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husky-twst-and-obeyme · 3 years

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Dorm Loaders react to you having a pop it but for fidget reasons

I KNOW IM CRINGE IM SORRY - but pops help calm me down - so i thought it'd be cute for a scenario too

This version is when you are dating the dorm leaders as well as the reader is gender neutral

Riddle

Riddle was aware of the trend, he gets why but he's slightly annoyed by it

he was meeting up with you for a study date , before he approached you , he noticed your pop it

funny enough it was a strawberry one

"hah...you're into this too?" Riddle asked in a firm but slightly annoyed tone

"yeah? why ?? " you were constantly popping the bubbles

"hm? are you ok?"

"oh yeah! don't worry riddle , this is just calming me down! or keeping me calm at least- It's a fidget toy after all "

He kinda just stood there in silence, he completely forgot that's what the main purpose was

but this really opened his eyes on how anxious or fidgety you can get

"Very well, just don't make too much noise with it . "

"Aw i thought you were like the strawberry one "

He blushed a bit but quickly composed himself "Im glad you were thinking of me but- wait how many of those do you have ?"

"...." you just smiled

" y/n how many do you have - "

"............i may have over 30 - "

"WHAT-"

Leona

He's not too fond of the trend but he doesn't care either

He goes to the spot you agreed to meet up at for him to nap on you

then he sees you with a pop it

ugh...am i even gonna nap..." he begrudgingly walks over

"hey leona!" *pop*

"Please tell me you're not gonna use that damn thing while i nap .."

You looked at him but looked down 'Sorry..I'm just a bit anxious today."

His ears went down , he didn't get it , why does it evolve the pop a thingy ma bop "what does that have to do wit this..?"

"That's the original use- a pop it helps with stress and anxiety but it can help you focus too! "

He stood silent which lowkey made you more anxious

then he spoke "fine, as long as it isn't too loud, i don't care " he lays on your lap and sets himself in place

"oh ok! I think number 25th is the quietest one i have "

"*yawn* yeah ok ..."

"......you have number f**king what now..?? "

Azul

He is aware of the pop it's and actually uses it to his advantage

He actually sells them as a small bonus for certain meals

It actually is quite popular and he makes more money from it

One day , he noticed you having on but it was more unique then what he sold

"oya oya , you seem to be in this trend like the other , little pearl "

"oh yeah , i already had one before you sold them "

He seemed interested , he actually never looked into the pop its much but really used it for profit

"If you don't mind , what is the purpose of these?"

"well why everyone else usually gets them is either because of it trending , it's satisfying or just to show off but my reason is completely different

As you spoke that , he noticed how figdety your hands were getting and you were constantly popping the bubbles

"..does it relax you ? "

"Yeah and it can distract me too, it really helps !" you looked giddy

he blushed a bit, your smile was the sweetest thing to him, in fact it makes his day

"w-well..if you want , i could get you more"

you perked up " oh sweet ! even though i have like over 30 "

"that's great little pearl I'll-....30!? "

Kalim

He has his own- you can't convince me otherwise and it annoys the hell out of jamil XD

You had like over 100 because he's extra of course , one for a different occasion

When you came over for a private date in the lounge, he took notice of your pop it , it was a ring looking one

"y/n...are you proposing to me!? " he was obviously joking but he did lowkey want to marry you

"pff very cute. i just have a lot on my mind. " you popped it a little faster

that kinda threw him off guard, he thought of it as a play thing , so he was a little confused, just a smidge

"It's a nice little fidget toy..." then it clicked for him , he didn't think it was a fidget toy- now he does

"Ah i see y/n ! I'm glad it keeps you calm "

You both continue your date and you both actually played with your pop its during then

THen kalim spoke " how many do you have ?" "ah...over 30 i think?"

"ah.." Kalim looked blankly

"..t-too much?.." you seemed worried

"To much ..? " he then suddenly beamed " you mean too little! Come on I'll get you some more!! "

"HUH-"

Vil

He knows too well of this trend, he even got offered to do commercials for pop its

He was actually really annoyed by it. plus the poping gets old to him

He one day noticed you with one ,but he's not surprised

Even if he's annoyed by it , he can understand the popularity and satisfaction of it

"Ah , sweet potato..You're into this trend ?"

"Well.. I was in it before it was a trend. It just helps my fidget"

Ah. He knew you were a fidgety and anxious person but it went over his mind of the pop it being more of a fidget then a toy

still won't change his mind of how annoying they are

"i don't care if you use it but please refrain from making too much noise with it "

"hmm..I'll try but i like the sounds. " you pouted a little

He covers his face with his hand and sighs "Fine. but only for a small bit because it honestly pains me to constantly hear popping. "

"calm down , this is one of the quiest ones i own!" you smiled

"...How many do you have?"

"....mayhaps over 30"

"....."

"...."

"sweetie. My little darling. my sweet potato. you have a problem"

Idia

Of course he's in the trend and has his own , fite me

Idia kept it more lowkey then others but he really enjoys pops it and even got ortho some

SO he was happy that you had some of your own too

" ehhh! y-you have 30 !? " Idia spoke after he questioned how many you had

"it's not that bad. They're all different at least. Look at this kitty one!"

He looked in awe of the kitty pop it and held it "They have ones like this?? I thought it was just normal shapes?? "

After explaining all different shapes and varieties , Idia got excited

It was a nice time too, you both looked online to see some that you didn't have , some were cute while some were interesting

But something caught Idia's eye. "eh? what's this "

It was a pop it game board, it was just two pop its connected to a rubber board on each side

"how do you play?" he questioned

"i'm guessing you use the dice to pop the bubbles , and everytime you pop it fully you get a point? " As you point to the area that has 3 bubbles to show points

Idia was silent. Then the mouse slowly went to "add to cart "

"you're getting that for the board game club, aren't you ? "

"yep :) "

Malleus

Probably has the purest / most confused reaction

He often keeps hearing of these ..."pop its"??

He sees others with them , coming in different shapes in sizes. he almost mistakes it as like a pet

The only person he would talk to more about it, is none other than his beloved

"Dearest. could you explain to me what are these things? they're quite confusing..." HE said as he examined one of yours

"Well...you know that feeling of being anxious or highly stressed? These things can distract or calm you down, try poping some of it and see!"

He did as he was told and oddly...he enjoyed it ??

malleus kept popping it for a few minutes without saying a word, like he was in a trance

"M-malleus ?? you ok ? "

"eh? ah. i'm sorry , i got distracted. "

you giggled because he was acting so cute, especially now possibly being invested

"I'll try and get you a dragon one !"

and you could of swore that a dragon tail suddenly and he wagged it

#twst disney #twst #twisted wonderland #riddle rosehearts #riddle x reader #leona kingscholar #leona x reader #azul ashengrotto #azul x reader #kalim al asim #kalim x reader #vil schoenheit #vil x reader #idia shroud #idia x reader #malleus draconia #malleus x reader

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blockgamepirate · 3 years

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Technoblade’s purpose in the political narrative of the Dream SMP

I can’t sleep so I decided to finally write the post I’ve been struggling with for literal months, except way more casual because I can’t be bothered anymore and also I’m sleep deprived.

So the thing is: to me the DSMP storyline has always been primarily political, probably because I was introduced to it through Wilbur who was definitely going for political, and also because I’m just generally interested in political narratives right now. Obviously I appreciate the character work and the personal relationship stuff, that’s what makes it more interesting than just dry allegory, but when it comes down to it, this story is about politics to me. So that’s the angle I’m going to approach it from.

Also not to spoil the conclusions here, but I’m an anarchist, that’s my lens.

(Obviously all of this is about rp from here on out unless otherwise specified)

Basically the situation as Techno joins the server is this: L'Manburg exists as an autonomous nation and is de facto independent although not officially recognised by the Dream SMP. The self-appointed president Wilbur Soot decides to hold an election and rig it in order to consolidate his power over the nation he founded and he gets his VP Tommyinnit to join in on the plan. Their scheme fails and they end up voted out instead. The new president, Schlatt, immediately establishes himself as an authoritarian figure and exiles Wilbur and Tommy.

A couple of points on what the election arc demonstrates:

1: the appearance of democracy can be used for distinctly undemocratic purposes.

2: even if the elections aren’t rigged, the electoral system could be massively flawed and end up favouring a party that in fact didn’t have the popular vote

3: even if the winning government (the coalition in this case) has the majority vote, that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll actually act according to the popular will.

4: the supporters of the losing parties basically just have to let the majority overrule their wishes, espcially since apparently L’Manburg doesn’t have an established role for an opposition, yikes. That’s actually a MAJOR oversight in the system but I’m not gonna go into that too much.

5: frankly as an anarchist I am just deeply cynical towards representative democracy, and just because you have a token appearance of choice and consent doesn’t mean that it isn’t a hierarchical and authoritarian system. And to be fair, from my point of view this applies even to so-called liberal democracies and progressive parties. Full disclosure: even if L'Manburg was the ideal example of a representative democracy (which it very much isn’t) I would still be opposed to it because I fundamentally do not believe in top down systems, even electoral ones.

6: despite all these flaws, all the characters seem to implicitly accept the electoral system as legitimate. There’s criticism against the actions of individual characters acting within the system, such as Quackity calling out Wilbur for trying to rig the election, but nobody is questioning the system itself.

So at this point I’m sitting there, watching all this go down, and thinking “man, this would be so much more bearable if there was an anarchist point of view being represented in the story.”

And hey, look who IMMEDIATELY SHOWS UP.

Okay, I’m not gonna lie, early installation Technoblade is not the best representation of anarchism. I was mostly rooting for him out of sheer contrarianism initially. I didn’t really even care if it would be another Killmonger/Magneto/Zaheer situation because I’m used to reading against the authorial intent when it comes to these things. Sometimes any representation is better than no representation, even with political ideologies. That’s not to say that him just straight up spouting this hobbesian notion of a “dog-eat-dog world” didn’t grate on me, obviously it did.

That kind of worldview of humanity needing authority in order to prevent chaos and conflict is literally antithetical to anarchism and is the favourite talking point of authoritarians, the least anarchist people there are. It’s literally what people use to argue AGAINST anarchism. I think it’s mostly because cc!Techno obviously wasn’t particularly educated on anarchist thought and was just basically having fun roleplaying with his friends at this point. Which is frustrating but fair enough I guess.

Cynical ideas about human nature are pretty deeply rooted in the mainstream, unfortunately, most people just consider it common sense. And like I said, it’s a huge talking point in the propaganda against anarchism.

(… even though in fact these arguments were originally used against proponents of representative democracy. Hobbes himself was very much a monarchist, the idea of letting normal people vote for their representatives would have been terrifying to him. Like surely the world would descent into a free-for-all war, all against all. Imagine letting commoners have OPINIONS, the horror.)

So yeah, that stuff was pretty ehhhhh. It was basically what I’d expected though: cc!Techno isn’t an anarchist and we just don’t get accurate representation from non-anarchists, ever. What I dared to hope was that Techno’s character would at least stay consistent about his opposition to ALL governments. I was pretty sure that he would, even though it seemed like the majority of the fandom at the time was convinced that he would switch over to Schlatt’s side or something. It would have been a really shitty twist, I would have ragequit immediately. I mean what would have been the entire point of his character then? He might as well have been a random mercenary. Why even have his character be an anarchist if you were just going to make him work for a government?

(ftr this is kinda my biggest problem with the Hypixel Skyblock revolution event lol, honestly I think that was a worse depiction of anarchism than early DSMP Technoblade. I mean the speech was good, but… still became a government official, tho. booooooooo, cringe)

And yes, I was rooting against L'Manburg, obviously, and I would have even if it had meant having to deal with another badly written anarchist villain character. I never understood why people saw L'Manburg as the good guys, they were nationalist and exclusionary and their whole existence was based on trying to scam people for money.

I mean they were definitely funny, they were great entertainers. I have no problems with people rooting for them because they’re fun to watch; I did that for a bit too. But people were starting to get really into the story and talk about Wilbur and Tommy, the corrupt politicians, and the country that literally excluded people based on nationality as the heroes, unironically, which was wild to me. And when Wilbur started his “villain arc” well: people called it a villain arc, as if he hadn’t been pretty much a bad guy from the beginning, constantly just out for money and power and taking advantage of the people around him and then pretending to be the victim when challenged. I mean yes he got worse, but I wouldn’t call it a villain arc, more like just a mental breakdown arc.

More importantly, to me L'Manburg represented so many things I hate about the status quo in real life, and seeing the fandom mostly unquestioningly accept it as good just pissed me off. Still pisses me off tbh. I mean, to be diplomatic I could say that I understand the emotional attachment and the way L'Manburg was built up mirrors a lot of how real nations are built and how they create a sense of patriotism out of symbols and a sense of honour and loyalty, and it’s actually really fascinating how it even works in a Minecraft roleplay. Says something about the human mind I guess. Doesn’t mean I have to like it though.

Anyway, I just wanted to see literally any kind of opposition to power, even if it had to come from a character that was unquestionably a villain, which I fully assumed Techno would be. Because political narratives so often just leave us out, or at best barely mention us. And even from a narrative point of view, adding an anarchist perspective to a political story just objectively broadens its scope and actually challenges people who are used to only arguing along the lines of conservative or liberal, welfare state or privatization, nationalism or multiculturalism, etc. Even if the original work dealt with it poorly, at least it would give me the excuse to rant about it on Tumblr, which is kinda why I revived my old Minecraft sideblog for this. (That and pig!Techno fanart.)

Also how can you have a story so fundamentally about power without its counterpoint: the rejection of power?

(Yes, Dream SMP as a whole is definitely a narrative about power, it’s a huge theme for Wilbur, Quackity, Dream, Eret and the Badlanders at least, as well as obviously the anarchist characters from the opposite direction.)

So yeah, the build up to November 16th for me was mainly about the anticipation for what Techno would do, how would Techno’s character respond to the seemingly inevitable formation of a new government. THAT was the point of interest for me, that was what I was the most invested in. Would we get an actual anarchist opposition as a new side to the conflict or would they just awkwardly drop that whole angle? Or even have him team up with Schlatt like a complete sellout? There was so much potential but I worried they might just waste it.

And I was right to worry since apparently in the original script Techno wasn’t supposed to do anything, he was just there to help fight Schlatt and witness the explosion along with everyone else.

And WOW that would have been so incredibly boring

Not even just from the political perspective, just talking about the narrative in general terms here: imagine November 16th without Techno’s plot points. Not only would it have been boring for Techno’s character but it would have been equally boring for basically everybody but Wilbur and Philza. An anticlimactic fight followed by a big explosion that pretty much everybody had seen coming already. Yes, the button room scene is dramatic and heartbreaking… for Wilbur and Phil. But nobody else was there to see it. For everybody else, it was just a big explosion. It would have been such a huge disservice to anyone watching the other POVs.

Techno’s intervention gave everyone an ACTUAL climactic fight, it allowed characters other than Wil and Phil to witness some actual drama happening and to participate in it, rather than just waiting around for the explosion, while also foreshadowing the explosion. Even better, it provoked SO MUCH discussion in the fandom AND gave a perfect hook for future conflicts to arise. Wilbur’s end was tragic but it was, at the time, final. L'Manburg would have still suffered a catastrophe but it would have been left with just the same exact antagonist as before: Dream.

And at this point Dream’s core goals had barely changed, just his approach was now different. Yes, that makes a difference for the plot, but it doesn’t really change much in terms of ideological conflict. Especially since there really isn’t that big of an ideological difference between Dream and Tommy, because arguably neither of them are particularly big on ideology in the first place, they just have conflicting goals and use different tactics to achieve those goals (well, the tactics aren’t always even that different *cough Spirit cough*).

Techno’s conflict with Tubbo and especially Quackity (and honestly most of the other characters in general) brings in so much more depth to the story, just by introducing another angle, not to even mention how much it brings to focus questions about power and violence. These are themes that exist in other characters’s storylines too but nowhere in the same way or as central as with Techno.

I’m getting kind of ahead of myself here, though.

The real twist of November 16th was the fact that Techno WASN’T a straight up villain, actually. It was a twist to me anyway, because with all my cynicism I just didn’t see it coming, I didn’t expect him to actually start making reasonable criticisms. I didn’t expect him to drop the hobbesian arguments entirely and start making points that actually sounded like anarchism.

I have to assume that cc!Techno must have seen some of the criticisms of his character and been inspired to adjust because the difference is pretty notable.

(Sidenote: I’m just forever kinda sad that Techno’s “I may seem like the villain here” monologue was cut from the video and most people never heard it.)

And I felt SO validated by the way, because it works so well in the story! Everyone is mostly content with the restoration of a status quo of some sort, Schlatt is gone, this is supposed to be the good ending, and then Techno calls them all out and turns the narrative around completely: This was just a coup d'état. This was just the previous political leadership retaking power by force. Why is everyone celebrating the same exact system that lead to Schlatt’s authoritarian rule in the first place?

What he does there is force the audience to question the narrative they’ve been presented so far, that they’ve accepted without a thought. It might not convince them, but they can’t just ignore it either.

Whatever you wanna say about the discourse around Techno on that day, in the ideological narrative THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART. Not who betrayed who or when is political violence justified, that’s about personal relationships and morality and it’s mostly all more relevant to the aftermath than the event itself. In my opinion, the REAL point in the moment is that the characters and the audience were comfortable with the ending only to be presented with a completely new perspective on the events.

It also recontextualises the finale, including Wilbur’s actions! It’s a much more ambiguous end to the Pogtopia vs Manburg arc and to Wilbur’s original run as the head writer. Wilbur’s “even with Tubbo in charge I don’t think [that ‘special place’] can exist again” is vague enough to be dismissed as just part of his paranoia and internal conflict, but with Techno, there’s a concrete question: what if Tubbo, given the same powers as Schlatt, will turn out to be just a new Schlatt? And suddenly you have to wonder what Wilbur meant by his words too. And was all this foreshadowing something about L’Manburg’s future?

Okay I’ve only made it to November 16th and there’s so much more DSMP to talk about but the post is getting too long and I’m starting to lose my energy. Will I ever make a part two? No idea. But I’ll try.

Standard disclaimer: I’m not the spokesperson of anarchism, other anarchists might disagree with my reading

#technoblade #bladeblr #dream smp #dreamsmp #dsmp #l'manburg critical #c!wilbur soot critical #for courtesy tags #anarchy pog

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applejackofalltrades · 3 years

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Why Do I Like AppleDash So Much?

Literally nobody has ever asked me this but I'm going to answer this question anyway.

Intro: How I Got Into My Little Pony

Imma be real. The reason I started watching the show is because some of my old Twitter mutuals were interacting with posts about the Friendship Is Magic 10th anniversary. Some of them were talking about Rarijack and how it was a good ship, and others were discussing the implied canonicity of Appledash.

I had, at the time, just finished catching up on The Owl House that had recently been in the process of finishing up season one or had just gone into hiatus (can't remember which) and I was losing interest in my old hyperfixations fast.

See, I do this thing where I get really REALLY invested in a show and then as soon as it ends or as soon as I absorb every bit of media in it, I lose some of the interest or it fades. I don't usually lose full interest. For example, I still love She-Ra (my last big fandom) and I'm obviously still invested in The Owl House, but ever since both of those shows ended/stalled, I was desperately needing something to distract me from the trials and tribulations of my will to live that my daily life often forced upon me.

As you can guess, ponies was my solution.

I went into the show with a Rarijack mindset, but knowing that Appledash existed. I guess my mutuals just really liked Rarijack. I decided to give season one a chance. Actually, I felt quite silly for even deciding to watch the show. You see, back in 2018, I was still quite... trivial about watching anything that was seen as "girly". I didn't really have any problems with watching cartoons (ie. V*ltron, Steven Universe, Avatar, Pokemon etc.) but it was the fact that a show was "girly" that made me iffy. I had a very fragile masculinity, okay?

Anyway, so I actually was really afraid to watch She-Ra, even though the teaser images and trailer looked good. But I did and I decided that even "girly" shows could be good and that I was silly.

But, oh boy, cringe culture really messed with me. In mid/late 2020, I was ashamed to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I said I'd watch one season just so I could laugh at it. I wanted to watch it as a joke, and who knows, maybe I found a guilty pleasure to watch while I waited for The Owl House to come back?

I loaded up Netflix and I hit play. Instantly, I was cringing at myself. Can you blame me? Early season MLP was obviously meant for kids. Not that it was immature or bad, but it was definitely a kid's show, especially considering the iconic storybook opening of episode one.

I watched the episodes, but they mostly were just background noise as I did other things. I remember watching them, but I was indifferent, although frustrated that I found myself chuckling at a few of the jokes and quips. I wasn't that invested, though. I thought Twilight was boring, Rarity obnoxious, Pinkie annoying, Fluttershy frustrating, and Rainbow Dash infuriating. I didn't really mind Applejack, I mostly kinda just thought she was the best one. (Nothing's changed, eh?)

And then....

Fall Weather Friends

Season One Episode Thirteen rolled around.

It starts (as y'all know) with Rainbow Dash and Applejack throwing horseshoes.

I don't know why, but this caught my attention. Of course, being only a few episodes after Look Before You Sleep, I had Rarijack on the mind. But I did think that Applejack and Rainbow Dash were probably good friends and would make for an interesting pairing, and a more interesting episode given their similarities, but also their differences.

I found myself fully watching this episode, and I dare say, it's the episode that dragged me fully into the show.

Maybe it's because I see myself in both of them in a way. Maybe that's why I connect so much with the pair, but them having an episode together? That was really good for me. I wasn't in the best state of mind, and something about seeing two characters that were in some ways reminiscent of myself interact and argue and have an endearing episode together made me smile.

It was then that I discovered the simple amazingness of AppleDash.

I mean, who doesn't love obnoxious, competitive girlfriends that are both prideful and headstrong?

I know I love it.

Anyway, so at that point, my mind kinda just clicked and I decided that my OTP was AppleDash. However, poly rights and Applejack has two front hooves *cough* Rarijackdash *cough*

But yeah so that's how I got into AppleDash. Fall Weather Friends, which was kinda the episode that made me love MLP.

How That Progressed

Well, obviously, I still love that ship I mean I live for it. If I could have any one single ship it'd be them. It just kept getting better and better as the show progressed, I mean their dynamic is great whether you want to see it platonically or romantically. They have a lot in common right off the bat (example, they are both incredibly stubborn, though AJ would take the cake for that) and seem to be close (I mean right from episode one they appear to already have a pre-established friendship), but they're also different. Applejack is a hard worker all of the time with anything she does, while Dash tends to be lazy but can be extremely driven when she is motivated (for example, when she wants to achieve her Wonderbolts dream). Applejack is immensely caring and family-oriented and does things for the good of everypony, while Rainbow Dash can be kind of a jerk and not mindful of her actions when she's wrapped up in the stuff she's doing for herself (not to say she isn't caring, but she tends to be kind of an ass, even to Fluttershy sometimes).

Their growth was immensely fun to watch and as time went on, they shared more and more screentime together. Even if it's not an episode that revolves around them, whenever one of them is in frame, most of the time the other is close by, and they often stand next to each other.

Now, in terms of why they work in the show's canon (in my opinion, either romantically or platonically, they do make a great pairing):

They are both competitive and enjoy competing with each other, though they know (especially after FWF when they've taken it too far)

They watch out for each other (AJ often holds Rainbow Dash back when she's about to rush into danger, especially in early seasons, and Dash always lifts AJ out of danger first [the two examples I can think of off the top of my head are in Best Gift Ever and My Little Pony: The Movie])

Their personalities even each other out. (AJ is a lot more calm than RD, and while they can both get worked up, Applejack is usually the calm one)

Their colour schemes are literally complementary. (AJ's coat is orange while Rainbow's is blue. AJ's eyes are green while RD's are pink/red).

They share a lot of cute moments. (You can just look these up)

THEY'RE HECCING CUTE.

AND FINALLY

I mean fuck, the finale. They're literally canon, you cannot tell me otherwise. It was absolutely intended and you cannot prove otherwise. (read the script notes l o l "we actually could do sort of a subtle wink to the idea that they are now a couple???" < RE Appledash). They live together, they have domestic arguments about chores, they are always giving each other fond looks throughout the episode, always standing next to or near each other, and well we all know Rainbow's iconic hoof on AJ's head in the last shot of the show.

Ashleigh Ball really was the OG shipper and fuck it, she was right. We all know they are in love, she knows they are in love. The only reason they couldn't explicitly state it in the show is probably bc Hasbro would have been against that at the time (I mean, Lyrabon had to be very subtle but hey we gottem).

Oh and, I know this isn't exactly canon canon, but it is an official game: The My Little Pony Magic Princess app. Future AJ and RD's descriptions allude to them being together.

You could negate this and say that this is just them being friends but I mean... come on. Come on. Sweet Apple Acres is Apple family land, and the only people who live there as of The Last Problem are Apples. (AJ, Sugar Belle and Big Mac and their foal, and you guessed it... Rainbow Dash).

You cannot tell me that they aren't canon. You'd really have to be grasping at straws because all the signs are there. They had build up, development, and it just makes sense.

If you don't think it makes sense... did we watch the same show??? It absolutely makes sense.

Anyway, AppleDash is canon. :)

#jay has pony thoughts #appledash #applejack #rainbow dash #i just like talking

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zawasdarkcirclez · 3 years

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How Bakusquad Asks You to Prom

Mina Ashido:

-Mina’s definitely got something really pretty planned

-She’s most likely a little dressed up with a cute little dress on

-This is all taking place in the common area

-Everybody besides you knew what was happening and were hiding in the corners of the room and against the wall

-Aizawa was even there claiming that he felt most comfortable if there was a teacher and adult present with all of these candles burning Mina, Denki, and Sero filled him in one day when he was trying to grade papers

-In reality though, he just wanted to be there to see how it would play out after hearing all the talk about it

-Y’all do be his kids after all

-You keep getting texts from Mina and everyone telling you Aizawa is calling everybody to the commons right now and that you’re late as hell

-You’re out of breath running to the room and realize you don’t see the lights on from where you stand

- Walking in however, you’re greeted with soft jazz music

-Mina standing in the middle of the room with a bouquet of flowers

-In front of her on the floor are candles spelling out “Prom?”

-Not gonna lie she’s a little nervous

-Fingers fiddling for sure

“HEY-uh Y/n.. PROM??“

-You said yes no doubt. Sorry I don’t make the rules

-You were literally stunned, she looked amazing, everything looked so cute, the effort was there. CONGRATULATIONS you won

-Everybody of course had to then hop out from the darkness of the room cheering and recording as you and Mina hug

-Queue Denki + Sero dapping each other up

-Midoriya tearing up

-Mineta full on crying because Mina is now taken

-Todoroki still standing by the wall 🧍‍♂️

-You and Mina definetly had some of the best prom fits

Katsuki Bakugo:

-You were already dating Katsuki, leading him to believe you were well aware that you were going to prom with him

-So when he overheard Momo ask you about plans for prom and you responded saying

-”Oh, prom? ...I’m not really sure I’m doing all that.”

-He was STOMP.ING over and Momo was tiptoeing away not wanting to get caught in another one of his outbursts

-”What the hell do you mean you’re not doing that?!”

-”You don’t want to go with me or what?!”

-”Did I do something? If I made you upset, you should have said something, Dumbass!!”

-”Actually, you know what, I don’t care! You’re going.”

-”With me!”

-You rolled your eyes jokingly

-”Well that sure is one way to ask.” you chuckled and patted his side walking away to go back to your desk

-You were not complaining by any means, but with the intensity of Katsuki’s ability to read behind your words, he knew he was picking up on something else

-Thinking back, he did notice the little way your eyes would glow as your friends were getting asked left and right

-Even when Bakugo mumbles beside you about “Why the hell’s he doing all this like she’s not already his girlfriend.”

-You’ve seen posters, candies, gifts etc.

-But all you truly wanted was for Bakugo to possibly let down a wall of his and utter the same words to you

-But you would never ever push him to do it, in fear of overstepping a boundary

-This in mind though, and with Bakugo being as invested and in love with you as he is, and not willing to admit, he plans something little so you can have a little moment to blab to your friends about too or whatever 🙄

-He’ll be damned if its in public though

-For sure expect to be woken up late at night, leaving you surprised considering yk his bedtime and all

-He’s shaking your shoulder and grumbling to you to “Wake your ass up, or I’ll leave.”

-You turn seeing Bakugo with a candle he over burnt a little bit with his quirk, your favorite snack, a teddy bear, and a little jewelry box

-“Will you uhh..” his eyes dart away from you and he hears you giggle

-”Shut up!! ... ”

-”Will you go to prom with me, Y/n?” he asks shoving the snacks and bear a little in your direction

-”Of course Katsu.”

-He smirked, opening the jewelry box

-”And you make sure to wear this little beauty around that neck of yours at this damn dance, okay?”

Denki Kaminari:

-I’m sorry but you completely spoiled Denki’s surprise

-Well it was a team effort

-He had already accidentally said too much one day without realizing so you knew he most definitely had “Something exciting to ask you”

-But bbbbruh

-The panic everyone screamed in when you randomly walked into Denki’s room while him and the rest of the Bakusquad decorated

-He jumped off the little ladder he was standing on in the corner and turned you around by your shoulders ushering you out

-”ahHa ha...”

-It’s silent for a couple second while you both plan what to say now

Simultaneously:

-“Denki I am SOOO sorry“

and

-”A little earlier than planned”

-Everyone has an ear pressed against the door at this point to listen

-”Well..surprise! I’ll tell you what though,”

-His hands reached for yours

-”I’m a liiittle busy right now.. You know what for, but let’s pretend you don’t.”

-He turns speed walking and dragging you with him

-”So you go relax for a little bit, do some studying or something. Put on one of your cute little outfits, and I’ll be by later to come get you because you’ve got a hot date in my room say around..8:30?”

-You nod, catching your breath and realized he has delivered you all the way back to your own dorm

-Before you could turn and ask any other questions, that boy is booking it around the corner to get back to his room

-Upon walking in he is greeted with bunches of “what happened?”s from his friends and a slap to the back of his head from Bakugo

-Yes they somehow got Bakugo to help

-”Guys! Guys! We’re good, why did nobody keep decorating? Come on people we have until 8:25 and then you all have got to go!”

-Fast forward to 8:30, he’s opening the door for you and guiding you inside with a hand on your back

-He’s cheesing like a fool I promise you

-Sure you already saw part of it but not nearly the end result

-”So, will you go to prom with me?”

-”Uhm, YES!”

-Y’all can hear Sero and Kiri hooting and cheering from Bakugo’s room across the hall followed by a

-”Shut up or get out you idiots!!”

-You and Denki definitely won the top spots in the Prom Court

Eijiro Kirishima:

-Kiri definitely has a little cliche possibly cringe idea he saw online

-But it’s still cute as hell because I mean hello it’s Kirishima

-All his friends were struggling planning things while he was sitting there CHILLEN

-Denki turned like “Uhhh..Bro, you all set or something? You’re looking mighty not-busy over here.”

-”Yeah man. This was eeasyy. I found exactly what I wanted to do. They’ll love it.”

-By this point everyone had been listening, and then he was bombarded with several voices asking for ideas and inspiration from him

-All voices went silent though when he whipped out his phone to show them

-”Dude.”

-”You’re joking.”

-”Tch. Dumbass..”

-He’s not even a little worried about their reactions

-If there’s one thing he knows it’s YOU

-And YOU love anything Kirishima does

-Let’s not lie we’re all whipped

-And y’all are just some chill ass individuals and cornballs with the same humor

-He spends the entire evening that day drawing out his sign and gathering things he needs and whatnot

-When you walk into class greeted with some yummy food and cheesy saying on your desk, you smirked knowing it was the one and only

-”Surprisee!” he would sing wrapping an arm around your waist and kissing your cheek

-”Pretty manly, huh?”

-When the rest of the class sees how it actually turned out in comparison to the picture he showed, they kinda regretted trying to get on him

-Especially since you were right in front of them enjoying it

-Shit was kinda sweet

-Ya know, seeing y’all be all perfect for each other and all

-”Ah, you’re so cute. It’s great!” your face was lighting up as you plopped down in your seat

-The rest of class everyone was still stressing between lessons about their own prom situations

-And cutting their eyes at you and Kiri

-The two of you are now sitting side by side, his arm around you shoulders and both of your mouths full of sushi

-Prom is literally a dream with this man

-I feel like he would dress with the most casually classy look

-Velcro shoes acquired 😎

-Y’all are so in love you don’t even realize how visible it is

-The whole night is you two soo lost in each other uhghh

Hanta Sero:

-Sero is cool as fuck

-I just had to say that first sorreh

-He’d definitely do something real low-key and cute

-It’s not anything public or in front of everybody and their mother

-The two of you hang out by yourselves and have little ~dates~ and what not kind of often

-So him knocking at your dorm door telling you to get ready to go in 30 minutes was nothing suspicious

-After a light walk from campus y’all reached a point where he told you to close your eyes and let him guide you

-Considers covering your eyes with his tape but doesn't want to end up literally yanking off your eyebrows when he takes it off

-You settle for one hand over your eyes, and one hand in his

-Sero almost knocks you into stuff on purpose and you know it

-But eventually he’s telling you to open your eyes and

- 🥲

-A literal gasp

-”Ohh my gosh! Sero!? What is this!?”

-You’re literally bouncin up and down

-A whole little picnic has been set up in the middle of some random park by the school just for the two of you

-He’s just smiling and rubbing at the back of his neck

-He’s cool, but he can’t lie, especially when it comes to you, he’s a liiittle bit of a uhh wreck?

-Just hides it like an expert

-”Have a seat”

-He’ll take your hand as you sit to help you wibudfverkfcj;e

-Y’all are snacking and chatting, snacking and chatting

-Everything is literally perfect with him, genuinely so nice to be around

-Around when the sun is almost getting ready to set and the two of you are thinking about heading back to the dorms he stops you for a second

-”Uhm, Y/n. I’m just gonna cut straight to it.”

-”You wanna go to prom with me?”

-He’s looking straight into your soul I swear

-You tell him you’d love too and boooy oh boy the weight off this man’s shoulders

-Everyone wonders what went down when the two of you walk back into the building hand in hand and giggling and smiling with each other

-Of course the two of you nonchalantly fill them in when they ask, but the best details stayed between the two of you

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kurootonin · 3 years

Text

study buddies - kuroo tetsurō

summary : kuroo didn’t want to invest his time on dates and relationships given his already hectic schedule, but one day you suddenly came crashing into his life... literally.

pairing : kuroo x fem!reader

genre : fluff + angst(?), strangers(?) to friends to lovers!

word count : 1.4k

warnings : uhh bad words ?

kuroo tetsurō.

ALMOST EVERYONE IN NEKOMA HAS HAD A CRUSH ON HIM AT SOME POINT

he definitely knows

but he never really paid much attention to it because he wanted to focus on his studies and volleyball

bUT YOU SUDDENLY CAME CRASHING INTO HIS LIFE

literally.

you two first met when you bumped into him and spilled iced coffee all over him and his paper work for english.

that paper work he almost forgot about because he’s been studying all week for tests

that paper work he crammed for last minute

that paper work on the floor that’s gotten all wet and wrinkly because of your coffee

POOR PAPER WORK 😭

POOR KUROO 😭

YOU FELT SO BAD ABOUT IT

you knew kuroo

aside from the fact that he was in most of your classes, he was also nekoma’s volleyball team captain

you had always admired him from a far not in a romantic way though and

you often think about how the heck he could balance his academics and deal with the volleyball team at the same time.

a common folk like you couldn’t relate

if you were in his position you would’ve probably given up already because having good grades and being a great team captain is definitely not easy

SO YOU FIGURED THAT HE WOULD PROBABLY YELL AT YOU OR ASK YOU TO DO LAPS AS COMPENSATION FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO WHAT YOU THINK SEEMS TO BE VERY IMPORTANT PAPER WORK

but he just took a deep sigh and said that it was okay

it’s not okay though he was literally about to explode

“i can talk to the teacher about it!! i’m gonna explain everything so you can turn it in later than the others, i can help you with it as well... if it’s okay with you.”

he agreed

and that’s when your little meet ups with kuroo started 🤩

at first it was just for that one paperwork

but after your first meeting you two immediately decided to become study buddies !

you actually needed a tutor for physics too because you sucked at it

MOVING ON

it’s already been about 3 months since you started doing the study buddies thing with kuroo and you’d be lying if you say you didn’t catch feelings for him because

YOU DEFINITELY DID

at first he would just walk you home whenever he can

then he started doing more things that made your heart go 💘💖💕💞💓💗💖💘💕💝💞💗💞💕💖💝💕💓💘

kuroo started letting you borrow his hoodies and jackets whenever you got cold

then he started holding hands with you while walking home (sometimes in school too) and that made you feel very safe

also brings you snacks and drinks he got on his way to school claiming he got it for kenma but he didn’t like them so he just gave them to you

you don’t need to lie kuroo we all know you got them for yn on purpose 🥱

he’s even got your schedule memorized so he’ll know when to squeeze in your little dates study dates 👀

and you’re just in awe because how can a man be so perfect ???

where has he been all your life ?????

then it happened, he started using CORNY PICK UP LINES

that’s when you finally accepted that you do infact like him

you hated pick up lines because it made you cringe alot 😖

but the first time kuroo did it, you’re heart suddenly started beating faster than normal then you’re stomach suddenly felt like there’s a whole zoo in there and then you started blushing red like a tomato 🍅

you’re basically whipped

kuroo : u must be a red blood cell

yn : huh? why?

kuroo : because you take the oxygen away from my lungs and straight to my heart

yn : you’re such a dork

yn’s brain : MY DORK IWBZIWHSIQHSIWHDIWJDIWBSINWIXHS

you like LIKE him alright 😼

but kuroo on the other hand..

WAS IN DENIAL ABOUT HIS FEELINGS FOR U

BUT ONE DAY KENMA POINTED IT OUT

“are you two dating?”

kuroo : huh? who?????? 😅😗😶😬

kenma : yn. the other day the others kept bugging me about it... i was busy playing and they won’t stop asking me to talk about it

kuroo : why would i be dating her?? we’re just study buddies. 😳

kenma : study buddies don’t share eachother’s hoodies.

kuroo : WELL SHE WAS COLD THAT ONE TIME

......

AND THAT OTHER TIME TOO SO 👉🏼👈🏼

kenma : oh okay. explains why 10 of your hoodies are probably with yn right now 🧐

kuroo : look, i was just being a nice person. i don’t want her to die from the cold or something.

kenma : die from the cold, sure. how about the holding hands thing, do study buddies do that as well??? 🤨

detective conan found jobless it’s detective kenma now

kuroo : i didn’t want her to get lost?

kenma : ....in school?

“OKAY FINE I LIKE HER” 😭😭😭😭

*cue the nekoma team entering the gym*

kuroo’s brain : oh shit.

lmao they weren’t even surprised about it

yaku : i thought you guys were dating already?

tora : you two kept doing all the couple stuff and it makes me feel very single :D

inuoka : please, everyone thinks they’re dating, even shoyo asked me about it during the practice match!

.....

was i being too obvious about it??? - kuroo 2k21

yaku : 👁👄👁

lev : well.. i think your pick up lines definitely gives it away, so...

kenma : for once i agree with lev 👍🏼

lev : what do you mean for once 😾

the gym doors suddenly opened revealing a very happy yn

you haven’t seen kuroo in a while because of their practices so you were very much looking forward to today

yn : HEY GUYS !! (*^o^*)

everyone suddenly scurries off leaving a very dumbfounded kuroo

yn : why did everyone suddenly leave do they hate me or something? (◞‸◟)

kuroo : no no! i just asked them to start with practice already.

lies

yn : oh okay then, why are you still standing here? go on i’ll wait for you to finish! ᵔᴗᵔ

kuroo is on edge

he doesn’t know if he’ll confess now or he’ll confess NEVER

because if you knew about his feelings for you and never confronted him about it

doesn’t that mean he got silently(?) rejected

but this is kuroo were talking about

yn : kuroo you-

kuroo : i need to tell you something

yn : it could probably wait til later, your team needs you

kuroo : no, i need to tell you now.

yn : 😶

you were nervous. kuroo has never been this serious about wanting to tell you something...

does he know about your feelings?

are you gonna get rejected... right now?

yn : look if it’s about-

kuroo : i don’t wanna go on study dates with you anymore.

“oh.”

you were frozen in your spot and your tears are finding their escape

what were you thinking how could the kuroo tetsurō like you back, you aren’t on his level and he was probably just being a good guy by doing all the things he’s done for you :(

that’s what you thought

back to kuroo

KUROO DIDN’T KNOW THAT YOU WERE TEARING UP BECAUSE HE WAS LOOKING DOWN SO WHEN HE LOOKED UP TO SAY MORE HE PANICKED SHUWHDIWHD

kuroo : OH MY GOD YN WHY ARE YOU CRYING ??????

yn : well.. i just got rejected by you, i knew you’d caught on my feelings eventually.

kuroo : i wasn’t rejecting y- WAIT DID YOU SAY FEELINGS ??? you have feelings for me TOO ?” 🙀

yn : TOO ???? YOU LIKE ME ??? 🤯

yaku on the corner watching the whole thing unfold with the whole nekoma team : wow, they really are perfect for each other.

kenma and tora : 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

kuroo : i was about to say i don’t want to go on study dates with you anymore because i want to go on a real date.....

yn : oh.....

kuroo : so ???

yn : of course i’d love too !! but first.. you need to go practice.. they’re waiting for you 👉🏼

nekoma team : 😄🍿

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING GO BACK TO PRACTICE NOW!!!!!” - very flustered kuroo

yn : uhh you need to go practice with them too 😶

kuroo : oh right !

kuroo suddenly kisses you on the forehead before he scoots off to the team leaving a very flustered you standing there like : 😳🧍🏻‍♀️

during the practice, the team didn’t miss a chance to tease him about what had happened 😅

poor guy, he was so caught up in his feelings he forgot that the whole team was watching them...

well atleast he scored a date with his study buddy! ♥︎

196 notes · View notes

thelightofthingshopedfor · 3 years

Text

I genuinely do not know how to engage with the Loki fandom anymore without regularly tanking my mental health, and I have no idea what to do about it.

the thing about my brain is that it sucks, see, and one of the big ways in which it sucks is that it is incredibly easy for me to miserably fixate on anything that upsets me, which then often expands to include all kinds of other tangentially related things that also upset me, thereby becoming a very bad spiral even if the thing that originally upset me was objectively not a huge deal. (I’m also really, really good at catastrophizing, which just accelerates the whole process.) at best, I then find it completely possible to do much of anything, like work on anything creative, or do my actual job that pays my actual bills, or in general remember that anything good can ever happen again. about all I can do to reset my brain when that happens is to ignore every single one of my responsibilities and do something really distracting like playing a game so my brain is engaged in something other than eating itself alive, or maybe just take a sleeping pill and go to bed. (if neither is an option, then it just sucks even more.)

for reasons that I certainly hope are obvious, that’s something I prefer to avoid.

the thing about Loki is, he’s been my absolute favorite character for about a decade now. he’s my comfort character. I can’t reliably write anything except Loki fic (which would be enough of a personal investment even if I hadn’t written a fic or two that helped me deal with the death of my dog a few years ago and my generally unhealthy feelings about death as a concept, but I did that too). I’ve spent a not-inconsiderable amount of money--again, over the past decade--on my collection of Loki stuff because it makes me happy, and I’ve invested probably even more thought and emotion than money into this character. Loki, in general, is very important to me, if for no other reason than that he’s been part of my life for a long time.

and the thing about the Loki show specifically is, I mostly like it. in part this is because I want to like it, because I’m invested for all the reasons mentioned above. there have been aspects of every episode so far that I’ve enjoyed without reservation or qualification...and there have been aspects of every episode so far that have made me cringe or genuinely upset me for one reason or another. but because I want to like it, and because I have that tendency to fixate on things that upset me in a way that makes me absolutely miserable and renders my brain completely useless for doing anything except continuing to be upset, it is genuinely unhealthy for me to spend much time at all reading negativity about the show.

some of the criticism I don’t totally understand and that’s less of an issue, but a lot of it has merit, a lot pretty obviously comes from a place of actual pain, and there’s a lot I agree with (or at least understand even if a specific thing doesn’t bother me as much). so if I read much of it, I will fixate. I will lose sleep. I will be pretty much unable to do things I actually need or want to do. if I want to avoid those things, it’s not enough just to avoid reading really intense criticism of the show; I have to actively seek out positive opinions, both to reinforce my enjoyment of things I already liked and to provide additional viewpoints on things I didn’t particularly like on first watch so I can keep myself from fixating on them (which my brain is quite happy to do on its own, without even seeing specifically negative posts, so you can probably imagine how much worse my brain gets having the negative opinions reinforced).

like--maybe this all sounds kind of silly, I don’t know, but I’ve lived with this garbage brain for more than three decades and I have a pretty good idea of how it works, at least in terms of what makes it even more garbage. to take care of my mental health, I have to approach certain things in certain ways, and I’m...working on not feeling like that’s silly all by itself. in this specific case, that means avoiding a lot of the negativity and making an effort to seek out positive opinions. as long as people tag appropriately, that shouldn’t be hard, right?

well you’d think so, except actually no, because I’ve had the worst time finding people who like the show and don’t also spend a significant amount of their time dumping on fans who hate the show or just, like, have any issues at all with any aspect of it for any reason. it starts to feel like people think that if you’re not worshiping at Marvel’s feet and loving every second of everything in this massive profit-driven franchise, then you are deluded, whiny, entitled, stupid, sadistic, or some combination of the above. and you know what, maybe it’s weird but I absolutely find that just as upsetting as negativity about the show itself. constantly seeing that stuff is equally bad for my mental health, equally likely to make me miserably fixate on it and lead to a spiral of “everything is bad and hopeless and nothing will ever get better in literally any aspect of life so why even bother trying?”

for reasons that I once again hope are obvious, I still want to avoid that! regardless of the cause! and apparently...I don’t have that option. people typically don’t tag criticism of criticism, or at least not with anything specific enough to be really useful, and it sure seems like I can’t look for the positive opinions that help me enjoy the show and avoid unhappily fixating on things I didn’t like, while also avoiding the negative opinions about other fans that also get me unhappily fixated on things that upset me. so the only alternative is, what, take several steps back from fandom entirely? well, I’d have to stop using Tumblr at all for at least a couple weeks, probably avoid the finale for quite a while, stop writing for the most part because Loki fic is too tied up in the overall fandom and I struggle too much with writing anything else, stop reading most fic for the same reason, stop working on customizing any Funko figures or other action figures that aren’t just for Etsy, and generally give up a lot of things that make me happy. weirdly enough, I don’t want to do that either.

if everyone in this fandom 1) tagged appropriately and consistently and 2) stopped being unnecessarily mean to and about their fellow human beings, I’m pretty sure it would be basically fine. and of course there’s no possible way I can make that happen. if I want to keep enjoying something that does genuinely make me happy often enough to be worthwhile to me, it seems like I just have to choose between two different types of mental-health minefields rather than, you know, being able to avoid all the mines.

so what am I supposed to do with that?

(this is...more or less okay to reblog if you’ve felt at all the same way, wherever you might fall in your opinions about the show itself, as long as you make sure to not be an asshole about it to anyone. this is not the place to talk about how much you hate the show, and it is also not the place to talk about how awful Those Whiny Fans are. take that somewhere else and for god’s sake put a useful tag on it.)

#loki #loki show #loki series #marvel cinematic universe #brains behaving badly #mental health issues #I don't know what else to tag this #loki spoilers #not really but just in case #really hope I don't regret posting this

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akaashisupremacy · 3 years

Text

Curiosity

Summary: Hajime Iwaizumi runs into an old friend yet again. Second chances don't come often so will he able to make a move before their time is up?

Iwaizumi x fem!reader/Oc || Read it on A03

Genre : romance, friends to lovers

The day had gone by quicker than Hajime Iwaizumi thought it would. It was now or never.

It all began last week, when he ran into Hiromi Miura, a friend from college, in a small Vietnamese restaurant in Ginza a month after he moved to Tokyo. As he lined up for a seat, he noticed the figure in front of him was familiar. He tapped her shoulder and waved. Hiromi was so surprised that it took her a moment to realize it was her old classmate.

“Iwa??” she said in disbelief.

They got a seat together to catch up. Normally, Hiromi would be nervous about have lunch with one other man, but she had been on so many failed dates lately that at least she knew lunch with Iwa would not end in disappointment.

“You’re eating here? This place must be legit huh?” he said, remembering that she worked for a food publication. She chuckled.

“Definitely has my seal of approval.”

The restaurant was small and Iwa was rather tall. He could feel his knees touching hers from time to time. She crossed her feet behind her chair so they didn’t have to apologize mid-conversation when they bumped into each other.

“I’ve been meaning to call you by the way. Do you know any good markets around where I live?” he pulled out his phone to show her the area where he was staying, “I’m not too familiar with the area yet, so you’ll have to tell me where is it on the map.”

Iwa lived almost at fringe of the city. His home was located not too far away by bike to one of Hiromi’s favorite wet markets. She took his phone a little more enthusiastically than he expected her to and pinned a location.

Hiromi loved showing people around her favorite food spots. If being a food guide was more lucrative, she would ditch her dayjob altogether.

“Here! There’s a wet market where I’m friendly with the stall owners right here.” she pointed, “It’s about a 15 minute bike ride away from your place. I can help you get good deals. Not too many tourists too.”

And that was how Iwa found himself inside a wet market with Hiromi, on an early Monday morning. On most mornings, Iwa liked to jog and not do chores, but Hiromi had been so enthusiastic about the market that he let himself get sucked in. He tried not to yawn as she waved at every other stall.

“Another market day for work? Did the production team ask for your help again?” tutted an old woman at a vegetable stand.

Did he really look that dressed down?

“No, I’m bringing a friend around, hopefully a soon to be regular. Yamagata-san, this is Iwaizumi. He just moved here.” she chuckled, gesturing at him. Iwa politely bowed and greeted her.

As Iwa picked out some vegetables, Hiromi continued to chat with the old woman, guiding him every now and then to a vegetable that looked fresher than what he had picked out.

“I thought he was a production boy., You know one of those boys that drives your company van and carries your stuff.” Yamagata-san commented good naturally, “Too handsome for a production boy.”

When Iwa was about to pay up, Hiromi disappeared over to the next stall. He sighed and made his way to the counter at the back. Behind the desk, he saw a simply framed black and white photo of Yamagata-san with a candid smile, reaching out to a customer. The background seemed to blur and the old woman was the star. Next to that was a smaller photo of Yamagata-san and…Hiromi.

Was Hiromi some sort of MVP for this stall or something?

“Miura-chan took that photo of me,” said Yamagata-san, taking notice of Iwa, “I told her that I didn’t need such a big photo of myself so I insisted on having one with her.”

“What was the photo for?” he asked, peering again at the two photos.

“She ran an article on the oldest stalls of the market saying we were the heart of the community or something like that. When the story came out, she even gave us a glossy magazine that had my picture on it. She made us sound big and important. She was really grateful that we let her talk about us so she gave us a framed photo of ourselves to remember her milestone by. It was her big solo article I think.”

After hopping from one store to another, sometimes to say hi and others to buy produce from, they settled in for early lunch at yakitori or grill restaurant. The sun was high in the sky. While waiting to be seated, Hiromi bought cool green tea for the both of them.

“This is so good! Damn!” he sighed in pleasure. The drink relieved the sweat gathering at his back. Hiromi grinned in satisfaction.

“Iwa can I ask you something?” she tilted her head towards him.

“Shoot.” Suddenly he felt unnerved and tense. What could this be about? He bit down on the tip of the straw.

Her eyes were with amusement, “Did you not notice that the fruit vendor was making eyes at you?? She’s totally into you and I tried to wingman for, but you just shrugged and paid up.”

“Wait, for real?” he asked, taken aback by his lack of self-awareness.

Hiromi nodded her head vigorously, “That was cold!’

He slapped his hands on his forehead, “Well, I wasn’t really interested in her anyways.” he sighed, his eyes flicking towards her before looking away.

Hiromi recalled a time in college, when a circle of their friends were having lunch together. One of the girls that had a crush on Iwa tried to make a pass at him.

“I would date you if I could, Hajime-kun,” she blushed. Everybody’s eyes turned to Iwaizumi who continued eating and only stopped because someone had nudged him.

“Thanks, I’m flattered,” he nodded. It had taken him weeks to realize that she was trying to confess to him.

“Do you remember that time in colle-“ she began but was interrupted. He was cringing as he remembered the same memory.

“Don’t bring up that lunch incident, Hiromi. I know you’re going to. Just NO.” he groaned, “I get it! I’m dense.”

Hiromi was trying to restrain her laughter. He could hear her stifle her giggle beside him. She tried not to look at him. He straightened up beside her and nudged her knee with his.

“I wasn’t interested in her anyways.” he said, thoughtfully looking at her.

“Clearly not,” she snorted, browsing through the menu, “You should see what you want to eat before they seat us.”

He placed his hand a little bit behind her and peered over her shoulder. He could feel her arm pressed against his chest. They were seated so closely his nose almost touched the side of her head. She remained oblivious to him.

After they were seated, Iwaizumi finally brought up what he had been noticing.

“How does everyone here have a photo by and with you?” he asked, “Are the photos really required by your work?”

Hiromi looked a little embarrassed. She cleared her throat and sighed, “People like to take. They take stories and never give the people they take from. They take their food and their ideas, which is really not fair.

“It took me a while to earn the trust of the community here but once I gave them a copy of their story, it made them realize I was sincere about wanting to give back to them. The black and white framed photos, that was on me. We had some budget left so I got them their own photos because they’re important even if their job is not glamorous.”

“You’re really passionate about your job huh?” he said. The food had just arrived and they began to rearrange their bowls and plates on the table.

“It’s not my job I’m passionate about, it’s people and their stories. I’m just lucky enough to be paid enough to do this.” she smiled.

“Don’t you feel the same way about your job?” she asked, “You like volleyball so much you turned it into a profession.”

“I do, but I’ve just started in my new job. Passion takes time if not at least a little bit more experience. Maybe by next year, I can feel the same way about my work.”

———————————————————————————

“Thanks for bringing me here.” he said as he loaded up his bike with his morning purchases.

“Thanks for lunch,” she said. Iwaizumi had paid while she was at the restroom to thank her for introducing him to her community market.

Urgency prodded at his back. It was now or never. As she handed him some of his packaged vegetables, he hastily turned to her.

“Can I see you again next week?” he said it so quickly, he wasn’t sure she fully understood him.

“Oh, do you want to try a different market?” she asked, carefully taking out the strawberries from her bag and transferring it to his bag.

“No, no this market looks great —“

“I know right! It’s not the best or most comprehensive market, but it’s a good market if you’re looking to build a community with.” she beamed with pride.

Iwa straightened his back and cleared his throat, “No, like a date.”

She paused and stood to meet his eye. “Oh…I guess this is why you weren’t interested in the vendor huh. I really thought she would be your type! She even plays volleyball.” She looked away while slowly recalling signs from earlier today: the knee nudge, the lunch, his lack of interest in other women in the market.

Iwa could feel the heat rising in his cheeks. He forgot how nerve-wracking it was to ask someone out. Sweat was pooling around his temples just standing there.

“Ahh not really, I am actually interested…in you. I thought you might like me too, that’s why you agreed to go out with me today…y’know to test the waters…” he stuttered, “but..ah…turns out you just really like markets. I realized that I should have been more forward.”

Hiromi was simultaneously flattered, mortified and a little confused. She kept quiet. In the back of her mind, she entertained the thought that maybe this was an unofficial date, but she had convinced herself that Iwa was invested in buying cheaper fresher produce.

“It’s ok if you don’t want to. You look uncomfortable,” he said, waving his hands side to side, breaking her out of her reverie, “We can pretend like this never happened.”

She hesitantly replied, “Well, I’m on the weekend and my hours are flexible on Thursday because it’s a reading day for me…” She was praying in her heart that she got her schedule right.

Her reply caught Iwa off guard. Nevertheless, he jumped to the chance to spend a day next week with her.

“That’s great! I’m away next weekend, but Thursday sounds great.” he smiled, looking hopeful, “Let’s meet then?”

“I know it’s kinda early, but I think I have to put it out there that my schedule’s really erratic some days. That’s kind of put some people off.” he shrugged. His schedule was one of his occupational hazards.

“We’re out on a Monday, I think I’m aware.“ she nodded. Although outwardly calm, she was ready to faint. She couldn’t wait to tell Itsumi that she had a date with a seemingly decent guy?

“Oh and Iwa?” her face schooled itself into a more serious expression as he gave her his full attention, “It’s non-negotiable for me. If you want to insist on being able to date other people, I’ll have to cancel next week.”

“I had a small spat with this guy I was dating and I…walked in on second date while he was making out with someone.” she gritted her teeth, heaving a sigh.

“Ok, I won’t see anybody else while we’re seeing each other. Deal?” he couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m not very good at dating. I haven’t been in a good relationships in awhile. I’m gonna need your patience.” she said softly, turning to him, her eyes wary.

“I’m kind of aware.” he nodded, “I’ll make the most of the time you can give me.”

When she left she felt dumbfounded. She had recently sworn off dating and now she was on another date?

“Itsumi, you’ll never guess what just happened!” she called up her coworker.

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

This is part 2 of a series on Iwa living in Tokyo after he moves back from California. If you’d like to keep up with the next chapters (which will include questions to help them fall in love *hint hint*), comment or message!

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3

Series taglist: @itstheee-ha-chan

#iwaizumi x y/n #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime #hajime iwaizumi #hq iwaizumi #hq iwa #hq fanfic #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu fanfic #hq fandom #aobai josahi #timeskip iwa #hajime iwaizumi 27 #hajime iwaizumi x reader #hajime iwaizumi x you

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dex-xe · 3 years

Note

Ghosts watch the Euros?

Am I about to write 1000 words of cringe about dead fictional characters watching a football tournament?? yes I am and I'm thrilled!! XD

This primarily focusses on Pat btw but most of the ghosts feature a bit too.

So basically Alison didn’t really care that much about the Euros before they started, Mike however was decently optimistic regarding Engliand’s chances but isn’t the world’s biggest sport fan. But one evening they’re all watching TV and stuff and then there’s one of those animated ads that play before any major sports competition starts and Pat sees it and gets incredibly excited.

He hasn’t been able to watch a major football tournatment (live) since he was alive because Heather never had sport on at all. He begs Alison that he gets control of the TV during England matches and after using the whole “pleasseeeee I’m no trouble, I don’t usually ask for much!” Alison agrees to adjust the TV rota, much to the others ghosts disgust (the Captain is peeved about his afternoon day time TV History Channel documentaries being overwritten, and Fanny’s evening period dramas often get pushed aside but Alison eventually manages to use the Sky Box to rearrange everything for them).

For most of the group stages it’s just Pat watching, Mike will occassionally sit in but is genrally on his phone. Julian will also offer the occassional comment which Pat just rolls his eyes at and tells him to go back to his computer games. Also Pat is amazed just quite how young the team is but I digress.

So once it becomes apparent that England are doing surprisingly well (and Mike’s mates stop talking about anything else at the pub) Mike starts paying attention and by extension Alison sits in bringing multiple ghosts in her wake.

Kitty doesn’t like the idea of competition much and just wants people to have fun, she gets upset when people get kicked out but congratulats them for doing their very best. Thomas however, stands behind the sofa muttering about how it’s a barbaric sport and the lowest form of entertainment (“Polo!! Now that takes real skill!!)

The Captain wasn’t much of a football fan in life (cricket was much more his bag) but he’ll gladly sit and enjoy some friendly competition, anything he can get these days to be proud of his country. Robin doesn’t understand organised competition much but he quite like the idea of playing a game like that, he kinda misses running around and burning of energy, physical performance was super important for hunting when he was alive.

Anyway, once England makes it into the quarters (and Mike claims to have been totally invested from the beginning) Mike and Alison both start to get more and more involved, they decide to buy England flags and bunting to put across the front of the house - much to the Captain’s pleasure cause it reminds him a bit of VE Day.

Alison does actually manage to convince everyone to gather round for the final - even Fanny who literally couldn’t care less is overwhelmed with patriotism and hovers in a nearby armchair. Pat parks himself on the floor right in front of the TV so he can hear the commentary even when the others are rambling on about their analysis of the game (their analysis is incredibly poor given they’ve been dead for centuries - Kitty announces that the strikers should “use thier hips more” and no one is quite sure what that means but Thomas does suggest sending correspondence to Southgate to give him that advice.)

Anyway (I keep going off on tangents) the final obviously begins with England scoring mad quick which erupts the TV room into cheers. Mike jumps up to celebrate and puts his foot into where Pat is also sat cheering - Alison has to catch him around the waist to pull him back towards the sofa to stop Pat from gagging.

Pat then starts going on about how, with a start like that, there’s no way England can lose now. Julian rains on his parade very quickly and tells him worse things have happened and Alison jokes about what a show off Julian will be if he’s right and England lose… (Julian is obviously incredibly patriotic and wants England to win but he wants to be right much more).

Thomas quickly begins to think of himself as an expert at this “pauper’s sport” and starts to shout the generic “I know nothing about football but don’t want people to question me” phrases (“they had better begin playing it forward more, they shan’t achieve anything with cowardice like this!!)

They remain kinda optimistic going into the second half apart from Pat who is potentially the only one who recognises England slolwy losing control - but, much like with his scouts, his puts on his usual optimistic front to stop the team from becoming deflated (the team can’t hear him becuase a) he’s not at Wembley and b) he’s been dead four decades but it’s just his natural reaction).

As soon as Italy score, that’s when the deflation starts to set in. They all become slightly quieter until England start mounting an attack and then the shouting begins again.

Pat tries to explain the concept of extra time to the others but few understand and begin suggesting their own tie break ideas. Kitty suggests a draw would be better, everybody wins. Fanny suggests someone should concede (she doesn;t specifiy who but it’s very much implied). Robin’s idea is to continue with extra time then release a bear onto the pitch at a random point “for the drama” (I would watch that though).

But no, Pat and Mike are both very quiet throughout extra time. Thomas is thrilled because he believes Southgate has listened to his ongoing generic advice to “bring on Grealish” - realistically he’s peeved Love Island isn’t on, he likes to make fun of it and announce repeatedly how “the modern world has no concept of love!!”

Once it gets to penalties Kitty is off. She can’t stand the tension and covers her eyes to avoid having to watch somebody lose in this way. Mary sits beside her on the sofa petting her hair like “ooh cry not, ’tis but a game child” which really doesn’t help the mood. After every single shot, there’s just a little burst of gasps and strangled noises from everyone except Pat who is just waiting and praying that his first tournament in 40 years is going to be a dramatic win.

When England (spoilers from over a month ago) lose, silence falls across the room before Julian finally breaks it: “I don’t mean to say I told you so but…” he is interrupted VERY quickly by shouting from everyone else. Eyes quickly fall on Pat who hasn’t said anything since the penalties began, he hadn;t even turned to look at anyone else yet. He slowly stood up and said with a very fake smile “well it was a deserved win… if you’ll excuse me” and then he fazes through the wall behind him never to be seen again.

“Julian, that really was uncalled for,” Alison tells him. Pat seems normal for the next few days but most people can tell he’s very disappointed, especially as Mike has to get the ladder out again to do the really sad “flag taking down ceremony” everyone did the day after.

Pat’s finally brought out of his slump by Kitty who asks him what he would do if his scouts failed at something - he says he’d tell them they did really well for trying their best and give them some tips to improve. “Exactly,” Kitty says. “You’d still be proud of what they achieved, right?” All the ghosts are pretty excited by the prospect of a world cup next year.

So there we go,, cheers for the ask!! I apologise for this being cringe as fuck and I really hope it gets to the right people XD I’m having a day of trying to finish as many projects as I can over the next few days before series 3 so I can essentially start afresh after the new episodes are out - I know I’m going to have a lot of ideas and inspiration.

#bbc ghosts #max's ghost post

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medea10 · 3 years

Text

My Review of Flowers of Evil

How did I get into this anime? Because Flowers of Evil is something no one says, “Oh I want to see that, this looks like a masterpiece”! Oh, I was well familiar with the rotoscope nightmare stories from this and hoped to God my randomizer wouldn’t curse me with watching Flowers of Evil. I was however intrigued to learn that there was a yandere in this anime that’s on Yuno Gasai AND Shion Sonozaki levels. But intrigue can only get me so far when you spend 13 episodes watching…

THIS!

No this is not an exaggeration. Everyone has this kind of cringe face throughout the entire anime series. Be afraid children.

So the story is about this guy named Takao Kasuga. He loves to read and he loves the class smarty-pants Nanako Saeki. He doesn’t just love her, he sees her as his muse and his Venus and all that bullshit. But this is an admiration from afar. Pretty sure Saeki doesn’t even know he exists! One day, Kasuga forgets his book in his classroom. And on the ground, he notices a gym bag that belongs to Saeki. Oh come on, he’s not gonna go down the perverted route and steal a girl’s gym…

So he steals Saeki’s gym uniform. And surprise, one person knew what happened. The class loner, Nakamura! She forces Kasuga to form a contract with her. It wasn’t written or anything, just verbal. However, that doesn’t stop Nakamura from forcing Kasuga to do whatever she wants. But does Nakamura really like Kasuga or is she just into torturing this shit-faced pervert?

BETWEEN THE SUB AND THE DUB: You know, I’m too thrown off by the animation here that it has temporarily paralyzed me from catching voices or even giving a damn. I’m familiar with only two of the cast mates and the rest is literally my first time hearing it. Okay, I have one comment here. I often forget Mariya Ise could do some damn-ass scary characters like Nakamura. And when she does those murderous screams, forget about it! Here’s what you might recognize these folks from.

*Kasuga is played by Shinichirou Ueda

*Saeki is played by Yoko Hikasa (known for Bea on Pokemon Journeys, Rias on High School DxD, Mio on K-ON!, Hina on Domestic Girlfriend, Kirigiri on Danganronpa, Frieda on Attack on Titan, and Diana on Little Witch Academia)

*Nakamura is played by Mariya Ise (known for Bonnie on Pokemon XY, Levy on Fairy Tail, Ray on The Promised Neverland, Stocking on Panty & Stocking, Mika on Durarara, Dorothy on Black Clover, and Yuuko on Yuri on Ice)

SHIPPING: Oh please, anime Gods, do not turn this into another School Days fiasco. I find myself praying for this a lot these days. But in this anime’s case, please do not go down that route!

So, it was clear from episode one that Kasuga had a crush on Saeki. But this got very perverted very fast when he stole her gym clothes and that lead to the contract with Nakamura. Now is Nakamura romantically invested in Kasuga or is she just a crazy bitch. Let’s chalk this up to a 50-50 split here.

It wasn’t until the fourth episode where Kasuga and Saeki actually spoke to each other. And one episode later, they go on a date and end up in a relationship. One has to wonder if Kasuga would have one day acted on his own and ask Saeki out. All of this happened because he was being forced by that psychopath Nakamura. She tortured this kid and forced him to do so many unethical things. Stripping him naked and putting Saeki’s uniform on him for one! Who does that? So would Kasuga have done these sporadic actions if Nakamura wasn’t in the picture? After he stole that uniform, anything is possible. Now here’s the crazy shit here, Saeki loves Kasuga and she doesn’t care that he stole her gym uniform and did fuck-knows-what with it. She’s mad that Kasuga hid it, but still loves him.

Girl, the fuck is wrong with you?! You must be some special kind of crazy!

By the end of this series, you do see a shift in Kasuga and who he wants to chase after. Saeki or Nakamura?! Let’s just say that during a running away scene, Kasuga was going to go home with Saeki until he saw Nakamura and he chases after her. That’s a pretty good sign that Kasuga has switched gears on who he likes. I won’t delve any further than that as the anime only gives us so much and the rest of this love turmoil between these three characters is covered only in the manga. Probably a sign I should read the manga!

LOOOOOONG NO DIALOGUE MOMENTS: Dude, I know you’re trying to set the mood for certain moments, but I think you can dial it back a bit. This complaint isn’t just what happened at the beginning of episode 9; it took forever to get the main gist of this story in the very first episode. I had no idea what the main premise of the story was until the last five minutes of the first episode when Kasuga stole Saeki’s gym uniform.

Now I’m not knocking serious moments where there is no dialogue between characters for a long period of time and we just watch the animation of them walking or doing something. Hell, Neon Genesis Evangelion had famous scenes like that. But the elevator scene didn’t last six fucking minutes. Neither did the scene where Shinji kills Kaowru. In episode 9, we watch Nakamura and Kasuga walking from the school to home and watch the whole walk after destroying the classroom. I guarantee you, you could leave this episode running, fix yourself a bowl of cereal and toast, eat it up, go to the bathroom to have a good yank, then finish it off with watching a Che Guevara documentary…and Nakamura and Kasuga would still be walking home! I’m exaggerating and I don’t care. I feel like being an asshole here.

OH DEAR GOD, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!: Very rarely will I ever look at an opening or ending theme song in literal fear. In fact, the last one to be so morbid was with Attack on Titan’s second season ending. I mean, the imagery alone should tell you that this is full of spoilers and possessed by the devil itself. Now that I think about it, that’s still undefeated. But Flowers of Evil’s ending theme is a close fucking second. Have you heard this thing? It sounds like Bjork singing in Japanese, synthesized, while a cat walks on a keyboard and having a seizure at the same time. Thank God there are no actual visuals for this other than the flower featured on Kasuga’s book. I don’t think we can handle anymore animation from this nightmare fuel.

ENDING: The writing is on the wall!

And the floor, the ceiling…that classroom is just a fucking mess!

Kasuga’s one bad deed led to another and another in a domino effect. And instead of a little devil on his shoulder, he has a classmate that’s a sociopath. Kasuga has guilt about hiding so much from Saeki in this relationship and he wants to tell her everything he did. Nakamura says, “Nah, you’re going to write it all over the classroom and let the whole world know what a piece of shit you are”. Let’s just say Nakamura and Kasuga went overboard and completely destroyed their classroom. Kasuga gets a bit of a lucky break as the other vandalism covered up his name on the chalkboard confession. But two people have caught onto Kasuga’s crime, Saeki and Kasuga’s mother.

Saeki put two and two together when she noticed the ink smearing on the ground resembled the flower art work on Kasuga’s book “Flowers of Evil” and her stolen gym uniform was placed right there. As for Kasuga’s mother, she put two and two together when she heard what happened to his classroom and noticed Kasuga’s behavior and dirty clothes from the night of the crime. Won’t be long before everyone knows what Kasuga did.

What now, shit-face?

Run away with Nakamura to the next town. Yeah, why the fuck not?! Saeki ends up tracking them down and tried to convince them to come back and for Kasuga to be truthful. Saeki wants Kasuga and I almost want to say the same, except hanging around this psycho-bitch for a while has caused him to try to stop Nakamura from leaving. Having Saeki see Kasuga go after Nakamura isn’t really a good look! At this point, it really feels like his love for Saeki was nothing more than lust.

Dude, isn’t there a rule about not messing with crazy…like, don’t stick your dick in crazy?! This dude has got one crazy bitch on psycho-yandere levels and the other that’s about to turn into Kotonoha from School Days in about five seconds. Well, no one left town today as the police were called to look for Saeki because her parents are overprotective types and they take the other kids in.

We get a small time-leap of one month after the night in the police station. Nakamura’s been ignoring Kasuga and Kasuga ends his relationship with Saeki. Dude, stop trying to stick your dick in crazy! Kasuga tries to speak to Nakamura again and it fails. So he visits her at home and meets Nakamura’s father and grandmother. Then, he sneaks into her room and reads her private journal that talks about Kasuga a lot. Dude, you are stepping in uncharted territory! Drop the journal and get the fuck out before Nakamura comes home. So Nakamura comes in her room and finds shit-face reading her journal.

*sighs*

First, I would like to acknowledge that Mariya Ise has one hell of a throat to scream as much as this crazy bitch does. Second, the fuck did I just say, ya dumbass?! Here we get another chase scene between Kasuga and Nakamura. What follows is…I can’t place my thoughts on this. Weird imagery, out of place dialogue, and possible scenes of future stuff to happen! A rape scene involving Saeki, a festival, a hideout, a knife, and fire! Thanks for the cryptic message guys, really appreciate it! Either the anime ran out of money or they’re fucking with the audience. Kasuga says he wants to form a contract with Nakamura and that’s the end!

Hmm, this anime came out in 2013 and it is now 2021. All the buildup and no word on a sequel! We all know that sequel ain’t ever coming. You have a better chance of a continuation to Haruhi Suzumiya than you do with this hunk of shit.

Okay, maybe ‘hunk of shit’ is too mean. This wasn’t a terrible anime. It was weird as fuck, the animation leaves a bad impression, but overall it wasn’t that bad. Now the manga to Flowers of Evil is a favorite to many. Probably because the characters don’t look like a cringey meme and there aren’t so many awkward pauses with no dialogue. Unless there’s a whole volume of Flowers of Evil out there where we just look at pictures of Nakamura and Kasuga walking home where they don’t say a fucking thing! I am not letting that go! Charlie Brown movies didn’t go to that level you guys did!

I was interested with each passing episode to see what Nakamura was going to do next and what she was capable of. I couldn’t make out if she was going to be homicidal or suicidal or just impact psychological warfare on her prey. It was the latter for this series, but I heard of some attempted seppuku going down in the manga. I’d like to think maybe one day a different studio would pick up this series, but I seriously doubt it with the rotten reception this adaptation received. It was said that the director to the anime saw this more as a live-action series than an anime and that’s why we have the rotoscope animation. It wasn’t until 2019 that we got a live-action adaptation to Flowers of Evil. Not sure how people felt about that adaptation, but even I have a feeling that it was much better than the anime. Hell, a Netflix adaptation probably would have turned out a better product. It would be nice for this to get a reboot, different studio, different director, and smash everything that has the word ‘rotoscope’ on it

Yeah, if you can get over watching the animation, give it a watch. Episode one drags, but it picks up the second Nakamura confronts Kasuga.

If you would like to watch Flowers of Evil, Crunchyroll and Hidive have all 13 episodes available for streaming.

Okay, now that I’m finished with that sociopathic nightmare let’s pick another Sentai Filmworks anime.

HELL NO! I am not reviewing, “My Teacher Accidentally Made Me Horny”. That’s what I’m calling it and you should all do the same. NEXT!

Okay…I have no idea what the hell this anime is, but it looks harmless enough.

#anime review #flowers of evil #aku no hana #takao kasuga #nanako saeki #sawa nakamura

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heyheydidjaknow · 3 years

Text

Why do I not have the option to copy and paste formatting? Why is that an option I am not given? Who thought that I wouldn’t need that when I’m on my phone? Screw that guy, who I am arbitrarily calling Adam. If anyone knows how to do that, please tell me.

Chapter 6 Pt 2

“There is no fucking way you got a date with her.” Raphael does not even look it up. “No way in hell.”

“And yet the flow chart worked.” He laughs from his lab, shutting off any excess equipment as to not overwork it. “It worked like a charm and she asked me to go to her place so ha.”

”You didn’t show her the chart, did you?”

“I did not.”

“Well, there you go.” Leo looks back at him from his seat on the couch. “What time?”

“Seven o’clock.” He slides the door closed. “But I’m planning on being there at six fifty-five so that she knows I value her time.”

“Does the sun set that early?”

“Why do you even ask?” Raph turns a page in his once periodical periodical. “You know he looked it up.”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Forgive me for also valuing preparedness.”

“Nobody likes a know it all.”

He grins smugly. “That’s where you’re wrong. See, I,” he gestured to himself, “have a date with a gorgeous girl tonight, one where she has already invited me into her home, and you,” he gestured to Raphael, “are reading a magazine from a company that went out of business two years ago alone.”

“Donnie, don’t be a jerk.” Leonardo looked back at the television. “Raphael brings up a valid point; you tend to act like you know everything, and the actual request wasn’t for a date.”

“How else can I interpret one on one time with her?”

“Well,” he counters, “how do you interpret one on one time with us?”

He blinks. “Wait, so you’re saying she’s… how do you put it?”

“Nah, I don’t think she’s friendzonin ‘im.” Mickey looks up from his drawing. “Think she’s sending signals she doesn’t mean to.” He sets his half-shaded piece aside. “Think about it; she said she’s been all stressed out, right? She died like two weeks ago.” He shrugs. “She’s probably just lonely and needs the company.”

“That’s… actually really insightful of you.”

He grins. “What can I say? I’m a modern McPherson.”

Raph snickers at that. “Donnie is more of a McPher—how old is that movie, anyway? A hundred?

“Hey!” He shoots a glare at his brother. “Respect the classics.”

“Not to interrupt your riveting intro to film class,” Donnie interjects, losing his shit, “but I really need to know what this is before I go, and it’s already fifteen ‘till.”

“Look, maybe she’s interested, maybe she’s not.” Leonardo’s eyes are back on the screen. “Just try to tread carefully and you’ll probably be fine.”

“Probably?”

“Again, Raph had a point.”

He groans, walking to the entrance and exit of their home. “You guys aren’t helping.”

“Not our job.”

Leo calls after him. “Be home before six!”

He turns the corner, cradling his head in his hands. ‘I am totally and thoroughly fucked.’

GoodFellas.

Of all the movies in the world, that is the movie you have decided to use to explain these concepts. This is the example piece that you are going to show to the vigilante. All you know is that you had started watching the Phantom Menace and had decided against explaining the concept of racial coding and this is the only other movie that you can think of right now. You have decided to commit, and you are already regretting it, but you decide to figure it out as you go.

You set the pizza on the coffee table, throwing a bag of popcorn in the microwave to pop. You do not expect Donatello to be late, so you decided to start now so that they could get started right away. You start walking to the window, stopping at the mouth of the hallway. You look yourself over one more time in the bathroom mirror despite yourself. You do not exactly know why you care so much; this was not a date, and you had not advertised it as one. Still, impressions are important, and the last thing you need is for him to not listen to you because of it. That is what you are telling yourself, anyhow.

You hear knocking against the glass. You check your phone for the time. ‘Five minutes early.’ You smile softly. ‘How responsible.’ You open it up, smiling at your guest. “Welcome, Donatello.” You take a step back. “Please, make yourself at home.”

He barely makes a sound as he steps off the windowsill, looking around your apartment, fully illuminated, for the first time.

After about thirty seconds of his investigation, you clear your throat. “Donnie?”

He snaps out of it. “Huh?”

You smile gently. “You wanna sit down? I bought pizza.”

“Uh, yeah.” He nods, sitting down and facing the television screen. “I like your place.”

“Thanks.” You sit down next to him, tucking your feet under you as you flip on the television. “How do you feel about gangster movies?”

“Gangster movies?”

“Yeah.” You list a couple on your fingers. “Scarface, Godfather, all that jazz.”

He shakes his head, brow furrowed in confusion. “How can you make gangster movies legally?”

“That is a long answer. The short version?” You lean forward, taking a slice from the box. “The police are kind to those who cooperate, and people think their stories are fascinating.”

“So they’re documentaries?” He mimics you.

You shrug. “Sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. You want something to drink?” You hear the microwave beep as you stand up.

“Water?”

You nod, walking over to pull the popcorn out of the microwave and grab your drinks. “I trust the walk wasn’t too bad?”

“Not at all.” The small talk is torture. “Getting to your window was a bit of a challenge, but it wasn’t anything too bad.”

“That’s good.” You pour him a glass. “I’ll have to get something for that; maybe a planter or something, so you have a bigger ledge.”

“It’s alright.” He taps his fingers against his knee. “It’s wide enough to stand.”

“Still.” You place his cup on the counter, dumping the kernels into a large plastic bowl. “I wouldn’t forgive myself if one of you guys got hurt trying to come in through the window.” You grab a can of soda out of the refrigerator, sitting down and handing him the glass.

He smiles slightly. “You’re really sweet sometimes, you know that?”

You grin. “I try,” you hum, starting to pull up the movie. “I think you’re pretty cool too, Hamato.”

He chuckles. “You make me sound like I’m fifty.”

“Oh, totally.” You nod in agreement. “You’re an old soul.”

He blinks. “Old soul?”

“Mature, I mean.” You shrug. “I mean, handling the stuff you do with any degree of tact, to me, displays a great maturity you don’t see in most teenagers, myself included.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

You get back up for napkins and plates. “Not at all.” You hand him one of each. “It’s an admirable quality, though not one I particularly envy.”

“You think?” His hands linger for a moment longer than typical as he took them.

“Yeah. You want me to turn down the lights for the movie while I’m up?”

His face goes red. “I-I mean,” he stutters, “if you want to.”

“Then I will; shows the image better when it’s dark.” You walk to the wall, flicking off the lights and sitting down next to him, setting your slice on your plate as you turn on the movie.

Your reactions to it are different.

He does not seem what you would call disturbed, but he gets grossly invested in the story extremely quickly. He is noticeably more interested in watching you watch the movie, but he studies the plot intently, noting the more domestic plotline between the lead and his wife in particular. His reaction to the violence is strange to you; he is not aloof, so to speak, but he does not flinch much until the fighting is between Henry and Karen.

You have seen this movie what feels like a thousand times. Whenever you think it applicable, you lean over and whisper to him about the directing, the script, the plot—it is supposed to be a lesson, after all. But you realize that your attention, every so often, shifts to the bed, to your pillow with the knife underneath it. The violence of the movie makes you edgier than you are used to.

About halfway through the movie, you move closer to the boy sitting beside you. You lean your head against his shoulder, closing your eyes as you listen for cues for comments. You don’t notice his reaction, but you do notice how his arm snakes around your waist, pulling you closer to him. You do not object; you were the one who initiated, after all.

“Here’s a psychology relationship thingy you can tell your family about.” You cringe at that poor little girl standing in the hallway. “’That’s all in your head’ is classic gaslighting. I dunno if that’s really your area or not.”

“Oh, yeah, I see what you mean.” He fiddles with the cloth of your jacket absentmindedly. “It’s kinda hard for me to wrap my head around, people staying like that. I mean,” he clarifies, “I get why, but—”

You both tense up as a young man on screen is shot dead by Joe Pesci’s character.

You exhale. “Yeah, I get what you mean.” You shrug. “But folks get scared, ya know? In her case, she doesn’t want to break the family apart, and she’s really into him.”

“What? No way.”

“Yes way.” You look up at him. “What can I say? We fall into infatuation so fast with bad people who say what we want to hear.”

“Don’t you mean fall in love?”

You watch as Lorraine Bracco holds a gun to her husband’s face. “Nope. Love is entirely different.”

“Yeah?” He glanced down at you.

“Apples and oranges.” You gesture to the television. “Love is supplementary, a beautifully imperfect connection between people.” Your voice becomes smoother, airier. “It’s a bond built on trust and respect. Infatuation is more of an addiction than anything.” You sigh as Liota meets to discuss his relationship with Sorvino. “At least I think so. That’s why love at first sight is a bunch of bullshit; you can’t have that kind of profound trust with someone you just met.” You shrug, looking back up at him. “Then again, what do I know? I’m an inexperienced, fifteen-year-old girl.”

“That makes a lot of sense, actually.” He looks back down at you. “I get what familial love is, but whenever Master Splinter talks about his wife, he has a hard time putting what he means into words.”

You hear their guilty verdict. “Totally get that. Articulation is not easy to do.”

A few minutes go by.

“May I be frank?”

“Please.”

You watch as a man drags his wife out of a Christmas party. “This movie is exactly why I don’t ever want to learn how to do the stuff you do. It changes you, all that violence; desensitizes you.” You bring your knees to your chest. “Especially Raphael. I swear, that shift was as dramatic as his, at least at this point in the flick.”

He pauses. “Please, tell me you’re kidding.”

You close your eyes, breathing slowly. “I’m going to try my best,” you swear, “do everything in my power, to see to it that you guys don’t experience more than you have to.”

You mean it. He can tell.

You two are quiet for the rest of the movie. You explain why certain directing choices were made, connect the beginning with the end, talk about the theme, all while you two watched their fall from grace. When the movie ends, you realize how tangled up in him you are; your head on his chest, legs draped over his with his arms around your waist. You feel the icy air against you, as if his skin attracted it to you. You push the hair out of your face. “So,” you stretch, turning the light back on, “do you wanna see another movie, or do you have a curfew?”

He pauses. “I should honestly probably get home,” he sighs. “If I’m not home early they’ll start getting ideas.”

“Oh, yeah.” You nod, completely understanding the reasoning. “You can take the leftover pizza home if you want; the guys’ll probably eat it before I do.”

“Mikey’ll be on cloud nine.” He picks the box off the coffee table. “Thanks.”

“Any time.” You stand at the window, opening it for him.

He climbs onto the windowsill, looking down at you from his perch. “I had a good time.” His face flushed. “We should do this again.”

You nod in agreement. “Definitely.” You rub the back of your neck. “I’ll pick a lighter movie next time.”

“Alright. It’s a plan.” He gives you a thumbs up.

You steal yourself, cupping one side of his face and kissing him gently on the cheek. “Goodnight, Donnie.” You smile. “See ya tomorrow.”

You are a bit concerned he’s going to fall off the windowsill. “Y-Yeah,” he grinned, words slurred. “See ya later, Y/N.” He waved, climbing up and out of your window.

You smile softly, sigh. You flop back on the bed, rolling over. You have not been this at ease since you died.

‘I really like that guy.’ You close your eyes. ‘I really, honestly do.’

You drift off to sleep, dreamless for the first time in too long.

Table Of Contents

Chapter 6 Part 1

Chapter 7

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alethiometry · 3 years

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Edward Kenway for character asks!

ooooooo okay i should open this with a disclaimer: i have not finished black flag yet (about 2/3 of the way through i think? i need to level up my ship so i can beat the next story mission lol) so everything i'm saying here is based on the game up to thatch's death, and everything we know about edward in ac 3: forsaken and the comics that came out a couple years ago.

First impression

oh boy... to be honest, one of the reasons it took me such a long time to get around to playing black flag (it was one of the first ps4 games i bought when i got my console in 2016, and i didn't start until about a month ago) was because i didn't really feel particularly strongly about edward's character design. i was vaguely interested in That One Pirate Assassin Game after having watched (and loved) black sails, but was afraid i would be let down; to me edward just looked like Some Dude, and i was still hung up on the black sails gang. to me, black sails and its characters were so genre/time period-defining that any other piece of pirate media just seemed lackluster in comparison.

i'd also heard a lot of praise for edward and for ac4 in general so i was aware that it was a very popular and well-received game. but since i mostly heard that from reddit (didn't join tumblr ac fandom until odyssey in 2018) i kind of discounted it, bc gamer reddit tastes are... questionable at best.

Impression now

I LOVE HIM!!! i always think i want stories about virtuous characters who believe in goodness and kindness and aren't motivated by gold or glory but aren't afraid to do what needs to be done to help others who can't help themselves. and sometimes that's true (coughratonhnhake:toncough). other times i end up clowning on myself because i realize that it's so much fun when said good/kind character has a rough and rugged exterior, and is motivated by personal gain (i think edward and kassandra are kinda kindred spirits across time and space in that regard, but maybe that's another rant for another time). sometimes you just want someone to be a little bit of an opportunistic bastard, and boy does edward fit that to a T. he's an incredibly complex man, and i think what really got me was that even as he was impersonating assassins and then templars and then assassins again, all for personal gain (pickpocketing the templars in havana while he gains their trust and agrees to do their dirty work lmfao my beloved <3), his primary motivation for doing so was to prove to caroline and her family that he is someone worth a damn, that he is capable of great things and that he is worthy of their love and acceptance. and i know from ac forsaken that the marriage with caroline doesn't last (though i haven't played ac4 far enough to see if that happens on screen, or if it occurs between the game and the novel) which makes his backstory in the game all the more heartbreaking. but his optimism and perseverance and determination to prove himself are all what make me love him.

so that's edward the romantic. now let's talk about the way edward is with adewale, his crew, and his friends. and let's also put the rest of this behind a readmore bc girl i am RANTINGGGGGG

he has several lines that he says to adewale that make me physically cringe (namely: "many of [these men] wouldn't accept you as captain" or "what was it like being enslaved?" like i get that someone like edward would be asking that question in good faith and genuine curiosity but also JESUS CHRIST UBISOFT). but on the flip side - cringey as those questions are, he also takes the time to actually listen and learn, and i think he genuinely values the perspective that he gets from adewale allowing him to open these lines of trust and communication. there's a patience and mutual respect there that i adore.

i also love how much edward loves his crew and his other pirate friends. those scenes of him + kidd + thatch + adewale + hornigold (lol) drinking on the beach and having a grand old time and talking about establishing - to borrow one of my favorite chills-down-my-spine phrases from black sails - a nation of thieves, for people like them to live and prosper, free from the chokehold of civilization. and i know he's not as outwardly invested in counterculture/independence/anticolonialism as thatch and vane and kidd are, but the fact that he so wholeheartedly supports his friends' goals, lofty and impossible as they are, speaks volumes about his love for his friends.

Favorite moment

every scene he has with kidd when kidd casually and softly reminds him that they see that he is a good person beneath his opportunistic and rambunctious exterior. i especially love when they discover julien du casse's mansion containing orders for templars to go out and hunt down assassins: the way kidd immediately knows that edward wants to help the assassins as a way to make up for the damage he did while masquerading as a templar, even if he hasn't voiced it aloud himself. the way that they don't force edward to admit anything about himself before he is ready, but still constantly remind him that he has a good heart. they give him space to come to terms with his compassionate side in a world/environment that more often than sees compassion as something to be stamped out or cast aside. i don’t love when characters are forced to be the Moral Compass for a main dude character, but i think it works for edward and kidd.

Idea for a story

not an edward story per se, but there are 2 povs into edward's life that i would cut off (someone else's) limbs for:

jenny's pov growing up in the kenway household. from haytham's pov it seems that she knows way more about his past than haytham ever did (it was hinted at that there are rumors about edward’s past as haytham was growing up that he wasn’t privy to, but i don’t think at any point in the novel does haytham ever find out definitively that his father was a pirate) and i want to know how she knew so much, and more into what her life was like - through her eyes rather than haytham, who is like 10 years younger and by his own admission barely understands her and barely has a functional relationship with her. i'll expand further on edward and jenny in the next question/prompt/bullet point, actually, bc i have a LOT more to say.

connor's pov learning about his grandfather from... idk? who's around to tell him? what's so goddamn sad is that by the time connor rebuilds the colonial brotherhood he's kinda the only one left. sure there's aveline down in louisiana, but as far as we know everyone who was around in edward's generation is dead now, and i'm not sure how much of the kenway saga is preserved for connor to discover, or if all this information about their family line was discovered in the modern-day, by your abstergo employee character, and later by osto berg in the comics. which is why i so badly want a revelations-style game where connor traces his assassin heritage back to the caribbean, relives some of edward's memories, and then makes the trip to london to see his aunt jenny. it would have been such a cool way to round out the kenway saga.

Unpopular opinion

idk how popular or unpopular this is bc i rarely see other in-depth posts about it on my dash, but edward was a terrible father to jenny. he was every bit the wonderful and loving father to haytham for the 10 years that haytham had a father, but i wish we'd seen more of jenny's perspective than just a few lines of dialogue in haytham's diary: i hate the way edward sidelined her and raised her in the same manner that any other wealthy person of the time would have raised their daughter - that is, for the sole purpose of sitting pretty and marrying her off in an arrangement that would benefit the family. it's especially hard to reconcile because in ac4 there are female assassins in the americas, and there are female pirates in the caribbean, so it's not like edward isn't aware that women have as much right as any man to live life on their own terms. it just seems like by the time he returns to england and settles down with his family, he's reverted back to the societal norms and gender roles that the pirates fought (and lost) against, and it's hard not to be deeply disappointed by that.

to be clear, i don't begrudge edward settling down and becoming a Rich Society Man. dude deserves to live comfortably with his loving family. he has every right to dote on his wife and children, and leave behind the hardships of being a pirate. but i think "fightning against deeply-ingrained cultural norms/expectations is a long and bloody struggle, and after losing so many people he cared so deeply about, i think it's understandable that edward wouldn't want to continue that fight alone (and also adewale is still fighting the good fight) (do NOT @ me about ac rogue I Pretend I Do Not See It)" and "i don't love the way edward sidelined his daughter into societally-expected gender roles she did not want; it makes me think that he did not continue drinking his Respect Women Juice as much as i thought he did/wanted him to" are two opinions that can coexist.

Favorite relationship

i don't know that i ship edward romantically with anyone, actually. i thought he and caroline were cute in the beginning, but it's hard to want to ship them knowing that she leaves him eventually. and ofc there'd edward/tessa in ac forsaken, and we know they were very happy together and that he loved her so so much. but we don't see that relationship except through haytham's eyes.

as for non-romantic relationships, i already talked at length above about his relationships with adewale and the other pirates and kidd, and i'll just leave it at that. i'm also vaguely aware that edward's got some upcoming scenes with anne bonny, but i'm not at that point in the game yet so i don't have much to say about the two of them. so far i've only seen them say a few lines to each other at the nassau tavern.

Favorite headcanon

kassandra absolutely rubbed shoulders with edward at some point during his time in the caribbean; i like to think that she needed to lie low for some reason (maybe she was with the assassins idk) and joined his crew. i just need my best stabby gal and my second-favorite stabby dude to be pals!

finally, this isn't a headcanon per se but it is obligatory that any time i talk about kenways i yell for a bit about the fact that EDWARD WOULD HAVE LOVED CONNOR SO SO SO MUCH AND I'M FOREVER DEVASTATED THAT HE NEVER GOT TO MEET HIM. at the same time, if edward hadn't been murdered and haytham not been indoctrinated into the templars the way he had, i'm not sure connor would even have existed. and in a way i'm glad that edward wasn't around to see how broken and cynical and depressed haytham became, because i think that would have absolutely broken his heart.

send me a character!

#KEN👏WAY👏BRAIN👏ROT👏#assassin's creed #ac black flag #edward kenway #ask games #reiverreturns #THANK YOU FOR ASKING i hope you expected and wanted this can of worms #finally wrangled that stupid ask box bug - saved this in my drafts and edited it from there #and lo and behold i can type W E and L!

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flying-elliska · 3 years

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I was so immersed in skam fandom, one of the first that I actually got into completely, that I forget that like other fandoms exist? Basically, I witnessed a lot of buffoonery in the skam fandom. It was nice with all the fanfics and meta but like it got wild and it’s one of the reasons I bowed out cause the anxiety was real man. But I’ve kind of entered into 911? But really it’s mostly just the fanfic because I go into the tag sometimes when an episode comes out but honestly ppl are WILD. Like Oliver stark had to deactivate because ppl won’t stop. And I’m over here like whaaat? I know ppl can freak out online and it’s one thing to make posts about it but like actors are real ppl and I really don’t understand the disconnect ppl have when they say shit to the actors. Like they don’t care or take into account that ppl are real and they are not their characters. It’s such a bummer and probably why I’ll stay in the land buddie fan fic lol

Wow this is so real like skamiverse fandom can def be a fucking circus sometimes and it's tempting to blame skam specific stuff like the live format etc

But yeah in fact each fandom unfortunately has its share of people who are either seriously deranged, too young to be online unsupervised, lacking any sort of decency, or at the very least have seriously lost touch with reality that they think it's okay to treat real people like this over made up shit.

It's so wack to me that people have invested so much of their identity and feelings in these stories that they fly off the handle like this. And this has a tendency unfortunately to get worse w queer pairings often bc media representation has come to be seen as a substitute for actual political activism so they see it as: not giving me the queer pairing I want = you must hate gay people = you deserve death threats (or something).

It's honestly such a shame bc it ruins the fandom for the rest of us. Like I read this and half of my enthusiasm for next ep was already gone, like this is so cringe I dont want to be associated with this. It would have been fun to see Oliver Stark liveblog the finale but I guess we can't have nice things.

And I mean I definitely think this is partly bc social media is specifically made to turn every possible human interaction into hot garbage for the algorithm but some people also really need to take a good look in the mirror.

I don't get the whole "haha bullying celebrities online is fun" thing ; sure they're rich and famous (and I mean in this case he's just a moderately well known TV actor so like...) but when it comes to it they're still one person facing a mass of people throwing insults their way which is not fun for anybody. And I know a lot of people doing that shit like to pretend that the power dynamics are in their favor because they're younger or not famous or whatever and the people they attack should "get over it" but it's like...just a bad faith excuse for being a piece of garbage. The way some people act like their faves somehow belong to them now bc of their support and they can do or say whatever and attack them for not giving them everything they want is so dehumanizing and gross.

#911 #911 on fox #buddie #oliver stark #fandom culture

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zims-left-shoe · 4 years

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Hey!! Was wondering if I could get some Dib x reader where the reader is a really ‘popular’ likeable kid at skool and Dib has liked them for a while but feels they’re “unattainable”? (Basically every high school romance movie ever lol) thanks!

I had a lot of fun with this one! It ended up being longer than I thought it would haha.

It was a crisp autumn day, dead leaves crunching under your feet. Although it was dry in the moment, there was this feeling in the air that threatened a downpour. You stood behind your friends when they came to a stop, watching them with your hands stuffed deep in your pockets, feet shifting, the only sign to display your discomfort. Your eyes followed the notebook that was being tossed between your friends, a simple black spiral book, appearance only made special by the strange eye symbol scribbled in paint marker that adorned the front. Wicked cackles escaped your friends as they continued to throw the book around as if it were a football.

"Give it back!" Ah. And then there was Dib. The strange boy in your class that went on and on about aliens and saving the earth from Zim, your other absurd classmate. He took another jump, swiping his arm out in a desperate attempt to reclaim what was his. His fingers gently grazed the binding, only to be yanked back by his trench coat at the hands of Torque Smacky. This was what qualified as a middle school prank. Admittedly, you had thought it was a bit funny at first. That was until your friends began to run to the edge of campus, spitting hurtful words back at the clearly unathletic Dib, who was wheezing and struggling to keep up with your group.

"Soulstealers? Chupacabras? You are actually insane." Jessica laughed as she flipped through what seemed to be his personal supernatural journal.

"This is why nobody likes you, Dib. You're a freak." Smacky shoved him hard, his body colliding with the chainlink fence. You winced at the rattling it caused and the look in his eyes as he hunkered down into himself, slouching against the fence. The one thing you could say about him was that he was not one to give up easily, if at all. And yet, he looked defeated, deciding to take the lickings and wait until they lost interest. You couldn't take it anymore.

You were always well liked by everyone. Everyone adored you and your pleasant attitude, always gravitating towards and revolving around you as if you were their sun. And although you stood behind those that you called your friends, you couldn't just sit there and watch how they treated Dib. He was definitely out there, sure, and maybe you didn't understand everything he said, but there was a line you had to draw. He was never hurting anyone. If he wanted to believe in aliens, who were you to stop him?

"Guys, that's enough. Knock it off." You spoke up for the first time in that encounter, snatching the book from Jessica's hands. Your friends, whom most would label as 'the popular crowd', all stared at you. Not necessarily in anger. More so shock. "Here." You tossed the notebook back to him, lips moving in a silent 'I'm sorry'. His hands fumbled the book, almost dropping it as he too stared at you with disbelief. Why would you help him? Weren't you friends with those who antagonized him?

"Thanks-"

"Shut it. Just feel lucky they stepped in." Smacky retreated a few feet back from him, glaring at him all the while.

"Let's go. It was getting boring anyways." Jessica turned swiftly on her heel, every one of your friends following her. Glancing one more time at Dib, you nodded to him, a movement that was so slight it was barely noticeable. Without another word, you jogged after your friends, catching up with them quickly.

Dib was left standing there, still leaning against the fence, notebook still clutched close to his chest. His mind was now full of questions, which was no different from its usual state. Why would you be nice to him? No one was ever nice to him. Especially not the popular kids. He began to wonder if, maybe, just maybe, you weren't as bad as the kids you spent your time with.

High school. Sometimes media would try and convince you that it was supposed to be some magical experience that would change your life, that your entire character could be rebuilt from the ground up. If that were completely true, why had everything remained an almost exact carbon copy of the way it's been since your earlier days? Sure, you had changed a little bit. Different music taste, new style, trivial things like that. But, your friends and position on the social ladder? Exactly the same. You had stayed in the popular pool, friends still adoring you, and despite questioning their actions and morals many a time, you adored them as well. If anything, you were more popular than ever.

Dib had also remained the same. Always squabbling with Zim, causing a scene, being made fun of and ostracized daily. He was still the local loser, but at this point he was owning it. He never did have the patience to be someone he was not. That was one thing you admired about him, one thing you could never be. You didn't think anyone you were close to could ever truly be themselves. The only thing that felt different about him was his more 'fuck you' attitude to those who antagonized him. He still wouldn't fight back, but he had developed a tougher skin, almost paying no mind to any insults. He knew what was right in his mind, if no one would believe him, their loss.

Over the years, you had many classes with Dib. You had grown rather fond of him, at the very least he believed in something that wasn't ridiculously vapid. And, despite coming off as a bit of a nervous dork in some instances, he was surprisingly self-assured, for the most part. You were proud to admit to yourself that you looked forward to see him almost every day.

Twisting the knob on the classroom door, you let yourself in, eyes resting on the familiar dark-haired nerd, his face taken up by the same large glasses he's had for as long as you could remember. Waving, you approached his table, watching him straighten up almost immediately.

"Morning, Dib. How're you doing?" You always liked to ask him how things were going for him, knowing that he never was given concern very often. No one in your class would ask him how his life was, his sister, at least to you, seemed to not care, and from what you knew, his dad was some prestigious scientist that was always busy.

"Hey, Y/n. And, um, I'm doing alright! What about you?" His smile was bright, cheeks just the slightest bit flushed as he drummed his fingers on the tabletop. You felt a giggle escape you as you witnessed this. Every morning, despite having the exact same routine, he always seemed to be taken aback that you were asking how he was doing, that you were even the tiniest amount of invested in his life.

"Fine, I guess. What about your ghosts and aliens?" You weren't sure that you believed in all of that crap, but if he took an interest in it and he wasn't harming anyone, who were you to stop him? "Oh, and I want an update on that werewolf you found in your trash." Remembering the story he had told you yesterday, you figured you would ask for a follow up to show your genuine encouragement.

"Oh, that! Uh, well...it turns out it was just some really hairy homeless guy rummaging through our garbage, but...as for aliens, I watched Zim's robot eat a baby. That was equal parts disturbing and intriguing." He shuddered, having flashbacks to whatever went down last night.

"His dog that he brought to pet day last year?" Thinking back to that day, it was a little strange. All hell broke loose, his dog going absolutely insane. It was a blessing he didn't end up destroying the entire school. Only the east wing. Lady luck was on your side that day, that was for sure.

“Yeah, GIR. The lip smacking noises really made it horrible." A cringe settled onto his features, and you felt it spreading to yourself as well. As much as you didn't believe that Zim was an alien (he was definitely odd and uncomfortable, that you would admit), you could see his dog consuming a human child.

"Geez. I'm sorry I asked." A chuckle fell from your lips, wishing to move past the disturbing imagery brought on by his response. Luckily for you, your teacher had announced the start of class, sending you back to your seat without having to think of a subject change.

"Tired of your charity work yet?" Jessica asked as you sat down in your usual seat across from her. Pressing your lips in a tight line, you pulled out your notebook and pencil, choosing to ignore her comment. You had always hated the abysmal way your friends treated Dib. So what if he was a bit weird? You felt bad for him, he had no one to talk to besides Zim, and he ate lunch with his sister every day. "Come on, please don't tell me you actually want to be his friend."

"I never said that...it's just...he seems so lonely." Ever since you could remember, you had been surrounded by friends. It was near impossible to hate you. You had never known what it was like to be all on your own, cursed to be a lone wolf. To you, it seemed that being alone was all Dib had ever experienced.

"He deserves it. He's a freak." Her answers were short and snappy as she tired of the subject.

"Does he?" Did anyone deserve to be lonely solely for being a little off beat? You were the only one of your friends, hell, even the whole school, who seemed to disagree with her notion. The social outcasts and rejects wouldn't even associate with him.

"Look, Y/n. I like you, I really do. We're friends. We have been for a long time. But if you become his friend, people are going to start talking." Your gaze fell to the tabletop, tired of this not-quite-argument. "You're too nice. I know you pity him, but think about your standing here. Popularity comes with a price."

"I didn't ask to be popular, okay? And at least if I were his friend, my social circle wouldn't be full of a bunch of dicks and stuck up bitches!" You spat, patience completely snapping. Jessica sat in a stunned silence, her eyes wide. That was the first time you had ever actively stood up to her. After a moment, you realized you were just a tad harsh, although she did deserve it. She was still your friend after all, and in her own twisted way, she was trying to look out for you. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"We can talk about it later at lunch. Just calm down, alright?" Jessica brushed stray strands of blonde hair behind her ear, sticking her nose deep in her textbook for the first time in months. Sighing deeply, your eyes drifted to Dib's seat. His glance had already been on you, so you had managed to catch his eyes. His shoulders tensed from being caught staring, color creeping up his neck to his face. Before he could turn away, your lips quirked into a slight smile as you waved to him. It took him a second to register, but he returned the wave, a dorky grin plastered on his face. Again, you just couldn't see what was so bad about him.

"Dib, I swear to god, do you ever listen to me when I speak? You break my immersion-"

"You break my face. Yeah, I know." I laid on the couch, watching my sister play whatever VR game she was into at the time. All I did was start to ask her a question, I had barely gotten one syllable out before she cut me off. "It's important, I swear."

"Let me guess, Zim is eating waffles again?" Her voice was irritated, and I'm sure inside that head of hers she was wishing me to be dead.

"No, actually-"

"He's hiding in his toilet? Ooh, or maybe he's trying to work the toaster." Okay, so maybe I interrupt her for admittedly meaningless things sometimes. Fine, a lot of the times.

"This has nothing to do with Zim!" Now I had her attention. She hesitated for just the slightest second before she resumed playing again.

"Oh? This had better be good, Dib." Her voice was no longer threatening, rather it held curiosity. Although she would never say it to my face, she was intrigued by what I had to say.

"I need advice." Now, normally Gaz would be the last person on earth I would go to for this kind of thing, but I had already tried my dad, and lesson learned, never seek romantic advice from a man who is married to science. So, I had already exhausted pretty much all of my options. The internet was surprisingly not much help either.

"On what? How to stop bothering your sister?" Her words didn't match her tone at all. Besides, I knew that if she really wanted me out, she would remove me by force. I was suddenly beginning to wonder if this was a bad idea. After all, Gaz was very much...how to put this lightly...not romantically inclined. Still, she was my only hope at this point, and really, all I needed was someone to vent to.

"I was thinking more along the lines of cliché high school romance?" My voice became higher and quieter as the sentence went on, and I was just barely cut off by Gaz's groan. Despite her attitude, she powered off her headset out of her own volition, which meant she was definitely interested in whatever I had to say. I pushed myself to where I was sitting up, Gaz falling back onto the couch next to me.

"You're joking, right? You're asking me for advice?" I couldn't believe it either.

"Just hear me out?"

Fine. But if it's stupid I'm leaving." I already knew she wouldn't say no, but she still had to pretend it was a chore to listen to me.

"Okay, so you know Y/n, right?"

"The popular kid? They're so out of your league, Dib." She sounded condescending yet not surprised. I figured she had caught me staring at them at lunch multiple times. I had probably been pretty obvious about it. Thinking about that made me cringe, because Y/n most likely knows I stare at them all the time. If they didn't already hate me before, I'm sure they do now, they probably think I'm some sort of creepy stalker. Well, that's not the worst thing I've been called at school, so I'll take it, I guess.

"I know! And I told myself I wasn't going to fall for them, but I did. They actually talk to me though! Every morning in first period, and they wave to me in the halls, and god they have the cutest smile-"

"Dib! Okay! I get it, you're in love or whatever."

"I never said I was in love! It's just a crush. There's a difference." I watched her roll her eyes so hard I thought she might be transported to another dimension. Even I knew deep down I was lying through my teeth. All the little things had made me fall deeper into whatever my infatuation with Y/n was. Every glance, every little quip, every greeting...they all made my heart flutter and I would feel sick to my stomach every time I thought about them. It was a satisfying kind of sick, though. I knew I had been carrying these feelings for a long time. They had always been the first, if not the only, person to stand up for me when the teasing became too much. Of course I was going to fall in love, what else was to be expected?

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say. But, do you even talk to them? No, you don't."

"So?" She was right. I never went out of my way to approach them. We would share short and simple conversations, but only when they spoke to me first. I was always too scared. They were the only person who could make me nervous and doubt myself anymore. The reasonable part of me told me that if I just went up to them, they would welcome the conversation. But, something was always stopping me. I held them on a pedestal, so much so that I believed making any move at all to be impossible. Y/n for me is unattainable, someone I was never meant to have. They were part of the untouchables, the most popular and worshiped kids in school. I'm just the freakshow who attracts all the wrong kinds of attention. And yet, something was pushing me to just reach for it.

"You're going to shoot your shot, aren't you." Her voice was flat. It wasn't a question. Rather, a statement that we both already knew to be true.

"Well, you know what they say. If you shoot for the moon, you're bound to at least land among the stars."

"I don't think that applies to this, unless your version of 'among the stars' is being taken out behind the school and beaten until you see stars." Ah, Gaz. Always so encouraging. What would I do without her?

"Do you think it's a bad idea?"

"Of course! It's a terrible idea! But, it would be kind of funny to watch..." A smirk crept onto her face, which would have been unnerving if my thoughts weren't already racing to think of how I would even accomplish this.

"So, you're in?"

"I would never miss a chance to watch someone kick the shit out of you."

Without a doubt, you were spaced out. To the point where you barely noticed what had been left behind in your locker, almost crushing it with your multiple textbooks.

"What the...?" You pulled out a small bouquet of flowers and a note from your locker, even more confused than when you first saw it. For starters, you weren't sure how it had gotten in there in the first place. You were sure it was locked and that no one knew the combo. Unless someone broke into it with brute strength or some advanced skillset. If that wasn't enough to drive you crazy, the note was anonymous. No name, no nothing. It was typed as well, so you couldn't even analyze the handwriting if you wanted to. The contents of the note contained a love confession, and you weren't quite sure where to even begin with suspects. There were many people who had crushes on you, some even within your own friend group. Even still, the note was odd. It sounded like nobody in particular, the wordage making it seem like it could be from anyone and no one at the same time.

"Hey, Y/n. What'cha got there?" Jessica came up behind you, eyeing the flowers with intrigue. The two of you were back to being on good terms. This was how your friendship normally worked, for as long as you could remember anyway.

"A secret admirer, apparently." You mumbled, handing her the note to read. Clearly, the person had no intention of outing themselves. They were hoping for you to catch on. From the tone in the note, you guessed it had to come from someone who felt they had no place in confessing. That could be anyone, for literally any reason. Maybe they were your best friend, or a social reject.

"No way! We have to find out who this is."

"I dunno, they seem to be trying really hard to keep their identity a secret."

"But what if it's someone hot?" She poked you in the side, her face pleading with you to let her assist in finding out who left the gift as she passed the note back to you.

"But what if it's Zim?" You doubted it was him. As far as you were concerned, you pretended he didn't exist, and he seemed to hate your guts, which was completely fine by you. The two of you burst out laughing as you put the flowers back in your locker so you could retrieve them after school. "But, maybe I don't want to know."

"Lame." She huffed as you began your walk to class. You folded the note, stuffing it deep in your pocket. You hated that you knew you wouldn't be able to let this go. You felt the need to solve the mystery. Although you had no clue where to even begin, there was one person you hoped it would be from. He was your main suspicion, even though a part of you wondered if that was due to wishing for it to be so.

"Can we please just be lowkey about this? If I decide to pursue this, I want to keep it hushed. Word spreads like wildfire here."

Well, you were absolutely right about one thing. Word travels fast in high school, especially if it's drama. Left and right, you had people asking if you had found the unknown Romeo who had broke into your locker. You were disappointed but not surprised. You had expected Jessica to talk. Her lips were about as tightly sealed as a window in summertime. So far, everyone had their own theories. The wildest one you had heard was that it was from one of your teachers. You were immediately disgusted with that, and how desperately you desired to unhear that statement.

Nevertheless, you had started to feel more confident in your own personal favorite guess. There had been one certain individual who was particularly silent through the whole matter, almost uncharacteristically so.

Lunch time. The perfect time to gain confirmation of your theory. Tray of borderline unedible garbage in hand, you strode to your usual table, which seated all of the school's finest and most elite in terms of the social ladder. Instead of taking a seat like everyone expected, you continued to walk, not stopping until you reached the very last table in the back, which sat only two: the Membrane kids. Setting your tray down, you took a seat across from Dib, who stared in utter shock and amazement. The sister looked up from her Game Slave, glance so brief you weren't entirely sure if it had even happened. Without a word, she rose from her seat, leaving the lunch room completely, most likely to continue playing in the hallway. Let's face it, no one was going to eat the shit they served anyway. You hoped he would say something, anything that would be incriminating. However, only the usual din of the cafeteria could be heard, the occasional murmur of your table switch slipping through.

You couldn't handle any more of the surrounding clatter of trays, laughter, and indecipherable words, so you decided to speak. "Hey, Dib. You like mysteries, right?" The poor boy looked helpless, red up to the tips of his ears, eyes refusing to meet yours.

"Sure..." You could feel his knee bumping the table as he bounced his leg at about a hundred miles per minute. You had him right where you wanted him, and he knew it. You both did. In that moment, you knew it was him. It had to be. He was acting even stranger than usual. Based on his behavior, he knew you had cracked the case. Thinking back, it should have been fairly obvious from the beginning.

"Well, something strange happened this morning. And since mysteries are kind of your thing, I was wondering if you could help me?" You were trying to coax him into saying the words you needed so desperately to hear. And yet, he was so stubborn.

"Alright, I could, you know, give it a go, I guess." Maybe he wasn't stubborn, maybe this was him playing out his last hope that you still were clueless on who it could be.

"I found something interesting in my locker this morning. Some very pretty flowers and a lovely little note, but unfortunately, it was anonymous. So, I guess I have a secret admirer on my hands." By gauging his reaction, you could tell he wasn't about to relent any time soon. He nodded his head, lips pursed in a tight line.

"Well, that's a tough one." Vague answers, saying as little as possible. You were getting nowhere, and would be getting nowhere. He was really going to make you say it, wasn't he?

"Yes. I have my suspicions. Would you like to hear them?" He didn't respond at all, fingers drumming nervously on the table. He still wouldn't own up to it. You decided to give him one last chance to confess, saying no more and staring directly at him. Hoping the pressure would bring him to spill, you thought your breath would catch in your throat when he opened his mouth to speak.

"Did you do the math homework last night?" His voice was almost an octave higher than normal, and there was a slight wobble to it. You could only fix him with a glare. Unbelievable. He was trying to get out of this by changing the subject. There was no way in hell you were letting that happen.

"I know it's you, Dib."

"Oh...you do?" His voice was so soft and faint that you had to strain to hear it. His eyes fell to the floor, as if trying to will a wormhole to open beneath his feet to swallow him so he could be anywhere but there in that moment.

What Dib was expecting to happen was for laughter to spill from your lips, followed by you telling him that you could never in a thousand years like someone like him, that his chances were below zero.

Some pearls of laughter did escape you, but it wasn't malicious. Even Dib, in his most insecure and vulnerable state could see that. Throughout the day, you were itching for this confrontation. You hoped it was him, you wanted it to be him. Not so you could throw it back in his face. This whole ordeal brought you to realize that you had somehow caught feelings for him as well. Your morning conversations about spooks, although mildly concerning at times, made your day, and you appreciated how passionate he was about his interests, even if you didn't completely understand them.

"Who knew you were such a dorky, hopeless romantic?" You didn't think it was possible, but the blush that stained his face darkened at your words that were broken by giggles.

"So...you liked the flowers? Or were you just saying that?" His eyes finally met your own for the first time in what felt like ages. You could see he was slowly relaxing, although to him it probably felt as if he were still walking on eggshells.

"Of course. I'll put them in my room when I get home." His lips pulled back into the cutest smile you had ever seen, and you thought your heart had melted on the spot. "Can I see your phone?" You blurted out, embarrassed of yourself. What ever happened to playing it cool?

"Should I be concerned?" A hint of worry crept into his voice, but regardless, he pushed his phone over to you. Taking it, you opened contacts and input your number, adding a small heart next to your name. As you glanced around the lunchroom, eyes had started to become glued to you. You had been sitting there much too long, and many were taking notice. Standing up, you slid the phone back to him, taking your uneaten tray in your hands.

"Call me sometime." Those were the final few words that were spoken as you made your way back to your usual table, leaving him to sit and stare in disbelief. As lunch drew to a close, you would shoot Dib occasional looks, waving happily whenever you caught his eyes. You let yourself dream that this was possibly the beginning of some blossoming high school romance. In your position, you had your pick of virtually anyone at your school. Nevertheless, you wouldn't have wanted anyone else to be your secret admirer.

#dib membrane #invader zim #invader zim fanfiction #fanfiction #dib x reader #invader zim x reader #invader zim one shot #invader zim fic #invader zim oneshot #one shot #oneshot #fanfic #request

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impactrueno · 3 years

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this a specific question triggered by your tweet regarding rocky cringe phase, so you don’t have to answer if it’s too personal but what was the experience actually like as one of the big mods back in the hall pa$$ days?

it must be such a unique thing to have so many random internet people, (predominantly young teenagers ig as a result of the transferrance of the lorax target audience? ik i was a cringe 13 y/o during the heyday lol) invested in the mythos of you and your pals ocs and cosplaying them and stuff? i mean hell, people still think of them now which is why i’m asking this question!

but i always wondered if askblogs are kinda a weird, niche sort of “internet celebrity” in a sense that the audience can interact directly with rocky or whoever which is part of the fun appeal but, again like e-celebs, did it ever get a bit invasive because the audience boundaries aren’t super clear?

are u still pals w the other big mods? i hope you think of it fondly and that you know you brought so much fun to a lotta people but it must have been a very one-of-a-kind experience? and it’s astounding the knockon effect the 2012 lorax film had wow

oh boy......looking back yeah, it was really weird. but fun nonetheless, and i still miss the very unique dynamic of the audience being able to interact with the characters through asks and all the plot happening in real time (for the most part.) it was truly a one of a kind experience and ive never seen anything else like it online...granted my scope is limited and i dont know how other fandom askblogs operated but i do feel like our "system" evolved into its own thing somehow. interactivity is great for keeping people engaged in whatever youre doing. however (and i dont want to speak for anyone else here) i feel like its possible that the askblog """"big mod"""" experience mightve twisted our expectations a bit re: feedback and engagement from followers....because creators usually struggle a lot to keep people interested in their ocs, but we had people cosplaying them from the get-go due to them evolving from something that was already popular (for better or for worse lmao) so people were already invested in them. and the best part is that a lot of them remained invested even after they became their own thing!! thats very cool. but we might never reach that point again unfortunately. it was just something very unique to that phenomenon

im honestly very grateful for all the people who stuck around and still stick around to this day. rocky being as influential on people as he is is just fucking wild to me man. ive met people who based nearly their whole identity and/or music taste when they were younger around rocky and years later you can still see the influence there. to see that and be aware that youre partially responsible for that is a really weird feeling haha especially because rocky himself has a lot of me in him (conscious choice, i wanted him to be fun and easy to play because i didnt think he would get as far as he did)

but yeah people did get invasive, not just with rocky but with me as well. in so...so many ways. they often treated me like a character too and shipped me with other characters/people and arghhhh bad. just to talk about one example, the reason why i dont really show my face in photos is because back in the day someone saved a few of my (already rare) webcam selfies from back then and made a blog dedicated to my face as a joke but all it did was make me extremely uncomfortable so after asking them to take it down (and yes they apologized and felt pretty bad about it), i decided to simply not show my face and go through something like that again. call it an overreaction but im already a private person by nature, so it felt pretty damn invasive.

i also got hate in rockys inbox that went way beyond in-character 'anonymous voices' when he got in a fight with one. like i was starting to feel that the asks meant for rocky were more directed at me or people were just sort of forgetting that there was still a real person behind the character. the stuff going down behind the scenes on that day wasnt pretty either. for me at least. rough times lmao

also this didnt apply to me but the mods who ran female characters would get an unjustified amount of shit for whatever the characters did, it was insane. the audience was lovely sometimes, yes, but other times they really didnt know how to act and this was the biggest example of it i think. granted, like you said, it was mostly teenagers so thats to be expected i guess

as for me still being pals with the other big mods......ehhhhhhhhh lets not go there.

despite all the bad stuff (that i wont elaborate), i still see the experience as a whole as positive and look forward to taking part in something just like it one day. there was a bit of a trufflu revival via discord servers in 2019 but it just wasnt the same and it went south pretty fast so i dipped. these days id rather not think about trufflu at all if im honest.

ANYWAY yeah.........truly a one of a kind experience and i learned a lot from and during it. 8/10 would not recommend

#Anonymous #asks

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phantastus · 3 years

Text

CW: Suicide. Please scroll past if you need to.

It's been a week since I got the news, and needless to say it's been sinking in and I haven't really been able to muster words appropriate for talking about it. I don't really -want- to talk about it, actually. I'm already struggling not to think back on all the ways I was too self-centered, all the opportunities to be a better friend that I let slip past-- and I feel like talking too much will make it about me, and it shouldn't be about me.

Regardless, I do have to talk about it a little, because sometimes the only thing standing between someone and something like this is knowing what happens afterward.

On December 27th, a friend I'd lost touch with messaged me on Skype to catch up.

Both being weird (not cool-weird, just weird-weird) artistic loners who barely talked to anybody, we originally met in 8th grade when an over-invested school counselor arbitrarily picked me to be some sort of mediator between them and their bully (maybe because I -also- was awkward and had no friends? Who knows). We both agreed that lady was nuts, but I guess it worked, because we wound up staying friends all the way through that summer, then high school, then college. I spent most of my teenage weekends at their house, playing video games, eating barbeque, and doing weird art kid things like finding out what happens when you microwave a banana, and planning to crash prom by running through the dance floor in fullbody gorilla costumes (we didn't, but it was fun to think about).

After college, that more or less stayed the same-- except now we could drive, and now we were dealing with the reality of being queer, mentally ill, and stuck in a smallish not-particularly-accepting town without much clue of where to go from here. We marathoned horror movies, ate ice cream in my parked car at night and talked about depression and gender, and when I had pneumonia, they showed up at my door with a basket of still-warm banana bread and an HP Lovecraft anthology.

We both loved Silent Hill. There’s even a photo of them somewhere on this blog, from back when we made that SH2 butter cake recipe that went around. They crocheted me a pillow with the Halo of the Sun on it. My birthday/Christmas gifts were never that thoughtful-- I was and still am a procrastinatory space cadet and would usually just stop at the store and grab a shitton of candy and whatever the goofiest cat-related object that caught my eye was.

Then I moved out of state, and got really depressed, and didn't call or visit for years.

I'd already been beating myself up about not being in touch, and they had little to no online presence that I could easily hunt down-- so I was elated to see the message pop up. We talked briefly-- pretty much just enough to tell them a little about what I'd been up to, and express happiness at hearing from each other. They admitted they weren't in a good place, but hey, after 2020, who was? I was just happy to talk to them again.

They took their own life on January 22nd, 2021, less than a month later.

They're gone, and I can't fucking describe what this feels like. I wish I hadn't talked about myself so much when they asked. I wish I'd told them that after COVID they should come up and visit me in Maine and that I couldn't wait to see them in person again. I wish I'd told them how much they meant to me and how often I still think about them. I wish I'd found out sooner than three fucking months after it happened. I wish I'd just fucking called them instead of waiting for the little online indicator bubble on skype to turn green.

This isn't supposed to be a sermon to guilt-trip readers into reaching out to their friends ~before it's too late~-- I know it's hard and I know we've all been through so much in this past year alone, that isolation compounds and builds and can feel impossible to wade out from.

This is just a heartfelt plea to everyone else who feels like their life doesn't matter, or that everyone around them will "get over it": please stay. I know it hurts. I know it feels unbearable. I know the world is profoundly fucked up and feels like it can only get moreso from here. I wouldn't wish what you're going through on my worst enemy, and I know because I've been there too. But please stay.

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/talk-to-someone-now/

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/help-yourself/

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention/index.shtml

(If you're afraid of having the police called on you or of talking on the phone in general, anything that can get you through one second at a time is worth it. For me, it was listening to someone narrate "creepypastas" while drawing those Gravity chapter summary comics. It sounds stupid but "NES Godzilla" and drawing cartoon James Sunderland being bullied probably saved my fucking life.)

And, okay, yes: if you can, please reach out. To friends, to family, to random acquaintances you remember, to anyone. No guilt-tripping intended, I promise. It just matters, a lot. Maybe more right now in this climate than anytime else.

If I haven't talked to you in years, please know that I probably remember you, that I probably still cringe thinking about some embarrassing thing I did in front of you, that I probably still wonder how you're doing. And, if I don’t even know you at all: I hope that you're okay. I hope that we'll all be okay.

I don't have an eloquent way to end this post.

My friend is gone and I miss them and this hurts, so much.

#please don't reblog #i mean i won't stop you #it just feels inappropriate #tw: suicide

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