#i love the concept of a kid whose parents were adventurers

[natp20]

my favourite details from the art of the newest member of the mighty nein (it's not a phase, mom!)

a book harness, just like his uncle caleb!

flask tattoos bc his dad's a damn fine alchemist

the summer camp has flask koozies (gotta get that trademarked, veth)

and who could forget FLUFFERNUTTER

#critical role #cr2 #the mighty nein #echoes of the solstice #cr spoilers #i love the concept of a kid whose parents were adventurers #and grew up hearing all sorts of stories #meanwhile their parents and the adventuring party were definitely going through some rough shit #and now that they're older priorities have shifted #luc brenatto

[phoenixfire-thewizardgoddess]

blues clues did a pride thing... is this a fever dream. this takes the whole i feel bad for kids nowadays thing to a whole new level 🤡

Why

Literally every concept in kids shows is shown in a gaudy, sing-sing, bright and fun way to explain things

It was age apropriate, and they will thankfully be completely oblivious to a time before it was (At the very least) normal to not be straight and cis.

It's a familiar show and character, who often brings new ideas to the kids each week. For a long time, people have acted like someone 'being' (or 'choosing') to be gay is a sexual thing.

But realistically, there are kids with two same-gender parents, there are kids whose father was the one who carried them to term, there are kids whose parents have had different relationships and those who have transitioned. And that's just white society babes.

I mean, you have other cultures with their own beiefs, and sure not every kid watching will be able to pick it up first time around, but little things like including the two-spirit symbol is important.

Most importantly, for the little kids out there who might be, aren't, aren't sure or otherwise... it says, "Hey, it's okay. Family looks different for everyone and being alive is different for everyone."

IT says, "Hey if one day you think you might be one of these, or if you want to explore that, it's fine. IT's just like working out your fave icecream flavour, and there are an unlimited number of free trials, baybee!"

It addresses the topic in a way that explains the basic concept, in the way anyone would, for a certain age group of kids. There's nothing that you would need to talk to an older teen or young adult about, bc that would be incorrect.

And its important that kids see that the wider society in general understands and accepts, even if 'to a degree' that gay and trans kids are out there. That this message of support and affection and normality reaches them before people like their parents, their grandparents, that one religious aunt who apparently has nothing the fuck else to do buit church, the HOA and any other group of self rightous busybodies start putting ideas in their heads that they should either hate these people, OR, that they should hate themselves and hide themselves.

I mean, where is the harm?

I mean, think back on the sheer political power of Rugrats. Explained a lot to us.

Angelica's mother (stacy?) was a high powered office woman who wanted her daughter to learn to Go For It. She filled Angelica with self confidence until it oozed out her eyeballs.

her dad drew did a lot of caring, and so did the aunt/uncle. also showing us the power of family care, not just the original family unit.

Deedee was a jewish woman who, yeah had some weird ideas thanks to dr lipschitz, but was a fantastic example of stay at home parent to the kids. They showed jewish hlidays too.

Stu was an inventor, and even though it put some strain on the finances, he was supported to pursue his passion. Which led to big oportunities later, but they showed the stress of it.

Phil and Lil's mum and dad, were a complete reversal of the normal dnamic. Betty was an outspoken feminist who was always willing to fight the battles for her friends, and her husband was a soft spoken, gentle dude who clearly loved their kids.Phil and Lil switching attire to change gender roles for a bit.

Chaz, chucky's dad, a single father and widower who was doing the best he could and reached out for help from his friend group when he needed it.

Not to mention Suzie, and both her parents were in super high paying professions (Doctor), etc. How many other shows did that?

When kimmi and her mother entered, Kimmi was the opposite of the asian stereotypes, she was loud and rambunctious. And the way they handled chucky getting a new mother, was huge and i think it still yoinks the old heartstrings to this day.

Involved grandparents.

New baby drama.

Stealing a giant robot so five babies could pilot it through france.

Generaly age-appropriate dialogue for the kids, and their weird little adventures, etc.

Typical, fun, but each episode seemed to have a message in there that is evident enough now.

Rugrats and Star Trek (oriignal) fly under the radar when we talk about media that was aimed to show the next generation a different kind of normal... but look how most of us turned out.

More accepting, more aware of how the puppet strings are pulled, more willing to speak up and seek assistance and learn, etc.

So maybe you feel uncomfy about the awkward song but also like, babes, you are not the target audience.

Kids need to know there's nothing wrong with being different, like gay or trans or kids with differing levels of disabilities (eg. kids with prosthetics and wheelchairs can be very aware at school, but fcharacters like cyborg help them and others around them to understand why it is needed and that it's normal)

etc.

I can barely see rn bc i have a cold, (verified with the Awful Test), and my eyes are streaming but i did my best to answer in a vaguely coherent way

[didsomeonesaydaddydraco]

What true love feels like - final part | Tom Felton imagine

I’M NOT CRYING, YOU ARE! Just kidding, I’m sobbing like a kid who’s candy was taken away. Excuse me for the grammar mistakes, I could barely see through my tears, writing this. But here it is, the final part for the mini series. I really hope you guys liked it. Thank you so much for the support! 

Word count: 4275

Pairing: Tom Felton x Reader

Note: For the best readen experience, I suggest you to listen the song Everyday I love you by Boyzone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QQQKJJBJOY) I’ll let you know when to start playing it!

Tag list:  @abrunettefangirlnerd ; @youknowiloveyou-so; @the-girl-who-drew; @thescaletknight2014; @lil5sosbetch; @pipppaaaaalouisee; @mysticskeletonfireherring

You can find the previous chapters right here:

Part 1      Part 2      Part 3      Part 4

*Tom’s POV*

Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that made me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheet blind love, but it definitely made me believe in something. And it was true love.

I spent the last two weeks with sitting by my phone, waiting for her to call or text me. I even went to see her at the lake house, but I could never make myself to get out of my car and knock on the door. I knew her better than that. She had to be alone and away from everyone and everything. So, even if it literally killed me, not hearing from her, I was more than willing to mop around my house and wait. Why? Because I deep down in my heart I knew that I was waiting for something great.

So when I opened my door in the middle of the night, and saw her standing there, I knew it was worth it. She was there. Smiling slightly and shyly at me, like it was the first time we met each other. And in a way it was the first time. The first time before a new chapter. A whole new adventure.

If it were up to me, I’d have married her right there. I’d have started my life with her. We’d have gone out and buy that piece of land I wanted so badly, built our dream house. We’d have had sex, cuddled by the fireplace and eat breakfast together in the morning. Go to work, and rush to get home just we could see each other. Eventually have a dozen of babies, and fight over whose parents we were naming them after. Buy another dog, so Willow wouldn’t feel alone. Celebrate our 10 years anniversary. Get in those bad fights, but make up after a day or so. Continue to surprise each other, watch the sunset from our front porch every now and then. Watch out babies graduate and start their lives. Retire. Meet our grandchildren. Hold each other every night and never forget the love that started this all. If it were up to me, I would have started that adventure with her right then.

I couldn’t say a word. I just kept looking and her beautiful face. Admiring how amazingly good she looked without any makeup on. She was a woman who wasn’t afraid to show her imperfections. And I loved that fact that I could be by her side through that long and painful journey. The journey where she learnt to finally love herself. Truly.

“So you chose me?” I finally asked the dumbest question ever. She was standing right in front of me. But I had to hear her saying it. I needed to.

“Yeah, you. It will always be you, don’t you get it? If I had the choice between you and a million things I’ve always wanted, I would choose you every single time” she said slowly, so I could fully understand her. And in that moment, I was the happiest man on Earth.

There’s a moment between a glance and a kiss. Where the world stops for the briefest of times. And the only thing between us is anticipation of her lips on mine. A moment so intense it hands in the air as it pulls us closer. A moment, so perfect that when it comes to and end we realize it’s only just the beginning. So I grabbed her by the neck and kissed her. Just kissed her so deep she forgot whose air she was breathing. Her kissed melted me like no one else ever had and I just wanted her to know how much I loved her.

“Come on in” I smiled at her after our lips finally parted “I wasn’t the only one who missed you”

I took her hand in mine and pulled her in the house. Willow was already sitting by the bottom of the stairs, patiently waiting to finally be able to see our guest. When I stepped out of her way and she saw Y/N kneeling down and calling out her name, she wasted to time and ran into her arms.

“Hey, girl” Y/N tried to keep Willow away from her face, but my doggie was too happy to finally see her again. She licked her face and hands and jumped on her. I didn’t blame her. I wanted to keep kissing and hugging her. But I knew she needed to talk to me, so I made my way to the kitchen and started to prepare our cups of tea, and gave them time to enjoy each other company for a while.

“I see you kept that terrible painting” she said from behind me. I look at her above my shoulders to see her pointing to the honestly terrible painting on the wall. I chuckled at the memory of her being blindfolded, sitting in front of the canvas and holding the brush in her hand, waiting for me to give her the instructions. We painted it on our little weekend getaway in Rome. Aaron was away for almost a month, so we could do anything we wanted. I remember how stressed she had been because of her final thesis, so after she turned it in, I surprised her with that little trip.

“Tom, wait” she laughed behind me as she tried to catch up. We just had a romantic candle light dinner at the small local restaurant. Beside us, there was only two other couple, enjoying the delicious Italian pasta with a bottle of amazing wine next to the scented candles and the red and white tablecloth. We already had a bottle of wine, but we drank one more after dessert as well. After we paid, I had a great idea, I was just hoping I could find the right shop still open to buy the equipment.

“Hurry up, baby” I called after her “We don’t have much time and I’m sure it’s going to be raining in a couple of minutes”

I told her to wait for me outside of the shop and quickly bought everything I need for my plan. I had always wanted to do this with someone, but never had the chance to do it. I wanted to do it with someone who I knew was going to enjoy it. And I knew for sure Y/N was type who liked the most unexpected and cliché things.

I grabbed her hand and basically dragged her with me. I was full with energy and the night was still young. There were a lot of things in my mind. Like my little plan, maybe another bottle of wine, and sweet love making with her in the candle lit living room.

“Alright, Felton” she stopped in front of me when we entered our rented flat “Tell me what you have in mind!”

“Go and put on a shirt you don’t mind ruining” I smiled at her and put down the bag on the kitchen counter. She just shook her head and turned around to go and get changed. I couldn’t keep my hand to myself, so softly and teasingly slapped her ass. I respected her. I loved her. But I was a man and she was the most beautiful and the hottest woman I had ever met. So there were times when I couldn’t control the wide caveman in me. But she knew me better, so these things were never offensive in her eyes.

She came back a couple of minutes later in one of my old shirts she had stolen from me like a month ago. She liked to hang out in it, play with Willow in it. I didn’t mind, it was an old shirt and I barley wore it anymore. But it looked amazing in her.

“So?” she wrapped her arms around my waist and stood on her tiptoes to kiss my lips shortly.

“Sit down, darling” I nodded to the chair and picked up her scarf from her bag “Do you trust me?”

“Of course” she said without hesitation. She sat down and waited. I carefully blindfolded her and poured paint on the palette for her “Why is it if you have something in mind, it always comes with something messy?”

“I just love to make a mess” I laughed and placed a brush in her hand “Believe me, you’re going to love this”

I stood behind her and bend down a little so my mouth was the same level as her ears. I kissed the soft skin behind her ear, and I could hear her breathing quickening. This was amazing.

“Take the brush and dug it in paint” I whispered slowly, letting my breath tickling her skin. She slowly breathed out and obeyed my command. She held the brush, ready to paint, only waiting for my next instruction “Good girl”

“Now, touch the canvas with it gently and paint a straight line from down to up” I put one of my hands on her bare thigh and squeezed it gently. She did as she was asked.

“Hmmm” I stroked her skin “Now, dug in the paint again” my fingers were dancing on her inner thigh “And paint dots on the rhythm of my fingers on your skin”

“And now, paint a circle” I told her. She almost dropped the brush when I started kissing her neck. A smirked to myself, knowing very well that she was close to lose it and turn around to kiss me. She almost did, but I stopped her “Ah no no no, baby girl. Where’s the circle?”

“Tom” she moaned as my fingers went further up on her thigh. I bit on her neck to show her who was in control “Fuck” she whispered my painted the circle nonetheless.

It went like this for a bit more. Me, teasing her and giving her the instructions, and her, trying her very best to not show everything of the table and push me against it.

“It’s terrible” I said when I looked at the final picture. There was no concept at all. Just random colours and random lines, dots and circles. But we made it. I put a little paint on my finger and left my fingerprint at the bottom right corner. I took Y/N’s finger and did the same, right next to mine.

“Do you want to take a look, baby girl?” I whispered in her ear, and that was the last straw. She tore the scarf and throw it away, not giving a damn if it landed in paint or not. She turned around and crashed her lips on mine. This kiss wasn’t gentle at all. It was wild, eager and passionate. When she finally looked me in the eye after the kiss, I could tell we were thinking about the same thing. Her eyes were dark from lust, and there was the dangerous flame in them that I loved so much. She only glanced at the painting for a brief moment.

“It really is terrible” she said and stood in front of me “But now, take me to the bedroom”

“You don’t have to ask me twice” I smiled at her and picked up. Her legs were wrapped around me, and I was sure she could feel everything. We made love for the first time that night. And it was the most amazing night. Little did I know, it was the first out of a lot more.

“It happens that I like it a tiny bit” I winked at her and handed her a cup of tea “I reckon you’d like to talk about a few things, right?”

“Yeah, I think we should” she nodded and went to the living room, Willow following her right away. Y/N sat down, and she immediately laid down by her feet. I joined my girls on the sofa and waited.

“I had a lot of time to think. And I talked to my brother a lot about these feelings that were building up in me” she started and never broke eye contact “I told him everything. About you and me…”

I took a sharp breath. Definitely not how I wanted to be introduced to her family.

“He took it quite well. All he wanted to know if you made me happy and treated my right” she smiled at me “When I assured him that you were literally treating me like a princess, he wished us nothing bet the best. Also, he said something very thoughtful. When I was telling him about how long I had been searching for someone who loved him, and someone I could love, he told me that love is not something you go out and look for. Love finds you, and when it does, ready or not, it’ll be the best thing to ever happen to you”

It was true. The best love is unexpected. You don’t just pick someone and cross your fingers it’ll work. You meet them by fate and it’s an instant connection, and the chemistry share is way above your head. You just talk and notice the way their lips curve when they smile or the colour of their eyes and all at once you know you’re either lucky or screwed. In our case, we were both. We met at the wrong time, but still. We made it work. Not in the most respectful and fair way, but we didn’t let go.

“But you’re still scared” I took her shaking hand in my and squeezed it to calm her down. She didn’t have anything to be afraid it. It was me, who she was talking to, after all “It’s okay. I’m scared too, and I don’t know why. Maybe I’m scared because you mean more to me than any other person. You are everything I think about, everything I need and everything I want.”

“So, what now?” she scooted closer to me, and rested her head on my shoulder. I kissed the top of her head and hugged her tight. I wanted her to know I wasn’t going anywhere. I was there for the long run.

“I think it’s finally our time” I tilted her head up by her chin and kissed her slowly. Yes, it was our time. And I was going to make every second of it worth it.

 < 3 years later >

*Y/N’s POV*

When I was a little kid, I loved going to weddings. God knows how many times I was asked to be a flower girl or a bridesmaid. All the decoration, the music, the spirit of true love mesmerized me, and I often find myself imagining my own wedding. I still remember the beautiful white and blush pink decoration with the fairy lights and roses all around the huge mansion. The beautiful ball gown wedding dress, made for me. But this time, everything was different. The huge, modern chalet which we rented for the reception was decorated with deep dark green and silver decoration, and the candles in the black wrought iron holders give and edgy but romantic feeling to the whole decoration.

From the room, which was assigned to be the dressing room for my flower girls, bridesmaids and I had the best view at the backyard. The chairs were covered with silver chair skirts, tied around with a beautiful, dark green ribbon. The trees were so colourful, due to the season, and fairy lights decorated them. Candles were already lit, and followed the way from the back porch’s staircase to the wedding arch, which was made out of evergreens and fairy lights. Everything was perfect.

“How are you feeling, darling?” my Mum asked me from the armchair. I looked at myself in the mirror, and admired the dress I was wearing. It was a simple bright white satin wedding dress, which hugged my body like a waterfall. The straps were made of small diamond-like crystals and fall down on my back, like they were the back of my dress. It was simple, but I felt like I was the most beautiful woman in the whole world.

“Like I want to run down the aisle and finally marry him” I smiled at her. This time, there were no bad feelings, I was shaking from fear. I was sure I was about to make the best decision. I played with my silver bracelet. The single teardrop shaped pearl wasn’t lonely anymore. There were other charms from the places we visited in the last couple of years.

“I’ll go and get your Dad than” Mum kissed my cheek and left me to find my Dad.

I took a deep breath and looked outside again. Family and friends were already sitting, and my flower girls and bridesmaid were waiting by the aisle to walk down before me. I could see a familiar dirty blond hair, talking with his best man and friends near the altar. For so long I thought marriage wasn’t for me. Even when I was with Aaron. But I realized it was for me. And it was with that man, with the most mesmerizing blue eyes and bright smile. With that man, who was the most beautiful person I had even met in my entire life. Sometimes I just looked at him and thought how lucky I was that he was mine.

“Let’s get you married” my Dad said as he entered the room with the biggest smile on his face “No cold feet?”

“No cold feel” I answered and laced my hand with his.

*start the song now*

The first accords started to play when the musicians saw me and Dad arriving. Suddenly, all eyes were on me, and I could feel myself getting emotional, tears blurring my vision. The sun was just setting, and the lights of the trees and the little path made out of candles made the whole scene look magical.

But the most magical part was the man who was waiting for me at the end of the aisle. We were looking at each other, not caring about our families and friends around us. I only see him. He, in his pitch black suit with the silver tie witch complemented his bright blue eyes. He had the most beautiful smile on his face, and I had to stop myself from running up to him and kiss him. Nothing was stopping us now.

We were halfway down when I could see it. He was crying and smiling at the same time. Damn, I was the luckiest girl in the world.

“Take care of my little girl” I tried so hard to stop myself from crying, but when my Dad placed my hand in my soon to be husband’s, I could help but let a few tears escape.

The ceremony was beautiful. The speech the registrar said was true, emotional and a little bit funny, but the whole time I was lost in the most beautiful eyes. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to. I was looking at my future.

“Ladies and gentleman” the registrar spoke “It’s time for this two beautiful and in love people to take their vows.

Tom’s niece stepped closer and handed him my ring, which he almost dropped because his hand was shaking so much. I chuckled and whispered a tiny ‘I love you’ to calm him down. He cleared his throat and looked back at me. We immediately get lost in each other’s eyes.

“I, Thomas Andrew, take you, Y/N Y/M/N to be my friend, my lover, the mother of my children and my wife. I will be yours in times of plenty and in times of want, in times of sickness and in times of health, and in times of joy and in times of sorrow, in times of failure and in times of triumph. I promise to cherish and respect you, to care and protect you, to comfort and encourage you, and stay with you, for all eternity” he smiled at me “I’d love nothing more than to stumble through life with you”

He slowly slipped the ring on my finger and gently kissed my hand, before wiping away a few of his tears. I took his ring from our niece and kissed the top of her head before she returned to her father’s side with a huge smile.

“I, Y/N Y/M, take you Thomas Andrew, to be my husband, my partner in life and my one true love. I will cherish out union and love you more each day than I did the day before. I will trust you and respect you, laugh with you and cry with you, loving you faithfully through good times and bad, regardless of the obstacles we may face together. I give you my hand, my heart and my love, from this day forward for as long as we both shall live.” I winked at him and said the last line of my vow “I’d love nothing more than to stumble through life with you”

I slipped the ring on his finger and from that moment, that wasn’t power on Earth that could have stopped me from crying. I didn’t care how ugly I looked crying or if my makeup was a mess. I was his wife. And he was my husband.

“Y/N and Tom” the registrar smiled at us “You came here today to affirm your love for one another and formally acknowledge that which your hearts already knew…”

Tom and I both chuckled, thinking about how our love started.

“That your lives are meant to be shared as one, that you are stronger together than you are apart, and that, for all your days yet to come, you wish to share together all life’s joys and challenges, committed one to the other”

She took a breath and with true joy in his voice he continued.

“I now pronounce you Husband and Wife! You can now kiss the bride”

He didn’t waste a second. Tom picked me up and kissed me passionately. He didn’t have to say anything. Everything was in our first kiss as husband and wife. And it was the sweetest kiss we had ever shared.

***

We were standing on the porch, watching our friends and now shared family having the time of their lives. Drinking, eating, dancing, bonding and laughing. It was perfect. Just the way we imagined our wedding. We spent almost a year planning it, Tom helping with everything, sometimes being even more excited than me. He never skipped a meeting with our wedding planner. He was really there for me. And he was the one who planned our honeymoon. No matter how many times I asked, or how I tried to trick him to tell me where we were going, he kept it as a secret. Always saying it was a gift.

“You’re still not telling me, right?” I looked up at him. We had been standing there for quite a while now, just hugging each other, staring into each other’s eyes and sharing sweet kisses as a married couple.

“Nope” he kissed my forehead and pulled me even closer. I could feel and hear his heart beating against his chest.

“I have a gift for you too” I pulled away and stepped into to house to grab the little silver envelope from my bag. My hands were shaking and I was terrified to give it to him. But also, I was excited “There’s one thing you have been wanting for so long. And I’ve been holding this is my dresser for a few weeks now, so excuse me for not giving you the latest one, but I really hope you’re going to love it.”

He took the envelope from me and opened it gently. He slowly pulled out the small, black and white picture with a red hear shaped sticker on the middle of it, framing the bean sized dot.

“Is that…?” his blue eyes were filled with tears “Are you? Are we having a…?

“A baby?” I asked with tears in my eyes too “Yeah, we are. I’m pregnant”

“I’m going to be a Dad” he yelled and picked me up for the second time today. He twirled around with me and showered my face with kisses. I was sobbing like a little baby. He was so happy. I knew how badly he wanted to be a father, and his dream was finally coming true.

“Never in a million years did I think I’d find someone so utterly and completely perfect, someone who would make me happier than I ever dreamed I could be. Someone that would touch my life so profoundly and just give me a whole new reason to breathe. But then I found you and realized that everything I anticipated you to be doesn’t even compare who you are.” he held my face in his hands. The amount of love I felt for that man was almost unbearable. I smiled at him and kissed him softly. I knew that no matter what was waiting for us, we were going to be okay because we had each other. He taught me so many things. He helped me to love myself. But most importantly, with him by my side, I could finally tell what true love felt like.

#Tom Felton #tom felton fanfic #tom felton love story #imagine tom felton #tom felton imagine #tom felton x y/n #tom felton x reader #tom felton x you #draco #Draco Malfoy #daddy draco #draco fanfiction #draco x reader #draco request. #harry potter cast

[conn-verse]

hi i wrote some connverse hurt/comfort where connie thinks steven is just a character and a story she made up because she’s lonely but then it gets soft and the beginning kinda sucks and i didnt edit it but yknow it’s under the cut enjoy

12-year-old Kahani Maheswaran stepped through the front door into her condominium home in Beach City, Delmarva. She was still settling into the new home, even though they’d moved in 9 months ago. She was returning home from her first day of 7th grade, where she was the only new kid, and everybody else already had friends. That was a feeling she’d gotten used to. 

The school year went on, and she would sooner call her teachers her friends than her actual peers. Her English teacher, Ms. Oliver, often encouraged her to make some friends — something she wished was as easy to do as it was to say.

13-year-old Kahani was lucky enough to stay in Beach City another year. Nowhere ever felt like home to her, but Beach City was friendly and quiet. Peaceful. She spent plenty of time on the beach, reading, writing, doing homework, whatever. The sunset was always beautiful. Though she may have been an introvert, she always wished she had someone to share her time with. She loved her parents, but both of their jobs kept them busy almost constantly. She wanted a friend.

Maybe she could make one up?

But no, that’s not healthy. Is it? After a little research, she concluded that it could actually be pretty helpful. So she sat down and started writing. 

She spent the summer before high school writing and writing. The main character of her story wasn’t her — she’d never felt like a main character, and wasn’t sure she wanted to be one. Instead, it was a short and chubby boy, two years older than her, with the biggest, kindest heart you could imagine. She called this character Steven, Steven Universe. Connie imagined magical alien beings whose life force came from gemstones, who were bent on conquering Earth and destroying its life for their empire. 

The boy was unique; he was the first hybrid of a human and what he called “gems.” He’d inherited the identity of his mother, Rose Quartz, a fearless rebel, but one who was secretly rebelling against her own royal family. He would have to answer for her crimes, to prove her wasn’t her, to survive the wrath of those who blamed him for the loss of his mother. But every step of the way, Connie was there to support him. He brought her out of her shell, gave her someone to confide in, he convinced his guardian, Pearl, to teach her how to sword-fight. She felt alive. 

But that was just the story she’d made up. Connie resembled her in many ways, but at the end of the day, she was still just boring, lonely Kahani. 

Throughout the following years, she’d return to her story, inventing incredible new concepts and characters, all while keeping herself as a side character. Pretending to have a friend felt wonderful, even if it meant she distanced herself from potential real friends. Even if she wasn’t writing her story, she was thinking about it. 

One summer, she went to Space Camp. She wondered what’d happen if Connie did the same, and if Earth was in danger again while she was away. She created a new character: Spinel, a gem who had been abandoned by Steven’s mother and sought revenge. 

She went to cram school, and met Daniel and Patricia, her first real friends. But she still wanted an adventure. So, she went back to her story.

Kahani wrote another adventure for Steven and Connie. This time, it was more emotional — more personal. She’d never understood how heroes in fiction could go through so much and come out seemingly normal, so, she projected onto Steven. Kahani felt lost, alone, like everything was against her when media taught her she should be having the time of her life. 

One morning, she woke up. Or, she thought it was morning. It felt like it should be morning. She picked up her phone and tapped the power button. The screen told her it was about 3 in the afternoon. However, it revealed something much more shocking: a text message from someone she apparently knew called Steven, who had a heart next to his name. The message read “call or text if you need anything,” and that message had a heart at the end, too. 

Her stomach dropped. “Mom?” She called. “Dad?”

Her mother entered her room, looking even more tired than usual. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

“I… I’m fine. Why? Did something happen? 

“You fell on the boardwalk and hit your head rather hard. Steven healed the wound as soon as he could, but I don’t think even his magic can heal brain damage. You probably have a concussion, Connie. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Connie took a moment to think. Slowly, she put the clues together in her mind, and her heart pounded as she asked her mom, “Where’s Steven?”

“I’ll go get him.” Her mother smiled gently and left the room. 

Connie sat up and turned her phone back on. She stared at the contact in her phone who had the name “Steven.” His picture even resembled the character she’d seen in her mind, and to a striking degree. But that couldn’t be real. She had to still be dreaming. Steven wasn’t real, she’d made him up. He wasn’t real. He—

“Hey, can I come in?”

He was standing in her doorway. Connie’s heart pounded like a tsunami crashing onto the shore. She nodded, staring the figure down as it entered her room and sat on her bed. He smiled warmly at her, slowly reaching her hand, as if to ask if he could hold it. Connie found herself reaching back. Their hands connected and their fingers tangled together, and Connie stared at their laced fingers, his large and pale, hers thin and dark. Suddenly, she remembered it all. The gems, Pink Diamond, Homeworld, fusion, fighting — everything. Not just from her story, but from her waking life. A few tears dripped down her face. She looked up at Steven and met his gaze. 

“Connie? What’s wrong?” He said, rubbing his thumb against the back of her hand. 

She sobbed pathetically, unfolding her arms and wrapping them around Steven. She cried into his shoulder, holding him tighter than she’d ever dared to. 

“Stars,” she choked. “I… I thought…”

“It’s okay,” he said, in that deep but soft voice she never, ever wanted to forget again. His hand danced its way through her hair. “Take your time.”

Connie took a deep breath, both to regulate her breathing and to breathe in Steven, making sure it was all still real. 

“I dreamt that you weren’t real. That everything since I met you was a story I made up because I was lonely. But…” She pulled back, looking into his eyes again. She tousled his hair, and he smiled. She giggled. “You’re real!” 

“Yeah, I’m real.” He said. They leaned their foreheads against each other, holding each other close. 

“Don’t worry, Connie,” Steven said. “I’m here.”

#tried to use the idea of her name actually being Kahani to separate her dream self from her real self dunno if it worked tho #saw a comment on insta with a similar idea and i ran with it #ik it's not great writing but it was only intended to be connverse hurt/comfort so i'm satisfied #caden.text #caden.posts #caden.stories #connie maheswaran #steven universe #suf #fanfic #su #priyanka maheswaran #doug maheswaran #greg universe #pearl #hurt/comfort #concussion #head injury

[noctuaas]

AS YOU WISH; t. kuroo

synopsis; in this tale of romance, revenge, and treason, you, a beautiful commoner, are set to become the princess of aobajousai. will your one true love be able to save you in time?

pairing; kuroo tetsurou x reader

content; princess bride au (heavily based on both the movie and novel), medieval au, torture, mild violence, drama, fantasy/adventure, murder, fem!reader

fic navigation

01 ; THE BRIDE

TO BE THE MOST beautiful girl in the world was a concept far past your concern. Those around you certainly saw the potential, but at 16 years old, you simply could not care less to capitalize on your natural beauty. (Beauty routines were exhausting in your eyes. You only washed your face so as not to feel filthy, taking a razor to your leg hair was far more trouble than it seemed worth, and you were quite sick of brushing your hair, so you did so as little as possible.) All you really wanted to do was ride your horse and pester the farm boy that worked for your parents.

Prince, as you had taken to calling the horse when he was just a yearling, was a loyal companion. Other girls your age grew attached to one of their herding dogs’ pups, or the kitten of a barn cat, but you had Prince. He always came when you called, steered where you told him even on a loose rein, nuzzled your face on bad days. 

For all the time you spent taunting and bossing the farm boy around—“Farm Boy, fetch me this,” and “Farm Boy, take care of that,”—he always had one thing in common with the horse: he always did as he was told.

(Perhaps you knew that he was really a young man now—he was a year or two older than you—but he had been just an orphaned boy when he first came to work for your father, so that was what you referred to him as: Farm Boy.)

“As you wish,” he always replied, without fail.

Your father was fond of the farm boy, often remarking how he should leave him an acre of land in his will for all his hard work. These conversations never lasted long though, not before your parents would turn to you and chide you for needing to go bathe again and clean yourself up after spending the day in the barn.

Despite your disdain for taking care of yourself like a “proper lady,” as your mother liked to say, your natural beauty was still enough to cause the village boys to flock to you. Those dimwits always liked to badger you with stupid questions whenever you rode into town, offering silly favors and making awkward small talk, much to dismay of the rest of the girls in the village. The boys were always so annoying, and you often noted how much more tolerable Farm Boy was as you dismissed their advances. Eventually they took to making fun of you, laughing over snide remarks about you because they must have been embarrassed about being shot down. Sometimes the insults were too much to ignore, and when that was the case, Farm Boy took matters into his own hands. You always thanked him after he sent a village boy home bloodied and crying, and he always answered, “As you wish.”

You came to realize that Farm Boy was the only boy your age whose presence you seemed to enjoy. One night, you lied awake with the dim light from a full moon crawling through your window, thinking about how he was always kind and respectful to you, how he protected you and your honor, how he seemed to smile at you differently than he ever smiled at the other girls in town. (You also let yourself admit that he was quite handsome, with his amber eyes and ebony hair that was always in a perfect bedhead state, which was something you had never bothered caring about before.)

After that, your time was no longer divided between riding your horse and pestering the farm boy; now, ‘pestering’ was to be replaced with ‘falling for’. You let him join you on rides through the woods on Prince; you began doing your morning reading in the barn to keep him company while he fed the animals; you took it upon yourself to take out any extra supper your mother cooked to him. You even decided to stop calling him ‘Farm Boy’.

“What’s your actual name, Farm Boy?” you asked out of the blue.

“Why do you ask?” he had replied, and you snorted in mild amusement.

“Well, after having known you all these years, it must be quite rude of me to still call you ‘Farm Boy’.”

He paused and grinned that endearing grin of his, “Just call me Kuroo, then.”

Everything was so blissful for the year following. You loved Kuroo, and he loved you. Even on the day the royal Count and Countess of Aobajousai had strangely paid your family a visit, you both were sure of this; because while the Countess took Kuroo’s arm gently for him to show her the dairy cows and the Count watched you intently as you followed the small procession on your horse, you and Kuroo both stared at each other.

At the end of one year though, Kuroo unexpectedly showed up at your window in the middle of the night.

“I’ve come to say goodbye.”

You shot up straight in your bed, cocking your head incredulously, “What do you mean, ‘goodbye’?”

“I mean I’m leaving.”

“Leaving? Have I done—”

“I’m taking to the sea to seek my fortune,” he cut you off. “There’s a ship that sails out of Karasuno, to the new country of Inarizaki. There’s great opportunity there, so I’m going.”

You were shell-shocked for a moment. Leaving? Sailing to Inarizaki? Where was this all coming from?

“But why? What about the farm? What about us?” You finally said. Your voice was already beginning to quiver pathetically as tears brimmed in your eyes.

“I’ve been training at night, so I hardly need sleep or food, and I’ll get two 10-hour-a-day jobs. I’m gonna save every penny, and in just a couple years I’ll have enough to buy a big farm and build a brand new house just for the two of us.”

“For the two of us?” Your brows furrowed and your voice was meek.

“Yes, (y/n). I love you. All these years I’ve stayed here because of you. I’ve taught myself foreign languages, made my body strong, everything, for you. I’ve been head over heels for you since I was a kid. Do you understand what I’m saying, or should I keep going?”

(By now, Kuroo had squeezed his broad frame through your window, somehow landing gracefully on the floor and sliding next to you on your bed so he could wipe away your tears with his thumb. It was a good thing he was athletic enough to do so quietly, because if your parents caught him in your room, all hell might break loose.)

“Never stop,” you mumbled dreamily.

“There hasn’t been a day—”

“You better not be teasing me, Kuroo, or I’ll have your hide,” you broke in this time. Kuroo loved to tease you, and it was normally all in good fun, but if that was the case now, then he was taking it way too far.

“I’d never joke about loving you,” he replied. “Remember all those years when you would tell me, ‘Farm Boy, do this, Farm Boy, do that’? What did I always say?”

“‘As you wish’.”

“Well, that’s just what you thought I was saying. I was actually saying ‘I love you’,” Kuroo smiled gently and ran his fingers through your hair.

All that time? You couldn’t even recall the first time Kuroo started saying ‘As you wish’ to all your commands, but apparently he had been in love with you. Before you had ever even noticed him, he was devoted to you. It sounded like a fairy tale.

“I love you too, Kuroo. I’ll never stop loving you, I swear,” you finally said.

“I’ll hold you to it, princess. I have to go now if I want to make it to Karasuno in time, but I’ll send for you soon. Promise.”

You nodded in understanding, but you couldn’t let him leave without one last kiss.

There had been five great kisses since the beginning of time. Though the precise rating of kisses is a bit convoluted and controversial (everyone knows that the formula for a great kiss is comprised of timing, affection, intensity, and duration, but there has never been a universal agreement on each element’s weight), there was no doubt that this kiss left every other in the dust.

The following morning, all you wanted to do was lay around and mope. It was perfectly justifiable, considering the love of your life had just left the country, and you wouldn’t see him for God knows how long. You wallowed in self pity for about an hour before realizing that Kuroo was out in the great big world now, and with as handsome as he was, he would surely have women throwing themselves at him.

What if all this moping destroys my beauty, and when he sends for me, I’ll arrive in Inarizaki, and he’ll take one look at me and send me back?

“Mother,” you ran downstairs, interrupting whatever petty argument your parents were having. “I need your advice. How can I better take care of my appearance?”

“You’ve never cared about your appearance, honey. Why are you asking this all of a sudden?”

“Well, I’m nearly 18 now. I figure it’s about time I start behaving a little more like a lady,” you lied. It was enough to appease your mother, and she grabbed your arm and began dragging you to the washroom in delight.

You quickly learned that taking such care of yourself was hard work; the saying, ‘beauty is pain,’ made an awful lot of sense now. But for Kuroo, nothing was too much. Every morning, you awoke at dawn to start the farm chores. You had to pick up all the slack left by Kuroo, so there wasn’t really any time for self-improvement until the afternoon, but once you started, you took it very seriously. Daily baths, simple exercises, and all the time it took to brush your hair out perfectly before bed.

If the whole town thought you were beautiful before, now they all knew you must be a contender for the most beautiful girl in the world. You, however, still had no care for how beautiful the rest of the world found you; as long as Kuroo found you beautiful. (In the coming years, you would learn that you were beautiful no matter what, and simplify your beauty routine to what you liked. As long as you felt clean and tidy, that was sufficient.)

Kuroo wrote you letters every few months, and you kept every one of them. Sometimes people would ask you how he was doing, which was a mistake unless they had a lot of spare time, because you could talk about him for hours. It was obvious that you were completely and utterly in love, and so the village boys eventually stopped trying, and the village girls warmed back up to you.

It made sense the way Kuroo’s death hit you the way it did.

The news reached your parents first. The Count (a new fellow named Iwaizumi, appointed by Prince Oikawa shortly after the last one’s death) was sent to your farm to deliver the news since it was Kuroo’s last known place of residence. You were returning from town on your horse when Count Iwaizumi was leaving your property.

“Miss,” he nodded politely as you crossed paths. You rode on in confusion, and the new Count watched you intently, much like the last one.

When you made it into the house, both your parents hushed up and looked at you with pity.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s The Crow’s Wing, darling. It was attacked,” your mother told you.

Kuroo’s ship was attacked? You furrowed your brows, “What?”

“Pirates. In the night,” your father explained.

You knew the trip across the sea would be dangerous, but you never thought it would happen to him. Sliding into a chair, you decided it might be best to sit down.

The room was quiet until you managed to squeak out, “So Kuroo’s been taken prisoner, then?”

A long sigh from your parents, and then, a, “No.”

“It was the Dread Pirate Nekomata.”

You blinked, willing back tears. The Dread Pirate Nekomata was the most famous pirate in all the world, and he never took prisoners. In all these years in his reign of terror, no one survived an attack from the Dread Pirate Nekomata.

You went to your room, and this time around, you allowed yourself to mope. For six days, you sulked, and cried, and mourned. Not once did you come out of your room, so your parents took to leaving food outside your door, which you only ever picked at meekly. During those six days in your room, you decided you would never love again.

#ITS HAPPENING YES #haikyuu #hq #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu fanfic #haikyuu scenario #haikyuu imagine #hq fanfic #hq x reader #hq imagine #hq scenario #kuroo #kuroo tetsurou #kuroo x reader #kuroo imagine #kuroo fanfic #kuroo scenario #my writing

[honourablejester]

Ideas for Sorcerers (D&D)

I do love a bit of innate, chaotic magic, the forces of the world writing themselves onto people. Whether said people wanted them to or not. Heh. I will admit I’m a bit more attached to the ‘touched by cosmic forces’ angle for the sorcerer, it’s really great for backstories, but the bloodlines are also fascinating for the ‘family lore’ and ‘really adventurous ancestors’ ideas. So!

I’m mostly focused on the classic sorcerers and then the horror-adjacent sorcerers, because I’m me, and we know what I like. Apologies to fans of the Divine, Storm or new Clockwork sorcerers!

Draconic

Because dragons (and dragon ancestors) are the best. There’s a lot of fun and aesthetic with choosing your dragon ancestor too. The little scales you get with draconic resilience just make for some really cool-looking characters.

I love the idea of mixing ancestries with a draconic sorcerer. Compare and contrast. For example, a tiefling draconic sorcerer with gold dragon ancestry! Combining a ‘tainted’ bloodline with a respected one. Maybe the clan lean heavily into the lawful reputation of gold dragons, as well as a sort of internalised racism against their own darker ancestry as well. They view the fact that they were once favoured by a divine dragon as proof that their bloodline can redeem themselves of their demonic pact/ancestry, and they lean towards lawful occupations, city watch, soldiers, clergy, etc. So your sorcerer has a bit of internal conflict going on. (Also, a red tiefling with gold scales is an awesome look – tiefling skin colours with dragon scale colours is a really fun combination)

Other cool-sounding ancestry combinations: high elf & white/silver ancestry, for that ethereal immortal feeling (also fun to add stereotypical dragon traits with the white dragons, in that you’re an ethereal immortal who really holds a grudge and does not do ‘forgive and forget’), half-elf & green ancestry, for a strongly outcast, political bent, halfling/gnome & copper ancestry, because if you’re going to go for a tiny trickster you might as well go all out …

Or we have my old favourite, a tortle sorcerer with (somehow) a dragon turtle ancestor, because great-grandpa Uhok never met an older and (significantly) larger lady he didn’t want to pursue, and great-grandma Korthalok was honestly rather flattered. (Yes, I am aware that dragon turtles are not high dragons, but they are intelligent, and they’re probably innately magical/elemental enough to put a bit of magic in the bloodline)

Shadow Magic

The sorcerer’s gothic option! I do love it. Your magic comes from a strange, grim shadow realm, either because you were touched by said realm, or one of your ancestors was an entity from said realm. You get a demonic shadow hound, teleportation from shadow to shadow, and later an actual shadow form. Lots to work with there.

I feel like there’s a lot of Lovecraftian, Dreamlands, William Hope Hodgson sort of feeling here. The dark touch of a strange realm. Emphasis on isolation, desolation, alienation. Loneliness. This is also the subclass where I really, really like a later-life coming into your powers, a traumatic event causing a normal person to suddenly develop horrifying magic.

So. Any of your gothic/cosmic horror backstories. You were kidnapped and subjected to a horrific ritual. You were created in a horrific ritual (hi Warforged!). You suffered a severe, inexplicable illness as a child, and remained pale, half-dead, and possessed of strange powers for the rest of your life (I love the shadow sorcerer quirks list). An insane ancestor entered the Negative Plane and your line was almost annihilated by the resulting Nightwalker, but you somehow survived. Your parent was an extremely powerful magic user studying the Shadowfell, and you only realised much later on in your life that your childhood ‘imaginary friends’ were actually Sorrowsworn (Lost and Lonely?) that haunted your ancestral home and that your parent was somehow keeping from killing you. You tried to steal from a powerful, vindictive wizard, who flung you into the Shadowfell for your temerity, and you don’t fully remember how you survived. You slept in a barrow as a dare when you were younger, and an allip whispered secrets to you that lead you to dream of a dark realm, dreams that seemed to gradually change you as you ‘recovered’ …

This entire subclass is just very much ‘go nuts on the horror tropes and have fun’. I love it dearly.

Aberrant Mind

A new one from Tasha’s, but the other Lovecraftian/horror themed sorcerer subclass now. Which is perfectly fine, because I can always roll with more Lovecraftian horror! If shadow magic was themed strongly towards undead, Aberrant Mind seems strongly themed towards aberrations. Body horror and psychic powers! Boo yeah!

I do like the suggested origins. Particularly the parasitic twin and the imaginary friend ones. I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with those. Aberrant mind does feel more … on the science fiction end of horror, more than the fantasy? There’s a different flavour compared to shadow magic. We’re talking alien abduction and Carrie-esque childhood trauma here. Particularly when you get to the higher level actual physical transformation elements. Bit of Akira in there, bit of Innsmouth. So.

I’m liking characters who are a bit ‘aberrant’ on their own merits, even before their powers kick in as well. The outcasts from the get-go. The albino half-orc abandoned by the tribe as a child and befriended/kept safe by their possibly-imaginary flumph friend. The fallen aasimar whose blessings allowed them to survive where their stillborn twin did not, but who still feels the touch of a ghostly hand in theirs (I’m not sure how well it fully gels, but I feel like an Atropal is a very interesting concept to lay alongside this – stillborn gods and blessed, aberrant champions – celestial guides and the whisperings of parasitic twins … not sure how well it fits, but there’s a lot of crunchy concepts there)

Also, there’s your chance to have some fun with the Underdark races. Duergar, Deep Gnomes and Drow. Or sea races, when we have fun with Aboleths. Or non-sea races who still had a bit of fun with Aboleths, if we want to fully embrace the Innsmouth vibes and have normal land-based elves/humans/halflings who come over all Deep-One in the end. You come from a quaint little village on the coast, where the coming-of-age ceremony involved something of an opening of the mind. Nothing to worry about, everyone does it where you come from. Yes indeed! Heh.

And then, to bring us back to the less-horrifying end of sorcerers, and to revisit my childhood in a big way, we have:

Wild Magic

Schmendrick the Magician! Sorry, I grew up on The Last Unicorn, you’ll have to forgive me this. (Is Schmendrick actually part of the inspiration here, I’m wondering?)

But honestly, wild magic really lends itself to down-on-their-luck characters, running ahead of their own chaos, or striving to learn to control their powers. Or, on the flipside, incredibly laissez-faire types who decided to just roll with and eventually enjoy or perpetuate a little chaos. So. Tricksters, shysters and earnest young things trying to do their best.

So. You could do a straight Schmendrick. A down-on-their-luck kid who really, really wants to be a real wizard, a great magician, but their magic just will not cooperate. It has a mind of its own, and their struggle is learning to either minimise or lean into the chaos and power of it. (I like a background as a tailor/seamstress for this, partly because of animated Schmendrick’s memorable patchwork robes, but also as a little practical detail in that, if you can’t trust your magical mending not to do a ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ on it every damn time, you probably would learn to darn your socks the old fashioned way)

For a variation, you could do a bit of a snake-oil salesperson sort of deal. A down-on-their-luck sorcerer turned shyster/criminal to make ends meet. Wild magic works very well as a sort of bloodline curse, bad luck and chaos following a family. A woman of the Witchbottle clan pissed off an archfey way back when, and so every girl born to the line since has struggled with wild magic. So the clan tends to move around a lot, both individually and as a whole, and individual members of it tend to work around their inevitable getting run out of town for magical mishaps in their own ways. The clan has a lot of travelling entertainers, salespeople, criminals, etc, and tend to be very loyal to each other, even if they don’t see each other all that often (concentrations of wild magic in a single area tend to be bad for said area, so family gatherings are discouraged near civilisation).

And then there are your straight trickster characters. Ones with a more philosophical approach to chaos, a belief that you should be able to deal with the unexpected, and that maybe other people should be helped along in experiencing and dealing with it too. I like bards for tricksters, but wild magic sorcerers work very well too. Heh.

I know Wild Magic might not be the most functional of the subclasses, but it’s got a direct line to my childhood, and I feel like it’s still a really fun idea.

In summary? I like the squishy spindly magic people. They’re fun.

#d&d #dnd #sorcerers #character concepts #long post #fantasy #dark fantasy #horror #lovecraftian #i do love d&d's more horror-leaning elements

[echodrops]

Home and a Half Pidge Headcanons

An ask I got yesterday reminded me that I never posted the HaaH headcanons for Pidge like I promised, so here they are! (I’ll answer the actual ask as soon as I can with some new material instead of headcanons I already had written... oops...)

Anyway, without further ado, some headcanons for Pidge related to my fic Home and a Half!

Pidge:

- Grew up in the picture of the nuclear family: mom, dad, two kids, dog, nice upper-middle-class house in a quiet neighborhood, dinner on the table at 7:30pm on the dot… Of all the paladins, Pidge had the most stable and “average” childhood… at least on paper.

 - In reality, there is not a single person in the Holt family who isn’t eccentric as fuck. Grandma Holt? May or may not still be an active intelligence agent for MI6. The dog? Woofs in Morse code. Auntie Ariana? Has actually seen the Jersey Devil. Colleen Holt? Has killed a man. If you ask Pidge, she’ll say that her upbringing was perfectly normal and she’ll genuinely mean it, but this is a consequence Pidge having no idea what “normal” even means.

 Rest under the read more to save your dash:

- Not actually a girly-girl when she was young. Although they’re eight years apart and thus unlikely to be mistaken for one another, very early on Pidge got frustrated by how similar she and Matt look, and she definitely did not want to wear his tacky hand-me-down clothes, so she pitched a royal fit and insisted on wearing dresses and hairbands so that her family would have to buy Pidge all her own things. (They probably would have bought them anyway if she’d just asked calmly, but Pidge was three at the time, and they were all very impressed by her grasp of cause and effect.)

 - Of course, when Matt disappeared on the ill-fated Kerberos trip, those tacky hand-me-downs ended up being some of the most important items in Pidge’s life. Even outside of infiltrating Garrison, wearing Matt’s old clothes was one of the few comforts Pidge would allow herself—when she cut her hair and put on his baggy shirts, for a second, looking in a mirror, she could almost convince herself he was still there—

 - Pidge has no intention of changing the way she dresses or styles her appearance until she’s reunited with Matt and her father. After that? Well, they may not be the coolest looking things ever, but Matt does have a point that baggy t-shirts are very comfy…

 - And okay, because I’m sure everyone expected this headcanon first: Pidge and gender is a surprisingly uncomplicated subject. Side note before I go further: I’m sure everyone has their own headcanons for this and none of what I say here should be taken as rejecting or invalidating any other fan’s views on Pidge. The only thing invalid in the Voltron fandom is canon. Anyway, I personally like to imagine that Pidge is very ambivalent on gender. There is so much else going on—the war, Sam and Matt being missing, freaking giant robot space cats—that sitting down and sorting out the question of “Do I identify as male, female, nonbinary, or anything else?” is just really, really low on Pidge’s to do list. Pidge thinks of Pidge as “Pidge” and even that’s rare because Pidge doesn’t sit around thinking about herself or what other people think of her.

 - In fact, what strangers think is, in general, extremely low on Pidge’s radar. Although she used to be more self-conscious due to bullying from both classmates and her teachers, the combination of her parents’ consistent support and Matt’s… extreme tactics (“I’m telling you Pigeon, nanobots in their lunches will solve all your problems.” “That’s illegal, Matt.” “Nothing is illegal until you get caught.”) Pidge (mostly) overcame the phase of being affected by other people’s opinions. Who cares what strangers think? Absolutely none of them will ever be even close to as smart and talented as her family anyway. (My IQ is three times yours, your argument about my gender is literally invalid.)

 - By the way, I’m using “her” simply because that’s what I’m used to seeing in the fandom and to keep the fic and headcanons consistent, but in the functional world of HaaH, Pidge answers to any pronouns and doesn’t have a preference for any set in particular over others. In fact, Pidge is used to going by different sets of pronouns coming from different people, and might be “he” to one person, “she” to another, and “they” to yet someone else. Pidge is just… Pidge.

 - Again, with the war and Voltron and missing family and literally everything else going on--and the fact Pidge is far more practical than all of the rest of her fellow Team Voltron members combined--she isn’t wasting time and energy doing something as troublesome as falling in love with an alien. (“Keith, can’t your melodrama wait until after we win the war?” “My drama waits for no man.” “Then please explain how you and Lance manage to engage in synchronized dumb-fuckery at least three times a week.”) Eventually, after life has settled down and Pidge has had some time to think about it, she’ll realize that the reason she somehow managed to avoid any romantic entanglements in space isn’t because she’s just much more mature than her teammates (although this might be true)—it’s that she’s just not really interested in romantic engagements with anybody, period. 

 - Pidge’s one true love is discovery; she feels far more passionate about knowledge and learning new things, encountering new puzzles, and grasping new concepts than she does about anything else. In between all her creations and codes and experiments and observations, it just doesn’t feel like there’s room—or that there needs to be room—for a romantic relationship with a real person.

 - Pidge will make room for friends though, if and when they insist on worming their ways into her life. She tends to be a fairly private person who has never really had a large friend group (back on Earth, before Garrison, there wasn’t anyone but Matt and her parents who really understood her, and she didn’t have much in common to discuss with children her own age), but once someone earns Pidge’s trust, she does open up and form close bonds and she will give her all to help and be there for her few, but close, friends.

 - Meeting Hunk at Garrison was a huge revelation. Up to that point in Pidge’s life she had never really met any young person outside her own family with a soaring genius-level IQ that was a match for her own. Although she and Hunk bicker frequently because their approaches to science are extremely different, she’s still over-the-moon to have someone who doesn’t stare at her like she’s talking gibberish whenever she goes off on one of her tangents.

 - If you ask Pidge, she will violently swear up and down that Lance never and in. no. way. reminds her of Matt, fills in for Matt in the lame-older-brother role, or helps her miss her brother just a little bit less. That did not happen, never had a chance of happening, what are you even talking about—

 - But if you ask about Shiro, she will be flat-out honest and admit she totally thinks of him as Space Dad. It’s not her fault. Shiro literally hero worships Sam Holt (still to this day!!) and may or may not have taken on more of his mentor’s mannerisms in order to fill the leadership role for Team Voltron. Sometimes Shiro will say or do something and Pidge will be absolutely dumb-struck because he got that from my dad is an actual thing she has to deal with.

- “Pidge” is actually a derivative of “Pigeon.” Everyone in the Holt family has a bird-based code name. Mr. Holt is Eagle Two.

 - People often get the impression that Pidge is scatterbrained because she can talk about ten different things at once and pounces on leaps in her own logic that other people just can’t follow, but her thoughts and speech are very organized. It’s not her fault you couldn’t understand her system of organization if you tried.

 - Put Pidge on the spot on a subject she doesn’t know, though, and watch the awkward jump right out. (“Oh, you meant the pop band Galileo, not the person. You know, that’s really an easy mistake to make. You can hardly blame me when you stop to consider all the similarities between modern chord progression and the trajectory of supermassive objects like—”)

 - And if it’s not awkward, it’s defensive. Pidge may be hyper-intelligent, but she’s still very, very young, and it’s hard not to get snappish when challenged by people whose opinions she really does care about. She has a far quicker temper than Matt (who is a “revenge is a dish best served cold” champion), a trait she shares with their mother. Colleen, in turn, blames it on her having been born in New Jersey. Pidge has flipped so many tables on the Castleship that Coran and Lance eventually went around and bolted them all down.

 - Do not even so much as hint that Sam and Matt Holt might be dead instead of just missing in space. Keith is still scared after his last attempt at reasoning with Pidge about her family’s fate.

 - Has a bad hoarding habit. Back on Earth she had her parents there to insist she clean her room at least once a week, but in space, things are getting a bit crazy. The Castleship closets and cabinets can hyper-condense their contents and she’s STILL running out of room for all the neat doodads and parts and scientific wonders she finds on their adventures across the galaxy. Is definitely in the “Look, there’s still a mostly clear path to the door; it’s fineee” category. It’s not like she finds it hard to let things go once she’s gotten attached to them or anything. Nope. Definitely not.

 - Pidge’s mess is absolutely of the “everything has a proper place” type though. Move anything with her name on it and you will feel her wrath.

- As the only one of the Earth paladins to have technology on her when they were unexpectedly swept off to war, everyone on the ship relies on Pidge’s laptop for their monthly dose of Earth nostalgia. Good thing for them Pidge and Matt’s pirating skills put Pirate Bay to shame, and she’s got basically every Earth movie from 1980 to the present. She even has every episode of the timeless classic F.R.I.E.N.D.S. (Keith hates that show with a burning passion that even he cannot explain.)

 - Speaking of technology Pidge had on Earth—every single person in the Holt family is (and has been for decades) aware of the existence of aliens. Pidge’s family tree has been involved in communications, radio wave technology, and interpreting space observations since those fields were first invented. When Earth first identified patterns of waves that obviously corresponded to alien communications going on outside Earth’s galaxy, Pidge’s great- great- grandfather was there. When world governments covered up the discovery, he was the loudest voice of dissent. Since then, the Holt family has been deeply involved in military and space operations across several countries, operating from within an oppressive system they fundamentally disagree with, using their positions of authority to monitor the Milky Way and beyond, keeping tabs on what the aliens might be saying—and what messages Earth might be inadvertently sending back.

 - Of course this is top secret work—secret even from the Garrison and government where the Holts were employed. Other kids learn how to play piano and soccer; Pidge and Matt learned how to hack virtually impenetrable military databases and hide their data behind uncrackable ciphers instead.

 - But the Kerberos Mission was supposed to be safe. They’d all monitored the chatter so closely—there hadn’t been anything hostile anywhere even near Earth’s galaxy, no sign at all of any technologically advanced race like the Galra in years and nothing about one little Earth mission that would disturb any other intergalactic travelers anyway… Why would they...

 - Pidge is surprisingly athletic for a self-professed nerd. With youthful energy to burn and a family to save, Pidge took to Allura and Coran’s intense Altean training like a duck to water, and while she’s not quite Shiro or Keith when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, she can definitely holds up better than Hunk or Lance.

 - Favorite color is actually yellow, and if Green wasn’t totally The Coolest™ lion, she’d be sort of salty about Hunk getting the Yellow Lion instead.

 - Absolutely capable of cursing up a blue storm, and hasn’t been friends with Hunk quite long enough yet to remember to censor herself around him all the time like Lance does with his “Holy crow!”s. She’s trying, dammit!

 - Big on pets. Gets attached to pet-shaped creatures (whether living or robotic) very easily. 110% kept the space caterpillars, who live happily free-roaming the piles of space junk in her bedroom. The space caterpillars and the space mice do not get along, however, as the space mice do not take well to having their status as the favored fuzzy team mascot squad threatened. In their micro-Cold War, which is occurring without any of the ship’s humanoid occupants being aware, the space caterpillars are currently winning.

 - The caterpillars’ names are Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton.

 - Remember that one post about Lance drawing angry brows on the space caterpillar and siccing it on Keith? I very much accept that as canon. Pidge was Not Happy™ when she found out what Lance had done and she is NOT letting anyone else near her caterpillars again any time soon. Is very, very careful not to let Niresh see the space caterpillars so that they don’t end up stolen right from under her nose.

 - Speaking of the kids, Pidge is super awkward with them and skedaddles at the first sign of tears. Next to Allura, there is probably not any member of the team worse suited to babysitting duty. That said, as someone who has lost members of her family in the war, Pidge is probably the member of the team who most directly understands Dulsara’s anger and the children’s loss. That doesn’t mean she’s really ready to let herself sympathize with the Galra though, at least not until she finds her own family first.

- Pulls all the most bullshit moves in Monsters and Mana. Whenever the team reminiscences on the truly legendary moments from their campaigns, somehow Pidge is the star in all of them.

And that’s all I’ve got for now!

#pidge #Voltron #Pidge headcanons #voltron headcanon #HaaHVLD #Home and a Half #voltron fanfic

[autumnblogs]

Day 18: Engineering our own misfortune

https://homestuck.com/story/2939

It never occurred to me until now that being betrayed by Jack Noir, the first person to accept him for who he is in a sense, is probably a signifcant part of the reason why Karkat is so angry. It’s probably ironic that the Blood Player’s relationships all have a tendency to disintegrate. Poor guy.

All but one of Karkat’s coplayers will either die, betray him, abandon him, or break up with him before the adventure is over.

More after the break. CW: This one has some suicide mentions in it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2950

WV and the other Carapacians may have some instinctive level of awareness of the players’ classes and aspects - while their legend is ensconced in Carapacian Lore, WV instantly senses the narrative presence of the Thief of Light.

https://homestuck.com/story/2960

Now here is something interesting. I just picked up on it, even though it has actually been present all throughout - when the Narrative addresses WV, it addresses him with information he almost certainly could not know - in a call and response fashion! While he’s jumping from one thought to another in terms of John’s different correspondents, the way that he phrases his dialogue suggests that he is aware of what the Narrative is addressing him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2962

And by all accounts, what he is viewing here is not the literal material events as they unfold, he’s literally looking at the same panels we are.

https://homestuck.com/story/2974

Vriska’s gloating here has always given me chills. It’s in moments like these that she really shines as not just a bully but an authentic diabolical mastermind who is, at least at this point in the story, utterly indifferent to the lives of other people.

https://homestuck.com/story/2975

Vriska’s external locus of control excuses her of feeling guilty about creating Bec Noir. While she is 100% responsible for it, that doesn’t mean, in her mind, that she should suffer any consequences for it (although she’s perfectly happy to take the credit for creating him, it seems.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2992

I’ve always thought that the Dream Bubbles were an extremely cool plot contrivance - semantically linking memories together with dreams and death is a really cool bit of linking.

https://homestuck.com/story/3008

Just as Jade has had effectively no parent to help her find her way in life, she will now have to suffer a sprite who cannot give her advice either. She remains alone.

https://homestuck.com/story/3010

Bec, to a greater degree than perhaps even the Seers, is directly cognizant of interruptions by Command Prompts.

https://homestuck.com/story/3017

I’m starting to be able to actually pick up the themes of the whole Exile plotline.

It seems, in general, to be a parable on power and authority, with each of the Exiles representing one kind or another. You’ve got WV who aspires to be first among equals, democratically elected, a community leader and organizer.

You’ve got the White Queen, who fits classical tropes related to the Good Monarch, a symbolic authority.

You’ve got the Peregrine Mendicant, whose take on governmental duty is more that of a functionary - her self-concept is as someone who does what is needed.

And then you’ve got the Aimless Renegade, who, as a Mad Max Type wasteland cop, could be read as either a playful parody of eighties and nineties copaganda, or as a criticism of copaganda, or both - government as the State, an enforcer of constructed order.

Of all of them, it’s clear that WV and PM’s takes on power are the most useful. The White King and Queen are quickly slaughtered once Jack arrives, because without their magical mcguffins, they remain little more than walking talking symbols.

AR is an interesting case though, because his defining character moment is that he hesitates to follow his orders, and while it could be argued that everything that ensues is his fault for not being stone cold enough to do what needs to be done, I’d argue that his hesitation is admirable - Jack escapes to live another day, and the Mayor survives. The Mayor’s infectious compassion ultimately saves his own life through the AR’s refusal to let him die by destroying the command stations in Cascade, because AR is not willing to trade lives.

https://homestuck.com/story/3040

I’ve never been entirely clear on whether the Dark Gods should be considered evil or simply incomprehensible, morally uncategorizable - in any case, the unique nature of the Kids’ session seems to preclude an ordinary relationship with them. By all accounts they also seem perfectly happy to help Rose create the Green Sun as well, sowing the seeds that will grow into Lord English, their own murderer.

Whatever they’re up to is extremely unclear, and they mostly seem to be a wildcard. I’ll have to see if any of my Homestuck chums have thoughts about the Horrorterrors. With the exception of the Dream Bubbles and their ability to facilitate interaction between the living and the Dead, talking to the Horrorterrors seems to be at best an exercise in facilitating inevitable misfortune - they seem to be all but completely useless.

I suppose learning how to navigate the furthest ring comes in handy exactly once, since it enables the kids to fly to the Alpha’s universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/3043

Rose’s pessimistic dissatisfaction manifests in two ways during this conversation - the first is her contemplation of self-destruction. Along with her suicide mission, one of the very first things she mentions about Doc Scratch is that he wants to die - which clearly fascinates her. The other thing is that, suspicious of the version of truth that Skaia presents, and lacking an anchor, she is very easily swayed by characters who offer her an alternative truth.

https://homestuck.com/story/3045

It has just occurred to me that while Rose doesn’t do anything directly to harm her co-players the way that Vriska does, the main actual thing that they have in common, that I was having a hard time putting my finger on, is actually another parallel between the two of them and Aradia - by allowing themselves to be manipulated by forces of evil beyond human comprehension - Doc Scratch in particular - Rose and Vriska both make manifest all sorts of misfortune. In Aradia’s case, it’s her continuous manipulation by the voices of the dead.

Both of them create nearly all of their own problems, and while they’re at it, create immense amounts of suffering from other people who happen to be in the vicinity. And, according to the rules of the Alpha Timeline, both of them therefore give their assent to their misfortune. The Alpha Timeline is, of course, the same as the Glub Glub trap - if you refuse to participate, you are destroyed, but participation is horrible.

https://homestuck.com/story/3055

Couple things.

The first and most obvious is;

Monkey see, Monkey do.

We’re starting to see the fallout of Vriska’s attempts to acculturate Tavros - she’s tried to force a square peg into a round hole, and has had no luck. Tavros doesn’t fit her vision of an ideal troll, and he never will; that’s not the kind of person that he is.

The use of the word hero is what’s important here. Notice especially the way that he draws a line from physical fitness and personal worth - the ability to do important things that you want to do has become Tavros’ idea of how to self-actualize. He has internalized Vriska’s toxic ideas.

The other thing is that while Grandpa may not have literally committed suicide, but he is clearly emotionally checked out of life - playing Indiana Jones when he’s away from home, and interacting with fantasy women at his tea party, instead of engaging with his real life granddaughter.

Suicide’s a touchy subject, one which Homestuck touches on. As I’ve already said, I’m not going to touch on the Epilogues or HS^2, both of which also touch on the subject. It’s not a central theme, I don’t think, although either killing themselves or waiting around to die recur multiple times as possibilities in the minds of different characters, particularly the Lalondes and Striders. I’ll have more to say about each individual instance, but in both the insincere threat of suicide Rose uses in her early strife, and here in Act 5, the act of self-destruction is not motivated by despair, but by spite - for Rose, self-destruction would be an act to spite someone else who wants her to exist.

Grandpa Harley’s complete emotional absence from the life of his loved ones might be called a bit of emotional suicide. Checked out of personal reality completely to pursue a life of fantasy (and to facilitate Sburb), Grandpa Harley may as well have been dead from Jade’s perspective, even before he died.

https://homestuck.com/story/3056

The link between being a Hero Coolguy and Romantic (Reproductive) Success is drawn very neatly by Tavros, but because the premise is false, the conclusion is also false.

https://homestuck.com/story/3059

Vriska immediately calls attention to the way Tavros is parroting her behavior because of her influence - without all of the chest-beating and saber-rattling that Vriska does, the skillfully executed showmanship of being aloof and confident, there’s not that much difference between what Tavros tried to pull just now, and what Vriska has always done - even repeating her romantic faux-pas.

https://homestuck.com/story/3078

And we’ll pause here, before I get to another walkaround, which I will do tomorrow.

Not a lot that inspired me to talk in the 150 or so pages I got today. Lots of action in Act 5, but less emotional meat to dig into.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, alive but not alone.

#liveblogging #commentary

[fizzingwizard]

I was curious if rewatching Kizuna after not having seen it since it released in late February would change my opinion of it any. It has a little bit. Not a lot, but a little. Spoiler warning!

To recap, I didn’t hate it or anything, it just didn’t amaze me. As far as grown up nostalgia movies based off anime go, it’s pretty solid, I think.

I felt that I enjoyed it more this time around, and I think there are a couple reasons why: first, I’m having a good day, whereas when I saw it in the theater I was in the worst mood ever. :P So there’s that factor that’s totally unrelated to anyone to but me.

Second, we’re now so distant from both Tri and Kizuna that I’m not so inclined to compare them. They really shouldn’t be compared anyway for billions of reasons, but before Kizuna came out it was a natural thing to be doing. There was lots of weird hearsay about Kizuna on the net before the release too, like that a long time Digimon producer had walked on the project etc...

(I guess if you waited till the DVD release/overseas release, it hasn’t been out that long for you... but for those of us who saw it last spring, we’ve got some distance now xP)

So here's how I feel about it now:

I still just don’t enjoy the whole “you grow up and lose your endless potential so your partner disappears” thing. And it’s not even like it doesn’t make sense. In the Adventure universe, what’s always been clear is that wishes, strong belief, passion, are the energy that fuels creation. It was a fun kid’s concept that has grown a lot and reaches I suppose its inevitable grown up meaning in Kizuna. If your view of the future narrows and becomes something like “I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing as an adult,” it’s easy to see how that would result in a decrease of that energy. And it CAN be renewed. They explain the entire movie in that one blurb at the very beginning (which I actually missed the first time since I got to the theater late) that talks about how change is inevitable and there’s always a new adventure.

It’s a fleshed out idea. Much more well-rounded than those old fanfics that treated Digimon like parental replacements and their disappearance in adulthood was synonymous with growth. I always hated that idea because, like, I get that some fans only really like the kids, but I always loved the Digimon. I think probably the majority of us do? And reducing them like that... it just takes away the fun and the emotional impact of the story. I hate to be hit over the head with metaphor, especially when the metaphor is grossly obvious.

But because of that idea that was so popular while I was growing up, I can’t help but clench my teeth through Kizuna’s interpretation of it, even though it’s so much better developed. Kizuna’s concept makes sense and doesn’t diminish the Digimon partners, not really... but I just don’t want it. The underlying theme that it’s up to the Chosen to continue to choose to be Chosen, in their own way, and continue to try to unlock their unending potential as adults, and then presumably they’ll be reunited with their partners... like it’s good, really, I should like it. I just never wanted it and still don’t.

The way the movie focuses so heavily on Taichi and Yamato bothers me less than it did on first viewing. It helps that I like those two characters a lot. I will always wish we got more of everyone, of course. I’m glad Koushirou was still indispensable. Takeru and Hikari got to be really cool in the opening scene. Seeing Angemon and Angewomon fight together rocked. Sora’s abscene was tough, but makes sense with the theme of the movie and her chosen role. All the characters still seemed like themselves. I’m always going to want more, but I’m grateful for that.

Also on initial viewing, I was underwhelmed by the 02 kids’ role, but now I think they got a pretty good slice of the pie, all things considered. Especially Daisuke and Miyako, who were awesome. I’m still whatever about Ken’s part though and wish they’d picked ANY OTHER HAIRSTYLE.

The pace of the movie is really good. It doesn’t feel rushed or jerky the way parts of Tri did. The first 30-45 min I really do think are stellar - it’s starting with the reveal that Menoa is the bad guy (big surprise, not) that I start to be less interested. It leads to the big battle scene, which is elevated by the emotional and mental trauma that powers Menoa and even powers the Chosen Children she abducts. I definitely would not have preferred a standard Big Bad with no relatable motivations. But I still don’t like Menoa, as a person or a villain. I kind of wonder if Menoa is the result of plans for Himekawa in Tri that never made it...

There’s that bit where the other Chosen are brainwashed, and yet not, because it’s their own wish for things to not have to change that powers them... I get it, I do, but I still wish there were less brainwashing. Menoa really had to reach to pull out that wish so that it was at the forefront of their hearts to the point that they’d attack Taichi and Yamato. So it wasn’t really their decision, unless it’s a sin simply to have conflicting desires. I’m not saying I would have preferred Hikari, for example, to have said completely by her own will “I’m with Menoa and I’m going to attack my brother!” because that would be dumb. Rather, I just find the whole child abduction to Neverland concept boring. The long and short of it I guess is I didn’t enjoy the battle scene that much. Regardless of the story around it, it’s still just an anime battle that ends with yet another new evolution.

We could totally have had interesting stuff for the other characters to do if there weren’t such a requirement that there be a big long battle. Some battle? sure. It’s Digimon. But does it have to be that long? Really? Kizuna’s not being shown to eight year olds during Saturday morning cartoons. It was adult fans in the theater after work. For a story that’s all about unlimited potential, I wonder did Kizuna itself really reach the unlimited potential for Digimon stories? lol.

So those are things I just can’t get around. However, at least we got an enjoyable movie out of it.

I still vastly prefer Tri. Kizuna has better animation, steadier pacing, and a more tied up storyline. But to me, Tri is better partly because of the amount of time it had (six movies to one), the huge risks it took, the great character moments everyone got, and the nontraditional plot. Of course, as I said at the start, it really doesn’t make sense to compare Tri and Kizuna for the simple reason that Tri is a series and Kizuna is a movie. That’s not to say a movie can’t kick a series out of the water - it absolutely can, quality over quantity folks - but in this case I’d argue the amount of time makes a difference. Digimon is a show about 8 individual kids who were all nearly equal in terms of how much they mattered in 99 Adventure. That’s why the extreme focus on Taichi and Yamato in the reboot and in Kizuna bugs me. Tri had time to take on all eight and we still complained that we didn’t also get the four from 02. Kizuna has all 12 of the kids in the main cast for just 90 minutes total, that’s it. For fans whose priorities, like mine, are face time with the characters, getting to know them again, see how they change, and enjoy a mix of the familiar and the different, I just don’t think Kizuna can fulfill all that.

Pretty much, if we had Kizuna without Tri, I’d probably hate it for that reason. But because we got Tri before Kizuna, I feel free to enjoy Kizuna for what it is. Which is overall pretty good if just not my personal desire.

lol how come I just can’t write anything short. xP All that being said, there were tons of things in Kizuna that I loved, the art, the snapshots of the adult relationships between characters, esp Taichi/Yamato, Taichi/Koushirou, Takeru/Hikari. And more than anything, the relationships between children and Digimon. Also loved cool spy Yamato of course. And the whistle. I said all this back in Feb so I’m gonna end now but I did just want to sum up my thoughts after they changed a bit.

#kizuna spoilers #digimon adventure #kizuna #digimon

[kylermalloy]

my Thoughts on rebels

Now I don’t have any hot takes or any controversial opinions to put out here. Rebels is a simple show with a simple plot. There’s not a whole lot to analyze, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to enjoy. Sometimes all you need is a straightforward concept with lovable characters. So let me proceed to squeal about Dave Filoni’s second masterpiece, Rebels.

Spoilers abound!

Before I say anything else...

THEY HAD A BABY I haven’t stopped squealing.

Zeb Okay I’ll start with Zeb, for no particular reason. He was the only main character I hadn’t really heard about or seen much of before I started watching. In the first few scenes with him, I was afraid he’d become his stereotype—the thuggish gorilla who argues all the time, disobeys orders, messes up plans, and borderline betrays his friends. I was so pleasantly surprised when none of that happened. Maybe by virtue of being a kids’ show, these characters don’t have *edgy* or twisted nuances. Zeb is fiercely loyal. He likes smashing heads in and gets grumbly sometimes, but he’s never a hindrance. He’s not just “the muscle”; his ingenuity saves the day on more than one occasion. If anything, his nuances take him the other way—he’s incredibly sensitive and childlike in some ways. Being one of the last of his kind is a major plot point of several episodes, which brings so much depth to him and his psyche. It also informs SO MUCH on his relationship with Kallus. Speaking of...

Kallus I never, ever expected Kallus to be anything more than a season-long plot device. The fact that he stuck around and went through actual character development?? Amazing. The episode where he and Zeb are stranded together is gold. He’s got a sense of honor even as he works for the Empire, sparing the rebels as Zeb spared him. He develops a new set of ideals thanks to our heroes, and he begins to question and regret the things he’s done for the Empire—ethnic cleansing of Zeb’s Lasat people included. And that last scene of them in the epilogue? I’m not gonna lie, it was a bit shippy.

KANERA I know while the show was airing, fans were constantly asking when Kanan and Hera were going to get together. But for me, they seemed to be married from the first episode. Hera calling Kanan “love” and teasing him? Kanan constantly worrying after Hera while simultaneously believing in her ability to do...absolutely everything? Their parenting of Ezra, Sabine, Chopper, and even Zeb? Explicitly referring to them as “the kids” and themselves as “Mom and Dad”? Yeah, they’re married. And let’s not underplay their strengths as individual characters. Kanan—or Caleb—is exactly what you would expect of a Jedi whose training is only halfway complete. He’s cool and awesome, but also riddled with self-doubt and uncertainty. And Hera is the mature voice of reason this merry band of children so desperately needs—except of course when she’s the one rushing headlong into danger, whether to get a fighter prototype or to steal a family heirloom or to save a couple pilots in a suicidally risky move. She’s a perfect blend of mature reason and headstrong determination that makes a true rebel. (Wait a minute...she’s totally Katara! Maybe that’s why I love her so much.)

Now back to them as a couple! Most of the show did nothing to advance their relationship—further reinforcing my headcanon that things were always happening between them behind the scenes. Even though they became official canon in the last season, the appearance of their kid in the epilogue proves I was right—based only on what we saw, there was no time for them to make a baby. Of COURSE there were things going on behind the scenes. 😏 (I found the interview that explains exactly where Jacen came from, and I was equal parts ecstatic and freaked out.)

Did I mention THEY HAD A BABY???

Ezra So apparently there are people in the Star Wars fandom who hate Ezra? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; Star Wars fans hate everything. Except the OT. If you hate the OT you’re a heathen. I can’t really think of a solid reason why people hate Ezra, except for the fact that he seems to be a Luke Skywalker analog. He’s a poor kid with Force sensitivities who gets adopted by a Jedi and becomes a venerated leader of the Rebellion. He also finds an oddball group of friends he comes to call family but eventually bids them farewell after the death of his mentor. They’re not carbon copies, of course—Luke’s an optimistic idealist; Ezra’s a cynic. Luke whines; Ezra snarks. Luke blows up the Death Star and defeats Vader; Ezra completes a series of far more complicated missions and defeats Inquisitors and Thrawn. Again by virtue of him being the star of a tv show instead of just three feature length movies, he gets a lot more time to have his adventures. Maybe there’s some resentment over him getting more screentime than Luke? Maybe it’s because I’m just Not a Luke Skywalker stan. I like him fine, but I don’t hold him up as some perfect saintlike hero. (I didn’t have any problems with his TLJ characterization.) The people who do need to rewatch the OT they hold so dear. Luke’s a beautiful drama queen and you all should love him for that. But I’m here to talk about Ezra! Listen, this child is a disaster and a half—just like Luke, just like Anakin, just like young Obi-Wan. There is nothing to not like about him—except that he reminds you of your favorite characters but he’s not them.

Clone Wars characters I initially started watching this show solely for the characters I already knew from Clone Wars. Ahsoka Tano has been my girl ever since I started watching Clone Wars, and I didn’t even consider watching Rebels until I knew they had undone her death. (If there was just ONE character they could needlessly save via time travel, they picked the right one.) At any rate, she’s perfect in this show. She’s more grown-up, more mature, but still retains that *young and plucky* spirit. (For the record, I usually hate the *plucky* characters. Somehow, she works for me. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t really do that annoying cocky smirk thing.)

But it’s not just Ahsoka. Rex survived! I’m so glad at least one clone (two? Wolffe?) made it out of the war okay. And he’s great here. His constant snarking with Kanan reminded me so much of his banter with Anakin (and I’m sure it reminded him of that too ;-; ) His presence on Rebels isn’t strictly necessary, narratively speaking, but it’s just a nice tie-in to the world we got used to in Clone Wars. It reminds us that this world with the Empire was once the world of the Republic, and there are still clones out there—even if there’s no place for them in this new order. This of course reinforces the tragic narrative of clones as sentient beings created for nothing but combat. And again, I commend both shows for making me feel that narrative so deeply!

Hondo and Maul were two of my favorite antagonists from Clone Wars, so seeing their multiple appearances here filled me with joy. Hondo cracked me up, as usual, and Maul’s farewell was touching and heartbreaking. I almost wish he were still around! There’s still his duel with Ahsoka in season 7 of Clone Wars... 👀 Honestly what surprised me most about those two were the way they were both presented as protagonists. Hondo especially, and Maul does become an antagonist again. But it really speaks to the way all paradigms in the galaxy have shifted after the Republic became the Empire. In Clone Wars, Hondo was portrayed as an annoying hindrance to our heroes. Now with the Empire as an adversary to our main characters, Hondo is an ally. An untrustworthy one of course, mostly in it for the money, but his interests usually lie with helping our heroes, not hurting them. Besides, nothing tops his relationship with Ezra. Their first meeting had me in fits: “You lied to me?? I KNEW I liked you!” (Also I forgot to mention the running gag of Ezra introducing himself as Jabba the Hutt? Genius. And hilarious, since some people actually believe him at first)

THEY HAD A BABY!!!

Thrawn I need to see this guy again. Whether in a continuation where we learn what happened to him and Ezra, or some other moment in time where we see him younger, rising through the ranks of the Empire full of ambition and ideas. He’s quietly menacing, always confident and meticulous. He does a great job of making the rebels feel helpless in their fight, needling their pressure points and taunting them—but he never makes the conflict personal to him. He always remains detached, just a guy doing his duty. He’s just there to pick up interesting art pieces. I love the way he’s acted—always quiet, cultured, practically whispering. I didn’t know he was voiced by Lars Mikkelson until after I watched, but that was a perfect choice. I found the Inquisitors a little flat as villains (antagonists, whatever) and the other Empire ministers and governors not very threatening. Thrawn was the perfect balance (lol) between interesting and a genuine threat.

MANDALORE For all of Sabine’s merits as a character, I love her most in the Mandalorian arcs. The episode where she comes into her power and wields the darksaber is one of my favorites. She’s not a traditional stern, stoic Mandalorian character. She’s a free spirit, incredibly creative and intellectual. Yet she’s also afraid of her mind and what she could create—for years she created weapons for the Empire to feed her hubris. Maybe that’s why she mainly sticks to painting throughout the series. :) Anyway. I look forward to the follow-up detailing her adventures with Ahsoka.

Chopper I rolled my eyes so hard when I first saw Chopper. Everything from his name to his design screamed “kiddie version of R2D2” and I was fully prepared to hate him. I don’t. He’s just like R2, in that every sentence he says sounds like it’s punctuated with about ten different swearwords. It’s hilarious seeing such a cute character being so surly and even threatening on occasions! Chopper kicks some serious butt. He even comes with a tragic backstory!

Lastly, I don’t think I’ve mentioned...

THEY HAD A BABY AND HE’S ADORABLE

#star wars #rebels #mymeta #ish #kylerrambles #zeb orrelios #kallus #kanera #kanan jarrus #hera syndulla #ezra bridger #jacen syndulla #ahsoka tano #rex #hondo ohnaka #darth maul #grand admiral thrawn #sabine wren #chopper

[scarluxia]

Let's talk about some Adventures I had in Phoenix, AZ in 2015. It came up in my FB Memories and even though I determined to let everything from last decade go, this one still rankles. I got "in trouble" with these people for being open about my experiences on my Facebook because, even though I hadn't mentioned names, they didn't like me "putting their business out there".

CW for ableism, depression, rejection sensitive dysphoria, and I'll try to put all that in the tags.

My partner, Loki (yes real name), and I had been urban camping in Portland, OR for about a month. It had gotten cold and rainy to the point where we couldn't safely stay living outdoors, and Loki's father (who didn't approve of me) had demanded he come back to California and live with Loki's uncle. He made it quite clear I was not welcome, so I ended up going to Arizona because I had a friend who was willing to put me up. She and I had known each other since 2008 and I figured I would be safe with her. At the time, Loki was much more easily influenced by what his family wanted, and we ended up having kind of a nasty set of conversations over whether he was abandoning me.

While in Portland, my wallet had been stolen so I had no ID or SS card. I had reported it stolen of course, but had received no response until I was leaving Arizona.

My friend in Arizona had two young sons, a husband, and a boyfriend. Now, I have some sensory issues that make it so I have a hard time being around children. High pitched noises hurt me to my bones, like, even now I have to leave the room if my son gets overly excited and starts shrieking.

I was sleeping on the couch in the living room, which was where the kids would go when they woke up and where the TVs and entertainment consoles were.

Anyway, they wanted me to contribute to the household and whatnot but I was severely depressed and I think I've provided all the context I can remember? If the rest of this doesn't make sense, please know that there was a part 1 but it came up in my Memories on a different day and i didn't think I would be rehashing it.

So I couldn't do work, couldn't do anything anyone had asked me to do to satisfaction because various things that did not, in fact, depend on me. Maybe I wasn't being enough of a ~team player~, I don't know. But anyway, I did my best with what I had. Sometimes, because of THE EXTREME FUCKING SENSORY ISSUES THAT COME WITH AUTISM, I would get overwhelmed by the kids screaming. Two little boys, barely school age, and their parents sat them in front of a TV and gave them controllers. That's it. They had toys in their room, sure, but they weren't getting outside. I suggested taking them out a couple times, but firstly, I didn't know the area and wasn't about to go out alone, and secondly, I can't split in half and I'm not in good shape, so even if I had known the area, I wouldn't have taken TWO small children outside to run around where they could run out of the designated area. I'm kind of anal that way, I guess. But Woman A (mum) and Man B ("uncle") never got off their arses to help me take them outside, and Man A was at work.

Oh, yes, parental interaction with the kids. Woman A loved her sons very much. But at their age (3 and 5), they both should have been toilet trained. They should have gotten at least two hours outside every day. They threw fits when they weren't allowed to play video games because, instead of games being a special treat that was earned with good behavior, they were toys carelessly tossed at the kids to keep them out of everyone's hair. Conversely, and bizarrely, reading to them WAS a special treat. The father woke up, played games, basically brushed off his kids, and went to work. Same when he got home for lunch, and he *ordered* us to have them in bed by the time he got home for good. The mum did somewhat interact with them, but mostly just wanted them out of her hair. I wasn't so nice because I'm not good with kids in general and also loud screeching HURTS, IT HURTS IT HURTS MAKE IT STOP. (Same with snoring, or any noise made when I want to sleep.) This isn't me being a ~diva~, it is an actual manifestation of a mental disability.

Woman A was of the opinion that "everyone who lives in a house with kids automatically becomes a coparent", maybe because she wasn't willing to actually parent her kids herself.

Note from the future: I still disagree with the idea that "anyone who lives in a house with kids is automatically a co-parent". Parent your own kids. I don't expect my dad to parent my son when we go visit him and he made it quite clear when I was pregnant that he would not take on a co-parenting role (because his wives 30-50 years ago had handled the babies and he doesn't really know how to calm them down beyond entertaining them)

She got a really bitchy look on her face whenever I (who have been around children, especially TROUBLED children, all my life) made any sort of suggestion. Well sorry, lady, but it's not like you're doing such a great job with them. Y'all act like you barely want anything to do with them. Like they're cute and little and fun to snuggle, but actually teaching them anything? Forget about it, just toss em a controller and hope they don't kill each other in the game or real life. Meanwhile, they have no outlet for their natural physical energy, no real outlet for their curiosity. They're going to grow up stupid and sedentary, with "no one paid attention to me during childhood except when it was convenient for THEM" to deal with. The older kid recently got on meds for a condition that, from what I observed, was likely much more nurture than nature. And what everyone ate, my God, those kids were the only non-overweight people in the house, and it's little wonder! I bought ACTUAL NUTRITIONAL food for everyone, and the adults look at me like I'm from some demon dimension. I made a light comment about how I'd never eaten anything like what they had growing up. You know, boxed potatoes, veggies out of a can, white bread, sugary peanut butter. And Woman A was like, "well YOU don't have kids."

Um, no, but my father did.

I have a kid now, am working part time at min. wage because my boss sees my performance as so-so (plus she's been forced to give me a raise every time the County of Where I Live raises the minimum), in a single-income household, on as much Family With Kids welfare as My County will allow, and I still wouldn't feed my kid that crap LOL

Spoiler alert: they made me use all my food stamps on their household and then kicked me out later that month so... When I bought food I bought HEALTHY food, like, I've been on food stamps my entire life... Also, WIC specifically pays for WHEAT bread, fruits & veggies, and they do let you get peanut butter without sugar so idk what was going on there with them.

My father was a SINGLE PARENT raising a daughter in America after 20 years of living in Europe and raising kids with his previous wives. Well, up until the divorces, anyway. I was the only kid he ever got to keep. He told me things about how the others had been raised compared to how I was raised, and I saw the outcomes of different parenting styles in my peers as well. My father was a very poor man whose trade had been outsourced and who struggled to support us for years. And yet, we never went hungry, and he never fed me boxed potatoes. Never fed me sugary peanut butter, white bread, or veggies out of a can.

Ok I understand canned veggies are better than no veggies, and not everyone can get fresh, but you CAN get frozen in AZ. I always had fresh or frozen growing up.

It wasn't because we were living in the lap of luxury. It's because...

HE FUCKING VALUED OUR HEALTH OVER CONVENIENT, CRAPPY, NUTRIENT-FREE FOOD!!!! This is not a difficult concept. He ALSO read to me every night, despite having what I now realise was a very grueling day at work just to put said healthy food on the table. I didn't get to watch TV or play computer games (edu-tainment, the only kind I was allowed) until after all my homework was done. I can't remember if I was a particularly active child, but I'm sure I had the OPTION!!!! TO GO OUT.

Meanwhile, when I was at various stages of my life, I met kids whose parents shunted them from guardian to guardian because they didn't want to deal with them, kids whose parents were kind and supportive but rubbish at enforcing discipline, kids whose parents were abusive in every kind of way, and kids whose parents did their best.

You know, I wasn't raised perfectly. My upbringing lacked social grace and included some toxic ideas about womanhood that I've only been learning to overcome recently in my adulthood. But DON'T FUCKING ACT LIKE I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT RAISING KIDS JUST BECAUSE I DON'T CURRENTLY HAVE ANY. I have my own life, the lives of my peers, and a wonderful online community of new parents raising children in kind and socially aware ways, to draw inspiration from. I can go to any one of them, and to my own parents, and ask "hey does X seem weird to you?" And they'll give me their honest opinion, which *is valuable*. I have even mapped out a general idea of how to get through some parts of my children's lives, and I'm not even planning to have kids for at least another few years. I mean, honestly, it used to be "I don't want kids ever", but dear gosh, if I can have any part of raising someone in a manner that defies procrastination culture, entitlement culture, and everything wrong with the way my husband and I were raised, maybe it wouldn't be a complete horror. If I can ensure that not all hope for the next generation is lost, hey.

Anyway, I've gone off topic...

I also had some issues with the men. Man B just didn't seem to like anything ever. I had no idea what Woman A saw in him. I remember one time he tried to tell me, a Christian, that I can't tell people what a "real Christian" is because it ~invalidates their identity~. Excuse me, no. It doesn't work that way. There are things that Christ taught, and anyone who blatantly goes against them IN THE NAME OF CHRISTIANITY, IS NOT A REAL CHRISTIAN. And yes, I realise this entire rant has been very judgey and technically I'm not supposed to do that either, but it's not like I'm saying they're going to Hell. Just that their kids are going to be sluggish and stupid, and I can't understand how these people have the gumption to try to lecture anyone else about life when they're not even TRYING to get their own lives together.

Yeah so they tried to lecture me about how I was "letting" Loki mistreat me and how I cared more about "socializing" with my estranged husband (I have separation anxiety) than helping around the house e_e They also implied I used depression as an excuse to be lazy.

Man B was supposedly "super employable." Well, okay, even though his "job hunt" seemed to consist more of sitting around playing video games, he was larger than my father (who is 6 ft tall with a protruding gut and weighs 240 lbs at last count) (My father and I are both 60 lbs above our ideal weights. But we're working on it!), and never seemed to get past the phone-screening process.

Now, Woman A told me that Man B was looking for work and that her family and some friends looked down on him for being a freeloader. Probably because she was anxious about me thinking the same. But here's the thing: I wouldn't have cared. Honestly. If you want to sit around playing games all day in your married girlfriend's apartment with her and her husband playing video games all day, go right ahead. If you want to bake three potatoes at a time and take them back to your room for a snack, hey, more power to you. But don't piss out the window and call it rain.

I don't care how employable you are, where you live, who you're living with, or what your lifestyle is like. It doesn't affect me in any way. But don't act like you're doing something you're not just to appease someone's judgmental family. That doesn't ever end well.

Now, see, I clearly have a problem with people who do that. I don't hide many aspects of myself, though I will refuse to answer a question if I feel it's none of someone's business or if they're just asking it to be a judgmental asshole. I refuse to compromise myself or my safe space to accommodate someone who can't make peace with who they are. Hell, you know me! You know my show!

Wait, this is Tumblr, so you might not know my show. It's a YouTube storyboard dedicated to processing and mocking some spiritual and psychological abuse I've undergone in my life. On Facebook, it was one of the things I was known for at the time because I was constantly posting clips and art, and trying to recruit voice actors.

I sell anyone out who I catch lying to me about anything! That's nothing new! And these people knew that about me. For SEVEN. FUCKING. YEARS.

So anyway. Woman A has a lot of great short term goals but no actual follow through because "I'm just not in the mood right now." No judgment there. I've totally been there. The only problem is when it gets ME in trouble.

"Let's walk the dog." "I'm not in the mood." Okay, then the dog doesn't get walked because I can't figure out my way around the place alone.

"Let's do the dishes." Woman A doesn't let me know when the washer stopped. Okay. Then the rest of the dishes don't get washed.

"Let's take the kids outside." "No I'm too tired." Okay, then they're going to be RUNNING AROUND THE APARTMENT SCREAMING WHICH MY EARS CANNOT FUCKING HANDLE so bye I'm just gonna borrow your room and isolate myself for a bit.

"Let's go to the gym!" "Maybe later." But later never comes.

Do you see where I'm going here? As for the men, they BOTH complain that they're "doing too much" around the house. Okay, probably fair for Man A, who works full time and deserves to come home to a clean house. But Man B. Wtf. You literally do nothing, except when you do, and when you do, we're meant to throw you a parade? That's not how adulthood works, or so I've heard.

Note: All three of these people are older than me. I was 24? at the time, fresh out of trade school, on my own for the first time in my life. (Maybe 2nd? I ran away when I was 17 but ended up with my grandparents so idk if that counts.) Woman A was 26 at the time and had been married since 2008, had experience with office work and parenthood, etc. Both men were older than her. I was a chronological adult with the life experience of a teenager, so I felt comfortable saying that.

So did I mention that I'm sleeping in the living room during this stay? And the adults don't go to bed until like 2 AM, which means, because of my disability, wherein I cannot sleep if there's any sort of non-ambient noise, *I* don't get to sleep until AFTER 2 AM. And the kids? They come in the living room screaming at 6 AM. Yep. Okay. Living on 4 hours of sleep, for the mathematically challenged. That and dealing with the emotional turmoil of being separated from my husband when I've got high separation anxiety in the first place. All my pain, everything, it's up to 11. and I'm supposed to contribute but there's not really anything that allows me to contribute.

So what do they do? They ambush me. Call a "family meeting" to tell me absolutely everything that's wrong with me, after WEEKS of telling me what a big help I am and how grateful they are to have me around. Tell me I'm letting my "social life" get in the way of me helping around the house. Hmm. Social life. You mean, VENTING IN MY SAFE SPACE (Facebook, no names named) AND TRYING TO MEND THINGS WITH MY HUSBAND??????????????? Okay. Well since you guys treat your woman like shit, you clearly don't understand or appreciate devotion to one's spouse. Seriously. Woman A told me she used to have extreme separation anxiety with Man A, and that he would brush off her emotions as irrelevant. Her solution was to make it a poly relationship and take a lover WHO TREATS HER THE EXACT SAME WAY. I'm serious. She got no emotional support from either of them. They basically just threw pills at her and trained her to lie down until her feelings went away.

And she had the gall to lecture me (24 at the time) about how Loki (19 at the time & from a pretty horrific family) treated me. LOL ok. Log. Splinter.

As she knew, I'm monogamous. I do have some opinions on polyamoury based on individuals I've gotten to know who are in those types of relationships, but those opinions are irrelevant to this series of rants. Except one, which is pertinent: if you're going to take another lover, they should provide something that your existing lover(s) don't. If you're suffering from low emotional support and you just find someone else who doesn't emotionally support you and who treats you like a child who can't be trusted??? What are you even DOING? Like, she told me NEITHER of her men trust her judgment. What the fuck is a relationship without trust? And don't even try "dick too bomb" as an excuse when you tell me you haven't gotten laid in months and your husband is using your condoms on Woman B.

They don't support you. They don't trust you. And yet YOU'RE telling ME that things with my husband won't get better unless I follow your lead and take another lover? HELL TO THE NO. My husband has his faults, but if I tell him Person X can be trusted, he believes me.

Except for his ex-girlfriend whom he tried to add to our relationship when he tried to be poly, months later. That went Badly.

Or maybe he just knows I'll deal with them myself, with my hot, hot temper, if they turn out not to be trustworthy. He also doesn't treat me LIKE A CHILD. And while I sometimes point at things and make small motions when I can't physically talk, or sometimes even use baby talk when I'm feeling cutesy, I DON'T POINT AT A PIECE OF PAPER AND GO "THE CARRRRRR!!!!" IN AN INCREASINGLY HIGHER PITCH BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO SAY, "Honey, I think we missed the car payment this month. Can you double check while the agent has you on hold, please?"

Okay, being a dick about losing words due to stress was not my finest moment, but at the time, I was just so appalled by how they treated her and how she allowed them to treat me.

So basically these adults who are nowhere near having their lives together, and aren't even really trying, put me on blast for not having everything running perfectly when THEY expected it to.

Let's reiterate. I couldn't get a job because I had no ID or social security card. I was waiting for them to be returned to me. I couldn't walk the kids or the dog, go to the gym, or complete all the household chores because no one would guide me. I need that guidance because of various components of my disability, which I really hate admitting to because I'm super fucking prideful, but I figured hey, she's not neurotypical either. These people will understand.

Their response when I brought this up? "You're an adult. You should know better." Sure, okay. But you should know that a child ought to be potty trained before he turns 5, or even 3; that kids need to run around, are entitled to their parents' attention and consistent discipline, and need!!! healthy!!!! food!!!!

Oh, discipline! So, she would send Older Boy to his room over misbehaving. But rather than enforce time-out, she'd go, "oh, I think I'm being too haaaard on him," and just... Relinquish. He's not about to learn anything that way, ma'am.

They called me trying to reconnect with the person I love more than almost anyone on this earth "obsessing over your social life". Well again, you treat your woman like shit, so MAYBE my undying devotion to the person I love goes a LITTLE bit over your head.

They told me that the household should be my first priority. Except no, because I am an autonomous person and my FIRST PRIORITY is, was, and ever has been the love of my life, whomever that may be at the time. That is 70% of my personality. I'm pretty sure anyone who had ever met me can vouch for my extreme devotion, and this woman had known me for SEVEN. YEARS. I'm not going to throw away 70% of myself to do an impossible task that no one will help me with.

They told me a lot of things I wasn't doing right, and for those of you who also struggle with anxiety and depression, you know that being told for weeks that everything is okay and you're so great and so helpful, and then being told that you're rubbish at everything... You know that that is hurtful. Devastating, even. I wanted to kill myself. I said that. I said that and expressed my feelings about some other things, in my safe space, without naming any names.

And even though I was posting in my safe space, I was polite about it. I was as gentle and rational as possible. I wasn't calling anyone out. Not like I am now. I wasn't trying to lead a witch hunt. I was just overwhelmed and trying to express my feelings. Trying to get myself not to kill myself. I had to tell myself over and over again that it's not what Loki would want for me.

In the morning, they woke me up and kicked me out. Said it was rude for me to say I don't care about their household. I never, NEVER said that. I said "Loki is my first priority." Something along the lines of "that's just how I am and I shouldn't be vilified for it." That doesn't mean I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE. IT JUST MEANS THAT MY PRIORITIES WILL *NEVER* BE WHAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTS THEM TO BE. I AM A PERSON. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DECIDE WHAT TO PRIORITISE, AND I HAVE THE RIGHT TO LOVE MY HUSBAND!!!

I MEAN, FOR FUCK'S SAKE. MY NAME IS *SIGYN*. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU IGNORANT ASSHOLES EXPECT?! WHY THE HELL SHOULD YOU HAVE FELT THREATENED BY ME SAYING ANYTHING IF I DIDN'T NAME NAMES AND WAS ACTUALLY RATIONAL? IF YOU SAW THIS, *MAYBE* YOU WOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE PISSY, BUT NOT THEN!

They kicked me out after having asked me to buy them all food. I had used up all my food stamps. Because I hadn't anticipated this at all. I hadn't known they would take such offence to my existence, to my ways. To the fact that I value the man I married more than I value... Whatever they wanted me to value, I guess.

Fun fact: I ended up in a women's shelter after this, and one woman told me to actually kill myself because she was tired of hearing me cry at night.

They said I hadn't made any effort to get my life on track. Because I can just snap my fingers and make my ID appear. Because I can just manifest the money for a replacement. They said all these things that left me almost unable to breathe, in retaliation for me posting that I was suicidal.

Later, Woman A told me that this had been a long time coming and that they were trying to make room for Woman B and Woman C, both of whom were willing to have sex with the men, which is something that I would not. I feel the first woman I met at the shelter was accurate when she said they basically kicked me out because I wouldn't sleep with them.

I also later found out that my ID and SS card had been returned to sender. The Portland PD called me and told me. So my father came to the conclusion that the people I had been staying with sabotaged me from the start. For a while, I didn't feel it, but last night I dreamed about it, and the dream made me angry. I didn't deserve to be treated that way. And I really had to get all this off my chest, so for those of you who didn't immediately whip out your tiny violins, thank you.

#ableism #depression #rejection sensitive dysphoria #sensory sensitivity #child neglect #child abuse #resource insecurity? #i forgot about the part where someone tried to mansplain Christian gatekeeping to me #emotional abuse #polyamory but make it toxic #suicidal ideation

[abrunettefangirlnerd]

Can’t Sleep

Pairing: Tom Hiddleston x reader

Prompt: You have something on your mind that is keeping you from a good night’s rest. Tom, your boyfriend, wakes up and notices. Asking what is wrong he learns about what has been worrying you about the relationship.

A/N: Little short but soft. Hope you enjoy it.

Twisting and turning under the sheets you finally huff in frustration. No position is comfortable enough for you to fall asleep. In fact, as time grows on you find yourself increasingly more alert. The light of your alarm clock illuminates the room, and you see that it reads 2 o’clock in the morning.

Peering to your left you see your boyfriend Tom sound asleep next to you. He has a big scene in his upcoming show he has to film tomorrow and wanted to be well rested for it. A pinch of jealousy sprinkles over you as you wish that you were sound asleep instead. Though Tom needs it more than you, tomorrow is your day off but you planned on hanging out on set a bit.

“Darling if you keep thrashing around over there you’ll fall off the bed.” Tom’s tiredly rough voice mumbles next to you. “Is there something bothering you?”

There actually has been something bothering you. You and Tom have been together for quite a few years and have recently been talking about the concept of marriage. When he first brought it up you were over joyed at the idea of taking your relationship to such a big step. You love Tom so much and you know that he loves you too. Though it is funny how you could be ready to marry someone but still not know their stand point on some aspects, especially when it is becoming more important.

“Umm,” you get really quiet. “I guess there may be a… umm tiny thing bothering me.”

Tom adjusts his frame to face you that shows his undivided attention. Focusing in on his face you see worry lines across his forehead. Trying to muster up enough courage you briefly trace your thumb against them before cupping his face. Tom kisses your hand and runs his hand up and down your arm in comfort.

“We don’t have to talk about this now,” your breathing becomes shallow. “You have to get up in a few hours.”

“(Y/N) please tell me what is wrong. I won’t be able to sleep till I know what it is.” Tom pleads with you.

“Okay,” you nod and try to collect your thoughts. “We never really talked about this. I know that you’ve mentioned marriage, which I’m ready whenever you are, it’s just…”

Tears form against your eyes to blur your vision of Tom in the dark room. You pray that your love is strong enough and that what you have to tell him really isn’t that big of a deal. Taking a deep breath you blink the tears away and find a worried and pained expression across Tom’s face.

“Tom we never talking about kids.” You look away for a moment before continuing, “and I’m… I’m pregnant.”

You begin to ramble on without the ability to stop. Explaining you tell Tom that you completely understand if it is not in his plans to be a father, and you would hate to lose him but that you want to have the baby. That he can be as involved as he would like from “not at all” to a “fully committed father.”

Tom just sits there soaking up your words, not interrupting. At first he seemed shocked, you both have been careful about it and of course would not have thought it would happen. Though after a few moments you stopped seeing his wheels turning in his head, but you still cannot stop talking. Being who Tom is, he doesn’t stop you but takes your hand in his and looks at you with a loving gaze.

“(Y/N), darling.” Tom says once you’ve run out of air. “I’ve always wanted to be a father. The fact that it gets to be with you makes it all the more wonderful.”

Smiling, Tom lowers his lips to yours and softly embraces you in a kiss. Running your hand down his chest, Tom’s fingers tangle in your hair. Tears run down both of your faces and neither is quite sure whose are whose. It doesn’t really matter though, you are both going to be parents.

“You’ve given me one of the two best gifts I could ask for.” Tom breaks the kiss and presses his forehead against yours before slipping to the floor by the bed. “The only other thing I need in my life is you, (Y/N). Darling you are the one I see myself growing old with, a loving companion to share our defeats, successes, and adventures. You are the love of my life, least till this little one gets here. Would you (Y/N) (Y/L/N) please do me the extortionary honor of being my wife?”

“Yes!” Your voice croaks breaking through the stream of tears once again flowing down your face.

Tom embraces you in a hug as he kisses your cheek and then your neck. Revealing the ring, he places it on the correct finger and holds you tight in his arms. Whispering “I love you” every few seconds you find yourself drifting off to a peaceful sleep in your fiancé’s warm arms. While asleep the both of you dream of the day of your wedding, and of course your life with the soon to be baby Hiddleston.

Taglist: @drabby-abby

#tom hiddleston #tom hiddleston fanfic #tom Hiddleston x reader #tom Hiddleston x you #tom Hiddleston imagine #tom Hiddleston baby #tom Hiddleston x pregnant reader #loki x reader #loki imagines #loki x you #Loki Laufeyson #loki odinson #loki marvel #tom Hiddleston marvel #marvel #marvel x reader #marvel x you #tom Hiddleston pregnant #tom Hiddleston pregnant reader #tom Hiddleston dad #tom Hiddleston fluff #tom Hiddleston fanfiction #loki fanfic #loki fanfiction #cute tom hiddleston

[your-hurricane]

neon moon || chapter 1 - broadcast me a joyful noise unto the times

A/N:  Disclaimer, I haven’t written fanfic since I was fourteen so please be gentle with me, friends

AO3 link

Fair warning that the only editing this has gone through has been proofreading!

Also, the first two chapters are largely exposition and setting up the various connections between Frankie and the MC (Natalia), but they will finally get to meet in chapter three!

Neon Moon summary: [starts three years after the events of the movie]

Single dad Francisco "Frankie" Morales and former Ph.D candidate Natalia Yevstigneyev-Diaz are trying their best. 

Alternatively: Frankie and the woman about to change his life keep missing each other, until they don't.

“Whoo-wee! Nice one, Diaz!” Benny said from where he’d just been knocked onto his back atop the sparring mats. 

 At her instructor’s praise, Natalia Diaz preened, making a show of taking her long dark wavy-curls out of her workout ponytail and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Thank you, thank you, always happy to hear my badassery is increasing.”

 “I’d say perfecting. That was solid.”

 “Yeah, haven’t seen him go down that unexpectedly probably ever,” piped up a man with big, kind brown eyes whose name Natalia swore was Frankie. She’d only ever heard him called by his real name once or twice --- Benny usually greeted him as Fish.

 If Frankie was here, that meant the rest of Benny Miller’s military buddies would be trickling into the gym. Pity they seemed to be on time today— flipping Benny was fun, maybe he’d’ve given her a window to do it again. Sometimes if his buddies ran late he’d keep sparring with her past the self-defense session she’d paid for. 

 “It’s thanks to him and his lessons! Wouldn’t know where to begin without him.” Natalia hi-fived Benny from where he was on the floor, now sitting. “Thanks as always, Benny. See you Friday afternoon?”

 “Hell yeah!”

 “Awesome. Well, I’ll get out of your hair before the rest of the guys show up. Later Benny!” She nodded politely to Frankie just as she spotted the man she knew to be Benny’s older brother and...Pope? Santiago? again, she’d only run into these men in passing.

  ~.*~.*~.*~.*

Natalia Diaz’s early life read like an adventure, and in many ways, it had been. Her mother, Anna Diaz, was a first generation Mexican-American of Spanish, Mixtec, and Chinese background who met her father, then in medical school, while studying abroad in Russia. Her father, Gavril Yevstigneyev, was from Yakutsk of mixed Russian, Yakut, and Chuvash background. He was a doctor who gave up the possibility of an ultra-lucrative career to spend most of his life working as a medical officer in human rights organizations, and she was a research assistant in those same organizations.

 Born while her father was practicing in St. Petersburg, Natalia Gavrilovna Yevstigneyeva Diaz didn’t spend too long in one place. She may have been a dual citizen of the United States and Russia but she didn’t set foot in the United States until she was twelve years old, and her earliest concept of ‘home’ was Pakse, Laos. She was educated at international schools across Southeast Asia, and spoke Lao, Khmer, and Vietnamese in daily life depending on where the Yevstigneyev family was living, Russian at home, learned English and French at school, and her mother taught her enough Spanish to understand her abuela’s English-Spanish mix on birthday and Christmas phone calls.

 When it came time to graduate from secondary school - she graduated in Laos, ultimately  - she even applied to universities across Laos, Canada, Cambodia, France, The United States, Switzerland, China, Singapore, Australia, and Russia. At her parents’ insistence she cast her net far and wide. Except, with twenty-two acceptance letters and zero rejections, she almost wished she hadn’t.

 She studied at McGill University and through a combination of scholarships, her parents’ help, and her “waitressing” job (stripping job actually, and Natalia was damn proud of it and the crazy money it made, but knew her parents would flip out on her so she lied), she earned her B.A.s in linguistics with a minor in translation and interpretation, and anthropology.

 She had her pick of the litter as far as where she could settle post-grad: her dual citizenship made the US and Russia wide open to her, Canadian employers were offering to keep her in Canada, her parents still lived in Laos - six years in one place? That was a record for her folks! - and the NGO they were working for straight up offered her a job without her even sending an application. 

 There wasn’t a grad school on planet Earth that would’ve rejected her application.

 Natalia’s life should have been set forever. For a while, it was.

 After a gap year traveling Bhutan, Thailand, Indonesia, Mongolia, and completing the Trans-Siberian railway with her younger sister Mariya, who took a gap year between secondary school and university herself, Natalia prepared to conquer grad school….at motherfucking Yale!

 That same year, her parents and younger siblings (save Mariya who was studying at Yakutsk State University in their father’s home Russian Republic of Yakutia) moved to her mother’s home state of Texas. A part of Natalia felt bad for her eleven year old sister and the three year old twins out of some sense that her upbringing had been, objectively, the best possible. Natalia did not feel Russian, or Mexican, or American, or Laotian, or Cambodian, or Vietnamese, nor did she feel the need to. Borders were an arbitrary thing. People were people just with different languages, looks, and customs, and she believed she came to know that truth early in life because of her childhood as a third culture kid. 

 She understood why her parents made that decision though.

 In her first year of grad school, the Yevstigneyev Diaz siblings were twenty-two year old Natalia, nineteen-year-old Mariya, eleven-year-old Valentina, and two-year-old Alisa and her twin brother, the only boy in the family, Pavel. Alisa had been born partially deaf and their parents, as if they could react any other way, saw it not as a terrible thing to mourn over but as an opportunity to learn. A challenge did not equal a burden in their eyes. When she was two, however, they realized they needed to either move back to Russia or move to the United States.

 The Yevstigneyevs primarily worked and lived in Vietnam and Laos, and there was no singular Laotian or Vietnamese sign language, rather, localized sign languages. As Alisa grew from an infant to a toddler they decided they did not want to deprive her of Deaf culture, and thus, the decision to move to Texas was made.

 Just two years after relocating to Texas, tragedy struck the family.

 A car speeding through a red light killed Anna and Gavril on the way home from volunteering their time to teach Russian classes at the local Russian cultural center. Natalia, then twenty-four years old with a newly minted Masters from Yale and acceptances to three Ph.D programs, had to force out emails declining the offers, pack up her apartment, and move to Texas to raise her siblings.

 Abuela Rita instinctively offered to handle her grandchildren, but Natalia couldn’t possibly make her abuela (who she barely knew at that) raise three children again. Besides, her mother’s youngest sister still lived at home, and this was the same year Hurricane Harvey destroyed one of her uncle’s homes and he, his wife, and their children were also living in Abuela’s home...yeah, no. No, this had to be Natalia.

 It was Natalia or the state of Texas and like hell she was going to throw her three little siblings, two of them just four, and one of them deaf,  into the system. Alisa being able to communicate in ASL was so important to her parents...how could Natalia possibly let Alisa go into a system that wouldn’t care?

 And anyway, it wasn’t so bad. She used her fluency in Russian, Lao, Khmer, and French to work as a book translator. She’d even gone back to dancing four days a week for two reasons. A. You’d think speaking five languages fluently would mean she was making an assload of money, right? Wrong. and B. The inheritance and life insurance policies from her parents wouldn’t last forever and she had four college educations to finance. 

That was three years ago, and two and a half years before she started taking self-defense classes from Benny Miller. She’d only been working at an Austin strip club for about four months when one handsy patron reminded her that she needed a refresher on how to throw a punch.

 As for why she was Natalia Diaz now and not Natalia Yevstigneyeva? Well. She was still Natalia Yevstigneyeva-Diaz, but unless she was filling out legal papers, or at the Russian cultural center, it was just Diaz. Her mother’s last name was just easier for Austinites to pronounce right. You had to be at least a level six friend to unlock her tragic backstory and her full last name.

 Natalia had had everything going for her until one drunk driver took her parents, her Ph.D goals, her planned return to traveling the world, and even her name in one instant. 

 She wished she had it in her to be bitter but that would require her to have time to think about herself anymore. If it wasn’t taking ASL classes with Alisa, it was listening to Mariya complain about her job. If it wasn’t Valentina’s archery competitions, it was Pavel’s gymnastics meets. 

 (Yes, yes, she knew. How stereotypically Russian of them to have a kid in competitive gymnastics. It wasn’t her idea! Pavel loved it and when he begged his big sister to be allowed more than one class a week...she dared anybody to say no to that face.)

Any Natalia time she did have was too precious to spend being bitter, she decided.

   ~.*~.*~.*~.*

“Natasha! Nataaaaaaaasha….NATASHA!” 

 “Wha!” Thud! “Fuck. Oww.”

 Natalia groaned from where she’d fallen into a startled pile on the living room floor, staring up at the ceiling and turned her head to shoot a glare at Mariya.

 “Marusya, one day, you’re going to scare me awake to actual death.”

 “That’s impossible.” Valentina said from where she sat at the dining table typing up a paper for school. “If you’re scared to literal death you can’t be scared awake because you’ll be dead. Dead people can’t be awake.”

 “Unless she’s a zombie, Valya!” Shouted Pavel from his room down the hall.

 “Pasha’s got a point.” Mariya said, to which Natalia grabbed her foot and yanked hard, making her shriek as she fell against the couch. “Oof. Anyway, you’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry up.”

 Natalia checked her watch and let out a swear under her breath. “I really need to not spar with Benny on work nights. Hey, Valya-” she sat up on the floor and whirled around to face her middle sister. “Do I need to drop you off for babysitting anywhere tonight?”

 Valentina shook her head. “Abuela’s picking me up to take me to Mr. Morales’. I’m watching Daniela.” Mr. Morales - whoever that was - lived near Abuela and her taking Valentina to his house gave her some ‘Valone time’ she liked to say.

 Natalia peeled herself off the floor and made her way to her bedroom, stopping by Alisa’s on the way. She grabbed the purple narwhal plushie that lived in a little basket attached to her door - the Get Alisa’s Attention Narwhal - and gently tossed it at Alisa, and when it landed in her lap Alisa tossed it back to Natalia, kept her hands free, and said “I didn’t forget.”

 “Good. If you’re good at the dentist tomorrow morning, I’ll buy you ice cream after.”

 “Isn’t that the opposite of what you should do after the dentist?”

 “So you don’t want ice cream?” “That’s not what I said!”

 Natalia laughed and stepped far enough into Alisa’s room to ruffle her hair and then said, “Be good. Masha’s in charge while I’m at work.”

  ~.*~.*~.*~.*

 “Thought you were day shift on Wednesdays, Natasha!” A black woman with her hair in box braids — Jess, stage name Phoenix — said, throwing her arm around Natalia when she first got to work. 

 “Nah, I talked to Paris, got my hours changed around, remember? Gosh, it’s like you don’t remember everything I ever say to you.” 

 Jess stuck her tongue out and muttered, “Bitch,” before smooching Natalia’s cheek.

 Natalia shoved Jess off of her with a giggle. “Go finish getting ready, ya crazy.” She sat down in front of one of the available mirrors to touch up her makeup before she was officially working, then addressed Jess again. “My 11-8 days are now Sunday and Monday. Wednesday, Saturday, I’m here with you 8 til 4, baybeeeee.”

 “Mm, good call. Wine Wednesday.”

 Half price wine meant more cash for dancers. 

 “Needs more body glitter,” Natalia said in her best Christopher Walken impression, before unscrewing the cap of her body glitter to shiny herself up. 

 “Now in your Zoya voice!”

 “Needs more body glitter,” Natalia repeated, this time, in her stage persona’s stronger Russian accent.

 The accent helped to further distinguish between Zoya the performer and who Natalia was offstage. It also wasn’t exactly offensive, either, because it was just Natalia exaggerating the accent she naturally had and just making it consistently Russian. It was a mess otherwise. Natalia and Mariya...talked funny. Their accents were kind of impossible to place because of how they learned English and which languages they first learned to actually speak in.

 At first listen, their international school education would hint at American- ish . But listen closely and certain vowels come out like an Aussie or a Canadian, courtesy of international school teachers from those countries. Listen for another moment and you’ll hear that Natalia’s tongue, specifically, never learned to consistently make certain sounds that English has that Russian, Lao, Vietnamese and Khmer just don’t. Natalia’s H’s came out harsh courtesy of her Russian father. And both Natalia and Mariya had a habit of dropping articles when telling their younger siblings to ‘close window’ or ‘feed dog and cat.’

For the most part, as Natalia tried to explain to anybody who asked about her accent, English was a language for the classroom. They spoke exclusively Russian in the home and out in ‘the wild’ spoke the local language. Yakutsk was a closer flight from Laos, Cambodia, or Vietnam than Austin was so if they visited any grandparents for Christmas it was their babushka and dedushka in Russia.

 Returning to the US permanently never was the plan, remember. It was only a decision they made for Alisa to live somewhere with a standard sign language -- and the only reason, Anna confessed to Natalia once, that they didn’t go back to Russia, was because Natalia had recently come out as bisexual.

  “We worried for Valya and the twins. What if they also grow up and realize they aren’t straight? The way it is in Russia for people like you...your father and I love Russia more than the United States. But we love our kids more than Russia.”

 She hated how vivid that conversation was in her head. There were some truly beautiful moments with her mother that had already faded from memory. How unfair of her brain to let things like holidays, birthdays, and her mother’s hugs slip. 

“Drive home safe, Jess.” Natalia bid her friend farewell a little after four the next morning, kissing her on the cheek before she unlocked her own car. If she got up to 70 and stayed there, she’d be home in time to count her tips, shower, and fix breakfast for the kiddos before school and in Alisa’s case, the dentist.

~.*~.*~.*~.*

 “Stand still Pasha,” Natalia said as she gently bopped the seat of her baby brother’s pants to knock the glitter off them. “Your butt looks like a glitter cannon exploded right next to it.”

 Pavel giggled and pointed out, “It’s your fault there’s always glitter in your bed.”

 “You shouldn’t lay down in my bed for naps after I’ve woken you up for school anyway. Especially not after you’ve already got your clothes on, you dingus.”

 “ Heeeey, that’s mean!” Pavel pouted.

 “Not if I’m saying it with love. Which I am.” Natalia stood up and pressed a kiss to the top of her brother’s head. “Okay, your butt’s as unsparkly as it's gonna get.”

 “I don’t see what wrong with having a sparkly butt anyway.” Pavel grumbled.

 “Now run along to the bus stop with the other kids. Be good at school, learn lots, I love you kid.”

 “Love you too , Natashe-!” the -nka! came muffled as Pavel had darted out the door to run down to the bus stop. 

 Natalia sipped on her coffee and watched out the window as her brother darted across the field to the complex’s mailbox pavilion to make sure he joined the other children safely. Satisfied he had, she turned away from the window to trudge back to the kitchen and refill her coffee and begin her vanilla work for the day before she had to wake Alisa for the dentist. On today’s docket? Trying to get through editing at least the first third of her Russian translation of the next book in the hottest new YA series.

 There was nothing Natalia wanted more than a nap but she was already cutting her deadline close. Right on schedule was the same as being behind in the literary translation world. If she wasn’t so ahead of schedule she was getting bored then she was nearing panic mode. 

 Logically she knew that only she felt that way. Her boss didn’t, or at least never felt the need to express to her that he did, but just herself was enough to put the pressure on from beginning to end of a project.

 It had benefited her in school. Not so much in her career.

 A life in academia as a linguistics scholar and researcher would have suited her better. The universe didn’t consider that when it let a drunk driver kill her parents and leave her three siblings to raise and Mariya’s academic dreams to finance.

#pedro pascal fandom #triple frontier fanfiction #frankie morales fanfiction #francisco morales x ofc #my fic #neon moon fic #ofc of color #multiracial ofc #Francisco catfish Morales

[pan-crow]

PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT HERSHEL ADOPTS CLIVE AU lowkey i've thought about the possibility before and it's fantastic in a bittersweet kinda way..... i wanna hear your interpretation of it :eyes emoji but really fast:

Tumblr deleted everything I typed out before I’m so sorry let me see if I can summarize it again. It started with this back in December 

We were talking about the various PL villains and which ones we liked and didn’t favorite too much and for some reason I brought this up idk i have a weird brain that cant focus on one thing. Anyway I put it off till like…January. I wen’t back to @well-clearly—-it-can in the AAFC and was like “Really though its not unreasonable for Hershel to possibly adopt Clive at that time impulsively.” because its…not? I mean (spoilers sort of for AA4) Phoenix went and technically impulsively adopted a child when he was at his lowest point. He expresses that through those first few months, Trucy was his light. I feel like Hershel if not in his right mind, would do the same thing. 

Hershel saves Clive, this child trying to run into a burning building. He holds him for a good long while until people come to help and he just stays there wondering who the child lost and wondering if Claire is safe. It doesn’t hit him until much later that Clive is crying for both his parents, but the police or whatever take him from there. Hershel doesn’t adopt Clive right away, but he thinks about it for a few weeks. Maybe a week and a half.

He thinks about how Clive, a child in the same boots as his own, is probably just alone right now with no source of comfort for the pain hes feeling. He feels like that sort of feeling should be familiar though hes not sure why. He eventually goes back after thinking on it for so long and adopts Clive on impulse. Hershel is at a vulnerable point in his life so thinking straight is not an option, hes only doing what his brain is telling him is right. 

Cut to Hershel then realizing he doesn’t actually know how to raise a kid. He didn’t take any classes to teach him how and hes not exactly at a place where he can just ask his parents. So Hershel Layton, being the big brained professor he is, goes to Clark and Brenda like “Hey guys I know I only just lost Claire and things have been really rough and I just became a professor but like…I have a son now?”

Clark and Brenda are reasonably worried because “Hey Hershel you literally just lost someone and became a professor what were you thinking doing this.” but…they’re good friends? They help him. They help Hershel balance his work and his time with Clive and it really gets Hershel through the first good chunk of raising this child. When they move hes got an okay grasp on what to do. 

Now Clive’s half of this experience is fun. Clive is a pretty traumatized child as it is? Hes not going to open up to Hershel for the first month and a half. He doesn’t really know Hershel, and while Hershel saving him helped with trusting him, he doesn’t think he can talk to him just yet. Clive stays selectively mute for some time until hes sure hes going to be okay. Even when he is sure, he doesn’t talk a lot and won’t call Hershel dad (which Hershel is totally fine with.) but…they manage. Some days Hershel will get Clive coming into his office later on to ask about homework or something else. A word, a sentence, even a simple smile is an improvement Hershel is more than happy to see from this kid. 

When Clive starts to warm up to his new life he slowly begins to open up more about things that interest him as well. If this kid so much as looks at a book or a toy or something in a shop window and shows some sort of curiosity or interest in that item, you bet Hershel is going straight back there later and buying that thing just for Clive. Somethin like

The personality of Hershel doesn’t really change at all however Clive living around him means Clive isn’t as big of a lil shit as he is in game? Like don’t get me wrong hes still pretty...uh...snarky? But its not bad and he can control his temper just fine. Hes just got a bit of sass because thats who he is. Hershel doesn’t mind it. 

Uh..I want to say in terms of adventures, Clive isn’t with the group on all of them? Perhaps Last Specter, Curious Village, Pandora’s Box and Lost Future. But hes not there for Miracle Mask, Azran or Eternal Diva? Simply because the guy has other things to do. Does Luke still turn up and join the adventures? Yes! Luke is a key character in the games so it would be unreasonable for me to remove him. Clive absolutely treats Luke as a little brother. Luke really looks up to Clive just as he does Hershel.

And speaking of Lost Future, the entire plot would be different but I still want it to happen because...its kinda important? Like Dimitri still goes ahead and does whatever the hell he was planning but he just doesn’t have the brain of an angry child at his side. No one dies thats for sure. Clive doesn’t become violent at all but he does loose his temper quite often during the whole ordeal because its been years and its all bringing up bad memories he doesn’t want to have to think about. Hes just started to feel good again. He doesn’t want to have to deal with all of this. Claire still exists, still disguises herself, and is 100% confused when she sees Hershel has a son. She can’t ask directly about it in order to not blow her cover, but she does wonder. She wonders what lead Hershel to having a son and where Clive came from. 

She eventually gets Clive’s story in a passing conversation between the two when she asks why Clive is there with them. She knows the deaths of his parents aren’t her fault, but he can’t help but feel guilty about it all the same. Shes just glad to see Clive happened to land in good hands with a great father whose clearly raised him well. 

Idk the aus a bit funky and a little all over but I love it and I live for the concept I am so sorry this post is so long I have so much to say about it sdfdsf. I’m gunna write a fic about the convo between Claire and Clive at some point because I like the idea of it. 

#Professor Layton #Clive Dove #Hershel Layton #Chats and Talks #Bookers Dad Hershel and Son Clive AU #thats it thats the tag for this #Long Post

[rachywritessomething]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! For LOE, I know you've been writing it for a long time and I love hearing how wips got started so do you remember what inspired LOE or what first got you started (like a plot, character, scene, or legend idea for example)?

I think in order to understand what inspired me to start writing this story is to get an idea of the pieces that make it up. I’ve been writing for this universe for almost eight years now, but the concepts have existed in some form or another for most of my life. Since I was a little kid, I have been in love with Tolkien’s lore (they were some of the first movies I saw in theatres) and “lived in my own little world” as my family puts it. But I won’t start too far back.

Winter 2005: I was in the third grade and wrote a story about a princess named Val. That princess has continued to exist as a character in some form or another in several stories since then and has finally evolved into a terba named Valenrey.

Spring 2008: I was a fifth-grader and had taken a profound interest (obsession) in dragons and as such, stole my brother’s only two books -Eragon and The Hobbit. Eragon quickly became my favorite story and had a special place under my pillow. From that story, I thought up a small, silver dragon named Iris.

Summer 2008: While frantically cleaning the house, my mother picked up Eldest and said, “whose copy of... Edelpest is this?” Suddenly I knew who was meant to fly with this Iris character. At least for the time being.

Fall 2009: In the seventh grade, gravitated toward werewolves. I started a story about “Kat,” an elf, and “Thief,” a werewolf originally named Paul but I had to change it because a kid named Paul in the class below me committed murder.

July 2011: On a road trip, I wrote a short story about sisters Katerine and ___ (now Perinnea) who lived in a suspended village, high in the trees. They were elves and Perinnea dabbled in magic which, to her “soon to be chief” sister’s horror, was considered unnatural and punishable by exile. (I did it first, FROZEN lol)

November 2011: I was a freshman in high school and the final installment of the Inheritance Cycle came out. Within three days, I managed to devour the whole thing despite having swim practice. For the first time ever, I was incapable of reading at all afterward.

December 2011: I was enduring my first “hell weeks” of swimming and was not taking it well. I got an iPod touch for Christmas and downloaded all five books of A Song of Ice and Fire. I swam, I ate, I slept, I read. I finished all five books before the end of January and my “book hangover” worsened.

March 2012: I discovered a writing app for my iPod and started recording a story about a girl named Edelpest who was found by a dragon named Iris and invited to join him in the magical land beyond The End. This was the beginning. I didn’t write voraciously because I was in art, I was in sports, and over the summer I got my first boyfriend, but it was something I picked up from time to time.

October 2012: As a dumb sophomore, I accidentally dropped my iPod off the roof of my house while I was sitting up there, writing. It was fine until the following day at school when I knocked it out of my pocket (I was pulling my hand out to hold that boy’s hand) and it shattered on the ground. The End was lost.

November 2012: I scribbled out “Spanish” from the cover of a yellow spiral notebook. My intention was to rewrite The End but I didn’t know enough about this elf Iris was best friends with, this elf who was meant to be Edelpest’s adversary. I wanted to know why she chose to stay behind when Iris went on this adventure and found Edelpest (and her friend Valenrey). So I started to write about his quest with his best friend, Helina, and rather than returning to Iris’ POV upon completing chapter two, Thief decided to join the story. This notebook, now safely tucked away in a banker box in my parents’ attic, is the first draft of The Assassin.

February 2013: I finished my swim season and it did not go to plan. I was devastated because it was the last I would have at that high school. I ate a quiet dinner, I showered as much of the chlorine out of my skin and hair as I could, and when I went to bed I distinctly remember having one, bright thought: “at least now I can just write.” That was when I realized that writing WAS my art, it WAS my outlet, and I WOULD pour myself into it. It was not long after that I had decided how Letters of Edelpest would end.

Since I started writing in notebooks, I have completed five drafts of The Assassin two drafts of The End, two drafts of The Thief, one draft of The Rogues, and I have only the start of The Vaults. All my notebooks have been kept, every file has been saved, and while I have five books for this series (LoE), I have other stores to tell with these characters in these settings. Three prequels have been planned and drafted, three stories will tell of the happenings after this series is done, and eventually, years from now, I will go on to write my greatest adventure of all, the kind I, as a young child, would have been terrified and enthralled to read by flashlight. Letters of Edelepst has been my primary project for eight years but that’s nothing compared to the time I have put into the details, and the time I will dedicate to bringing these characters and this world to life.

Sorry, I got a little carried away...

#Letters of Edelpest #Inspiration #OC #am writing #writblr

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

American culture is saturated with the idea that public housing is inevitably and uniformly grim — not so much a place to live as a place to lay your head while you plot your escape, or to simply resign yourself to paralyzing poverty and social invisibility forever.

The impression of public housing as dull, dilapidated, and dangerous has always worked in favor of those who would rather there be no public housing at all. Private real-estate developers, landlords, banks, and assorted wealthy people who don’t like paying taxes benefit enormously from our pessimism and lack of imagination. It galls and frightens them that we might someday start to view public housing not as emergency aid for the most destitute, but as an ambitious long-term solution and preferable alternative to the atomization, insecurity, and relentless exploitation of the private housing market — that is, that we might build public housing so attractive that people wouldn’t want to take out mortgages or pay market-rate rent anymore.

So they would rather we didn’t find out about Red Vienna, or Le Lorrain in Brussels, or Sa Pobla in Mallorca, or even the heyday of British council housing. These projects past and present demonstrate that social housing can be vibrant, safe and beautiful, all while being affordable and reliable for ordinary working people.

1. Red Vienna

To capitalists whose profits depend on extracting as much value from land and shelter as possible, raised expectations for what public housing can accomplish are an existential threat. And nothing raises those expectations quicker and higher than familiarity with Red Vienna, the paragon of social housing in modern history.

Unsurprisingly, the massive undertaking to build decommodified housing for the city’s residents was spearheaded by socialists. A robust labor movement with socialist leadership had established itself in Austria during industrialization in the late ninteenth century, but socialism really came into its own after the First World War, when the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy created new political openings. In Vienna, the Social Democratic Workers Party came to power in 1919 and immediately set about implementing an ambitious reform program.

The socialist city government imposed heavy taxes on the wealthy and, starting in 1923, used new revenue to replace its overcrowded and drab working-class slums with modern public housing. Because these were built by socialists with a vision for decommodifying shelter entirely and with a political allegiance to the city’s working class, they weren’t begrudging bare-bones offerings. Far from it, they were high-concept, masterfully-built edifices, many of which have stood the test of time. Their construction doubled as a good unionized public jobs program, helping the economy recover after the war.

Red Vienna’s social housing was designed not just as a place for workers to recharge between shifts — what Barbara Ehrenreich has aptly called “canned labor” — but as a place to live. The majestic apartment buildings featured leafy courtyards, copious open space, and plenty of natural light. They had well-equipped shared laundries and communal state-of-the-art kitchen facilities. They were connected to, and sometimes contained within them, public schools and cooperative stores. Many even had bathhouses and swimming pools, healthcare and childcare centers, pharmacies, post offices, and libraries on the premises.

The largest apartment block in Red Vienna, Karl Marx-Hof, was used as a fortress against militant fascists in the lead-up to the Second World War. The socialists put up a valiant resistance, but in time Red Vienna fell to the fascists. Even so, the city retained the memory of beautiful social housing: for residents of Vienna, the illusion that shelter had to be either private or subpar had been forever shattered. Vienna continued to build desirable social housing after the war, and today 62 percent of the city’s residents live in social housing, compared to 5 percent in New York City.

“We have an old idea here that not only rich people should live in good conditions,” says one 52-year-old social housing resident in Vienna. “It’s an important idea and we should hold onto it.”

2. British Council Housing

In 1979, 42 percent of Brits lived in public housing. The big and bold postwar British public housing system wasn’t a telltale sign or symptom of widespread immiseration. Instead it was the fruit of a century of reformers’ visions and working-class struggles. Some council estates were modest, while others — like the charming, eccentric turn-of-the-century Boundary Street Estate, or the striking modernist buildings designed by communist architect Berthold Lubetkin — were carefully planned for maximum livability and architectural allure.

British social housing was funded through progressive taxation, an arrangement that social democrats justified by pointing out that public housing tenants performed the labor that made large personal fortunes possible. Naturally, this never sat well with the domestic ruling class. So when a global recession in 1973 caused a crack in the foundation of the economic system, capitalists and their political allies leapt at the opportunity. Deliberate underfunding of the housing projects —  rationalized as a consequence of unavoidable recession-era belt-tightening — began in the 1970s, followed by a full-on privatization scheme in the 1980s.

When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she swiftly passed legislation allowing tenants to buy and eventually sell their council flats — a clever way of absorbing the publicly-furnished housing stock into the private sector and reestablishing the supremacy of capitalist markets. Low-income tenants have been subjected to steadily disappearing protections and increasing rents ever since.

As shelter costs creep up on earnings across the UK, many who grew up in public council housing are nostalgic for a time when working-class tenants were protected from the vagaries of the private rental market. They remember their council-house upbringings fondly. “You practically knew every kid that was here, and you always had someone to play with,” recalls one woman who grew up in the Quaker Court Estate in London. “The parents got on brilliantly as well. If one of you was having a party, the whole lot of you would go.”

“We had an idyllic childhood,” says another, who grew up in the Boundary Street Estate in London — the city’s oldest social housing project, born on the heels of the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1885. “We really did. I mean, it seems strange to say that now.”

A man who grew up in the Heygate Estate in London recalls that he “loved it here… I remember being dazzled by the whiteness of the fitted kitchens, and the stairwells seemed to head to heaven, and away from the slate-grey streets below. This was the modern world, and it was ours for the taking.”

Austerity drove many estates into disrepair in the late twentieth century, and Thatcher’s ongoing right-to-buy scheme continues to privatize what remains.

Only 8 percent of Brits live in public housing today, but they still have a stronger intuition about social housing than Americans do. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has recently proposed an ambitious new social housing initiative, and it’s been received with an enthusiasm that’s difficult — though not impossible — to imagine in the United States.

3. Spain’s Architecturally Adventurous Housing Projects

Though privatization and austerity are on the march everywhere, the social-democratic legacy of high-quality public housing hasn’t entirely evaporated. Particularly in Europe, there are a handful of recent developments that draw inspiration from the projects of the past — particularly their architectural legacy.

Spain has recently taken up the mantle, and has turned its public housing program into an opportunity for architectural experimentation. In Madrid, the Mirador housing project features a large open space in the middle of the vertical building that doubles as a communal plaza, while the Carabanchel Social Housing project is heavy on bamboo and the 120 Parla project has a retro-futuristic appearance. In Barcelona, the Torre Plaça Europa looks identical to a pricey condo building in London or New York City — same with the Parc Central Social Housing Building in Valencia. The Sa Pobla project in Mallorca looks like something a movie star would rent out for an Instagrammable vacation, and social housing for mineworkers in Asturias is a geometric novelty, inspired in color and shape by the coal that the miners extract.

But Spain is not run by socialists, and while the architecture of these new social housing projects upends the idea that poor people should live in ugly and boring buildings, the projects leave some things to be desired. These buildings are often located on the peripheries of cities, where land is cheaper — for a reason, since these areas are underdeveloped and remote. Building social housing on the outskirts tends to segregate working-class tenants and burden them with costly and time-consuming travel, a mistake also made by the otherwise relatively successful Swedish miljonprogrammet, or Million Program. Fashionable buildings are an improvement, but ultimately unsatisfactory if there aren’t shops or schools nearby.

Imagine these buildings in vibrant city centers and you’ll have an idea of what social housing can actually achieve. Better yet, imagine them in bustling neighborhoods and equipped with their own publicly-run pharmacies and daycares. Now you see why Red Vienna remains the social housing gold standard, in terms of real value to working-class tenants.

4. Savonnerie Heymans and Le Lorrain, Brussels

Brussels has given Spain a run for its money in recent years. Two developments in particular — Savonnerie Heymans and Le Lorrain — are shining examples of social housing architecture.

Savonnerie Heymans, named after the soap factory that used to occupy the site, is less than half a mile from Brussels’ central square. It comprises dozens of units of varying types — studios, lofts, duplexes and apartments ranging from one to six bedrooms. The architecture is as varied as the units themselves: there are boxlike structures made from glass and slatted wood that have a modern Finnish-sauna feel, and white pitched-roof dwellings that resemble modern interpretations of Belgian cottages. In the middle is the old chimney from the soap factory, the kind of homage to industrial history that’s usually cloying in bourgeois settings, less so in a social housing project.

The smaller Le Lorrain is designed by the same architects and is also a renovated industrial complex, this one an old iron dealer. The new estate is spotless and stylish, like something out of Kinfolk or Dwell. But what’s remarkable about Savonnerie Heymans and Le Lorrain isn’t just their pleasing architecture; it’s that, unlike the Spanish projects, they’re located on high-value lots in lively neighborhoods, avoiding the problem of working-class siloing. Their designs also encourage communal life to a greater extent: plenty of shared outdoor space, pavilions and gardens and “mini-forests,” and Savonnerie Heymans even has a game library for kids.

The major downside to social housing in Belgium is that it’s a complicated public-private affair, with a labyrinthine nexus of developers, providers, payers and categories of tenant. The system is decentralized, and while Brussels doesn’t allow tenants to buy (or eventually sell) public housing as Britain does, other Belgian regions do — and there’s a danger that Brussels could fall prey to this policy, as austerity and neoliberalism break the social-democratic commitments of municipal governments across Europe.

This is another area in which Red Vienna shines by contrast. The planning, construction, finance and maintenance of its social housing were highly centralized. The buildings were completely planned and administered by a democratically-elected body, and they were never intended to be privatized. They were provided by workers, for workers, ideally forever.

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