downstairs to go away, and crawl back into the bed with Jensen and sleep for the rest of the day, not having to deal with anything.

You knew that wasn't possible though, so you just nodded and attempted to smile at him when he kissed your forehead lightly, before grabbing your hand in his, and making his way toward the door with you in tow. This was going to be a long trip for you, you just knew it.

The drive to the airport wasn't as bad as you expected it to be. The boys all chatted while you sat quietly, and watched the Austin scenery flow by your window. Jensen's hand was still wrapped tightly around yours, squeezing you occasionally, letting you know that he was right there should you need him.

It was still very early in the morning, and the traffic hadn't gotten horrible yet, so there was very little to halt, or slow your trip to the airport down.

Even for early in the morning, the airport was crowded, people standing in long lines, waiting in one way or another,standing around talking on cell phones, and sitting on the floor waiting on their flight numbers to be called. You were shaking slightly as you held tight to Jensen's hand, making your way toward Jared's private plane that was awaiting you all, fueled up, and ready for it's trip.

Jensen leaned down and put his arm around you, pulling your tightly to him as he saw a group of young yours, probably teenagers, making their way towards your little group. He hadn't let anyone see you, even though everyone had found out that you were married by now. He still hadn't really posted any pictures or anything on social media, and since he had no projects really going on right now, no events where in place you where required to attend. There was no real reason for you to make an appearance.

Something told you that you were about to make your appearance to the "fandom" for the first time.

Your stomach knotted up even more than it already was, and you regretted your choice of Jensen's oversized black and white plaid shirt, black undershirt, black knee length leggings, and black flats; with a ball cap to match. You were sure you looked horrible. You had very little makeup on, and your hair brushed straight down your back, the way Jensen liked it.

"Oh My God!! Jensen!! Jared!! I can't believe it's really you!! You guys look great!! Can we get a picture with you!!" The tall blonde was pretty much bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement, her more observant friend was looking at you with a sort of smile on her lips as she noticed yours and Jensen's hands entwined together.

"Jensen, is this your wife?"

Jensen looked down and smiled at you after posing for the picture with the two women.

"Yes this is Y/N." he said, pulling you close to his side, and kissing the top of your forehead lightly as he squeezed your shoulders.

"OH!! Can we get a picture with you too!!" the blonde said excitedly.

Jensen looked down at you, almost apologetically.

"That's up to you sweetheart." he said.

You could feel Jared's eyes on you, watching your every move. You knew that this was part of being married to Jensen, and you knew that this day would come eventually. You didn't want to disappoint him.

"Sh...Sure... Uh Okay..." you stuttered out and they got on either side of you, and Jared snapped the picture quickly for them, then Clif started to usher them away from your little group.

"Okay ladies we gotta get going!" Jensen said, pulling you close to him again,wrapping his hand around yours.

They thanked you all again gratefully, and you made your way quickly to the airplane. You were thankful that you were safe inside of it, which was surprising to you. You never thought you would be happy to be on an airplane, go figure. Your hands were still shaking from your first encounter with the fans.

"You did great baby." Jensen said, pulling you so that your head was down on his shoulder.

"Yeah Y/N, you did really well." Jared said, surprising you even more. He thought you did well. Maybe you could do this after all.

The plane started to make it's assent, and you grabbed onto Jensen's hand tightly as he pulled you to him, kissing your head like he had developed a habit of doing every time he knew you were uncomfortable or nervous about something. Before you knew it, the plane had smoothed out, and you were in the air.

"So Y/N Jay said this is the first time you've ever been outside of the state of Texas. Are you excited?"

Was he really trying to make small talk with you? That was new.

"Yeah I guess." you said shortly, and curled up closer to Jensen, who said nothing, just started playing with your hair and settled himself for the flight.

"You know Jensen, they said on the phone last night, that if we all agree to do this, then we will be filming in Vancouver again." Jared said, seemingly excited.

Jensen took a deep breath and just nodded. You knew he still wasn't completely on board with this whole revising Supernatural thing, even though you told him you would be there and support him every step of the way.

Jensen was afraid he would lose you through all this, that it would be too much for you, and you would leave him. Your mind was made up; you weren't going anywhere. No matter how hard or different this was. You needed to learn to live a little, not be such a coward.

You lay there on Jensen's shoulder, him playing with your hair as they chatted between each other about the show, and the people they worked with that they haven't seen in a long time. You started to doze off,content with Jensen's strong arm wrapped around you.

'You can do this Y/N..." You thought to yourself as you drifted off to sleep for the rest of the flight.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tag List: @lyarr24 @amandamdiehl @deanwanddamons @imabitch4jensen @rvgrsbrns @bi-danvers0 @onethirstyunicorn @i-love-superhero @akshi8278 @lyss-dw79 @magssteenkamp @lemondropirwin @squirrelnotsam @hobby27 @spnbaby-67 @mrsjenniferwinchester @defenderrosetyler @screechingartisancashbailiff @thecreatiivecorner @aflamboyanceofgays @vicmc624 @busy-bee-angel-misska @justanotherwinchester @brilovesdeanwinchester @idksupernatural

#jensen ackles #jensen ackles x reader #jensen ackles x you #jensen ackles series #jensen ackles fanfiction #jensen ackles fanfic #jensen x reader #jensen x you #jensen series #jensen fanfiction #dean winchester #x reader inserts #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #jawritter #jawritter 1k celebration #the arrangement

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snakeboistan · 4 years

Text

When He Sees Me

Pairing: Karmagisa + mentioned Maeiso

So this is basically a sequel of this where Karma meets florist!Nagisa

I was listening to ‘When He Sees Me’ from Waitress when I was writing this so yeah...

Maehara and Fuwa stood behind the counter, completely ignoring their work as they watched Nagisa pace about the shop, their heads moving backwards and forwards in unison as the blunette walked to and fro from one side of the large room to the other, wringing his hands and mumbling under his breath.

“You alright there, Nagisa?” Maehara asked, amber eyes still trained on his frantic-looking coworker slash friend, “you know it’s not that big of a deal, right?”

Nagisa paused, swivelling in place so that he could give the blond an incredulous look. He repeated, hands flying everywhere, “Not a big deal?! This is the biggest deal ever! Karma is coming in ten minutes to take me on a date - a date - and you’re saying that it’s not that big of a deal?!”

“Calm down, Nagisa,” Fuwa said, as if she didn’t transform into a squealing volcano when she found out that the redhead customer that Nagisa had hit it off with that fateful day had asked the petite pigtailed boy on a date to a local sushi chain and then proceeded to glomp said unsuspecting petite pigtailed boy into a hug as she rattled on about how she was ‘so proud of him’ and that ‘all I’m asking for is to be your maid of honour’, “it’s not like he hasn’t asked you out before. I mean the two of you went to see that Sonic Ninja movie the other day.”

“That’s completely different,” Nagisa exclaimed, “we went to a movie theatre - where you sit in the dark for the majority of the time - to watch a movie that we were too immersed in to actually have a conversation. And then we only spoke for about five minutes before I had to leave because mum called. Now we’ll be in a public area where all of his attention will be trained on me.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Maehara inquired, ignoring the quiet hiss of ‘vile madwoman’ that seemed to escape Fuwa’s mouth at the mention of Nagisa’s mother, “I mean speaking to each other and getting to know each other is one of the best parts of dating.”

“You’d know all about dating,” Fuwa smirked, “wouldn’t you, Womaniser?”

“Former Womaniser,” Maehara shot back in offense, “I’ll have you know that since dating Isogai, I have become a changed man.”

“I sure hope so,” Fuwa retorted, pointing a threatening finger at the blond’s face, “I swear to god Maehara, if you hurt that lovely Prince Charming of a barista I will hunt you down and end you in ways so bad that not even Ranpo Edogawa would be able to find your body or discover what happened to you.”

“Fuwa, if I ever do end up hurting Isogai, you have my permission to end me in any way you wish.”

“Guys!” Nagisa yelled, “can we get back to my crisis, please? I mean I’ve never been on a date before so I wouldn’t even know what to expect.”

“But isn’t that exciting?” Fuwa encouraged, her dark and threatening expression had completely been replaced by her usual starry-eyed adoration of anything that remotely resembled one of her beloved shojou mangas, “finding out everything you possibly could about the other, staring into each other’s eyes as you uncover the depths of their soul as you feel yourself falling more and more in love with each other.”

They both looked at her as she began swooning with daze.

Maehara raised an eyebrow, “where do you come up with this stuff?”

Fuwa shrugged, “it’s not my fault that you two happen to have meet-cutes that are literal shojou material. I mean come on: we’re all florists and Maehara’s boyfriend works in a coffee shop. At this point, I just hope that I don’t get dismissed as a mere side character.”

“That makes even less sense.”

“It’s just - just so scary,” Nagisa confessed, head hanging low as he began twiddling with his fingers, “I don’t really know that much about him apart from that he likes the same franchise as me. And that he’s super smart. It’s just so new that I have no idea what to do. I-I like to stick with the things I know, you know, try to minimise the areas where I can make mistakes. When things turn into some big guessing game and you lose control of the situation, things can turn ugly, trust me on that.”

“But it isn’t a complete guessing game,” Fuwa said, “you know that you like him and that he likes you.”

“What if he doesn’t?” Nagisa argued, “what if he only likes whatever version of me that he thought he saw that day we first met? What if tonight, during our date, he realises that he made a terrible mistake and that I’m really not whatever he thought I was that interested him? What if he’s disappointed when he knows what I’m really like?”

“Hey, hey, Nagisa,” Fuwa consoled. In the midst of the male’s anxiety-driven panic, she had walked towards him and now had the palms of her hands laying flat on his shoulders, their firm grips grounding him in an attempt to prevent him from proceeding further with his emotional tangent, “calm down. You’re getting worked up over nothing. Remember he asked you out

“But what if there’s something wrong with him?” Nagisa gasped as a new idea dawned on him, “I mean come on, have you met me? I’m not much of a catch and I’m certainly not that interesting. What if - what if he’s some sadistic psychopath that is only asking me out to lure me away into an abandoned alley and then kill me so that he can sell my organs in the black market or something? He could’ve planned this moment from the first day we saw each other. Oh my god, I knew I was being too reckless.”

“Holy hell, man,” Maehara rolled his eyes, “I can’t believe I’m saying this because you’re like the most chill person I know but you’re acting worse than Fuwa. You really need to reel back on those crime dramas - not everyone’s some crazy unsub from Criminal Minds. He’s a high schooler just like us. I really don’t think he’s planning on killing you.”

“You never know,” Nagisa shot back, “I mean with the TV shows and current media we’ve got nowadays anything’s possible. He could be some sort of heartless sadist. He - he.”

Nagisa cut himself off when his eyes caught onto the bunches of sunflowers that stood proudly next to the pink cala lilies by the window. Walking up to them, he carefully picked one up and gently traced the circumference of the disk florets, his mouth curling upwards at the memory of Karma entering the store the next day.

“I got your bouquet,” he had said, blushing furiously at the wide grin on the other’s face.

“Really?” Karma asked, “I didn’t get a text so I thought it might have been misplaced.”

“I don’t really text people I don’t know that well.”

“Hmm, I see. Well, what if I told you three things about myself? Would that be enough for us to have a textual relationship?”

Nagisa’s blush deepened, both at the redhead’s words and at the way his heart seemed to beat faster. The redhead placed his elbows on the counter and leaned forward, “what kind of three things?”

“Well, one, I want to study Economics in University so that I can become a bureaucrat. Two, I wasn’t kidding about the offer to the movies. Or with maths. Or about those flowers because Asano’s face was the funniest thing I saw all week. And three, I think that you really know your flowers.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just what I meant when I sent you that bouquet with the forget-me-nots,” Karma smiled, “there’s just something about you that’s pretty unforgettable.”

“He could be the most amazing person I’ve ever met,” Nagisa whispered, “which is weird because I’ve never felt like this about someone. Especially not someone I barely know.”

“But Nagisa,” Fuwa said, “you’re like really good at reading and analysing people so shouldn’t you trust your instincts. They’ve never been wrong before, right?”

“I don’t know. He’s just so amazing and smart and brilliant and he makes me feel things I can’t even explain even though we’ve only known each other for like a week and he’s like a straight A student and I’m just barely passing my tests. I’m not used to not understanding my feelings and I’m just so scared that I’ll drive him away. He’s funny and knows how to make me laugh and I feel like - I don’t know - like I don’t need to be scared. I barely know him but I want to know more and there may be a chance that he does too but what if when he knows more he doesn’t want to know more anymore. When you’re on a date you’re supposed to be open, but what if the only way I can be open is if I get broken and then he realises that I’m a complete mess and by that time it’s too late to put me back together,” he tucked the bright yellow flower back into the basket with the rest of its species, “I always look at things rationally, I try to get as much information as possible but right now everything seems irrational and I don’t know what to do.”

Fuwa walked up to him and pivoted him around so that she could stare right into his eyes, “you be yourself. Your usual kind, loving amazing self that me and Maehara and Sugino and everyone else knows and loves. You go there and you have fun and if Karma suddenly develops insanity and realises that he doesn’t like you - which will not happen by the way - then I will kick his redheaded butt, you hear me. I’ll even steal one of Sugino’s baseball bats so that I can beat him to death, if you want.”

“I’ll help,” Maehara piped up, “so will Isogai and Yada and Kurahashi and everyone else at The Busy Bean.”

“Wait,” Nagisa turned to him, “the coffee shop knows about this?!”

“Yep,” Maehara nodded with no hint of shame, “they were interested in their favourite customer’s love life and I was only too happy to provide. They ship you guys by the way but will kill Karma if he decides to hurt you.”

“You know what,” Nagisa shook his head, “I’m not even going to question it.”

“Just have fun,” Fuwa reiterated, brushing his shoulders, “you’ll be fine.”

“Looks like you calmed down on time,” Maehara quipped, “because I see a little silhouetto of a man.”

Nagisa and Fuwa turned their heads towards the giant transparent double doors to see Karma sauntering up to the store whilst texting on his phone. Readying himself, Nagisa took a few deep breaths before straightening himself and walking towards the front of the counter. With a look behind him so that he could see his coworkers’ thumbs up, he stared straight at the door as he waited for it to open. The bell rang as Karma walked in.

“Hey, Nagisa.”

“Uhh, hi, Karma.”

“So, you ready for dinner?”

“I sure am.”

And so the two of them left the store, side by side.

Fuwa turned to the boy beside her, wiping away a fake tear, “Ahh, they grow up so fast.”

“They sure do.”

“We should go follow them.”

“Fuwa, no.”

“Fuwa, yes.”

#assassination classroom #karmagisa #shiota nagisa #nagisa shiota #maehara hiroto #hiroto maehara #fuwa yuzuki #yuzuki fuwa #akabane karma #karma akabane #my writing

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shadowfromthestarlight · 3 years

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The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.

It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

Everyone monetized Trump. The Fox wing surrendered to the Trump phenomenon from the start, abandoning its supposed fealty to “family values” from the Megyn Kelly incident on. Without a thought, Rupert Murdoch sacrificed the paper-thin veneer of pseudo-respectability Fox had always maintained up to a point (that point being the moment advertisers started to bail in horror, as they did with Glenn Beck). He reinvented Fox as a platform for Trump’s conspiratorial brand of cartoon populism, rather than let some more-Fox-than-Fox imitator like OAN sell the ads to Trump’s voters for four years.

In between its titillating quasi-porn headlines (“Lesbian Prison Gangs Waiting To Get Hands on Lindsay Lohan, Inmate Says” is one from years ago that stuck in my mind), Fox’s business model has long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers with a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline. It villainized immigrants, Muslims, the new Black Panthers, environmentalists — anyone but ADM, Wal-Mart, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, and other sponsors of Fortress America. Donald Trump was one of the people who got hooked on Fox’s narrative.

The rival media ecosystem chose cash over truth also. It could have responded to the last election by looking harder at the tensions they didn’t see coming in Trump’s America, which might have meant a more intense examination of the problems that gave Trump his opening: the jobs that never came back after bankers and retailers decided to move them to unfree labor zones in places like China, the severe debt and addiction crises, the ridiculous contradiction of an expanding international military garrison manned by a population fast losing belief in the mission, etc., etc.

Instead, outlets like CNN and MSNBC took a Fox-like approach, downplaying issues in favor of shoving Trump’s agitating personality in the faces of audiences over and over, to the point where many people could no longer think about anything else. To juice ratings, the Trump story — which didn’t need the slightest exaggeration to be fantastic — was more or less constantly distorted.

Trump began to be described as a cause of America’s problems, rather than a symptom, and his followers, every last one, were demonized right along with him, in caricatures that tickled the urbane audiences of channels like CNN but made conservatives want to reach for something sharp. This technique was borrowed from Fox, which learned in the Bush years that you could boost ratings by selling audiences on the idea that their liberal neighbors were terrorist traitors. Such messaging worked better by far than bashing al-Qaeda, because this enemy was closer, making the hate more real.

I came into the news business convinced that the traditional “objective” style of reporting was boring, deceptive, and deserving of mockery. I used to laugh at the parade of “above the fray” columnists and stone-dull house editorials that took no position on anything and always ended, “Only one thing’s for sure: time will tell.” As a teenager I was struck by a passage in Tim Crouse’s book about the 1972 presidential campaign, The Boys in the Bus, describing the work of Hunter Thompson:

Thompson had the freedom to describe the campaign as he actually experienced it: the crummy hotels, the tedium of the press bus, the calculated lies of the press secretaries, the agony of writing about the campaign when it seemed dull and meaningless, the hopeless fatigue. When other reporters went home, their wives asked them, “What was it really like?” Thompson’s wife knew from reading his pieces.

What Rolling Stone did in giving a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the system was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull “objective” format.

The problem is that the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction of politicized hot-taking that reporters now lack freedom in the opposite direction, i.e. the freedom to mitigate.

If you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.

We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Ideally, it would:

not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;

employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;

embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;

operating on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.

Innovations like Substack are great for opinionated individual voices like me, but what’s desperately needed is an institutional reporting mechanism that has credibility with the whole population. That means a channel that sees its mission as something separate from politics, or at least as separate from politics as possible.

The media used to derive its institutional power from this perception of separateness. Politicians feared investigation by the news media precisely because they knew audiences perceived them as neutral arbiters.

Now there are no major commercial outlets not firmly associated with one or the other political party. Criticism of Republicans is as baked into New York Times coverage as the lambasting of Democrats is at Fox, and politicians don’t fear them as much because they know their constituents do not consider rival media sources credible. Probably, they don’t even read them. Echo chambers have limited utility in changing minds.

Media companies need to get out of the audience-stroking business, and by extension the politics business. They’d then be more likely to be believed when making pronouncements about elections or masks or anything else, for that matter. Creating that kind of outlet also has a much better shot of restoring sanity to the country than the current strategy, which seems based on stamping out access to “wrong” information.

What we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.

Matt Taibbi is one of the only people I subscribe to. He’s one of the few journalists I like because I actually believe he’s genuine.

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r00en · 4 years

Text

Still Good Chapter 10

A Million Kisses

All Might x Reader (OC)

I just wanted some cute fluff with Toshi being an absolute angel boy! A basic domestic conversation about food and Toshi just adoring his tiny new girlfriend.

Warnings: Some heavy kissing and super fluffy. Toshi cries. It’s all good!

(I’m running out of All Might gifs people!)

The day's after the attack on U.S.J were some of the greatest Toshi could recall. At least since his injury. All of the students were given the following days off for 'safety' which mostly meant the heads of the school were looking into the breech, upping their security and making a game plan should another attack happen. They needed to be prepared. Both the media and parents of at least the first year students were all on edge and rather critical of each move U.A made. Having the great All Might on staff did sway some hearts and he was labeled as the hero of the hour Toshi felt anything but and was thankful the Principal was doing more to put the citizens at ease.

There was only so much Toshi could do in his current state. He had maybe an hour now if he was lucky which would need to be used for teaching and possibly appearances on the street during days off to keep everyone's suspicions at bay. All Might was a major public figure. Constantly out and about meeting people, doing interviews, showing up on TV and in movies. A literal Symbol needed to be everywhere at once and be seen by as many people as possible. And of course his hero work. There were mutterings that something was wrong with All Might given how rarely the people of the town around U.A ever saw him. The school tried their best to filter the rumors and spread a few of their own. He was often around different cities helping with major disasters, school and teaching took up most of his time and he was such a valuable asset to the next young hero's. He trusted the police and local hero's to do their jobs and left them to it. Simple things like that. It worked well enough and the attack only solidified his need to stay on campus. That was one of two good things that had come from that horrible day. The second was standing next to him in his kitchen, humming away as she chopped some carrots.

They had been busy making dinner, each slipping comfortably in this new relationship. Honestly very little had changed between the two of them save for Toshi's obsessive need to pepper her cheeks with kisses every time she was within reach. So much so that he was expecting to be beaten off each time his lanky arms wrapped around her middle and pinned her in place to assault her with his mouth. But each and every time she would erupt into a fit of giggles, planting a few of her own on his boney jaw and only teasingly shooing him away so she could finish what ever task he interrupted.

"I like it." She told him plainly after he apologized for his millionth kiss that morning while she was attempting to make coffee. "Being wanted so much is...nice. My brain dosn't have time to worry about things when every few minuets you remind it how happy it is now." That earned her a mild tackle of a hug and another thousand smooches.

And it wasn't just him. She often came up behind him to snuggle into his long back and hold him tight. He adored when she would climb herself into his lap while they watched TV as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be as close as possible. She often couldn't reach his face and so she would tug on his shirt slightly to demand he bend down to her level so she could kiss him how she liked. Often starting on her toes and working her way to his lips. Toshi had to admit they already acted as if they were a couple long before he had confessed. The rest of the teachers apparently had a betting pool on when one of them would finally break. He was glad it was him. Toshi adored the old school romance of it all. The heated confession after a dangerous battle! It felt like one of his American action movies. Though he could have easily done without the fight....

And the fact that even with his twisted, broken, scared and scary body she touched him as if he was in his prime. Not an ounce of fear or disgust on her features. At time's he honestly forgot how he looked. Really believing her when she muttered how handsome he was while they were lounging on the bed together one morning. She seemed to love tracing small patterns against his arms and following the thin but textured muscles in his shoulders and neck. Remaking how strong he was and giggling and cheering when he would scoop her into a hug and swing her around like she weight nothing at all.

So here they were, in his apartment getting ready for dinner. His arms locked around her little frame with his head resting atop her's like a strange parrot. Listening to her quiet little hum as she worked. Perfect, this was perfect. "Toshi..." His arms wound a little tighter on her sides. Nuzzling his face against her hair with a little sigh of his own. "Yeah?" He couldn't think of anything better than these moments. It almost made him forget his loss as a symbol, his injury, his troubles. "Toshi the meat...." Her voice sounded a little worried. Always so concerned about his well being. "It should be fine. We didn't add too many seasonings this time so it won't bother me as much as last night." The thought of their little blunder with spices last night made him nonexistent stomach churn a bit. Spending hours laying on the bed eating chipped ice and taking advantage of her quirk had not been pleasant.

"No I mean it's burning!" She laughed, wiggling herself out of his arms to turn off the small hot plate. A dark patchy smoke rising from what was meant to be their grilled pork.

He stood there dumbfounded for a second. Watching her try and salvage the chard meat. "My apologizes....I was so wrapped up in what I was doing-" That sounded a bit stupid, what he was doing was clinging onto her like an infant. The shame heated his cheeks as he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "H-here I'll finish the vegetables. I doubt I can screw that up." Now that he said that the knife looked very sharp and the small little shapes she had been cutting seconds ago looked far more professional than anything he would manage to do with his clumsy long fingers. With a heavy sigh he took up her post, glancing over to watch her cut the thick chard sections of meat. "I don't think I ever noticed before but you are a very good cook. Your recipes are simple yet delicious and you know your way around a knife." He motioned to the well cut veggies on the board and his mess of what looked like a hacked up bit of onion.

It took her a second to respond. So focused on the task at hand. Or maybe it was hard to answer. "It's kinda embarrassing...but I'm a really picky eater..." She muttered, plating their meat carefully now that it had been saved from his blunder. "I had to learn new tricks pretty quickly when I moved to Japan. But my family was very ah...." She struggled with the Japanese for a second. Toshi could see the gears turning in her head and had to stop himself from smushing her cheeks. 'So cute...'

"Meat and Potatoes! That's it!"

"Meat....and potatoes? Dear... we have that here in Japan though." He raised a brow at her and grinned. "We are having meat and potatoes tonight." He playfully motioned to the boiling pot of potatoes right next to her.

That earned him a little playful swat on the arm and a small nudge so he could scoot his skinny butt over and let her finish. He gladly moved, still afraid to ruin their meal any farther but still bent on figuring out what she meant. "Come to think of it that is all you seem to order when we eat out. Simple dishes, a lot of carbs. I assumed it was because you were trying to accommodate me." People who knew about his injury and stomach issues had a hard time eating freely around Toshi. It was a guilt thing. Like people not drinking around an alcoholic. He could have a wide variety of foods. It's not like he was limited to rice crackers and water. Well not any more. It was mostly heavy spices and seasonings that bothered him. Without a stomach to help break it all down spicy foods would often burn his insides. Never a nice feeling. Toshi let his hand rest on her head, giving it a little rub before he moved off to get them some drinks. "So this meat and potatoes thing?"

"Oh! Well it means you eat very plain foods normally. It can mean a wide range of things ironically but my family tended to eat hardy meals with lots of meat and carb based foods like mashed potatoes."

"No vegetables?" That was something Toshi often enjoyed. Steamed veggies were nice and easy on his stomach but could add different flavors to things without being too harsh.

"Well yes but we stuck to simple things. If we were having steak it would normally be with a carb and one simple vegetable side dish like green beans or corn. Here there is always a rainbow mix of veggies in almost everything so my pallet it's really accustom to it yet." Paladin moved to place their dishes down on the table. Taking her spot as he carefully bent his knees in across from her. "I worry I'll never develop a full taste for Japanese food. I do like most of it though but I find it's far easier to cook at home and add the things I like rather than getting pre-made food's and having to remove what I don't." As always she was already starting on her small strips of pork. Toshi remembered the meal she made one night for him. It was steak but rather than being cut and cooked in strips which was custom in Japan she had cooked both slabs whole. He was tentative at first but her way of searing it gave the top a wonderful crunchy texture but the middle was so juicy it tasted like it had just come from a hot pot yet still melted in his mouth. And there was so much butter!

"I see. So your pallet just happens to work with my dirt restrictions." A happy coincidence that convinced Toshi they were indeed destined for each other. The thought warmed his heart it also chilled it. Fate...a future. All Might wasn't sure he even had one of those. The echo of his friends dooming prediction played through his mind. What did he have? A year at best? A single year to spend with her like this. He should tell her. But the thought of living every day on edge, her worried about their small short time....sad. Always sad and already mourning a man who wasn't dead yet.

No.

At least for now he wanted to be happy. Even if it was constructed on a lie by omission he wanted her to smile at him with no dark cloud hanging over them. He could pretend he didn't know. He had been pretending for years now and it wasn't turning out so bad. But now suddenly, watching Paladin eating across from him, happily giggling along with something on the T.V he had long since stopped watching he wasn't so sure he was okay with dying. If living meant being here with her longer. But Nighteye was never wrong. All Might would die a horrible, violent death at the hands of a villain. He would leave her alone. At the very least she knew he would pass before her naturally. He was almost twenty years older than her, that was a given but she didn't know just how true and how close.

It felt like some kind of disgusting lie that he would have to keep up with. His side burned as if punishing him already for letting any of this start. What could he possibly do? He would break her heart one way or the other. Ignore their feelings, pretend he wasn't in love with her and break her heart by forcing a friendship neither of them truly wanted? Disappear from her life without a word? Or die in a fight in a year. He could at least pretend that one was a more natural way for him to go. More so now with the targeted villain attack. She would be devastated but at least she would have closure. Plus she as a pro hero! She knew the risks they all took with their line of work. This lie would be better.

A hand reached out to brush carefully against his arm. Shaking him from his thoughts with a jolt. "Y-yes?!" She was looking at him with a worried expression. How long had he been silent?

"The food's not that bad is it? You've been glaring at it for like ten minuets...." Shoot. Toshi flipped his palm and gripped her's tightly trying to grin at her as if nothing in the world was wrong.

"It's nothing....really." She gave him another worried clench of her hand and he returned it trying his best to put her at ease. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I find myself still thinking about the attack on U.S.J...I know! I know you said it's not my fault. Everyone has said that." He was quick to correct when she got that little pouty look on her face that told him she was about to argue. "I'm far past the point of blaming myself now." Out loud "But the attack has me worried. I'm not as strong as I used to be. That's a fact and one we can't dance around any longer. I know the school is setting more security measures in place but still..." He glared down at his thin hand wrapped around her's. His face scrunched in what seemed like anger. "I wish there was more I could do. Feeling so helpless, it's not something I'm used to feeling. I'm still not used to it."

Paladin didn't seem to have an answer. This wasn't a quick fix sort of issue and one Toshi had been struggling with since his injury. It was worse now that his power was so limited. Relying on others to keep him safe, being unable to protect those he wanted to protect. Her hand slipped from his and Toshi hated the loss of contact. As she stood to gather their plates; his hardly touched, his appetite was gone for now she pressed a careful kiss his to his head in passing. "I don't think it's something you ever get used to Toshi. Not really. You lived most of your life so powerful that this reality may not even seem real. And the weaker you get the more it sinks in and the darker it feels. The more attacks you can't fend off the more it will eat at you." Well she wasn't anything if she wasn't brutally honest. "But you were always going to need to face this. One day All Might was going to die. Slip away in his bed surrounded by loved one's. Too old and weak to be the Hero he once was. It happens to everyone. This is just....an unexpected speed up. You're training Young Midoriya for this very reason."

He was nodding along, her words were wise if not a bit rough. He was going to die one day, he would have been on the exact same path he was on today....just give or take twenty years. That seemed like such a long time but given how long he was the Symbol of Peace it wasn't too far in the future. The danger that now lurked over Japan due to his near absence was the only major change in the true inevitability. "Yes but if I had more- Wait! You know I'm training Young Midoriya as my successor?!" He was so startled his sudden upright jerk crashed his poor knees into the underside of the table. Forcing him back down with a heavy groan as he rubbed his legs. "Y-you know?!"

Peaking out from the kitchen Paladin gave a little shrug. "Well I know for sure now. Sorry if it was meant to be a secret...I mean it still is. Of course I'm not going to tell anyone but it's a bit obvious." Toshi grumbled and pulled himself away from the offending furniture and joined her. Hovering by the doorway.

"Really?"

She was elbow deep in some dishes. The pot already on for their nightly coffee and tea. If he wasn't so worried this would be a perfect moment for more kitchen cuddles but he was more interested about her realization. "Well I spend a lot of time with both class 1-A and you personally so it might just be me. But you constantly sneak off with him to get in some one on one training. You worry about him and his progress more than the other students...and if his records are correct his quirk shows amazing potential if he can figure out how to not break his own body using it. I got to thinking and it all just kinda fits you know?" That made sense. She was a smart girl and had more detailed records of Young Midoriya's medical history and quirk than most. Plus if Toshi wasn't with her or teaching he was training the boy. It would have been very easy to pick up on for someone like her. He should have been at least a bit more careful. "Honestly if I didn't know you were off with him I would get a little worried..." Toshi jerked back, waving his hands with a look of utter disgust plastered on his face.

"I would never!" When he looked up at her she was laughing, her tongue sticking out at him letting him sigh with relief. Of course she was kidding.

His cheeks still burned.

"Of course you wouldn't. That's the one thing I never have to worry about with you." The very though made him feel dirty. And not in the slightly less shameful way like the dark hours of the night before they started dating and he was alone with his thoughts. His shoulders slumped forward slightly, curling inward a bit his arms crossed over his chest trying to hide the embarrassment of the memory. The though of those perverted day dreams he was so privy to in the past possibly coming true made a heat bloom in his groin though he tried his best to hide it. For now. How did one even breech such a topic. It's not as if they were fumbling teenagers both young and experienced. All hands and teeth and no nerves. Well 'she' wasn't those things anyway. He was all but a young teen wishing he had at least given into a few of those old propositions from his past. Maybe even a bit of experience under his belt he would know how to act. Then again the idea of sharing that first time with her had it's own thrills. They scared the hell out of him. Like the drop on a roller coaster. Thrilling and dangerous but fun and exciting. "I think he's a good choice though."

Once again her voice cut through his inner ramblings. This was a better conversation to get his mind off of the dark pink places it was wandering off in. "You do?" Toshi moved into the kitchen at last. Setting out their cups and grabbing his tea and her instant coffee making a small face as the harsh smell hit his nose. He couldn't stand he stuff too strong.

"He's always so cheerful, really cares about his friends and those around him. His entrance exam was proof of that. The only student in how many years who put someones life above his own chances at his dream future. He had no way of knowing that of course we would never let anything happen to that young girl yet he jumped in to save her. Sacrificing those last few seconds he had to take hold of his spot. He moved before he could even think, like being a hero was just a natural instinct for him." He felt her snuggle up against his left side carefully. Warm breath seeped through his cotton shirt to pool against his scar and Toshi was quick to secure an arm around her as best he could while he tried to carefully mix her coffee the way she liked it. "He's so much like you."

A shiver ran up his spin. The drinks forgotten as the both sat there in a happy moment of comfort and silence. A woman so wonderful chose to be with him like this and it baffled him beyond all else. But he wouldn't complain. Her spunky little attitude, her willingness to scold him and be bold enough to call out his nonsense, to see him for who he was and not for the icon he built himself up to be...yet to still understand the need for it. Respect and admire it. To see it in Young Midoriya. She reminded him so much of his late Master. Toshi wondered what she might think of all this. She always stressed the importance of keeping true to himself, never forgetting who he was. The same normal high wisdom he expected all teachers stressed to their young students but perhaps she was trying to tell him to do this. Be with someone who made him feel whole or at least a little less broken that before. Nana would adore her.

He should tell her. Let her know the truth about his power and the boy. If only to prove how right she was. If anything it may have been a small boost in validation that Toshi had made the correct choice in successor. "That is a good point. You're a bit more right than you think you are."

It seemed she had gotten the snuggles out of her system and was now perked at full attention. The deeper tone in his voice told her this was important. Wide eyes stared up and him waiting for him to continue. "What I'm about to tell you is of the utmost importance and to be kept secret. You can tell no one....Recovery Girl and the Principal already know. As well as two old....acquaintances from my past." That was most likely the best way to put it without any more prying questions about them. He could already see the look of aggressive curiosity growing on her face and he wanted to make his point quickly and possibly never speak of those two 'acquaintances' ever again. "My quirk...you remember how we spoke about it being a mystery?"

Her head gave a little nod as she thought back. "Right, speed or strength or something different altogether. No one really knows to this day exactly what it is. It's one of the worlds greatest mysteries." Toshi chuckled and ruffled her hair a but. Leading her back into the main room with their drinks. At least she didn't ramble like Young Midoriya...

"Right. Well it has a name. One for All. I won't get into the messy details. It might take weeks to really explain everything." Her expression told him she wanted those details. Wiggling on the spot so ready to explode with questions that Toshi needed to hold up a hand and stop her before she got start. "I'll tell you over time I promise. No use in over loading you with information when there are more important bits." It seemed to work well enough for now. Leaving her a little pouty but excited for this 'info' he kept hinting at. "It was given to me when I was about Young Midoriya's age." His hand came up again. Snapping her jaw shut and keeping her silent from the flood of questions about to burst forth from her little body. "H-hang on. Yes I was quirkless. It wasn't strange back then. In fact it was in the midst of society coming to terms with superpowers in general. I was considered normal really. Not that I wanted to be. My master saw something in me back then.....and she passed her quirk, One for All to me. To become the Symbol of Peace I thought the world needed. To protect those who couldn't protect themselves. I wanted to be the hero that everyone looked to. That made people feel safe no matter where they were. I think that's why she gave it to me. She knew my ideals and goals were for the good of society and One for All would be used for justice." He could tell she was a bit lost. Her face flitting between confusion to deep concentration. Trying to piece together everything he just said.

He let her think for a few minuets. Sipping he tea quietly. "I'll tell you as much as I can over time. Though that's really the meat of it. Even I don't know the full extent of One for All. What it truly is and how it works. I don't think I mastered all there is to it even after so much time. But I was able to use enough to become All Might and fulfill my promise. I can't ask for much more...."

"After your injury....you needed to find someone else then. Someone to take up the place of All Might. Become the next Symbol of Peace." Toshi gave nod, leaning himself on his elbows against the table as he waited for her to process some more. It was a lot and he wasn't lying when he said even he didn't fully understand it all. The previous holders, how to unlock it's full power. After all this time he was still only able to stay All Might for so many years. He wasn't indestructible. Perhaps if he knew more he wouldn't have ended up like this.

She startled him by moving suddenly. Slowly crawling her way into his lap and snuggling herself down so her back was pressed against his chest. Toshi was glad for the sudden closeness keeping her hugged tight against him in a cage of legs and arms. Nuzzling his gaunt face into the crook of her neck and letting out a small sigh. "I saw all those things you can see in Young Midoriya. I saw myself in him. I knew he was the right choice as my successor. I came to U.A to find one but before I could we crossed paths. It was like fate." That word made him cringe. He didn't want to think about such a concept now. Not for the second time tonight. He took some solace in knowing that he was being honest with her about this. At least it was something. An honesty to cover up the darker lie he was prepared to keep up for another year. "I don't regret that decision. He tried to save his friend from a villain even when he was quirkless....saved me at U.S.J. Jumping into the fight even at the expensive his his legs. Buying me those last few seconds of time to keep my hero form. Without him my secret would be out. I don't even what to think of what those villains would do with that information." She felt the little shutter run through his body and wrapped her arms around his neck pulling him closer. The angle was hard on his back but it was a minor sacrifice for this intimacy he craved so much from her.

He could feel her fingers petting softly at the hair on the back of his neck. A soothing gesture that lulled him into a quiet peace. "I think he'll make a wonderful Symbol of Peace one day. Plus he couldn't have a better teacher." Toshi flushed and hugged her tighter in his embarrassment. Chuckling softly when she made a little sound of surprise at the tightness. "I worry about the people now." He muttered softly against her shoulder. "While I train Young Midoriya they have no protector, nothing to keep them safe and secure..."

"It will take time...and it will be hard." She responded softly, careful to pick her words "But the hope you gave people won't wash away. Even in your absence what you taught us will stick around for longer than you think. It will help the hero's who take up the reins for now until Midoriya is able to. What you gave us isn't something that will so easily be forgotten. We still have that fire you sparked in all of us to be better people, to Go Beyond what we think we can do on our own. No one can take that no matter how many years it takes for Midoriya to learn to be the next Symbol."

Silence.

Toshi couldn't tell at first. It was only when the fabric of her shirt against her shoulder was starting to soak that he noticed the tears streaming down his face. Thick and heavy and so sudden they didn't come with the usual pressure behind his eyes and hitching choking breaths. They just appeared. "I'm sorry....." She was so soft, seeing now that he was crying so quietly behind her that worry seeped back into her voice. It wasn't what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to keep talking. Keep telling him everything would be okay. Chase away those hateful demons that clawed at the back of his mind and made him doubt the society he spent his whole life protecting. Validate his feelings for what he cultivated and strived for for so long. Her words were so very much what he desperately needed to hear. "Did I say something-"

He didn't want to give her time to apologize. That was the last thing she ever needed to do. In those few short moments she just understood. Understood what he had been trying to do and his fear of losing it. And in those few seconds after eased those fears into the background and filled him with a warmth he hadn't remember ever feeling before. Not like this. To be truly and honestly understood like this felt so personal. He spun her around as carefully yet quickly as he could. Crashing his mouth down on her's as if he couldn't be physically close enough to her. Just contact. This deep, intimate contact as if without it she might not seem real. He could feel her fingers curling into the soft cotton of his shirt. Tugging at clenching at the sudden surprise of his actions. His tongue pressed desperately against her lips that she gladly opened for him. Delving forward to dance and lap against her's. Exploring the warm expanse of her mouth before finally pulling away with a heavy gasp for breath. His tongue still hanging ever so slightly past his thin lower lip as he panted for much needed air.

She moved to speak again. The small sound dying somewhere in the back of her throat as he dove forward so roughly he toppled them over the table and pressed her back against the hard surface. The crash of their mugs all but white noise to him now. He could hear their teeth click together, he could feel her fingers carding through his wild hair. Tugging sharply as he caught her lower lip between his teeth and gave her a teasing bite until it was rosie and pink. Licking at the tiny mark he created there to soothe the heat away before attacking her mouth again giving her no time to breath or think. A sound came from his chest. Something between a growl and a groan as he felt her wiggle under his heavy hold. His tongue pressed deeper. Toying with her's in a wet battle. She was so much smaller in every way that he almost filled her mouth completely.

It was like every emotion he had felt over the last five years had just bubbled forward. Pouring all that pent up fear, anger and self hate into this kiss. He couldn't help himself, couldn't stop. But he had to. He couldn't breath now and so he begrudgingly pulled himself back with a wet pop and slid his lips to her cheeks. It was salty and wet. His tears had rubbed off on her during their heated kissing. He was thankful she wasn't crying at least. He moved to kiss and nuzzle against her neck. Watching the harsh rise and fall of her chest as she tried to catch her own breath. He hid down there for now. His mind racing. Pushing him to keep going, keep touching. But as his hands hovered over her sides feeling the soft curve of her hips he felt himself grow nervous. Hard....but shy. He really had put everything into that kiss. Including his nerve. His head peaked up from her chest. Blue icy eyes shining in the dark that surrounded them. Looking more like a puppy then the man who had just kissed about a weeks worth of air from her lungs and still had the wet and slick lips to prove it.

"I-I...." He gulped hard, Adams apple bobbing harshly as he repeated the words over in his head just in case. Scooting himself up to hover over her flushed out face. Looking so dazed and well worn yet grinning like a fool. He was rather proud of himself for putting that look there. Long fingers traced down her heated cheeks tilting her head so she would at last look at him properly no matter how distant her eyes seemed to be in that moment. "I love you."

He wasn't sure if he meant to say it really. If this was the right time. So soon after his confession, so soon in their relationship at all. But he felt it. It needed to be said. His gut gave a little twist when she finally seemed to process his words. Looking so shocked a real panic started to set in him when she gave a little gasp like the words had smacked her hard in the face. "Oh..."

Oh what not what he expected nor wanted to hear. Oh was not the sound someone made when another person just confessed their love. Oh was bad. Oh was very very bad and Toshi found himself hiding away again against her chest. Jaw clenched tight in shame, trying to prep himself for the awkward conversation they were about to have about boundaries. The feel of her fingers against his cheeks caught him off guard. Pulling up slightly so he was force to look at her this time. 'No. No please don't.....don't look at me. I'm so sorry....' his mind already beating him for this horrible, impulsive, ridiculous-

"....I am so very madly and absolutely emphatically in love with you too."

'Holy shit....'

#All Might/Reader #all might x reader #Toshinori x reader #Toshinori Yagi #All Might #MHA #my hero acadamy #fanfiction

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ecto-american · 4 years

Note

Hello! If your taking prompts, could you do one where Danny both loses his memory about his family and friends and gets brainwashed by the guys in white that he's a full ghost, then released back into amity park with some faint idea of some connection, but not sure what. Thank you!

I take prompts within reason

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The dust began to fully settle, and the agent squinted through the mask. He tried to pick out that familiar form in the dust, that was trying to fly away as it always did. Escaping justice, but he saw nothing as smoke began to cloud the skies.

“There!” his partner cried out, and he pointed to a limp figure. The ghost they had been hunting, the town menace that began all of this, laid over a bit of rubble, motionless.

The agent kicked up dust of his own, scrambling to get to the ghost. He could hear his partner following suit, and they rushed towards a ghost that made absolutely no movements. They both, nearly in unison, skidded to a halt right before they could touch him. A flash of light had interrupted their actions. Hearts racing, they watched as this light blinded both of them. By the time it faded, almost as quickly as it had come, they were left looking at...a boy.

Neither made any movements to do anything, and Phantom (?) made no movements either. The agent hesitantly reached out to grab a handful of black hair that was slowly becoming caked in blood, so very different than the white hair of their target. He lifted his head up, bending over a bit to get a look at the face. The resemblance to Phantom was arguable. Paler, but if given a good hair bleaching, this could be Phantom.

Slowly, his other hand lightly patted the boy’s cheek. Bright green eyes opened halfway, staring up at him in confusion. Unmistakable green eyes that glowed like a ghost’s, like Phantom. They dropped closed, only to snap open once more. Bright blue eyes, looking more like a pair he’d see on a fellow agent, were now looking at him. Confused, scared, dazed.

“Sir, did you see that?” his partner’s voice was audible. The boy’s eyes closed fully once more. The agent spared a glance at the other agent. He was nodding with one hand pressed to his headset, listening to what their boss was telling him. “Yes, sir...Right away, sir...No, sir...We’ll be there shortly, sir.” He gestured to the teenager. “Pack him up. The boss wants to bring him in for questioning.”

The agent carefully let go of the hair. The boy’s head hung still, and the only audible noise from him was pained, labored breathing. His partner had gone to fetch their vehicle while he stood guard. And before anybody seemed to notice, before most of Amity Park could truly recover from the attack, they had loaded up the mysterious teenager and were already gone.

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His name was Daniel James Fenton. A background check revealed that he was a seventeen year old student at Casper High. The youngest in a family of four, son of Madeline Anne Walker and Jack Harrison Fenton and a brother to Jasmine Elizabeth Fenton.

He had no criminal record that they could find, though he reportedly got into trouble often at school. Minor things, mostly tardiness and poor grades. A few fights and one instance of pulling a fire alarm. Nothing comparable to the criminal rap sheet of Danny Phantom.

It was the longest rap sheet any agent had seen, literally pages and pages long. Thousands of charges for attempted murder, attempted arson, arson, attempted kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and more. Their file on Phantom was surprisingly long, but it was a file that had been compiled over the years by the observant eyes of a select few agents who had studied footage and that elusive ghost for years.

But that flash of light changed everything they thought they knew about Danny Phantom. An entire file that had blanks had odd answers that filled in. However, those answers couldn’t come from Phantom.

“So am I supposed to just believe that you happen to not remember anything about who you are?” Agent B voiced his skepticism to the teenager who had since been changed into a GIW prisoner’s uniform, a pure white loose jumpsuit accompanied by a standard anti-ghost collar around the neck and wrists.

This teen, nobody knew what or how to refer to him at this point, just stared at him with wide, scared eyes. He shifted in his seat, leaning his elbows on the wooden table that separate them, moving his hands a bit as he spoke.

“I-I don’t know what you want from me?” he croaked. He sniffled a bit, and he almost looked like he might cry. Agent B had to admit that the kid seemed to be a good actor, but it was bullshit. He wasn’t fully sure of this situation, but Phantom was always a sly and manipulative ghost. Always one step ahead. Not this time. “I told you what I know.”

“No, you haven’t,” Agent B spoke harshly. “Who are you, and what are you doing in Amity Park?”

“I don’t know who I am!” the teen exclaimed. “I can barely remember what Amity Park is! I think I live there? Or...like family lives there? But I don’t know their names.”

“You’re lying to me,” Agent B accused him. The waterworks truly began, but that never worked on Agent B. It was hard to really feel sorry for a ghost that hurt so many people through selfish actions.

“No, I’m not!” The teen put up a pathetic act. The tears were actually a good sign, in Agent B’s opinion. It meant that the ghost was possibly at their breaking point. “Don’t I get a phone call? I’m supposed to have the right to a lawyer too.”

Agent B stared coldly at him.

“No. Those rights don’t apply to ghosts.”

He stared at the agent, absolutely shocked at that statement. He said nothing, and Agent B stood up.

“Take him back,” Agent B ordered. “Let’s give him another few days in solitary.”

The teen didn’t even utter a word as he was escorted out. Soon as he left, a woman slipped into the room. Unlike the other agents, she wasn’t in a suit, but rather a plan white t-shirt and white jeans, with black shoes and a white lab coat.

“Anything?” she asked. Agent B shook his head. “You know, amnesia can last months, even years.” Agent B knew that look in her eye, exactly what she was leading up to asking him.

“If he doesn’t remember anything by Friday, you can have him Monday for experiments,” he promised her.

Her eyes shined happily.

“You have no idea what kind of scientific discoveries that boy has hidden in him,” she told him. Agent B simply shrugged.

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“Release him?” the scientist looked crestfallen at the news. “But there’s so much more to discover, so many more experiments, he has so much information he could tell us!”

“We can’t afford to keep him in custody much longer,” Agent B told her firmly. “People are starting to question where Phantom is. Of course, Fenton too. It won’t take long before people become suspicious and begin to investigate.”

The scientist frowned. In the six months of captivity, she had learned so much. Phantom was this odd human-ghost hybrid. How this happened, she nor her team could determine, other than that this was a recent event and not a natural state for him. The ghost’s continued lack of memory could provide little clues. She had been hoping to spark his memory, in the pursuit of getting some possible hints or theories. But she’d only get a blank stare.

“He’ll say something,” she argued. “Reveal everything. I know, legally, we didn’t violate any laws or anything. He’s a ghost. But that town thinks he’s a hero. It’ll cause a media outrage.”

“I know,” Agent B replied with a sigh. “We may just put him down and keep a close eye on him to ensure his memory doesn’t return, but it also may not really matter. It’s very doubtful that he told anybody about this. He couldn’t have, especially his parents. Had his parents known, well...you know the Fentons. They’d have experimented on him themselves. Fenton will eventually be classified as a runaway. But Phantom’s too well known to disappear forever.”

“We can’t kill him,” she told him almost immediately. “I want to do more experiments later. Everything will change if he dies fully. There’s just too much more to learn.

And that look in her eye returned as she gave him a hopeful smile. Agent B raised an eyebrow at her.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“He’s already lost so much of his memory,” she began. “What if he...just simply forgot that he had a human half?”

The agent paused as he thought carefully.

“Let’s discuss it with the higher ups, and see how they feel,” he replied.

Their request was granted.

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Phantom stared nervously at the agents that watched him with suspicious eyes. He took a few cautious steps forward in fluffy snow. More was falling thickly, gathering quickly on the ground and on the trees of the woods that they had brought him too. The ghost glanced around, before turning to look at the agents.

They didn’t stop him. They made no movements to draw their weapons. The pair just...watched.

He took this chance, and he shot off into the sky, as fast as he could. No sounds of blasters firing after him, no shouting, only silence and agents that blended into the snow. While his memories of his experience were limited, they were horrifying, and yet they simply let him...leave.

Whatever. He wasn’t going to question that much, but he was already asking himself where he was supposed to...go.

Phantom tried to grasp for his memories for anything of use. Anything that didn’t involve his time there, that could be a place he could go to, a person he could find. What he could remember was so shaky at best.

He saw a town in the distance, the city lights glowing faintly despite the heavy snowfall. Perhaps figuring out where he was, what the date was, was a good start.

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There was something wrong with stealing, he absolutely knew that much. But he, of course as a ghost, had no money, and he also knew that he couldn’t walk anywhere without drawing attention. So with a heavy heart, he stole a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt and a beanie hat from a department store before walking along the streets.

Judging by all the signs of the city and what he could find, he was in a town called Lakewood, within Washington state. Phantom didn’t know how he knew, but he knew that this was not where he was from, and that he was very, very far from where he was meant to be.

He now stood in a gas station, trying to figure out what candy he was going to, sadly, end up stealing. Phantom hated it, hated it, hated it. But maybe he just needed to eat something, to jog his memory, to understand what he had to do. There was something in his gut, telling him that he was missing something, something critical and important about him.

His attention went to a display of free brochures, and he absentmindedly read through them. One caught his eye.

Amity Park: America’s Most Haunted City! Visit Today!

The headline hit him in the gut. Despite ghosts not needing to breathe, he grabbed the brochure, ripping it open to immediately see his own face staring back at him. One of the town’s main attractions, the famous ghostly superhero Danny Phantom.

Amity Park was his home. The memories of saving the town flooded him, and he began to openly cry. That was his purpose. Helping others. Protecting them. That town...that town was home.

“Uh, kid?” the clerk asked, obviously confused. “Are you alright?”

Phantom didn’t answer him. He phased out of his stolen attire, earning a surprised shriek from the worker and the other customers. He ignored them all, and he flew through the ceiling as fast as he could for Amity Park, Illinois.

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He arrived some time later, still clutching tightly onto that brochure. The second he was within the city limits, there was an instant sense of self. His memories were not failing him. This was home. This was where he was meant to be, and these were the people he had sworn to protect and care for.

Why? Phantom couldn’t tell you a true reason why. It just was what he knew he did. The paper in his hands proved it.

No sooner than he arrived was he able to get straight back to work, as there was a ghost attacking the city.

#asks #my phics #drabble prompts #phics #danny fenton #danny phantom #guys in white #hnn i'm sorry this is Choppy and stuff #Anonymous

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xviaysia · 3 years

Text

𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐑𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐌𝐀𝐒

tw; substance use/abuse

AYSIA often found herself in situations that probably could have easily been avoided, especially when it came to her childhood friends.

The one thing that AYSIA’s friends didn’t know was that she had been struggling with her sobriety for about a year. The thing was that when she first started in the industry, her life had been turned on its head. Yes, her parents had been wealthy much of her life, but they’d never spoiled her. She was taught from an early age that anything you wanted done correctly you’d have to do it yourself. But at first, AYSIA didn’t know what she wanted to do. She wasn’t necessarily tall, she couldn’t sing or act or anything crazy, and she practically fainted at the thought of an office job—even the higher end ones like an attorney or something.

So it’s not shocking that when she was 18 and she found out that amateur models could find and book go-see’s online she was all over it. She’d even finessed a few closed go-sees that she technically should not have known about. AYSIA always knew how to talk her way into things.

The industry took her full force and was not stopping in the slightest. She was always one of the shortest in the newer class of supermodels, but her walk and overall style propelled her into spotlight before she knew it.

When BOSS BABES first started a few years prior, AYSIA was on the rise and she had more free time and money than she knew what to do with at the time. Her old friends had always been the partying types. Many of them were the reasons that she was able to network her way into such an unbending industry to begin with. And one thing about them: they were always doing drugs. To cope with stress, to celebrate, to combat bad moods, there was nothing her friends were going through that couldn’t be fixed with a blunt or a line.

As the saying goes “birds of a feather flock together.” Halfway through the second season of BOSS BABES, AYSIA did cocaine for the first time at a party in the beginning of the summer. She was caught on camera by a guest at the party, and it made headlines in seconds. Everyone close to her declined to give a statement to any media outlets, despite many attempts at bribery from different sources. It was headlined that she might have had a drug problem, and it definitely followed her for about four months.

When it finally died down, AYSIA had felt as though she had dodged a bullet. She didn’t have to stop doing cocaine, but nobody knew she was doing it—except the man she was having sex with at the time, but who cares—and everyone was happy.

But when her and LEMY got into a huge argument at the beginning of 2019 and a vial of cocaine was found in her duffel bag at a shoot that they were both working, AYSIA hadn’t been able to live it down. LEMY framed it as her helping a troubled friend, saying that AYSIA had always been like a sister to her and that she wanted the best for her. Everyone pestered AYSIA about rehab and therapy for months afterwards, and she got a warning from the network and all of that. So, she decided to start living sober. As if it could have ever been that easy. AYSIA would fall into random relapses, and because she would always function, no red flags were ever raised. She could do a line before a shoot, before dinner, probably after dinner, and before bed and be fine for a day.

But LEMY’s death hit AYSIA like bricks, truthfully. She thought she wouldn’t care initially, especially after everything LEMY had put her through on and off sets. She knew her ins and outs. They had a very complicated relationship in that way. They could always see right through each other, and that made their hits at each other even harder. AYSIA felt she had lost a huge part of her routine, and it didn’t take long for her once recreational habits to turn a bit more intense.

After the ending of season three’s filming, the two and a half months before the start of season four had AYSIA in a really bad place. She was adjacent to being dependent on the drug, taking it everyday multiple times a day.

Until the recordings started up.

When they started getting text messages, voicemails, and notes back in February, AYSIA didn’t really know how to handle it. The person that had been bothering them started leaking LEMY’s information once more, further proving that their every move was not only being documented by BOSS BABES but someone else.

And AYSIA was afraid. She was scared that they knew about her secret. That they would tell someone about it. She got rid of everything... literally. She figured ultimately if she started being fully sober, they’d have nothing to tell. It’d be some triumph story if anything.

The entire year of 2020, AYSIA would go through random spells where she was starting to go off the rails a bit, lasting anywhere from a day or so to a whole week. It was never longer than that, only because she never wanted anyone questioning her or her possible habits. But it seemed like everyone thought it was all because of LEMY. Nobody ever knew their relationship, and if AYSIA could use grief as a mask, she would.

In August of 2020, AYSIA had been fed up with herself. She had finally gotten into a better headspace that summer and was able to get herself right just in time for the end of the year. She wasn’t sober, but she had come a very long way from the amount of using she was doing at the top of the year. She had been doing a good job at having a hit here and there before a shoot or hookup or for a treat after a hard week, but for the most part, AYSIA was in an okay headspace.

But there she was. She was at the birthday party of one her old friends— you know how it is. You get a name and suddenly everyone was your best friend in school. And of course, AYSIA knew how to play her role. She took pictures, added a few people on social medias, and she even offered a couple of them to come to her birthday party in the coming weeks. It was a good time, but then again it always was when AYSIA went out.

The night was nearing its end and all of them were gathered around the table, toasting champagne and talking about plans for Christmas and New Year’s. She’d been spiraling slightly. It was nearing the anniversary of LEMY’s death, and AYSIA still hadn’t fully recovered from the whole thing. She thought back to how she spent her last birthday out and taking pictures all day just to end up alone in her apartment, paranoid out of her mind... and she didn’t want this one to be that way. Especially since it seemed like she couldn’t connect with anyone anymore because she couldn’t be honest with them.

So, she’d been partying it up with the girls and going out more and if that meant she was back to taking a few more hits a day, she would be fine. It wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She needed everyone to know that she was still that bitch.

And when her friends offered her a few lines in early celebration of her birthday, she didn’t have the heart to deny them. She asked for a vial to go, saying she didn’t want someone to catch it on camera. That didn’t go over well since all of them had been friends for a while, but AYSIA didn’t care. She knew that someone there was liable to say something. There is nobody to trust when money is involved.

In reality, it triggered her. AYSIA didn’t really deal with feelings. They weren’t worth all the trouble they brought. Using was on her mind all night, and in that moment, she was given the opportunity to make the choice. She knew if she did that line right then, she would’ve gone overboard. But declining it completely wouldn’t have been her.

When she made it home that night, she held the vial to her chest and rolled her eyes when a single tear slid down her cheeks. It was annoying and inconvenient, you know? She had been doing great and of course this would be a thing.

“Yeah, no,” She whispered to herself, giving it a squeeze and standing up to go into her room. AYSIA placed the vial in the bottom compartment of her jewelry box, sighing to herself and deciding to just sleep on it. She needed it.

#やりまん ͟͟͞͞➳ 𝘊𝘙𝘚𝘕 // DVLPMNT #やりまん ͟͟͞͞➳ 𝘊𝘙𝘚𝘕 // READ-NLY

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