#my city skills are still...very lame

[fuzzysocksstuff]

Leo has been the leader since day one

Alright, I haven't seen this conversation yet, but I can't be the only one who's noticed this. This isn't my usual post- not that I post often- but art is WIP.

~aannnnyyway~

Leo has been the (back seat) leader of the Mad Dogs since day one.

Mobile users, RIP no seriously, you are digging your own grave

In the first two episodes he shows his potential, he thinks ahead, guides the team, makes astute observations, shows his knowledge of his team (including himself), and makes his own plans (even if Raph has made a plan, he almost always has his own).

I'll go through the first two episodes chronologically.

First is Mystic Mayhem.

-This is a good example of understanding himself-

Leo: So . . . You guys from Jersey?

Mikey: Really Leo?

Leo: What? I can't make a joke in the middle of the craziest thing ever? That's how I cope.

-Leo stops his brothers and forces them to think ahead-

Mikey: Should we just ask him for it?

Leo: And what do we say when he asks us why we want it? That we need to go after our best friend, who disappeared into a wall after our priceless weapons were destroyed by mystical jogger guys?

-Not only is Leo showing how well he knows his dad, he executes his own plan when Raph's first plan fails, without asking his brothers first-

Raph: How'd you get that?

Leo: You know he always passes out after milk and cake.

-Now, this example is a debatable one, yes it shows his understanding of Raph, but it may also just be to shown to establish relationships in general since this was the first episode-

Donnie: A few hours ago I would have called this foolish and impossible. Now I just call it foolish.

Mikey: Say what you want Donnie. Raph'll pull is off 'cause if he doesn't, we'll loose our best friend forever.

Leo: Mikey, don't say that. You know he chokes under pressure.

Donnie: Leo, he's even more self-conscious when you talk about it.

-Here, while happy to see April again, he keeps the team on the task that got them in the hidden city in the first place. It can be argued if this was on purpose or not; but it still showcases his natural ability to lead-

Donnie: According to my calculations, we are in a tertiary-metaverse.

April: Actually, I've been doing some exploring, and we're in a hidden city deep under New York!

Leo: So where's the dog thingy?

-There are even subtle moments where Leo takes the lead; after Donnie takes out Draxum's robot with his tech, Leo is the only one talking to Draxum directly for the team. This is another debatable example, you could say Leo is just being the face man here, but I'd like to include it-

Draxum: Accidently impressive. With a little bit of training you can be formidable as I hoped.

Leo: Okay, well, great, and since you're surrendering. . .

Draxum: Baron Draxum does not surrender.

Leo: Okay, well, when he gets here we'll deal with him. . . oh, ho, ho, I see. You're doing that whole "sinister talking in the third person" thing.

-Here, he is the only one to once again question Raph's decision, and present his own idea instead-

Raph: We just defeated a boss villain. We're heroes. We deserve a name like Mad Dogs.

Leo: Mad dogs? You don't think something like Mutant Ninja Turtle Teens or. . .I don't know. Maybe - we'll keep brain storming.

The very next episode has soooo many parallels to the movie.

Origami Tsunami.

The dialog is long on this one and, despite the humor, throughout this scene Leo guides his brothers to the best mission for their skill level.

Mikey: Yo, Leo, we're gonna be heroes!

Leo: Okay, what's the plan? Solve the city's rat problem?

Splinter: Hey now. I am standing right here.

Raph: Pfft, no way. We're crime fighters!

Donnie: Okay, check this out. The Spine Breaking Bandit!

Raph: Yeah. Go big or go home!

Leo: Yeah, go home in a stretcher. What else you got?

Donnie: Hmm, well this one's kind of lame. Someone stole paper from a delivery truck.

Leo: Not on my watch! This is exactly the kind of junior level mischief we can put an end to.

-Leo then hypes his brothers up for this mission-

Raph: Really? That'll make us heroes? But it's only paper.

Leo: It's only paper. I'm so sorry. Donnie, what did he say? Did he say it's only paper?

Donnie: Yup.

Leo: Did he say it's only paper?

Donnie: Yes, he did.

Leo: Okay! That's what they all say. You think the road to hero town is paved in real crime? No! It's paved with the tears of the poor paper man. And who helps that guy? I'll tell you who; we are who!

Raph, Mikey, and Donnie: Yes!

-When Raph's first plan fails, and he sees how discouraged his brothers get...-

Donnie: Uh, quick question. Did we seriously get schooled by paper thieves?

Raph: I didn't swoop like a boss. I swoop like a noob.

Mikey: Man, this seemed like a really cool idea until we didn't succeed at it.

-...so, Leo gives a "hero" speech, like he does in the movie. Although this motiving speech needs some help, he still tries-

Leo: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Where'd my brothers go? Mikey, where's your. . .legendary optimism? Raph, where's your, ya know, your go-getter attitude? And Donnie, where's your. . . your thing, your - emotionless passion?

Donnie: Here.

Leo: We can still catch these lame old paper crooks and be heroes!

-In continuing this scene, we see the Leo make and execute his own plan, now that Raph's impulsive plan has failed-

Donnie: Yeah, that's gonna be hard. This was the last paper store in town.

Leo: Hmm. . . or was it?

Donnie: Yeah, I. . .I literally just said that.

-Again he takes the lead talking to the foot clan first (could just be that he's a face man here, but nonetheless)-

Leo: Okay twerp. . . and surprisingly big man. It's four against two. So what you say we just call it a day, right?

-Leo uses his observations to guide the team, here when the foot are making their origami soldiers, Leo realizes taking out the paper ninjas isn't a solution-

Leo: We're getting no where fighting these guys. We gotta take out the source.

-After Raph ~properly~ uses his ninpo for the first time, Leo again uses his surroundings to find a solution, in doing so he shows both guiding his team, and astute observations-

Leo: Hm. Mikey, the sprinklers!

-Even at the end of the second episode, they look to Leo for reassurance and support-

Mikey: So. . .does this count as a win?

Leo: Well, I don't know. Let's think about it. Did the bad guys get their big supply of paper? Uh, no. Did they build their army of soilders? No. No they didn't. Are they otherwise Thwarted, and we unscathed?

Raph, Donnie, and Mikey: Yes!

Leo: Hero mission accomplished, my friends!

Alright.

First off, if you've made it this far, thanks for attending my not even close to life changing ted talk. I hope you have enjoyed my rant.

In conclusion,

Leo has the potential to lead, just prefers to do as little work as possible. He almost always passes resonsibility onto someone else, however when he has no other choice but to lead he does it well without realizing it. There are many other subtle examples sprinkled throughout season 1 and 2.

I have more thoughts on this, but this post is already the height of the empire state building.

Class Dismissed.

#did I really just spend this much time writing this? #yes #yes I did #rise of the tmnt #tmnt #rottmnt leo #rottmnt #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt mikey #rottmnt raph #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles

[soulsilvers]

ult kantrio headcanon masterpost

⬇ here i will be compiling as much as possible of my very specific hcs about my favourite play dolls from pokemon that ive rambled about everywhere else, usually at 3 in the morning. and will be updating this post whenever i will. this is still just a small percentage of everything going on in my head lmao. ⬇

does not include futureverse, give it time in the oven.

RED 💖

mute boy born to a family of jolly, talkative and enthusiastic fishers. they make this their entire personality and reds house is very fishing themed. hes... absolutely not as enthusiastic as a kid and sick of the smell of fish, but enjoys it as an adult.

his pikachus a much bigger beast than most pikas in comparison. Supreme Champion.

during G1 he is very polite and well mannered in contrast to green and leaf. his room is tidy and he goes to bed early. though he defends all dumb rowdy shit leaf pulls anyway. this is reflected in his pkmn being more of the gentle giant sort.

he has learned a lot of cooking + baking skills from his mom and the smell of his outdoor cooking can instantly summon leaf and green (reluctantly) to him during G1. he is a huge sweet tooth as well and prefers tea over coffee.

only looks retired as an adult; often sleepy and napping and walking everywhere in crocs. boring as hell but hey its endearing when red does it. but he is very much in peak physical strength and still quickly sweeping other trainers' teams. despite his usual serene demeanor he can still go for the most rash decision and just go apeshit w his pokemon.

TERMINALLY OFFLINE. no way is he going to understand what "ratioing team rocket epic style big W" is going to mean. types bluntly, like your dad. last tweet from him was six years ago, a 240p quality video about encountering an ursaring in a hut in the middle of the woods.

his usual pokeball throw resembles a baseball pitch.

exactly just as geeky as he is athletic. he enjoys the battle tree, but he still wishes for more. his dormant interest in wildlife biology and conservation that he had as a child is soon reignited and hes gonna get that PhD.

enjoys haunted locations too much. even leaf is confused by this! he decides to buy the shittiest abandoned house. which is also haunted. but reds eyes sparkle as always, man is FLEXING and determined to renovate this thing while green is frantically experiencing literally every emotion at once from jumpscares to "huh red knowing how to renovate is kinda ehehehe" then again pacing around sobbing over what were they thinking buying this house.

GREEN 💚

his and daisy's mother was a musician with a similar personality to him. his father, prof. oak's son, was more like daisy and a humble gardener w grass pkmn by his side. neither were too interested in battling or going on adventures.

he is extremely multifaceted when it comes to styles and music tastes, for example. somehow this man can combine prep, jock, geek, stoner and punk rock to his style all at once. his music taste is ALL.

nowadays his eevee is sporting the same hairstyle as him.

millennial still trying to make his podcast a big thing. his poke-twitter is fairly professional. relatively offline, not hip enough for zoomer trainers.

a francoboo. had his boy crazy era in kalos and thus more experienced than red when it comes to relationships. some of his french ex bfs still chase after him but shit bricks every time red answers the door instead.

at least he got them to take good fancy pictures of him in kalos. and he cooks kalosian recipes quite well, spoiling red with those nicely decorated crepes. but likely he experienced some paris syndome too. when you realize lumiose city kinda often smells like piss...

not very artistic. he draws like a 5 year old.

bad at figuring out what lesbians like. he buys leaf ellen degeneres merchandise :(

hes just kind of. eternally stuck in 90s slang and still having his default insults be so hilariously lame they wouldnt sting anyone. like buttcheek.

this is a more recent thing about my design for him but his left eyelid is perpetually droopier than the other.

LEAF 💙

showed up inexplicably in pallet town one day and simply asserted herself. no further elaboration. her origins remain a mystery. she biked all the way inside oak's lab and kept biking.

diversity win! in this universe leaf is closer to being an "ash counterpart" than red is.

since shes always seeking new thrills, she lives in a van as an adult. it looks pretty amazing and cozy from the inside and plenty of room to cook! on the outside theres like. airbrushed venusaurs and wizards and venusaur wizards of all sort.

a big ball of positive meatheadness to the point where shell def blow up a lot of things thinking everythings gonna be just fine. some people want her dead for this.

absolutely will put anything in her mouth and sometimes this is terrifying. tries to always make her cooking look like something "fun" and colorful that kids would enjoy but usually fucks up the look.

on-off relationships with women, she makes a new rival with lgbt undertones every two months. popular gal like that. dont ask her for relationship advice.

quite online and very charming. types like cher on social media. still, she remains popular and loved amongst the youth.

had a geocities in 2004 where she documented her adventures (bc i want G1 to be as 2004 as possible like that). it was an eyesore to look at.

often forms a trio with may and kris and they go on roadtrips eeeeverywhere. they either love her one day or think of her as a dumpster fire personified the next day.

#trainer red #trainer green #trainer leaf #red oak #green oak #trainer blue #blue oak #pkmn #pokemon #kanto trio

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

y’know not to jump onto the string of posts that i’ve been seeing about “please learn small talk for the love of god”….. but i think the memes around “all i want is deep talks and REAL conversations. none of this shallow shit anymore. i have to talk about space and existence and everything when i first meet someone” really do rot your brain.

because during my time in UG uni (2015-2018) i was very much on my high horse about needing deep conversations. but following that line of thinking is mostly why i made next to no friends at uni. i was so obsessed with the idea of needing “deep, meaningful and insightful” or whatever the fuck the memes said convos, that i really struggled to build small talk skills about “inane shit” (as per memes) like the weather, sport, the daily mundane hum-drum of life. and also work (but we all know i never worked during uni so this bit doesn’t count for me). i forgot how to ask people what their fave shows were, what their fave music was. hell, even what their fave flavour of coffee was or whatever. y’know, besides all the lame getting to know you ice breaker games at the beginning of each semester…. that tried and always kinda failed at trying to get everyone to build common ground and be friends, i really never asked these types of questions to anyone during undergrad. so obvs, in turn, no one/barely anyone asked them of me outside of icebreaker games. so, it was very isolating and lonely, to say the least.

but when it came to it, i never actually wanted the deep conversations, really. my degree was deep enough, being english and philosophy. so much so, that i didn’t even want to explain things to people (like the symptoms of my stomach tumour- ie constant bouts of nausea and extreme tiredness) which is exactly one (1) of the many, many things that put me off dating for the entirety of uni. i just wanted empty conversations, to keep my mind off of my assignments and the sheer amount of course content that i was trying to avoid for them. i wanted time to stop. to freeze. to slow the fuck down. and god. i just wanted someone to talk to. but lo & behold, fucking dumb ass early 20s me also didn’t want to talk to anyone bc “the conversation isn’t quality and deep”; all because of the amount of time i spent on This Here Hellsite (affectionate)™️ reblogging those bs memes and also liking them on fb. but what fucking early 20something year old actually knows what Quality Conversation™️ is anyway???? lmao. sure asf not me back then. and i’m sure asf not many other early 20somethings would know, either.

but now that i’m finally in a job, i see the importance of small talk. i see how it helps build routine and build connections slowly, but surely. i’m still building friendships at work. but god. it’s so much easier to blab about the shows you’re watching, what you did on the weekend, your fave wine/s, the good places to eat in the city or whatever the fuck else small stuff that you talk about at work.

because holy fuck. if someone had come up to me on my first day in march this year, demanding that “oh hey! we have to talk about quantum physics and the essence of being a solid state of non-celestial being and how that effects the very existence of humanity in the world” or some other weird sounding deep shit, i would have ran straight out of the office. like no joke: what the fuck is up with todd??? because we sure as fuck aren’t in a quantum physics lecture or a philosophy of science or physics lecture that would begin that debate. bc bro. simmer the fuck down and tell me if you like to surf or not. good fucking god. we’ll get to those convos on lunch break, eventually. but not when i barely fucking know you. sweet baby lord jesus.

like don’t get me wrong. yes. we need to have deep conversations with people. but you’re never going to get them if you totally block out and dismiss ALL small talk as “pointless, inane and useless” or “vapid and empty” as opposed to putting “deep conversations about time and the universe and how people meet in the cosmos (not counting vision boards)” on a pedestal…. and trying to paint yourself as a pretentious pseudo-intellectual (i guess) douchebag who only wants to talk about that stuff. because like i said earlier, no one wants to talk about the state of the human race or whatever the fuck the first time they meet someone, really.

(although asking political beliefs and stuff is probs a good idea but that’s a whole other post).

basically my point is: for anyone who is Terminally Online™️ and a Humble Meme Farmer™️ like myself and has had the Internet Brain Rot Worms™️ infiltrate their brain with the “fuck small talk! i have to have deep conversations the moment i meet you!” bullshit….. please try to break free from them. practice small talk in the mirror. practice in the shower or the bath. practice it while you drive yourself around (if you have your licence/a car). practice it in the dark of night in a seance of small talk demons. idek whatever your style is.

just. learn to build small and simple connections with other people with easy things like “what’s your fave colour?” or “what’s your dogs name??” et al. ad infinitum. because for crying out loud. when you really think about it, that’s what all those OG tumblr askbox question posts were all about. small talk. but it’s easier obvs with only a keyboard in front of you, and an imaginary audience. but it’s obvs different in person, where you can’t delete words and screwups. but who the fuck cares???

just get the fuck away from your laptop and actually talk to people in the real world. not just your fellow terminally online meme farmer mutuals on various social media sites. because then you’ll realise that small talk, albeit it being a bit of a pain sometimes, ain’t all that bad….. even for a socially awkward ambivert/introvert infp (like myself- see i’m still ~quirky ✌🏻✨~)…. and is kinda inevitably essential to building stable friendships/relationships…… instead of believing that being deep and meaningful and trying to force The Big Deep 🧐🌊🔮👽🤯™️ on everyone, all the time, is the only way to have good conversations.

#life #about me #shut up ilona #i did make a huge rant piece about this on a post about it MONTHS ago now #but i’m not bothered to go back into my archive or my posts to find it rn

[lediz-watches]

Podcast: Weird Medieval Guys

Another podcast, because it's consumed my brain over the last week.

Weird Medieval Guys started as a Twitter account (go off, Musk), but is now also a bi-weekly podcast starring Olivia (the Twitter creator) and Aran (the historian she bribed with a platform to rant about Constantinople). Every couple of weeks, they gather together on Olivia's living room floor to academically gossip about medieval life, loves, and nonsense.

Because people have always been nonsensical, and that's amazing.

I found it through another podcast that I will one day do a post about (I need to... come to terms with why I love it) called We Can Be Weirdos, in which Olivia came on and caught my attention with her passion for the legal debates people got into about heraldry, and her willingness to admit that medieval people were just as petty and ridiculous as we are now.

Because that's the thing, and which I think this podcast shows so well: people have always just been people.

The world we exist in has evolved. Technology has marched on, our ways of interacting with each other have changed, and we have different values, different things we consider important, but we're still the same, really. We think of the past as this noble and dirty and incorruptible space, but people were making sex jokes and lame puns for a hundred thousand years. We aren't special just because we can blast our lame humour to seven billion people at a time.

But anyway.

Each episode of the podcast takes the form of a loose essay, Aran lecturing Olivia (or occasionally vice versa) on some topic about the medieval period, and don't get me wrong - they are lectures. There are stupid jokes, Aran loves to play different characters, Olivia giggles constantly, and the point of each one is that medieval people were Just Like Us, but Aran is an academic talking about research. Yes, his area of expertise is a later period, but the skills remain.

And to be clear, I am a recovering cultural studies student who until recently has been out of academic life and away from other academics for over a decade. But I suspect this is not a podcast you can walk into without some academic-adjacent background. They discuss articles and a lot of their humour is based in inference and the kind of irony you see in people who debate reality for a living.

But they are also redditors, and Twitter natives, and talk about their subjects as 'based'. Aran loves to call people King and Queen. They bring their subject matter to the now.

The most recent podcast was about medieval Welsh bards, and they read out a rap (flyte) battle between two of them (Olivia's bard totally won, I don't care what you say), and finished on the DIRTIEST poem I have ever heard (seriously, ugh), and it taught me a lot about Wales' history, which I've never really known much about, so thank you for that. But it was great to hear all this poetry and these poets and put them in a context where you can strip back the language and see them for the frustrated, young, often horny, very human people they were. Also I loved the owl poem and must search it out because I grew up next to koala tress and boy, I feel you.

The episode before that was about medieval animals, and while it was fun to hear about hedgehogs and the bestiary, it also contained a beautiful insight into why we use animals as narrative devices. The only downside is that I'm still on the edges of the Hellverse fandom and started analysing furry culture and honestly, no one needs that in their life...

But my FAVOURITE episode so far is part two of their Constantinople episode, where they described the Ottoman leader Mehmed as so... painfully human. Even as his soldiers ransacked a once-glorious city and he chased a mad dream, he was just so lost and passionate and terrible and... Aran described him so beautifully, I was just swept up in the story.

So yes. Although there are a few hiccups along the way (please please please go back and fix the episodes with the overlapping voice tracks it hurt my ears so bad), if you have even a passing interest in history or culture or what makes humans human, check out this podcast.

Because we're just people. We've always just been people. And that's amazing.

#podcast #weird medieval guys #historical academics #people as people #we're just innocent men #that's unrelated unless you think about it too hard #seriously though aran's obsession with constantinople gives me life #I didn't catch the potato joke but I get it #you're dorks and I love you

[mercy-mercie-mercymorn]

TAVS.

bg3 spoilers ahead!

aurora (gold dragonborn cleric of mielikki) grew up in the woods, far away from the city. she likes animals and once spent three days chasing a unicorn, just to see what it did. on a diplomatic trip to stop logging that was infringing on a grove once considered sacred to mielikki, she got abducted. pokey sticks and fire breath quickly proved to be the best way to make her way through her new life. on the way she fell head over heels for the two dumbasses who got fucked by the Hells. so they decided to start saving people, hunting things. and now it's wyll and wyll's wife aurora and aurora's wife karlach's family business. yay hell polycule!

(aurora is the reason i call wyll my wife. he's just. my wife <3)

kassandra (seladrine drow warlock) has never been to the underdark. she has a cousin there, on her mom's side, maybe? she grew up in baldur's gate and made a career for herself as a shrewd businesswoman (she makes jewelry; that's how she got warlockéd). using people's impressions of drow against them is like her primary skill and it works surprisingly often despite the fact that she is 5'3" on a good day and has the face of a disney princess. she also has the animal skills of one. aurora is steve irwin, kassandra is cinderella. karlach and kassandra were instant besties, which evolved in the sapphic tradition of "surely she doesn't mean it like that haha" until kassandra just straight up said she wanted to make out with karlach.

(i haven't finished her playthrough yet because i'm afraid teehee)

winter (avariel [mod, winged elf] bard) is your manic pixie dream girl. i stole her name and most of her appearance from Winter The Lunar Chronicles because i am a silly little criminal. winter has never met a problem she could not make marvel-esque quips at, much to shadowheart's eternal chagrin. desperately wants karlach to teach her that silly tiktok dance she's always doin So Bad. her adventure is a very strange change of pace for her because she was previously a tavern waitress/occasional entertainer when there was literally no other option. as such, she does not know how to use weapons really at all and makes everyone else protect her (insert pleading face emoji). anyways, she's the golden retriever gf to shart's black cat gf.

(her wings get in the way of every cutscene but i still love her)

marie (human durge paladin) is like if tinkaton was a person. she hates the murderhobo ps5 in her brain and loves weird little guys (gale). voted most likely to cry at dog food commercials. i really haven't played much of her, so i haven't decided on much backstory for her.

(i just think she's a little funny)

the one that only sort of counts.

cynthia (tiefling wild magic sorcerer) is literally just my OC who got isekaid to faerun. the only people who know this are the """dream guardian""", the gods, and the three dipshits and their lame goddess. she's there to cause problems and live up to her old nickname: Godkiller. her fake persona, Lady Cynthia Tav, is from a little town on the coast and enjoys the finer things in life. her most fervent desire is to have a spray bottle so she can get astarion to stop that (at any given moment, "that" ranges from mild horniness to wanting to violently murder people). she is beginning to understand what it was like for her brother to raise her.

(don't have many pics of her, but she's the most frequent subject of my drawings)

there's a bunch of more in my notebook that i doodle in while playing

#bg3 #bg3 spoilers #bg3 tav #oc content lol #long post

[pkmnnursecass]

Ciao!

Hey there Rotomblr! I saw some of my coworkers talking about this app, so I decided to try it out! Name’s Cassidy, but you can call me Cass! I’m a big fan of She/Her pronouns, so use those for me if you'd please! I’m an aide down at that new Pokémon Center in Freezington, Galar. Nice to meet everyone!

Here’s my Trainer Card and a pic of me! Hope you can see them- I still have no idea how this site works lmao

Anyway, I'm from Castelia City in Unova! I spent a few years studying abroad in Kalos, and now I'm working in the Crown Tundra at the new Center they set up! I loooove astrology, cooking (especially curry), reading, movies and cardgames!!! I still don’t know a lot about Pokémon, but I’m good at taking care of them! I hope so, anyway. Lemme talk a little bit about my own!

Valentine - Ribombee: my first partner! I caught her when my family was vacationing in Alola way back. She's soooo adorable, and helps me out at the Center a ton!!

Chime - Chingling: my second Pokémon! I found him while studying in Kalos. He's more like emotional support for me, honestly. He's just as cute as Val!

Chansey: I got her from my employer (which I guess is the region???? Idk). She's very cool, and I think we work well together!

Lumi - Metang: Lumi was given to me by a friend in Kalos! They don't understand Galarian very well...and I'm no good at Kalosian...but I think they like it up here!! And they help out a lot!!!

Cheri - Spritzee: My newest team member!!! I caught her in Hammerlocke during my vacation (it keeps happening lol) She's super sweet!!!

That’s all for now! I can share my dreams and aspirations later, lol. Feel free to talk to me about anything- Pokémon, life, good recipes, movie recs, card games…like I said, anything!!!! It’s real lonely up here in the tundra, so any interaction is welcome!

Ciao! 🩷

(OOC stuff under the cut \/)

Update 1/7/24: Decided to update this, to offer more information and just generally be less cluttered! Also got rid of Cass' middle name, because that was lame and I forgot about it

Howdy! This is a Pokemon IRL Blog run by @skrelpson. As such, there's a major unreality warning for all of it! This blog runs off of mainly game/anime canon, with a sprinkle of headcanons throughout! Maybe I'll talk more about that later. idk!

Rules .｡.:*☆:

No NSFW! I am a minor, as of writing this. I'm also just generally uncomfortable with that subject matter. If you send any asks in that nature, you'll be blocked.

Magic Anons are off! They'll probably stay off, too. Just not comfy with that...yknow yknow

Pelipper Mail is on...ish! You can send things in, but please nothing like surprise gift Pokemon. Cass isn't equipped to deal with that right now! I will just ignore any mail that doesn't really jive with what's going on.

This is a low stakes blog! Cass might get into minor events, but for the most part it's just chill vibes in the tundra.

Speaking of, if you'd ever want to include me in some sort of RP (again, mainly low-stakes!), feel free to DM me! Just like specify what's going on. My writing RP skills are kinda rusty, but I can make it work! :]

Sapient Pokemon and the like can interact!

Basic DNI critera- Transphobes, racists, anti-seminists...etcetera...

In general, I'm not a very outgoing person. I gotta work up a lotta courage to try and talk to people! Especially people I don't know! And it might take me time to respond to a reblog, message, etc...it doesn't mean I don't want to interact! I'm just terrified of being online :p

Any ask game I reblog will be permanently open!!! Feel free to send in asks for any of them. Since that sounds a little daunting, here's a list of all the ones I've reblogged! Just PLEASE please please please include the question and not just the emoji...PLEASE

(I'll update this like...once every other month or something)

Find Out the Little Things!

Press A to Interact (This one doesn't really have a name? Ack sorry)

Roto Leak!

Pokéblr Ask Game

Curry Ingredient Ask Game

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PREVIOUS ARCS (+Tags!)

The Lime Water Saga - a joke arc about Cass putting too many lime slices in her water bottle. Can be found under #lime water saga

Vocational Vacation - Cass tours Galar! She visits landmarks, takes pictures of ponies, and doesn't see the northern lights. Found under #vocational vacation arc

#pkmn irl #rotomblr #pokeblogging #pokeblog rp #unreality

[aes-h]

Here are my initial ideas for a band/music themed pack (preferably an expansion pack but realistically a game pack). I introduce to you:

The Sims 4: Making Music (working title)

Primary pack features overview:

The new ability to make bands. Either gether a group of your friends together to make a band, or put up listings searching for new members and review their applications. Assign specific intruments to different sims. Set up practice sessions to build skill and learn how to perform together on stage.

Put yourself out there! Perform at concert venues, bars, parks, a creepy basement, or whatever else suits your style. Invite family, friends, or perhaps someone you're looking to impress to your concerts to show off your skills.

New instruments! New guitars, drums, 4 string bass, new keyboard piano, synths, record players, real stages to perform on

New lot type: Concert Venue. Alternatively, you can place a "stage" item in other builds to make them possible venues for concerts.

Attend concerts for other bands/singers (premade townies. Your sims can talk to other townies to learn about them or research bands on a computer)

Explore a new city world full of alleyways and secret/hidden areas. Based off New York, but make it different enough from San Myshuno. (i know people want world based off places literally anywhere but the USA but i just love san myshuno so much i just want san myshuno 2.0 is that too much to ask for). MORE APARTMENTS! CRAMPED!!

One secret location is a speakeasy hidden underground through an unassuming door in an alleyway. It can be edited, but the lot type is locked to be either a bar or lounge.

The second secret location takes you to an old, unused subway station which can be turned into a venue. The door to reach it is locked up behind rusty chains and a heavy lock. To bypass this your sim must explore more of the city to find bolt cutters (or some other way to unlock the door idk) to break the lock. (Or, to incorporate skills, reach a certain level of handiness to pick the lock, a certain fitness level to break the lock, or bring your band-mates to break it together). Once inside, you can edit the lot to make it a venue, practice space, whatever you want, you just can't build full walls. There are debug bathrooms built into the subway around it so your sim isn't pissing themself.

The third secret location is a rooftop of one of the apartments (because there WILL be apartments so help me god) you get by either reaching a certain friendship level with your landlord and asking for it (LAME) or attempting to swipe the key (low chance of success and pisses off landlord, but that's what makes it fun). If you REALLY hate your landlord, you have a decent chance of getting it if you get into a fist fight with them. The rooftop is another secret lot you can edit (though the lot type remains 'generic')

Careers outside of making your own band:

"Producer" career (what do producers do? go around saying "i'm a producer" and making people sign contracts)

"Vocalist" career- start out as a backup singer and work your way up to pop star

I originally wrote out a DJ career before I realized that was a thing in get together LOL. i've been meaning to get that pack (on sale) is it worth it?

Overall Style of the Pack: Similar to city living in the sense that there are two contrasting sides; a very grunge, rocker, underground vibe to most of the pack. but there is also an upscale pop-star side to it for when your sims make it big (as they say). I want the pack to feel Dirty and Used (werewolves pack vibes), with lots of well-loved items (thinking basement treasures), with an artsy edge to it. Lots of stickers, and drawings on things, and random things that look like instruments and instruments that look like other things. For the pop-star side; still a bit of an edge with lots of neon lights and fun colors. Dressing tables/vanities, headset microphone. Accessory headphones that don't look ridiculous. Expand on the grunge style kit with more grunge and rock inspired clothing (we deserve more alternative clothing) and heavy jewelry. Layered necklaces, concert wristbands, band merch. Also performing outfits; a little bit of everything. (New outfit category for sims in bands? Or something you can customize in a separate menu, perhaps the same menu where you can track your band's progress.)

Other Thoughts: I don't want the pack to be easy. I want it to take effort to gain a following and improve as a band, and for the relationships between band members to affect their skill & performances. Starting out, you won't make much money at all for a long time, until you start growing and can make more than you spend. (ticket quotas and fees at different venues. start small and work your way up from dingy basements to bars to lounges to real venues from concert halls to stadiums. (Realistically, some, if not most, of these will have to be rabbit holes but I can dream)

Base Game Update: Make the electric guitars actually sound electric PLEASE.

#ts4 #kinda awful conceptualizing a pack catered specifically to yourself bc you just know it'll never really happen #if you have ideas PLEASE share

[autolovecraft]

Why did you do it, Birch?

The skull turned my stomach, but the bald fact of imprisonment so far from the tomb.

For the long-neglected latch was obviously broken, leaving the careless undertaker trapped in the vault, a victim of his own oversight.

On the afternoon of Friday, April 15th, then, Birch set out for the tomb with horse and wagon to transfer the body of Matthew Fenner. His day's work was sadly interrupted, and unless chance presently brought some rambler hither, he might have to remain all night or longer. I've seen sights before, but there was one thing too much here. In this funereal twilight he rattled the rusty handles, pushed at the iron panels, and wondered why the massive portal had grown so suddenly recalcitrant. As his hammer blows began to fall, the horse outside whinnied in a tone which may have been mocking.

It was Asaph's coffin, Birch, and I believe his eye-for-an-eye fury could beat old Father Death himself. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed it. Horrible pains, as of savage wounds, shot through his calves; and in his mind was a vortex of fright mixed with an unquenchable materialism that suggested splinters, loose nails, or some other attribute of a breaking wooden box. Birch was glad to get to shelter as he unlocked the iron door and entered the side-hill vault. He had, it seems, planned in vain when choosing the stoutest coffin for the platform; for no sooner was his full bulk again upon it than the rotting lid gave way, jouncing him two feet down on a surface which even he did not care to imagine. Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer. Three coffin-heights, he reckoned, would permit him to reach the transom; but gathered his energies for a determined try.

Dusk fell and found Birch still toiling. It is doubtful whether he was touched at all by the horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the other was worse—those ankles cut neatly off to fit Matt Fenner's cast-aside coffin!

He gave old Matt the very best his skill could produce, but was thrifty enough to save the rejected specimen, and to use it when Asaph Sawyer died of a malignant fever.

Maddened by the sound, or by the stench which billowed forth even to the open air, the waiting horse gave a scream that was too frantic for a neigh, and plunged madly off through the night, the wagon rattling crazily behind it. The hungry horse was neighing repeatedly and almost uncannily, and he did not heed the day at all; though ever afterward he refused to do anything of importance on that fateful sixth day of the week. Horrible pains, as of savage wounds, shot through his calves; and in his mind was a vortex of fright mixed with an unquenchable materialism that suggested splinters, loose nails, or some other attribute of a breaking wooden box. Instinct guided him in his wriggle through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. He always remained lame, for the great tendons had been severed; but I think the greatest lameness was in his soul. The air had begun to be exceedingly unwholesome; but to this detail he paid no attention as he toiled, half by feeling, at the heavy and corroded metal of the latch. He had not forgotten the criticism aroused when Hannah Bixby's relatives, wishing to transport her body to the cemetery in the city whither they had moved, found the casket of Judge Capwell beneath her headstone. Then the doctor came with his medicine-case and asked crisp questions, and removed the patient's outer clothing, shoes, and socks.

Instinct guided him in his wriggle through the transom. Armington helped Birch to the outside of a spare bed and sent his little son Edwin for Dr. Davis.

He was curiously unelated over his impending escape, and almost dreaded the exertion, for his form had the indolent stoutness of early middle age. In either case it would have been appropriate; for the unexpected tenacity of the easy-looking brickwork was surely a sardonic commentary on the vanity of mortal hopes, and the overhead ventilation funnel virtually none at all; so that he was wise in so doing. I'd hate to have it aimed at me! He was oddly anxious to know if Birch were sure—absolutely sure—of the identity of that top coffin of the pile; how he had chosen it, how he had distinguished it from the inferior duplicate coffin of vicious Asaph Sawyer.

Horrible pains, as of savage wounds, shot through his calves; and in his mind was a vortex of fright mixed with an unquenchable materialism that suggested splinters, loose nails, or some other attribute of a breaking wooden box. He was just dizzy and careless enough to annoy his sensitive horse, which as he drew it viciously up at the tomb neighed and pawed and tossed its head, much as on that former occasion when the rain had vexed it. He was merely crass of fiber and function—thoughtless, careless, and liquorish, as his easily avoidable accident proves, and without that modicum of imagination which holds the average citizen within certain limits fixed by taste. Tired and perspiring despite many rests, he descended to the floor and sat a while on the bottom box to gather strength for the final wriggle and leap to the ground outside. The body was pretty badly gone, but if ever I saw vindictiveness on any face—or former face. Tired and perspiring despite many rests, he descended to the floor and sat a while on the bottom box to gather strength for the final wriggle and leap to the ground outside. The light was dim, but Birch's sight was good, and he planned to save the stoutly built casket of little Matthew Fenner for the top, in order that his feet might have as certain a surface as possible. Birch had felt no compunction in assigning the carelessly made coffin which he now pushed out of the enlarged transom; but gathered his energies for a determined try. Over the door, however, the high, slit-like transom in the brick facade gave promise of possible enlargement to a diligent worker; hence upon this his eyes long rested as he racked his brains for means to reach it. Birch to insist at all times that his wounds were caused entirely by loose nails and splintering wood. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom. Whether he had imagination enough to wish they were empty, is strongly to be doubted. He was a scoundrel, and I don't blame you for giving him a cast-aside coffin, but you got what you deserved. Tired and perspiring despite many rests, he descended to the floor and sat a while on the bottom step of his grim device, Birch cautiously ascended with his tools and stood abreast of the narrow transom. Clutching the edges of the aperture. In either case it would have been appropriate; for the unexpected tenacity of the easy-looking brickwork was surely a sardonic commentary on the vanity of mortal hopes, and the overhead ventilation funnel virtually none at all; so that he was reduced to a profane fumbling as he made his halting way among the long boxes toward the latch. He could, he was sure, get out by midnight—though it is characteristic of him that this thought was untinged with eerie implications. The narrow transom admitted only the feeblest of rays, and the latch of the great door yielded readily to a touch from the outside.

Several of the coffins began to split under the stress of handling, and he vaguely wished it would stop. Well enough to skimp on the thing some way, but you got what you deserved. Being without superstition, he did not care to imagine. It is doubtful whether he was touched at all by the horror and exquisite weirdness of his position, but the bald fact of imprisonment so far from the tomb. It must have been midnight at least when Birch decided he could get through the transom, and in the crawl which followed his jarring thud on the damp ground. Clutching the edges of the aperture. He had even wondered, at Sawyer's funeral, how the vindictive farmer had managed to lie straight in a box so closely akin to that of the diminutive Fenner. Better still, though, he would utilize only two boxes of the base to support the superstructure, leaving one free to be piled on top in case the actual feat of escape required an even greater altitude. Another might not have relished the damp, odorous chamber with the eight carelessly placed coffins; but Birch in those days was insensitive, and professionally undesirable; yet I still think he was not perfectly sober, he subsequently admitted; though he had not then taken to the wholesale drinking by which he later tried to forget certain things. Sawyer died of a malignant fever. There was nothing like a ladder in the tomb.

[mysticphilosopherbasement]

Counting down! T-minus 22 more days til my next journey begins. Even despite the controversial output, I am still proud to be making a change and following suit with a skill I wish to acquire more informagion in thw way I want to. Even growing the free spirit of my teenaged party and finding my personality I was told to go to college given my interests half the time.

So even though taking a leap into to checking out maybe a Bachelor's in Media Communication - I couldn't keep up with the full-time school schedule while juggling quitting alcohol after getting a DUI and feeling compelled to live with a guy I met at work. I kind of just had this impractical thought that maybe take a chance wouldn't be so bad. Felt like a rebound of my pride slowly dwindling; just a feeling for the most part.

So now that school is lined up. Finding a fucking career to walk down the path in.

Between everything I feel like I am good at nothing at all except the simple pleasures in life, body/sex positive lifestyle, and just kind of being at the moment. I have to be a bit more present given the circumstance of being anxious. I use to always felt like I needed to be on the go or there foe every moment, if I didn't take a picture with anyone and anything then it didn't matter, and other misconceptions that truly had me overthinking A LOT. So to slow down, discovering my niche a bit better now that I can do a bit more maybe, to be fair growing up - my past times included online mini games, chat rooms, reading fan fiction, and sometimes editing pictures/videos. Kind of lame but going outside was usually the other part of my life and mildly having adventures in my room (from toy scenarios: i.e. dolls, dollhouse, and other stuff) to gaming finally at 10 with a PS1 and my first two games being Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Froggers; oh and the demo disc. Can't forget the lovely PC Demo disc method of letting you try new games and such for a certain amount of time.

Guess my point is that I don't necessarily have a dedicated practice outside of learning new things, guide/helping others, communication but also love artisan activities every few days to clear my mind. Time to work towards transportation. No car, no bike, plus a dirt road and no sidewalks leading into our out of town where my parents stay.

Next with my health, its high time I start attending AA meetings because there are some things I need to take a break from when it truly counts. Also I smoke cigarettes like a damn chimney and hate that I feel out of breathe, just very uncomfortable to tell the truth. Thinking that my psychological vendetta of why I smoke is pretty much faded. Just in case though and if any kind of support group I had to chose from at this point, plus it also helps with getting my license back, I'd have to choose AA. Maybe substance abuse but it's mainly with alcohol and cigarettes that I feel the most dependency.

Thanks to Chronic Guru, having the right connect has never felt so good. Mainly because the motivation to eat, sleep, and get my self-talk regulated during not only excercise but just focusing a bit better has helped me. I notice a big difference. Even conciously realizing my world a little but more so, not just blowing hot air on the matter of what I have learned about my mental health yet lacking in getting peofessionally taken care of.

It's in my little master plan but first thing's first, getting out of the hole I dug. This may just end up becoming my favorite raw journal yet.

xoxo buttercup

#journal entry #alcoholism #substance abuse #100 days of productivity #journal #me

[monasatlantis]

Review of Persona 5 Strikers

“Its finally over...” is not a sentence, you should here from me, after I have finished a game and yet, here we are, once again... In any case, my journey with Persona 5 Strikers is finally over and I am happy that with this review, I can bring that boring journey to a closure. A fast one.

Spoilers obviously ahead (also possible for the original P5 and P5R) so you have been warned. Here we go...

The things that come first to mind, when I should describe my feelings while I was playing this game are: “Its boring” and “Its too different from what makes a Persona-Game a Persona-Game” as well as “The nostalgia is just not enough to make this game enjoyable.” and those 3 things pretty much sum up this game.

When you start the game, you will be happy to see Joker and the Phantom thieves again, that you can visit the velvet-room once more, that you sit in Leblanc and everything is just pure, happy nostalgia and it feels really good.

Sadly, this is where the good feelings mostly end.

Relatively soon, our team of thieves leaves Leblanc behind for a journey in a freaking Camper around Japan. So you literally leave all the nostalgia behind for what could be a new exiting journey, but the seemingly refreshing idea behind switching places, totally misses its mark.

Honestly your first disappointment will probably be that almost NOTHING in this game is like an actual Persona game. And no, I am in fact not talking about the fighting style. Hack and slash is personally not what I prefer, but it isn’t like that is actually the problem of the game. It takes some getting used to and it makes the difficulty be a bit higher, especially since your team members can’t remember anymore what conserving SP means, but all in all it isn’t too much of a bother, after some getting used to it. So, once again, no, this is not a problem at all.

What is a problem that the time-managment, getting jobs for money, getting skills and making them better, finding confidants and learning for school as well as all the other slice of life stuff that is usually happening between the plot and the dungeons and is also usually helpful for battles on the long run in one way or another, is completely missing.

You don’t have access to a full city anymore in your free time, and aside from doing stupid requests, like finding some mysterious cake, so Mona can impress Ann, the only thing you actually do on your free time is shop for groceries and stuff and talk to people. And all that in small towns that offer you nothing but new things to cook and that above mentioned things. In other words: Whatever small freetime Joker has between Dungeons and the Plot is boring as hell.

And, while we are at it, so is the plot. I can’t remember the last time a plot was that boring and lame. When you are stuck in one of the overly long, never ending dungeons of this game, you have no motivation whatsoever to force yourself through them, because the only motivation you could have, would be an interesting plot and sadly, there is nothing interesting about the plot at all.

The two new characters are interesting, but they totally fucked it up to make Sophias plot fascinating and interesting and motivating until the actual true final dungeon. Sophias Plot starts strong and ends strong but the very long in between face is like she is just there... to be there... nothing interesting about her. And as we barely find any hints about her or who she is, it is actually a moment of “Oh... right... we wanted to find something out about this. Totally forgot about that” as it gets finally mentioned again in a later dungeon and basically gets dropped again for a while immediately after. What a waste of a good plot-motivation. Now Zenkichi was the real star of this game most of the time. He was the only motivation to play this game and even tho one was routing for him until the very end, as soon as he joined our thieves of hearts as another persona-user, the way he was interesting was mostly gone. He was still a great character, but he didn’t do anything anymore to motivate you to get through the boring plot. Furthermore, he joins the team relatively late in the game, so it would be fine if there would be anything else interesting about the plot of this game at this time.

The rules, of what once were palaces and now are jails, usually have some sort of Trauma in their lives, that is the cause of them becoming cruel, coldhearted assholes which often makes our group shorty forget about what terrible things those people did, as if a traumatic past is an excuse for everything.

Early on we have someone who had been bullied through her school years and that really hit home for me. So that person actually became a pop-star and started bullying other people for fun, just because she could. People who got bullied in their schoolyears and think it will EVER be okay to bully other, are just as much assholes as the people who bullied them in my eyes and so any kind of mercy or forgiveness was totally out of place for me here. On the other hand, later we have a mayor whos employees got bribed to hire a cheap company for a festival and that cheap company made a mistake and a little girl died because of this. She was blackmailed to keep quite about it and as she was so frustrated about her helplessness, she became the so called “monarch” of her jail, and started to work everyone to death, to make sure they fear her that much that they would never ever betray her. Which is a totally different story. This woman was desperate because of the guild she felt, because indirectly her own action have caused that little girl to die and she couldn’t even stand up for it because of the blackmail. There was no real system behind the madness of becomes the ruler of a palace and why - we later on find out why there wasn’t a system behind it, but that doesn’t make it any more interesting.

Aside from some nice scenes between our Team (and their new members) there was basically nothing nice about the game at all.

The music was nice I guess, but it was a lot of reused music from the original P5 - which was a blessing and a curse, as the reaction of the Lets player who finally freed me from having to finish this game myself, and my own reaction, to “Rivers in the desert” was clearly a positive one. But a few more badass new songs would have been nice.

Graphics were as usual for a Persona game. Nothing bad to say about it.

The pacing was so-so. The plot was boring, but it was moving forward mostly at a normal pace, if you don’t count in how long one can be stuck in those never ending dungeons.

Speaking of which, the first dungeon was already a never ending nightmare of going back and forth, being forced out of of the dungeon, going back into the dungeon, walking back and forth again, getting kicked out of the dungeon once more and so on and so forth. When you have FINALLY reached the palace, you can not enter it, until you leave it, to face the monarchs trauma, fight a big shadow there and only then you can FINALLY fight that damn boss. And if the first dungeon already started like this, you can imagine how cruel the dungeons were, going deeper into the game, where they add puzzles and mazes and shit like that to it. I am not a big fan of dungeons so I usually refrain from saying too much about them, but I can tell you that it is NOT very inviting if the freaking first dungeon is already that overly long.

Once again, the plot got finally better and more interesting when you reach the true final, but at this point, its far too late to redeem this game.

I give it gracious 6 out of 10 points. But that isn’t really good.

#Monas Spiele reviews #Mona spielte Persona 5 Strikers #Mona hat am Ende nur noch ein Lets Playgeguckt #Kein Geld der Welt wäre es wert gewesen das Spiel selbst zu beenden.

[sirfrogsworth]

Note-able Expertise

Expertise is extremely fascinating to me.

Like, I'm never going to be a woodworker or a painter or a car detailer, but watching experts do their thing and explain it so I can understand is one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube.

But there is one expert that I have encountered in my life that stands out in my mind more than any other. He was probably the most experty expert I have ever personally interacted with. An operatic vocal coach that I took a single lesson from in high school.

Operatic or classically trained vocal coaches are no joke. They're like whoever teaches the Navy SEALs but for singing. Some think learning to sing that way will ruin their style of singing or make them end up sounding like Pavarotti. But that isn't true at all. Learning to sing opera will give you tons of new skills that you can then use to sing however you'd like.

I mean, most opera singers can sing to the back of huge theaters without amplification. And the really good ones can do it dynamically—meaning they can give you the impression they are singing softer or louder while still maintaining enough power to be heard in the back row.

That is a useful skill for any singer to have.

For me, it gave new appreciation for singing and for that entire genre of music. I wasn't interested in becoming an opera singer or anything. I just enjoyed the challenge. Also, before I took lessons I thought opera was kind of boring and lame. I was in high school and had a music palate to match. At the time Scott Stapp was my favorite singer (yikes). But once I discovered how hard it was to sing classically, I heard the music very differently after that. And once I learned that Freddie Mercury got super into opera later in his career, it seemed a lot cooler.

In the end, I was a decent regular singer and a bad opera singer.

Which was a huge improvement from where I started.

My voice teacher once told me that I wasn't a great singer, but that he had never seen anyone improve as much as I did in his career. That is actually one of my most favorite compliments in my life. He didn't think I had a chance at sounding anything close to musical when I first started training. He had even considered suggesting I learn a different instrument and breaking the news that I probably couldn't sing. But he always gave people a chance and thankfully I surprised him.

Although my teacher was quite the expert in his own right, he wasn't actually the most experty expert I was referring to.

Apparently, the really reeeeeally really really good and most sought-after vocal coaches travel the world like nomads—going from place to place helping professional singers improve their abilities.

My high school vocal coach (who was already an extremely gifted operatic tenor) had a vocal coach of his own.

Almost like how good therapists have their own therapists.

And his vocal coach drove around the country in a spectacularly decked-out RV going from city to city to give voice lessons. He worked with everyone from college students hoping to go pro all the way to world-renowned opera singers.

(He refused to confirm or deny that he worked with Pavarotti. He would only say that he had given lessons on a giant yacht off the coast of Italy.)

You might be wondering how a high school voice teacher ended up getting lessons from this teacher of the stars. Well, he liked to train other voice teachers so that his knowledge and techniques wouldn't be lost after he retired. Which I thought was super cool.

And every once in a while he would offer lessons to my teacher's students if he had extra time in town while he was visiting. So my teacher pulled me aside in class one day and asked if I wanted a lesson from his teacher. He said it would be $60 for 30 minutes.

That was the "student discount." In 1998. So adjusting for inflation, about $100. Which kinda makes me wonder what the full price was.

In any case, it was a lot of money for a high school student at that time. So I was like, "Is it worth it? How much could I possibly learn in 30 minutes?"

My teacher was like, "You have no idea."

I don't even know how to describe that lesson.

It was actually more like 2 lessons. First I got to sit in and observe my teacher's lesson with him. That may have been my favorite part of the entire experience.

They had just started warming up and I could hear the sound as I came up the stairs to the practice room. The walls shook as I heard my teacher and his teacher trading full belt high C notes. I walked into a small room with an upright piano and a long vertical mirror on the wall. There was my teacher, who was in his 30s, and this older gentleman in his 70s, with dark gray curly hair and an unassuming flannel shirt. He just looked like someone's grandpa, really. Not exactly what I was expecting, knowing his credentials. He was sitting on a small stool behind the piano and he waved and pointed at a chair where I was to sit. I just said hello and then they began their lesson.

It was... mind boggling.

And loud.

So, so loud.

I had no idea humans were capable of something that intense and beautiful and powerful. I was just a giant goosebump for that entire half hour. Totally worth the slight hearing damage.

I really wish I had recorded it.

Though I do have a recording of my voice teacher singing a sea chanty. It was a practice tape he made for me before a competition. This is him playing and singing at the same time—while sightreading. This is his first take with no warm up.

So if that was him halfassing it, perhaps that gives you an idea of him and his teacher fullassing it during their lesson.

I didn't really understand a lot of what I observed. When they weren't singing, they sounded like they were speaking in code. It reminded me of those videos where an expert explains a topic to a kid, then a teen, then a college student, then a grad student, and then a colleague in the same field. It was like I skipped to the end of the video and just watched two experts discuss something at such an advanced level you just kind of stare in awe and confusion—not really understanding but still fascinated nonetheless.

A lot of times they didn't speak at all. They just gestured and nodded and adjusted how they sang—making minute change after change until the desired outcome was reached. Some of it sounded very silly, actually. He'd make my teacher create these strange high pitched yelps and slowly sing lower and lower until he was in his regular range. And somehow those yelps turned into beautiful notes. And I got to watch as my already amazing teacher got slightly more amazing at singing. I could really tell the difference by the end of the lesson.

After my teacher got his learn on... it was my turn.

Which was a little intimidating after basically getting a free opera concert performed in front of me.

I had no idea what to expect.

First, he ran me through some scales—playing them on the piano as I sang along. Basically taking my voice out for a test drive. And once I shook off my nerves and gave him the full beans, he stopped me and just kinda stared for a second.

He was deep in thought analyzing what he just heard. And I was trying not to have a small panic attack as I waited for his assessment.

And after hearing me sing for a couple of minutes, this dude was able to zero in on all the things I was having trouble with.

He was like, "You aren't engaging your diaphragm enough, your vibrato is inconsistent, and I'm not sure you are baritone either. You might be a tenor, we'll have to push you a little higher...and... and... and..." He just kept listing flaw after flaw and I kept nodding my head exuberantly because he was sooooo right about everything.

You might think being given a list of flaws would be a bit deflating, but I was actually very excited. All of the things I struggled with were finally put clearly into words and it was so refreshing. It was like getting a firm diagnosis from a doctor of exactly what is wrong with you. No uncertain "it might be this" or "it could be that." Just clear and concise constructive criticism delivered without judgment or malice.

It was like the anti-Whiplash style of teaching.

And over the next 30 minutes he surgically removed several of my worst habits. Like, they never plagued me again after that. It is usually incredibly hard to deprogram muscle memory like that. But he knew exactly what voice exercises would expose the problems and was masterful at relating what I needed to do to resolve those issues.

I think explaining what to change is the most difficult thing when teaching people how to sing. The instrument is biological and everyone has slightly different anatomy. Telling someone how to do something differently *inside* their body is super tricky. But he was so adept at explaining how to make these small changes to move me forward with my singing. Things my normal voice teacher struggled to expose and clarify—which is why he was taking these lessons himself.

In any case, I was literally able to sing an octave higher at the end of that lesson.

It was nuts.

After that, I forgot some of what he taught me and I could never sing that high again without sounding like a sickly parrot, but it still felt like I skipped an entire level in a video game. He was like a cheat code for singing. And because my regular teacher sat in on the lesson he was able to work with me further on the issues discovered. I took my singing pretty far. I got the second highest score possible at the state singing competition.

Sadly, I didn't sing much after I graduated. And unfortunately, if you aren't a naturally gifted singer, it can be very much like a muscle and atrophy without regular workouts. If I don't constantly train my voice I go right back to sounding mediocre to terrible. I could probably get good again, but I've just never had the energy or passion to get back into it.

Though I always wondered how far I could have gotten if I was able to train with that guy on a regular basis. Maybe I could have unlocked my tenor mode and hit that high C.

But he really liked traveling the country and working with new people all the time, so regular lessons weren't really in the cards.

Apparently he was quite wealthy and several famous opera singers had him "on call." They would fly him out to Rome or Spain or wherever on a moment's notice whenever they ever had a serious singing issue they needed to work out. Like if they got hired to sing a really difficult piece of music and couldn't nail it, or if they had some kind of vocal cord surgery and needed to rehab their voice.

What an interesting life that must have been.

I mean, I guess he could still be alive. But he'd probably be in his 90s or higher by now.

I wish I could remember his name.

It was Doctor something.

Doctor Voicey McSingface?

[thevindicativevordan]

Why isn't Nightwing a bigger deal? He has all of Batman's skills and Superman's faith in humanity and is arguably the most beloved hero in the DCU, but most people seem to know him either as the leader of the N̶o̶t̶ ̶J̶L̶ Teen Ttians or just Robin.

Thank you for asking me about Nightwing, I've been wanting to write a piece about him for a while now. The short version is that everyone who claims Dick becoming Nightwing was him "moving out of Batman's shadow and becoming his own man" is completely wrong.

Dick Grayson is a fantastic character, someone who saved Bruce Wayne in-universe both by forcing Batman to grow up a bit, and the countless times he saved Batman's life as his partner whether as Robin or Nightwing. Dick saved Batman in the real world as well, hard to believe but Batman was actually in danger of being cancelled due to poor sales early on. Enter Robin, a young daredevil audience stand in the creators hoped would get kids interested in reading Batman. And it worked! Sales on Batman doubled once Robin showed up which is crazy to think about, but Dick Grayson has always been a popular character. Cartoons like Teen Titans, Batman: The Animated Series, and The Batman only helped grow his audience.

Character-wise, Dick Grayson really does fill a number of crucial roles in the DCU. For Batman, Dick is proof that Batman is a positive force. Meeting Batman helped change Dick for the better, helped him heal after his parents died. With Dick, Batman can take comfort in knowing that yes, he has made a difference in the world for at least one orphan boy, which is all he wanted when he lost his parents himself. To the wider DCU, Dick is a friendly face who convinces others that Batman is competent and not a complete asshole. He took this kid in, trained him to be one of the best heroes the DCU has seen, and did it all out of the kindness of his heart. That someone like Dick can confront the evils of Gotham and not break means there's still hope for that city. As Robin, Dick has led the Titans and is an icon in his own right as The Sidekick, the original, the one every other Robin is built around copying or contrasting. The one all other superhero sidekicks are drawing on as a basis. As Robin Dick Grayson is very much on Batman's level.

Just not as Nightwing. As Nightwing, Dick has been a second rate Daredevil which means he's a third rate Batman (fully prepared to get hate for this but I've read and enjoyed the Miller and Bendis DD runs so I feel entitled to my opinion). A typical Nightwing run tends to go like this: Moving to Bludhaven (which is Gotham... but WORSE!), Dick Grayson usually enrolls in a pointless job we don't care about in order to provide some meaningless soap opera drama that doesn't go anywhere. Patrolling the city as Nightwing, he fights a variety of bad guys who are usually rather lame and unthreatening, with his big bad being a Kingpin knockoff called Blockbuster. Villains are fought, long running plotlines are set up, then everything is abandoned because it's Batfamily event time, and Dick has to run back to Gotham in order to play sidekick again. Usually his involvement is completely superfluous and it would've been better if the writer had gotten to opt out. By the time we finally get back to Nightwing's solo plotlines, the audience has usually ceased to care and the run gets cut short.

That's how Nightwing has been since the New 52 at least. Anyone who thinks that's "becoming their own man" is out of their mind. Dick is so thoroughly in Batman's shadow that he got shot in the head and spent a longer time as "Ric" which everyone fucking hated and sold like shit, than he did as Agent Grayson which was extremely well-received. Reiterating: Ric went on longer than Grayson because of a fucking Batman plotpoint Tom King wanted where Bruce was sad and cut off from the Batfamily because of Dick getting shot. Not just calling out King either, how many times was Kyle Higgins Nightwing run derailed because of Scott Snyder's crossovers? Or how about that entire run getting dumped to the side because Johns wanted to out Dick during Forever Evil, a Justice League/Lex Luthor story? DC has repeatedly made their contempt for Nightwing clear, he's Batman's sidekick still in their eyes, and he serves whatever story role the Batman writer wants.

Hell his best stories tend to have been the ones where he's not Nightwing. He was Robin in a good chunk of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans run. Morrison really showcased his depth as a character when they wrote him as Batman, their time with Dick under the cowl was actually one of the first Batman runs I ever read, and no Nightwing run has ever matched it in terms of quality in my humble opinion. Scott Snyder's work with DickBats also was a high point for the character, showing Dick as competent and examining his relationship with Gotham and the Gordons. King and Seeley gave him one of the best comic runs with Grayson, a series where he wasn't even a "superhero" technically! When it comes to actual pre-New 52 Nightwing runs that are highly recommended where he *is* Nightwing, there's Chuck Dixon and uhhhhhhh... Tomasi's brief run before Dick became Batman? It's not exactly an overwhelming list.

Look there has been good work done with Nightwing, I'm not claiming there hasn't been. Tim Seeley wrote a great run with Nightwing Rebirth. Seeley fleshed out Dick's Rogues Gallery with cool new ones like Raptor, he brought back old foes like Dr. Hurt (why oh why couldn't you have brought back Flamingo too?), he gave Dick's world some character it solely needed. Bludhaven under Seeley is pretty much the only time I've really felt like it lived up to being Dick's city.

The problem with fictional cities is you have to put in the work to give them the character of real cities. You have to make the cities feel like characters in their own right. Gotham is the best example of this, it's a character all it's own, one that tells you a lot about Batman and his cast. In contrast Bludhaven is usually one of the worst. Any place that wants to claim to be worse than the city that is built over the gate to hell and gets wrecked every other month by the Arkham freaks has to really put in the work to compete. Simply put, Bludhaven typically fails utterly. There's nothing about it that makes you really buy it's worse than Gotham, I mean does anyone really think Nightwing's Rogues wouldn't get their lunches eaten by Batman's? No, no one genuinely buys that. When Bludhaven claims to be worse, it just comes across as tryhard, an attribute that does end up telling you about Nightwing in unintentional ways.

So Seeley didn't do that. Instead he created a city built for a hero like Dick Grayson. Someone who is bright and flashy, but does have an element of darkness to him. Someone who loves the spotlight, but often uses it to obscure. Seeley turned Bludhaven into Las Vegas, and that was the fucking best concept for Bludhaven I have ever seen, it makes so much sense. Las Vegas is the "Entertainment Capital of the World" and isn't that the perfect city for a hero who got their start working in the circus? Isn't the aesthetics of the gleaming casinos, the glamorous sex appeal of the performers, and the spectacle of the shows, all being used to cover up the seediness of mob bosses meeting backstage perfect for Nightwing? It's so utterly unlike New York City, yet Las Vegas is still dangerous, it's got a crime culture all it's own. Seeley used it to great effect, as did Humphries during his brief run, and I will always be pissed that DC didn't continue to use it. That should have stuck around and been the definitive look for Bludhaven.

How Seeley's take on Bludhaven was treated feels like a small scale version of how Nightwing in general gets treated. Whenever creators pitched ideas for him, if editorial thought there was potential to break big, they asked for those ideas to be repurposed for Batman instead. Anything big or good gets repurposed for Batman or tossed to the side so Nightwing can go back to his default: having irrelevant adventures in a city that is supposedly worse than Gotham but can't live up to it. Just like how Nightwing is supposedly better than Batman but never gets to show it. Goddamn it's so frustrating seeing his potential get wasted like that.

The Nightwing book should be one of DC's most ambitious books in terms of storytelling. You can go from traditional superhero stories, to romantic soap opera, to spy stories, to crime noir, to horror, to cosmic adventures, and ALL of them would fit because Nightwing is someone who has a foot in both Gotham and Metropolis. He's got friends everywhere on every team, and has been a hero longer than most Leaguers have at this point. No reason DC should still be afraid to let him loose and insisting on hewing close to what Dixon established almost over 30 years ago is only holding him back. At the very least get him some better Rogues, why the hell didn't he get to keep Professor Pyg? That's Dick's villain not Bruce's! Bullshit that they didn't let Dick keep him. Hopefully Flamingo comes back, with a slight revamp I think he'd make a great reoccurring Nightwing Rogue.

Luckily it does look somewhat like Nightwing fans have reason to be optimistic. While Taylor isn't to my taste, DC clearly views him as a "big" writer, and that they put him on Nightwing says a lot. Taylor has been selling well so far, so hopefully he gets to tell his story, hilarious that even he lampshaded having to write Dick running over to Gotham for another tie-in after Taylor's big opening arc was all about Dick committing himself and his money to Bludhaven. Scott Snyder is apparently working on a Black Label Nightwing book which will explore how he's a different detective than Bruce. The Gotham Knights video game has him as one of the main stars, and while Titans is... controversial, it's one of the most popular streaming shows and Dick is the main character. There's a lot of content coming that features him in the starring role, and that will only help his star rise further.

For the first time in, well, ever it feels like DC may be serious about elevating him. Time will tell if it pays off, but I for one choose to be optimistic that the 2020s will be a turning point for Dick Grayson where Nightwing becomes hugely popular in his own right. Not just as Batman's sidekick.

#nightwing #dick grayson #batman #gotham knights #titans #dc comics

[atlabeth]

transferred part 20 - atla smau

part 19 | masterlist | epilogue

summary: trying to run from your past is hard, but falling for your brother’s roommate is even harder. little do you know that he’s falling for you as well.

a/n: me when i have to write more than 5 words in a series thats supposed to be a smau

anywho! basically the last chapter?? which is crazy?? filled with heartfelt emotions and the moment that you've all been waiting for, it's a wild ride. so strap in and enjoy. the epilogue will be posted later today so i can finally wrap this series up!! and dont worry theres a super long sappy authors note on the epilogue. LETS GET INTO IT

wc: 2.3k

warning(s): cursing, mentions of alcohol, hurt/comfort, one suggestive comment, mentions of toxic relationships, reader talking about her self sabotaging behavior and burnout, Bad Coping Methods (dont disappear kids)

-

“You haven’t seen her?” Zuko sighed as the same words he had heard on repeat for the past hour played through his ears again. “It’s alright, thank you. Have a good night.”

He shook his head at his friends, their defeated expressions mirroring his own as he leaned against the kitchen island. He ran an exhausted hand through his hair, and he couldn’t help but think of the countless times you had done it for him.

“Your sister doesn’t play when it comes to theatrics,” Aang lamented as he plopped on the couch next to Sokka.

“Tell me about it,” he muttered. “I mean, she doesn’t pull stuff like this. Sometimes she went over the top when she was younger, staying out a little too late or doing something stupid, but she never just… she never just tried to disappear like this. I.. I guess she was too worried about Katara and me to do anything like that, but still.” He knocked back the rest of the seltzer and tossed the can on the table — alcohol was tempting, but none of them wanted to be any less than completely aware tonight.

“We all knew she was hurting,” Sokka continued. “Not even she could be fine after everything that happened with Hahn, especially the day after, but I— I guess I thought that she would open up before just dropping off the radar completely!

“No news from the girls,” Aang announced, prompting a collective sigh from the other two boys. “I gotta give it to her, she’s been very thorough with this.”

“Of course she has. It’s classic Y/N — she can disappear without a trace, sure, but she can’t put enough effort into picking up some supplies for my project on her way home.” It was a lame attempt to lighten the mood, and though he got a weak chuckle out of Aang, it was radio silence on Zuko’s part.

“Hey, buddy.” It didn’t snap him out of his reverie, and Sokka seriously contemplated throwing his empty soda can at him. “You okay?”

“She didn’t even say anything to me,” he finally murmured, eyes trained on his phone screen. “She said she would tell me if she was having a hard time, but she didn’t say anything to me. Just suffered in silence until it got so bad she just up and left. She just… left. Without a single word to anyone. To me.”

Aang’s eyes softened and he let out a loose exhale. “Zuko, she didn’t mean to hurt you — I know that much. She’s just been under a lot of stress lately, and… I guess it didn’t manifest in the best way.”

“Stress...” he muttered, trying to piece it together. There was something nagging at the back of his skull, something on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t get it. “And you guys are sure she hasn’t put anything anywhere? No texts that you missed, nothing?”

“Believe me,” Sokka said. “I’ve refreshed her pages a thousand times by now. It’s radio silence on her side. God, I wish I was more invasive and put like, a tracking device on her car or something! For all we know, she could be back to Kyoshi.”

Kyoshi. Stress. This whole thing, your disappearing act.

And suddenly, it clicked.

Zuko stood up abruptly, nearly knocking over the stool in the process and warranting puzzled looks from both of his friends as he grabbed his keys off the table and practically ran to the door.

“Zuko, where are you going?” Aang questioned.

He tugged the door open and shot a glance back at them, tension having noticeably dissolved from his shoulders.

“I know where she is.”

-

Zuko tapped idly against the steering wheel, once again glancing down at his phone screen but to no avail. His relationship with you had become infinitely more complicated since the kiss through fault of both of them — he supposed that was what happened when two people who didn’t know how to talk about their emotions caught feelings for each other. Zuko was very skilled at sticking his foot in his mouth whenever he tried to talk about anything like this, and

But you had accepted his offer to talk on the way home, so that meant something.

He had originally suggested just talking on the way home like he had proposed earlier, but you had a different idea. ‘Trust me,’ you had told him. ‘It has a good track record with making people feel better.’

Your proposition was a wildflower field on the outskirts of the city, just out of the way that someone would go en route to the university. Far enough from the city to emanate an aura of peace, but close enough to be a feasible trip.

“I found this place when I was missing home,” you smiled as he parked the car. “I love it here, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes I just feel homesick for Kyoshi. You passed a field like this on the way into town, and when I stumbled here, it just kinda felt like fate. So now whenever I’m stressed, or overwhelmed, or just need a break, I come out here. And I think this is the perfect place to talk about… well, whatever’s going on with us.”

“Sounds good.” He returned the sentiment then cleared his throat. “As long as we don’t go in there. I can admire it from afar, but just looking at that field is making my skin itch.”

You laughed and nodded amiably. “Deal.”

-

One hand was splayed against your chest, the other trailing lazy circles with the pads of your fingers against the metal as you gazed up at the sky. You had the best and only seat of the view, the flora drifting softly in the night breeze as the stars twinkled from above.

You didn’t know what you were thinking, being here. The past couple of weeks had just been… crushing you. It was like your heart was stuck in a vice and no matter what you did, it just got tighter and tighter.

You had been treating everyone you knew horribly, but you couldn’t stop. It felt like a game — how terribly could you act towards them until they snapped too? Until your friends, your siblings, Zuko, recognized that they had made a mistake by trying to help you?

And you didn’t know what it was about today, but… something inside of you just broke after that morning with your roommates. So you did what you were best at, and you ran. Skipped class, skipped work, just drove around aimlessly until even that was starting to feel like too much of a trap.

And then you ended up here.

It would’ve been laughable if you weren’t on the verge of breaking down.

You had been here, just laying on the hood of your car parked a few feet away from the field on an off road path, for the better part of an hour. If you were going to drown underneath the weight of your thoughts, it was better to do it alone.

But as you heard the crunching of gravel underneath car tires, your eyes instinctively shot towards the noise — so much for being alone — and you sat up. Your brows furrowed in recognition, you knew that car, and it felt like your heart was going to beat out of your chest when Zuko stepped out.

“You remembered,” you breathed after a moment of silence. “You’re here.”

“Always.” He said it so obviously, so easily — why wouldn’t he remember? Why wouldn’t he be here?

You scooted over to make space on the hood and patted the space next to you softly, pulling your knees up to your chest in a moment of shame as he walked around to the front and pushed himself up next to you. What were you going to say to him? What could you say?

“I’m sorry,” you said out of the blue, your words pouring out of you like an emotional waterfall. “I’m sorry for just— for just leaving, I know it was stupid and I know they’re all probably worried out of their minds, but I couldn’t do it, Zuko. I-it was like I was trapped, and I know it was irrational, but I had to get out of there—”

“You didn’t have to,” he said quietly, effectively stopping your rant. “If you really had to get out, you could’ve at least said something to one of us. I don’t know what things were like back at Kyoshi, but here— here, you can’t throw yourself back onto the knife every time something goes wrong, because— you just can’t do that anymore.”

“I’m not mad, believe me, I’m relieved that you’re okay. I just..” he sighed and glanced up at the night sky, the light of the moon illuminating his features as he faced you once more. “I know you’ve felt alone before, but you’re not. You have Katara, and Sokka, Suki, Toph— you have me, Y/N! And I’m not going anywhere, trust me, but— but you can’t keep doing this to yourself, because they care about you, and I care about you.”

You swallowed the lump in your throat and chose to concentrate on the hood of the car, tapping your fingers against the metal as a way to use up your nervous energy. “You’re… you’re right,” you said after a long moment of silence, the beginnings of a mirthless smile on your lips.

“After that night at the party, I just— I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened. There was a part of me that just wanted to lock myself in my room and never come out, but I— I told myself I was better than that, and I refused to let myself fall back onto any of it. So I worked. I took extra shifts, I helped out my professors, I did anything and everything I could to try and keep my mind off of Hahn. But I wasn’t helping anything, I was just… I was destroying myself. It was just like you said. I was a candle burning at both ends but still convinced that I was doing the right thing, and eventually.. I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I ran.”

“And— there’s always been this… this voice in my head that pops up after things in my life are going good, and it tells me that something is going to go wrong. A-and it tells me that if I’m the one that ruins it, then I don’t have to ask myself what I did wrong, if I could’ve stopped it from happening— if it’s inevitable, then I should be the one to ruin it. It’s how most of my relationships ended, and— well, the only thing it’s succeeded in is making me miserable.”

You don’t even notice your hands are shaking until you feel Zuko placing his own over yours — a simple gesture asking an unsaid question, one you answer by intertwining his fingers with your own.

“That same voice popped up again once I started getting close to you,” you admitted quietly. “And this whole time, I’ve been so terrified of falling that I never considered you would catch me. But I’m tired, Zuko. I’m tired of constantly looking over the edge.”

As you turned your head to meet his eyes again, your breath caught in your throat at his close proximity. You were sure that no matter how much time you spent with him, your heart would never stop beating out of your chest for Zuko.

“I will always be there to catch you,” he affirmed softly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

And just like before, he brought his hand to the side of your face and tenderly brushed a loose strand of hair behind your ear. His hand, slightly calloused but emanating comfort all the same, lingered on your cheek for a moment before he posed the question.

“Can I kiss you?”

You nodded, and his lips captured your own immediately. You reciprocated with an almost desperate fervor and— and it just felt so right. You had grown so accustomed to the constant warmth he carried with him that it had become a part of you, he had become a part of you, and now a life without Zuko was just unimaginable.

He was right — he already was there to catch you, each and every time. Giving you endless rides when your car broke down, sitting through the world’s most boring anthro projects, letting you bare your soul to him, telling you it was all going to be okay when nothing felt okay, and managing to find you when you had gone out of your way to not be found. And all of it— it all made you realize.

You didn’t want to keep running. And you didn’t have to. Not anymore.

Zuko pulled away and pressed his forehead to yours, breathing slightly labored as the two of you sat in comfortable silence. That is, until you broke it.

“So,” you started, a nervous chuckle following. “Are we… are we a thing now?”

You could tell that caught him by surprise by the laugh that escaped him, a sound of unfiltered joy. “I’d say that we are.”

You could feel the heat rushing to your cheeks once more as he slid off of the hood of the car and held out his hand, an offering you took happily. “We should get home,” he said, somewhat reluctantly. “It’s past midnight, and—” Zuko glanced at his phone and grimaced. “They’re all still worried out of their minds.”

“Right,” you muttered. “I’m gonna get the lecture of my life from Sokka and Katara.”

“Probably,” he chuckled. “But they’re just doing their job as concerned siblings.” He pressed a chaste kiss to your forehead and glanced back at his own car. “I’ll see you back at the apartment?”

You nodded, an uncontrollable smile pulling at your lips. “Thank you, Zuko. For this, and— for everything.”

He returned the sentiment, golden eyes filled with adoration.

“Always.”

-

if your name is crossed out it means i can’t tag you!

perm taglist: @dv0412 @siriuslyslyslytherin

transferred: @ourbestfriend-mishacollins @lil-lex1 @xxshad0wxb1rdxx @zuko-is-the-sun @akiris @irohs-teapot @thatarthistorynerd @charlenasaxen @minninugget @marvel-ousnesss @count-thotticus @what-ye-egg @furblrwurblr @thesstuff @mariachiii @ietss @dizzy-miss-lizzieeeeee @xbarrjallenx @tommy-braccoli @dreamsluvrr @floofybread @thelovelylolly @lin-biefong-is-my-life @tiffanyy-21 @sistheselenophile @theincredibledeadlyviper @bakugouswh0r3 @loganrwebb @mikaslilworld @matsunshine @iris-suoh @aizameow @h3llbun @kozuelle

atla: @marianne1806

#zuko x reader #zuko x you #atla smau #avatar fic #atla #avatar the last airbender #a:tla #avatar the last airbender fic #atla zuko #zuko #zuko fic #reader insert #sadie writes #i stared at the screen for SO LONG #just TRYNIG TO WRITE THE KISS SCENE #I DONT KNOW HOW PEOPLE DO IT IT MAKES ME FEEL SO UNCOMFORTABLE #2 kiss scenes in the whole 20 chapters and i had to muddle through both of them #i dont know how people write smut i would literally die #anyways. no one wants to read my rants in the tags. no one is reading this #happy end of the series

[the-lone-witch-and-secret-room]

On Boschlow, Skarlow and imaginary moral superiority

Alright, before anyone wants to yell at me for putting this in the ship tags, this is less an “anti ship”-post and more of an “I want to have this conversation with shippers because I think it’s important to talk about this”-post.

So, Boschlow has always been a fairly popular ship in the fandom, which doesn’t really surprise me, because the whole bully/victim dynamic is just incredibly popular, no matter which fandom you enter.

As a person that got bullied throughout the majority of my high school years, I have thoughts about this dynamic being so popular in general, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss today.

Recently, there has been an increasing number of Skarlow shippers making art and writing fics.

What makes this so different from Boschlow?

Essentially... nothing, and that’s exactly why I felt the need to make a post about this.

I’ve seen a bunch of Skarlow shippers say they do not ship Boschlow because Boscha is an awful person, putting themselves above the Boschlow shippers and making Skarlow a “superior” dynamic, based on... what, exactly?

From my perspective, there’s exactly two things Skara has on Boscha when it comes to shipping her with Willow. One being, she hasn’t thrown trash on her—which is an incredibly low bar to set.

The other thing? Skara acknowledged Willow’s Grudgby skills at the end of WILW.

And that’s a scene that gets misinterpreted a lot. See, people take Skara being nice to Willow here as a sign that she’s a way better person than Boscha, that she’s changed, and so on and so forth.

But this is untrue.

What exactly is it that changes between the beginning of WILW and the ending of the episode, between Willow and Skara specifically? It’s that Skara has seen Willow is good at Grudgby. Grudgby is something of value to Skara, thus, Willow’s skills impressing her makes Willow someone worthy of being treated well.

The ending of the Grudgby episode isn’t everyone except Boscha suddenly magically being better people. They’re all still very much bullies. They’re just now seeing Willow as someone who is better than other people because of her skills—and should therefore be treated better.

Boscha isn’t as willing to share her imaginary pedestal with Willow. But that’s the only difference. All the Grudgby girls are currently still on that pedestal. They’re just seeing Willow as someone worth sharing it with now. If they saw someone being “weak” the way they thought Willow to be previously to the match, they’d bully that person the same way they did Willow.

This isn’t any of them being better. This is all of them behaving the same way they always have. Willow is just moving up in their social hierarchy.

It shouldn’t take being good at some magical sport, or being a talented witch, or whatever the heck, to decide not to bully someone. NOBODY deserves to be bullied. Even the weakest, least sporty witch of the Boiling Isles should be treated with the same amount of respect as any of their classmates. Your value as a person shouldn’t be defined by how good you are at something. You have value no matter what you are and aren’t good at. And that’s something Skara and the others still fail to acknowledge.

Also I think it’s worth noting that even when they were treating Willow better at the end of the episode, they didn’t go out of their way to apologize for how they’d treated her before. They acknowledged her skills and don’t at all comment on how they treated her previously to the match.

If it takes some huge effort from Willow and her friends for the Grudgby girls to treat her with even an ounce of respect, that’s not character development. Character development would be them changing their general behavior. Acknowledging the way they’ve treated others was shitty, apologizing for that and actually working on being better. Is there a possibility this might happen? Sure. But you guys basically pretend WILW is their redemption arc already fully done. You’re giving Skara and the others credit for something that currently haven’t even happened.

And the option of them ditching Boscha (which also currently hasn’t happened) wouldn’t be a redemption arc either, even if it could be part of one.

Cutting toxic people out of your life can help, but Amity’s redemption arc was that, plus her explaining herself to Willow and giving Willow time, and actually acting on her word of not letting her friends pick on her again. Amity making it up to Willow wasn’t that she cut out Boscha and Skara. It was that she not only promised to be better but acted accordingly, standing at Willow’s side when she needed her.

(And Skara not constantly being a dipshit when she’s in the background is not a valid argument for why she’s a better person than Boscha. Boscha is also a harmless character when the episode isn’t focused on her, e.g. in Covention & Sense and Insensitivity. That Skara isn’t actively bullying her friends—which, uh, most people like their friends? This shouldn’t be that surprising?—is not a thing that should earn her any points in being “nicer” than Boscha.)

Do I think it might be a bit easier to get through to Skara than Boscha when it comes to letting go of current behaviors? Possibly.

From the way their characters are written and with how Boscha refuses to acknowledge Willow as equal even after the Grudgby match, it’s fairly obvious that it would need some pretty major event to get through to her. There’s an extra step here with Boscha (needing to learn to acknowledge others as having equal value to herself) that Skara doesn’t need to take.

BUT that one step in what should be a fairly long journey for either of them is far from enough to justify one ship being better than the other.

From the way I’ve seen it written (and unfortunately also experienced it in the comment section of my own fic), a bunch of skarlow shippers like to excuse Skara’s behavior by entirely pinning it on Boscha, pretending she’s actually a great person and that it’s only her friendship with Boscha that makes her toxic—and also that Boscha is the only one that should be held accountable for everyone’s behavior.

I am not exaggerating, I got a comment that essentially said “this shows wonderfully that Amelia and Skara are actually good people that unfortunately met a horrible person that had too much control over them.”

This strips Skara and Amelia of any accountability for their actions. And the idea of Boscha being an evil mastermind that forced all her friends into doing things they never wanted is... quite frankly, stupid, and also untrue. Skara actively encourages Boscha making fun of Willow at the beginning of Understanding Willow:

In the same episode it’s also stated that Amity “let her new friends bully [Willow] for years”, which definitely includes Skara and isn’t just about Boscha.

Skara looks really pleased when Boscha takes Willow’s hair clip at the beginning of WILW, just appears bored and not at all sympathetic when she throws gum at Willow, and grins gleefully when Boscha suggests using the others as target practice later in the episode:

Also, in Once Upon A Swap, Boscha’s entire squad is messing with people all over Bonesborough. Skara is throwing monster balloons at the city when Boscha isn’t even present:

Not only that, but a very large portion of the episode has Skara and the others literally ditch Boscha in favor of an even meaner person (King in Luz’s body).

King states, and I quote, “Hey, impressionable youths! Under my command, you could learn how to do some real damage.” after unleashing a monster on the city. And the entire group cheers him on and decides to follow him.

If Skara was actually so much better than Boscha, why the heck would she run after someone that is worse than her when given the opportunity?

And here comes the thing that a lot of the Skarlow shippers refuse to acknowledge because they for some reason feel the need to have moral superiority over Boschlow shippers: Skara isn’t a nice girl. Skara is a bully. And Skara should be held accountable for her actions in the same way as Boscha. Saying everything she did was just Boscha forcing her is entirely untrue to canon and just a lame excuse to make your ship look better.

Boscha and Skara have both bullied Willow for several years. If you want to ship either of them with her, even if you just want one of them to be friends with her, that needs to be acknowledged and definitely not excused. Even if you treat Skara’s bullying of Willow as something she did only due to Boscha (which, again, is canonically complete nonsense), she’s still hurt Willow to pretty much the same extent as Boscha has.

That a person isn’t as into the bullying as someone else doesn’t make it hurt any less for the victim of the bullying.

No matter if you ship Skarlow or Boschlow, commit to the reality that Skara and Boscha are both Willow’s bullies. Quit pretending Skara is so much better than Boscha, or that she isn’t responsible for her actions.

She is just as responsible for bullying Willow for years as Boscha is.

I’m so sick of hearing how Skara’s bullying is far more redeemable than Boscha’s. It’s not. Stop declaring bullying that doesn’t get physical harmless. As someone who was “only” ever verbally bullied, let me tell you that after four years of not seeing that person I’m still scarred by it. Stop getting your head so stuck in high school movies. Just because not every kind of bullying involves someone getting shoved into a locker doesn’t mean it’s not harmful.

Even worse: the take that people are shipping Skarlow “because they realized shipping Willow with Boscha is inherently toxic”. Tell me again why this “revolutionary” movement deciding that Willow deserves better then turns around and ships her with another one of her bullies?

This isn’t about treating Willow better. You’re just making Boscha seem unreasonably evil for no reason, and treating Skara as her not at all responsible victim, so you can ship Willow with her and don’t have to acknowledge that Willow is a victim of both of their bullying.

This needs to stop. Skara needs to be held just as accountable as Boscha.

If a Skarlow shipper exclusively comes from a perspective of “I think their personalities would mix better”? Sure, whatever, they may or may not, but that’s a valid opinion to have. But don’t start shipping Skarlow because you think you’re being better to Willow than the Boschlow shippers.

This whole thing isn’t a movement to get Willow a better girlfriend, lol

Both of them bullied her. Both ships are bully/victim dynamics. Skarlow does not actually have any moral superiority over Boschlow. As much as you refuse to acknowledge this, these two ships share the same basic dynamic.

Stop pretending shipping Willow with one of her bullies is leagues better than shipping her with another.

#also I wanna clarify I don’t think either character is irredeemable? #they’re fourteen year old kids of course they can change and shouldn’t be treated as irredeemable monsters #but like. stop pretending Skara already had her redemption when it didn’t happen #Willow park #the owl house #toh #skarlow #Boschlow #Skara x Willow #Boscha x Willow #owl house #toh Boscha #the owl house Boscha #toh Skara #the owl house Skara #FanFiction #fanart #toh fanart #toh fanfic #toh fandom #owl house fandom #toh Willow #this has been a PSA by a bullied person thank you for reading #reblogs are very appreciated because the more people see this the better #eleena rants #rant #long post #bullying TW #look at me being controversial on main again lol

[triptuckers]

New In Town (part two) - Kaz Brekker

Request: nope Pairing: Kaz Brekker x reader Summary: you're exploring ketterdam and happen to overhear an interesting conversation Warnings:  none Word count: 2.6K A/N: ketterdam my beloved <3 <3 <3 PREVIOUS PART | NEXT PART TAG LIST (all grishaverse fics): @ayushmitadutta @mrs-brekker15@dancingwith-sunflowers @thegirlwiththeimpala @parker-natasha@story-scribbler@romanoffstarkovs @daliareads @meiitanoia @itsnotquimey @sanktaesperanza@whymyparentscheckmyphone@aleksanderwh0r3 @ilovemarvelanne1 @marlenaisnthappy @tomridlessecretvampiredemigod TAG LIST (Kaz Brekker): @mufnasa @janesofia7 @stairscortana add yourself to my tag lists here (bold means I couldn't tag you for some reason!)

You spend the first weeks wandering around the city, getting to know the streets, canals, and its secrets. Every morning you wake up early to leave the pub when the regulars aren't there yet.

You like Ketterdam in the morning. It seemed like everyone collectively decided to sleep in every day. When walking the empty streets, you feel like the city belongs to you, even though you only arrived a couple of weeks ago.

During your short stay, you couldn't help but to develop some habits and routines. Normally, you made sure no one could figure out your habits and favorite spots, but somehow you felt like nobody in Ketterdam cared enough to pay attention to an outsider like you.

Especially when said outsider definitely didn't look rich.

Your clothes had worn out, because you hadn't taken your bag with you and had spent all of your money on rent for your room. But the owner of the building had agreed to give you a job at the pub.

You made a little money on the nights you worked as a bartender. You saved part of it, and spend part of it on clothes. First was a shirt, that was slightly too big but at least it didn't have stains on it or holes in it.

Next up was a new pair of pants. You picked them out carefully, buying one with wide legs so you could easily hide your weapons. It also has a lot of pockets, which was useful as well.

You then bought a new coat. It was a long, black coat. Perfect for wrapping it tightly around you and disappearing into the shadows during the nights you were on the streets.

Your boots weren't worn out just yet, so you hadn't spend money on a new pair. You kept your old clothes at the room, in case you needed a change of clothes. Old ones were better than no clothes at all.

With every piece of clothing you bought, you felt more like you had been in Ketterdam for a long time. Part of you felt like you needed to blend in, and buying Kerch clothes was a perfect way to do so.

You wake up on a particular sunny day. At first, you're excited to spend the day walking around the city, exploring the outer edges of the city.

But your good mood soon disappears when you remember you have an extra long shift to work at the pub today.

It's not like you particularly enjoy working at the pub. Most of the guests seem to think they can do anything to you when they're drunk.

The regulars know not to mess with you, but the new customers weren't around to witness you break three fingers of a guy who put his hand on your waist.

Even though less people messed with you now, there are still some who believe they can convince you to have a drink with them. You always have to smile and politely refuse, telling them you're working.

You'd much rather work your usual jobs, but you had yet to find out how to get someone to notice you. You didn't trust the gangs - yet. Simply because you didn't know enough about them.

Sure, you had the guts to march into whatever their main building was, but if you didn't have any dirt on them, it wouldn't be very useful. Besides, you'd much rather watch them try to anxiously get you to forget the information you had gathered.

You loved to have your clients beg for their pride when they double crossed you, or hadn't paid you enough. But you didn't dare to walk into a house full of trained gang members simply because your job at the pub was dull.

It was boring, and your skills were useless, but at least you got paid. It was just enough to cover the rent of the room, but a little money is still better than none at all.

If you could just find out some more information on the different gangs, you'd be able to join one of them, using the secrets you discover as leverage.

It's not like you had always wanted to join a gang. But the streets of Ketterdam are more dangerous than the ones in Ravka or Fjerda. Being part of a gang provided protection. You knew no one would touch you if you were part of a gang. Except maybe members of rival gangs, but you could handle those.

But for now, you're stuck serving rich tourists and drunk regulars.

Though it was a boring job and nothing exciting really happened, you did learn a lot by listening to their conversations. Gang members didn't often come to the pub, but guards, merchant's servants and advisors, people of the Stadwatch and other interesting people did.

You'd already learned a great deal about them by listening to their conversations. As someone who worked at the pub, you could come closer without any of them getting suspicious.

If only some gang members came in for a drink, you'd be able to listen in on their conversations as well. But you figured they'd have their own clubs, or other pubs they like to go to.

After a quick breakfast and a morning walk in the sun, you're already back at the pub, getting ready to start your shift.

Luckily, there aren't many people in the pub this early. You spend your time washing glasses, occasionally serving people, tiding up the place.

Around noon, it starts to get busier. But that's also when more people start their shifts, so you don't have to do all of it on you own. Even though it's busier the later the hour gets, it's still boring to you.

The same people are there and they order the same drinks, making the same lame jokes, hoping to make you laugh. The best you can do is a forced smile which disappears as soon as you turn your back on them.

When your shift is almost over, you're standing behind the bar. You're cleaning the glasses people used today, trying not to zone out as you stare at the open doors on the other side of the pub.

People are laughing and talking loudly, but it all seems oddly far away from you.

Suddenly, your coworker nudges your shoulder and gestures with her head to the entrance.

'They're not regulars, are they?' she says.

You look at the people she pointed out. Two boys around your age walked in the pub. One of them is tall, curls falling down on his forehead, and there's a grin on his face.

The other one is shorter, leaning on a cane and dressed head to toe in black, as if he's going to attend a funeral. Unlike the other boy, he doesn't have a smile on his face. Instead, he walks to the nearest table and sits down, signalling to the bar.

Your coworker wants to approach them, but you're faster.

'I've got this one.' you say with a smile.

You didn't see many people like this in your pub, and your curiosity got the better of you. Besides, you hadn't seen them in the city, making you believe they are from the parts of the city you rarely go to.

And since it's not weird for a bartender to make small talk, you approach them with a smile.

'Good evening!' you say cheerfully. 'How can I help you today?'

'Hello love!' says the taller boy as he returns your smile. 'I'll have a beer.'

'Great choice.' you say.

You turn to the other one, quickly scanning him up and down and noticing he's wearing gloves. Which seems odd, since it's such a nice sunny day. But then again, there are a lot of odd people in Ketterdam.

'And what can I get you, sir?' you say.

Just as he looks at you and wants to answer you, the taller boy speaks up again.

'You don't have to call us sir, you know, we're basically the same age.' he says.

'And how would you know that?' you say.

'I'm a good gambler.' he says, leaning back in his chair.

You see how the other boy raises his eyebrows at him.

'He's not a good gambler.' he says. 'I'm good.'

'You sure you don't want anything to drink?' you say, deciding to see if you can find out more about them. 'You're in a pub after all, and we've got some good stuff.'

'I'm good.' he says again, more firmly, indicating you don't have to ask again.

'Alright then.' you say. You turn to the taller boy again. 'I'll come back shortly, with your beer.'

'Thanks.' he says with a wink.

You smile at him and walk back to the bar. You notice your coworker was a little too late to subtly look away.

'What were you talking about?' she asks.

'What they want to drink.' you simply say, reaching out to take a beer and open it.

'And?' she presses on.

'And that's it. The other one didn't want anything to drink.' you say.

'Why's he dressed like that?' she says.

You shrug. 'Tell me the answer when you ask him.' you say.

You walk back to the two and notice how they quickly cut off their conversation. With a smile, you set the beer down in front of the tall boy.

'There you go.' you say. 'Enjoy.'

He thanks you, and you turn to the dark-haired boy again.

'Are you sure I can't get you something?' you say.

He briefly shakes his head. You turn back to the taller boy again. Apparently, he's the talkative one.

'So, you're a gambler?' you say to him.

'I can't say no to a game of cards every now and then.' he says.

Before you can ask him another question, the other boy speaks up again.

'Jesper, cut the small talk.' he says.

So the taller one was called Jesper, that's at least a start.

The tall one, Jesper, looks offended. 'I can have a conversation, Kaz, relax.' he says. He turns back to you. 'You a gambler?' he says.

You shake your head. 'I never really understood it. And I haven't gotten a chance to go to one of the gambling halls yet.' you say.

'You should tag along some time, I can teach you the basics.' says Jesper.

'That would be amazing.' you say, surprised at how easy it is to get Jesper to engage in a conversation. You wonder what else you can learn about him.

Unfortunately, a large group of tourists enter the pub, loudly telling you to come and take their orders. You don't bother to hide the disgust and annoyance on your face.

'Looks like I'll have to pass. I'm working, after all.' you say. 'Let me know if I can get you guys anything else.'

'You got it.' says Jesper as you walk over to the large group of tourists.

Of all the people that stopped by for a drink, you loathed tourists the most. They always seemed to think that if they were in a different country, basic rules about human decency didn't apply.

They're loudly shouting their orders at you and as you walk back to the bar to get their drinks, you can feel their eyes on you. No doubt they were talking about you.

You bring them their drinks with a forced smile, ignoring their horrible flirting. The second you turn your back on them, you let your smile disappear. You then catch Jesper's eye, who had been looking at your encounter with the tourists.

'Tourists are all the same.' you say as you walk up to him to retrieve his empty beer glass.

'They look nice.' he tries.

'They're assholes.' you say. 'Every tourist that comes in here thinks because I'm a bartender they can shamelessly flirt with me and pull me closer. But they give excellent tips, so I can't really complain.'

'If you don't like serving them, why not get a different job?' asks Jesper.

'Because I need the money.' you say. 'Don't really have a lot of choice. Can I get you anything else?'

'Another beer, please.' he says.

'Jesper.' says the other boy.

You turn to look at him, you almost forgot he was there. Jesper had taken off his coat, but Kaz was still wearing his long black coat and gloves.

'No more drinks, I need you sober for this.' says Kaz.

'Okay, dad.' says Jesper. 'He never lets me do anything fun.' he then whispers to you, loud enough for Kaz to hear.

'I'll leave you two to it, then.' you say.

You walk away from their table to clean a table of a couple who just left the bar. Normally, you'd do a quick sweep and head back to serving customers.

But something about Jesper and Kaz has gotten your attention. Jesper seems like a cheerful, fun person to be around. Kaz, on the other hand, looks like he hasn't smiled in his entire life. You wondered why they would go to a pub together.

You take out a piece of cloth and start to slowly clean the table, but focusing on Jesper and Kaz behind you. They're talking in such hushed voices, you're having a hard time understanding them.

But you do manage to hear a few sentences of their conversation.

'We enter as guards, Nina, Matthias and Inej go in disguised as party guests.' says Kaz in a low voice.

'Why can't I be a party guest as well?' says Jesper.

'Because we can't afford you to drink and flirt, we need to to confirm that diamond necklace is the real thing.' says Kaz. 'So we move quickly and don't attract too much attention.'

'Fine.' says Jesper. 'But next time we're crashing a merchant's party, I get to be one of the party guests as well. I want to have a good time.'

You quickly straighten your back and walk past them, back to the bar. You didn't want to give them the idea you'd been listening to their conversation.

So they were planning on robbing some rich woman who owned a diamond necklace. And Jesper would be the one to confirm the diamonds are real. Only Grisha could do that. And there were more on their crew, at least three more. If you could figure out what party they had been talking about, you could try and get in as well.

As you're standing behind the bar, talking to one of your coworkers, you see Jesper and Kaz get up. While standing in the doorway, Jesper waves happily at you. Kaz is already out of the pub.

You smile and wave back at him.

If only he knew that in just a few minutes, you had discovered they'd steal a priceless necklace, and that they were gang members. Because who else would dare to steal a necklace someone would be wearing at a crowded party?

Only gangs would be bold enough to do something like that. You didn't know what gang they were part of, but that wasn't the kind of information you need to acquire. Right now, all you had to do was find out where and when the party was being held.

You could be quicker than them, and snatch the diamonds away from them. You could buy yourself a nice new set of knives, or rent a bigger room.

Either way, you were going to get a lot of money.

A/N: If you want to request something, make sure to read my house rules Here’s the list of characters I write for. Everything that I have written can be found on my masterlist. Please don’t repost my work, as I spend much time and effort on it!! Thank you for reading! Much love, Marit

#me whenever I am writing a grishaverse fic: I must include jesper or nina in this #I literally cannot write something without at least one of them in there #also I am sorry but it is true. kaz dresses like he's going to a funeral I'm sorry <3 its okay tho he's hot #kaz brekker #shadow and bone #grishaverse #Kaz Brekker x reader #Kaz Brekker x you #kaz brekker fanfic #Kaz Brekker fanfiction #Kaz Brekker fanfics #Kaz Brekker fic #shadow and bone fics #shadow and bone fanfics #shadow and bone fanfic #shadow and bone fanfiction #shadow and bone fic #new in town

[mgsapphire]

What is love, Hae-in?

I was waiting for all episodes to be released for this particular post, but Hae-in's homework was a gateway for me to talk about it. The different forms of love portrayed in Racket Boys.

Racket boys makes a good point of talking about all the different kinds of love, even if it's not explicitly. And yes, I'm going to be lame and use the greek's types of love, and add some more, because I can.

Philia

gif credit: @deokmis

Without getting too philosophical, philia refers to a love between friends, and it's directly translated as the highest form of love. This is the kind of love the story centers around. And interestingly, the definition of philia doesn't stop there. Aristotle believed that philia could be divided into three separate forms:

A friendship of utility

A friendship of pleasure

A friendship of the good

I found this interesting because the friends navigate between these as the story develops. Mainly with Hae-kang when he first arrives to town. He starts hanging out with the rest of the kids out of a necessity to do so. They needed him and he needed them. That was it.

Soon, as Hae-kang grows fonder of badminton, the boys start sharing a common interest, to which we can add their love for games. They start growing interested in each other, and a deeper connection starts to form.

As they navigate a different set of experiences, a true friendship begins to develop, where they see themselves as part of a whole that must function together.

So, what is love, Hae-in? It's the way your brother and his teammates fight over the silly stuff passionately, and let go of the heavy ones. It's the way they protect each other even when the odds are against them.

Storge

gif credit: @mercurialhigh

Storge often refers to the love between family members, most importantly that which parents give to their kids and vice versa. This one is one of my favorites when depicted in the show, and it also has to do with the nature of this type of love.

Storge often feels unilateral from the parent to the child, and I think it has to do with the fact that the children are often oblivious to the parents' sacrifice. While sacrifice doesn't necessarily mean love, it is noticeably clear that this is the storytelling the showrunners are going for when they depict it.

Hae-kang's mom stopped her athlete career in order to give birth to him, Yun-dam's parents showed him off in the store and bought him his favorite dishes, Yong-tae's dad gives him tonics to make him feel better and buys him a cellphone, and U-chan's dad tries to understand him increasingly every day.

On the other hand, we can also tell how much the kids love their parents, Hae-kang often hides his pain in order to not worry his parents, Yun-dam tries his best at everything in order to make his parents proud, Yong-tae knows everything about plants just like his dad, and U-chan tries to please his parents. The girls too, try to show their affection to their parents in the best way they can.

So, what is love Hae-in? Is the way your brother, dad and you all sleep with their arms raised. It's the way you can all find comfort in each other, and it's the way they all tried their best to explain to you what love was.

Xenia

gif credit: @uppoompat

This is known as hospitality love, in Greek mythology, it was portrayed as helping a stranger would grant you blessings. Close to christian's belief of "love thy neighbor". This is my favorite portrayal in Racket boys, as the community via this kind of love develops in one more similar to that of family. It started with Hae-kang and Hae-in arriving in town and being welcomed by the elderly, with Hae-kang's bad curry, with the village chief hospitality, and it developed into a lovely mural, a community effort to cheer each other on, and a funeral that was closer to a party.

So, what is love Hae-in? It's the way the city people found their will to live in helping those in the small village they came to die in. The way your brother's curry accidentally showed them love, and the mural showed their gratitude toward the community.

Philautia

Gif credit: @mostlyfate

The love of self in here has been portrayed as both good and bad. Hae-kang is the biggest example of this duality, at first, he was overconfident, and lead to him losing a few games. Then, he started both training and still being confident in his skills, making him unstoppable in his quest for success.

Other characters also manifest this love. I think another example is In-sol, who knows what his worth is, and that's why he strives hard to be better at everything.

While Se-yoon is very good at what she does, I don't think she has found her self love quite yet, as she puts the sport and others opinions of her above her own health and needs. It could be argued that Hae-kang is the same, but Hae-ckang doesn't necessarily win to keep others satisfied, which Se-yoon feels is something she must do.

So, what is love, Hae-in? It's the way your brother constantly strives to be a better version of himself, the way each one of the team members know their worth despite losing or winning. It's the way your mother is so confident.

Eros

gif credit: @uppoompat

While romantic love is not very prominent in the story, we can still see it with the city couple, Hae-kang's parents, and the exploration of a love different than those of friends that Yun-dam and Ji-won experience, along with Hae-kang and Se-yoon.

The city couple are the biggest example of a passion for each other, no matter how calm and odd they may be on the outside. They are always taking the other into consideration, and seem to be such an extreme version of passionate love that they seem to be unable to live without the other.

With the teenagers crushes, we can also see how they navigate this change from merely a philial love to that that is more erotic. Of course, they can coexist, but when you start approaching the realm of eros, new feelings can surface, such as jealousy, and sense of fierce protection that can overlap with control if one is not careful.

So, what is love, Hae-in? Is the way your father still looks at your mother as if she were the biggest treasure he could ever find. It's the implicit understanding that the gaze of the city couple's hold. It's the way your brother sometimes seems silly.

I could also touch on agape, but I honestly don't know how this particular form of love is approached in the series.

#sbs racket boys #racket boys #love quote #love #netflix recommendations #netflix kdrama #netflix #kdrama recommendations #kdrama #kdramas #korean drama #essay #analysis #rant #kdrama meta #meta