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babyboibucky · 3 years

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Babysitting Bucky - Part 4

Pairing: FATWS!Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 1,644

Summary: You’ve been assigned by the government to keep an eye on the Winter Soldier to ensure that he was no longer a threat to the world.

A/N: Things are getting interesting for these two lol, if I missed out on anyone in the tag list, please let me know. If you would like to be added, please also inform me whether it’s for this series only or for everything Bucky xoxo

MASTERLIST

FOUR

It was a little past nine in the morning when you heard Sam and Bucky arrive back at the compound. You leaned against the counter in the kitchen as you waited for the two men to show up and when they finally sauntered in, you immediately cleared your throat.

"How was your run, Mister Barnes?" you asked, lifting a brow at Bucky.

Sam rolled his eyes and groaned, "Please don't tell me you need to join us on our daily morning jog too."

You held up a hand at Sam, "Mister Wilson, I do not care for you." Turning your gaze back to Bucky, you crossed your arms over your chest. "So, how was the run?" you asked again.

"Damn, lady." you heard Sam utter under his breath as he walked towards the fridge to fetch himself a glass of water.

Bucky merely shrugged, "It was good. I mean, I was three laps ahead of Sam the entire time so yeah." he explained and smirked at Sam who grunted in response.

"Oh and we passed by a civilian who tried to use my trigger words and it almost worked. Almost."

Bucky must've have noticed the slight change in your demeanor because he immediately let out a chuckle, "I was kidding, Agent. Nothing happened. We literally just ran."

You scoffed, "Do you really think that this is all a joke, Mister Barnes? I asked because I need to send a weekly report to the government and if they notice even the slightest discrepancy, they will apprehend you. Like I said, I am not an enemy. I may not be a friend either but I reassure you, Mister Barnes, I am more than willing to vouch for your stability. That is if you participate and help me out here."

As much as you hated the fact that you needed to always be around Bucky wherever he went, it wasn't like you had a choice. Besides, you believed that he was no longer a threat but you needed evidence. You needed something to present to the government to make them believe so. You also understood why Bucky behaved the way he did but was it really so hard to participate?

Bucky heaved out a sigh, "I'm sorry." he mumbled. "It's weird...to have someone follow you around when you do normal stuff, y'know?"

Taken aback at how quickly Bucky apologized, you nodded in understanding and apologized for being aggressive as well.

"We have training later, maybe it'd be better to have you spar with Bucky instead. Might make things less weird for him. Only if you can handle the cyborg." Sam chuckled.

"I look forward to it." you smirked.

---

It was three in the afternoon when you went to the compound’s gym. Sam and Bucky were already inside the boxing ring, sparring. You watched for a while as you wrapped your hands with bandages; you eye the Winter Soldier carefully, analyzing his every move.

Hit, evade, kick, punch, evade, punch.

Every single time he tried to hit Sam, the latter was able to avoid him. You noticed that Bucky had a certain pattern that he followed. A few more attacks later and Sam was able to knock him off, pinning him down on the ground.

“Man, you’re getting rusty.” Sam commented, offering a hand at Bucky who remained on the ground.

“He was restraining his moves.” You interjected as you walked towards the ring, bending down as you slid beneath the ropes.

Sam lifted a brow at you as he watched you enter the ring, “And why would he be restraining his moves?” He asked.

You shrugged, “If Mister Barnes stopped pulling his punches, you would’ve been sent to the ER by now.”

Sam scoffed in offense. It wasn’t your intention to belittle the Falcon, in fact, he was holding up against a super soldier pretty well. However, Bucky was an enhanced human being and had vibranium for an arm. He knew the extent of his skills and was aware of the fact that Sam wouldn’t be able to take every single blow if he wouldn’t restrain himself.

The Winter Soldier would injure Sam without a doubt, but Bucky Barnes? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

“The Winter Soldier wouldn’t have given you a chance to evade his attack. Am I right?” You turned to Bucky who was obviously surprised at how you easily figured him out.

He shrugged, “You tell me, Agent. I’m not the one tasked to find out the answer to that.”

Sam hummed, “Yeah, okay. Point taken.” He said. “Barnes is yours, Agent.” He smirked and moved out of the ring.

He sat on the bench facing the ring, looking forward to see you spar with Bucky. You, on the other hand, was just as excited. You could sense that the two still doubted your skills; maybe showing off your capabilities would help in gaining their respect and cooperation.

“Do I need to pull my punches, Agent?” Bucky cracked his neck.

“I don’t know, Mister Barnes. Do you?”

You didn’t give Bucky any chance to respond to your question and immediately ran towards him, using a foot sweep to trip him. Bucky was caught off guard and found himself on his back with you quickly moving to straddle his metal arm with your legs, pinning him to the ground.

“Holy shit!” You heard Sam guffaw as he clapped his hands.

“Shut up, Sam!” Bucky choked out before using the entire strength of his metal arm to throw you off of him.

You groaned when you landed on your front, quickly rolling to the side when you sensed Bucky’s attempt to hold you down. A combination of punches and kicks were exchanged between the both of you, with Bucky gaining the upper hand when he twisted your arm behind your back, holding you tightly against his chest.

“I don’t think you’ll like it if I stopped restraining myself, Agent.” Bucky said, voice deep and rough.

His grip on you tightened as you tried to fight him off. Heaving out a deep breath, you relaxed and let out a groan. Thinking that you probably realized that winning over him was futile, Bucky loosened his grip on you and you took it as a chance to stomp on his foot before throwing your head back, hitting his nose with the back of your skull.

“I think I can take it, Mister Barnes. Try me.” You boasted, quickly moving away from Bucky.

“I’d rather not.” Bucky responded.

No words were exchange from then on, only grunts and breaths as the two of you continued to spar. At times, Bucky would have you tackled on the ground only for you to choke him with your thighs, flipping him over as you tried to land a hard punch that he easily caught with his metal hand.

“That all you can give me, Mister Barnes?” you leaned forward as you straddled him, your fist still in Bucky’s metal hand.

He darkly chuckled, “You know I can do more, I just prefer not to.” he said and let go of your hand before grabbing your arm and throwing you over to the side.

“Yeah, well I guess you’re a coward for holding back.” you panted and sprinted towards Bucky, using the momentum to throw your legs over his shoulder, twisting your body as you brought him back down to the ground ala Black Widow.

You immediately got up and moved away from Bucky who lifted his head and stared at you with a frown, “Where did you learn that?” he asked curiously.

“Your babysitter Black Widow-ed the shit outta you.” Sam chuckled.

Bucky rolled his eyes as he got up from the ground, “Do you ever shut the fuck up, Sam?”

“Do better, Mister Barnes. You’re putting the Soldat to shame.”

A split second. All it took was a split second for Bucky to tackle you onto the ground with his metal hand loosely wrapped around your neck. Your eyes were wide as you looked up at Bucky, the glint in his eyes long gone and replaced with something else.

Anger?

“Do not ever compare me to the Soldat.” he said through gritted teeth.

His hand remained wrapped around your throat but they didn’t budge, didn’t tighten nor shook in an attempt to do so.

“Why not?” you lifted a brow.

“I may still be the Winter Soldier, but I’m not the same man I used to be. I’d rather hold back and lose to you, Agent. Because the Soldat doesn’t exist, not anymore.” he said.

You knew it was a low blow to try and trigger him. You felt bad for doing so, seeing how he reacted to your statement when you brought up his dark past. But at the same time, his actions relieved you. Even with him hovering over you, metal hand wrapped around your neck, you didn’t experience any sort of worry nor fear. He was firm yet gentle with how his fingers remained loose around you.

Bucky was in full control of his actions.

You stared up at Bucky’s eyes and realized how blue they were. When you didn’t budge beneath him, Bucky let go of your neck and got up but immediately fell to the ground when you tripped him with your leg.

“That’s what I thought, Mister Barnes.” you said as you stood up, dusting your hands off. “You’re not dangerous. Thanks for the cooperation, I’ll include that in my weekly reports.” you said and slide out of the ring.

“All that for a test?” Sam incredulously asked as he watched you retreat from the gym.

You turned around, “It wasn’t a test, Mister Wilson. That was me trying to get to know Mister Barnes better.” you said and left the gym but not before hearing Sam’s comment about you.

“Man, we underestimated your babysitter.”

---

Babysitting Bucky Tag List:

@chipilerendi @procrastinationinawriter @supraveng @sammypotato67

Everything Bucky Tag List:

@ddowii @jessou893

#bbbwrites #babysitting bucky #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x reader #bucky #bucky x you #bucky x reader #sebastian stan

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notgonnarememberthis · 3 years

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Pillars

Surprise!!! I didn't have intention of publishing a oneshot but this popped into my mind a couple of hours ago and it was just too good to ignore. I don't write Ainsley much so it was a lovely change to have her voice in my mind for a change and it was really fun to explore a more vulnerable aspect of her. Especially since her weakness appears to be her family being in danger. It was really fun to write and I hope y'all enjoy this as much as I did

Ainsley wakes up to the sound of a scream. It’s so loud it pierces through the walls. She startles, feeling her heart pounding in her ears. It takes her a few seconds to realize it wasn’t from her dream. The scream is very much real. She’s never heard anything like it, so full of pain and terror. Then she realizes it sounds very familiar.

“Mom.”

The rate at which she’s on her feet and running is dizzying. She almost rips her phone from the wall it’s plugged into with her urgency to move. Her bare feet echo on the floors as she races down the hall. She curses her urgency for privacy from when she moved in almost a year ago, insisting that she’ll need her own space since she’s been used to living alone for so long.

Her mother’s scream still echoing in her head makes her hate every step that she was too far from helping.

Her fingers shake too much as she tries to work her phone. Dialing the number almost absentmindedly from memory as tears stream down her face, panicked breaths too short to fill her lungs.

She should call 911, there could be an intruder or a fire or. She should call 911.

“Malcolm Bright, leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.”

His voicemail taunts her as she tries to school her panic. She can’t call anyone but him. She needs Malcolm. He’d know what to do. He’d know how to save her. He’d get there faster than any cop would.

Except maybe Gil.

Finally she’s in front of her mother’s door. She doesn’t even bother knocking, instead reaching for and twisting the golden handle. Yet, it doesn’t budge in her grip. She tries again, then once more before the horror truly sets in. Her door is locked and Ainsley can’t hear anything coming from the inside.

Not that she can hear much over her own heartbeat.

“Mom!” She pounds on the door, tears flowing freely imagining everything horrific her mind has to offer. Her mother choking on blood, stabbed in the stomach collapsing just out of reach of the door, a gun trained on her temple if she tries to scream. Ainsley throws her weight against the door but it’s no use, the wood is expensive and she just bounces painfully off it. She ignores the flare of pain resorting to pounding again with her good arm when the door swings open.

She freezes when a very tired and very concerned looking Gil answers. She thought he’d come fast but this is ridiculous.

Her rational mind comes to as her panic ebbs momentarily. Gil had dinner with them last night, she retired for the night before he left. He had a few drinks, there was no way her mother would let him drive and insist that he stay.

“Ainsley? Is everything ok?” She glances over his shoulder not seeing her mother anywhere behind him. She must have slipped into the closet, probably sitting at the vanity.

“I heard-” She thinks for a moment. Was it all a dream? She could have sworn… It sounded so real. “I heard a scream.”

His shoulders drop, a soft look of understanding passes over the man’s features. “A nightmare.” He assures her.

“No. I know what I heard. I heard-”

“No, Ainsley.” He stops her with a had up. “Your mother had a nightmare.”

She tenses, confusion knotting her brows. She’s no stranger to someone waking up screaming in the night. Hell, she grew up familiar with the sound of Malcolm’s night terrors. A scream, the sound of running, a struggle, and then her mother’s gentle voice coaxing him awake again.

It was always Malcolm though. Never her.

“I don’t understand.”

“She just had a nightmare. I’ve got her, kid. Don’t worry.”

She almost scoffs at his words. Don’t worry? Not even when she was faced against a literal serial killer did she hear her mother make more than a yell. A challenge against her opponent. She always fought back. Always. How the hell would she be able to stop hearing that scream? She sounded so… helpless.

She’s never known her mother to be helpless.

“I can’t.”

“Ains.” She stops, only Malcolm calls her that but it’s enough to disrupt her thoughts. “She’s safe.”

Her face sinks with realization. “The pills.” Gil’s expression only confirms it. The sad almost guilt that passes over him, and she knows. Her mother had talked to her and Malcolm about it before. How she planned to get clean. No more relying on pills and booze to survive. She didn’t want to miss another moment. Those were her words.

Ainsley has had only a small peek at the bottles before when her mother was sulking over Malcolm’s treatment of her. Ones she expected, having seen from Malcolm were there. Valium, Ativan, Marplan. Yet the one bottle screams in her memory now.

The sleeping pills.

“She never…” Guilt clenches in her chest. “I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t.” He assures her gently with a sad smile. “She would never have let you or Malcolm know.”

“Is she…”

“At the vanity.” He nods, understanding her question. Sitting at the vanity is almost never good. After moving in Ainsley often found her there, so locked in her own thoughts she didn’t hear or see her come in. She understands why, in a way. It gives her space to think, where the walls never feel too much like him. The closet was always her space. Ainsley remembers it almost looking the exact same as when she’d run in to play makeup with her.

She wonders if the familiarity is a comfort or a punishment.

“You want to see her?” Ainsley chews on her lip, thinking. Would her mother want her to see her like this? Probably not. Yet she had to have heard them talking. She doesn’t hear her protesting either. She would not be shy to request her time alone. She nods. “Come on.” Gil guides her into the room, softly knocking on the door before opening it just a little. “Jess, sweetheart. Someone wants to see you.”

No protest again. Ainsley shuffles forwards, suddenly feeling very much like the shy five year old who came to check on her older brother after he had a nightmare. She always had her favorite stuffed rabbit ready to share to keep away the bad dreams. She wishes she had the bunny right now. To wordlessly pass to her mother without needing the explanation. Without having to say what they both already know.

Her mother turns to her, eyes dark from lack of sleep. Ainsley wonders how long it took her to work up the courage to close her eyes. How long it took for them to fly back open in terror. They’re red rimmed too, from tears, she recognizes. She’s never seen her mother cry. The thought terrifies her.

Yet when her mother sees her, the expression changes. A soft look of guilt and understanding. “Oh baby,” She reaches out a hand and Ainsley goes to her. More tears she didn’t know she had left spilling down her cheeks. She rises from her seat meeting Ainsley in the embrace. She wraps her arms as tight as she can around her mother, her face burying into her shoulder. All the fear and sadness she felt melts out of her at once. The slow stream of tears turning into full body sobbing in the comforting touch. Fingers comb at her tangled blonde curls, separating the knots from her own restless sleep. “I’m so sorry I scared you sweetheart.” She whispers in her ear.

She shakes her head trying to reject the apology. Yet the crashing realization that her mother isn’t this pillar of strength and bravery weighs heavily on her. She wonders if Malcolm even knows.

Oh god, she’s going to have to explain her crying voicemail to Malcolm.

“Are you ok?” She finally asks when she has the strength to talk.

“Oh my sweet girl.” She breathes, pulling away just to trace her jaw. “I’ve got you right here, I’m more than ok.” She places a kiss on her hairline enveloping her in a hug again. “It was just a nightmare. I’m ok.” Ainsley bites her tongue at the thought of what her nightmares could possibly look like. Malcolm’s were terrifying to hear about and he has suppressed memories.

Her mother knows every face, every name. Every single image.

Gil’s knock interrupted her second wave of panic. “I talked to Malcolm. Figured he might see Ainsley called and panicked when he woke up.” She feels her mother nod in understanding.

“He’s not coming, is he?”

“No. I managed to convince him everything was ok.”

“Good.” She pulls away from the hug, though her fingers still linger on his arms. “Do you want to sleep with me tonight?” Ainsley looks between her and Gil. A selfish part of her wants to nod, curl up next to her mother and keep her safe from the nightmares just like she did for her after the memories of Endicott started resurfacing.

“It’s ok kid. I’ll sleep in a guest room tonight.”

“Nonsense.” She scoffs. “The bed could easily fit all three of us plus Malcolm. That is, if you’re ok with it.” Ainsley realizes she’s talking to her and nods. Gil had always felt like a father to her, even when his focus was on Malcolm. He always asked if she’d like to tag along to a baseball game or a trip to the planetarium. Anything to make them feel like normal kids.

She still has the stuffed astronaut he bought her.

“Is that ok with you?” Ainsley asks Gil and he smiles, wide and warm. Nothing like Martin’s.

“I’d like that.”

They fit comfortably back in the bed. With Ainsley hugging her mother close to her. She’s more than used to the octopus grip and settles in, manicured fingers scratching her back in smooth lulling patterns. Gil takes place behind her mother, safely cushioning her between the two of them. This way she’s protected from both sides. Ainsley smiles at the image but it does calm her when she sees him offer his arm to lay on to her mother.

They both fall asleep before she does. Neither stir while she listens to the soft noises of the quiet slumber. She hopes, against everything that has happened, that they get to keep this soft moment. After everything that’s happened her mother deserves to be happy. She thinks with him, she could be.

Maybe they all could be.

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sneezefiction · 4 years

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apple pie & ice cream

Kenma x Reader - Scenario

desc: gloomy days can always be brightened with sweet smells, cinnamon sugar, and a homemade apple pie from yours truly: Kenma Kozume

a/n: to the anon who requested this a little while ago... happy birthday, love!! i hope you’re okay that i switched things around a little bit & had Kenma make you something sweet instead <3</i>

warning: slight language

wc: 1580

---

Some days are longer than others.

You’ve never had a good explanation as to why, but there are at least some telltale signs.

Like when red lights seem endless, your favorite song doesn’t sound as pretty as it should, and you just can’t keep your tired eyes open. Even with a cozy mug of hot tea in hand or the gentle stream of sunlight filtering through your office’s window, the warmth on your fingertips and face simply refused to reach you on the inside.

It also doesn’t help that you were flipped off not once, but twice, by some shitty drivers when you clearly had the right of way.

So you determine that the faster you can get home to Kenma, the better you’ll feel.

You take every short-cut and any back road, impatiently awaiting the moment that you can kick off your uncomfortable shoes and step out of those constricting work clothes. To turn on the air-conditioning and crash into a couch that proves to be far more welcoming than the outside world. Even just a nice, long stretch would do your aching back and heavy arms some good.

But most of all, you long to sink into Kenmas chest and lazily breathe in the comforting smell of home that rested on his well-worn hoodies. To run your fingers through his silky, soft hair and make messy braids out of it while sighing heavily to relinquish the day's grip on your tight shoulders. You can’t wait to bother him until he sets aside his black and red headphones to kiss your forehead and pull you into a soul-catching hug.

Most crappy days call for extra love from your gamer-boyfriend… but today Kenma has really gone out of his way to shower you in sweetness. Literally.

You’d sent him an awfully lengthy text about the number of crazy drivers on the road, the dreary weather overhead, following it up with a recap of your teary-eyed breakdown in a fast food chain parking lot... and you topped it off with just how much you missed him.

So he did the one thing he knew could lift anyone’s spirits.

Kenma got to baking his world famous apple pie.

Countertops were covered in white and brown sugar, apple peels, and other various, scattered ingredients. A store-bought pie crust was preheating in the oven, because only God knows how long it would take for Kenma to learn how to make that from scratch. Spices plumed in delicate, little clouds throughout the kitchen. Everything was coming together beautifully.

Kenma mumbles to himself quietly, a little miffed that he’s missing his weekly streaming session...

But secretly, he’s been meaning to do this for you for a long time.

He’s been dying to thank you for putting up with his incessant live shows and never-ending computer gameplay. For living with him in his rental house even though he could probably (definitely) afford something far more luxurious. And you deserved luxurious. You should be decked out in diamonds and fancy cashmere, lounging on a sofa atop some rooftop garden oasis that overlooks the entirety of Tokyo, and dancing the night away at clubs and galas.

But you chose him.

Simple Kozume.

A smaller-framed boy with a knack for video-games, patterns, and strategy. The one they jokingly called “pudding head” in high school. That kid who used to hide behind his own hair because the world around him was far more daunting than he thought he could handle.

Kenma would rather stay in and binge a series on netflix than spend a night out on the town. He invests himself in playing an overly-competitive tournament of Mario Kart with you over flying out for a highstakes game of poker in Vegas. He prefers nights surrounded in fairy lights when you collaborate on videos with him, throw popcorn at his long hair, and drink a bit too much just because you both compliment each other more when you’re a little tipsy.

You love all of this about him and you’ve reminded him time after time that you wouldn’t trade him for the world… yet Kenma is still determined to at least have this apple pie done by the time you get home.

But as luck would have it, you’re early.

The lock to the door clicks and twists as you slide it open with a few squeaks.

Your senses are instantly delighted by the blooming fragrance of cinnamon and nutmeg. An ambrosial wafting of warm apples and pastry dough permeates the airspace while the added ginger and lemon cut through the sweet scent.

As if the room had just handed over a fluffy blanket and set you in front of a crackly, wood-burning fire, you’re filled with that much needed comfort.

You’re home. And it smells so damn good.

If heaven had a scent, this was it. And you might as well be wearing a halo and angel wings.

“Kozume…?” You call out, wondering if it was really your boyfriend in the kitchen creating that mouth-watering aroma.

“...yes, y/n?” He replies slowly, trying to clean up the countertops, a little frustrated that the pie wasn’t finished in time for your arrival.

“Is that you? Or did Gordon Ramsey break into my house and take over my kitchen?” You giggle, waltzing into the kitchen, the stress of the day being alleviated immediately upon seeing those speculative, gold-speckled eyes.

His hands are in his hoodie pockets, but when your form turns corner into the kitchen and makes its way toward him, Kenma draws them out and sneaks his hands up to your cheeks, cupping them gently.

He leans in, his expression a tad quizzical and somewhat mysterious, and whispers…

“You’re an idiot sandwich.”

A laugh bubbles up and out, shaking your whole body as you wrap your arms around his frame. You’d seen him just this morning, but wow you’d missed him and his extensive knowledge of meme culture. Now Kenma has his arms draped around your waist, hands squeezing at your hips a little. Your flustered but smiley expression spurs on a soft chuckle, a gentle yet deep rumbling in his throat.

“I thought you’d be back a little bit later, but I’m glad you’re here.” He murmurs out, voice tired but so soothing to your ears.

“Mmm, I’m glad to be back… now are you gonna tell me what that magnificent smell is? Or should I open up the oven and check?” The cheeky tinge to your voice causes him to pull away from you for a moment to look you in the eye.

“If you want it to turn out well, I’d keep your pretty little hands away from the oven for the next few minutes.” Kenma quips.

You playfully stick out your tongue but then proceed to place a teasing peck between his eyes, making him crinkle his nose cutely.

“So, when you sent me those texts earlier, I might have accidentally made an apple pie.” Kenma admits, looking away.

“Accidentally?” A grin slowly spreads across your face, eyes glinting with humor.

“Yep. Accidentally.” He shrugs, “I found some ingredients and a pie dish and I just accidentally threw it all together. So yeah, how convenient is that?”

You sigh, rolling your eyes.

He’s really something else. And to think your day had previously been wrought with misery and disappointment.

“Mmm I don’t know, Kozume… it doesn’t sound like an accident to me. I think you did it because you wanted to be sweet.” You whisper softly into his ear.

Leaning back to brush away a strand of his hair from his face to get a full visual of his cat-like gaze.

“And why would I do that?” He teases gently.

“Oh, I don’t know… maybe because you love me?” You poke at his shoulder.

“Huh? Love?” He gives you a goofy look, raising both eyebrows in mock confusion. “...Is that some kind of sauce?”

He tries to keep a straight face, but the quirk of his lip gives him away.

You just stare at him before giving in to another fit of rolling giggles. The hearty, unrestrained laughter overtakes the both of you, causing you to double over and clutch your middle in an attempt to hold yourself up. Kenma has his back up against the counter-top, holding the edges of it with both palms to keep himself steady and from falling to the floor.

As you both recover from aching lungs and that cloudy, euphoric feeling, you can’t help but let a smile plaster itself on your face.

Kenma has done many things today.

He gave you a reason to come home with hope in your heart. He’d drawn you into a heartfelt, soul-refreshing hug. He had made you laugh like nobody ever could. He’d even baked you an apple pie.

But best of all, he‘d held you together.

Like he always did.

Every single day, without a doubt in your mind, you could celebrate and smile. Because you would always have this cinnamon-covered cutie to smile and crack up with. He would always brighten the most mundane of weekdays and find the loveliest of ways to match your moods.

You two are like apple pie and vanilla bean ice cream.

And speaking of ice cream…

“Hey, Kozume?” You bring him into one more bear-like hug.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Did you get ice cream to go with the apple pie?” You ask, your face preciously tucked into the crook of his neck.

No reply. Had he heard you?

“Kozume? Did-”

Cue a huge sigh from Kenma.

“...Where are my car keys? I need to go to the store immediately.”

---

tags: @cherryonigiri, @yams046, @miss-rin, @shou-kunn, @senkuwu-chan, @super-noya, @stcrryskies, @holaaaf, @sugacookiies, @vintgicals, @moonlightaangel

(comment, dm, or send an ask to be added to my general tag list)

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu x reader #kenma x reader #kenma kozume #kenma #nekoma #haikyu #haikyuu fluff #hq #hq x reader #hq scenarios #haikyuu scenarios #kenma scenario #kenma imagines #haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu kenma #sneezefiction

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miss-kittys-magical-library · 3 years

Text

The Ides Of March

(A Darren Treacy x Jeanie Turner mini-series)

Prologue - Bad Romance

Word Count: 1815

Warnings: language, violence, murder, mention of sexual assault, angst

A/N: On Saint Patrick's Day, Darren and Jeanie start receiving ominous, cryptic text messages claiming to be from the future. Play the game; save Darren. Jeanie's rules are simple enough: If Dazz can catch her out in Dublin, he can have her any way and anywhere he wants. So how did a night of wild sex and whiskey lead to murder? *Spoilers for Love/Hate series 3*

Sequel to “The Sinner’s Prayer” Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

There are tiny moments that contain millions of choices we all make. It's not a choose your own adventure; there's not always time to think cohesively. Add in copious amounts of liquor and sex and a person may become impulsive. As Jeanie cocked the gun pointed in Nidge’s direction, she found herself in the middle of one of those flip-of-the-coin situations.

She followed every hint, every cryptic text from a burner phone that was meant to prevent this exact instant. But the vile leader of an IRA faction lay slowly dying from internal injuries at her feet. Siobhan, softly sobbing hid her face in Tommy’s shoulder. Darren, behind her, still held the keg by the handle. Nidge was the only one who could square up. He was pacing like a trapped animal, enraged and seething. Jeanie never faltered in her aim.

“We're done here, Delaney,” the words came out distorted. “Right now. This was a nice night. I saw a great concert. I drank loads of fucking liquor. I have had more sex in the last few hours than I have in the last few years. I literally got eaten out in a pub loo. I'm getting divorced, and if Trish was smart she'd get a divorce too.”

“Red-” Darren tried.

Jeanie spun on him, the gun pointed too close for either’s comfort. Darren’s eyes like a deer in headlights. “I'm not losing you. I'm not letting this life eat anymore of you. Siobhan already paid the price.”

“Just put the gun down please. I'm only trying t’put him out, love. Look at the bastard.”

“It's a butterfly effect, Dazz. You're already too much for them.” Tears threatened Jeanie’s eyes.

Darren put his hand on the muzzle of the gun cautiously and pointed it down to the floor. “What the fuck are ye talking about? Jeanie, you've been barking all night. Not that I don't appreciate the craic,” he smirked, “Or the shaggin’. The panic attack when we walked through the door earlier. How did ye know about Git?”

Jeanie fished in her cleavage for her mobile and tossed it to Darren. He opened it up and used his own for comparison. He studied the texts on both screens with confusion in his eyes.

“You've been getting them too, right?”

“But how?”

Only Darren and Jeanie existed right now. And the soft gurgling of Git as he drowned in his own blood. The choked crying of a young woman who had been assaulted. They were alone, but aware. So deeply aware of their situation.

“Oh please, can ye even fire a fucking gun?” Nidge’s voice broke through.

Jeanie whirled again, her arm around the side of Darren's friend. It was all fluid. Her arms moved with resistance like underwater. The gun aimed somewhere towards the back of the basement or front. No one was sure. It was just where she pointed the gun and pulled the trigger.

One by one dominos topped in a new pattern. Siobhan screamed, but the sound was deafening so her panic was muted. The gun kicked back causing Jeanie’s elbow to vibrate. Almost like someone checked her reflexes with a small hammer. A burst of concrete where the bullet hit a wall, and Darren dropped the keg with an even louder crash.

In Nidge’s terror, he went to flee from Jeanie's bullet . His entire weight landed on Git’s face. Nidge’s trainer came down with a sickening crunch like a knife in butter. Git’s face was the butter. The gurgle ceased.

The last domino fell. Jeanie dropped the weapon to her side and staggered backwards into Darren’s arms. He tried to take the gun but she jerked it away.

Instead he switched gears and mumbled nonsensical words of comfort. “I've got yous.” and “Jeanie, it'll be ok” She stared up at him as a tremble rolled through her. Darren put his hand on her face and sort of started fixing her hair. Then, with a turn of her head, Jeanie vomited absolutely everywhere.

“Lovely. Just fucking lovely,” Nidge said. “Typical Americans.”

Darren held Jeanie by the arms and bent to look her in the eye. “Alright, sweetheart? Nidge and Tommy and I have t’ take care of this. Why don't ye call Laura or Ewan, and have them come get the pair of ye. Siobhan too? Get her cleaned up and get some sleep. Crash at my gaff, ok?”

Jeanie was numb. Catatonic almost as Darren and Tommy formed a circle. Their heads literally together as they attempted a plan.

Jeanie straightened her back and made her way to Siobhan who held herself tightly. Like she was trying to fade into the background. She put her arms around the young woman who started with a jump but relaxed into Jeanie. The gun finally out of her hands and on the desk beside them.

“Here's what we're gonna do, ok? Do you want me to call Trish or Mary? You aren't gonna clean yourself or even pee. We're gonna take you to hospital. They'll clean you up and take samples. Then we can get you some tea and a warm shower and a nice bed. Dazz has a nice bed. Then I'll get Layton, and bring him to you. That sound good?”

Siobhan nodded softly in agreement, but her uncle wasn't having it. He shoved Darren and Tommy aside to bellow at the two women huddled in the corner together. His finger pointed in Jeanie’s face.

“She’s not gonna do a goddamn thing you say. You're gonna sit right here while Uncle Nidge and the boys clean up this bitch’s mess.”

There was not a single thought that went through Jeanie's head. Was this how Darren's brain was wired to live this lifestyle? Just react and pay for it later while you're trying to live until the next job.

But she was done, she knew that much. Done being left behind. Treated like she was the good little obedient housewife. Having men tell her what she can and can't do. Shut up, sit still and be a good girl. But open your legs. It was being done that caused her to hold the gun up again and point the barrel to Nidge's forehead.

“Darren doesn't work for you anymore, Nigel. Tommy, you can stay here or you can take care of your wife. No one owes him any loyalty.”

“Come on, I didn't mean bitch. We just have to fix it. Then you and Treacy can do whatever.”

Jeanie cocked the gun again until it clicked, “No. You can call Elmo or Fran. Can't call Aido can you? Seeing as you got him shot. Dazz gave you a lung, the love of his life, his sister and his fucking mind. He's not giving you or this bullshit anything else.”

“Red-”

Jeanie swung the gun on Darren without thinking. He flinched and ducked, But she kept her wits about her. She aimed the gun at Nidge once more.

“Dazz, take your shoes off,” she instructed.

“What?”

“You're standing in this cunt’s blood. Take your trainers off and leave them. Socks too, and stand behind me. Then text Ewan and tell him to meet us here with a car. We're going to your flat, then my hotel to pack our bags after we shower and set these clothes on fire. Then we are getting all of our money, our passports and our IDs. Say goodbye to Mary and the girls, and we are going away. Tibet. Phuket. Bali. I don't give a fuck, but we’re flying first class.”

Darren complied. Jeanie couldn't believe it. They shared a look. She couldn't tell if it was relief or the devil in his blazing green eyes, but she was emboldened by it as she bent to take off her own boots. Her focus on Nidge never faltered.

“Ewan said he'll be here in ten or so. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

“I'm not above shooting this bastard in the head for you, Dazz. I'm not saying we are settling down and having babies and happily ever after or some shit. I'm saying I don't want you to die. If we have to run half way around the world to make that happen..” Jeanie's body started to quiver. The adrenaline was running out. “First I need a Bloody Mary and some French Toast.”

-------

Jeanie exhaled for the first time in nearly 24 hours. The exhaustion finally set in as she laid back in the ridiculous bed chair thing from“upper class.” She and Darren were beyond first class, they were elite now. Even if it was only for the twelve hours it took to get to Thailand.

She could see his far too short hair sticking out on the other side of the wall. She knew at one point he would sneak in to be with her if only for a little while. Jeanie made him look a bit nicer than his typical trainers and hoodies and denim. She was in a sundress herself. They both knew dressing up was not fitting in. Neither felt they fit in here.

“You good, Dazz?”

“I t’ink so. Still trying t’figure out how we went from shagging in coat rooms and back rooms and toilets to watching an IRA boss,” Darren raised his eyes, “to being on this plane. We have forty.. Enough money to live, maybe years where we're going.”

“You couldn't keep living that life, Darren. Nidge was off his fucking rocker, and everyone around him is gonna pay for it.”

“Rosie would've never done this, you know that right?” He looked plaintively over at Jeanie as she climbed up onto her knees.

“Her loss is my gain though. I know you love me, but I'm not sure about my own feelings. I do care about you alot. I'm probably a danger junkie, so we could end up bored of each other without the fear of being caught or you not having any jobs. Or you could wear colors and learn to meditate, and I'll get a pet monkey and cut all my hair off.”

“Don't ye dare!” Darren laughed. “I'll become a Buddhist, just don't cut that hair.” He twisted his fingers up in it before reaching up to kiss her sweetly. Just a hint of his tongue.

“Fine,” Jeanie rolled her eyes. “But I still want a monkey. We should get some sleep.”

They kissed one last time before she laid back down and closed her eyes. Jeanie knew Darren would be on his side when he would begin to dream. His hand tucked under his cheek and head, mouth slightly agape. She pictured it in her head as she drifted off herself.

“How DID we get here?” she thought before dreaming herself of a game that started in sex but ended in murder.

Tag list: @sean-falco @robertsheehanownsmyass @nightmonsters @super-unpredictable98 @elliethesuperfruitlover @slutforrobbiebro @frogs--are--bitches @forenschik @bisexualnathanyoung @sugdenyoung

#robert sheehan #darren treacy #love/hate #darren x jeanie #robert sheehan character fics

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stomp-that-ho-regard · 3 years

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I typically don’t do asks (I've only ever gotten a few), but a recent one got my gears turning and I wanted to reply.

(This is a secondary blog, so I can’t answer asks in the usual way.)

Your post about the retcon is so fucking good, I wish every critter saw it and actually thought about how shitty it was done, but then their belief in the cast and show would probably start cracking.

Thank you for liking the retcon post. I’ve seen various people in the tags thank me for making that post and have said that it’s helped them ‘feel less insane’. None of us are insane. We are not delusional. We didn’t experience a mass hallucination. These things happened, and they’ve been thoroughly documented. Hundreds of hours of material over the course of three years.

The people who should read that post won’t ever see it because I have all those assholes blocked lol. If they did manage to find it somehow, I know they would just mock it, as they’re wont to do with any of our criticisms. They’re so far up CR’s ass, they’ve convinced themselves that a retcon didn’t happen. Even shoving the literal definition of the word in their faces wouldn’t wake them up.

It's just so fucking weird to see how the group is acting now, and I'm pretty sure we're never gonna get a Laura&Marisha episode picture and a TM episode with those 2 for the rest of the campaign. It feels like when a non-canon wlw ship gets big on a TV show and suddenly the actresses can't be seen or interact with each other anymore🙄 it's the same fucking pattern and like you, I thought I wouldn't have to deal with this on a d&d show.

I specifically want to address the “It feels like when a non-canon wlw ship gets big on a TV show and suddenly the actresses can't be seen or interact with each other anymore” because I’ve thought about that pattern too. (Not so much with Marisha/Laura ‘cause them being on TM together is already a rare combo. If they don’t appear much or at all going forward, I don’t think it’s because of this, though it really wouldn’t surprise me. But, I have been thinking about that specific pattern in regard to their characters.)

I can make a comparison between this situation and what happened with the show A/gent Carter and the way the ship Cart/inelli was handled.

I know that might sound weird, but stay with me here lol...

I want to make it clear that I’m not comparing the relationships at all. Cart/inelli did not have nearly the same amount of build-up and depth as Beaujester, (or quite frankly, their level of possibility.) What I am comparing is the creators over-the-top reactions to these characters being shipped so hard and the extreme measures they went to in order to ‘remedy’ that.

The ship included P/eggy Carter and A/ngie Martinelli. The show was set in New York. Angie was a waitress (who wanted to be an actress/be on Broadway) at the diner that Peggy frequented. They ended up talking quite a bit and became fairly close. That ended up kind of becoming the core relationship in the entire first season, and LOTS of people started shipping it.

At the time, no one was calling us crazy or delusional. At most it was, “This is ABC! They’re not gonna pair her with a woman!” and of course the obligatory “But Peggy’s not gay!”. But no one was calling us names or being generally cruel. And anyone who tried it was ignored because everyone else drowned them out. The ship became extremely popular on Tumblr and Twitter. Both actresses were very positive and supportive. They regularly liked/retweeted romantic Cart/inelli fanart on Twitter. Even one of the female writers on the show got behind it too. It was asked about frequently at conventions and no one booed or rolled their eyes. The questions were never dismissed or made into a joke. (Honestly, this was one of the better overall fandom experiences I’ve had on here.)

And all of us were super excited for S2. Not just because of all the support, but because they had ended S1 with Peggy and Angie moving in together. Peggy had purchased, either it was a really fancy apartment or house (my memory is fuzzy on this), and she literally asked Angie to stay with her. Needless to say, that fueled the flames even more.

But despite the actresses and at least one writer being on board, between S1 and S2, something shifted.

Clearly, the showrunner and/or the execs, took a look at all of this and deemed it a ‘problem’. When S2 finally came around, suddenly everything was different. Instead of both of them living together in New York, instead of it being an organic (I’m beginning to hate that word) continuation from where they left off, Peggy decided to move to Los Angeles to do work for some agency out there or something, and Angie stayed in New York. It’s never explained why. It’s never explained why a woman who so badly wanted to be an actress would NOT want to go to LA, where Hollywood is. LA was never mentioned in S1. There were no hints that Peggy might want to fly out to the West Coast at some point. She seemed perfectly happy in NY, basically setting up house with Angie.

And they didn’t even ease into the change. They just got rid of the character. The actress was bummed about it and Cart/inelli fans tried to put pressure on the showrunner/writers to bring Angie back, which the actress completely supported, but even that fell on deaf ears. So, Angie was simply no longer an entity on that show. Conveniently removed. All the excitement we had was crushed. And of course, the second that Peggy got out to LA, she suddenly had a very obvious male love interest. What a surprise.

The showrunner/writers were not subtle about what they thought about our ship and us. They made the most extreme, nonsensical writing decision in order to permanently separate these two characters. Because, hey, that’s the only way to get the shippers to STOP, right?

This was what I was reminded of when I started seeing the turn that post-hiatus CR was taking. It ended up being a weird combination of kneejerk erasure (BJ) and heavy-handed overcompensation (BY).

But of course, CR is not a TV show, it’s D&D. And they can’t force one of their PCs to just disappear, so what do they have to resort to? Not interacting.

We all know how severely neutered Beau and Jester’s general relationship has become. It’s clear to me that both Marisha and Laura felt they had to do that. They had to suddenly have their characters stay away from each other as much as possible so they could prioritize Fjord and Yasha, and speed-run into romances with them. They started acting as if either of them giving the other one ounce of affectionate attention (like they had been doing so often and so naturally before), would be breaking some sort of hidden ‘relationship code’. Almost like if they ever hugged again, the studio would go down in flames.

The very obvious fact that they went to these lengths, to me, proves two things...

One, it proves the retcon even more, because you can tell that the way they behaved with each other DID in fact change. The frequency of interactions and the way those interactions would play out. Whenever they interact now, it seems like they’re trying to keep it as short, thin, and almost comedic (to the point of goofiness, and not in a good way) as possible. Their engagement seems half-assed and dull. The sounds of their voices, their facial expressions... completely sanitized. Even all the physicality they had is gone; the touches, the hugs, the cuddling. Every single aspect is different and they absolutely did that intentionally. This had to happen because they needed to dupe the viewers into believing that despite overall interest waning, their threadbare connections to Fjord and Yasha are more important, and were always more important then their connection to each other, that we all watched them steadily build. (And watched them pick up steam from about ep70 onwards.)

And two, that whole intentional decision to cut themselves off from each other, proves to me that their interactions pre-hiatus were indeed tinged with ‘something extra’, that was more than just friendship. They both recognized it and that’s why they pulled back so hard. That’s why soft touches and hugs and cuddling are no longer ‘allowed’. That’s why quiet, heartfelt conversations are no longer ‘allowed’. Because if there was absolutely nothing there, if they didn’t see/feel any romantic chemistry simmering underneath, and it was all just platonic BFF stuff, why would they suppress their behavior so drastically?

I think that all of this really does cement what I said in my retcon post: That there are disingenuous patterns being used here that I’ve seen far too often in media. In A/gent Carter, it was a character separation, in CR it was a character dynamic separation. Both done on purpose, to make the shippers shut up, and to push a different plot.

One is scripted, the other is unscripted, but the situations feel disgustingly similar, don’t they?

#op #ask #long post #i feel like i'm just retreading old ground here #still cathartic though

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youremyonlyhope · 3 years

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Starship Rewatch

10 years ago today (well, yesterday since I’m posting it a day later), 15 year old Hope curled up on her couch to watch a new StarKid show called Starship right as it dropped. This was the first time I got to watch a show when it was posted since I didn’t become a StarKid fan until a months earlier. I was so excited.

And now, I’m rewatching Starship for the first time in full in at least 5 years I think. I listened to the soundtrack twice earlier today, singing along at my desk at work (thank god no one else was here tonight to judge me). I still know so many of the lyrics. And so many little jokes and stuff were flooding back. Starship was my favorite StarKid show for a long time, so I’m so excited to watch this again to see if it’s still my fave.

This post ended up being really long, so you’ve been warned. But it also includes pictures of the crocheted Roach and Bugette plushies that I made as a teen.

OH. THE OLD LOGO. AHHH. I already have so many feels. The future is now! I can’t handle this. The nostalgia! The Galactic League of Extraterrestrial Exploration. My facebook account to this day says I am a Starship Ranger at the G.L.E.E. because I’ve never bothered to change it. Also, shoutout to anyone from the StarKidPotter FB and EFST days if you’re reading this. AHHH IT’S CHRIS AND ERIC. Ok I might have to pause 20 thousand times during this Starship Ranger ad to acknowledge all the StarKid cameos. Tyler! “We come to conquer... in peace!” Tyler I love you. Brian and Richard! I forgot they painted Richard BLUE. Britney and Ariel! Nicholas Joseph Stauss-Matathia! I see that StarKid’s website has shortened his name to just Nicholas Strauss but remember the days when we’d purposefully say his full name? Anyway, I literally just screamed “NICK” when I saw him because he was always one of my faves. The Old Snatch was and still is iconic. Devin and Lily! The Wizard God himself, AJ Holmes. God... remember those AJ Holmes appreciation days where we’d make Chuck Norris-like memes about AJ? So much is rushing back from the depths of my mind oh my god... It’s been so long yet it feels like yesterday... “Someone really *static* F- *static* -ucked up big time” Love it.

2 minutes and 22 seconds in. I’ve written so much. I had to pause before Joey started singing to take a moment. I love this show so much. I love these goofballs so much. And they’re all so young. Most of them are younger than I am now. This is insane.

Ok I have to promise myself not to pause as much now. *Spoiler, I failed*

“I’ll fight off this gamma radiation if it’s the last thing I ever do!... We’re going down! This is the last thing I’ll ever do!” Oh my god. Look at baby Joey. He hasn’t even graduated from college yet. And that Bug puppet! Someone remind me to dig up the pictures of my crocheted plushies of Starship puppets since I made Roach and Bugette and gave them to the StarKids at SPACE and Apocalyptour. (I also did Rumbleroar, but the bugs were my own pattern I made so I was more proud) The camera is focused in on Bug instead of Joey’s face. I love it. So much. Brannnttttttt. My god. Am I gonna freak out over every single entrance? Roach pretending to die, he’s the best friend ever. “The needs of the many bugs outweigh the needs of the few bugs.” “Or the one bug, I know.” Oh man, when that line comes back... “Dirt eater” “Exoskeleton polisher” “I wanna build honeycombs” “The bug that ruins your picnic” “A fly on the wall!” That line came back to me earlier today and I died. Remembering that line was like 50% of the reason I listened to the soundtrack today.

Nick Lang! Julia! LAUREN LOPEZ. THERE SHE IS. Lovebugs, I can’t. *Sentimental music* “You could come over to my nest and I could... tear off your head and let my larva devour your body?” How did I forget that line? The way Lauren has to kick Bugette’s larva sack to walk. But the way that it also works so well with the character. I can’t. The Mosquito Brothers!! I forgot they show up so early. “This is our sister, Sweetheart” “...YO.” I CANNOT HANDLE JIM POVOLO. The “zzzz”s like buzzing as backing vocals instead of the usual “ahs” and “oohs.” The things you don’t appreciate until years later. Darren, you genius. That is such a good detail. For a second I couldn’t remember who the Overqueen is played by. 99% sure it’s Jim (It is). Also. Overqueen like ovary... and it looks like a giant vagina. That had to be pointed out to me later. “FLATTERY WILL GET YOU... everywhere.” Why did I forget that line too? “I’m a starship ranger” “Quiet you, you’re drunk” “No I’m drunk!” I remembered that line probably like... 2 minutes earlier when I noticed Joe huddling in the background and realized that line was coming up. The way Joey lets go of the puppet so both he and the puppet walk away with their arms limp... so cute.

Before even pressing play on part 3, I can hear February saying “Let the record show I am super ahead of schedule.” and I’m dying. I forgot about Brian as the escape pod. Denise Donovan! That Star Trek prop. I’m dumb so I can’t remember if it’s a communicator or what. But I know my Uhura Barbie had a mini one that I lost within a month probably. “OxyGen” “Schience” I can’t. “Mission Log... I think I just heard a spooky noise.” How am I forgetting all of these amazing lines? “Pika-pi!” AHHH I JUST SCREAMED. “My stars, I seemed to have landed in a field of these aMiNals!” I can’t. “Can I tell you guys something?” *port de bras and falls gently to the ground* “Hello!” “TOTORO!” I’m dead. The balloon mechanism on the mosquitos! I forgot about that! “HOLY SHIT IT’S A BUUUUGGGGG” Ok something I noticed but didn’t mention earlier. The bug puppet that Joe uses when he says “I had my heart set on nourishment” is the same one red and pink one that Julia used when talking about wanting to be nourishment. When Julia actually gets eaten, she’s using a different bug puppet, the green and pink one, but the same character voice. So, I can’t tell if they intentionally had her play 2 bugs so Joe could be one of them later, or if it was a mistake. I might also just be overthinking things. “ME THINKS IT WENT THAT-A-WAY” I cannot handle Jim Povolo. That scream Joe does as he slimes her. Woah I originally wrote “There seems to be no signs of intelligent lifeforms anywhere” earlier and then deleted it since I don’t know why I found it remarkable. And then looking at the comments of this part I see someone mentioned a Toy Story reference. So that’s why that line stuck out to me. Aww StarKid. There are so many Disney references in this show.

THERE SHE IS. THERE’S MY GIRL TAZ. The pew pew effects how could I forget that! “Hey Taz. You’re pretty tough for a chick.” “I was just going to say the same thing about you.” “Woahhhhhhhh” JoMo oh my god. “My spectrometer readings are off the wazooooooo” That line kills me. Why am I JUST NOW noticing, 10 years later, that Tootsie enters this scene with his gun facing the wrong way. Oh my god. “I saw the empirical proof that science killed god. It’s comforting to know he was once alive though. I like to think that when he died, he went to heaven.” Oh Tootsie Noodles. “...What the hell kind of name is that?” “He’s got bear hands??” Why do I forget all of these lines??!? That record scratch and freeze frame to go “BOOOOOO” oh my god I forgot that. “Like the other day, he was in the cafeteria, just cah-rying in front of everybody.” BOOOOOOO. Here we go, Taz’s amazing Up monologue. “And when Up, cuts an onion, the ONION is the one who cry.” HELP. Also 99% sure I used that joke for AJ appreciation at least one year. “Now take a walk off my knife” What a line. So awesome. I remember having a profile pic on FB that was the text of that monologue and the image of Lauren screaming “WALK IT OFF” I’m still convinced that first “WOO” from the audience that we hear when Up enters is Darren. “I do not peepee sitting down” “Huh??” JoMo’s face as if he’s trying his hardest not to laugh and I can’t tell if that’s him breaking character or if Krayonder is actually trying not to laugh. “I peepee like big boy, deadgoddamnit. So stop making fun of me because it hurts my feelings” I’m dying. Also, deadgoddamnit is amazing. “if you don’t go out there and die for something, then I will kill you for nothing.” I remembered the mirror scene, just seconds before it started and already started laughing. “You’re not a failure, overall.” “Allow me to introduce you to the final member of your team. MegaGirl!” I forgot how DRAMATIC that was. I also forgot that’s how MegaGirl comes into the story.

I need to stop pausing every 5 seconds oh my god I’ll never finish this tonight if I don’t.

“All hail AstroBoy” That was the funniest line. “MegaGirl, can you kill humans?” “No. But I’d like to.” I can’t handle it. “A horse ate my cousin! Me and horses got a feud.” #1 MegaGirl doing the “I’m watching you” hand sign. I can’t. “Hey. Miráme. *Slaps* NOW ESCHUCHAME” amazing. “Or that time. You taught me calculus... CALCULUS WAS TOUGH.” I never went past pre-calc. Nope. Ah. Get Back Up. One of my fave songs. “And now we dance.” Dylan’s “OW” as they lean back. “Ok Idiotas. Say something nice. Or I will kill you.” It’s all so iconic.

“So you still think being an egg planter is lame?” “...Yes.” The larva oh my god. I forgot we see one before the end. That’s Jaime playing the larva I think. Life is definitely one of my all-time favorite StarKid songs to this day. I wish it was longer. I love it so much. And I love that its instrumental is scattered as a motif throughout the show. “It’s a short, small thing we lead. With so much potential, pointless or essential, which one can I be?” Wow. Near Pippin levels of giving me an existential crisis. Also wow Joey improved his singing so much between AVPS and Starship. “My name’s Bug” “*Gasp!* Like a bug??” “Uh... no.” “Good. I’m February, like the month, but a person.” I should start saying that honestly. “I’m Hope, like the concept, but a person.” “You boldly go where every man -hey- woman -bark woof- or data dog has ever gone before! Sorry K9DX” Adorable. Joey’s subtle little double nod he makes the Bug puppet do when he’s shocked she thinks he’s a Starship Ranger. Amazing. Ah he said goddamn not deadgoddamn! February should have known right then he wasn’t human! “Take my claw” that too. "The only thing that needs to rest are your jokes, because they are so tired.” “Woahhhhhh” No but like... why don’t I use that line in everyday life... “Now I am slightly less weak.” “Ok. I’m going to shoot this metal bitch!” I’m dying. How did I forget the Taz/MegaGirl rivalry?? “That thing is a R-O-B-O-T man” “Can’t fool me with numbers, Krayonder.” I’m dead. “The stack of hay was my cousin!” #2 The way Meredith says “barometric pressure” is great. And Tootsie saying “Well you must take real good care of it, because I never would have guessed.” He’s such a sweetheart. “Nobody shoot dammit, nobody shoot.” “KILL KILL KILL” I never really liked Hideous Creatures but it’s so cute to see MegaGirl do the choreo robotically. I love that the Gap hasn’t changed. “Cool it skank, you do not know me.” Another line that I forgot until a split second before it was said. I’m so glad whoever edited this added some pews going in the wrong way for Tootsie’s gun. I know I definitely noticed Tootsie’s gun was backwards during this part, but I don’t know if I noticed it was backwards in that very first scene too. I forgot about MegaGirl tossing out Specs. That “MEGAGIRL!!!” scream from Joe though.

“Never in my 6 long days of life.” Underappreciated joke. Also, I think this is the 4th unique upright bug puppet. We got red/pink, green/blue, green/pink, and now red/blue. Also, Nick Lang is a great puppeteer. “Yes, I helped her escape. But I swear, never in a million years, did I think I’d be caught and yelled at for it!” Oh I forgot Bugette is the witness. Jaime’s angry face behind Joey is killing me. “He didn’t know the humans were evil.” “Oh, they’re not.” “Shut up!” Humoons and hoomans. “And no more singing or dancing” *gasps of horror* “The Overqueen has overspoken.” “Well, that’s not gonna help your chances with Bugette” Oh Roach. “PERHAPS.” Jim destroys me.

God the 4-person Pincer puppet. Amazing. Dylan’s arms being strong enough to be above his head for 10 minutes straight. Amazing. Also, Nick Lang is so emotive as a claw. It took me a sec but yeah JoMo is the tail. “There were? Where are they?” Joey’s face. “Tell me all about her” The claws under the chin I can’t. Hey StarKid, I see you throwing in an ad mid-video before Kick It Up a Notch. You’re lucky I love and support you guys. “Put ‘em together and what have you got?” bibbity boppity boo. More Disney references! This scene is full of them. Man, remember when we were all blown away by Dylan’s voice in this song the first time? Like we could tell he could sing in AVPM/S, but his songs were just so jokey and only his long “Welcooooooooooome” showed us his talent. But then Kick It Up a Notch happened. And we FINALLY appreciated Dylan’s beautiful voice. “I pushed it to the limit.” and “To coin a phrase, be a man.” more Disney. I might be overthinking this and will have to rewatch Life to confirm, but I think the camera zooming out as Pincer reprises Life is just like the camerawork when Bug sang it originally. If so, then wow even when filming their shows StarKid really thinks it all through. (Update: It totally is referencing the original zooms for Life and that’s amazing. Except it’s zooming out instead of in. I LOVE the attention to detail even in filming the show. I’m gonna guess that’s Liam’s doing.) All I can see when I hear Bug’s chorus of this song is Jaime and her SPACE tour dancing, which they incorporated in Apocalyptour as actual choreography. Because they’re goofballs. The kick line. Love it. God. Even though it’s not my favorite song from Starship (just because I love Life and Beauty more), Kick It Up A Notch is one of the best StarKid has ever done. I really has everything. Dylan’s gorgeous voice. Not one but two reprises of earlier songs to throw Bug’s own words back at him. Jim’s bass line. Awesome puppets. Disney references. It’s so amazing. I love how all the comments are either about Dylan’s voice or Dylan’s ability to hold his arms up for a 10+ minute scene or both.

"Gameover man, gameover!” “I feel like cutting open your belly, and filling it with jelly” *Gasps* Oh my god, I put on the captions for a second, and the caption said *Sad spayed puppy noises* “I am in charge of this mission now.” How did I forget about the mustache until 2 seconds before it happened? “She’s got the mustache now. *Kisses head* I love you” Oh my god Tootsie. I FORGOT ABOUT THE SECOND STACHE. There’s an ad right when we see Bug’s human form and I can’t even care because look at him! Ahhh. And the blue headband! Ahhhhh. Joey you’re so adorableeeee. “Bug? Well that’s a fine name.” His concerned face then the relief. Adorable. “Thank you sir. I am a tough bitch.” “Getting nothing but bug muff?!?” I love the slight delay the audience has before laughing as they realize what was just said. “Bug. You hard, ese. You flame.” I die. “Up there. In Space!” *dramatic pointing* No I totally didn’t just do the dramatic pointing with them... no that’s not in my muscle memory from 10 years ago... why would you think that. I’ll rave about Status Quo after it’s done. “But, what if I miss you?” Awwwwwwwww. And that “Just look up.” screenshot was used for “This.” memes in the fandom for years.

Oh Joey. Status Quo is such a good song too. And he really did improve as a singer to sing it. Earlier this week I remembered that this week is also the 10th anniversary of that time Darren was hopping from city to city every single day to promote the Warblers album. And at one point in that week he did a livestream that I remember rushing home to watch. In that livestream, I am 99% sure he sang Status Quo as a little sneak preview for Starship being released later that week. (Just checked, yep he sang it in a livestream on April 20 2011) God I love this song. Then the version the boys all sang for SPACE Tour was beyond beautiful too. Ahhh I love this musical.

Ok. It’s almost midnight. I started this 3 hours ago. I’m probably not finishing the show until 2am at the rate that I’m pausing and stopping to comment. But OH WELL.

“Dr. Spaceclaw” wow. “Leaving them behind was of little consequence, but a pleasure.” Oh Megagirl. “You did a very good job today too, son.” “*Gasp* Thanks dad.” That Star Wars fake-out though. Speaking of Star Wars, I really need to rewatch Ani now that I’m actively a Star Wars fan unlike last time when I still wasn’t invested in the movies I just watched them. How did I forget about Jaime playing Junior’s new mom?? ...Does Junior get an alien incubating in his chest... is that foreshadowing... I can’t remember. (This was like... half a foreshadow) This scene is funnier now that Breredith is married. The way Junior says “Phew” I’m dead. I remembered how they restrain MegaGirl once again 2 seconds before it happened oh my god. “We deserve bubbles on our skin.” An iconic line. “Well thank the long dead god you made it, Bug!” The crunching of the handshake, I can’t. Oh someone in the comments pointed out that Bug and February are doing the Tarzan hand thing while Up’s asking Taz to see a movie. Adorable.

Get yourself a man like Tootsie who won’t stand for you talking down about yourself. “Maybe this was all part of God’s plan. He made before he died.” I love the dead god jokes. I remember years ago some kid on facebook was like “The dead god jokes are offensive” and I was like “It’s a sci-fi musical about a bug in a human body but sure worry about god being dead.” but probably in an even more immature answer. I’m just mesmerized by Tootsie and MegaGirl’s verses. God. The first Dylan and Meredith duet. Amazing. And MegaGirl’s confused face is great. “Don’t press that button, or we’ll all be sucked into space.” So... Can anyone tell me what foreshadowing is? Oh shoot... ok wait no I’ll comment on that when we get there. God that is such a cute love song. I wrote barely anything just because I love that song so much. Would love to know where Tootsie’s taking her though.

Oh my god this scene! I forgot about this. How could I forget this. “Well the world always looks a little bit brighter, from on top of a lap.” I had remembered Bug sitting on Up’s lap, but not Specs. This is the part I forgot. Adorable. Ahhhh so cute. The Specs/Krayonder relationship was apparently cut from the filmed version, but was present if you saw it live. These moments are adorable. And I love how this is the second person JoMo’s had to carry in this show since he also carried Denise earlier. “Why if it isn’t Bug, my oldest friend.” and “Don’t say that, my dear.” are adorable. Oh wait. Up sat on Bug’s lap. Not the other way around. Ok. I didn’t remember this scene as well as I thought I did. I’m dying. I didn’t want to write anything during this, but oh my god “That son of a bitch Optimus Prime” I forgot that. I love the audience’s reaction to “The entire right side of my body, it’s a robot” because they all gasp, and then laugh at themselves for gasping. I knew there was something he couldn’t do without crying. I didn’t remember it being “Sir I Wanna Buy These Shoes” Christmas Song. It’s ok Up, I haven’t listened to that song in full in years. I can’t handle it. But Christmas songs in general make me cry too. Oh Up said goddamn instead of deadgoddamn too. Hmm... Aww the mother spider story. “I think the old you was just killing out of hate.” “Oh I was.” I’m dying. Awwww the nose kiss. I definitely remembered that. “Deadgodspeed soldier!” The way Joey misses catching the keys and also Darren’s “Woo!” in the audience again. So great. That 12 minute scene is just adorable and the Up story is so dramatic and hilarious.

Hmm finishing before 2am might be ambitious... “Hahaha. Then I’ll shoot him!” “Taking care of my business down on the planet is that cool with you?” Brian’s delivery of that line has always intrigued me. “How much I care about my MegaGirl unit’s survival is also a percent equivalent to zero” Rude. “You are nothing like my boyfriend, Tootsie Noodles.” “Yes, well - wait WHAAA” This scene is so different now that they’re married. “Ha. Ha. It was cute.” “You’re... a toaster.” *Slaps* Ok 1) I used to use that insult all the time and only half ironically. I was a strange teenager. 2) She just hurt a human... isn’t that against programming, or can she just not kill humans? Evil angry Brolden is something we need more of. I love Brian as a villain. More please. “You stupid goddamn robot” So I guess they say goddamn and deadgoddamnit. I’m overthinking the evolution of language in this universe. Also Brian’s screams while being choked are amazing. I’ve never forgotten those, if anything they’re better now.

AHHHH I REFRESHED AND DELETED ALL OF MY STUFF FOR BEAUTY. Kill me. I’m so mad. Let me try to recreate it but I hate myself. I was saving this draft after every part but OF COURSE I don’t save after my favorite song and then refresh.

Oh poor Meredith. Her white wig doesn’t let her blend in as much when she’s in the hoodies playing a bug. “Oh hey Bugette, we’re just trying to get Bug laid!” That bug had to know about Bugette’s crush though? That’s just cruel. “The ending is killer” ruuuuuuddddddddddeee. I know I had at least one more point, but that’s lost to the ether. Beauty is probably my fave, if not tied with Life. When I was listening to it earlier, I was overcome with emotion because it’s just such a joyful song. These days I cry over happy stuff almost as much as I cry over the sad. And these lines just hit so hard... I love it. I love this song so much and this scene so much. “Bug. She excreted her filth for you. WE DID IT!!!!!!!!” Brant Cox is so good. It really is a shame he’s not in anything else besides AVPSY and the 10th Anniversary with everyone else. “I do accept you for who you really are. A genius.” Well February, you’ll be glad to know that you thought of that, so you’re the genius. Wow. Junior’s 25, Brian was 25, and now I’m 25. This really was perfect timing for the 10th anniversary. Also I do not feel 25. “Suck off!” amazing.

I’M SAVING THIS TIME.

Ok next part. Luckily I was only 1 minute into the next part when I refreshed. Still so mad at myself... “Someone really firetrucked up big time” (Dead)God I love that line. I also used firetruck unironically. Once again, I was a strange teenager and I didn’t like cursing and I still don’t. “This is so weird, I’m so used to the scrambly version.” (It was while writing this line the first time that I refreshed and lost Beauty....) Ok as I watch AJ, it’s hitting me that he almost definitely came to the set during rehearsals and filmed his part since it’s not a green screen like the rest of them. “The hunters have become the hunted, and it’s wabbit season.” “That was a good video, until the end when it got sad.” Thanks Bug. “I think, I just had a think” See February’s smart. “I’m in a weird situation” Love that line. “Bug is a BUG!? I DON’T BELIEVE IT” Oh Junior. Dylan’s insulted face at “I am not... a dumbass.” So I can’t tell if Brian forgets he’s trapped when he moves his arms into a more relaxed position to lean on the column and then puts them back, or if it’s purposefully staged that way. Brian’s acting while he pretends to be shy and embarrassed about his evil plan is amazing and adorable. Brian has a good evil laugh, why don’t we get him as a villain more often? Also I was gonna make some sort of joke about Nick as Pincer’s left claw vs. Robert as Snarl’s left paw, but I’ll leave it be.

I FORGOT ABOUT THAT WEIGHT TAZ WAS LIFTING JUST FLOATING UP TO THE SKY WHEN SHE LETS GO. I just laughed out loud. “Damn that G.L.E.E. They’re always making twisted abominations of everything!!” I cannot handle it. And the wink. Poor Darren but also not poor Darren at all. I was just now WRACKING my mind for who could possibly be playing Pincer’s tail if JoMo was being devoured by mosquitos. It’s Brant. Literally the entire cast is currently onstage. Ok Krayonder’s been getting his blood drained for 3 minutes, why is he alive? OH I FORGOT KRAYONDER GETS UP AND SHOOTS THE BUGS. Ok and he gets chopped by Pincer’s claws too so HOW does he survive? StarKid answer!!! I forgot how dramatic this musical gets when you got both the bugs and MegaGirl coming after the humans. Aww the Vulcan salute from Specs. “I changed my name. To Tootsie... MegaGirl.” I love the reactions of the people in the audience who immediately realize what that means. I hear at least one “oh my god” that sounds like sobbing. Awwwww Tootsie’s “that’s real” speech and “I’d love you if you was the horse that ate my cousin.” (#3) just... get yourself a man like Tootsie MegaGirl. He is perfection. God the downloading love scene is so cute. I can’t handle it.

The Up saving Taz scene is so dramatic. Then Brian and Jim just calmly walk offstage. It kills me. Also why did Jaime just continue to lie there? “I just needed to learn how to kill with my heart.” Not exactly what Bug meant, but it works. God Taz climbing onto Up’s back is still the most hilarious thing ever. Whoever thought of her climbing that way was a genius. So funny. I always wanted to try it. Holding the gun up to her head like a blowdryer always gave me anxiety. Making the door out of a scrim that can be backlit was genius. Oof and bringing back “The needs of the many bugs outweigh the needs of the few bugs. Or the one bug.” just hurts. Poor Bug. My heart. This is probably the line that sticks with me to this day and I do think about sometimes.

Ok it’s now 2am and I still have 2 more parts.

I sorta love that Joey didn’t have the time to change into his blacks so he’s still in the Starship Ranger suit while playing the Bug puppet. “Save the Overqueen. I love her.” Awww. “Roach, I’m gonna get the job done if it’s the second last thing I do.” Love it. That Kick It Up A Notch Reprise though. Brian, you should play villains more often. Also remember all of us being like “LUPIN CAN SING?!?!?!??!!” “Lucky for me, God is dead. When you see him in hell, tell him Junior sent you.” Deadgod I love that line. This whole deadgod thing was just leading up to that amazing line. Oh no Bugette! Bug saying “maestro” oh my god. “DFSDSJFDSJKFDS... I’m dead.” I forgot that part! Oh my god the way Brian flicks the glasses back down on his face. Ok so I saw Lauren wiggle her way behind the mucus sac, but I didn’t see Nick come onstage. I rewinded, and I guess the zoom in shots on Brian and Joey were timed so we can’t see Nick join Lauren to be the first larva to come out. Oh well. And I love the crowd cheering as Junior dies. “And bingo was his name-o” That callback though. I forgot that the Overqueen eats Bugette’s body while crying. “Or Bugette! Oh...” Also god Roach is adorable.

Last part. 2:21am. Here we go. Krayonder got his blood sucked out by giant mosquitos and was cut up by a giant scorpion, but all he needs is a bandage around his head. Awwww the soft “I Wanna Be” playing the background as Bug begs the team to accept his bug form. Bug being so mad “It’s that bastard Pincer isn’t it?” and then being so happy that Joey does the little nose scrunch thing. So cute. JOEY’S FACE WHEN DENISE KISSES THE BUG PUPPET. Cannot believe I forgot that until 2 seconds before it happened too. “I now pronounce you man vs. machine. Fight!” WOAH. Why in the WORLD did “eep op ork ahah” come back to me. I was able to say it WITH Joey. That was straight from the DEPTHS of my teenage brain oh my god. I forgot about that oh my GOD. THAT’S INSANE. I FORGOT SO MUCH STUFF BUT I REMEMBERED HOW TO SAY “I LOVE YOU” IN BUG.

And the Beauty reprise.

God I love this musical. It’s still my fave StarKid show I think. And I’m horrified to see that it has only 500K views for the last part, so only 500K people have watched it all the way through after 10 years. That’s disgraceful. It’s amazing. Watch Starship.

It is 2:32am. I started at 8:50pm. Got sidetracked when I had to rewatch the Beauty part of Act 2 again to make sure I got my notes back in the post. Took a few bathroom breaks. But this is mostly because I paused every like 10 seconds to make a comment, so it took 5 and a half hours to watch a 3 hour musical. This why I take forever to watch things while liveblogging. I take too long to writing notes.

I’ll probably just post this in the morning. Gotta proofread for mistakes before posting.

Ok it’s the next afternoon. This post is literally 5,000+ words and takes 20 minutes to read according to a online word counter. I’m sorry to whoever read this entire thing. Your reward is the pictures of the Starship plushies I crocheted when I was 15 and 16.

(Ignore the bad lighting and my horribly chipped paint. That’s the only picture I have of the Bugette one since I gave it to Lauren Lopez a day later. I started making another for myself shortly after but never finished. Maybe I should finally finish the second one... hmm...)

#hope rewatches starkid #guys i'm not kidding it's 5000+ words i wrote a lot i commented on basically every single second of this 3 hour musical

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fizzingwizard · 3 years

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Episode 28~ Well, I heard this season’s supposedly got 60 episodes total (don’t quote me, that may be wrong) so we’re almost at the halfway point... I’m gonna wait till episode 30 to talk about that though.

This episode I actually rather liked, even though absolutely NOTHING happens other than the important things at the very beginning and the very end. That’s becoming a pattern this season - lots of nothing sandwiched in between hints of big dramatic things to come. Eh. But yeah, I liked it anyway :P for a few reasons that are probably not that objective. It’s not the kind of episode that’s gonna make you want to rewatch though.

Cap of the week!

Look we all know Jou is exactly the kind of 12 year old who folds his clothes neatly even when lost in a mysterious parallel world. Also he brought more textbooks (social studies and Japanese). Aka more ammo for Mimi

More below:

Last week we ended with Patamon evolving to Angemon in what was a pretty anticlimactic moment, despite a big villain being there and a cliffhanger ending. Seemed like a waste after all we went through just to get him.

However, I do think the beginning of episode 28 makes up for it somewhat. Angemon gets to show off how Very Very Cool he is, but it’s also made clear that he’s not up to full strength. Seeing him throw all his effort into the battle to save them even though it’s clear he won’t win was actually pretty great.

More typhoon winds throwing everyone back XD they must have so many bruises

Poor Takeru gets thrown back all by his lonesome

So last episode, I said I thought Darknightmon was gonna go for Hikari and was surprised and somewhat relieved when he stayed interested in Takeru/Angemon. Um... I guess that was a red herring x’D he’s after Hikari after all.

He literally says “I have no use for you” to Angemon LOL sick burn my dude

Hikari: “There is a new cutest child.”

Takeru: “Um, actually the phrase is ‘smallest child’.“

Hikari: “No. Cutest child. Do not interrupt my moment, impertinent one.”

Grogu: “Did someone say ‘cutest child’?”

Angemon’s peeved that Hikari stole the spotlight so he immediately jumps into the way and prevents Darknightmon from grabbing her.

Angemon: “No one treats ME like some washed up has-been!”

But as hard as he tries, Angemon just hasn’t recovered enough. It probably took all the energy Patamon had stored up just to evolve. His wings lengthen and release into millions of shining feathers, and both he and Darknightmon de-evolve.

I really did kind of enjoy this battle! Seeing Takeru be all strong and heroic, and the desperation with which Angemon tries to protect him... me likey.

Next it’s a nod to 99 series! D-D-Digimon!

Yamato screams like he’s at the dentist’s.

There’s lots of freaky black lightning that rains down seeming to give dark energy and empower random Digimon who get hit by it. Just to ensure our heroes don’t get to waste time on any more “breaks”

A single feather floats down where Taichi lands and dissolves. I am not sure what happened to it, if it did anything or if it was what protected them until this point...

Taichi and Hikari wake up and discover they are alone. So last week I thought they’d get swept off into pairs... I didn’t even consider that they’d each wind up alone. Mixed feelings! On the one hand, seeing each kid interact with their partner and their partner only was one of the good things about this episode (except it wasn’t always true, which I’ll get to in a minute). On the other hand, my fears last week were that whoever ended up with Taichi would be overshadowed by him. Turns out, if no one’s with him but Hikari, that means all the plot stuff is with them and the others have nothing in particular to do. -_-; At least not this week. My hope is that it’s coming (and there were a few promising hints this episode so), but next week’s trailer looks pretty Taichi-centric too..

Taichi: “Can I help it if I’m so charming cool awesome and dare I say it adorable”

The impact of everyone being “alone” is cut short by the fact that they can all still communicate via digivice. I would be fine with that, except for what I said earlier - they wind up spending too much time talking to each other instead of their partners. Particularly the ones who like to Plan Things. Eh.

Yamato tells Taichi to protect Hikari, doesn’t even mention that he’s sadly separated from Takeru at this point ;_; He knows Takeru’s okay though because Takeru is also communicating by digivice.

Sora: “Hello yes, it’s in my contract that I get to be awesome X number of times per episode, and I have doubts that you are making your quota.”

I love how Tentomon’s job is basically Koushirou’s secretary x’D “Put my calls on speakerphone Margaret” “Yes Mr Izumi”

The partners really are suited to each other... Koushirou gets a secretary, Jou gets a mom, Mimi gets a gal pal, Yamato gets a therapist, Sora gets a sister, Taichi gets a... preschool child who eats paste... -.-’

takeru and hikari don’t count because they’re Special and their main attribute is Cute

All the kids have ended up alone except for super-charged monsters who want to eat them. Palmon hoists Mimi up a very sheer rock trying to escape Golemon who is not great at climbing but doesn’t seem to know that

Meanwhile Jou... is like “Ohh yeah, you guys have it so rough, I’m trying my hardest too, keep fighting the good fight y’all”

He’s relaxing in the hot springs and freaking studying.

Gomamon’s unusually fine with it though. Because he gets to swim. He says “Let’s invite the others here.” They’re both like YEAH THIS IS WHAT I CALL A VACATION

It’s all fun and games until the hairy guy with the tattoos and veiny arms sharing your hot spring starts staring at your ding-a-ling. Uhhhhhhh.

he does make the “Nanimono?” joke so all is well lol

No matter what form he takes, Patamon is always an Angel 👼

Takeru is alone but he has Patamon... but Patamon is...

... ADORABLE... and conked out. Takeru’s so proud of him though, look at that smile *sniff*

Taichi remembers to ask Koushirou how conditions are back at home. This kid is too organized.

Koushirou: “News and variety shows continue as normal even though the world’s ending.”

I’m not going to get into everything he says but it’s pretty much more of the same regarding the power influx from the human world to the digital world and the way the Zurumon’s attacks are wreaking havoc with electronics...

Taichi almost says “You’re so sugoi!” Almost. He’s grateful anyway. *chews on those Taishiro breadcrumbs till they’re broken down to atoms*

Then... Hikari’s acting strange!

Agumon: “What are you looking at?”

Hikari: “I don’t know.”

Taichi: “You don’t know but you’re looking at it?”

Hikari: “It kind of looks like Steve Buscemi... it’s hard to tell”

Taichi’s not too wigged out by freaky Hikari because he’s lived with her all his life, and she’s always been a freak.

Baby Hikari: “Shteeve... bushemiii....”

Agumon: “Your sister’s weird.”

Taichi: “Yeah but she’s MY weird sister.”

Yamato is fighting, of course. He stops for a moment to be impressed by how well Takeru’s handling himself. Garurumon points it out. I suppose it’s simply time to accept that this season Yamato is just not the disaster boy he was in 99 x’D

Now have some gratuitous adorable Patabutt images.

Patabutt patabutt pata pata butt butt

Um... is it just me or is Patamon kinda... oversized all of a sudden lol...

Takeru: “Did you eat all of my candy stash again?”

Patamon: “I just can’t seem to quit”

Takeru: “That’s it we’re getting you into rehab”

Patamon tries to fly but just can’t ;____; poor baby is totally wiped out. Takeru takes a long time to catch on to that. I REALLY HOPE THIS GOES SOMEWHERE, like Takeru has to protect Patamon instead of the reverse etc... pleeeeease don’t just leave this where it is writers!! The potential for cute is endlessssss

On the matter of Things That Are Not Cute... -.-;

Jou: “Please stop looking at my junk”

Nanimon: “Stop looking at mine”

Jou: “YOU DONT HAVE ANY wait do you wAIT I DONT WANT TO LOOK”

Mimi is much more useful! She discovers a shiny rock!

Theory!

This rock... could be the raw material for their Crests!!! Squeee~!! I mean, it’s about time something about that came up, assuming it’s still a thing. (Since they already seem to have their Crests loaded in their Digivices and got to Perfect level without any talk of values and personal strengths, I don’t know how much of the old Crest legacy remains in this season.) I, uh, did the same thing in my fanfic so I guess I’m just biased... These could totally be Evil Rubies Of Darkness and Terror but I’d rather have Crests :p Of course I would have expected Mimi to find green stones in that case sooo... maybe not.

Anyway she and Palmon are suitably distracted from running from Golemon and go mining instead. I’m sure that will not cause any problems.

We swing back to Taichi and Hikari, who are being approached by a big scary monster...

Taichi: “Watch my Tarzan impression.”

Hikari: “Nooo! I don’t want to be Jane!”

Fortunately Agumon evolves just to catch them in midair x’D Now is not the time for impressions, Taichi, seriously.

They are attacked by Volcdramon, which is a dumbass name.

Voldramon: “I AM VOLCRADMON, THE VOLCANO DIGIMON”

Taichi: “Velcromon the Velcro Digimon?”

Voldramon: “what NO i am Volcdramon-”

Hikari: “Voltronmon? Voldemortmon?”

Voldramon: *sniveling* “why does this happen EVERY time i JUST want to be one of the cool guys youre all such BULLIES”

MetalGreymon and Volcdramon face off, but something’s not right! Much like... the Digimon in the last episode whose name I already forgot *cough*, Volcdramon seems able to absorb other Digimon’s power. This presents a problem because last time it took all of them shooting into its mouth together to overload it so they could win. MetalGreymon is having a hard time on his own as Volcdramon just absorbs all his attacks.

Hikari prays to Jesus to save them. Digimon is approved for Christian families 👼👼👼

ugggghhh I love them

Taichi promises Hikari everything will be okay. His back-and-forth with MetalGreymon here is kind of cool. Every time MetalGreymon takes a hit, Taichi’s encouragement and coaching?? I guess keeps frustration at bay.

Buuut eventually they’re both feeling pretty desperate :P It was hard for me to take this battle seriously since, after all we’ve seen MetalGreymon capable of, it seems weird that he should be struggling this much. But obviously they don’t just want to make him invincible. And this problem makes sense: the ability of Digimon to absorb attacks and turn them into energy is definitely a new problem.

The question is, how do we solve it?

Apparently it helps if you have a little sister who’s some kind of super battery.

Taichi: “Nothing shocks me anymore with Hikari. She could announce she’s been Beyonce this whole time and I would believe it”

WarGreymon appears (again) as his goldeny vision self, defeats Volcdramon, then promptly de-evolves back to Agumon.

So the question is, why is this happening... From earlier episodes we know Agumon & co are some group of legendary warriors who have had their memories tampered with (??) to some extent (because they do still know each other, or at least Agumon and Gabumon remember knowing each other). Omegamon’s a given for that of course so I suppose that’s why. Hikari seems to be the key to unlocking the legendary warriors, maybe with Takeru. That’s my guess. Of course, Tailmon’s probably already in the bad guys’ clutches, much like Patamon was. I hope she’s still working for them. I want more double agent fun times. Also ANGST

Hikari: “Thank you, Agumon-” *disappears*

Taichi: “GEEZ I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t even breathe without something bad happening anymore, like excuse me for BLINKING”

Yeah so... Skullknightmon appears and abducts Hikari like it’s nothing xD

Skullknightmon: “What’s under arm number two? Iiiiit’s your sister!”

Taichi: “Aw damn, I wanted the sports car”

Taichi quickly gives chase. I assume Agumon’s pretty exhausted after that and probably can’t evolve now. Bad timing. Oooor maybe this is all how Skullknightmon planned it...

Then... the unthinkable! Hikari looks at her brother rushing desperately to save her... and turns away!

Taichi is SHOCKED! Le GASP!

Taichi: “But but but I’m the MAIN CHARACTER”

Hikari: “Not anymore bitch it’s my show now”

Yeah okay jokes aside! This bit was AWESOME. Like, I’m sure it’s obvious that she can tell the voice that “called” her to the digital world is with Skullnightmon. Or at least, her heart’s telling her she has to go with him in order to meet that person (Tailmon, duh). I’ll be surprised if that’s not what’s going on. But... to so coldly just turn her back on her brother... I mean, maybe she also thinks she’s protecting him... but SHE JUST GOT HERE... holy crap...

To think we spent so long theorizing that Takeru would be the one abducted but no it’s Hikari... In retrospect should have been obvious. She’s 1) a girl and therefore a damsel, and 2) the one who was abducted in 99 xP

But I really like her semi-willingly going off with Skullnightmon. Much better than just screaming as she’s whisked away King Kong-style. In 99 she also got abducted voluntarily (I mean, it was coercion, so... that’s not voluntary, but you know what I mean). So they kept that in this season and I like it.

That’s it for this week’s episode! So the bits that I liked were the individual moments with the kids and their partners, of which we had more than usual but still not nearly enough. Nowhere near. In the end it was still a Taichi episode.

As a Taichi fan... it’s not like I’m ever sad that he gets more focus. But I love ALL the kids and they’re NOT getting development. We do keep getting hints about them but it’s so, so, so slow. To be fair, it’s not like we know THAT much about Taichi either. He gets so much focus because he’s always fighting. This season doesn’t seem concerned with personality and character bits like the 99 one, and I am gonna compare them for that. Because I think that was the heart of the 99 show. Without it, it’s missing something. I keep hoping it’ll come back, we keep getting those hints and special moments here and there, but the plot is such a distraction... if it was like a really good plot maybe I’d care less but...

Next week... as far as I can see, it’s another Taichi episode xP But I do think they’ll do the same as this episode and intersperse Taichi’s battle with what’s going on with the others too. If that’s how they do it, I won’t mind. It might even be better. Fine, Taichi can fight, as long as the others are showing us more about themselves and getting other things done in the meantime. Mimi and Jou both look promising. Takeru too. Sora and Yamato, not sure..

Koushirou better not just sit at his computer the whole time -___-

Le owch.

Taichi: “Look being the main character’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I have three concussions and six broken bones. Also I can’t feel my toes anymore”

hang in there bud im cheering for ya

#digimon adventure 2020 #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure reboot #digi spoilers #digimon #fizz watches digimon 2020

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demaury · 5 years

Photo

boys online. chapter 1. (social media influencers au)

7916. 124. 10. These are the numbers that define Eliott and Lucas’ relationship, either they want it or not. 7916 kilometers between them, from Paris to Vancouver. 124 days since they first said ‘I love you’ last spring. And nearly 10 hours, until… well, until they meet for the first time. (ao3)

It’s around 8 at night, and Lucas is already halfway done packing when the truth hits him square in the face with the strength of a truck launched at full speed. “I’m going to be sick,” he stammers, wide eyes falling on the two folded pairs of boxers he’s holding.

Oh boy. He’s so going to be sick. He can feel it, the way his stomach is churning painfully and his eyes are flickering from one corner of his vision field to the other. The worst part is that he has no idea why it’s hitting him now, but all of a sudden there’s a fucking precipice opening in the middle of his bedroom and threatening to swallow him for good.

From the bed, Manon peers above her phone. She’s sitting on a pile of wrinkled clothes that he was absolutely sure he had already packed up. “I already told you there’s nothing to worry about taking a plane. You’ve done it before.”

Lucas’ eyes snap up at her. “I’m not scared about taking a plane,” he huffs, trying to ignore the way his heartbeat is suddenly thrumming behind his ribcage. He’s taken tons of planes before, and he never gave it so much as a second thought. “I’m scared shitless about Eliott.”

Manon quirks a brow. “Eliott,” she repeats flatly, almost in a deadpan, “the guy you’ve been in love with for at least six months and that you’ve been dating for three of them.”

Lucas glares, throwing his pair of boxers in the mess that is already his suitcase. “Eliott, the guy who’s seen me in person only fucking once.”

Fuck he thought he was handling it well, the whole ‘I’m meeting my boyfriend for the first time’ thing, but apparently he isn’t, and it had to dawn on him the night before he’s set to leave for the other side of the ocean to spend two amazing weeks with the one person on Earth he’s been dying to touch and kiss and hug for six fucking months.

“You’re facetiming like, six times a day, and you guys met once already, as you said,” Manon waves. “He knows what you look like, relax.”

“It’s not about-,” he snorts, but his voice trails off.

It isn’t about what he looks like. He’s not self-conscious, he knows he’s cute and he knows he can be hot when he sets his mind to it — even back when he was in the closet he had more game with girls than his straight friends. It’s just that he’s suddenly terrified. Terrified that maybe, justmaybe, they might not be as compatible as they think they are.

“What if I’m a bad lay,” he blurts out, hands falling to his hips.

“Did you ever get any complaint?” Manon asks bluntly.

“No,” he scoffs.

“Then you’re not a bad lay,” she shrugs. It’s a fucked-up logic and he’s dying to speak his mind about it, but she’s already leaning forward to glance at the content of his suitcase, her phone dropping between her crossed legs. “Honestly, it sounds like you’re just trying to find excuses to worry at this point.”

“Like you weren’t a mess when you met Charles after IFYE last year,” Lucas retorted, “and you guys were just hanging out back then.”

Their manager had shipped him and Manon to Toronto the year before to attend IFYE (the International Forum for Young Entrepreneurs) and they had met a bunch of people there, including Charles and his buddy Alex who had launched an app putting together companies and students looking for summer jobs. Manon had immediately awarded Charles the ‘biggest self-entitled jerk’ title, only for them to start dating six months later — something that Lucas isn’t anywhere near to let die down.

Manon squints her eyes at him but doesn’t bother replying, settling for rummaging through his suitcase instead. She exhumes one of the pair of boxers he stashed there two minutes before, a camouflage-patterned one he hasn’t even meant to take with him in the first place. “I don’t think there will be any problem with him peeling the clothes off you,” she says, “but let’s put all chances on our side.”

Lucas gives her a look and snatches the underwear from her hands, before shoving it back in the safety of his underwear drawer. “You’re not helping,” he grits out, scowling, as Manon laughs entirely too long at her own joke. “I’m freaking out because, like, what if he doesn’t like who I am? Or what it’s like being with me? What if he’s just too cool for me?”

Manon rests her elbows on the edge of his suitcase. “It’s going to be just fine. You’re freaking out, and it’s okay, but I can assure you it’s going to be alright. Eliott loves you, the real you, and you’ve been sharing stuff and caring for each other for months now.” She tilts her head. “So what if you two never kissed yet? You guys want to be with each other, and trust me, plenty of people who do kiss and do tons of other stuff beside kissing don’t want to be in a relationship nearly as much as you.”

Lucas purses his lips, running a hand through his hair. “Damn, what is it like when you don’t take it seriously,” he mutters.

Manon huffs a laugh. “Alright. You know what? You’ll want to do a lot of things when you’re there and none of them is ironing your wrinkled clothes,” she says, frowning at the amount of clothes he shoved haphazardly in his luggage. “Bring me something to drink and I’ll see what I can do with your pathological inability to fold clothing items.”

It takes him a second to nod and decipher whether he can trust her with his stuff, then he goes to the kitchen. It’s not like he’s got something to hide from her, they’ve known each other for four years now — as long as he’s been in Vancouver, give or take three months — but he blames it on the everlasting side-effect of being in the closet for a bunch of time and having to watch his every move even at home. To this day he still isn’t sure if his dad is okay with his sexuality and just doesn’t speak about it with him because they are an emotionally constipated single-parent home, or if he’s just acting like nothing happened — like Lucas never came out to him — out of sheer denial. Even the fact that his dad’s the reason he hasn’t been able to fly to France sooner doesn’t quite provide a defined answer.

“You’re not flying to the other side of the world just because you met someone on the internet a month ago,” his dad had decreed when Lucas had first brought it up, last spring, and that’s when Lucas had been reminded how bad being 17 sucks. He’d been making money, meeting people, flying for business purposes, signing contracts, and yet up until last July and his 18th birthday he was unable to meet with his very own boyfriend simply because his dad wasn’t willing to allow him to leave the fucking country.

No need to say he wasn’t thrilled when Lucas told him he was leaving a few days ago, but he didn’t make an attempt to prevent it either. “Just promise me you won’t see your mother without me,” he had said. “If you want to go, I’ll go with you, but I’ve got too much work right now to leave everyone hanging, so we’ll see about that next Christmas.”

Lucas had shrugged, because going to see his mom wasn’t really a part of the plan, but he had promised anyway and that was left to that. His dad is a notoriously very busy man and so the amount of time Lucas is spending with him in a week is generally narrowed down to a quick hello and a quick goodbye every now and then, so he can’t say living with him is terrible by any means. He mostly lets him do the things Lucas wants to do, and in exchange Lucas doesn’t ask him too many stuff and certainly not to be overly present at home — it’s a good compromise, and certainly better than Manon’s parents not giving two shits about her.

Since he’s good at multitasking, he dedicates his right hand to opening the fridge and picking up a soda can for Manon, while the left one automatically reaches up in his back pocket to retrieve his phone. There are loads of notifications from Instagram and several from YouTube, but he ignores them and goes for the whatsapp conversation he has with his boyfriend instead. Eliott went to bed about an hour ago and up until now he wasn’t even angry at their six-hour time difference (like he usually is), because for once it allowed him to focus on the matter at hand (packing everything), and not on his (incredible, amazing, adorable) boyfriend.

Yeah. That was ten minutes ago, before he started getting fucking anxious. He sets the soda can on the kitchen island and starts typing.

you're just going to make fun of me, but, like, i’m panicking

He looks up and nibbles on his bottom lip, eyes trailing around in the kitchen as if the pieces of furniture could give him answers. All of a sudden he’s glad he didn’t start packing up before, because otherwise the freak-out would have happened much sooner and the last thing he wants is to make Eliott feel guilty or concerned or whatever emotion that is not happy for too long at a time. Maintaining their relationship through the last couple of months wasn’t the easiest thing to manage, but they resolved early on to be honest towards each other. Is that something that is worth getting Eliott concerned about?

Nah, he decides as he erases the text. Instead he sends a few heart emojis, because that’s something Eliott deserves to wake up to — and certainly not his boyfriend freaking out —, grabs Manon’s drink and goes back to his bedroom.

Fifteen more hours.

He’s got this.

Thirty minutes already.

It’s a fucking nightmare.

It’s not like Eliott is throwing the words at any given opportunity, but he’s literally running in the airport like a lunatic, slowing down and slightly ducking his head every time a member of the security or the staff is squinting at him a little weirdly. It takes forever to make his way through the crowds of people coming back from vacation, and he nearly loses his calm behind an old lady babbling with her husband after she stops for the third time to fish god knows what in her purse.

It all started wrong, in complete honesty.

Thing is, he’s had trouble sleeping for weeks now, mostly because his mind is constantly racing with project ideas, and editing has been taking so much time lately that he always ends up going to sleep at ungodly hours. It’s already a problem in itself most days because he’s getting up at 6.30 to get to work at 7.30 — not to mention that he’s been trying to hide it from Lucas not to worry him —, but when he ends up oversleeping because he forgot to plug his phone in before falling asleep, it’s an even bigger mess.

Truly, waking up to Idriss slamming his flat hand on his front door until he wakes up isn’t how he envisioned one of the most exciting days of his life to begin — not that the follow-up has been any more exciting so far. Six hours a day, five days a week, for four months now, he’s been selling frozen yoghurts in the same restaurant where Idriss is waiting tables, and after a few weeks of freezing cold AC and rude people, word spread out that Eliott, aka srodulv on YouTube, was apparently available for a chat during his work hours — after that it had been three more months of tiny skirts and cheeky doe-eyed customers refusing to take no for an answer, Idriss making too many jokes and his boss being entirely too satisfied with the idea of whoring him out in order to get more customers.

His contract ended two hours ago, and the prospect of being able to squeeze in two weeks between that moment and the schoolyear starting off at the Fémis school, two weeks with his long-distance boyfriend, has been enough to survive one last day selling stupid banana flavored frozen yoghurts —until Idriss whined enough to drag him home to celebrate with a beer, that is.

“No plane ever landed on time, relax,” Idriss huffed when he said that Lucas’ flight was supposed to land in two hours.

Well, Idriss would fucking hear from him, because not only Lucas’ flight is on time, but the asshole who refused to buy a fucking bus ticket and insisted on walking by the front door anyway well and truly delayed Eliott more than what his nerves could handle at the moment. Hence the running. You’d think that reaching the airport would be the end of the nightmare, but no, he found out exactly five minutes ago that he can’t get a wifi signal for the life of him, and that the flickering crumbs of 3G (3G for god’s sake!) aren’t enough to send Lucas a whatsapp text to tell him he’s on his way.

He stops running as soon as his phone dings, relief washing over him when he reads Lucas’ name on the notification.

i'm waiting at starbucks 💖💗

Eliott looks around. He’s in the hall K. If he’s guessing right, Lucas is probably not gone wandering in another hall just for the sake of it, so he scrupulously follows the signs indicating various newsstands and airport shops until he spots the familiar logo, in all its green glory. There are a few customers waiting in line and others spread out, sitting at small tables. His eyes are trailing over the unknown faces a couple of times before he has to admit Lucas isn’t one of them.

It’s a mess. Last time, when Eliott went to Vancouver, Lucas had been waiting for him right after the customs area and they didn’t even have to text each other — it was literally that simple. And, alright, he indeed was pretty excited to meet Lucas for the first time back then, even though they were just friends, but it wasn’t anywhere near as exciting and stressful as it is now. He turns around, ready to get worried and upset, and starts searching the crowd of passing strangers. A family of four eventually leaves his visual field at a snail’s pace, and that’s when his eyes stumble on him, almost on accident.

Him.

Lucas.

Eliott’s left paralyzed for a solid minute, drinking in the sight of his boyfriend, his Levi’s shirt, his skinny-jeans, his messy hair, and he feels shy, almost too shy, to make the four or five steps separating them. Too shy, to get over the way his heart is beating and his teeth are digging into his bottom lip long enough to call out the only name he thought about for the last few months, to everyone else’s dismay.

Turns out, he doesn’t need to. Lucas looks up, a little blankly at first, then they make eye contact, and his eyes widen comically, and fuck if they aren’t the most beautiful eyes he’s ever seen-

Before he can even think about it his feet are surging forward, without a single care if he bumps into other people on the way. Lucas’ jacket drops from his hands, falling half on the ground and half on his suitcase, and it lasts a second, barely, between the moment Eliott finally started moving and the moment Lucas jumps in his arms, but it’s both the shortest and the longest second of his life. Lucas throws his arms around his neck, and Eliott lets out small laugh as he’s forced to take a step backwards not to drag them both to the ground, hunching a little forward so that Lucas can stop tiptoeing despite it being the most endearing thing in the world.

He can’t even remember how many times he’s been thinking about this, the simple feeling of Lucas’ weight in his arms, and he isn’t sure if he’s ever going to find the right words for that — but he doesn’t care, Eliott decides as he buries his face in Lucas’ neck, not when his boyfriend is here. He allows himself one last sniff of his new favorite drug, taking one more second to breathe Lucas in, before he pulls away, and reaches up to cup Lucas’ face with his hand — he’s not sure, but he thinks Lucas’ eyes are suspiciously bright.

“Damn,” Lucas whispers, voice rough, letting his hands rest on his chest as he relapses his embrace, “I forgot you’re so tall.”

Eliott smiles, chuckling a little, and lets his thumb graze over the sharp edge of his cheekbone. “And I almost forgot how beautiful you are.”

“Aren’t you the cheesiest,” Lucas huffs, grinning.

A few months ago, when Lucas started planning this trip to Paris, they briefly discussed the fact that plenty of influencers took opportunities like these to make some views out of meeting their loved ones in tearful reunions. Frankly, putting himself out there wasn’t Eliott’s strong-suit and he was relieved when Lucas said he wasn’t planning on making someone film them.

“You aren’t going to regret it, right?” he had asked, a bit nervous.

“Nothing about it is worth making you feel uncomfortable,” Lucas had replied with a casual shrug.

Yeah. Now he regrets it though. He wishes he could have recorded it somewhere, just to replay it whenever the distance gets too much. He, the cinema student, in the most prestigious cinema school in France, didn’t think one second to put his embarrassment aside for the sake of filming.

The irony.

Lucas is staring up at him, blue eyes a shade as deep and dark as the ocean, and Eliott feels his heart swell. He doesn’t quite know who leans in first, and if they both did, how on Earth they knew it was the right moment, the perfect second even, but they do. They lean in and Lucas’ lips meet his own in the softest manner, gentle and warm, somewhat cautious in the pressure he puts into them, but it’s more than enough to make Eliott’s heart burst and the last couple of months seem more bearable.

He’s right.

He’s in love, and he’s right, and nothing else matters — not even the sick pleasure of knowing how fucking wrong they all are.

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trouvelle · 5 years

Text

Emogust 09.08 — Stubbornness

For the last prompt (of the first week) of DCMK Emogust 09.08 — Stubbornness!!

A/N: Not sure if this fits the stubbornness theme but once I pictured them as kitties I just couldn’t stop squealing internally. I mean, who could resist kittens!AU?? So I had to do this because this is the only way I know how and I can’t for the life of me draw anything nice /cries/ @mintchocolateleaves @sup-poki

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that anyone in possession of a kitten must constantly be in need of new blankets. And curtains. Or something like that. Maybe it’s just my kitten, Ran thinks, as she regards her curtains sadly. They have threads sticking out every way all along the bottom hems.

Shinichi has shredded the ends of her new ones, and while these not quite brand new, at least they weren’t so obviously scruffy before Shinichi came along. Gathering the curtains, she tucks them up on the handles of her French doors out of Shinichi’s reach before turning to the kitten in question.

Shinichi has magically gone from ripping around the apartment when Ran first came home to sitting quietly in a corner with his head cocked to one side. He is a picture of cuteness. Spoiled cat knows he’s in trouble. His eyes are shining bright as if they’re glittering, making him look harmless and innocent. Ran knows better.

But Ran has a huge heart so she picks Shinichi up and sits him in the crook of her elbow, before tapping him on his velvety nose, saying “Don’t rip up the curtains ever again, okay?”

She stares into Shinichi’s blue eyes. Blue eyes stare back at her. Ran stares some more. She’s not going to lose to this cat again! Finally Shinichi looks away first. First ever win since Shinichi’s been with her! Small victories win the battle~, Ran tells herself as she carries Shinichi into the kitchen, placing him on the counter.

“What shall we have today? Chicken and turkey casserole or grilled seafood feast?” She asks Shinichi, chucking him on the chin. Ran pulls out two cans of cat food and sets them in front of Shinichi. She watches as Shinichi sniffs one, sniffs the other, and then instead walks toward the bag of rotisserie chicken Kazuha has brought over earlier for dinner.

Against the advice of the vet at the shelter, Ran ends up sharing bits of her chicken with Shinichi. If he goes bald early it is definitely his own fault for being so cute anyway.

---

Kazuha’s the one who wanted a cat first.

“I think having a pet will help alleviate my stress levels and provide me some company. At least that’s what Aoko-chan says.” She told Ran enthusiastically over coffee one day. Across from them, Sonoko made a face, “But then you’re gonna have to feed it and clean up its mess. Sounds like a lot more trouble to me.”

“She does look happier lately since she got Kaito,” Ran noted. About a month prior, while the four of them were on their way back from their weekly routine of doing grocery shopping together they had passed by a pet adoption event. She immediately had her eyes set on a stunning white Manx cat and decided to adopt it the moment it opened its blue eyes and stared back at her. The name displayed on its cage was “Kaito” and she never bothered to come up with a new name for him.

That’s how they end up on a Saturday morning at their local cat shelter, watching two kittens chase each other around in a pen. They run many rounds before the dark chocolate one abruptly stops in its tracks and turns to bat the cream kitten on the head, hard. The other kitten is stunned for a moment, and then suddenly the high-speed chase turns into a round of head-bopping. Kazuha is confused. Will there be bloodshed any moment? She turned to look at Ran, is this how cats usually show affection?

They turn to ask the shelter staff and not a minute later when they turn their heads back, the cream kitten now has the head of the other kitten cradled between its paws, very diligently licking the tuft of dark brown fur sticking out from its head.

Kazuha watches with some disquietude as Ran squats so that her face is nearer to the kittens and makes cooing noises. The brown kitten’s eyes fly open and Kazuha swears he’s glaring at her for interrupting him. On the other hand, the cream Birman kitten now just looks sleepy, like all that has worn him out. He’s flopped onto the floor, one paw curled possessively over the other kitten’s neck.

When Ran reaches down to pick up the cream kitten and cuddle it against her cheek, the brown one gives a sort of squeaking noise, and peeked his eyes open and shut it close again, not making any effort to get up. Kazuha makes a squealing noise herself, but for very different reasons. Surprisingly though, instead of lashing out at Ran’s face, the kitten starts making this odd whirring noise, and rubs his head against Ran’s cheek. He’s got really light brown markings around his eyes and snout.

“This one’s name is Shinichi!” Ran says brightly, immediately sold.

Somehow, they end up taking both kittens. The chocolate one latches onto Kazuha’s sweater, snuggling into the soft wool when Kazuha picks him up. That’s when Kazuha notices he has tiny white socks on all his four paws.

“Snowfrost Socks would be a fitting name for him, Kazuha-chan!” suggested Ran.

“I’m not calling him Snowfrost Socks, Ran-chan.”

Kazuha can hear the pout.

She lifts her kitten to eye level and looks into his dark green eyes. “It says here that his name is Heiji.” She grinned.

---

Ran regards the kitten which has been super active since she brought him home. She’d set up his bed for the night and shown him where his water bowl is. After the tour was done, he had promptly jumped onto Ran’s favorite plush bean bag chair and jumped down onto the carpet, before jumping up again. Seems like he’s found his spot.

“You’ll have to give them extra love and attention as they have abandonment issues from being abandoned by their mother.” That’s what the shelter staff told them. She’s not sure how to show extra love to a cat that literally does nothing but nap.

So she leaves Shinichi to it, and sets up her laptop to get some work done on an overdue paper. Barely five minutes into it, Ran feels something pulling on her pajama pants. She looks down to find Shinichi sitting at her feet, the claws of one paw hooked onto the hem of her right pant leg. Absentmindedly, she reaches out a hand to pat Shinichi on the head, once, twice, then resumes her typing.

Then it happens again.

So she lifts Shinichi up onto her desk and coos over him for a bit, scratching his chin and tickling him behind his ears until he’s purring and pliant on the desk, eyes drooped close. When Shinichi looks like he’s fallen back asleep, Ran returns to her report.

But Shinichi wakes up again. This time, he thinks it’s a good idea to jump up and step on her keyboard. Her laptop makes a number of alarming noises and Ran scrunched her nose up. She shifts Shinichi off the laptop four times before she decides he’s probably not going to get any work done until she gives Shinichi some attention.

Ran suddenly realizes this must be those abandonment issues coming into play! Picking him up, she moves them both to the shag rug in her living room and pulls out the catnip mouse she had gotten together with the other supplies earlier.

Shinichi only gives a couple of half-hearted pats at the mouse however, before he flops onto the rug, asleep. Ran watches the kitten sleeping, waits until it seems like he’s properly fallen asleep and sneaks back to her work.

Fifteen minutes tops. Shinichi is back at her ankles mewling again.

Ran discovers a pattern with her new kitten. Shinichi only wants attention when she’s trying to get things done on her laptop, or cooking herself some dinner—basically any time she is not playing with him means it’s petting time!

Rana keeps repeating to herself, “abandonment issues, abandonment issues” and puts up with Shinichi’s stubbornness. He makes up for it when he snuggles up against Ran’s neck at night, warm and cozy, his steady purr a lullaby to them both.

---

Heijii is bristling on the couch, his fur still ruffled from his earlier freak-out, hissing and scratching at Sonoko when she’d tried to pick him up. Kazuha adds “precious baby kitty” to the list of names he must remember to tell visitors not to call Heiji.

Half speaking to herself, half to Heiji, Kazuha says, “I’m going to stay forever single if this keeps up.”

First it had been this guy whom Kazuha had invited in after their date. He was rather persistent and insisted they dove straight into a make-out session. He abruptly left because Heiji had bitten his ankles when he placed a hand onto Kazuha’s lap. She tried to reason that Heiji was just being territorial—Kazuha’s lap is usually his after all. Teruaki-kun lasted longer, but that was also probably because he was less aggressive. Heiji had leapt up to his thighs, claws digging into his jeans only when he’d suggested to Kazuha, “Why don’t you put your kitty in the bathroom? I don’t feel comfortable when he’s staring at us like that.”

Usually they get the most angry when instead of immediately tending to their wounds, Kazuha picks Heiji and asks, alarmed, “Did you get any blood under your claws?!”

“Hygiene is very important for growing young cats,” she tells Sonoko, the only one among them without a kitten. “Especially since they’ve been abandoned by their mother, there’s no one to teach him to clean out his paws properly so I have to be extra careful.”

Kazuha insists the problem must lie with those guys. Heijii has never scratched her in his life, he's only ever had sweet cuddles from her precious baby kitten.

(Albeit being really grumpy at times, more often than not.)

When Kazuha forgets to feed him some snacks, Heiji starts wailing, a whining pathetic mewl that sounds a lot like crying. The same thing happens whenever her attention is divided and lies on anything else other than him. Really, this kitten could be extremely stubborn. But once Kazuha leaves what she’s doing to attend to Heiji, the kitten doesn’t seem that interested in playing with her.

Some days she comes home after a having a really bad time at school, or work, or both. But whenever she sees Heiji’s tiny face relaxing as she scratches the back of his ears though, her heart always melts, along with her bad mood. Heiji could be rough to visitors (Kazuha fails to notice that it’s mostly toward male presence only) but he’s actually a really big softie. He has truly won her heart.

---

Playdates for Shinichi and Heiji usually end up with hours of cleaning for whoever hosts. The two go absolutely mad around each other, tearing around whatever room they are in, displaying some form of kitty-parkour as they vault over side tables, bounce off armchairs and balance on ledges, knocking over anything in the way. Kazuha and Ran soon learn to put away breakable objects and secure anything that can moved by a 4-pound kitten any time Shinichi and Heiji get together but collectively they still manage to smash uncountable bowls, many vases, and notably one extremely expensive frame from Kazuha’s father, a half dozen coffee mugs and—Ran sort of loses track along the way.

It’s Ran who has the bright idea to ask Aoko if they could have a playdate with her cat. Kazuha feels pretty anxious at first, since her kitten has a reputation of attacking random people at times. It’s only ever been Shinichi and Heiji, because they seem to be very close even back in their shelter days. Ran has no worries about Shinichi getting along with Aoko’s kitten, mainly because Shinichi is pretty reserved and doesn’t really bother anyone but her.

From what she’s head from Ran and Kazuha, their kittens are fairly possessive of each other and their owners. Indeed they look strikingly different, but Aoko gathers for herself that both cats are pretty similar as far as cat-personality goes. Her own kitten, Kaito, is nowhere as guarded as Shinichi and Heiji but he has his own fair share of stubbornness that she has to deal with.

Unlike Shinichi and Heiji, Kaito is good at socializing with humans, especially with the ladies. He never seems to mind whenever any of Aoko’s girl friends pet him on his head, or stroke his fur, or pick him up and cuddle him around. Kaito is very welcoming and likes receiving any attention from anyone. Aoko often brings Kaito along with her on their girls days out because he’s such a friendly kitten.

Sonoko adores Kaito so much so that she always squishes him to her cheeks and chest whenever she sees him. “It’s something about Kaito that’s so charming,” Sonoko gushed on one sunday afternoon when they were out in the usual coffeeshop (pet-friendly, yes). Aoko doesn’t get to hold him much whenever Sonoko is around because the latter often insist for the kitten to be held by her. The short-haired girl has now made up her mind on getting her own kitty cat as well.

Kaito always knows when Aoko’s leaving the house, and he’d always whine to be brought along with her. Aoko doesn’t want to say that she can get jealous at times. (Especially when he’s comfortable nestled on Akako-chan’s chest, she grumbled to Ran once.) And every night Kaito always creeps up to her bed and settles on her shoulder. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be left alone and will do anything to be with her.

Apparently, all goes well. Aoko’s apartment hasn’t been decorated with broken pieces of glassware or furniture.

All goes well, that is, until Kaito decides to lick Shinichi with his pink, slobbery tongue. The look on Shinichi’s face screams shock (Ran has learnt to read her cat) and Heiji, offended on his littermate’s behalf, shoots a paw out with claws extended and smacks Kaito on his face.

The round of screeching, yowling, whining and skittering claws on Aoko’s parquet floor goes on for twenty minutes until Ran and Kazuha bravely wade into the fray and grab their own kittens. Kaito manages to escape to the top of the washing machine in the laundry room. He’s not trembling in fear like Ran and Kazuha expected, and instead sort of looks like he is grinning happily.

“It could’ve been worse,” Ran says, ever the optimist.

Aoko puts her hands on her hips, nodding to herself, “I’ve never seen Kaito this way before. I think we should let the three of them have playdates more often. It’s good exercise!”

Shinichi and Heiji are completely quiet, save the occasional purrs on the way home, both asleep and exhausted from their earlier exertion. They are curled up around each other like a cream and brown yin and yang symbol.

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jercythesiscrying · 5 years

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hit it ‘til it breaks | Kageyama & Oikawa, Gen, G, 1.5k

NaNoWriMo Day 13: Hurt/Comfort

Summary: Tobio visits Seijoh once again.

WARNING: Depiction of a minor injury. Also Oikawa is Salty.

Read on Ao3

A/N: Shout-out to Lori for the idea! Un-beta'd and it shows whoops /o\

Tobio shuffles on his feet, stepping aside to let a group of giggling girls pass. He tries not to glare at them as they walk by, clutching his sling close to his chest.

The last time he visited Seijoh was completely different. He’s way less stressed about being kicked off from the campus as a student from another school than he was before.

Though that may be because he’s more focused on trying to keep from his sprained wrist from getting more injured.

Everyone else says it’s a total accident. Tobio knows the truth.

It happened because he got into a slump at the beginning of summer. Instead of pinpoint tosses, his sets were off by precious fractions; instead of rapid calculations, it took him a few more moments to strategize. There was no apparent cause for it, and his teammates try to reassure him that sometimes it just happens but everyone gets over it.

Not him apparently.

He started arriving to practice way earlier than anyone else, setting up the net on his own with stubborn determination. He started leaving later than Hinata, who only leaves because he has to bike home. He began an obsessive pattern that in hindsight he could have easily avoided.

He’s lucky that someone was still around when it happened.

Hinata had just exited the gym, heading out to go home, so Tobio began practicing his jump serves instead. He was drenched all over, clothes soaked to his skin, hair trickling with perspiration. The ball slammed into his palm with a satisfactory smack, and it would have been a good note to end his extra practice with –

Then his feet slipped beneath him, sliding on the sweat that began to drip everywhere on the gym floors.

He tried to cushion his fall by sticking his hands out behind him, but when he landed he screamed, a sharp pain shooting up from his left arm.

Hinata—somehow, fortunately—hadn’t left yet, returning to the gym with a burst, and they rushed Tobio to the nurse’s office where he was told he sprained his wrist.

Hours later, he arrived home with his arm in a sling, left hand protected in a soft cast. He was told he couldn’t play for at least three weeks.

News spread around fast. Coach Ukai gave him a stern lecture, and Takeda gave him a terrifying look that Tobio never wants to see again. Those he handled quite easily—it was the rest of the team that he couldn’t handle.

They coddle him when they weren’t busy with practice. Suga-san looked half-excited to have more play time with Tobio out injured, and also half-remorseful for being on the court because Tobio’s injured. He ends up particularly more doting than the others.

Tobio won’t mind it if it weren’t for the fact that he got himself into this mess. He hates being babied, and he only has himself to blame for working so hard he didn’t think to mop up when his sweat was flying everywhere. He knows how to take care of himself, knows how important it is in order to be in peek form so he can be the best setter for every game, and now he’s stuck nearly an entire month unable to play.

What worries him most, though, is the uncertainty now that he actually hurt himself. His teammates tried to reassure him again that these injuries are normal, that he’ll recover just fine and things will be back in no time, but he can’t ignore his fears: what if?

What if his wrist will never return to normal? What if the injury permanently affects the way he plays? Will he ever be able to truly toss again once this is all over?

When the anxiety starts keeping him up late at night, he decides he needed to talk to someone about it.

And there’s only one person who will really understand.

Tobio makes his way to where he recalls the volleyball gym is located. He stands by the open door, peeking into where practice has obviously wrapped up. The only person left—as he predicted—is Oikawa-san. Even Iwaizumi-san isn’t anywhere to be found.

He watches Oikawa practicing his serves, throwing the ball up gracefully and running up to slam it into the other side of the court. The sound it makes at the impact is deafening, and Tobio is left to watch in awe.

Oikawa pants, wiping sweat off his chin.

“You know, people don’t like be spied on, Tobio-chan.”

He blushes, but presents himself more fully at the entrance.

“Can I come in?”

Oikawa looks over to the door where he is, eyes narrowed at him before cocking his head in a come-in motion. Tobio walks in, face dropping into a frown as Oikawa eyes his sling.

“What’s the cast for?” he asks. “Injured yourself for life, Tobio-chan?”

Tobio’s frown deepens. “No,” he snarls. In a quieter voice, he mumbles, “I hope not, anyway.”

Despite trying to hide his literal deepest, darkest fear, he sees Oikawa immediately perking up at that.

“Oh?” he says. “So you have permanently injured yourself?”

Tobio scoffs, unable to meet Oikawa’s delighted eyes. “I said no.”

“You look like you may as well have said yes, Tobio-chan.” Oikawa smirks, humming to himself. “What a waste if you did. How can I defeat you if you quit the game?”

“I’m not quitting,” Tobio says defiantly.

“What’s the point of you visiting,” Oikawa says, walking over to the benches where Tobio notices a water bottle and towel lie, “if you’re not telling me that I’m always going to be better than you?”

Tobio rolls his eyes. “I’m never saying that, Oikawa-san.”

“Mm.”

Oikawa takes a long swig from his water bottle, gulping loudly. He breaks for air with a loud gasp. Tobio watches silently when he wipes his lips with the back of his wrist.

“Then why are you here?”

Tobio bites the inside of his lip. He looks down at his cast, his uninjured hand brushing it softly as he shifts from one foot to the other.

“I don’t know,” he says quietly, honestly. He had wanted to talk to Oikawa-san but he doesn’t know where to begin. He feels like an idiot for coming now.

“Then what do you want?” Oikawa snaps, sounding irritated, and Tobio feels even stupider. “Because if you’re looking for sympathy you’re not going to find it here. I’m sure Karasuno is much kinder than I am.”

He shakes his head. “No, no. The team is really nice,” he says softly. “Too nice, actually...”

Oikawa barks out a hollow laugh. “Hah! At least that I can relate to. Iwa-chan coddled me the entire time I injured my knee.”

Tobio looks up at that. “He did?” He’s surprised. “I thought Iwaizumi-san would’ve been mad at you.”

“Oh, he was,” Oikawa says with another fake laugh. “He wouldn’t stop reminding me that I was the idiot for working myself so hard I got hurt, but he mother hen’d me anyway.”

He considers this. “Did that ever happen again? Working so hard you hurt yourself?”

“Obviously not,” Oikawa snaps. “Iwa-chan stops me before I even try. He just had to leave early today for some family stuff, but I’m sure I’ll get an earful once he finds out I stayed late.” He rolls his eyes, and Tobio purses his lips.

“Look,” Oikawa says after a moment of silence, “I told you you’re not getting any sympathy from me. If you want advice, I don’t know what to tell you. I messed up my knee pretty badly that I have to wear a brace now—you know this. And if you got so worked up that you ruined your arm or wrist or whatever, then that’s not my problem.

“But listen to what Iwa-chan said to me: don’t do it again.”

When Tobio says nothing, Oikawa continues, “I know you’re stupid, Tobio-chan, but not that stupid. I don’t care if you look up to me, but obviously don’t do what I did.” He looks at Tobio with a hard stare. “If you’re serious about not quitting, then stop feeling sad for yourself and work on getting better.”

Tobio wants to point how that he isn’t feeling sad for himself, just so lost he doesn’t know what to do if he can’t play, but somehow Oikawa-san’s words resonate with him. He’s not going to quit volleyball, but he is going to stop worrying about his injury now.

If Oikawa-san can get through it, he can too. In fact, he’ll be even better at recovery than his senpai.

He jerks his head in a single nod, feeling the determination simmer beneath his skin.

“Got it.”

The other setter rolls his eyes. “Is that all now? Because I have to close this place up.”

Tobio nods again, turning to leave. Behind him, he can hear Oikawa beginning to pack everything away.

Just as he reaches the gym doors, he hears: “Tobio-chan!” He turns around to see Oikawa pointing at him. “That’s two times you asked for advice now. Don’t think I’ll forget this.”

He nods, stepping out of the gym with a quiet, “Thank you.”

#oikage #kageoi #kageyama tobio #oikawa tooru #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#hq!!#tobio kageyama #tooru oikawa #nanowrimo 2018 #week 3 #tropes #hurt.comfort #injury #canon compliant #gen #jercy's fic tag

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themelaninmamifiles · 5 years

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Changing Perspectives & Embracing the WAHM Life

Long before I was considering having children or getting married, I used to always say that I never wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM). It just seemed boring and anti-climatic after having spent a lifetime studying towards a career to do something. Don’t get me wrong, being a mom is a noble and essential profession, and this is in no way a diss towards SAHMs, but it just wasn’t for me.

Fast forward to about 10 years ago and I shifted positions slightly. This was also around the time that I realized that corporate life was for the birds and I was tired of working for other people on a full-time basis. So, I can be honest here and admit that part of the reason I wanted to work for myself was that I was tired of working for tyrants. Small businesses might be the backbone of the U.S. economy but many of them are run by nut jobs who lack people skills. And I had managed to work for two such companies back to back.

Anywho, in 2009 I decided to step out on my own and just work as a freelancer/consultant. It gave me the flexibility to work with the people and on the projects that I wanted to, and it allowed me to primarily work from home. And let’s face it, even though there are real benefits to working in a collaborative office environment, having a “morning commute” that’s just a few steps from the bedroom to wherever I keep my laptop is hard to beat. So, I’ve been a freelancer/consultant for 10 years now.

And when I first got pregnant in 2017, I had plans for a three-month maternity leave and then to return to a company I was consulting with at the time. I had this mindset that I would get bored being home non-stop with my child and would welcome the distraction and outlet of getting out of the house and interacting with others. So fast forward to the summer of last year, and my technical maternity leave was up. But I wasn’t interested in returning to my marketing work. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to work, but I wanted to pivot to something that offered more flexibility. And this was for a number of reasons:

Childcare is Expensive

I live in North Jersey, and can literally see One World Trade from my house. It takes me all of 25 to 35 minutes to commute to Herald Square (Macy’s where they do the Thanksgiving Day Parade for those of you not in the tri-state region). Depending on where you go between North Jersey and NYC, daycare can range from $1,000 to 4,000 a month. When I tell you, that shit is expensive, I’m not lying. That’s essentially my husband and I paying rent twice.

Once I ran the numbers, I realized that in order for me to go back to any consulting role where they expected me to even spend half my time in Manhattan in their offices, I’d need to be making six figures or kissing up to it as close as possible. Why?

Because on top of that daycare cost is the price of getting in and out of the city. And now that I live in Jersey, I don’t just pay for the NYC MTA, but the Path, and the NJ Transit. So three separate monthly commute costs, paying for lunch in the city, plus daycare plus all of our other expenses. Can I get six figures? Certainly. But those aren’t the roles where you get an offer the same day you pitch/interview. From my experience, once you pass the 60K mark, it takes multiple rounds and a bit of romancing to get companies to loosen their purse strings.

Tay Tay is My Focus

One of the things I’ve always hated about working for others or working on long-term consulting projects where you’re technically an extension of the client’s company is that business owners want you to make their company a priority over yourself.

It’s happened. At. Every. Long-term. Company. I’ve. Ever. Represented.

I’ve been expected to drop everything and fly around the world to rep clients at their partner factories. I missed Thanksgiving one year because I was in China in a factory coordinating designs and patterns for a clothing collection. I’ve been expected to attend conferences to network with businesses on behalf of a client who ultimately had no interest in partnering with them.

This induced eye rolls before TayTay came along. Every damn company knew I had my own consulting work, that I’m an influencer, that I like to travel, etc. Yet all of them would have this ridiculously unrealistic expectation that I was supposed to pause my life and make them the most important thing at the peril of all else. Meanwhile, some of them wouldn’t return that favor by doing things like say...pay their invoices to me on time.

When TayTay was born, she literally became my focus. My priority is on raising this little human to be well adjusted, confident and a productive member of society. So, yeah I take the job of “mom” very seriously. But this also meant that I had a serious talk with myself and realized that although marketing is my love, I wasn’t going to be able to devote the focus to that type of work right now. Maybe once TayTay starts school, but for now, I need something less demanding. Okay so I knew my limitations, but I still had to make money. We can’t be a single income family.

So I Pivoted…

Lucky for me, I’m not a one trick pony. I’ve always had a variety of talents, one of which is writing. I’ve worked as a copywriter off and on for years—mostly as a side hustle to supplement the marketing consulting. But towards the end of my pregnancy, I started taking on more copywriting work through agencies...and I love it because:

No Commute: My commute is from the bedroom to my living room or desk where I can write til my heart’s content.

No childcare expenses: For now, we’re not putting TayTay in daycare. At some point when she’s two, we’ll put her in a half-day program for socialization. But for now, I’m the primary caregiver.

I don’t take my work home with me: I know, I know, I work from home so technical sticklers will say this isn’t true. Clients reach out and ask me to write whatever content is needed. But once the content is submitted, no one’s giving me the side eye or trying to berate me. There’s no “we need a real team player” or “someone who’s committed for the long-term”. (side eye). Once I finish a project, that’s it. Maybe there’s an edit request, but that’s pretty rare (yes I’m that great at crafting content).

No scope creep: Anyone who’s worked on projects as a freelancer knows why this is a big deal. I’m not expected to be a Jack or Jane of all trades. Once I get the project brief, that’s it. No one comes back and asks me if in addition to writing I can also do some Photoshop work, oh and maybe also manage the social media, oh and maybe also handle the press releases, oh yeah and also work as a hiring manager.

Flexibility: I’ve literally been able to do this work while on vacation or en route in the airport because it’s that easy for me to write. While I was in San Francisco and Miami earlier this year, I worked on projects and it was a painless experience. No one was texting and harassing me, demanding I get on a call to listen to them drone on about nothing. And even on the day to day, I can take a break in the afternoon without getting frenzied texts or emails from people expecting me to be chained to my laptop.

Timely pay: Now granted, you can still come across slow/no pay bums in the copywriting world, but I’ve been blessed in this department. I work with a number of great agencies/platforms that pay well and on time.

I can prioritize myself: One of the biggest wakeup calls I had in the past two and a half years was working on an extended client project that left me little time for myself and made me feel like a horrible person for having my own passions outside of their business. And just as I found out I was pregnant, lack of pay caused me to step back from them.

I was forced to pause my passions/budding entrepreneurial ventures and rework my timelines because I literally didn’t have any money and everything fell on my husband. I had prioritized a client who saw fit not to pay me. Serious learning lesson! :( Fast forward to today and I have more freedom and am able to pursue my ventures again because I’m not a one-trick pony financially.

I’m happier: Not taking on other people’s unnecessary stress can do wonders for your own mental health. I’m not carrying someone else’s baggage or trying to split myself in a thousand different directions. I feel more focused now than I’ve ever been.

So I wrote ALL of this to basically say, if you’re pregnant or thinking about being pregnant, be open-minded to what your work life might look like once the baby comes. Right now you might think that being home is horrible, but then you hold that bundle of joy and your perspective changes. Maybe it’s not you, mom. Maybe it’s a SAHD or WAHD instead! Whatever works for your family—just be open to change!

#wahm #wahm life #sahm #mommy blogger #black moms blog #mommylife #parenting #working parents #workfromhome #women in business #life lessons #child care

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attackingstarfish · 6 years

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Just finished LoZ: Wind Waker...

I normally never post, but I recently wrapped up Wind Waker HD (Yes, I’m late to the party), and it is so far removed from the usual Zelda fare that I just had to compile my thoughts. And if I’m compiling my thoughts, I might as well yell them into the void.

You will have to show me physical proof that Wind Waker is not Ocarina of Time from the Opposite Dimension, where windows are the primary means of entering your house and people worship at the altar of Hello Games, because despite me being almost exactly as satisfied with Wind Waker HD as I was with Ocarina of Time 3D, the greatest sources of joy are flipped with the biggest annoyances between the two games.

Yay!

Breath of the Wild had won me over in part because the entire world felt cohesive; you could go anywhere on the map without having to encounter a single loading screen, and I had no idea Wind Waker did the same thing. The Great Sea is a vast trove of trees, pirates, and treasure, with the occasional giant squid attack or salutation from the Flying Dutchman. Each of the 49 segments contains an island that is often unique in purpose, and you’re very rarely sent to a specific island for a specific item by a specific character. Instead, the entire overworld becomes open to you as soon as you grab your sail on Windfall Island, and you have a literal sea of knowledge before you as the 49 fish that serve as your guidebook to the game take their places.

A couple of islands start off closed, unable to be reached until you get the Iron Boots or the Bow or the Hulk Hogan suplex manual, but that’s it as far as what you can’t reach, and the squares of ocean containing even these islands can be reached as early as any other zone, fish and all. The fish are easy to spot, splashing around near their respective region’s landmass, and to reward taking to initiative to explore, a surprising amount of what they tell you can be put to use immediately, like the location of the all-new extra-fast wind-changing sail the remake’s added to speed up travel. Good thing, too, because there’s a point where travel time stops being buildup and becomes padding, especially when you have to dance a round of Hands Up every time you want to change direction. Later in the game, when you’re better equipped, you could stop by one of those islands you couldn’t figure out earlier on, and figure out what to do with just one more trip around the border. Nothing pops up on your map to indicate that suddenly you’re able to access anything new, and your boat doesn’t wonder whether the eastmost pillar on island A7 has met any nice hookshot targets lately. The game trusts that you can navigate the uses for your gear yourself, which I value. Fewer tutorials, more expectations.

Even the story serves the game’s hands-off attitude. Ocarina starts with Link going into the Deku Tree to purge it of some unspecified evil (What exactly does Gohma do in there, anyway?) before coming out to be told of his fate to kill a man he has never met before and become Hyrule’s savior. Link takes up the mantle in that game only because the gods who have not and will never make a proper appearance want him to do it. Meanwhile, Wind Waker opens with Link putting on the green tunic to make his grandmother happy for a day, right before his sister, who clearly adores him, gets kidnapped by a giant bird, and he teams up with pirates to sneak into a fortress and rescue her but instead gets bitch-slapped by Ganondorf, who turns out to own the place and the bird. In addition to being awesome because pirates kick ass, Link’s introduction to the man who wants him dead feels a lot more natural here, and Ganondorf doesn’t even come into the plot for real until the second half of the game. Link’s got a sister to save, and everything he’ll do to accomplish that goal will demonstrate him to be worthy of the Master Sword, which itself seems to prefer this organic sort of journey, seeing as the Link who set out to get the Master Sword from the beginning ended up locked in solitary confinement by the thing while it allowed the man it was created to kill to instead take over the world. Evidently the Master Sword is a strong, independent blade beholden to no one who can’t think for themselves, and anyone who disagrees can spend some quality time with the nice old man who loves to talk and talk and talk and talk.

The characters in Wind Waker feel more on the dynamic side than Ocarina’s. At first I was a bit surprised that i felt that way considering Ocarina had you view two very different versions of Hyrule, but Ocarina’s characters either don’t change in personality much between time periods or don’t make an appearance in one of the two at all. Talon’s still lazy in the future, the carpenters are still idiots, the Lake Hylia scientist is still mad, the Kokiri of course don’t change at all, you see none of the Zoras after their caves are frozen over, etc. Not to mention Ganondorf, who doesn’t get much beyond “evil Gerudo thief king who wants to take over the world because of reasons,” even if he gets a bit further than many movie/game villains and is able to demonstrate exactly what he’d do while in charge and why he’s so dangerous. Wind Waker, meanwhile, has even a fair few one-off characters with their own tiny arcs. Mila goes from stuck-up rich kid to poor as dirt and struggling to adapt, so out of her element that she resorts to stealing money from her new boss until Link catches her and helps her stay true to herself in the future. Maggie’s father starts out so desperate for Link to save his daughter that he will annoyingly stop you in your tracks every time he so much as glimpses you and repeat his pleas for help, but after Maggie is returned home and he strikes it rich through no deed of his own, he decides everyone else is beneath him and starts bitching at Link, the Rito postman, and anyone who thinks repeatedly boasting about your own fabulous wealth makes for poor dinner conversation. Even Ganondorf himself is given more than a simple desire to take over Hyrule this time around, as his belief that the rest of the kingdom deserves to suffer the way the Gerudo suffered in the desert is brought to light.

Boo!

Part of the reason I liked the dungeons in Ocarina of Time so much is that they had a way of coming full circle at the end, or even a smaller full circle in the middle. You’d come across something at the beginning, go “Huh, that looks cool,” then move on. An hour later, BOOM, payoff, and likely in a way you didn’t even expect. The web serving as the floor in the Deku Tree and the blue stone head at the back of Dodongo’s Cavern come to mind. Plus, there were often open rooms that allowed you to get a handle on where everything else was relative to you, and gaze upon areas you’ll visit once you find the Hookshot or Hover Boots. Wind Waker’s dungeons are the antithesis of the rest of the game, they’re cramped and, for the first half of the game, overly linear. Dragon Roost never musters up much more challenge than “kill enemy in front of you, go through door in front of you, repeat,” a far cry from the wall-climbing around the first half of the Deku Tree. Re-hydrating the bombs to get into the place is arguably as clever as you get with it, which for me is the perfect representation of the amount of thought that went into everything surrounding the dungeons vs. the amount of thought that went into the dungeons. And aside from those spinning leaf wheels in Forbidden Woods that wouldn’t know what a wind was if they were fired for incompetence and forced to spend the rest of their lives at its mercy, this is best illustrated during the teamwork-based dungeons with Medli and Makar toward the end of the game .

Considering how often you have to switch between characters to set up a Mirror Shield reflect or to hit a switch or to plant a seed or because you got hit fucking once, it would’ve been nice not to have to do half the Macarena every time you want to switch to your companion’s viewpoint. It also would’ve been nice if the controls of your partners didn’t make me want to offer them to the Floormasters. That said, Medli wasn’t awful. Yes, her flight was a bit hard to direct, there was no way to halt her Link-bearing glide without throwing her, and the number of times you had to hop on the Wind Waker was a pain, but the irritation was diminished when lot of her roles involved standing still and shining light while you played as the character the game actually put work into handling. Plus, my wave of enthusiasm from the first moment I walked under a spotlight while carrying her and saw the light reflect lasted me quite a ways into the dungeon, so my memories of the Earth Temple are okay enough.

On the other hand, Makar. (I still call him Oaki, which should indicate how memorable Makar’s character is) When flying with Medli, all that was required was good aim when leaping off any ledge you were leaving, whether she was on her own or supporting Link. Makar has to fly in patterns more complex than straight lines, so naturally his controls are twice as stupid. You have to repeatedly press A to fly, speeding up or slowing down your button presses to increase or decrease the amount of lift as you go. Button mashing as a recurring mechanic, yay. Its imprecise nature becomes worse when the vertical nature of the dungeon’s biggest room has Makar rack up a ton of momentum from the amount of rising and falling he’ll be doing, leaving you struggling to adjust your frequency to keep up, with aerial endurance that makes you wonder how the Korok seed-spreading ritual has not led them to extinction by mass drowning. Fortunately, there’s a giant fan you can activate at the bottom of the room to blow yourself upward and kill any chance you have at forward progress. You’d think that being able to coast to the top of everything would be a good thing, but being in the fan’s range of “anywhere” causes Makar to eschew any direction that isn’t straight up (as his flight meter drains!), when running out of flight power has the same effect but downwards. If that wind catches you while you’re trying to cross the room, you’re left to watch as Makar is frozen in place while his energy drains to zero, wait for the fan to stop, fall several stories to the bottom of the room, and walk about two feet toward where you want to go before the fan activates again and restarts the cycle. And that’s assuming one of the many flying enemies doesn’t brush Makar and throw the camera back behind a Link who’s attempting to keep calm by doing the wave.

The combat took some getting used to. Ocarina’s combat was fine; it was easy to tell what you were in range to hit, and timing your swings properly could get shield-wielding enemies like Stalfos in a loop where continually accurate shots would finish them in seconds. In Wind Waker, Link’s attacks don’t reach quite as far as his sword would indicate; you’d think the gods would make sure their magical evil-smiting blade is most capable at the end that goes in the King of Evil, but I guess not. “Just The Tip” is a no-no with these monsters, so it’s either impale them in full or let them dominate you.

Meanwhile, you have two options for your targeting system, and they both suck. You either hold down L as long as you want to keep an enemy targeted, which before long will cause your left index finger to rebel against its draconian master, or press the button once to start targeting and press it again to target a different enemy, leaving you with no way to stop targeting the enemies and put an arrow in the switch. This wasn’t that big a deal in Ocarina, since Link had a wider vertical range with the bow and there were never many enemies hounding you when there was another immediate objective to complete, but in Wind Waker, you can expect a rainbow of respawning Chu’s to ambush you around the clock. It sours a lot of dungeons and dungeon-themed areas for me. That’s why the Wind Waker experience was so surprising; the dungeons were a slog to get through and felt less like a collection of clever puzzle ideas suiting each region’s theme and more like an obligation to throw in because it’s Zelda, yet everything surrounding them felt engaging and intriguing enough to make me want to keep playing and find out what happened to everyone.

(Tower of the Gods was pretty cool, too.)

#legend of zelda #wind waker #zelda wind waker #link #zelda

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sure-as-eggs · 7 years

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can you tell more about ed’s (and oswald’s) ways of thinking? god i can listen to you going on about them forever

…Well since I don’t seem to be capable of shutting up about them, I’m thrilled you feel that way?? (I’m sorry this took so long… Honestly I kept putting it off because I was waiting to see how Defrosted!Ed would handle things on his own before I committed to a reading on him!)

Anyway:

Ed is a chess player.Oswald is an artist.

There are a finite number of variables Ed is interested in at any given moment, and he operates within a closed system of actions and responses. He also always has a predetermined Winning Condition: after all, there’s only one definition of ‘checkmate.’

The problem for Ed is that he’s not always a particularly good chess player, because he has blinders a mile wide that prevent him from seeing if he’s made a bad move or if he’s underestimated an opponent. And that happens quite a lot?? Because Ed has very poor social skills and a fascinating ego problem.

Rather than a narcissist (which is 100% Oswald’s issue), I’d almost call Ed a solipsist?? Solipsism is the philosophical idea that you can’t be sure if anything exists except your own mind, and between his hallucinations and his compulsions and his empathy issues and his social difficulties, Ed has very very few anchors in reality. He has to find a way to view the world in concrete terms if he’s going to interact with it, he has to know that he can process and catalogue and make sense of things. Riddles are a perfect expression of that: by framing things in questions he knows the answers to, he swaps places with the rest of the world temporarily, because HE’S the one who’s anchored and it’s EVERYBODY ELSE who’s on uncertain ground.

That’s why it breaks my heart when he gets those riddles wrong. It’s all tied up in his Riddler persona, this assurance that he’s real and knows who he is and what he’s meant to be doing, and it unwinds him. Oswald telling him his riddles don’t make sense is Oswald telling Ed that his grasp on reality is wrong, that his identity isn’t real and that he’s completely lost sight of the chessboard patterns and reasoning he held on to so tightly in the first three seasons. Of COURSE he accepts being frozen again.

“Fogginess of the mind,” “decreased capacity to think ten steps ahead,” and “inability to solve riddles” are all basically the same complaint. He can’t make sense of the chessboard anymore. He knows it’s all there, he knows there are patterns to follow and questions with answers, he just can’t see it.

And he doesn’t make any attempt to adapt or look at things differently, either?? (Not yet, anyway.) He manages to develop a complete plan, and when it falls through, he temporarily gives up, and then comes up with another one. (Make money -> Fix brain)

Honestly, the quality of his plans has declined significantly from when he went up against Jim or orchestrated Oswald’s downfall, but I don’t think his mental cycle of futility and single-mindedness has changed at all from before being frozen??

Ed doesn’t adjust well to unexpected circumstances or reactions. He’s at his best and happiest when he’s protected, removed, when there’s a buffer between him and whatever he’s trying to do. He doesn’t tend to do well in the thick of things, because he can’t account for complicating variables or micromanage from the front lines, and because he has no time or space to develop alternate strategies when he feels like everything he’s planned is falling apart around him.

For example: Kristen wasn’t supposed to get mad at him over Dougherty. He doesn’t know what to DO with that, he didn’t plan for it and so he panics, he tries to get things back on track with such violent desperation that he kills her. He has absolutely no problem-solving skills in situations like that.

Compare it to literally the next time he wakes up, when he’s alone and can start to rationalize the situation and the stakes. Compare it to him trying to sabotage the investigation into Kristen’s death, where he absolutely expects Jim to be out to get him, but there’s no immediate danger; he has all the time in the world to come up with and commit to a course of action, and to handle it all cleanly and precisely.

Ed has plans, and then potentially back-up plans, and quite often they’re brilliant. But if they fall through and he’s not in a position to retreat and reassess… He’s screwed. (“I was arresting Jim!!”)

(He has the /capacity/ to improvise, and sometimes he’s even successful, but generally only when whoever he’s trying to manipulate doesn’t have a good reason to doubt or make things difficult for him. He lies to Lee several times, and to Kristen, but in all those situations they go out of their way to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s the same thing when he tricks Oswald; Oswald doesn’t believe what’s happening even when Ed pulls his gun.)

Ed gives his stance on manipulation in Arkham, which is that people are just puzzles, and there’s a solution to them: give them what they want. Contrast that with Oswald’s perspective: “when you know what a man LOVES, you know what can kill him.”

Ed is thinking in terms of cause and effect, black and white, fixed identities and desires because that’s how he operates, that’s the only way he can anchor himself and create a strategy that gets him closer to some objective ideal of control over his own reality.

Oswald isn’t.

Oswald is entirely contextual. He’s not looking for truth or answers, he’s not interested in objectivity or what’s really going on, all he cares about are feelings and experiences. Even his big-picture view is in terms of his own relationship to Gotham: it’s not just a prize or a proving ground, it’s his home.

I love his relationship to Ed’s riddles, because the ones he solves are the ones that are wrapped up in an immediate experience. He’s brilliant, but he’s not interested in being smart for its own sake. He gets nothing out of solving puzzles which aren’t relevant to him.

“What I want, the poor have, the rich need, and if you eat it, you die.”…Who gives a shit? Literally, who gives a flying fuck? If you want to say something, say it. If you want to lie, then lie. He doesn’t understand what Ed gets out of knowing the answer to his own question, he doesn’t understand why you’d separate the fact that you know something from the thing that you actually know unless you’re going to USE that somehow.

“I can’t be bought, but I can be stolen with a glance. I’m worthless to one, but priceless to two.”He is so not interested in this while he’s pissed at Ed and trying to run a goddamn campaign, but, fascinatingly, he remembers it word for word. Because the scene where Ed tells him this riddle is Ed pulling out all the stops, every rational explanation and concrete example he can think of to communicate something to Oswald, and I think Oswald can tell. He shuts Ed down because love is such a huge insecurity for him, acknowledgement is such a weak point, and he doesn’t want to accept that he has any interest in what Ed’s trying to tell him.But he does.And when it turns out Ed’s right, Oswald proves that he totally subconsciously solved that riddle because he could FEEL it, not as a question with an answer but as a hope and a fear he was trying to pretend Ed hadn’t brought to light.

…That was a digression.

Anyway: Oswald is at his best when things are an absolute shitshow. In tense, high-stakes situations where everybody’s already burned through Plans A through F and nobody has a precedent for what to do next, or when he’s stuck with no resources and an impossible task, Oswald shines.

My favorite example of this is the Season One finale, where he’d planned to go quietly murder Falcone and instead ends up arrested and chained in a warehouse by his two OTHER worst enemies (one of whom he thought was dead) who are suddenly working together. There is no way in hell he even considered that this was how his day would go. In Ed’s chess metaphors, this would be like if halfway through the game somebody gave your opponent all their captured pieces back and then let them take several consecutive turns. This is a Problem in a proper noun sense of the word, and Oswald has absolutely nothing to work with.

…Except he does. Because he can feel the tension, he can feel Fish’s controlled fury and Maroni’s self-satisfaction, he has history and connections with both of them, and he channels it all through about three sentences. He reads the situation like a painting and changes the entire mood and meaning of the piece with three well-placed strokes.

He can do this most effectively when he only has to worry about himself, because whatever he creates is (by default) going to suit his own vision. The most extreme version of it manifests as one of my favorite Oswald Things: what a tremendously bad idea it is to let him go off screen.

If you let him out of your sight, you’ve given him free reign to choose his own relationship to whatever’s happening. You’ve given him total creative control, and by god he’s gonna use it.Some examples off the top of my head:-When everybody scatters in the Season One finale and he unhooks himself and disappears, he comes back minutes later with an assault rifle and takes over the city-When Jim and Harvey leave him downstairs at Loeb’s farm, he stages the escape of the captives he’s supposed to be guarding and later murders them at his club-Ed shoots him and puts him in the river and he survives and turns up as Ed’s roommate in the super secret Court of Owls dungeon(I like to think everybody is fully aware of this phenomenon by the time the hostage exchange rolls around, and it’s part of what’s going through Ed’s head while chasing him out of the warehouse: “If I let him get out that door, I am fucked.”And hey, what do you know.Oswald gets out the door about four seconds before Ed.And four seconds is all he needs.)

Oswald has his weaknesses too, obviously. He’s actually, generally speaking, pretty terrible at being in charge of things. (Remember what a piss poor job he did with Fish’s club before Butch showed up?? He made it too much about himself, took it too personally, disregarded too many things he wasn’t personally interested in, and it nearly flopped.) Being in a position of authority really doesn’t capitalize on his skills, because it restricts the perspectives he can take, it dictates his relationship to the city and its workings in a way that can undermine the things he wants and feels.

In that sense, the team up of Oswald as mayor and Ed as chief of staff really could not have been better for either of them: you got the sense that Oswald ranted and fumed about things and worked through to what he wanted, and Ed translated it all into itemized lists to be discretely handled after tea.Oswald was in a position to see and interpret everything, but he didn’t have to worry about micromanagement. Ed had a constant stream of ego-inflating tasks to optimize and complete, but he could do it all from a position of total security.

(…I have to bring up one last thing, which is part of why I picked chess player and artist as my metaphors for Ed and Oswald: 3x15. Oswald leaves behind an oil painting of the two of them together, layers and shades and impressions, and Ed leaves a huge question mark over it because he can’t PROCESS them that way. He goes to the chess tournament, one stage in a meticulously choreographed master plan, and hallucinates Oswald telling him he’s being absurd because Ed is coping by moving pieces around for their own sake, assembling a puzzle without any regard for whether it actually makes a picture in the end. It’s such a good contrast and such a good episode, I’m still not over it.)

#Gotham #Oswald Cobblepot #Edward Nygma #Nygmobblepot #thank you so much for the ask??#I rambled a lot... but that's pretty much what I usually do I guess #hopefully you enjoy reading it!!#because it's long as holy hell!!#my stuff #asks

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dramarising-replacement · 7 years

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(edit: This got a little longer than planned… but I feel sorta good now that I can see how far along I’ve come actually….)

To be honest, all the people screaming about having Tryptophobia… you guys don’t sound like you’re actually having a phobic reaction. If you immediately turn to self mutilation, that’s impulsive/compulsive behavior, not fear behavior.

I’m a diagnosed arachnophobe (my father is an asshole, we’ll leave it at that). I would scream and scramble away from anything I thought was a spider when I was young. The vine stalk on a tomato caused a small kitchen fire once because I flailed in the worst possible direction. I smashed my laptop (flying across a room does that) and accidentally gave one of my dogs a bloody nose because I thought something that felt like legs crawled onto my ankle and I kicked out like a spaz -it was just her nose whiskers.

But let’s get something REAL clear, phobias cause an avoidance behavior, of some kind. In bad cases they cause extreme avoidance behaviors where the person will blindly run into things and people to escape the source of the fear. You try to get AWAY from the thing that’s scaring you. It’s also important to know the fear is irrational and the reaction is completely overblown to the stimuli. My reactions would make sense if I lived where aggressive baboon spiders tended to randomly drop from the ceiling, not the 3 inch flat wall crawlers we have here. I have a phobia, I fit the DSM criteria for a phobia, I have a code number that gets added to my monthly insurance bill because of that diagnosis.

If you have a phobia, you don’t stop and stare at it and start scratching your skin off, that’s legitimately crazy, and certainly not in the manual for the categorized symptoms. That’s an impulse behavior issue, and because you apparently don’t like it but can’t stop, that starts putting it in compulsive impulse territory (the popular and often tumblr diagnosed OCD). You trypophobes do NOT have a phobia, get a new name for your condition, trypophomania or something (symptom being an inclination to recreate the same holes in yourself apparently, while obsessing on the stimuli that prompts the mimicry). You do people with genuine fear a huge disservice by being associated with your dramatic crazy. FR is a game site, this is literally the safest place you can ever desensitize yourself to this issue you’ve got.

I got actual medical help for my arachnophobia, medication mediated-desensitization therapy worked wonders (a beta-blocker and unpacking the core aspects of the fear, putting into words what was I afraid of specifically, what I was afraid would happen… cognitive therapy needs more support). As did learning what my absolute thresholds were (cartoon spiders all peachy, Spiderman, completely okay, Star Ship Troopers…. okay, the spiders from that episode of American Gods… not okay [creeps and cold sweat inducing], a 1080px wallpaper of a goliath spider, extremely not okay [shriek and back button], that same wallpaper reduced to 350px …okay [creeps and thinking something is on my neck]… and so on).

I’ve got myself managed down to where I no longer need medication or the talk therapy, but have an absolute limit of either overly realistic tarantula images that are larger than 200px or live tarantula-like spider within 3 feet of me. I can actually stand 500px gifs of peacock spiders, because I make a point to focus on their movement and patterns and not on their fangs and claws. I sort of have a tiny “pet” orb weaver that lives in my lamp next to me, right now. Because that’s how I’m continuing my own therapy by getting used to the idea that a spider is just a small animal that doesn’t want to eat my eyes (yesterday, with my snake tongs, I fed her a pinhead cricket and it was really cool that she was okay with me looming over head to come out and wrap it up [and then she suddenly dropped down and I jumped back like two feet….so yeah, but I’m better than I was]). My mother bought me a cake when I managed to sit through the movie Arachnophobia on TNT, without a single jump. That was like my graduation moment right there! And let’s also understand that it’s taken me almost ten years to get from the kitchen fire situation to watching a movie literally titled with my problem and being totally fine with it, without being on any medication or chanting mantras to myself in the process.

THAT’s how you learn to function with an issue, because it’s ultimately your issue and no one else’s responsibility to manage it but your own. I manage my arachnophobia not by making everyone douse every inch of my surroundings in malathion, or wanting to “kill everything with fire” or telling people that like having tarantulas as pets that they are the devil and the idea “triggers” you so much, or wanting a game that I do use constructively to help myself (not a fan of redknee tarantulas, they look too real, but the volcanic vents familiars have all the stuff I’m scared of, but look just unspider and “fake” enough for me to study them and let my panic cool down while desensitizing myself more.)

So STFU about your fake phobia, and figure out how to get a handle on yourself, even if it means taking a break from FR until the hype dies down, I’m sure you can find something else to do for a week (figure out if you can handle honeycomb cereal or do you lose your mind every time you see chainlink fencing, make it a self-discovery week. Making FR get rid of a gene won’t fix you! You’ll just be reinforcing your own problem because you’ve successfully screamed away another opportunity for safe desensitization rather than do the more challenging thing and figure out what’s wrong.). When the festival hits, everyone will be talking about that instead. And you’ll barely notice Jaguar and Rosette, like you barely notice Hypnotic now.

#sjw #rant #user #genes #long post #submission

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todonintendos · 7 years

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Top 5 Best and Worst Shrine Quests in Breath of the Wild

A few days ago I listed my favourite and least favourite shrines from Breath of the Wild, however I focused on what was inside of each shrine itself rather than what players must do in order to get to them, and this is where Shrine Quests become important. There are 42 of those in the game, and they’re missions that need to be completed in order to reach or unlock a shrine. For this list, I will be excluding all quests in which the shrine is already accessible before triggering the mission, as I’ve found a lot of those by just randomly exploring, so here it begins!

Also, spoiler alert, just sayin’ you may want to complete all of these quests by yourself before.

#5 (Best) - Shrouded Shrine

To kick off this list I could have picked any of the three mazes, but instead I went for that dark forest north of the Great Hyrule Forest because it’s more original and better designed than any of the three labyrinths. The gimmick is pretty much using whatever you find or is in your inventory to light up your way to the shrine in a completely dark forest. There are many treasures spread around, but nothing too interesting on the chests except a ruby. As you advance, you’ll begin to hear growls that become louder and louder, and when you get to the end the mystery unravels: someone at Nintendo decided it would be cool to put a Hinox right there, but you can just skip it and enter the shrine.

This shrine adds a sense of mystery and, why not, fear to the game, which you won’t see anywhere else in the vast wilderness of Hyrule, which is mainly why I like this quest.

#5 (Worst) - The Ceremonial Song

I know most of you actually don’t find this quest to be that bad, but it straight up confused me to the point I had to give up and come back way later in the game. The quest triggers when you talk to a Zora girl, and she sings a song containing all the clues you need to solve the quest. I was a bit early into the game so when I read “scale of light” I immediately thought of one of the three dragons, but which one? The question answered itself when I tried putting all three scales on the pedestal without success, only to find out later “scale” referred to the weapon, so I began looking for it when that old Zora told me he dropped it off a bridge... but what bridge? I looked under every bridge on the way to Zora’s Domain, didn’t find anything. He was actually talking about the “bridge” he was standing on, which I don’t even consider a bridge in the first place.

But this doesn’t end here, the final step was going to the pedestal and doing what the Mipha statue was doing. I don’t think I have to mention how much time it took me to figure out what she was actually doing and what I had to replicate... and that I had to do it from a certain height. As soon as I saw the shrine pop up... ugh... screw this quest.

#4 (Best) - Recital at Warbler’s Nest

Despite the urge to talk about how terribly cute the small Rito are, I’m gonna have to focus on the quest. It triggers when you talk to one of the five sisters at Warbler’s Nest. She will tell you that her four sisters met up to sing with her, but didn’t come, so you’ve got to look for them. All of the missing Rito are in Rito Village (shoutouts to the one sitting on the cliff that literally took me ages to find) and each of them will give you an ingredient, as the green bird won’t go sing unless you prepare her favourite meal: salmon meunière, which you do by mixing the three ingredients you get from the other sisters.

Once this is done, the five sisters will be finally reunited at Warbler’s Nest and they’ll play their song. Now the player must memorize the order in which they sing, and use a Korok Leaf to enter that pattern using the numbered rocks as a reference to reveal the shrine. This quest mixes two of the main attractions of any Zelda game: exploration and puzzles, and the shrine you get is not a blessing one... but it has a huge staircase.

Now that I’m done talking about the quest... please take a minute to appreciate the cuteness of the five sisters, specially during the cutscene in which they fly back to Rito Village. Also my apologies to the blue one for being an unhatched egg, never forget.

#4 (Worst) - Watch Out for the Flowers

The fact that this is one of the first shrines you’ll encounter after exiting the Plateau doesn’t save it from being among the worst. I’m talking about that infamous quest featuring the mad flower woman, who literally takes away part of your health is you step on her flowers too much. And by stepping, I mean just touching one single flower a little bit. Or you can also wait until you get Revali’s Gale and screw all the process up, but that still makes it too cheap. Get frustrated or skip everything, you decide what to do.

And don’t forget to burn all of the flowers from a certain distance when you leave using bomb arrows. She somehow won’t notice and you’ll feel like you’ve recovered all of the time you may have wasted with this one.

#3 (Best) - The Stolen Heirloom

Unlocking this one takes some time, as you don’t just need to defeat Master Kohga in order to trigger it, but also complete every secondary quest in Kakariko Village. Once you do, you’ll notice something strange at Impa’s house: that big fat orange ball is missing and that girl that gets shipped with Link way to much called Paya will tell you, sobbing, that someone stole it. After falsely incriminating a random woman who just wanted to cry the death of someone he loved (this is your fault Nintendo), if you head to the pedestal that’s next to the Great Fairy Fountain, everything gets suddenly real. Even more if you consider the lore of Kakariko Village.

Basically, the big fat ball was stolen by a big fat Yiga who is suspiciously stronger than the other big fat Yigas. I could talk about the fact that you just have to defeat him in order to unlock the shrine, but it’s the lore what gives the bronze medal to this quest on my list. Dorian, one of the guards in Impa’s House, is a former Yiga member who left the organization to look after his family, so the Yigas killed her wife as a revenge, and as they weren’t done yet they came back to steal the big fat ball which the game likes to call heirloom.

After kicking the Yiga’s butt, the first thing that came to my mind was that boy who was seemingly playing hide and seek with her mother for like, forever. You could think it’s just another NPC cliché, but everything changes when you find out that’s one of Dorian’s children. Then you’ll come across the game’s lore silently cutting onions in a distant corner.

#3 (Worst) - The Lost Pilgrimage

If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about. All Koroks are cute, I must admit, but this one gets on my nerves, Scolting missions in videogames are generally bad, and this one is no exception. This mission is one of the three trials in the Korok Forest, and you have to follow a Korok without letting it notice you and, of course, trying not to lose track of it as he knows the way. And you don’t. The way becomes more and more dangerous as you progress, to the point where he runs back after getting scared without even telling you, and there’s a wolf ready to make things harder. And it’s not a short way.

The first time I did this quest I somehow managed to get to the shrine, but not complete the quest because I didn’t talk to the Korok once I was there. All I can tell you is that I tried again like 100 hours of gameplay later.

#2 (Best) - The Spring of Wisdom

Though you don’t really need to trigger an actual shrine quest in order to unlock the shrine, I just couldn’t miss this one. You’ve probably already seen Dinraal and Farosh flying around Hyrule, but what about Naydra? All the pieces of the puzzle put themselves on its place when you get to the summit of Mount Lanayru: the big blue dragon is possessed by that purple goo thing with eyes. And suddenly, a boss battle appears!

To defeat the evil forces taking over Naydra, you just have to fly next to him and shoot the malicious eyes with any arrows you have. Not too hard, yet not too easy, as Naydra moves and turns pretty fast and you can’t touch its freezing body. Despite the apparent simplicity of the battle, the setting is what makes it unique and different of anything we’ve played so far in any Zelda game. Once Naydra is defeated, you have to take a scale from its body and put it on the fountain to reveal the shrine. Make sure to say hi to Naydra whenever you find it while exploring!

#2 (Worst) - Test of Will

The main attraction of this shrine is three Gorons that don’t even know who you are and aren’t aware of you possessing either Fire Elixir or an entire suit that protects you from extreme heat in your inventory. This quest requires a bit of exploring to find, so you may already have any of the stuff required in your inventory... or you can rely of food, as it somehow prevents you from burning to death.

Now, just stand still for way too long until the Gorons notice you can handle heat better than they do. Don’t worry, they won’t notice you’re technically cheating, but they won’t give you back the five minutes you wasted by simply waiting.

#1 (Best) - Stranded on Eventide

Like if there were any doubts. Stranded on Eventide is the only quest where it just doesn’t matter what weapons or what enemies you’ve killed during your adventure (only hearts and stamina do), so it doesn’t really matter when you do this quest. This quest begins right when you step on Eventide Island for the first time, and the game takes away all of your clothes and weapons so you’ve got to start from zero, using anything you find as a weapon. The aim is to find three orange balls and bring each one to any of the three pedestals.

This is a challenge known for its rather hard difficulty, as it’s not about killing enemies as you’re probably used to do, but about avoiding them. You don’t want to face them though the balls are in the most dangerous locations possible. Heck, there’s even one on a Hinox, and the only alternatives are either climbing to his belly using his hand, or throwing something at his eye when he wakes up. But you can’t deny that the satisfaction of beating this is certainly worth it.

#1 (Worst) - Under a Red Moon

If the main problem with the previous worst quest was waiting, then you’re instantly going to understand why this is the worst quest in the game. You can be lucky and be able to unlock this shrine right away, or be like me and talk to Kass the night after the blood moon happened.

As you might have guessed, all you have to do is stand on the pedestal during a blood moon. And you have to do it naked. Unneeded detail that I bet at least someone missed and got even more frustrated... as unneeded as the quest itself, gotta be honest here.

And that was it! Those were my five most and least favourite shrine quests in Breath of the Wild... hope y’all agree! (probably not, though)

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