#i drew these at the same time... it was a very interesting experience to say the least

[flowersandbigteeth]

Hey sorry if this isn't your sorta thing but could I request a dragon that collects humans with special magic powers falling for reader?

I love this idea! Sorry it took me so long to get to this ^_^'

Dragon (Felix) x female reader

Word Count: 3k

W: yandere dragon behavior , some threats of violence, sfw fluff

Felix had dedicated his life to hunting the most miraculous humans, the most beautiful, the most powerful, the strongest, and the most magically inclined. He was fascinated with what made them tick. Humans shouldn’t naturally have magic. In his personal opinion, it was a bit of an abomination actually. Humans were meant to be servile, toiling around in the dirt with no wings or fins or fangs to protect them. That they should be dominated seemed to simply be the nature of things and he had no intention of fussing with that. 

No, really, what he had was morbid curiosity and perhaps nothing else to do. Dragons' lives were very long and they had few natural enemies. Felix was a scholar at heart and something drew him to collecting. Over the years he’d captured and tamed hundreds of powerful, talented humans. Some cooperated with his experiments and lived in relative luxury in his castle; others had far too much pride, in his opinion, and had to be locked away for everyone’s safety. 

Each one was more miraculous than the next. One man could draw fire from his hands like a fire fairy, but tests revealed he had no fire fairy blood in him. Another person could screech so loud they could break glass. Their vocal chords were fascinating to study. It seemed to be a totally natural phenomenon. 

Still, after years and years of collecting he hadn’t found…perhaps the human he was looking for? Something still drew him to scouring the planet looking for…something. So naturally, he was quite surprised when he found you simpering and sniffling in a corner of his castle with tears on your face. You were just a maid. You had no special magic, you weren’t exceptionally beautiful, and your biggest talent was that you could make a boiled egg better than any of the other kitchen staff. It came out perfect every time with your technique, but that was it. 

“Why are you crying little one?” he asked, perhaps because he was bored. Otherwise he would have probably walked right past you. He’d never noticed you before, though you’d worked in the kitchen peeling potatoes and boiling eggs for a few years. He’d had your famous boiled egg for breakfast every day for a long time without even knowing who cooked it. 

You lived in a small cottage near the castle and came to work in the kitchen every day from sunrise until everyone had their last meal. Then you hurried home to the safety and comfort of your old hay mattress. 

Our eyes filled with terror when you realised the master of the castle was talking to you and you quickly righted yourself, trying to rub the soup one of his talented humans had dumped on your head off of your face. 

“I-it’s n-nothing my lord,” you stammered, trying to slip past his huge form. 

He was just scraping nine feet tall, not including the silver horns emerging from his head. You tried not to let your eyes linger on the glittering scales that clung just above his cheekbones and along his jaw or his silver eyes. 

“Stop right there,” he said, grabbing your shoulder with his big hand and swinging you back around to face him, “answer honestly when your master asks you a question.” 

You blushed, unsure what to say. You didn’t want to tattle on Mira, the talented human who’d waited too long to eat her soup and threw a tantrum when it was cold hours after you’d delivered it. She was far more important and interesting than you, despite her temper. She could lift objects with her mind. You could boil an egg. You were not the same. 

“I need to get Miss Mira more soup,” you decided to say, ignoring the glob of meat that wetly slid out of your hair and smacked on the floor with a splat. 

“I-I’ll clean that up, right away,” you assured him, bending to wipe up the mess you were making with your apron. 

The dragon frowned looking you up and down and tapping his chin. There was something about you that he liked. He wasn’t exactly sure what. You certainly weren’t remarkable and you looked a mess covered in red soup with bits of vegetables and meat in your hair. Regardless, he was curious about you. 

“Do you have running water at home?” he asked. 

You blinked and looked up at him for a moment, before catching yourself and looking back down to the soupy footprints you were trying to mop up. 

“Erm…no my lord, only the castle and the merchant’s manors have piped water,” you explained. 

You were not looking forward to hauling bucket after bucket of cold water to your bath to wash all of the food out of your hair when you got home. Only the rich could afford the metal pipes and enchantments that would bring warm water indoors. 

He grunted down at you.

“Come with me,” he said simply, turning on his heels and marching down the hall. 

You didn’t know what else to do, he was your boss, so you shuffled after him. 

“My lord, perhaps I should get another maid to help you,” you said apprehensively as he led you into his personal quarters and bathroom. You hovered uncomfortably at the door, wondering what he wanted you to clean while covered in soup. You were making an even bigger mess wandering around the castle dripping wet. 

“Don’t move an inch,” he said over his shoulder as he started the tap. 

You started to tremble, unsure what was going on. This was highly unusual, working in the kitchen you hardly ever saw the master. Nothing good could come of him bringing you to his personal quarters. You had no romantic illusions about some noble lord taking an interest in you. You’d seen maid after maid chewed up by the male talents Lord Felix had in the castle. They went through them and then tossed them away like toys, leaving them penniless, without a job, and heartbroken. All you wanted to do was come to work, do your work, and go home without being molested or covered in soup. 

You watched him pour a sweet smelling soap into the water that reminded you of the scent of peaches and made lots of bubbles. 

“Go ahead and undress,” he said, as he sprinkled some kind of salt as well. 

“No, my lord,” you said with fleeting confidence. 

You were an employee, not a toy. 

He turned to you and his eyebrows went up. He was handsome and very large, all things that were attractive to you, but you had some shame. 

“No?” he repeated, scoffing. 

“I don’t feel comfortable…” you said, your confidence waning. 

“You’d rather spend the day covered in stew?” he asked. 

You plucked a thread at your dress. 

“No, my lord, but…” 

He snickered at you as he crossed the room, looming over you and yanking the wool dress you were wearing over your head before you had a chance to fight him. 

“How do you plan on stopping me?” he teased you as he pulled the chaste white panties you were wearing off and removing the bra you had on. 

He wasn’t rough with you, but he also didn’t hide his strength, pinning you easily with one hand while the other worked on removing your clothes. 

“My lord!” you sputtered, “this isn’t fair!” 

He shrugged as he picked you up like you were just a kitten and carried you over to the bath water. 

“It really isn’t,” he agreed as he gently set you in it, “but such is the way of the world.” 

To your dismay he unceremoniously dumped a pitcher of warm clean water on your head so instead of fighting him you were busy wiping water out of your eyes. 

“That’s better isn’t it?” he asked drizzling a swirl of shampoo in your hair. 

This was probably the first time in your life you’d been fully immersed in warm water except maybe when you were an infant and the sensation was hard to pass up. It was warmer than you could ever get your water at home with just hot rocks heated in the fireplace and your skin felt smooth and soft from the salts he’d added. 

If you wanted to argue, you didn’t have a chance, because he was quickly scrubbing his large, strong fingers through your hair, massaging your scalp.

“Mmmm,” you hummed reflexively and he smiled, gathering a comb up to run it through your hair and remove all of the bits of vegetable matter. 

“So have I softened you up enough to tell me what happened?” he asked, as you let your eyes shut, leaning back against the smooth back of the tub. 

You tender bits were all covered in piles of bubbles, which eased your shyness. 

“Miss Mira just has a bit of a temper,” you mumbled in total bliss, the gentle scrape of the blunt comb on your skull relaxing and soothing years of built up tension, “nothing to be concerned with, my lord.” 

He chuckled at how a simple bath relaxed you and loosened your tongue, reminding himself to deal with Mira later. He didn’t tolerate badly behaved humans under his care, especially now that he’d taken an interest in you. No one would be dumping any food on you again under his watch. When he’d gotten you satisfactorily clean he pulled you from the tub and wrapped you in a fluffy towel, ringing the bell for another maid. When she arrived her eyes widened as she saw the condition you were in, shooting you a questioning look when Felix wasn’t looking. You shot back at her with a shrug and a pleading look indicating you had no idea what was going on either and begging her to do something, though neither of you had any idea what she could possibly do to save you. 

“Bring…” he glanced down at you to get your name but you kept your mouth shut tight. 

Frightened of angering the lord and to your dismay the other maid gave him your name quickly. He smiled. 

“Bring (Y/N) another dress, something pretty,” he said. 

“Yes, my lord,” she replied, tossing you an apologetic glance before she disappeared. 

“Now,” he mused, looking back at you with his finger tapping his chin, “there’s something about you…”

He lifted a lock of your hair, before smoothing his clawed fingers over the column of your neck. 

“You seem to be a normal human,” he murmured, “but I can’t seem to keep my eyes off of you…even for a moment, they are always drawn back to you…do you know why that is (Y/N)?” 

You quickly shook your head because you really had no idea. He picked you up and you stiffened in his arms as he carried you to his laboratory. Terrified, you tried to fight him when your eyes grazed over the bottled body parts he had lining his shelves. Of course it was hopeless, he was far too big and strong. 

“Don’t be so worried, little one,” he chuckled, “I have no intention of dissecting you. I’m only going to run a few tests.” 

He set you on his work table before producing what looked like a doctor’s kit. While you shivered in terror, odd drops of water dripping from your hair down your neck, he took some of your blood and tapped various pressure points with some kind of tool to stimulate your reflexes. 

You watched him hum and wrinkle his brow as he tried to sort out what made you so special, examining your blood sample under a microscope only to find your cells were perfectly average human cells. 

“I assure you, my lord, I’m just a normal human. There really is nothing unique about me,” you said when you’d calmed down enough to catch your breath. 

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he informed you curtly and you shrank back. 

There was a knock at the door and the maid appeared with a dress in your size. He took the dress, waving her away and carefully pulled it over your head, letting you slide your arms through the sleeves. To your surprise he very adeptly braided your hair and secured it with a pin.

“Follow me,” he said, pulling you down off of the high counter you were sitting on, onto the floor. 

He took you to the male’s quarters and with a shout gathered all of the male special humans from whatever they were occupying themselves with. 

“What do you think of this human?” he asked them, pointing to you. 

Most of them looked bored, while a few looked a bit interested. 

“She’s just a pretty girl,” one of them said. 

“Not that pretty,” another commented. 

“Yeah, she’s not really my type,” someone else said. 

“I think she’s pretty, in a sort of farm girl type of way…” someone piped in. 

“Hmm,” Felix said, pushing you behind him and considering the data he’d collected. 

For some reason, he didn’t like these males looking at you, assessing your attributes, even though that’s what he’d asked them to do. 

He led you back to his laboratory more confused than before. The males of the castle seemed to think you were a normal human. You didn’t have any sort of excessive seductive powers. So why did his heart flutter when his eyes met yours? Why were his hands sweating like he was just a schoolboy? While the other men seemed relatively ambivalent, when he looked at you, your skin seemed to glow and your smile made him want to press his lips against yours. 

“My lord, don’t you think I should get back to work?” you asked, hoping his curiosity was satisfied and he would let you go. 

“No,” he said, “you’re not to leave my side. I’m adding you to my collection.” 

You gasped. You did not want to be one of your master’s collection. You were a maid, an employee, not a doll! You didn’t know what else to do, so you ran…or at least tried to run, but you only got a few steps before he hauled you back to him. 

He pulled you up to his eye level and glared at you with his reptilian, golden eyes. 

“Do NOT do that again,” he snarled, curls of smoke leaking from his nose. 

The idea of you running away from him was infuriating. You were his. He was sure of it. 

“I don’t know what it is about you, but you will not get away from me. Try to run again and I will remove your legs,” he snapped. 

You nodded your head quickly, trembling in his arms. 

Pleased that you understood, he led you to the other side of the castle to find Mira. 

“Oh, hello Master Felix,” she cooed when he entered her room, batting her eyelashes at him, “I’m so pleased you’ve come to see me.” 

Her eyes focused on you in your fine dress and she frowned. 

“What’s she doing here, bringing me more cold soup?” 

Felix snorted and a small flame burst from his nose. 

“I’ve found a new use for your talents, Mira,” he informed her, “from now on you will work in the laundry washing linens…I think your skills can be useful to the other maids.”

He rang the bell in her room and a different maid appeared, her eyes popping at your dress. You gave her another confused shrug, before she had to turn her attention to your Master. 

“Bring Mira a maid’s uniform,” he spat and she hurried away. 

“You can’t be serious!” Mira shouted, various items in her room levitating around her, “I’m not a maid! I’m special!” 

“(Y/N) is special,” he said, glancing down at you, then back up at her, “you are nothing more than a biological anomaly that apparently needs to be put to more productive use.” 

While Mira shot daggers at you with her eyes, you tried to return her look with the most contrite, sympathetic face possible, but that didn’t stop the shower of hair brushes, hair pins, and makeup that came sailing in your direction with murderous intent. 

With a wave of his hand the sundry items dropped to the floor with a clatter, just before they reached you. 

“Try that again and you’ll be dissected and pickled,” Felix growled. 

Mira blanched and the maid returned with one of the plain wool dresses you used to wear. 

“Change and report to the laundry, the other maids will tell you what to do…if I see your face out of the laundry again there will be consequences,” he hissed, scooping you up like you were a treasure and carrying you from the room. 

You blinked up at Felix, feeling bad for Mira. You were an employee, you had the ability to go home, but Mira was a captive…and now a servant. 

“My lord,” you gasped, “are you sure you’re not being too harsh? I’m really nothing special…” 

His eyes sparkled and he chuckled at you. 

“That’s where you are wrong, my darling,” he said, “I think you are the human I’ve been looking for.” 

“Looking for?” you murmured. 

“Since I started this project of collecting humans I could never find the one that would sate my hunger for searching…but with you in my arms…I seem to have lost the desire to collect them at all…I would rather spend my time studying you.” 

You blinked at him and swallowed thickly. 

“I am not a doll…or a biological anomaly or whatever you said,” you pouted, using your last bit of pluck. 

He turned your face to him and his golden eyes searched yours. 

“That you are not,” he admitted with a smile that revealed his sharp teeth, “but you are still mine and I have no intention of letting you go. From now on you will be my companion.” 

You blanched. His companion? You weren’t sure you liked the sound of that, but there was nothing to be done about it if you wanted to keep your legs attached to your body. 

“Now,” he said with a sigh, smoothing his fingers over your soft cheek, “let’s have a nice day, shall we? No more silly attempts to escape and no more bowls of soup on your head, hmm?” 

Your heart fluttered a bit, you were unsure if it was from fear or interest, but you accepted his words with a nod as he carried you off to the garden to enjoy the sunshine and your new life.

#dragon yandere #dragon fluff #dragon x reader #yandere x reader #yandere fluff #yandere male #yandere #monster x reader #monster fluff #x reader #fluff

[nihilistem]

Hey! I read your study tips both posts regarding adhd . (Feel free to ignore )

I am still undiagnosed and I think it's adhd but i do not have the resources nor the environment or support system to do anything about it .I am a high schooler preparing for entrance exams and i really need to like get my shit together and i feel like i have wasted sm time already but i really do want to get better. When i sit to study i just can't focus if I keep my phone in some other room then also i would just sit and stare at my books without accomplishing something. I am trying really but it's feels like my brain is frozen and my body is moving .my brain keep screaming guilty and ashamed but i can't seem to do anything about it.your study post actually i related to a lot because pomodro kind of seems to be working for everyone but me and the you described the exact same things I do

I know this is a lot to ask for please feel free to ignore but how do I stop Letting my emotions take over and study consistently because I only have one chance at the exams

Oh my, first of all I’d like to say that, as cliché as it is, I know exactly how you feel. I was undiagnosed for so long (I was only diagnosed a few months ago) and I didn’t even know that the adhd things I experience on a regular basis wasn’t normal or neurotypical for so long.

first up : I know this is difficult, but please do not say such things about yourself. I’m not gonna get into the whole thing, (cuz I have done a post on that already) but it’s true that the more you drill that bad stuff into your brain, the more it’s gonna stick. We need our brains to be in the best condition possible to study efficiently and saying bad stuff about yourself that isn’t even true is just going to hinder your performance. You got this. I promise you’re not lazy. Your brain just isn’t motivated by the same things others are, but we can work with that simple difference.

I’ll make a separate post on how not to let your emotions take over, but for now …

adhd study tips for those trying to get into the habit.

— by a stem student with adhd.

here’s my first post on adhd study tips.

— don’t put your phone in a different room. Instead, download an app that prevents you from using other apps on your phone.

there’s plenty of apps that do this but the one I prefer is ypt because all its features are completely free and it stops your timer when you exit the app unless you enter ‘allowed app mode.’ I don’t know about you, but if I find that I’m just zoning out on my textbook then I end up stopping my timer and deleting the record because I know I didn’t actually study, and this motivates me to actually get some work done. The timer also gets me motivated to keep going for longer so I have physical proof of my focus time and studies. It will feel good to even have just 1 hour of study time on it, I promise.

— even if you’re not interested in your studies, try your best to find even one thing that interests you.

novelty, challenge and interest are some of the best motivators of the adhd brain, so use it. I know that sparking your curiosity for a subject you hate seems impossible, but hear me out.

ever since I was young, I was exposed to books and I drew everyday. This caused me to become very passionate about the arts, but since I had adhd and didn’t know, I failed all my classes and specifically hated chemistry because it was specifically designed to be everything that I can’t be good at due to my poor memory and the need to memorize a TON of concepts. Then during class one day, I was doing chemistry work with my friends and felt frustrated that they could easily balance equations and work out which compounds were acids or bases purely by its chemical formula. And that’s what sparked me to start reading my textbook to see what the big deal was. How was it possible for one to just know when something is a acid solely from looking at a bunch of letters? This started a chain reaction; I found my answer, and found that the process of finding my answer and learning this new information was fulfilling. So I looked at all the other chemistry topics, and it turns out chemistry was fun. I was supposed to be an art student but now I’m majoring in chemistry and biology, all because of that sense of challenge and curiosity I was given that day.

tdlr; I was bad at chemistry but I’m now majoring in it because I felt challenged by a friend and was curious to know how they could solve chem equations easily.

All it took was a bit of curiosity. It’s a very powerful thing to the adhd brain. And if you use this as a motivator for your studies it might even cause you to hyper-fixate on your work, which means you’ll naturally spend more time studying just to find all the answers you’re now dying to know.

— use the pomodoro timer, but think about the things that you have to do that seems a little impossible to do under 25 minutes.

This fulfills the ‘challenge’ category I mentioned in the previous tip.

Let me explain; I subconsciously started doing this to myself without anyone telling me this and it’s helped me a LOT. Here’s an example;

“This chapter’s too long, it’s impossible to read through everything and understand the key concepts in just twenty five minutes.”

is it, though?

So I was off to the races, genuinely reading through every page and taking note of every single heading or bold or italicized word so I will be able to summarize the entire topic by the time the twenty five minutes is up.

And it doesn’t even matter if you don’t make that twenty five minute mark, because you’ll feel a sense of defeat and try it again with another chapter/topic.

this accomplishes two things; one, the work you’ve been putting off or zoning out on is now probably 20% - 50% completed and now you feel motivated to continue. Two, this method will train you to be faster in learning or studying new material or even just completing work in general, depending on what you’re challenging yourself to do.

— dress up, do your hair, study at a library or cafe you love (and possibly make pretty notes.)

I’ve talked about interest, I’ve talked about challenge, and now I’m gonna talk about novelty.

Do this with purpose! But what do I mean by that?

I’m sure you’ve come across studious girls in media or even people on social media making videos and taking pretty photos of their day out to study. Usually they’re dressed the part and even if they’re not, there’s a certain vibe, aesthetic or aura about them that is just so desirable that it makes you wish you were doing what they were doing. And if you don’t feel this way, find content creators or media that do make you feel this way.

How will this help me? Well, there are actually a few reasons but the first one that comes to mind is that this is also an adhd tip used outside of studying. Combining a task you don’t want to do with a task you’d like to do is a faster and more efficient way of convincing yourself to do long, difficult or even tiring tasks. Another is that doing this would also mean you’ve technically gotten yourself to desire studying, something more commonly known as romanticizing studying. If you make studying look fun, glamorous or even desirable for yourself then you’re sure to get to the hideous parts of it. Think about being a straight A student, someone who’s always wearing nice clothes with great hair and such a focused work ethic. Once you desire to be that person and you dress like that person, you’ll start to do the things that person will do.

— use the pomodoro timer but set it to even shorter bursts instead. (e.g. 15 minutes work, 5 minutes break.)

Or hell, on my worst days I set it to 5 minutes work, 5 minutes break.

The whole point of this exercise is to just start, because that’s arguably the hardest part about studying, you can’t get yourself to actually start or to actually focus. So promise yourself a five minute break after a very short amount of time of reading.

— skip straight to the questions of a topic, try to do them and identify the information you need to get the answer right.

For example, I came across a bio question that was rather simple but I didn’t know the answer to because I haven’t revised the topic for a while, and the question was, what is needed in the body for anaerobic respiration to take place? And the answer was simple, but I didn’t know because again, I didn’t study the material before answering the paper.

one’s brain can have the habit of being complacent especially when you don’t wanna do work, so diving head first into the questions and realizing that you don’t know jack shit would be a good wake up call for you and your brain—and this can connect to the second point that I made because you might find that you’d be eager to get the answer right all on your own, and become curious as to what the answer is.

important to remember …

erase everything bad that you were told or led to believe about studying. I promise that if you look for ways to make it engaging for you and form a habit, studying can be something you don’t dread or worry about everyday. You are capable. This is the start of your journey. Yes, the question of ‘what if I get distracted again’ will always be there but think about what could happen if today is the first day you’re not distracted. If you don’t at least try to start now, you will have zero chance of being able to actually focus and study. But if you try, the worst that will happen is that you tried. If you keep trying, it will happen. I promise.

If you need any more tips regarding adhd, (or being undiagnosed,) please do let me know. I’ll do my best to help.

#stem #study #study hard #study motivation #studyblr #studygram #studystudystudy #science #biochemistry #chemistry #math #adhd #adhd problems #adhd stuff #adhd things #adhd brain #adult adhd #adhd studyblr #adhd study tips #actually adhd #adhd struggles #living with adhd #adhd tips

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Hey y'all welcome back to the hit show

'You MFers Be Racist!'

I'm your host, Roman and on today's show we're gonna be talking about how Miguel, a Latino man looks... Latino.

*audience gasps*

Now audience, what if I told you there's literally people mad they made Miguel darker in ATSV 😭😭

They're saying it's racist because 'if a black character got turned white-'

Like they ain't even change his ethnicity. Just the fact that he's darker makes them angry.

Same hair color same eye color but he's like four shades darker

Oh my god the creators are so evil for making a *checks notes* brownskin Latino man

Someone said they prefer Miguel's ATSV design because of the brownskin Latino rep

- and they got called an Anti-White Racist (me and Hobie cackling in the next room) and then anon tried to explain how ethnicities and races in Mexico work

Y'all do not understand how pervasive racism is in the Spider-man community.

It goes to show how so many 'allies' work and cheer for black solidarity UNTIL black or brown people do something they can't relate to.

Oh, Hobie might wanna date black girls to bond over the shares experiences of racism and anti-blackness? NO THAT'S RACIST how dare he hold parts of his blackness so dear that he wants to be able to share it to his partner with complete understanding? Race shouldn't matter at all to him!! And if it does he's a racist and so are you!!!!!!! You holding your culture dear is not allowed.

For the racists in the fandom, It's racist and upsetting to imply that POC might have a stronger connection to a black character than them.

Oh, brown Latinos are happy that Miguel is brown skin rep now? NO THAT'S RACIST how dare you change the characters skin color by four shades darker even if he's still the same ethnicity and nationality.

How dare you give rep to a largest part of the demographic he's always been apart of

Y'all are the mfers that gave Zendaya - a mixed race self-described Black woman - a hard time.

Yeah mfer I ain't forget that shit!!!!!

Back when casting Zendaya as MJ was seen as racist and 'race switching' and 'what if they made Miles white that wouldn't be okay so this shouldn't be okay either'

even though there's already a white Spider-man but no black canon spiderman love interest despite the character being around for over half a fucking century.

Because even though Zendaya shares Caucasian ancestory like Mary-Jane has, Zendaya is very clearly a person of color, and since she doesn't look white, that's not enough.

(And don't even get me STARTED on the shit she got for actually dating Tom. Or people who say they want his Black Cat to be white so he can 'get back to' yt women)

Sure, Miguel is mixed - sharing white ancestory with his father. But he's clearly a person of color now, and since he doesn't look white anymore, that's not enough for y'all.

The racism is wild. It's wild and clear.

And that's all from me folks! See you next time on 'Y'all MFers be Racist!!'

Maybe next time we can talk about how Jessica Drew wasn't that much in the wrong. And how she was way less in the wrong than Peter B. And how y'all put responsibility on Black women while also giving a pass to white male incompetency in the same breath.

Tune in next time because trust me these racists will strike again and so will I 😭😭🧐🧐

#n e ways #Hobie Brown likes Black partners he loves them #spiderman #spider man #atsv #marvel #across the spiderverse #miguel o'hara #miguel o hara #miguel ohara #racism #antiblackness #atsv meta

[doberbutts]

So, I know you're a bit fan of fantasy novels, are they're any you're recommend that have a similar vibe as Tamora Pierce's Tortall books?

oof similar? Hard to say honestly, I feel like most good authors within the genre have their own pronounced and distinct style so they're not really "similar" to each other. Sorry that's probably a really pretentious answer but it's the one I've got lol.

You could try Pierce's Emelan series. They are (obviously) quite similar to her Tortall books but have their own style that I also really enjoy.

Something that drew me to Pierce was that she made the effort to write almost exclusively female protagonists in an age where the vast majority of fantasy was all male all the time with women regulated to mostly being healers or prizes won. If they were mentioned at all. This was pretty uncommon when her books first started coming out so if you're looking for books with a similar target demographic, most of the writing is going to feel very different because it'll be way more modern authors. On the other hand if the true writing style is what you're interested in, you're going to find a solid lack of female protags. So it depends what you want out of the book experience.

Books/series I read at the same age, though idk if I would really consider them "similar": Elfquest (comics), Inkheart, The Divide, Artemis Fowl, The Edge Chronicles, Pellinor, specifically the Dragon Singer trilogy from Dragon Riders of Pern, The Sight/Fell, Through Wolf's Eyes (I am currently on a very slow re-read of this series!), Animorphs, and of course Lord of the Rings. I think of all of those, Through Wolf's Eyes and Pellinor would probably be the most similar. I thought the Harper Hall books could also be mentioned HOWEVER in order to actually understand what's going on you really need to read more Pern books and the similarities with Pierce stop once we navigate away from the specifically female main characters.

[mossymandibles]

How did Kraw's mom and dad meet? What drew them together? What was their relationship like? What did they talk about? Wait, did she even speak the same language as him? She seems pretty wild and solitary from what we've seen of her...

I haven’t honestly thought about languages and linguistics yet, if I ever do. It seems very daunting and I don’t have the brain power for it right now. For a sort of lazy aside I’d like to think the primordials have some form of common tongue that they all understand, idk what to call it yet though.

Yuna ended up solitary but she used to have a pod/matriline where she stayed with her own mother, brothers and sisters and their families. Their hierarchies are kind of like most whales. She wasn’t able to have calves of her own because of a faulty uterus but she would often help hunt for the pod, at times helping the calves of other mothers in her pod, or protecting the pod from any threats, proving herself to be very ruthless when it came to anything threatening her family.

She met Sobehk much later in life, when he found her on his wanderings after being exiled from his Rook on Zenith.

He was a prince but most found him strange, a romantic somewhat detached from reality, even somewhat immature and full of himself. His mother, the matriarch/Empress, found him to be a bit of a disappointment in terms of running things. He didn’t express any type of desire to learn politics. If he wasn’t showing off his fighting skills He would often wander off on long flights by himself, exploring or…writing very bad poetry.

He had developed a sort of obsession/fixation with the ocean. He definitely feared it, but felt drawn to what was down there because of an experience he had happening upon a leviathan in the throes of death, lying on the shore of an islet. He would spend hours looking across shorelines in search of anything that would wash up, any indication of answers for his burning curiosity.

He’d never seen a creature like Yuna before, only hearing stories about sea serpents and drakes at the edges of the world.

She was in the midst fending off two ‘whaling’ boats(merhunters/poachers), unable to dive away from them as they had several harpoons hooked into her side. She seemed to be fine on her own but Sobehk took it upon himself to help her, raking through the two boats like they were paper. Yuna didn’t stay to say thank you, but instead swam away to the nearest shore she could find, leaving a foamy trail of blood in the water. Sobehk ended up following her. She thought he was looking to pick her apart once she was dead.

He actually did think she was feral at first. He mostly wanted to observe, finding her to be graceful as well as beautiful.

Yuna, of course, was snarling and snapping the moment he decided to approach her, calling him a vulture and telling him to fuck off. (Sea drakes don’t especially care for Furies or other flyers.)

Finding out she could talk, he became even more enamored and interested and was determined to help her despite her reservations. He felt that “something as beautiful as her shouldn’t die like a hunted fox at the hands of whalers and their rusty harpoons” in his own words.

She was amused by this, and told him if he could fetch a specific kind of blood clotting kelp for her she would allow him to help. Even more amusing to her was finding out Sobehk was essentially afraid to go into the ocean despite his professed love of it.

Since they were closer to some populated islands, he ended up taking a fungal nymph doctor hostage from a nearby island village, close to where Yuna’s sea cave was. He was able to help Yuna and safely cut out the harpoons albeit nearly shitting himself the entire time.

During her recovery she stayed in her sea cave. Sobhek continued to hang around and made the mistake of impeding on her territory. There were several time that she actively tried to kill him when he would hunt for her and bring her live fish he stole from fishermen nets. Even in her weakened state she came very close to biting his head off. She distrusted him but Sobehk still seemed determined to help. Eventually he would leave the fish at the mouth of the cave and wait, safely perched nearby where he could still speak to her without being swiped or snapped at. He realized she just wanted her space/privacy. Long story short, during her recovery, Yuna eventually began to find Sobehk’s presence tolerable, realizing it was nice to have someone to converse with after so many years of keeping to herself. Where he was such a different archetype to her, she found it somewhat entertaining. His insistence to adorn and flatter her was a change of pace for sure. She did not care to be fawned over.

Yuna had never really had any lovers. Most prospects would end up avoiding her because she couldn’t bear any young and seemed cold/short tempered. After a few miscarries she would end up forgetting the whole mating thing altogether, finding it draining and redundant. I’d say her relationship with Sohbek was a sign of her settling down tbh, not that she didn’t end up caring for him in the end ofc.

I’d say they would mostly talk about their past lives, their separate cultures etc. Sobehk had thought sea drakes were just wild beasts so he was very interested to learn about her, even if she seemed reluctant to talk about herself. He would often ask tons of questions about what it was like whenever she’d make dives for hunting. (which is coincidentally what non-aquatic partners would ask Kraw a lot) the ocean was another world to him.

It wouldn’t be until towards the end of their relationship that he’d bring up eating the celestial’s flesh. Then things kind of ehhhh. Went to shit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

But hey, then comes Kraw.

I’ve wanted to draw out their meeting for a while but you know how that goes. Here’s a wip of one of the pages. I’ve been having fun drawing Yuna’s expressions and such.

He’s so smitten over this giant mean dragon lady. “You come from the ocean?? I’m a HUGE fan.”

#asks #yuna #sobehk #lore #wahoo! lopsided romance #i get it’s probably tropey but idc #I’ve been starting to design Yuna with more seal-like features because it makes sense to me #its not as visible in this page tho

[doll-elvis]

PRISCILLA 2023: the press conference and incoming reviews

today was my day off of work so naturally I stayed up until 5:15 am (pacific standard time thingz) to watch the press conference, and to read some of the incoming reviews for the film 😩

here are the most interesting notes from the press conference (it was extremely brief) and the reviews that I found the most interesting ⬇️

✭ the key moment in the press conference was most definitely Priscilla getting asked a question despite her not being on the panel but in the audience. She was asked how she felt about her life being represented on film and what touched her most about the movie… she gave the best answer of the conference imo

- she became emotional nearly right away and had to take a moment to wipe her tears for which she apologized

- at first she simply said “the ending”, referring to what touched her most about the film. Based on that, and another question, I’m assuming the film ends with Priscilla leaving Elvis

-there were a few questions which shed Elvis in a bad light and so Priscilla referenced one of the journalists and began defending Elvis: she said that her parents had no idea why Elvis was so drawn to her and wanted to be with her, but she states that she was someone that Elvis could completely pour his heart out into (she references the loss of Gladys, his fears, and his frustration with his career)

-As she says it, she was there to listen and to comfort him, she said that is what drew Elvis to her. She states she was mature for her age “older in life but not in numbers”. She also says that in the beginning of the relationship, when she was 14, the relationship was not about sex and that he always respected her

“People think, ‘Oh, it was sex.’ No, it wasn’t. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old”

-she talked about how she didn’t know why Elvis had put so much trust into her but she realized it was because she never gave him up. She never told anyone at school she was seeing him etc. etc

-to end her statement she says that Elvis was the love of her life, and that she didn’t leave him because she didn’t love him, she left because she couldn’t handle the lifestyle

some other key notes-

- the very first question by a journalist referenced physical and mental abuse that is shown in the film

-Jacob Elordi seriously surprised me (in the best way) with his very first answer: he was asked about Elvis telling Priscilla “maybe another time, maybe another place” and how he related to that. He first talked about how Priscilla’s book was the main source for him, and how he came to understand the scale of their love (between Elvis and Priscilla) and the power of it. He said it’s “true”, “undying”, and “it’s beautiful”. He finished by saying that Elvis and Priscilla will be tethered for eternity because of their love

(I honestly didn’t expect such an insightful answer from him lmaoo 🤧)

- Sofia talked about how it was really important for this film to only be the from the perspective of Priscilla, and she says that one of the reasons she loves film is because you can experience someone else’s story

- One journalist asked Sofia if she learned anything new about Elvis from talking with Priscilla and she says that Priscilla told her about how when they would go to movies together in Germany, Elvis would always mouth the words to film… that is how badly he wanted to be a serious actor

- Jacob was asked if he drew any inspiration from the 2022 “Elvis” and he said “no.”, and that Sofia helped him tackle his fears in portraying someone as big as Elvis

- When asked about why Jacob was casted as Elvis, Sofia said that she felt that he had the same charisma as Elvis but most importantly he could play the sensitive and vulnerable side to Elvis

There were a few other technical questions about the film’s palette and music but the press conference ended super quickly, it was a bit awkward to watch and the lead actress, Cailee Spaeny, was naturally very nervous 😭

Overall, reviews have been mixed. Some are saying it’s Coppola’s best work. Some are saying it lacks any depth. And many have had not good things to say about Elvis which makes me anxious for what kind of content is shown in the movie

Here are some of the newest reviews for the film, courtesy of letterboxd ⬇️:

“it avoids giving any sort of context to why Elvis was acting the way he was” is the most worrisome line out of all of these to me… elvis is quite possibly the most context needing person ever

it’s a lot to digest at once, what do y’all think about everything?

#I’m feeling so disillusioned at the moment #I feel like Priscilla and Coppola are on two different wavelengths #the way Priscilla talked about Elvis doesn’t not align with the film’s reviews #ahhh I just want to see this movie already #the unknown is killing me #elvis presley #elvisaaronpresley #elvis #elvis history #elvis fans #priscilla movie #priscilla 2023 #priscilla presley #venice film festival #sofia coppola

[cosmic-hyena]

I drew this as a quick meme but then I thought that I want a fanfic with modern no magic shit AU. where is Atem the son of a politician who went with his father to Japan for the summer to gain experience in doing some kind of international affairs and when he does not go on business with his father he just sits sadly in his room because no one wants to mess with him and he himself does not want to walk the streets of an unfamiliar city and attract the attention of his retinue of guards. father sees that Atem is somehow a little sad and thinks about what to do about it because he does not want to just hire some unverified guide. and then someone from his entourage says that he has a friend who has a grandson who is about the same age as Atem and that «if you want I can call and arrange everything».

meanwhile, Yugi is having a very bored vacation at his grandfather's shop because it just so happens that all of his friends are either busy or away for a couple of weeks. so that he yearns and whines that he is bored of sitting here. but his grandfather stuns him with the news that his friend called him and asked Yugi to show the city to the son of an important person from Egypt who settled in domino city before the end of the month and that he said that Yugi agreed

(Yugi- DID YOU EVEN ASK ME???? how are we going to communicate ???😖💦💦💦

- well, you study English at school - that's practice for you! forward ! it's such an interesting experience! + you said yourself that you're bored here!😤)

eventually Atem and Yugi meet, somehow communicate in English, BUT all problems of the language barrier disappear when they find out that they share a common passion for games. then they end up falling in love and it's a bit difficult because they can't date whenever they want + they have limited time + they're nervous fools from different countries with still a language barrier. Somewhere around this time, Yugi's friends return and they are LITTLE surprised that Yugi managed to find the love of his life in a couple of weeks in some rich boy from FUCKING EGYPT that he is trying to secretly date. but like true friends, they are here to help.

#ygo #yugioh #blindshipping #puzzleshipping #yugi muto #ygo atem #katsuya jonouchi #yugiohduelmonsters

[crescentfool]

I noticed you're a Ryomina!!! How did you get into it? And do you have any good fanfics/doujinshi you can advice me to read? ANYTHING on Ryomina actually? I'm dying for anything about them!!! Thanks!!

yes!!! it's me!!! i'm ryomina fan (one of many)!!! thank you for visiting my askbox, i'll do my best to answer all of the questions because it always makes me happy to see that ryomina sparks joy for people! :D

...this got really long because i like linking to things, so i'm putting it under a read more (IM VERY NORMAL ABOUT THEM)

how did i get into it? i got into persona 3 around august 2021 through the movies- at the time my only experience with the persona series was with P5R / P5S / P5D. p3 was the one that interested me the most (i thought minato was very pretty + i caught wind that the themes of the game were very resonant with people). i picked the movies over the game because i'm a guy who plays games at a snails pace, haha.

admittedly, i did latch onto ryomina because of the scenes in the third and fourth movie (i have mentioned in the tags of this art i drew how much i felt like i was exploding and blasting off to the moon watching it).

but what really dug me into the ryomina hole (and what has kept me there) was thinking about how much ryoji encapsulates the themes of p3- and how interconnected his fate is with minato. i wrote some musings about their dynamic here, if you're interested!

tl;dr: what if we were both boys and we were mirror images of each other and i inherited your kindness and looks but god doomed our narrative even though we're soulmates

on ryomina fanworks recommendations:

regarding fics: i'm going to assume that you've probably read the fics that have the highest kudo ratings on them, so i won't really be listing those.

a personal favorite fic that i always hold close to my heart is Eurydice's Vow by crescentmoontea, which explores the idea of ryomina in p5r's third semester. this was the first fic i read about ryomina and it made me tear up lots...

i also think a lot about I Alone Await You by Nail_gun, literally scrumptious writing that captures the ryomina dynamic so so well. actually check out Nail_gun's other ryomina fics while you're at it too!

other fun fic i'm fond of: can't get my mind out of those memories (what were they?) by foxmulder_whereartthou. ryoji being homeless lives rent free in my head and it's all because of this fic. there's a bunch of other fun ryominas from the same author too (i still need to read them)

BkZa555 also has some fun AU scenarios if you're into that too, notably with Zagreus (P5-Setting, Ryoji focus) and The Definition of Insanity (TIME LOOP fuckery!), but they're currently ongoing.

these were some ones that came to my mind first- as i have the strongest recollection reading them. admittedly i haven't really been reading fic this year, so i don't have many recommendations from fic that came out this year. but if you're so inclined to let ryomina consume your soul, i definitely recommend giving the newer works in the ryomina tag a look-see and see if it strikes your fancy!

as a side note, i do have a few ryomina fics that i've bookmarked on my ao3 here, though i have to say that i'm not sure how well they hold up in terms of like... what i would seek out of a fic these days. but they made past me happy so i bookmarked them, LOL. it's kind of outdated (my collection of fic recs has my old username *disintegrates*).

regarding doujinshi: i have not read all the ryomina doujinshi available, but as a starting point, please take a look at this list from pandora-scans from livejournal!

notably, this is where you can find the strawberry-chan say good bye doujin- which features a small and cute comic from shuji sogabe (the p3/p4 manga artist), as well as other artists. the existence of this doujinshi is the funniest thing to me because it's like "HEY if you're wondering what the volume 8 cover is really gay it's because sogabe contributed to a ryomina doujin." this fact makes my head spin (positive). it explains a lot about the manga.

regarding persona side material:

i know you didn't ask for these but i thought that i mine as well list these too, since i feel that the side materials have some fun expansions on ryoji and minato's interactions. i haven't... watched/read all of these but, hey, i like to share these things!

for comic anthologies for the persona series (some of which have ryoji!). if you're interested in reading them, here's a scanlation index from maboroshi-no on tumblr. i don't think this is a comprehensive list, but i think it will be a great starting point!

for some translations of the persona 3 drama cds, check out imaginary-numbers on dreamwidth! ryoji and minato interactions can specifically be found in the persona 3 character drama cd vol. 1, and for the audio + english subs, you can watch this video on youtube:

and ohh the musical. ryoji singing and dancing gives me so much joy. i haven't watched the musical in it's entirety (only fragments), but here are some links that may be of interest to you:

Ao no Kakusei (The Blue Awakening), Sakuya version - playlist for the first p3 musical, translated by Phoenix Maiika.

Ao no Kakusei (The Blue Awakening), Kotone version - playlist for the femc version!! also translated by Phoenix Maiika on YouTube.

Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade (English Subtitles) - playlist by rumio!

P3 Weird Musical DVD & Soundtrack Booklet Scans by rumio_k - twitter thread that links to these funsies, if you don't have twitter, here's the publicly shared drive link.

god. these sure are a lot of links, huh? i hope you enjoy them- pick and choose whatever sounds most appealing! (if this overwhelmed you im sorry GKLHLDH i just like being very comprehensive in my answers about things so i got carried away).

and as a reminder, you (and anyone else reading) are always welcome to browse my tags/archive and reblog things from there anytime! i have... nearly 300 ryomina posts which, while mostly consists of art, has a few fics, meta, hcs, gifs, memes, and whatnot scattered about.

or browse the minato and ryoji tags too! there's.. nearly 1k minato. and 500 ish ryoji. and they're going to keep on growing because i can't stop being obsessed with archiving these things. god help me i am so deep in this hole called ryomina hell and now you're here too. welcome aboard!

there's always going to be a lot of fun ways to enjoy rotating ryomina around in one's brain, i think- they're a pairing with such fun symbolic imagery that is So Deep (to me) but ALSO they're immensely hilarious and weird guys (affectionate). so i love to share these things in hopes that it gives you joy too! they are the most couple ever (to me) (i'm biased)

thank you again for the ask! i hope it can satiate your need for more ryomina, and be a nice aide in exploring the p3 fanspace :)

#ohhh do i even main tag this #fuck it we ball i'll tag it #lizzy askbox #persona 3 #ryomina #ryoji mochizuki #minato arisato #i'm in a bit of a hiatus in terms of like.. looking at new ryomina stuff outside of fan art so i haven't seen Everything #but i would like to get back to it when i can be more cognizant and present to appreciate them #the grind to being a ryomina encyclopedia never stops! #my files and links are all messy i can hardly keep track of all the ryomina things... maybe i just need to make a neocities- #like cat's souyo archive (cat is an inspiration to me) #but FUCK man ryomina is so good. thank you for the follow and sending me this ask #i'm very sorry about the excessive length i can't help myself i'm very dedicated to wanting to know lots of things about them #i had a lot of fun answering this! #times like this make me want to return to like. my fic recommendation collection.. i gotta rehaul that stuff tbh #maybe after i've seen all the ryomina stuff i can make a ryomina iceberg based on what i've seen peple talk about (or not talk about) #it'll be a long while though. i feel like i've hardly scratched the surface even though i wouldn't call myself a casual enjoyer #ANYWAY BYE. no one ever apologize to me about being excessive because I AM very excessive and repetitive. LOL. have a good morning? evening

[blueskittlesart]

do you have any thoughts for the future of zelda? do you prefer the open world of botw and totk, or wish they’d lean back into the traditional dungeon/explore/dungeon linear structure?

this is a hard question to answer. I think botw was incredibly successful as an open-world zelda game. In many ways it redefined the modern standard for game development. years after its release we're still seeing hundreds of botw-like open-world games being released, using their large maps and nonlinearity as marketing draws. But the thing is, I've honestly yet to see another game capture what really made botw's open map GREAT. Botw's gigantic world was cool, yes. very few other games of that scale existed at the time it was released. but what really drew ME to botw and its world was the way in which the story of the game was woven into the open-world gameplay. The open world was not a marketing draw for botw, it was a complete, thought-out facet of its story. It allowed the player to experience the narrative firsthand through exploration, and the games' central themes reinforced that mechanic of discovery. A big reason I find myself drawn to loz as a franchise, as someone intensely interested in game design as an art form, is the way in which these games consistently find new and unique ways to utilize their medium to tell their stories. the linearity of earlier titles was a strategic use of the medium to tell their stories in an interactive manner which always puts the player first. Botw was a departure from that standard, but it was a departure in a way that still held true to loz's standard of player-centered storytelling and utilization of all elements of gameplay. botw's world was cool because it was huge and open, yes, but it was REALLY cool because it was first and foremost a storytelling vessel.

anyway. to answer your actual question, what im trying to say is that linearity vs open world matters much less to me than HOW the story is interwoven into the world and mechanics of the game. i'd be fine with another linear game if the story was written with linearity in mind, and the same goes for open-world. In terms of game development, I would like to see the devs continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in order to tell their stories. open world was cool with botw, but with the intense popularity that game garnered it's going to be difficult to create a new open-world zelda that doesn't end up feeling like a botw remake. imo the way that the franchise SHOULD go from here is to focus on the ways they can innovate on the open-world concept as introduced in botw in order to tell a new cohesive story. how that will play out is anyone's guess, but with the amazing successes that the last few games have been, I'm definitely looking forward to the future of the franchise!

#asks #asking me this question sets you up for an eight hour long conversation about video game development. this is the abridged version #lmaooo

[misslavenderlady]

I'm here with some questions about our girl Bree~!!!

How did she find out they were vamps in the first place? I mean, did she figure most of it put on her own, or did the boys show their true side to her?

And what are the Frogs + Sammy's thoughts on her? If the Frogs know her at least. 👀

CHERRYYYYYY!! This is my first ever ask about Bree!!! I'm so excited! Rest assured, I will have an actual side blog up for her soon but in the meantime I am more than happy to answer any questions about her here

🥺🥺❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

So Bree is a registered nurse, meaning she has plenty of medical knowledge from her studies and experience. It's easy for her to figure out when something is wrong. She met the boys the first night they ever popped into the doctors office she works at. David asked for her to examine his wrist because he crashed his bike while doing a stunt (a little callback to the injury kiefer got before they started filming)

Obviously during the exam Bree noticed there was no pulse in his wrist, and feared something was wrong. She tried to listen for his heartbeat with her stethoscope but found nothing. When she excused herself to get another stethoscope and try again, David and the boys had mysteriously vanished.

They returned again another night. She tried to ask questions, but the boys lead her in circles with their mysterious words (that or they just didn't answer her, opting to just giggle playfully). Dwayne, Paul and Marko all got checkups too. Whether it was asking for a flu shot, getting a cough checked or just making up some disease to get her to touch them, they adored playing games. Each time they did, she found something new wrong. The biggest kicker was when she drew blood at David's request, and was shocked to find the blood was glittery and dark.

She fainted from the shock, and was found and cared for by Michael after she woke up. The boys had left by that point.

At first she thought there had to be some logical explanation. She's a bright woman that values science and research. In a way, she was more fascinated than she was horrified. She thought they were all some kind of medical anomaly. Four boys with an unknown illness.

But then the visits started. Or rather, the "dreams" as she thought they were.

Bree would have moments in the dead of night where she'd hear voices whispering to her. Images of the boys in her room, asking if she wanted to be one of them. To know what they were. They told her to turn away from her medical journal and look more to her beloved monster books. When she awoke, she did just that. She poured over all her favorite stories, particularly Dracula and Camilla. Everything began to make a lot more sense.

At the moment, David and the boys have not outright said what they are, as they're biding their time for the right moment (especially with Michael still a part of their game). But there's this unspoken agreement between them and Bree. A bond made by a shared secret. She knows what they are, but she's not frightened. She's interested. Curious. Attracted to them.

She wants to get to know them more, and they feel the same about her~

Since Michael works at the same doctors office, the other Emersons pop in to say hi to both him and Bree. During the summer Sam and the Frogs come by for the school physicals, which are done by Bree. She thinks Sam is a nice kid, but find the Frog brothers a bit odd. They give her cryptic warnings about monsters and that they suspect the return of vampires they once slayed. When she tries to ask Sam about it, he tells her that Michael isn't very comfortable with sharing that story.

To her, the Emersons are just as mysterious as the Lost Boys. Granted, they're very kind and wonderful to be around, but she wishes they would open up to her. She really likes Michael and he likes her. It breaks her heart to see him and his brother struggling with their demons from the past.

Little does she know that such a thing is more literal in the sense.

In the meantime, she's happy to chat with the kids, so long as they behave. She also gives them stickers as a little gift. They claim they're too old for stickers, but secretly love them.

#tlb insert Bree #tlb self insert #the lost boys #lavender lady rambles #asks

[raytorosaurus]

I have seen maybe half a season of TUA and didn’t read the comics so let me tell you seeing those panels where Vanya is yelling “We belong on that stage” (and in reference to herself and her taller blonde bass-playing brother) drawn in profile with literally Gerard’s haircut and outfit was a big shock to the system. I never even considered that he’d inserted elements of himself and his bandmates into TUA except for a bunch of weird edits people made comparing how much Aiden Gallagher looks like Frank but now I feel like I really need to read it.

im really looking forward to rereading all of the comics after this semester's over because i haven't done that since volume 3's run ended and i'll definitely make more coherent posts about it then but like. it's really really interesting to compare to all of gerard's other art because he is just...so distinctively him, even across different mediums and genres. tua and mcr and hesitant alien and kjna and his visual art etc etc etc like his artistic fingerprint is stamped so boldly and unapologetically all over them and that's something i really love about him. like his art, love it or hate it, is sooooo genuine always. even when he's purposely imitating other artists, he's very consciously doing it in his own voice, putting his own spin on it.

when i say tua and mcr are completely separate projects i mean it - i don't think one should only ever be discussed in relation to/in the context of the other - and, above all, tua is certainly not like...autobiographical, or a direct representation of real people/events. it's led by gerard but it has a different creative team than mcr does and that really shows as well - i definitely wanna talk ant this when i have more time but part of the reason im not sold on conweap as an album is because it's too umbrella academy - it's really evident that gerard was working on both of them at the same time, and letting one influence the other too directly. mcr's a band, not a Gerard Project, and umbrella academy is largely a duo (w gabriel bá), so they can't just be transplanted onto each other yk.

anyway I'm rambling but all this to say - tua isn't meant to be "about" mcr any more than bullets is "about" 9/11. but gerard's life was changed and shaped by his experiences in the music scene throughout his life, by dropping everything and living as a penniless artist, by becoming suddenly (in)famous, and that really shines through in tua. he says he drew inspiration from touring band life to write a dysfunctional family, and the dehumanising effects of fame and attention, and of being categorised and scrutinised on a private or public level, are huge themes - as is addiction, mental health, complicated grief.

like...i actually got into mcr through the tua comics lmaooo. i read volume 1 because of wonderful @blackmoldmp3 talking about it and immediately said oh. i need more from this dude's brain right now. and i was soooo not disappointed haha. i really am obsessed with quite a lot of the things gerard is also obsessed with as an artist. the particular themes and imagery and scenarios he's fixated on are really very consistent throughout everything he does - only the way they're discussed or portrayed does change over time. i don't rly subscribe to the idea of gleaning specifics abt artists' personal lives from their works because, beside all else, it just does them a huge disservice (that's my number one gripe with the popular talking pounts around hes alien and frank's solo work in particular; however "confessional" you wanna read art as, it's still art that was created with skill and intent.)

anyway that's way off topic dkfnfj. what i do love about this kind of thing is looking at distinct creations in the context of the rest of an artist's body of work. like...yeah, gerard's said there's a lot of mikey in klaus. has dressed similarly to vanya and the kraken and the seance at times etc etc. has compared himself to the rumor, because she's the one he relates to most. puts a lot of his familiar ideology surrounding music and performance into vanya. puts angry teenage vanya in a shitty punk band with her disillusioned teenage brother on bass, and puts a classical music prodigy in a punk band as an excellent guitarist, writing songs about killing the president etc etc. i could go on! because these things are just scattered everywhere through the comic, just like all of gerard thematic and aesthetic and ideologic fingerprints.

so what's reallyyy interesting to me is looking at umbrella academy as something gerard wrote on the road with mcr across multiple years. volume one was released while the tbp world tour was ongoing, and volume two only a few months after. the progression of parade -> tua -> conweap -> danger days is SOOOO fascinating to me, especially because one of the things that really works about danger days imo is the way it kind of shakes off some of the tua-style gritty cynicism and returns to mcr's defiant, extravagant theatricality. if you go through tua with a fine-tooth comb you'll definitely find the most direct comparisons to conweap, in terms of mcr. the way dd approaches the themes it has in common with tua is just.....so different, and so so mcr. and then you can see the at times self-referential development on those things in hesitant alien - AND THEN VOLUME 3 COMES AROUND AND LIKE. AUUUGGGGHHHHH the change and growth there is SO apparent. btw i don't mean "growth" "progression" etc in this post to mean "improving" - i just mean change and development in a neutral sense, bc it's so interesting to see it laid out there in an artist's body of work. but like. man it makes me crazeeee actually the way gerard picked tua back up....almost certainly around the same time mcr started discussing a potential reunion. and the way that foundations revisits and reconceptualises mcr's existing catalogue is paralleled in the way vol 3 of tua is, like...........like there's so much life lived there, between those things. gerard's even said he's changed his plan for the ending (if we ever see it 🥲) because he has more compassion for his own characters now and doesn't want to see them broken down for good. he says he's gotten better at listening to other people - for starters, he's a lot more conscious of his own subconscious racism/whiteness that came through at times in the original run and has expressed regret for that (namely, the entire main cast being white, with a couple of side characters being uncomfortably stereotyped).

but just like. augh. im not gonna lie man i have no idea what i've just typed im sorry it's probably so rambly bc I'm so dizzy rn and definitely am not gonna proofread it or whatever skdjfj but. I LOVE ART! I LOVE ARTISTS! I LOVE DIVING DEEP INTO AN ARTIST'S BODY OF WORK AND WATCHING THEM REINVENT THEMSELF AND/OR DOUBLE DOWN ON THEMSELF (SOMETIMES FOR BETTER, SOMETIMES FOR WORSE). obvs this fandom genuinely does have a big issue with invasive/un-self-aware parasocial behaviour but there's a difference between that and like. getting obsessed with a particular artist. that's so normal and in fact necessary to life imo. i think every artist literally has to have ppl like that i can't imagine any other way to live it's just a specific type of human connection at a distance baby. don't get me wrong tho i also wanna chew on his thigh. anyway.

my god. how did i get here what even was your question. tua. yes it's crazy. it's not for everyone for sure but it has enough of the shit that makes me crazzzzyyyyy that it got me into mcr which made me crazierrrr so. yes i can recommend. especially if ur like me and lovvvve stories that are a little bit fractured by design. that dance around big parts of the story, where there's as much significance in an absence or in a tiny background detail than there is in any dialogue or action scene. most of the criticism i see of tua is about the pacing but like. to my tastes it's a really great use of the comic medium yk? lmk if you want content warnings or something there are plenty skdjfj.

#how was i completely braindead today and then too dizzy to read text. and then somehow type this shit on my phone with my eyes half-closed. #am i literally just lazy or is a hyperfixation strong enough to kvercome any illness lolz #sorry if this went in a billion circles but the room im in is also spinning a little so. skfndkfndjdjfjdj #umbrella academy #tua #mcr talk #* #answered

[solradguy]

Hello! This is genuinely a weird question, but have you heard of Kuro Ky?

He was a popular fan character in Ky based doujishi (particularly SolKy) who was Ky but with a black color palette. His hair was black along with his uniform, while his trim was white! I don’t have a grasp on his personality, but I’ve got a lot of experience with this kind of character. Sometimes he’s the result of a curse on Ky, but other times he’s the darkness inside of him taking shape outside his body. Other times, he’s just a dark Ky clone. Sometimes he’s just some guy!

I found him mentioned in a Guilty Gear FAQ from 2003 and did some preliminary digging. There’s some other fan stuff I’ve discovered, but I won’t bore you with those. I will say that recently I’ve discovered Fanny’s got a very dedicated long time fanbase (all the way back in 08!) and that Aria really changed the way people talked about Frederick.

OH! I haven't heard of him, but I HAVE seen him before while browsing GG doujinshi on the site I usually buy from; I just thought the artists were having fun with alt palettes. Here's an example of one I found after going and looking again (參 by ASGARD circle—this seems to be part of a series of darker/maybe psychological-leaning yaoi featuring Ky and Sol, but this is the only one where Ky matches the Kuro Ky description the closest):

Having him in a black uniform with a gold trim with white or blond hair seems common too. These are 壱 by ASGARD circle and TOURNIQUET by 極東ジャージ軍 circle. 壱 is part of the same series as 參 above. Kuro Ky seems especially popular in Sol/Ky doujinshi than he does in solo or non-BL/erotic works.

It's interesting that the palette they drew Kuro Ky with, black with white trim, isn't actually one that seems available in any of the games, Or rather, it's not in ML, +R, or Rev2 (couldn't find X's palettes). Strive, however, other than the hair....

Some of the games DO have him with the black and gold uniform though. Maybe the gold trim design was a more canon-complacent version of Kuro Ky? It would certainly be less work using rips of the in-game sprites for fan pages than it would be editing every frame to have the white trim haha

Are you the same anon that sent me an ask last night about doing archive deep dives? I'll publish that ask right after this one. Tell me more about the fan stuff you found!!!! It won't bore me, I love that shit

#asks #long post #kuro ky

[spotsupstuff]

Ooh, super interested in what happened to your Sun and why he went from lying to himself to becoming an apathetic brick wall lol

well! Suns was always an apathetic brick wall. because of a design flaw. Moon has already talked about this in one of the questions we've answered:

the Iterator design evolved by the process of eliminating "redundant" things, with only their capability of figuring out the Great Problem taking priority. quite literal case of putting the evolution points into a singular specialization because of outside guidance

Gen 1s are chunky and tall as they are because they physically (with their puppets) interacted with the Ancients often- either because check ups and fixing things was often required since they were the experimental Generation OR for the sake of things like school/educational trips (citizens of Gen 3s would have road trips to Gen 1s rather than visiting their own iterators). and we end up with the lanky spiky Gen 3 design thanks to this process of elimination

the official jump from Gen 1 to Gen 2 was a BIG thing. different Gen happens when a LOT of things are eliminated to the point that the base design is more cumbersome and therefore it gets revamp to fit the systems better. the jump to Gen 2 wasn't.... the smoothest one

on a physical level everything had gone absolutely swimmingly. but some dumbfuck from the big designer/engineer/programmer team fucked up n accidentally removed the One thing that ensured the Iterators could experience emotions as fully and broadly as a normal organic. and so early Gen 2s have the reputation of being incredibly dull concerning emotional matters (some were a bit spared of this when someone from the construction team on-site noticed the flaw)

this was resolved within the same Generation and pretty quickly by reverse engineering the parts of Gen 1s that made them so capable of this. NSH specifically was very influencial in this research because, for some reason nobody could ever figure out, he was more emotion capable than most of Gen 1s (this fact got boosted cuz the reverse engineering then turned into Enhancing so they could see how far they could possibly take this. NSH does the Iterator equivalent of crying when watching movies Every Time GUARANTEED)

i already have this on hand, so here's Fish (early Gen 2) and Euros (mid Gen 2) for comparison

poor bastard Seven Red Suns drew the shortest stick possible with this design flaw n has absolutely Minimal emotional understanding and capability

the Terrible thing about this is that they are Aware of this flaw of theirs and what little spark of emotion they can surrect within themselves they dedicate to either mourning or hating it. that's the subject of their depressive "pondering" in this pic

they are *trying* so hard to have emotions and feelings. they often force fake ones into their voice and it's painfully apparent cuz they always put their all into it, no subtlety about it

the pain there is faked. they know what sounding pained means to other people, so they force their voice into such form to show to Spears that they didn't mean to be so blind to its capabilities of being a feeling, comprehending creature

their ruse of charm was put in place to make themselves... well, maybe not Feel exactly but you know what i mean- to seem better, i guess. so the other Iterators would love them, so the children wouldn't be so scared of their apparent coldness, so they wouldn't hurt anyone around them because harming people will make them go away and Suns doesn't want to be lonely and Needs other people if he wants to solve the Great Problem. more heads more smarts. "look at me, i'm alright! i feel alright! i am Well! i am happy!" and if i say that to myself enough it will Have to become true

like all Gen 1 n Gen 2 Iterators could tell they were bullshitting, though. they appreciated the effort though so most of the group accepted Suns either way. Gen 3s did not recognize it so much- that's how Pebbles ended up as their mentee rather than Moon's (as he was honestly set up to be, which just made him Not Want To take Moon on as his mentor) or some other Gen 1's (Gen 3s often search for mentors cuz there's a lot of things to catch up on in the research at this point- they often go for Gen 1s cuz naturally they have the most knowledge at hand. Innocence, for example, is Nish's mentee!!! she's his shitty little student, he wants to bonk her So much for bein disrespectful to everyone and he loves her with his entire fuckin being. his lil fucklet...)

this ruse starts to slowly slip past Suns' fingers some years after the Ancients' mass ascension. the longer the searching for solution drags on the more Iterators start giving up, becoming desperate, negative, ...insane... Suns gets affected by both the time and everyone else around them. the ruse doesn't MATTER anymore, because everyone is damaged in SOME way at some point. everyone is a little or a lot broken, what is so bad about their flaws at This point- nobody gives a shit and they sure as fuck don't have the emotional power to give a singular fuck in the first place so why not... just let go of that if it isn't so required anymore...

and so they become an apathetic brick wall openly to the whole world, "shedding" their lies, prioritizing logic and goal chasing over others' feelings and importance of the present

that's how we got here in my take on RW

Suns is fucked up, man

#Spot says stuff #rw #LIKE they still CARE they CAN care and they do which is why they still send out Spear to Pebs a second time but Yeah #they are not gentle. they dunno how to. unless they have assistance from someone else that guides them. they used to go to Nish with- #-this kind of stuff often but Nish became more unavailable for long chats about emotions the more everyone else started givin up #sweet heavens not to mention what Nish becomes like after Moon's collapse and Hunter's death/involuntary ascension #Spotverse Suns definition song is The Mind Electric by Chonny Jash 👍 thank u shkik #i really gotta update their design n the timeline to work with Suns' Hot Girl Summer arc 😔

[spiderpussinc]

I don’t think it’s very fair for you to try and knock others from reading Miguel’s OG run because truthfully that’s the only place you’re going to get his full character since every run after that is just “Let’s place him in different time scenarios to fix other people’s problems”. I’ve read ur reasonings and some of the issues I just don’t see and that’s coming from someone who’s ALSO half Hispanic and had similar family experiences. Idk I guess comic Miguel is rlly important and relatable to me and you shouldn’t turn others away from having that potential connection too. :/

NAH LOL it is *not* the only place to get his character truthfully -- his character is not consistent between runs, or between comic and movie! Not even Pdavid's runs have an unified version of Miguel since he just becomes an author self-insert after one point. The way Pdavid writes '92 Miguel - Gabriel is also shamelessly almost the same as he wrote Bruce Banner - Rick Jones. (another series where he ended up being pushed off the book after he started making really weird decisions; and notice these last two are white guys, which is how pdavid depicts Miguel all the time.)

I haven't even told people to not read them. In multiple posts i say 'read the first ones to see how it is, stop when you get annoyed, look up summaries, don't feel obligated to treat it as canon because it isn't.' If anyone feels threatened by this they should examine where that defensiveness is coming from.

I'm gonna be real with you that's like saying "the only way to REALLY understand Miles Morales is to read his ultimates run." You know, the one where his mother gets eaten alive by Venom, his dad thinks he's at fault for killing her and nearly beats him with a cane, where the closest thing he has to peter is a clone named jessica drew, and that eventually gets completely retconned in a universe explosion so main universe Miles can be rewritten. Do you remember seeing any of the things above in ITSV? Would you call them *the only real way to fundamentally understand Miles as a character?*

I keep seeing the rhetoric that 'real fans' have to subscribe to the very first script of these characters and that somehow enjoying their ATSV versions is fake-stanning and that is just... not true. That's not how comics work. Our most iconic, definitive, memorable traits for MANY of these superheroes have come from subsequent comic runs, rewrites, feats of adaptation and the interaction between fanwork-becoming-canon. Even uncle Ben's 'power and responsibility' schtick is NOT an original part of Peter's first draft. That came from re-imaginings and rewrites.

I'm really, truly not a fan of the argument that 'relating to parts of a character' completely absolves the text from criticism. It's not a good comic. It barely tries to be latino rep and frankly, I'm not going to praise it for just placing a label on him and doing nothing with it. I don't care for this white man's truth. It's racist and creepy and I should be paid reparations for having to read a storyline where the same girl gets paired up with two different brothers and then their father just to end up getting killed for a sexier token love interest. I am constantly frustrated by the argument that new fans should be forced to read it and potentially get turned away from comics forever; it's one of the worst offerings you could give them. 90's Marvel and DC are a public fandom joke and nearly led the market into bankruptcy!!!!! (Marvel filled for loss in 1996. IT WAS BAD. That's part of why the whole 2099 line went up in flames! The money was going down the drain.)

I've been a comic reader for a long time and I just can't give them blissful innocence passes like that. The current editor-in-chief at Marvel did yellowface and pretended to be a japanese man for years to write some shitty superhero weeb comics with no accountability whatsoever. He still has a job. RUNNING the company!

And here's the thing: I like Miguel too. I have a shitty family and I empathize with that but I KNOW he deserves much better than to be confined by white people's scripts and fetishes. I *want* him to have a chance, multiple chances even, to be completely rewritten and remolded by latine voices without the need for them to constantly refer or tie back into that white man's work; It is our right just as any other.

ATSV throws away most of Miguel's baggage, and straight up refuses to refer to the weird indepth sludge pdavid had going on; the artbook doesn't mention these first comics or most of his runs, they actually talk about other groundbreaking sci-fi concept work and the idea of basically rebuilding the landscape from scratch, and I am deeply thankful they do that. One of the biggest themes of the movie *is* that the idea of comic canon is fraught and full of holes, and that we should subvert it into joyful and honest expressions of these characters' cultures. These are movies that begin with the Comics Code Authority stamp, a censorship marker that among other things explicitly prohibited the positive depiction of pro-civil rights narratives and homosexual relationships, and actively turned their nose at protagonist black characters — & proceed to rip it to shreds. That's what we should be doing!

#miguel ohara #miguel o'hara #spiderman 2099 #atsv #spider man: across the spider verse #spiderverse #marvel comics #spiderman #meta tag #miles morales

[suchawrathfullamb]

FRANCIS/REBA + WILL/HANNIBAL

I came across a TikTok talking about the correlation between Reba, Dollarhyde and Hannigram, and although throughout the whole Dragon plot, it may not seem like there is any correlation, after Reba's plot, we have her last scene and it is essentially confirmed that it was, indeed, related, and it is confirmed by Will himself, by speaking to her in a way that is very obvious he understands what she's been through on a personal level..."not just the blind". And also him projecting, telling her "there's nothing wrong with you", clearly talking to himself there. So this scene is the grounding point for this messy rambling.

With that in mind, if we go back to the other episodes where we were getting through the Dragon's plot, there's a lot of interesting points to correlate to Hannigram, such as the scene where Reba feels the tiger, "the beast", a word that has been used to refer to Hannibal before. Reba is in awe of the creature, yet it is harmless because it is sedated. We could look at it as Will being Reba ("blind" to danger) and the tiger being Hannibal, as the TikTok creator proposes, she talks about Will/Reba being able to feel the soft side of Francis/Hannibal that the world does not see.

Alternatively we could look at it as Reba being Will, the tiger being his wild instincts and his own darkness, and Dollarhyde being Hannibal: he took Reba to the zoo and watched in amazement as she delighted in the experience of feeling the tiger, much like H delighted in seeing Will "interacting" with his own darkness.

"The beast's heartbeat" could be a symbol for how even though the man (Francis and H) are conceived as separate from the beast (Will implies that in the conversation with Reba, saying "you didn't draw a freak, you drew a man with a freak on his back")...But now as I write this it's making think about how Will could just as easily be referring to himself, as if he perceives that H is the "freak" on his own back...Hence why he wants to help Francis, and yes, we know he was jealous, yet Will has the tendency to be extremely compassionate towards the criminals he feels are fighting something within, and says so in the same convo with Reba...He says Francis was trying to stop, says, again, that Francis isn't a freak, just "has a freak on his back". He relates somehow. He tries helping them because he wants to believe he can help himself, which was directly shown in S2, in the horse episode, with the social worker and Peter, the guy Will related to.

They (Reba and Dolarhyde) also shared a deep (and quite mystical) sexual connection. It was the first time Francis experienced love...or what he perceives love to be. The symbolism of Reba being blind could be saying that, for Francis, one needs to be blind to truly accept him (he thinks he's ugly/deformed)? Maybe. Maybe it's even the opposite...She can't see how he looks so she likes him on a deeper level (in his perception, at least). It's an interesting aspect to contemplate nonetheless, I have no definitive answer to that.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the biblical text this plot derives from, the Woman Clothed With The Sun, or The Apocalypse Woman, is said to be carrying a child, a son, and the Dragon (Satan) wants her child, but isn't able to get him or able to even attack her, though he tries. We see that on the show, where after they make love, Francis' Dragon wants her. He tells Hannibal this and we have this interesting line:

This makes me think of how Hannibal thought he needed to eat Will (in that conversation with Bedelia) but never actually did it. I wonder if he came to a similar conclusion, "having him alive", although of course Hannibal doesn't kill or eat people because there's a greater force inside him making him do so, but he does have the whole idea of needing to eat in order to forgive (which is ambiguous).

This dialogue happens immediately after Hannibal says he feels love for Will. Obviously H is extremely arrogant or downright delusional and doesn't seem to consider that what he did to Will in the first place, was betrayal, and what Will did was merely a reaction to the hardcore betrayals he experienced, and so he still thinks he's the one who has to forgive somehow. Or perhaps he's just lying to himself. Either way, we have a similar situation with Francis, the Dragon, H and Will. The *extremely* ambiguous dialogue between H and Bedelia seems to imply that he does not accept feeling love? He "blames" Mischa for making him feel something he cannot control (picture above).

Is that why he feels the "need" to consume Will? In the original work H is fed his sister unknowingly, but in the NBC version it's implied he simply ate her to honor her death. Mads says so in a s3 special, he found the caged man molesting and killing her, therefore this cannot be the same as people feeding him Mischa without his knowledge or consent. Bedelia also implies this in the bathtub scene, she asks what was his first "spring lamb", then immediately asks "what did your sister taste like?".

All of this to try to make sense of why he said that to Francis. He couldn't have predicted Francis was interested in Will, so that's not what he had in mind when suggesting to keep her alive, and "not worry about feeling love for her". Did Hannibal finally came to this conclusion/acceptance himself? That he doesn't need to consume Will just because he loves him, just like Francis doesn't need to kill Reba because the love he felt for her incited the Dragon? Maybe. H actually contemplates killing Will when they're at the cliff house (see WOTL script) but his "compassion is inconvenient" and so he doesn't.

What's the point of this? God only knows. Anyway,

Closing this useless mess up with canon Hannibal is Will's God. I'm sorry if you came this far and thought I actually had a point. This show destroyed my brain and before that I was on the Supernatural fandom so, imagine my state of being, pray for me.

#hannibal #hannigram #nbc hannibal #murder husbands #will graham #hannibal lecter #meta #i haven't sleept

[jamiesfootball]

The super longest post about Keeley and her relationships: featuring interesting parallels between Keeley and Jamie, how her and Jamie's perspectives on their relationship is an inverse mirror, why Roy Kent, and other ramblings.

Heavy on the Keeley.

(woohoo boy this is a super long one I am not kidding. this is so long i busted out the laptop so I could add a readmore for you fools. you’re welcome)

Starting with the depressing bottom:

Jamie having a bad sexual experience with an adult that he didn’t choose in a very male-specific situation.

Keeley choosing something sexual with a teacher in a very woman-specific situation and the adult teacher not only letting it happen but also making it worse.

So we have two people with… not great experiences in their history, and their experiences are layered like a burrito in how other people perceive them through the lens of their gender. And yet somehow our cute little muffins battled on, and by the time the show starts they are 1) together and 2) freaking adorable, but 3) have a tendency to put sex first in a relationship (more on that later).

It’s adorable, flirty, fun sex definitely, but it also collapses pretty quick when Keeley begins starts making a relationships with what are arguably two of the most important people in her life: Rebecca and Roy.

First - Rebecca.

One can extrapolate from the context given in the show that before Rebecca, the friends Keeley had were industry-related acquaintances and other famous people. Not serious, sensible people. No disrespect to Sally, but while Silly Rebecca is a delight I think what drew Keeley in her general awe of Rebecca was how inner strength and outer persona were so intertwined. She was a formidable, self-sufficient, boss-ass-bitch. While Keeley clearly possesses an enormous amount of inner strength, she (as the script says) is used to people judging her book by her cover.

It's as she gets to know Rebecca - who is kind and thoughtful and caring behind that initial cold exterior - it's Rebecca who asks Keeley the probing, important questions, like why she's settled for messing around with someone who on the surface makes for a very shallow relationship.

Keeley's answer? For shallow reasons. Jamie is young and fit and fun, and Keeley's been stuck in the cycle of finding young-fit-fun for so long that she's actually lost track of the fact that one of those is beginning to not apply to her. Her joke about being Leo DiCaprio isn't entirely a joke - in industries of fashion and fame, it's pretty common for people to stop emotionally maturing around the age that they get famous.

So Rebecca asks 'what about accountability?' and that's the true start of Keeley's journey, because until someone said it, she didn't know how to put to words what it was she needed. And what she needed was room to grow, room to have a stable, normal, and dare I say adult relationship.

Enter Roy Kent.

Their initial interactions are loaded with fun, flirty chemistry, but two instances in particular resonated with Keeley: the scene in the club and the scene where he told her he didn't appreciate being used as a pawn in her relationship at the auction. And while the club is pivotal for Roy as a leader, I think the moment that sunk Keeley was when, amidst all of the team drama going on, he took a second to just stop and... acknowledge her. He didn't come there for her, she wasn't in his direct focus, but she was there, and for someone who's probably used to feeling a bit like arm candy? It felt like respect. Score a point for Roy Kent.

The second scene is a case of Roy 'accidentally putting his best foot forward at the right time' because she's pissed at Jamie, arguing about accountability, and then there's Roy demanding the same accountability from her. He challenges Keeley and Keeley does not back down. She jumps head first into accountability and it fits like a glove.

And just like that, it's over between her and Jamie.

BUT. BUT. Keeley and Jamie have been broken up since episode 4 and we’re still getting new facets to their relationship!

One of those interesting facets that’s come to light is that Keeley has a habit of downplaying to other people that her and Jamie's relationship had any emotional components at all. Before and after they break up, she always refocuses any mention of Jamie in the conversation towards the sexual:

“Now I’m in my 30s and I’m still dating a 23 year old footballer.”

“[To Jamie] Babe, if [bankers] looked like that, then we wouldn’t be together.”

“I just wanna know if I can bang him.” “Well you’ll have to ask him, it’s his dick, isn’t it?”

“Five out of five: would break again.”

And like, she tells Roy that she hooked up with Jamie to get back at Roy because she was hurt that he left her on read after a really fucking good kiss, but then you look at her face in that scene and that's not entirely true is it Keeley?

When Jamie stops by her house, Keeley's face is NOT that of someone plotting anything. That is not the face of someone who's bummed their crush might not like them and is looking for a rebound (well it is at first a bit).

But Jamie comes over and she. is. CHARMED. He's here to thank her for being so excellent to him all the time, and taking him to plays, and putting work into him that he didn't appreciate before. He's not even here for a hookup - she offers him a drink and he's just like 'nah, thanks tho'. He's basically out the door before he realizes what she's implying.

And that's the thing - the second sex is off the table between them is when their relationship actually begins to shine. She’s constantly charmed by his total… Jamie-ness. Like saying ‘you’re welcome’ when she says he made it easy to break up. Like seeming ambivalent about the break up, but then cheering when Keeley is still willing to help with his beer ad campaign. Stripped of the sexual connotations of a relationship, his honest appreciation of her is endearing. But that's it. She's refocused on Roy, and she's not looking at Jamie anymore as an option. That book is closed.

Now. Jamie.

Poor fucking Jamie, who has a history of losing a good thing right when he was starting to understand that he had one to lose (see: getting transferred from Richmond, losing Keeley).

Where Keeley has spent most of their post-break up intellectualizing that her relationship with Jamie was mostly just a sexual fling, Jamie has spent more of their post-break up time realizing that not only was their relationship was more emotional than he thought, but that its the kind of connection he wants in the first place. It's clear from post break-up day one that he still wants Keeley around, even if it's not as a girlfriend. Where she's dismissing things between them as having been shallow, Jamie is sitting there going 'she took me to plays, she listens to me when I talk about what's bothering me, she gives me advice. She's kind. I could always turn to her when I needed help. I miss her.'

It's as if before, they both found comfort in focusing on the sexual aspects of their relationships, so neither of them really tried for anything more.

And then Keeley went off to have an emotional relationship with Roy, and Jamie had to come to terms that that’s….what that is. That’s what a real, emotional relationship looks like. And it turns out he wants that. He feels left behind. And yeah, he was jealous. Why wouldn't he be jealous? He's never had anything like that before, and now it looks like the person he used to be with actually wanted that the whole time and he was just too. Fucking late.

So he's just been a big old confused ball of feelings since they broke up. They broke up, and then they slept together. His hopes got up a bit, and then she's dating Roy Kent. At some point he deletes her number. Then he's confused and alone, and he tracks her down to a cafe in London and she gives him good advice about talking to Ted to get back onto the team. And then he's confused again, because what's the trick? He's alone and everyone at Richmond hates him. He goes to Keeley for advice, and this time she doesn't talk to him- she drops him on a therapist instead. Maybe it's not a trick then. Her and Roy actually seem fucking happy. What the fuck?

And I know it in my bones that the moment he decided to delete rest of the pictures? Had to land square between The Hug at Wembley and confessing to Roy that he told Keeley he loved her. Because at some point him and Roy Kent came to a tentative understanding, and Roy started treating him like a real human person, and then it wasn't just about being hung up on his Keeley. Because there was someone else involved, and that person could get hurt if Jamie didn't back all the way off. It occurred to him that there was something to destroy, and he didn't want to be that person. He had to stop lying to himself that things were ever gonna go back. He deleted the rest of the pictures and videos of her, and he just has to live with the fact that he likes her, yes. But he also likes Roy now too.

And THAT'S how you be accountable to the people around you. Not just by stepping up to do the right thing, but by stepping back and making sure you don't do the wrong thing.

Like deciding to follow Roy instead of Keeley when he finds out they've broken up.

Jamie knows he's charming, and he knows that Keeley finds him charming. But he also knows that Roy is hurting. How could he not be? Keeley just broke up with him. Except she didn't, he broke up with her. And yet Roy's still hurting.

And Jamie. Sweet fucking Muppet he is. Decides to do the right thing. He empathizes with Roy. Let's him lick his wounds. Takes him to see a fucking windmill. And he stays away from Keeley, who's already told him before that she has trouble turning him away. He doesn't even tempt that.

For Keeley and Roy, I think it's fair to say they were each other's first real, serious relationship. And they grew and learned together as a couple. But without Roy, Keeley has new eyes for what she wants, and she can't help but notice now that some of what she wants? That's in Jamie now.

She doesn't go there either. She maintains her distance. Why wouldn't she? She's never the one that goes to Jamie.

Now. The rebound.

Keeley did the bravest thing a person can do after a break up. She took a new road. She met someone she had a good feeling with. They hit it off.

Jack. Jack who is fun and fit and makes her laugh. Someone who's a bit cheeky, sometimes a little inappropriate, assertive about what they want, and fucking hot in a suit jacket without an undershirt. Intense eyes.

Checkmarks all across. Exactly Keeley's type. But it wasn't quite working.

Keeley was going through the all the motions of an emotional connection in the hopes that it would bloom. But she's playing the game one handed. She's still got her heart in her hand over Roy, and then there's Jack and she wants it to work with Jack, she does, because on paper Jack is great! Sure Jack doesn't challenge her the way Roy did, never frustrates her like Jamie did, never seems to need anything at all from Keeley really. But Jack is full of big romantic gestures that make Keeley feel adored! With Jack she can just have fun and relax! Jack's a great rebound.

But Jack doesn't make her feel like she's been struck by lightning, does she? Maybe she could have, one day. And Keeley is willing to try - that's all you can do after a break up, is try. But she's trying to make it work with someone who is very much the Type of Person she used to like and there's something missing.

And then there's these little moments. Where the differences creep in and in until things split apart.

Jack takes Keeley out to fancy restaurants. On their first date, Roy took her home to cook for her.

Jack's 'that was so fucking hot' moment was telling the office that her and Keeley were dating when Keeley said she was feeling unsure. Roy's 'that was so fucking hot' moment was listening to Keeley when she said she needed space and going to read his book on the couch.

Jack says about the video leak 'I will take care of this' and Keeley believe her. Then she gave Keeley a press statement and an disbelieving 'how would i get it down? it's the internet'. The lawyers helped, but Keeley would have to do all the work.

On their first date, Roy threatened a paparazzi and stole their sim card.

(He also held her hand. It’s such a simple, almost childish gesture but he really did love holding her hand all the time.)

Jack prioritized social appearances over her relationship with Keeley. Roy once gave Keeley a video of him crying at a press conference just so she could have a wank.

Roy fucked up when he asked who the video was for. But you can not say that if it were him in Jack's position, that he would not have gone through ridiculous extremes to have made Keeley feel better. Whatever she fucking wanted. He'd probably release a video of himself masturbating if it he thought it'd take the pressure off of her. When that man is committed, there is no half measure.

But he doesn't have the right to that anymore, does he? And it's his doing. And all he can do - the most he can do without crossing any boundary - is '''''casually''''' run into Keeley in the parking lot and try to offer a quick word. He's dying inside that he can't do more.

And he fucks it up so bad. Ironically, his fucking up this time is what allows Jamie to put his best foot forward.

Keeley Jones. Hurting. Single again. Bitter. Let's be real - fucking traumatized. Because that shit hurts, and it's happened before when she was younger, and it's happening again. She was shaking when she first saw the leak. Couldn't even finish the video. And she's right on the money when she says she feels like she's fifteen again - because she's reliving the same damn bullshit and she's still having to argue for her own autonomy.

And who shows up at her doorstep (shaded in soft colors to match Keeley's earlier outfit, her whole aesthetic)? Jamie Tartt, the one the video was actually for. The one who is fucking kicking himself because he knows he got rid of those - even though they were special to him. He got rid of them because it was the right thing to do, and he came here to apologize because it's the right thing to do.

Jamie Tartt isn't entirely new to her - he's still painfully Jamie. He kinda drifts off on a tangent about himself for a bit. He's still so easy to read. Him showing up for her is new; but his sweetness is not. And he doesn't say the right things always. But he is there for her, and he fucking cares that she's hurting. And if part of that was on him, then he's here to claim that part and apologize. Because it's not her fault.

Again, with the words you don't know you need to hear until you hear them. This from the guy who used to have near-topless photos of her (although only her, eleven pictures all of her) all over his locker. But those are the photos that she chose to do, and she is proud of them, and they always matched sexually, didn't they?

And now they're talking again, for the first time in a while. And it's because of a sex video that she sent him. Yet somehow, for the first time in their relationship, there's....no sex. None. Not even a vibe of it. For once, they're on the same page, seeing each other clearly, and sex is off the table.

It's nice. It's a good look on them. It's downright loving.

Keeley Jones had a no good, terrible bad couple of days, but Jamie Tartt made it a little better.

Let them be close. Let them care for each other, however that looks for him. If it grows, so be it. They've all grown this season - Roy, Keeley, and Jamie. All it takes to fail is for all parties to stop trying, and there's no one here who isn't trying.

Also another bit that I couldn't quite flesh out the way I wanted to:

Jack cancelled a family meetup because of Keeley's scandal. Roy wouldn't cancel on his niece even if it meant missing Sexy Christmas. Something about the commitment of it all. Something.

#keeley jones #jamie tartt #roy kent #did I lose the thread? #it feels like I did but I had a lot to say #keeley jones is also a work in progmess #obviously so is Roy #jamie may be in progmess until he dies - there's a lot of mess in that boy #but god my feelings for all three of them #just let them be happy #all of them equally happy #please #ted lasso meta #ted lasso spoilers #i hope some of this made sense because it took forever to write and i am NOT rereading it for proofing #ted lasso