#my friend said I look like HIM from the powerpuff girls and honestly yeah

[renaerys]

22. for reds 🤡

This is 100% not what you asked for (yet...👀), but I give you part 1 of what we're calling the Weird King AU. I'm turning this into a proper multi-chapter High School fic because I love you and I'd jump on any bandwagon for you.

xxx

Like most young, conventionally attractive Supervillains, Brick had made a bit of a habit of failing upwards. It was pretty easy in a town full of simpering morons content to project their own narrative assumptions onto him, and who was he to crush their dreams when they made his life a little easier?

For example, dating.

“You can tell me, you know.” His cute date, Tracy, sipped her milkshake across from him.

“Tell you what?”

She softened and reached her hand across the table. “Your tragic backstory. I’ll listen without judgment, I promise.”

Brick tried to think of something tragic, but it all seemed pretty underwhelming as far as Supervillain origin stories went. “You mean like how I was born in a toilet?”

She made an oh shape with her lips. “We all have those days where we feel like we were born in a toilet, Brick.”

He’d dated Tracy for three months before she broke up with him out of the blue in tears: sorry she couldn’t fix his baggage, she just wasn’t strong enough to handle all that tortured darkness, but she wished him nothing but health and happiness. Brick deleted her number from his phone and spent twenty whole minutes staring at the toilet in his bathroom, wondering what the lesson here was.

But everything changed when Mojo got out of prison and moved Brick and his brothers back to Townsville, where he enrolled them in the local high school alongside their former arch nemeses, the Powerpuff Girls.

Suddenly, everything Brick did pre-supposed ill intent. These people remembered him as the pest who had graffitied their local monuments and blown up their cars and endangered their children. They held no love for him, and at best they feared him. This was not Citiesville, where he’d been a tall, cold glass of Voss water in a sea of recycled Dasani.

He found himself thinking about his birthing toilet again as he stepped into the cafeteria alone and the conversation quieted down as his new classmates watched him from the safety of their tables. His next moves here were critical. He was no longer at the top of the food chain, but fear and mystery surrounding his origins and character gave him a certain power over his peers.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of social suicide, I will fear no cringe,” he said to himself.

The jocks were out. Capable though he may be, Brick was not much of a team player unless there was a blood contract involved requiring his participation on pain of satanic torture. The drama kids were also a hard pass, not because he thought drama was lame, but because they had barely noticed him walk in, and Brick did not have the energy to deal with people more self-involved than himself. Some of the unaffiliated tables could be safe, but without a good understanding of the nuanced social dynamics in the high school, he could be heading toward irreversible doom, and that was a risk he was not willing to take.

He saw his salvation just ahead. It was the only option, all else being equal. In an environment where he couldn’t be certain of his baseline status and potential for upward mobility, there was greatness to be had only by association and certainty only in the devil he knew.

Brick helped himself to the empty seat directly across from Blossom Utonium to a chorus of gasps and staring.

Blossom did not startle like her table mates had. She watched him critically behind a head full of bangs as she balanced her soup spoon in her hand. “Really.”

Brick unwrapped the burrito he’d purchased in the lunch line and brandished it before him. “Really.”

He took a bite of the burrito. It was not hot enough. The two girls to Blossom’s left whispered to each other about that bad boy and he’s hot, though.

Blossom daintily spooned soup into her mouth without spilling a single drop as she continued to watch Brick for signs of his imminent dark side transformation.

The guy next to Brick was brave enough to ask him what his next class was. Brick had a mouth full of disappointing burrito, so he passed the guy the printout of his class schedule in lieu of answering.

“Wow, all APs, huh? Hey, we’re in U.S. History together next period, nice. I’m Mike Believe, by the way. Brick Jojo, right?”

Brick didn’t answer him immediately on account of the burrito currently occupying his mouth hole, and Mike took it the wrong way.

“Oh, yeah, we all know who you are. Blossom sort of filled us in.” He winced like he’d inadvertently revealed a terrible secret.

Brick swallowed his food and washed it down with a gulp of water. “Saves me some time.”

Mike looked super relieved. “For sure! Hey, I could lend you my notes if you want to catch up. Gershwin’s giving a quiz on the Progressive Era on Friday, and she’s a hard-ass who definitely won’t care that you just transferred…”

Brick chewed on his lunch as Mike continued to talk at him about classes and other vaguely helpful, albeit uninteresting, information. But Mike seemed normal enough, a little chatty but not in an overeager sort of way. Blossom was no longer clocking his every move and seemed to be absorbed in her friend’s latest swim team cheating scandal, until Brick reached for his water bottle and she suddenly laser-focused on his wandering hand.

Her keen attention to him was honestly flattering, if expected. It was in his nature to be noticed, and in this narrow respect she was no different from anyone else whose head he turned. If she chose to feed her interest with the flames of suspicion, then it was no difference to him.

But if she was anything like him—and on a chemical level she was probably the closest to him that a person could get—he suspected it took tremendous effort to hold her full and sustained attention. The world they inhabited was as vapid and mundane as the humans that surrounded them, and even the most gracious of gods grew bored of worship. Which explained all the smiting and fucking and generational curses upon entire households in everything from Greek mythology to the Old Testament.

Brick was pretty deep into a fantasy of Blossom going full Ixion and the Wheel on the swim team when Mike tapped his shoulder. “You ready to go?”

It took him a moment to realize the bell had rung and he had a class to get to—AP U.S. History with Mike, apparently. Brick gathered his tray and his bag and followed Mike. When he looked back at the table, Blossom was already gone.

xxx

That whole first week was painfully boring. No one bullied him, or pranked him, or picked a fight with him, of course. But no one really approached him, either. His brothers were more determined to make an effort. Boomer announced he was trying out for the soccer team because there was no rule saying a Super with extremely well documented ties to active criminals and the forces of Hell couldn’t kick a ball around a field. Butch had gotten himself invited to a midnight screening of Snakes on a Plane in some rich kid’s home movie theater, but only after that same kid had accidentally spilled milk on Butch and burst into tears in front of a cafeteria full of Juniors and Seniors. Brick declined the invitation Butch extended to him. He had that AP U.S. History exam to study for on Friday, anyway.

He shared all of his classes with Blossom. Even in the classes where her assigned seat was behind his and he couldn’t see her, he could feel her lobotomizing stare at the back of his head whenever she glanced up from her notebook. And while Mike’s notes were perfectly adequate and the friendly gesture counted for more than the content (a gesture Brick would not soon forget), there was a far more efficient way to accomplish his goal of murdering the class averages while also taking the edge off his loner doldrums.

“Can I borrow your class notes?”

Blossom rose from her seat and pulled her hair tie out to re-do her extremely long ponytail. She held the elastic between her teeth as she worked. Her teeth were very straight, he noticed. Some pretty nice girl-teeth, generally speaking.

“Which class?”

“All of them.”

He watched her wind the elastic around her hair with quick, adroit fingers. “That’s a lot of notes.”

“You’re the top of every class. No point in asking anyone else.”

She moved toward the hall. He followed her out. “Why would I help you?”

A legitimate question delivered without venom. Unlike her sister Buttercup, who’d “run into” Brick after school on Monday and told him to watch his back, Blossom didn’t have to do anything but maintain a general proximity to make her superiority complex known. Which was the kind of flex he could fuck with.

“Isn’t helping people sort of your mandate?”

They had arrived at her locker, which she opened with enough force to rattle the hinges. “I help the helpless. Are you helpless, Brick?”

Brick smiled at her baiting. Had she ever actually said his name at a normal volume before? It sounded good even in her baseline bitch timbre. “Critically helpless. I’m the new student who transferred in the middle of the semester, and you’re the only person who knows me.”

A couple other students clearly trying to get to the lockers Brick was blocking hovered just out of reach. They whispered to each other, but neither of them actually worked up the courage to ask Brick to move. He ignored them.

Blossom rummaged in her locker for the binder she would need for the next class. “Make friends.”

“Working on it.”

The locker door slammed and she faced him. There was something confrontational in the way she held herself before him that kicked him in the nuts back in time thirteen years to their more uncouth days when all he wanted to do was destroy her so he’d be the only one. Now they were older and wiser and he actually did need her notes to study, so destroying her was not high on his list of priorities.

“You want to be my friend.”

“We have so much in common.”

“So do lions and hyenas.”

“Both are apex predators, so.”

She took a step closer and peered up at him. Brick did not move, although he wondered what was so interesting about his face. She probably just thought he was hot. She was probably as bored as he was. She probably—

“You have lettuce in your teeth.”

Brick pulled back and covered his mouth on instinct. God fucking damnit.

Blossom was already walking away from him by the time he’d picked the food from his teeth. “I’ll expect my notes back in mint condition before first period tomorrow morning.”

Brick pressed a fist against the lockers and quietly fumed. “Dumbass…”

“Um, sorry, but do you mind…?”

The student who’d been waiting for her locker space to clear up had her palms up as if to assuage a feral stray. Brick pushed off the lockers, but his fist left a dent where he’d unleashed some of his impotent self-pity. He looked back at the girl, and she shook her head.

“It’s fine! It, uh, it happens sometimes.” She pointed a couple lockers down to Blossom’s, which was dinged up worse than the others.

Brick stared at Blossom’s locker, and then back at the girl. Her narrow, dark eyes were wide, but not out of fear. She was waiting for something, and like an idiot it took him a moment to catch up. “You’re trying to make me feel better about fucking up your locker.”

She laughed nervously. “I mean, it’s really fine! You just looked so miserable for a second there, and I just thought…”

Great, he was moping so hard he had an audience.

The five minute warning bell rang, and a flood of students rushed past them on their way to fourth period. Brick stepped aside so the girl could get to her locker.

“Hey, you’re the new guy, right?”

The new guy, yeah. How quaint. Except, she was waiting for a response, which wasn’t the absolute worst thing that had happened to him all week.

“Brick,” he said. But of course, she already knew that, and she was just being nice.

“I’m Kim. Kim Chan.”

“Okay.” He didn’t have anything else to say to her, so he decided to get his shit and get to his next class.

“Welcome back to Townsville, Brick.”

Brick shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off. It didn’t occur to him until later that Kim was the first and only person who had properly welcomed him back home.

#powerpuff girls #powerpuff girls fanfic #blossick #ppg reds #ppg blossom #ppg brick #september fic prompts #weird king au #i have no idea what i will call this yet #but it'll make its way to AO3 and it'll be a Thing #i have to think of themes and shit now #i came here to shit post and here we are with another full on Reds fic

[ask-the-official-gangreen-gang]

Late with Ace

-The camera turns on, showing Ace in his usual, handmade chair, the rest of the gang out of sight, and three folding chairs brought in, where the Powerpuff Girls sit-

“Heeeeeey, youse people! Welcome to the premiere of my own, special weekend segment: Late with Ace! bet yer all excited, huh? Well get even more excited cause here’s...The Powerpuff Goils!!”

-The sound of applause, probably the gang as the audience-

“Thanks for bein’ patient, goils. Had stuff to take care of. But I know our followers been lookin’ forward to this interview”

“It’s no trouble. I was...skeptical, the first time you asked. but we looked through your blog to make sure you weren’t pulling any tricks. Once we realized it’d be safe, we agreed to come. We’re glad to finally be able to do this interview, honestly. so much has happened in the past years”

“No kiddin’. Alright then, let’s get started shall we? Here’s the first question: How are ya dealin’ with crime these days? If ya had to rank your favorite and hardest to beat criminals etc how would youse do it? Also just how’s life for youse guys in general? How’s the professor and the rrb?”

“Oh oh! We’re not nearly as brutal as we used to be! We try not to go overboard when we’re fighting. And the professor's great!! He's made a bunch of progress in his inventions!”

“That’s right! Him actually taught us a lesson once. remember when all of you bad guys were being good because he controlled you? And Mojo is definitely the favorite, then Fuzzy, then you guys, annnd Princess, rowdyruff boys, and Him are on the bottom. But Him and Rowdyruff boys are the hardest.”

“...I try not to, believe me. But yeah, why? And eeeeyyyy, nice!”

“Well, it made us think. We spent years beating up bad guys, but we realized we didn’t even know why they were making crime to begin with. Oh and the Rowdyruff Boys are still snot-nosed jerks.”

“Yeah! So we stopped and thought about it, and decided to be gentler from then on!”

“No wonder there’s been less doctor and dentist bills! Hehehe! Alright, next question. Huh...These two are out of ordah. Gonna switch ‘em. Okay: Did you goils know that Ace joins the band Gorillaz in the future?What are ya thoughts on that?”

"Huh?! You join Gorillaz?! No way! How?!"

"Heheh, that answers that! Murdoc Niccols is an old friend. He needed a solid, and I was the next best talent he knew!"

"We knew you had your rock band with the gang, but that's incredible, Ace! The Gorillaz are a big band. Congratulations."

"Thanks, goils. Its a fun run. And I hope that part of my life ain't over. Did ya know they're fans of the show?"

"The Gorillaz? Are Powerpuff Girls fans?!"

"Yeah, sure are! Noodle used to watch, and 2-D has a Mojo Jojo t-shirt."

"Woooow! We're famous!!!!"

"We were already famous, Bubbles..."

"...Oh yeah!"

"Hehehe. Alright, here comes the next one: Hi goils! So it seems like you’re on bettah terms with the Gangreen Gang now, has your relationship changed with any of the other villains over the years?"

"Well, our family does go camping with Fuzzy's family in the summer! Even though he still terrorizes town once in a while."

"And Mojo still favors being a villain and finds being good too 'boring'...But when we're not fighting each other he's much nicer now! Sometimes Professor even invites him and his family over to have dinner with us!"

"Yeah and Him just finds it hysterical when the Rowdyruff boys start food fights. Jerks..."

"Buttercup, you always join said food fights."

"Didn't say I didn't. Then Mojo and Him just act like proud parents when the boys create chaos."

"Wait, so Him and Mojo Jojo are co-parentin'?"

"What's co-parenting?"

"Co-parenting is when two adults not in a relationship, but share child custody, work together to raise the children in a healthy, stable environment."

"Ohhhh! Then no! Definitely not co-parenting! Heehee!"

"Waaaaait a minute. Are youse saying Mojo and Him are-"

"In a solid, normal relationship? Yup."

"Yeah! Oh! If they get married, think they'd let me be the flower girl? I'd be the cutest flower girl ever!!!"

-Buttercup facepalms herself-

"Hehehe! Talk about a juicy dish, huh people? Okay, next question: Do ya feel any remorse for the things you've done? Are youse on good terms with the gang?"

"...Yes. Yes, we do feel remorse. We were wrong back then. We thought we were experts, that good was good and bad was evil in need of a buttkicking. But we were wrong. The world isn't black and white. There's shades of grey in-between, too. We're sorry we didn't understand back then..."

"And as for the gang, yeah! We still kick their butts when they steal, but we're not as harsh about it. Sometimes we do stuff together! Especially Buttercup and-"

"Ace! Isn't it time for the next question?"

"As a matter of fact it sure is! With the origin story out I've gotta wonder, girls. Did your dad evah say anythin' to ya about the pandemic?"

"Pandemic? ....No, he...didn't. What pandemic?"

"Uh oh. If youse don't know, Then I suggest reading our story, It Ain't Easy Bein' Gangreen on AO3!"

"Let me see. Do you have a copy of it?"

-A long, green arm reaches out, holding out a bundle of paper-

"PLBBT!"

"Thank you, Grubber. Let's see..."

-Blossom proceeds to speed read the first chapter, then she looks shocked.-

"Whoa! The professor accidently started an epidemic? How come we never knew about it?"

"Dark stain on the towns history. Veeeery dark. They wanted to bury it. For several reasons."

-Blossom proceeds to speed through the technically first chapter next-

"Oh! He found a cure! So there was probably no reason to- huh?!"

"What? Let me see!"

-Buttercup grabs the papers, reading the page Blossom was on, then she looks at Ace in shock.-

"You?! The professor saved YOU?"

"Eh...Sort of. Keep readin'."

-Buttercup looks back at the paper, reading the rest-

"Huh?! You were BORN green? We always thought it was a mutation you guys suffered from later on! Cool!!"

"Nah, nah. NOT cool. As for why, well you'll have to see as more of our story comes out. Everythin' ties together."

"If you mom had Gangrene, and the prifessor cured her...And if she returned to normal after being cured...Then how could you be born green? It doesn't make sense. You shouldn't have had any Gangrene cells in your body!"

-Blossom thinks, then suddenly gasps-

"It wasn't the Gangrene! It was the-"

-Ace quickly cuts her off.-

"AH! SPOILAH ALERT! Sorry, can't let ya finish that one! That info's gonna be revealed latah on. We're strict on spoilahs."

"Ohhh. Alright, I won't say it."

-she leans over to whisper to Ace-

"Yeeeah, ya got it alright. Nice detective work. But don't tell anyone. Got it?"

"Got it!"

"Heeey no fair! I wanna know! Secrets aren't nice!"

"Sorry, no can do. You'll find out eventually."

"Hehehe, that's right! Alright that's all the time we got this week! Remember people: Tell us who YOU wanna see me interview next! Have a goodnight people!"

-Ace and the girls wave to the camera, followed by applause from the gang as the camera cuts off.-

#gangreen gang #powerpuff girls #ace #snake #big billy #arturo #grubber #blossom utonium #buttercup utonium #bubbles utonium #professor utonium #mojo jojo #Him #rowdyruff boys

[dreamypeaches]

don’t wake up pt. 5 | rafe cameron x reader

summary: your relationship progresses and rafe makes a mistake

warnings: drug use, alcohol use, cursing, angst (oops)

word count: 4.8k

a/n: apologies in advance. this is sad. it’s also not completely proofread because it made me sad while reading it back. final part will be out tomorrow or monday. enjoy :)

series masterlist

Rafe Cameron was a lot of things. He couldn’t even count all the labels he had swirling around his head. Rafe Cameron was an asshole. Rafe Cameron was a disappointment. Rafe Cameron was an addict. Rafe Cameron was hated. Round and round the words spun in his head. But for the last few weeks, they had slowly started to dissolve replaced by words that spilled like honey from your lips. Rafe Cameron was a good boyfriend. Rafe Cameron was sweet. Rafe Cameron was strong. Rafe Cameron was loved.

You two hadn’t said the words yet, but he knew how he felt about you and he was certain you felt the same. For three weeks you had been official, secretly. Not a day went by that he didn’t see you, hug you, kiss you. You and Rafe hung out everyday. Sometimes, Rafe would plan out elaborate dates, spending his money like it was nothing to buy you a dress and some fancy lingerie. You would drive to the mainland where no one you knew would be, going to the most expensive restaurant he could find, then staying in a suite at the nicest hotel possible. Rafe Cameron was a man who liked to spend his money, he was glad he had finally found something worthwhile to spend it on.

As much as you loved being spoiled by Rafe, most times the extravagance was too much. You grew up on the Cut, you were used to having nothing. You were a simple woman with simple needs, and Rafe would do whatever you wanted to meet them. So, most days, you would drive around the island. You had made several playlists, each one designed to introduce Rafe to a new type of music. Rafe was the first to admit that he had shit taste in music. The first time he had picked you up in his car, he’d pressed shuffle on his music. The look you gave him had been the most terrifying thing he had seen to this day. It was decided then that, as long as you were in the car, you decided on the music. Rafe was pleased to learn that he wasn’t completely hopeless. You had been pleased to hear that he loved Fleetwood Mac, one of your favorite songs being Dreams. From then on, you promised Rafe that you would save him from the musical desert he was living in.

As much as Rafe loved showering you in expensive things, he loved the time in his car with you more. Music turned all the way up, windows down, his hand on your thigh, you singing at the top of your lungs with a contagious grin on your face, it was like a dream. He would drive until the sun started to go down. You would pick up dinner and end up at the beach or one of the beautiful lookouts that graced the Outer Banks. Cuddled up together, you watched the sunset and ate and talked. There were days you couldn’t wait to get home and would have sex under the stars. That’s when Rafe found you most beautiful, moaning his name as the moon reflected around you like a halo. You were his angel, and he was unbelievably happy. Still, it was hard, you both knew it would be.

There were days he fought with his dad and all his negative thoughts and anger swelled up inside him like a bomb. You learned quickly how to defuse him, with soft touches and quiet words, but some days he just needed time. Only once had he come to you, high as a kite with white powder still present on his nose. You shut it down immediately driving him home and telling him if he ever was around you high again, you were done. Rafe had taken it to heart, and had been clean for a couple weeks now, with great difficulty.

He stayed true to his other promise, not provoking your friends when they happened to bump into each other. Despite not knowing about your relationship, it seemed JJ Maybank was intent on making Rafe break his promise.

Rafe had been hanging out with Kelce and Topper when they ran into you, his sister, and the rest of the Pogues. He whispered to his friends to just ignore them, avoiding their surprised looks. Resisting the urge to look at you or touch you, he pushed passed, only to be stopped by JJ’s taunts. He heard you trying to stop him, telling him to just leave it alone, but he wouldn’t listen. Topper and Kelce turned, biting back at the blonde Pogue’s words. Rafe turned as well, meeting your pleading eyes for just a second before grabbing Topper, who had started to approach the group with malice, by the arm and pulling him away.

“They’re not fucking worth it.”

The rest of the Pogues started to leave, but JJ and Topper stood their ground, both refusing to be the first to walk away. Rafe watched as your hand moved to JJ’s shoulder, pulling him towards you but he pushed you off. Rafe’s eyes followed your hand as it trailed down JJ’s arm, taking his hand in yours. White hot jealousy coursed through him as JJ looked at you, and you looked at him, not Rafe. His fists clenched painfully at his side, trying to resist the urge to punch the smirk off his face as he looked back at the Kooks.

“See you Powerpuff girls later,” He said before you pulled harder on his hand. You spared Rafe one last glance, a quiet smile on your face, before walking off, JJ’s hand still holding yours.

Rafe felt himself go numb with rage. It boiled just under the surface for the rest of the day, until that night when he picked you up. He was completely silent on the drive to your destination. You noticed, easily. His normal grip on your thigh was instead wrapped around the steering wheel, showing of his white knuckles. He barely even kissed you when you got into the car, not meeting your eyes. By the time you reached the lookout where you were having your date, you were fed up. Knowing exactly what his problem was, you prepared yourself to confront him. You laid out the blanket while Rafe grabbed the cooler. The moment his butt touched the ground, you were on him.

“Look, I’m sorry about JJ. He doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut,” You started, reaching for Rafe’s hand. He pulled it away from your grasp, turning to look at you for the first time that night.

“Does he have a thing for you?”

Your eyes widened, taken aback by not only the words, but the venom behind them.

“A thing? What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you and JJ! I saw you two today! The way you held his hand and the way he fucking looked at you, I can’t get it out of my head! So please, tell me whether or not you have a thing for him so I can decide if I get to break his nose,” Rafe seethed. You looked away and sighed. He allowed you to take his hand this time, though he didn’t return your grip.

“No, JJ doesn’t have a thing for me. But, since I care about you, I’m going to perfectly honest. JJ and I did have a thing, once, many years ago. Honestly, I wouldn’t even call it a thing, it was nothing. I was young and he was my best friend and he was cute. We were sixteen and just trying to figure out dating and all that shit. He asked me out because it made sense, me and him. Everyone already thought we were together, so why not try. We went on one date, he kissed me, and we realized what a terrible mistake we had made.”

Rafe had now laced his fingers with yours, staring down at your intertwined hands as you spoke. You reached up and tilted his chin to look at you.

“Baby, that was years ago. JJ and I are just friends and we will never be anything else.”

“Someone should tell Maybank that,” Rafe mumbled, making you giggle.

“If this,” you motioned between the two of you, “is going to work, you have to trust me.”

Rafe groaned, running a hand through his hair. He rarely wore gel in it when he went out with you, knowing how much you hate it.

“It’s not you I don’t trust, it’s him. This is why I want to stop hiding. That Pogue needs to understand that he can’t touch what doesn’t belong to him.”

You rolled your eyes before lifting yourself up so you were face to face with him, lips inches apart.

“I don’t belong to anybody, Cameron,” You breathed. His arms wrapped around you, pulling you roughly into his lap to straddle him. One hand moved down your back, gripping your ass as he sucked on the sensitive spot below your ear. You let out a moan and he chuckled darkly, whispering in your ear, “Are you sure about that angel?”

Clothes were shed soon after that, Rafe hovering over you and pounding into you as you screamed his name into the night. When you finished, Rafe held you close against his chest, covering both of you with a blanket. His fingers ran through your hair as you head rested on his chest.

“Are you going to the kegger tomorrow?” He asks.

“Of course. Are you?”

“Yeah…” Rafe is silent for a moment, choosing his words carefully, “Do you want to go together?”

He feels you sigh as you lift her head, resting your chin on his chest to look at him.

“Midsummers is only a week away, baby. I want one more week of just being with you without having to worry about anything else, okay? One more week, then you can shout it from the rooftops if you want.”

He already knew your answer before you had even spoken. Several times throughout the past few weeks Rafe had asked you to go public before you had planned. Each time you said the same thing, just a little bit longer. Rafe Cameron was a lot of things, passionate, persistent, possessive. Patient was not one of those things. That days incident had done nothing to calm his already raging impatience. But he kept it down, willing to wait one more week if it meant being able to hold you like this for the rest of his life.

Rafe woke to you getting ready for work. Your hair was still wet from the shower, hanging loosely around your shoulders as you pulled on a bra and underwear. He didn’t move from the bed, too enraptured by you to even think of turning his gaze away. You felt his adoring stare and turned to give him a smile as you covered up the love bites he had left on your neck the night before.

“Good morning, baby,” You said walking over to give him a peck. Rafe had other ideas, wrapping an arm around you to pull you into his lap, deepening the kiss. A giggle escaped your lips as Rafe’s lips trailed down your neck and you gasped as he sucked at a bare spot on your neck. Satisfied with his work, he leaned away and gave you a smirk.

“You missed a spot.”

You crawled off the bed, flipping him the bird as you returned to your make-up bag. You got ready quickly, the walk to the Wreck from the Cameron residence being much longer than from your own home. Rafe had offered numerous times to give you a ride, but you didn’t want to risk it. Plus, you always added, you liked morning walks, helped you get your mind ready for the day ahead. Rafe couldn’t wait for the days when he could join you on your walks, hold your hand as you moved through the morning sun where everyone could see you.

Kissing him quickly, you pulled away before Rafe could deepen the kiss. You gave him a smile as you started toward the door.

“I��ll see you tonight!” You called before sneaking into the hallway. You had perfected the art of sneaking through Tannyhill undetected, and Rafe could hear you humming the Mission Impossible theme as you disappeared down the hall. He grins at your dorkiness before snuggling back into the pillow that still smells like you.

“Rafe!” The man woke to the sound of his name, jumping as his door bursts open and a stern faced Ward Cameron walks in. “Of course, you’re still asleep.”

Rafe reaches for his phone on the bedside table, mumbling, “What time is it?” 3:13p.m.. Shit.

“Dad, I’m so sorry-” Rafe began before his father cut him off.

“Oh, you’re going to be. You were supposed to be at Davidson’s office three hours ago to help me close that deal. My own son blowing off one of my biggest investors, do you know how big of fool that makes me look?”

Rafe rubbed the sleep from his eyes, trying to comprehend his father’s words through his sleepy haze.

“I must have forgotten to set an alarm last night. I’ll call Mr. Davidson, I promise, I’ll fix it.”

“You will do no such thing. You’re done.”

Eyes widening, Rafe jumped from his bed, grabbing his pants laying on the ground and pulling them on.

“Dad, please, I know I fucked up, but I can fix this, just let me-”

“No, Rafe. I will fix this, just like I fix everything you ruin.” Rafe’s mouth slammed shut as his father set his menacing glare on him. “You know, for the past few weeks, I thought you were changing. You’ve been different, working hard, getting serious, acting like the son I always wanted, but now…I know it will always come back to this. You will always find a way to disappoint.”

Ward’s eyes rake over his son’s body, taking in the hickies adorning his body.

“And what was it that had you so distracted, hm? Some whore?”

“Don’t call her that,” The viciousness in Rafe’s words takes Ward aback for a moment, but he recovers quickly.

“What should I call her then? Do you have a girlfriend, Rafe, who I haven’t had the privilege to meet? No, of course not, what respectable woman would date you, a boy with no prospects who mooch off his father’s money. A disappointing little shit, what woman would want that?”

Rafe doesn’t meet his eyes. It is silent for a moment, Ward waiting for some sort of response that never comes. He scoffs, shaking his head.

“What father would want that?” He says finally. The door slams as Ward leaves, making Rafe flinch. He stands in the middle of the floor, frozen for a moment by the ice of his father’s words. When he’s sure his father is long gone, Rafe let’s out a frustrated scream, turning to assault the bed with his fists. His breathing is heavy as he pulls away, pushing his hair out of his face and looking around the room. He moved to his dresser, eyes wild as he pulls open the drawer, tossing clothes around until he finds the small, white powder filled baggy. He holds it up, feeling his heart pound. But the words of his father are staring to be drowned out by your voice in his head. Rafe gives the bag one last glance before shoving it in his pocket.

Kelce and Topper are already pregaming when he shows up at the Topper residence a few hours later.

“There he is!” Topper calls, bottle of vodka in hand, “We were worried you’d be too busy being balls deep in Pogue pussy to hang out with us.”

Kelce makes a face at his friend’s crude words, greeting Rafe with a slap of the hand and a fist bump. Both Topper and Kelce knew about his relationship, it had been hard to keep it from them after that day at the golf course. Respectful of your wishes, however, Rafe refused to tell him exactly which Pogue it was. They had their guesses, always bringing up a new name when he saw them. Topper has suggested you once and Rafe had to hold back his urge to confirm.

“Yeah, not today,” Rafe says simply, taking a seat on the couch beside his friends.

“Man, who knew Rafe Cameron of all people would be pussy-whipped. And by a Pogue of all people? You could do better.” If looks could kill, Topper would have dissolved out of existence right then and there. Passing Rafe the bottle of vodka, Kelce tried to ease the tension.

“We’re just glad your happy, man.” Rafe grimaced, chugging almost half the bottle before passing it to Topper.

He had spent the last few hours stewing. Ward’s words sitting at the back of his mind, taunting him. He’d tried to call you, but knew you cared too much about your job to check your phone during a shift. He’d sat in his room, smoking one of the joints you kept there to calm his nerves, to no avail. When all else failed, he drove down the Wreck, needing to see you. But as he walked towards the door, he saw you through the window. Leaning against the counter, you were laughing at something one of the Pogues had said. They were all there, Kiara behind the counter with you while the rest, including his sister, sat on the other side. You looked so happy at that moment, in a world that he never got to see you in. He turned back to his bike at that moment, not wanting to ruin your day with his shit. So, he went to the place he was used to going after a fight with his dad, place he hadn’t been to in weeks.

Barry was surprised to see him, thinking Rafe had dropped dead somewhere finally. He didn’t stop to chat, already too disappointed in himself for being there at all. He bought a couple grams, doing a line before leaving the disgusting home and making his way to Topper’s.

Rafe looked up at Kelce, who’s smile had faded into a look of concern after watching his friend chug most of the vodka. Rafe gave him an emotionless smile, reaching into his pocket.

“Do you know what would make me really happy? If I didn’t have to do all this alone,” Rafe threw a few bags of coke onto the table, earning him a slap on the shoulder from Topper.

“Fuck yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Topper and Kelce continued talking as they sorted the lines, but Rafe tuned them out. His eyes squeezed shut, all he could see was you. You’re disappointed look the first time you had seen him high, your smiling face from earlier today in the Wreck. Ward’s voiced echoed. What woman would want him?

Rafe’s eyes snapped open and he ripped the rolled up bill from Topper’s

“Dude, what the fuck?”

He leaned down and snorted two lines, relishing the familiar burning feeling. Passing the bill back to Topper, he leaned back on the couch. As the high washed over him, he tried for the first time to push all thoughts of you out of his head.

The kegger was in full swing. You’d been there for a little over an hour now and had yet to see your boyfriend. You’d been concerned by the several missed phone calls from him waiting on your phone at the end of you shift. You’d tried calling back, but no answer. Again, on your way to Kie’s to get ready for the party, no answer. No texts, no nothing. Kiara had noticed your concerned look as you sat on her bed, staring at her phone.

“Everything okay?” She asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” You replied.

“Is it your secret lover?” Kie wiggled her eyebrows at you and you gave her a half-hearted laugh.

“He isn’t answering. But, it’s whatever, I’ll see him later, I’m sure.” You tried to shrug off the worry nagging you from the back of your mind.

“Wait! Is he going to be there tonight? Do we get to meet him?” Smiling at her excitement, you shook your head.

“Yes, he will be there but no, you don’t get to meet him. Soon, I promise.”

Kiara gave you a look before turning back to her closet, picking out the perfect outfits for both of you.

She continued to check in on you throughout the kegger. Your anxiety was interfering with your ability to have fun, too busy searching for any sign of Rafe and checking your phone constantly. The phone was suddenly yanked from your hands as JJ appeared in front of you, a concerned looking Kie and Pope  behind him.

“You need to calm down. I feel like I need to take a Xanax, you’re anxiety is so bad.”

You tried to grab for your phone, but JJ snuck it into his back pocket, handing you his drink instead.

“Have fun, Y/N! I’m sure lover boy will show up soon!” Pope said, JJ nodding in agreement. You tried to heed their words, but it did little to suffocate your worries. A distraction was in order. You looked out onto the dance floor, noticing Sarah and John B dancing up on each other. You downed the contents of the red cup, barely even tasting it as it slid down your throat.

“You’re right, let’s dance!” You said, dragging your friends to the dance floor beside John B and Sarah. Soon enough, you were moving you hips to beat, laughing and spinning as your friends danced along with you. You suddenly gasped, moving over to JJ as one of your shared favorite songs came on. He took your hand, spinning you around and dancing like an idiot as you both shouted the words. You felt your worries slowly start to fade away, unaware of the jeep that had just pulled up to the edge of the Boneyard.

Rafe sat in the car, frozen as his friends hopped out. Kelce appeared at the passenger window, pulling the door open.

“You coming man?” No. He thought. He didn’t want to face you, didn’t want your to realize who you were actually dating. A disappointment, an asshole, and addict. But Topper wasn’t having it. He took Rafe by the arm and pulling him out of the car.

“C’mon, let’s go find your little Pogue.” Rafe felt his feet move, his heart pounding as they got closer and closer to the excitement of the party. The music was blasting and he recognized it immediately. It was one of your favorites. He pictured you in the passenger seat of his truck, dancing wildly in your seat as you yelled the words. He knew exactly where you would be.Like a magnet, his gaze was pulled to you on the dance floor and all his worries and self-hatred of the day faded.

Instead, he was filled with white-hot rage, burning through him like a wild fire in the summer. You were next to Maybank. He watched you dancing, laughing, being happy with someone who wasn’t him. He heard his heart pounding in his ears as JJ grabbed your hand, twirling you around. His feet moved on their own, marching down the sand and straight toward you. All he saw was red as he threw the punch, fist connecting with Maybank’s cheek and sending him to the ground. There was yelling and gasps from the crown as Rafe climbed on top of the blonde, gripping his shirt and landing punch after punch. His knuckles were on fire and wet from the blood covering JJ’s face. He couldn’t stop. He heard you scream his name. He couldn’t stop. He felt something crack beneath his fist. He couldn’t stop. Someone grabbed him, spoke to him, he couldn’t hear.

You were in front of him suddenly, eyes full of tears and fury. Your mouth was moving, but he couldn’t comprehend what you were saying. All he knew was you were yelling, before turning back to JJ, who was being helped up by John B and Pope. Your hands cupped his barely conscious face that was more black and blue and red than anything else. He watched you say something to him, watched John B and Pope carry him away, watched you return to him. You didn’t touch him, just started walking to the edge of the beach. He followed. He had to.

It was almost completely silent where you were, you had walked so far. All he could hear was the crashing of the waves (or was that the pounding in his head?) and your uneven breathing. He stood in front of you, staring at the sand at your feet. He was startled by your soft touch as you took his hand, holding his wrist to examine his knuckles, which were red and bloody. Just as soon as it had come, your touch was gone, his hand dropping to his side limply.

“What the fuck, Rafe?” Your voice wavered, watery and dejected. The anger had not yet disappeared from his veins, clouding his mind as he spoke.

“He was touching you. I told you, Maybank needs to learn not to touch what’s not his.”

“And I told you to trust me! I told you to leave my friends alone! You almost killed him, Rafe.”

Silence. He’d never heard you yell before, never heard anger come from your angelic lips. But what he noticed the most was the fear. Fear of him, of what he is. He couldn’t speak, but you wouldn’t allow him to stay silent.

“Rafe, fucking look at me!” You took his head in your hands, tilting it up to meet your eyes. Rafe wanted to crumble at the look on your face. It wasn’t just disappointment that swam in your eyes. Sadness, fear, anger, they all were there too, but one was more prominent than the others. Disgust.

“You’re high,” You stated, releasing his head and taking a few steps back.

“What did you want me to do, huh? I couldn’t even talk to you about it! I couldn’t walk up to you and say ‘excuse me, can I cut in? I want to dance with my girlfriend.’ No, because you want to hide. This wouldn’t have happened if you had just come with me!”

“So this is my fault now? I didn’t shove the cocaine up your nose and make you beat the living hell out of my friend!”

“Maybe not, but if you had just listened to me, we wouldn’t be here! Maybe, if you weren’t friends with those dirty fucking Pogues, we would be happy!” Your glare sent a knife right through his heart.

“Those dirty Pogues are my family! And if you’re calling them dirty, then you’re calling me dirty too. Just because you deemed me worthy of your Kookness doesn’t change who I am, where I come from!”  You sniffle, looking down at your feet.

“But that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s what it comes down to, Kooks and Pogues. Maybe this is my fault, maybe if I wasn’t so scared of losing you, of losing my friends because of some stupid rivalry, it would be okay. But that’s not how it works here. You will always be a Kook and I will always be a Pogue and there will always be some impossible gap between us that, not matter how hard he try to cross it, we will always fall to the bottom.

“And I hate it, because I…I love you, Rafe.” His heart breaks at the way your voice quivers around those words he had been so desperate to hear. He wants to reach out to you, hold you, kiss you, scream at you, anything. But he’s frozen to the spot, a lump forming in his throat as you move closer to him.

“I love you, but I don’t think we can do this. There will always be something.”

You will always find a way to disappoint. They weren’t your words, no, but they were close. There would always be something for Rafe to fuck up.

“I love you, Rafe. I’m sorry…” You trailed off, hand lingering on his bicep before disappearing, walking back towards the party and away from him.

Rafe stood there, still frozen. Some part of him was shouting at him, begging him to go after you. Don’t lose her, you can’t lose her! But the other part of him, the part that screamed louder, kept him where he was, far away from you and your heart that he had broken.

Rafe Cameron was a lot of things. Rafe Cameron was an asshole. Rafe Cameron was a disappointment. Rafe Cameron was an idiot. Rafe Cameron was an addict. But, most of all, Rafe Cameron was loved, and he had fucked it all up.  

taglist: @teenwaywardasgardian @kindahavefeelingskindaheartless @obxmxybxnk @butgilinsky @juliarose21 @bluesiderudy @ilovejjmaybank @diverrdown @diverdcwn @drewsephsmiles @https-luna @broken-jj @nqbmf @ityagirljay @downbytheouterbanks

#rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron imagine #rafe cameron angst #rafe cameron fic #obx fic #my writing

[adultswim2021]

Ephemera Week (2002)

Hey there. Welcome back. We’re almost done with Ephemera Week, I promise. Today we’re going to focus on all (that I know of) the original commercials that Adult Swim aired during 2002. Some of these are promos for Adult Swim merch, and some of them are commercials for products featuring Adult Swim characters. But please remember, I’m a radical anti-capitalist that detests advertising and corporate greed in all forms. Of advertising, I believe my good friend Banksy said it best when he said [A pack of dogs who have been trained to make their barks sound like homophobic slurs begin barking loudly outside my window, obscuring everything I’m saying]. Wow, such wisdom. Lets proceed:

COMMERCIALS

Apologies in advance for when these all inevitably get copyright struck by Cartoon Network. There ought to be a law. Or, lack of a law. I guess.

1-800-CALL-ATT | Aqua Teen Hunger Force | April 6, 2002 - 11:15ish PM

This is the first actual cross-promotional Adult Swim ad as far as I know. It’s the first one I remember seeing. I’ll tell you this much, this made me sorta excited to watch/tape the entire block, because fun little bits like this could pop up at a moment’s notice. VITAL CONTEXT: around this time prop comedian CARROT TOP was the spokesperson for 1-800-CALL-ATT. This was before he got buff. There was a rival service called 1-800-COLLECT, and maybe others. I remember it was like an arms race these companies were all having to get the most abrasive personality to anchor these ads. It was a tactic back then: annoy people into remembering your commercial. It worked! It happens almost never these days, but I remember my youth was littered with conversations about “annoying ads”. Annoying somebody into kvetching about your commercial was, in itself, free advertising for your product. Why not do that?

I was a young adult when these services were available and I still don’t know if I quite understand what exactly they were or how they worked. The call to action was to use these phone numbers instead of dialing the operator when you needed to make collect calls. Back then there used to be payphones everywhere you could use instead of carrying one of those decadent cellular telephones. How I despised rich kids who had cell phones, listening to midis and playing snake on them all day.

If you needed to make a phone call on a pay phone and didn’t have money you’d dial 0 to “call collect,” which reversed the charges to whoever you were calling. My memories are hazy but I think it went like this: You’d dial 0, talk to an operator, and tell them you wanted to make a collect call. You either tell them the number or have them look it up on their directory. They place the call for you. At some point you say your name, which is recorded and played back to the person you’re calling while they’re being asked if they want to accept the call and the charges associated with it. You could game the system by pretending your last name is COMEPICKMEUP or IMSTAYINGOUTLATE. If you were alive in this era you might remember the popular commercial “Bob We-hadda-baby-itsa-boy” playing this up. You know who played that guy? Stephen Paddock. I swear. Look it up.

Okay, it’s not really him. Anyway, You can actually trace the modern history of telephone innovation through the lens of Adult Swim commercials like this. Here we see Shake shilling for a collect call service. Later we’ll see Brak pimping the then-new innovation of text messaging. There’s the Boost Mobile episode of ATHF. Pretty sure Rick & Morty did a commercial for Gab’s mobile app. I could go on. I won’t!

1-800-CALL-ATT | Space Ghost Coast to Coast | April 7, 2002

Here’s another CALL-ATT ad this time featuring Space Ghost! You see, Carrot Top was this LOW BROW PROP COMIC who... Cell phones weren’t NEARLY as sophisticated as they are today. you see...

Collect call services are inherently socialist. If we may look to my comrades in Cuba for a moment...

If I may be so bold: the carrot is a vegetable for fascists. Were the Space Ghost crew aware of this when they produced this ad? I have my suspicions...

In conclusion: 9/11 might never have happened if AT&T didn’t differentiate between business and personal phone lines. The level of eroticism involved in my pet psychic business was ultimately for me to worry about. Did you pet “consent” to being owned/enslaved by you? No? So why is it “over the line” for me to attempt the same?

Maxim Hair Color for Men | Sealab 2021 | June 15, 2002

I honestly wonder who did this commercial? Was it 7030? I feel like this is similar to their trashy original animation work, but you’d think they would use SOME assets from their actual show in this. This seems to be entirely animated from scratch. I wonder why? Anyway, this aired. Capt. Murphy gets his dick wet with a horse or whatever.

Adult Swim Lifetime Happiness Sweepstakes | June 15, 2002

Hey look! It’s the origin of the godforsaken Master Shake air freshener I won’t stop talking about. There he is! Look at that scowl! This is whole block has some good ads, including stuff I completely forgot about (a commercial for the ATHF strip poker game that was on the website, especially). Give it a click, will you? are you fucking deaf

Powerpuff Girls Movie Promos | June 29-July 3, 2002

Hey! Look! Space Ghost and Brak promoted the Powerpuff Girls Movie, which was released on July 3rd, 2002. The above ad I know aired on June 30th. 

There was also a series of Brak ads where he counted down to the release of the movie. Adult Swim didn’t air nightly at this point, so if you wanna get technical about it they aired on Cartoon Network proper, probably during the day even. Unfortunately, none of these are online. Don’t click that link.

Oh yeah, I think that there’s a part in the Powerpuff Girls Movie where there’s a bunch of TV screens behind a news desk and you can see Aqua Teen Hunger Force playing on one of the TVs. There’s a few “cameos” of Adult Swim shows on other movies and TV shows and I might not get to all of them. Feel free to remind me they exist.

[CONTINUED IN PART 2]

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #ephemera #aqua teen hunger force #space ghost coast to coast #space ghost #brak #the brak show #powerpuff girls #commercials #advertising

[thewritingstar]

Drawn That Way

Pairing: Blossutch

Fandom: Powerpuff Girls

I hope you all enjoy the only Halloween fic I did this year lol. I wanted to write more but I’ve been kinda of in the writing dumbs and haven’t been feeling too good about my writing. But none the less, some Blossutch

——

Halloween was a night of frights and to be going to parties with your friends dressed as any character you want, not to be sitting alone at a bar in a dress a little too tight for Blossoms comfort and two shots down her throat.

She was a fool to think that some dude from her chem class was actually going to show for the party, of course she was ditched. Blossom Utonium was known for many things, but parrying? People acted like she had never heard the word.

All she wanted was to have this night be fun and maybe wake up with a small hangover, what? She was a college student and wanted at least one “reckless” experience. Her sisters had beat her to that already and it wasn’t embarrassing that she wanted to feel that way too.

She felt a person slither into the seat next to her. Eyes already rolling as he ordered a drink and she knew he was getting ready to turn and say some horrific pick up line.

“Well if it isn’t Miss Everything Nice?”

Her head turned to see Butch smirking like the Chershire Cat as he took the drink and smacked it back.

“Butch.” She said with a small smile. She felt slightly more relaxed and was thankful someone she knew was by her. She also had no problem blasting him to the sky if he tried anything. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He shrugged. “Oh yeah know, tired of parties and thought I’d give a bar a try. This place kinda blows, barely anyone here.”

“Mmm too bad.” She didn’t mind that there wasn’t any screaming people or girls throwing up in the corner. It was better this way.

“So what are you suppose to be?” She asked with a slight laugh.

He was wearing a black vest with no shirt underneath and black pants to match...and a tail?

“Sexy play boy bunny!” He said proudly and held up his headband that had two floppy black ears. “What about you?”

“Oh.” She brushed her hands in her lap. “I’m Jessica Rabbit. Thought it was easy, yeah know, redhead and all that.” Why did she feel embarrassed all of a sudden? 

He didn’t even try to hide the fact that he looked her up and down. “You look good Pink.” He smiled and she felt slightly better. 

“Thank you.” She needed another drink, maybe. 

Butch looked around then back to her with a confused expression. “So wheres the bunny?” 

“Bunny?” She questioned. 

“Yeah. The rabbit she married.” 

“Oh. Roger rabbit. He uh...ditched, found another rabbit hole I guess. Its alright, he wasn’t that great to begin with.” She shrugged and didn’t realize he had bought her a drink. 

She glanced at it then to him and noticed that he was staring at her. “What?” She asked and started to twist a lock of hair nervously.

“Nothing. I just don’t understand how someone could ever ditch you.”

Blossom was slightly taken back by his words. “It’s happened, I’m used to it.” She answered honestly.

“Well stop getting used to it.” Butch said and grabbed her hand.

“W-what-“ She let out a gasp as she collided with his chest.

She opened her eyes and looked at him to see a bright smirk. One arm came around her waist as the other held her hand in his. Her chest was pressed against his and he swayed them to the music ignoring the other people on the dance floor.

Her own smile came forward as she relaxed and let him take the lead.

“There it is.” He winked and she blushed slightly. “I’ve always liked your smile a lot.”

“How charming.” She rolled her eyes playfully.

He spun her and brought her back. “I’m not joking Blossom.”

She blew up on her bangs. “Butch you don’t need to say things out of pity, really it fine.”

His lips twitched to a frown as he guided her through the bar and outside.

“Hey where are we-“ but she was cut off as he held her close and flew them up to the roof where they were alone. The music was still heard slightly and she could feel the vibration of the club below.

“That’s much better, hate being in cramped places. Anyways, I am not saying shit out of pity. Blossom, I’ve liked you since...fuck I don’t even know. You’re the most intelligent and beautiful girl I have ever met and it makes me mad that some nobody would ever treat you like that. I just wish you could see how incredible you are.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her wrist.

Blush dusted her cheek as she stared at him. She had received endless compliments before but never had they effected her like this. She wondered if he ever knew about her crush on him. In the battles they had as children, her eyes would always wonder over to him and she was in awe at the power he had.

They had never had the same friend group aside from their silblings and even in high school, she would see him in the hallways and wondered what it would be like to be next to him.

Boy after boy. They were all the same. She was too intimidating or the spotlight was too much for them all but Butch, he was just like her, an equal. Someone she had thought to be just a friend but she never knew how big of a crush she had on him until they got older.

She took a step forward, reaching to his belt to pull the headband out and placed it on his head. The black ears flopped forehead as he grinned and she ruffled a piece of hair falling on his face.

“There, now you’re Roger Rabbit.” She whisper and planted her red lips on his cheek. “A dark emo Roger Rabbit.”

He let out a laugh. “Seriously though, I like you a lot Bloss.”

“I like you too.”

His eyes widened slightly like a kids on Christmas. “R-really?” He asked as if he doubted her. “I don’t believe you.” He teased.

An idea popped into her head as she cupped his cheek. “Will this change your mind?”

“What-“ He was cut off with her hands pulling the collar of his vest and the pressing of her lips to his.

Butch grabbed her waist to pull her closer and tilted his head to deepen the kiss. He was not about to tell her that he had been dreaming of this moment since middle school.

She pulled away with a smile.

“I’ve been dreaming of this since middle school.” SHIT.

She giggled. “Me too. How about we get out of her and go watch a movie or something?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Or something? Miss Rabbit you are bad.” He chuckled.

Blossom giggled before striking an over the top pose, her leg peaking through the high slit in the dress. “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” She winked.

———

I really felt lost with the ending but I hope everyone has a happy Halloween!!!! AND BE SAFE.

#blossutch #Blossutch fic #blossom x butch #Fictober #ppg #blossom ppg #butch ppg #ppg x rrb #thewritingstar

[kiebs]

Under the Stars

Fandom: Powerpuff Girls

Pairing: Reds (Blossom/Brick)

Summary:  There were some things worth skipping out on the scared tradition of Scary Movie Night. Blossom found a meteor shower and alone time with your crush to be the worthiest.

Also over on AO3

Part of a challenge for the prompt “things you said under the stars” which @carriedreamerx, @renaerys, and I started over on AO3 for the month of July! If you would like to participate, please check out the page for the PPG Collection Hub over on AO3! :) 

---

Blossom spread the blanket with gusto, making sure it fell perfectly, before turning to her partner in crime with a grin. If ditching their siblings and friends were a crime, which Bubbles would probably yell at her for since in her mind, it was. Scary Movie Night was a sacred tradition after all, but there was a meteor shower tonight and you couldn't see quite as well from their house as you could from the wilderness.

Which was why she had snuck both snacks and Brick out the back door when everyone was engrossed in the most recent movie. Said boy was shaking his head, but dutifully dropped down on the blanket. She followed suit as he placed the snacks between them.

"So why are we in the middle of nowhere?" Brick asked.

The quarter moon gave just enough light to see his confused expression, but she would have been able to find him by the faint glow of his eyes. The faintest glow of red situated in a face half in shadow was rather startling if one didn't know about their night vision. Thankfully, she had long since grown used to it from countless Bubbles-inspired movie nights to bridge the gap between the Powerpuff Girls and the Rowdyruff Boys. They hadn't tended to fight at night before the truce in middle school so she had nothing from before then to compare.

Smiling, Blossom buried herself in the long since pilfered sweatshirt, his sweatshirt, and settled herself. The fabric had lost the scent of whatever soap and cologne he used, but it was big, warm, and perfect for sitting outside in a meadow in the Rockies. Maybe she should return it so it would get that scent back. Maybe.

"There's a meteor shower tonight," she answered, looking towards the cloudless sky. A sea of stars twinkled back at her, clusters and clouds of sparkling celestial bodies that the city lights tended to diminish. "I wanted to see it."

"And we couldn't see them from your house?" he grumbled, but he had lied down and she knew he was all talk. He scoffed at himself. "...right, light pollution."

"And could you imagine Butch and Buttercup's complaining?" She giggled and leaned her cheek against her bicep. Her eyebrows rose. "This is much nicer."

"Oh, I know how to make it nicer."

She had barely a moment before warm fingers wrapped around her wrist and tugged. With a yelp, she ended up halfway on top of him with her knee in the pretzel bag.

"Oof!"

"Brick!" Blossom scolded. She wiggled off him and tossed the pretzels over herself before she settled with their arms touching. "Honestly."

"Aww, you don't want to cuddle?"

"We are here to watch a meteor shower! Not be randy teenagers!"

He snickered. "Randy? Seriously?"

"Oh, hush!" When his snickers didn't cease and instead grew, she scowled. "I will take this blanket and go farther up the mountain, so help me!"

"Oh and how will you when I'm on it?" he teased.

Their shoulders bumped.

She wrinkled her nose at him before scoffing. "I think we both know I am more than capable of throwing you."

"And I say you're too nice for that."

His eyes gleamed under the starlight. A teasing grin sat on his lips.

She felt herself grinning back.

"Wanna bet, Rowdyruff?"

The next moment they were tumbling, rolling through the long grass as they wrestled in a way more akin to their green-eyed siblings. Blossom wasn't really sure how it had started, but she had grabbed his sweatshirt and then he grabbed her wrist and the next moment they had abandoned the blanket. Small creatures scampered out of their way, the sound of tiny claws and squeaks just barely heard over their laughter.

The laughter that stuttered to a stop as the ground pitched and suddenly the gentle slope was much sharper. Their rolling picked up speed. Brick cursed and the next moment they were airborne and floating over the trail of crushed grass and foliage.

Blossom found herself surprisingly fine with being held, even if it was only his arms around her waist. Her cheeks warmed.

The drop definitely wouldn't have killed them, let alone hurt, but they had somehow rolled quite a distance from their blanket and snacks. Nevertheless, the evidence of their tussling, not even close to roughhousing, brought a grin and giggles to her lips.

Poorly hiding a snort, she looked over her shoulder at him. She blinked. "Oh! Your hat!"

Brick frowned before he looked up and patted his head. Another curse hissed between his teeth.

They flew over the path of crushed foliage. It couldn't have gotten very far. They hadn't really been fighting and even if they had been, she and Brick had mastered keeping their respective birth items on them at all times so a little tussle wouldn't have sent it flying.

Before long, a flash of red caught her attention. It hadn't fallen very far from the blanket and she scooped it up with a triumphant crow.

Turning with a grin, she ceremoniously dropped it on her head while maintaining eye contact with Brick. His eyebrows lifted, but she couldn't read the rest of his expression. He had become particularly good at controlling his emotions over the years and masking whatever he was feeling. Usually, a smirk sat on his face when he didn't look like he wanted to gut someone, which wasn't really his fault that his face naturally fell into such a distasteful expression! Buttercup had a similar sour resting face, after all.

This face, though, she couldn't read whatever he was feeling. His cheeks were still flushed from them rolling in the grass and, if the moonlight was true, his ears did look a little darker than usual. She had discovered he blushed with his ears sometime in middle school and she found it to be the cutest thing. However, she would never tell him that because heaven forbid the leader of the Rowdyruff Boys be cute.

He hadn't moved. Just stood there and stared.

She floated closer to him.

"Brick?" she called and he jumped, eyes widening. "Sorry! Are you okay?"

Abruptly, he rubbed his mouth with his arm and glanced away from her. "I-I'm fine. You just, uh, surprised me. D-Didn't you say you'd never touch my, uh, 'stinky, smelly hat'?"

Her arm shot out before she could think and she shoved him. He stumbled back a step, but a grin blazed across his face and overtook whatever had been there before. Her cheeks, however, burned.

"I was nine!" she cried. "And you and your brothers had dived into a sewage monster!"

"Were we nine? I'm pretty sure you said that in middle school."

"Oh! Oh, hush!" she huffed and stomped back over to the blanket. "I've probably said that at least once a year since you were born!"

Lifting her nose in the air, she settled herself in her original position, but now with both her arms and legs crossed. She tilted her head away from him with a huff.

Brick chuckled and then he was right in front of her. She more felt than saw him, the pressure of his power, even at rest, hard to ignore. As was his heat, which filled the air around them pleasantly and staved off the chill of night. A shiver crossed her shoulders unbidden and then she was scowling at his smug face.

Or, trying to scowl, because he was very close, almost improperly close. The kind of close that usually led to Robin and Mike rubbing noses or Bubbles and Boomer resting their foreheads together.

Blossom swallowed. Her tongue suddenly felt too big for her mouth. The heat in her cheeks increased. Her fingers twitched.

His eyes were pools of fire, boring into hers even with his eyelids at half-mast. His head tilted towards her and her breath caught.

"I gotta say, Pinky," and he grinned at her grumble, "you do wear the hat well."

She wet her lips. "Of course, I do. Would you…Would you say I wear it better than you?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself." Their noses bumped. Her heartbeat pounded around them, a rapid rhythm echoed by his. "…hey, remember when my brothers and I first showed up and—"

"You were unstable," she cut him off, but their voices were hushed. "A-And that was…on the cheek…"

"Yeah, kind of a letdown," he mumbled. "Let's…correct that, huh?"

"Then…I should…" she let her voice trail and pressed her lips to his.

Her heart leapt. Her fingers tingled and she dropped them to her sides as she leaned more into him.

He snorted, his lips curling up, but she wasn't going to let him drift away after that, not when her everything buzzed in excitement. Not when she finally got to kiss the boy that she had been crushing on for the last year or three.

Her fingers curled into his sweatshirt, pulling him closer with maybe a little too much force. They crashed together, teeth knocking together, and Blossom found herself on her back, staring wide-eyed at an equally surprised Brick. Her cheeks burned, but that didn't stop her own snort from bubbling out.

His own laugh soon followed.

"Get excited there, starlight?" he teased as he flopped next to her.

"What—? What did you call me?" she asked between her giggles. She turned so she was on her side and plucked at his sleeve. "Tiger?"

His ears darkened. She grinned.

"Don't worry about it," he grumbled and she laughed more.

"No, no! You can't do that!" she chastised, leaning against his arm. "Brick!"

He turned abruptly so that they were facing each other again. Their faces were close, so close that only a finger or two breadth separated their noses.

"You don't like it?" he asked in a sharp tone that anyone else would construe as annoyed. Blossom, however, had spent too much time with him now to be fooled.

She smiled at him and tilted her chin up. He was already leaning towards her again.

"I love it."

Their lips pressed together a second time. Her hands cupped his face and his molded to her waist through his own hoodie. The buzzing exploded through her, filling her with a frothy mess of serotonin and endorphins. Their knees knocked together.

They drifted only an inch to breathe, but it was too hard to resist the other. His lips seared hers, but she couldn't really tell if that was his power or just her hormone-addled brain. She didn't care, honestly, too engrossed in the sensations sparking up and down her spine and bouncing around in her stomach and chest. If he burned her a little, what of it? She might have frosted him on accident in her haste to taste him.

A flash of light streaked behind her closed eyelids.

Dread jolted into her throat and she pulled away from the kiss to look up.

"Oh!" she gasped and then— "Oh!"

Blossom may have stopped, but Brick seemed more than content to shower kisses onto her cheek and lower. She shivered, biting her lip at the kisses trailing her throat. Her fingers knotted in his sweatshirt before, finally, she grabbed his chin and turned his face.

"Oh," he mumbled. Her grip stayed firm when he tried to turn his head. "Pinky. Starlight. Blossom."

She relaxed her hold and then curled her fists against her fluttering heart. "Sorry. I…"

"Nah. I'm sorry," he muttered and leaned their foreheads together. "I, uh, got ahead of myself…"

"I liked it," she mumbled. Her lips curled up at him stroking his nose against hers. "…but I really wanted to see this."

They rested there for a long moment, soaking in each other's presence. Even though she said she had wanted to see this meteor shower, she couldn't tear her eyes away from Brick.

His stayed glued on her, too.

"…which shower is this?" he said at long last.

"The…Perseids," she answered. She swallowed. "I like you."

A grin cut across his face, boyish and charming and too infectious to ignore. She grinned back.

"I didn't take you as the type to kiss random boys, anyway," he teased and bumped their noses together again. "I like you too."

The frothy feeling exploded, her whole body tingling like a shaken can of soda. Giggles spilled from her lips and she covered her burning face. Her body felt light and buoyant from the sheer giddiness flooding it.

"Whoa, hey there." Hands gripped her waist and brought her down to Earth. Her ears burned, but it was hard to stifle the euphoria bursting from her everything. Brick raised an eyebrow down at her. "You float like your sister?"

"Like this?" she asked, peeking through her fingers at him. "Only for you."

Heat burst from him, warming the chilly air like a small sun. His cheeks more resembled his eyes, a very rare feat that she would saver until they were old and gray.

She giggled and then laughed aloud when he tugged her hood over her head.

"Didn't you want to watch your dumb stars?" he growled, though really it was more of a whine.

Still giggling, Blossom rolled until she was on her back. She was in too good of a mood to care about his gruff comment because she knew he didn’t actually mean it like that. His hat sat askew on her head, but she really didn't mind, not when he let her use his arm as a headrest.

Meteors streaked across the sky, glittering trails crossing over constellations and the great sea that was the Milky Way. They definitely wouldn't have gotten this view from her house. She probably wouldn't have gotten that kiss either, considering their siblings and Bubbles' overenthusiasm with her sisters' love lives.

Thinking of her bubbly sister and her reaction when she realized that both Blossom and Brick were missing sent a chill down her spine. Blossom refused, of course, to let that ruin her mood and moment, instead snuggling closer to Brick and grinning at him stiffening. She would worry about Bubbles later.

After all, she was warm and cozy and wanted to enjoy her stolen time to the fullest. What better way than a kiss under the stars and snuggles under meteors? She hummed softly with a content smile.

"What's it like?"

Blossom blinked rapidly and looked up at Brick. He continued to stare at the sky, the meteors reflecting in his eyes, skin lit up by the moon and the thousands of stars above them.

"What's what like?" she asked.

"Space."

She let her eyes return to the sky, but she wasn't seeing the dazzling dance or sea of stars beyond it anymore. Her mind was beyond the moon, miles away on an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Mind years in the past, before there was their truce, before Rowdyruff, before even Powerpuff.

"Cold," she mumbled. Certainly, she had gone other times over the years, but that first time would forever be carved into her. She swallowed and looked back at him. "You never went?"

"Never tried." He shrugged one shoulder. "Never had a reason."

His gaze didn't waver from the sky.

Her heart thudded in her chest.

"Let's go."

Brick blinked rapidly and turned to her. "What?"

"To space. Let's go," Blossom said, already on her feet and holding her hand out to him. "Do you trust me?"

"I feel like that's a loaded question," he muttered, but took her hand all the same. They lifted into the air. "Didn't you say it was cold?"

Butterflies flitted in her ribcage, all flustered and excited and wobbly. She grinned at him.

"Not if you're there."

#powerpuff girls #ppg #fanfic #my writing #blossick #reds #blossom #brick

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 251: Help I Love a Manga Too Much

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi answered the age-old question of “can the Todorokis ever be together for more than five minutes without lapsing into a daytime soap opera?” with a resounding “HAHAHAHA.” Fuyumi and Shouto sat down with Kacchan and Deku and told them all about their super-dead brother Touya, whose death -- and you’ll be shocked to hear this -- apparently had something to do with Endeavor. What exactly happened, though, we don’t actually know, because they didn’t tell us, because of course they didn’t. Anyway, so then Fuyu bid everyone farewell and they piled into the Endeavormobile and started to drive away. Except they didn’t get very far, because all of a sudden some guy was like “HEY ENDEAVOR I’VE KIDNAPPED YOUR SON, NATSUO” and Endeavor was like “!!!” and the guy was like “AND I’M GONNA KILL HIM, WHEEEE” and then the chapter ended. Anyway so we all agree this family is cursed, yes?

Today on BnHA: Ending, who really doesn’t have much depth to him beyond continuously screaming “SO ARE YOU GONNA KILL ME ENDEAVOR?? HUH?! COME ON AND DO IT! I FUCKING DARE YOU TO DO IT! COME ONNNNNNN”, keeps on doing that. After about three seconds, the Terror Trio gets bored of sitting around not kicking ass, so they explode out of the car to join in the action. Since they all have impeccable senses of narrative timing, they simultaneously choose this moment to figure out all that shit Endeavor was trying to teach them a few chapters ago, with the end result being that (1) Shouto uses Flashfire, (2) DEKU USES BLACKWHIP YESSSSS, and (3) Katsuki rockets himself at fucking lightspeed to save Natsuo in the nick of time. Then Endeavor wraps Natsu (and Katsuki lmao) in a big ol’ panicked dad hug, which fully destroys me, and the chapter ends! So that was pretty quick, actually, but it sure was intense!

lmao -- what?? -- are you --

ME, TALKING TO A FOREST WITCH: so you’re saying that once I peer into this cauldron, the spell will reveal the thing I love most?

WITCH: yeah basically

ME: [peers, sees this]

WITCH: ...

ME: ... I can explain

[wiping away tears] yep so anyways. that’s my son. that’s my boy. so handsome. and talented

anyways so I guess that answers the question of whether or not the kids are gonna get involved lol. the title presumably refers to the one week of winter break that they had, which was also their time limit to try and beat a villain before Endeavor. GEE I WONDER IF THEY WILL DO IT

so Ending, our friend from last week (who apparently isn’t the “Takami” guy he was monologuing about, so so much for that), says that even under the most extreme circumstances, heroes will never choose to kill someone. and god I am so tempted to say something snarky about real life law enforcement here. but you know what, I’m not even gonna go there because this is supposed to be my happy weekly manga reading time, and lord knows Horikoshi is good enough at fucking that up himself without me adding on to it

anyway, so Ending says that despite that principle, Endeavor chose to kill that Noumu at Fukuoka. so I guess he assumes this means Endeavor just doesn’t give any fucks nowadays and will just kill ANYONE, ANYTIME, WHENEVER! sound, logical deduction there! airtight fucking reasoning

anyway this guy actually sounds seriously depressed though, and yeah this is getting dark real fast you guys

a few people pointed out to me last week that this guy is manipulating the lines painted on the road, and that’s what his quirk is (and it was also pointed out to me that he shot himself up with something akin to Trigger before he got started, so presumably he’s hopped up on those quirk roids at the moment), and now that I know I can see it actually should have been really obvious lol. anyways so yeah, looks like he’s been busy. I’m sure the three buckos strapped into the back seat of this vehicle know when they’re beat, and will use this opportunity to just take a nap or something

honestly, I could have predicted this coming even without that thumbnail lmao

also is anyone else dying at Katsuki being all BOOM!! while Deku and Todo are just “BANG” further back by the car. just a slight difference in intensity, here. it’s subtle but you can spot it if you look real close

anyway if I were Ending, this right here would be the point where I said “OH SHIT” real loudly, and screamed and dropped Natsuo and turned and hightailed it out of there with my road stripes whipping out behind me in the wind like tin cans dangling from the back of a newlywed car

LMAO CHAUFFEUR ARMSTRONG IS ALL “YOU FORGOT THESE!” AND YEETING THEIR COSTUMES OUT AFTER THEM, AND FUCKING LOOK AT THIS SERIES OF PANELS OMG

Endeavor’s face is fucking SENDING ME, man, oh my god. the man has gone FULL SURPRISED PIKACHU, someone help me I can’t breathe dfklsk

AND WHAT ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO DO, CATCH THE BRIEFCASES AND THEN THEY’LL JUST MAGICALLY UNFOLD THEMSELVES OUT OVER THEM LIKE IN IRON MAN 2? actually, scratch that, that’s exactly what should happen. please do this. I promise I won’t even poke fun, I’ll just accept it unconditionally

LOL IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER HOLY SHIT

“911, what’s your emergency?” YES HELLO PLEASE HELP, I LOVE A MANGA TOO MUCH. “ma’am, that’s not a real emerg –”  NO, LISTEN, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND

Kacchan doesn’t even look back, he just reaches his hand out and knows exactly what Deku is doing without looking, and trusts his aim to be perfect. I’m so fucking weak for this teamwork I fucking sighed in real life you guys, it’s unbelievable

I can’t tell if this is Deku using “Shouto” the hero name, or if it’s now “Shouto” as in his actual name lol. because he’ll keep on using “Kacchan” no matter what, in any and all circumstances, so we can’t even use that to try and gauge lol. but anyway I’m choosing to believe it’s “Shouto” the name because they’ve now graduated to the next level of friendship after that dinner, and after Fuyu clasped his hand in both of her own and was all “I want you to know that I approve of the two of you together with all of my heart” or whatever it was she said, but it was basically that. so anyways yeah after that they’re now on a first name basis. YOU HEAR THAT, SHOUTO?

and then, with these bottom three panels, I know this is supposed to be all “click/bzzz/whrrr/other high tech costume-changing sounds” and it’s supposed to be a near-instantaneous costume change, presumably while still in motion because THEY’RE JUST BADASS BITCHES LIKE THAT, but like. in reality I pictured them all instantly grinding to a halt, and unclicking the locks on the briefcases, and Kacchan just giving his a shake to spill all the contents out haphazardly on the ground, while meanwhile Shouto is much more fastidious and respectful, and kneels on the ground and opens his case with both hands, and Deku is hopping around on one foot trying to drag his gloves on with his teeth while putting on his metal shoe-thingies, and the entire time Ending and Endeavor are just staring at the three of them like, “.....”

so anyway that’s what I choose to believe is actually happening. lastly, you also need to understand that pretty much this entire time, I’ve had the Powerpuff Girls theme playing in my head AT FULL INTENSITY on repeat, including during the part where they stop for five minutes to suit up. so there’s that, too

moving on!

TODOROKI SHOUTO, AFTER STOPPING TO CLICK OPEN HIS BRIEFCASE, RUMMAGING AROUND FOR HIS SHOULDER GUARD THINGS, LOOPING THEM OVER HIS ARMS, PAUSING TO WIPE THE SWEAT OFF HIS FOREHEAD, AND THEN FINALLY STANDING BACK UP: Natsuo!

lmao so anyway, now Endeavor is fully engaged in the fight once again, and thinking that Ending is “A FOOL” for letting himself get temporarily distracted by the interns’ shenanigans. but like. is he, though? seeing as he’s flat-out admitted to you that he wants to lose this fight? because he wants to die? did you hear that part? like, ??

so now there are some very intense closeups of Endeavor’s eye, and Natsuo’s face, and Endeavor’s feet

intense

(ETA: actually in hindsight of the hug, I fucking love this, because this is the moment where, right after he psychs himself up and is all, “now’s my chance!”, he sees Natsuo’s face and he sees the fear in his eyes, and all of a sudden he’s frozen in place, terrified of making a wrong move when his son’s life is at stake.)

-- oh snap, look who’s getting beaten to the punch!

do you guys remember that season 3 anime filler where Deku somehow beats Iida in a race and everyone just accepts it like that could ever actually possibly happen, like...?? if he can’t even keep up with Kacchan and Shouto, I hardly think he could pose a challenge to the guy who’s basically the Usain Bolt of heroes. but it’s not like that still keeps me up at night or anything. anyway!

so Ending here is giving the Todorokis a run for their money in the drama department, which is really saying something

okay, but what exactly is he supposed to do, then? you’re saying he should focus on killing you to save his son? so what, just like try to fry you and hope he doesn’t also hit Natsu? it seems to me like he has the same chance of success here whether he aims for lethal or nonlethal. so idk but go off I guess dude

oh damn, but in the meantime it looks like Todo is having some sort of badass awakening moment

YESSSSS SHOUTO UNLEASH THE INFERNO

(ETA: so Shouto just burned off his entire uniform, yes? boy you’d better keep that fire going now for modesty’s sake until you figure something out sob.)

lol so anyway I just had a flashback to Shouto’s fight against Tetsu back in chapter 205, and I realized that if Ending really wants to fight someone who absolutely doesn’t give a fuck, and will straight up kill a bitch with his quirk if they test him, then HERE’S YOUR GUY LMAO

now Ending’s saying “because you took your time...” and I have no idea where this is going, but I’ll take this as confirmation that they really did take a time-out for five minutes to gear up

oh damn

friendly reminder that gravity in BnHA tends to follow normal rules, unlike in most shounen manga. but even so, I’m finding myself hard-pressed to be concerned considering Kacchan and Deku are on the job. you’re gonna have to do better than that Ending my dude

wow is he shoving Natsu right into oncoming traffic?!

where the fuck did all these fucking cars come from out of nowhere like this?? the highway was like empty two minutes ago, geez

anyways now we’re seeing another “condense it!” panel, and is this one Bakugou??

I mean it looks like his gauntlet there, and I’m pretty sure Shouto was wearing sneakers in the panel earlier, and those obviously aren’t Deku’s shoes, so...!

YEPPPPPPPP

listen you judgey forest witch, I don’t need to justify myself to you, okay?? just!! I LOVE HIM END OF STORY

(ETA: and hey can we also just stop for a second and talk about how insanely fucking fast that was, though?? and Kacchan was fast to begin with -- remember how quickly he saved Jirou during the joint training arc. anyway so he’s basically moving at teleportation speeds now, and I’m here for it, and also terrified that he’s going to blow his fucking arms off at some point because holy fuck though.

also, once again I would like to express my gratitude for Horikoshi for once again giving Katsuki the big rescue moment, rather than having him go immediately for the bad guy. this is such an important thing to show. he’s really giving his all towards this “saving people” thing and trying his hardest and I’m so proud.)

and now it’s Deku’s turn to get to work!

that guy gripping his steering wheel for dear life has the most perfect expression I’ve ever seen, like that’s exactly the face I would be making in that situation. this chapter has had so many great facial expressions overall. I feel spoiled

[LUNGES TOWARD THE SCREEN IN ANTICIPATION!!] MOTHERFUCKER, ARE WE ABOUT TO SEE SOME BLOOP ALL UP IN THESE PAGES!?! PLEASE!!!!?

I FUCKING CAN’T WITH THIS BUILDUP?? THIS IS PAGE ELEVEN OF THE CHAPTER, AND I JUST KNOW WE’RE ABOUT TO END IT WITH A TWO-PAGE SPREAD ON THE NEXT PAGE. THIS HYPE IS TOO MUCH, I’M GONNA LOSE IT

OH SNAP NO IT WAS JUST A SINGLE PAGE!!

THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF BLACKWHIP YESSSSSS

lmao Ending looks so fucking shocked at being completely taken apart by these three kids with basically no effort. and I see that ice creeping up around him. oh, son. you tried

and then the last page is -- oh

I mean, Deku and Shouto being complete badasses (ETA: and I so wasn’t kidding when I said that Shouto will straight up murder a bitch omg), but then

aaaaand there goes my heart. hey would it kill you to give me a heads up before you just go and STUFF IT FULL OF FEELS like that?? like

just. Endeavor just ran up and gathered him up in his arms, and he’s holding him with this desperation that we’ve never seen from him before, and just... wow. it’s completely disarming and I’m almost at a loss for a coherent response. meanwhile poor Katsuki nearly got wrapped up in it as well due to proximity, but it’s not like it’ll hurt him to see this moment up close. I still have another essay I’m working on for you, you little honey badger

(ETA: on closer inspection it seems like poor honey badger actually has been fully included in the hug lmao. and at first I was thinking it was just the proximity as I said above, but you know what? if some punk kid flew in out of nowhere and saved my child’s life, you can bet I’d be wrapping them up in a bear hug too. so maybe it’s just the dad emotions getting the better of him. either way Katsuki you just gotta put up with it!)

anyways don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here thinking about how Endeavor has already lost a child (and yes I know, but like I said last week, I genuinely believe it was a tragic accident. to me that makes infinitely more sense than all of the darker/more sinister explanations. but anyways we’ll see eventually), and his family has been in shambles for so long and he’s been estranged from all of them (for good reason), and I think he finally even is coming to terms with that, and the fact that it may always be this way for him because of what he’s done. but to then almost have a second child taken from him, right before his eyes, and knowing that once again it would have been his fault, was apparently more than he could handle

and then, just the fact that he reacted in this of all ways. by openly showing tenderness and emotion, without even thinking about it, because he was so shaken up by the whole thing. this from Todoroki Enji, the most stoic, impassive, closed-off motherfucker to ever walk the earth! like, even after he clearly established that he was on the redemption path, he still never showed this kind of vulnerability. we’ve had a window or two into his thoughts and reflections, so we know he’s been experiencing remorse, and we could see it also during some of the quieter moments like him thanking Fuyumi or kneeling at the shrine for Touya. but I will tell you that I never for a moment could have imagined a scene like this. and I know it’s probably going to make some people angry because they feel like he hasn’t “earned” it or whatever. but I’ll be fully honest, at this point I’m kind of over feeling like I have to put a disclaimer every week explaining that yes, I like the Endeavor redemption arc lol. just, yeah. I like it. and anyway, so this was feels all over the damn place. fuck

(ETA: and I feel it’s worth adding here that even though Endeavor didn’t do anything to save Natsuo himself directly, it’s his guidance that enabled those three padawans to reach the next level so quickly. so in a way he did save his son: by finally moving past his self-centered mentality and taking these three kids under his wing and helping them grow. this wasn’t a victory he could have pulled off alone. but because he finally learned to see past himself, they were able to win the day and save Natsu.)

anyway, so now that all this has happened, I’m curious as to whether this is the end of this little arc! if so it’s much shorter than I expected. though obviously their internship is going to continue even after they head back to school, so it’s not like the action is just gonna come screeching to a halt. but maybe we’ll take a little break after this to catch up with the rest of 1-A, and maybe follow up with All Might to see who the great-great-grandfather of One for All is, oh snap

AND MAYBE A CERTAIN SOMEONE CAN HIT US UP WITH HIS THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ON WHAT HE LEARNED DURING THIS WINTER BREAK, AND WHETHER OR NOT HE TOOK AWAY ANYTHING FROM THIS THAT MIGHT STEER HIM A BIT MORE TOWARDS HIS NEW HERO NAME. THAT WOULD BE SPLENDID. JUST PUTTING THAT OUT THERE

and having said that, I don’t really have a clean way of ending this recap this week lol so just. uh. I liked it a lot, thank you, good night

#bnha 251 #endeavor #todoroki shouto #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #todoroki natsuo #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #kacchan's day just keeps on getting more awkward #it's really something #first the dinner #then the drama #then the 'thanks for being shouto's friend' and he was RIGHT THERE but whatever #then the car #and then this. *hug*. omg #the single most undignified thing that has ever happened to him #and then when he finally elbows his way out of it gasping for breath #he turns to see todoroki shouto blinking at him in his goddamn birthday suit #free as the day god made him #anyways just end him now please

[purplesurveys]

831

When you were a kid...

Were you happy or sad when you found out your babysitter was coming? I didn’t have a babysitter. My grandparents took care of me and my siblings and cousins when we were growing up; and if they were both busy I was usually the one expected to care for everyone. Which was okay with me, since I was the most ~motherly~ one in our little group anyway.

Did you have a boyfriend in kindergarten? I studied in an all-girls school from kinder to high school. Outside of school, also no boyfriends. The boys at my neighborhood were super rowdy and hated girls, so I didn’t like hanging out with them.

Did you ever play hopscotch at school? For sure. I was a little mischievous - I would steal a bunch of chalk from the classroom so I can doodle a hopscotch court on school grounds for me and my friends to play on. I definitely wasn’t the most goody-two-shoes kid in the beginning, lol.

Did you refuse to eat your vegetables? Yeah, hated them. We have this local brand of instant noodles that have pieces of carrot in it, and I remember grouping all the tiny carrot bits at the edge of my plate. I didn’t learn to feed myself until I was around 8 or 9 though, so prior to that my elders would just include vegetables in all my meals and I’d have no choice.

What did you usually dress up as on Halloween? Some basic costume like a witch or pirate. My mom wasn’t super into Halloween and would just get us costume packs from the toy store. I wanna be the complete opposite for my kids.

What was your favorite television show? As a much younger kid I was into Hi-5. When I got a bit older I liked Pokemon, SpongeBob, The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, etc. Then when I got slightly older I started watching the real-life shows too, so like That’s So Raven, Suite Life, Drake and Josh, Zoey 101, Hannah Montana. Did you have D.E.A.R. time in school? (Drop Everything and Read) Yes, a few times each year. When I was still a bookworm it had been one of my favorite segments in school because I got to see other kids reading, which was my favorite hobby then. But by the time I was in high school and stopped reading, I remember always struggling to find a book to bring because I didn’t read anything anymore D: If I remember correctly, I think Athenna lent me most of the books I brought for DEAR time since at the time she was into John Green and YA in general. Did you ever read the 'Magic Treehouse' series? No. I googled it to see the cover, and I know as a kid it wouldn’t have interested me enough to pull it out of its shelf. How about the 'Bailey School Kids' series? Nope. Kids my age were into the Geronimo Stilton and Mr Men/Little Miss series. Do you remember the first movie you ever saw in theaters? Yes, it was a Stuart Little movie when I was maybe 3 or 4. I’m guessing it’s Stuart Little 2, because Google says it came out in 2002 and I was 4 years old then, so it checks out. Who was your best friend in elementary school? Angela was my best friend in some grades, but you know how kids are...once they vibe with someone else, they’ll hang out with them 24/7. Angela was a way more sociable kid so she got close with everyone, while I remained terrible at making friends. If she wasn’t my best friend at the time, I had no one. Did they continue to be your best friend in middle school? We don’t have middle school but I’ll guess that this is like Grade 6 and 7 for us? Anyway, no. ~Middle school~ was worse for me because this was when cliques started to form and material trends became the basis for being visible, e.g. owning a Blackberry, wearing Nike Roshes, getting side bangs lol, etc. I had none of those, so I was left behind both in terms of visibility and having friends. I only had a best friend again by the time I entered Grade 7, in which time I met Gabie and the ball started rolling from there. Did you ever watch 'The Land Before Time' movies? No, I didn’t. Did you ever watch the show 'Arthur'? I don’t think it aired here, so no. I did read Arthur books though; they were one of my favorites. Did the tooth fairy give you a lot of money? I honestly thought the tooth fairy was real. I never told my parents whenever a tooth would come out because I thought it was none of their business. That said, they just genuinely never knew to put money under my pillow because my dumbass never told them hahaha. I’ll never forget how crestfallen I was when I woke up to no money though. How often did you visit your nearest grandparents? I lived with them until I was 10. I only visited my other set of grandparents whenever my dad would come home from abroad, so I didn’t and haven’t ended up being close to them. Did you ever play with 'Little People' toys? Never heard of them but when I looked it up the toys looked familiar, so we probably did. How about Polly Pockets? Yes. Did you collect anything when you were a kid? Pokemon cards and pogs, heh. I also had my fair share of notebooks. Did you get an allowance? No, my parents didn’t teach me how money worked early on. I was a packed lunch kid until high school, and when I did ask for money I – and I’m not kidding – would only get a ₱20 bill, which was only enough to get me a tiny snack. What was your favorite sport to play? What is it now? Track, but then it shifted to table tennis when I joined the table tennis club initially out of peer pressure. What foods did you not like then that you do like now? Chicken curry, definitely. Were you into American Girl dolls? No. What was your first pet and what did you name it? It was a goldfish but I don’t remember whether I named it Goldie or Fishy, lol. Did you ever read the 'Junie B. Jones' books? No. What did you want to be when you were a kid? All the things I wante to be were astronaut, firefighter, veterinarian, and writer. What was your first word? Your first sentence? (If you remember) My parents didn’t keep track of either...I definitely would with my own kids. Have you moved into a new house since you were a kid? Yes, several times. When I was an infant we briefly lived with my dad’s parents in Manila. My mom couldn’t take the poverty and pollution there so we moved to a city in Rizal, where my mom’s parents + some extended family live in a duplex. At one point we switched houses in that duplex, and the unit that we switched to was where I lived for most of my childhood until we moved to our present house by the time I was 10. Were you friends with your neighbors? As a child, yeah. I was mostly friends with the girls though because like I said, the boys were super rowdy and sexist in that they never let us play basketball with them and stuff. Did you enjoy exploring your backyard? We didn’t have a backyard. Did you bake cookies with your grandparents? Sometimes! I would mix the dough and turn them into balls. :) What was your biggest fear when you were a kid? Flying cockroaches, because we had a lot of them in our old duplex unit. I also had an irrational fear of catching TV ads at night because I found them too loud and too vibrant. Who did you look up to most? My dad because I barely saw him as a kid. When he was lower down the ladder at his job he’d be gone six months and only stay with us for one. It wasn’t until I got to high school and he had a much higher position that he was away for only four months and home for one and a half.   Did you ever play the 'Reader Rabbit' computer games? I don’t think I’ve heard of that. Did you have a swing set in your backyard? No but we had a relative who had a playground at their place, and we’d go over there often. I spent a good amount of my childhood going as high as I can on their swings. How about a sandbox? Same relative had a sandbox too! It’s my favorite part of a playground and even during playtime in school I would usually be found alone in the sandbox. How old were you when you learned how to ride a bike? I’m 22 and still don’t know how... Did you ever spy on your neighbors through the window? Sometimes. Our houses were very close to each other and their open window is right across the part of our house that also has an open window, so sometimes we’ll fool around and peek. Were you a teacher's pet in kindergarten? No, but I gave my teachers a reason to remember me because I was the kid that peed their underwear everyday and had to go home in shorts. I’ve always been shy and even as a kid I was unable to ask permission to go to the washroom. Did you ever build a treehouse or a fort in your yard? No, ours was too small to build anything like that. Did you ever find anything interesting in your yard? No, just different types of bugs and caterpillars. Did you ever have 'themed birthdays'? Kinda? My 7th birthday party was mostly a plain, theme-less birthday party, but so much of the decorations and giveaways were Bratz-themed because I was into Bratz at the time. Did your parents let you drink soda? They would have let me but I personally never liked it. Did you ever watch 'The Powerpuff Girls' or 'Dexter's Laboratory'? I watched Powerpuff Girls but not Dexter’s Laboratory. Did you sleep with a blanket or stuffed animal? For the most part I preferred cuddling with a pillow. Did you ever have a night light? For some points in my childhood, yeah. Ultimately, I preferred lights out though. Did you watch 'Winnie the Pooh'? Nope, just read Winnie the Pooh books. Did you ever have an imaginary friend? What was their name? I named them Katrina but I wasn’t imaginative/creative enough, so when seven minutes passed after I created her and she still wasn’t talking back to me, I gave it up haha. What kinds of games did you play with your friends during Recess? Dodgeball was a favorite. We had a big field just right outside our classroom so we’d all go out, pick our teams, and play for the whole 30 minutes. We’d do it for lunch, too. Fortunately our teachers never barred us from playing, because I guess they knew it counts as exercise for us too. Did you dream of being a princess or did you not really care about that? Not really. I wanted to be an astronaut more haha. The only princess-y things I did were to wear my blanket around my neck like a cape, and to wear a tiara on my 7th birthday party. Did you have a special name for your pacifier? What was it? No. Did you watch 'Blues Clues'? Yesssssss. I grew up with Steve and Joe. It was such a fun show to watch. What kind of car did your parents have? I don’t remember the make anymore but we had a black sedan until I was around five. It was mostly broken-down and had no aircon, but it was my dad’s first car so it was his absolute baby and I never had the heart to complain about the car’s flaws to him. He eventually sold it and we had a blue Mitsubishi Lancer after. Did you ever flush anything down the toilet by mistake? I don’t remember ever doing that, thankfully lol. Were you afraid to sleep by yourself? No, I think I was excited to start doing it. Growing up in a cramped duplex, I shared one bedroom with my entire family until I was around 9; so when we moved to our own home, I was the first one to call dibs on a bedroom. What was your favorite subject in elementary school? Language, which is a class where we were just taught basic English grammar. I loved reading as a kid and got fluent in English early on, so I was always a top student in that subject. How often did you go to the park? We don’t have parks. What was your favorite kind of cake as a kid? Chocolate cake from Red Ribbon. Did you ever want to grow up? I never actively ‘wanted’ it because I was already kinda forced to grow up early, what with all the issues happening at home and me having to shield my siblings and cousins from whatever screaming match was happening inside.

#survey #surveys

[theanimeview]

Reboots: They’re for who?

When I was interning a handful of summers ago, I remember talking with a handful of editors and peers about our favorite comic to television adaptations. I said honestly that I am not a fan of Teen Titans Go because I don’t think it has a lot of substance when compared to Teen Titans or Young Justice. It’s a problem I have with a lot of reboots, and I remember distinctly one of the editors saying that reboots “aren’t for you.” That’s a fair statement, they’re not for me specifically, they’re for... who exactly?

What the editor meant, I believe, is that a reboot isn’t really for the original fans of a series. It’s for a new generation to experience the characters and become fans. The characters we see from one show to another are kind of like reincarnated versions--they may have similar names and art styles but, the characters are kind of new because their stories are new. I think that this is often correct. However, I want to disagree a little with the idea that reboots aren’t aimed for older fans. Good reboots should have something that the older fans can enjoy too. I say this because clearly reboots in some ways market to the audience that watched the previous iteration(s), sort of like a big sign saying, “Hey, remember this show you loved as a kid? The one that we sold a lot of for a long time? Yeah? Great! Why don’t you check out our new version and show it to your kids/younger siblings/others?!” Their’s nothing really wrong with that, its an effective sales/marketing strategy, but for it to work the new iteration needs to have something old fans will appreciate.

A great example is My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic - the series takes the older characters, characters that fans of the previous iterations have loved for a long time, and translates them to the current climate of television, allowing for a new generation of fans to fall in love with the characters. The new show still holds some elements of the underlying message that the original show or stories held. What I mean is that My Little Pony has always focused on friendships and what it means to be a good friend; this message has carried on over the years to what we see today. The old fans can appreciate that the morals or backbone of the show are still there and the new fans can fall in love with these reborn-characters on their own.  

I remember watching the vintage version of MLP on youtube in middle school and loving it. When the new version came out around my junior year of high school, I never quite got into the show again, but when my nieces started watching it, I had no problem enjoying episodes in passing. The same thing happened in college when many of my friends liked binge-watching seasons of it on Netflix. While I still wasn’t a die-hard fan again, I enjoyed that the friendship elements were still there and felt comforted that my nieces not only enjoyed a collection of characters I had loved previously but also by the fact that the show was still teaching aspects of how to be a good friend and responsible individual. MLP FIM is a perfect example, to me, of what a reboot should be. It’s easy to merchandise to new and old fans (which the company producing it will like), it’s still got the elements needed for the nostalgic appreciation and a revival of the fandom in older viewers, and it provides something a new generation can enjoy. If I’m babysitting and my nieces and they say let’s watch it, I’m 100% down for the reasons stated above.

Now let’s look at shows like Teen Titans Go from 2013, or The Powerpuff Girls 2016. Are the shows merchandisable, of course--but do they hold true to the same values that we saw in the originals? I would say, No.

Teen Titans was a beloved show. We saw a mix of comedy and adventure expected of a story with teen superheroes, but we also saw some serious elements befitting characters who are transitioning between childhood and adulthood-for all intents and purposes-alone. They’re, in many ways, outcasts who are bound together by their friendship and a mission to protect the planet from harm. Their episodes are memorable and often have a deeper underlying message. In many ways, the show begins with an examination of crime, and the adult world at large, as being one of black-and-white. It’s how children often see the world, but as the series progress or even single episodes, characters learn that there is a lot more grey area and nuances than we previously thought or understood.

Like, I remember the episode “Sum of His Parts” where Cyborg confronts, not for the last time, challenges with his disability as a half-man, half-machine individual. While the robotic parts give him great abilities most of the time, there are situations where they become more of a hindrance than helpful. It was a meaningful episode that allows us to see that despite having a cool robotic exterior, and the name “Cyborg,” the character himself is a human being with complex emotions that will not always show on his face or in his interactions with others. When I first saw the episode, I remember Cyborg’s last line, “I am just like you, but it’s not your arm that makes us the same, its the stuff that’s connected to it.” It reflects a lot about the character and the emotions he has, as well as stating something about image and what’s inside. While I don’t have a robotic arm, I felt like a part of me was reflected in his character in that episode because I have insecurities (everyone does), and while I sometimes hide them well it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. I also remember the episode “Troq,” in which Starfire faces racism. She and her team (once they are informed of how she is being treated) must set aside their anger for the greater good. It’s a difficult episode for many reasons, the most important of which is that 1. Racism still exists and is something people must fight against 2. Sometimes you have to work with your enemy to prevent a greater evil from taking place. Both are difficult to accept, especially as children, but they’re realities of our world. As I get older, both seem to become more prevalent in my life, particularly the later as sometimes you have to work with awful people to get a job done. Even the former though is something I’ve had to see and face in life.

The original Powerpuff Girls, likewise to TT, had memorable episodes not so much for their imagery but for their stories. For example, “Equal Fights” is an episode I may never forget. In it, a female thief behaving like a radical who hates men points out to the PPGs that women have suffered a lot in history and uses this as an excuse for her behavior. It seems almost justified as retribution against the patriarchy for how women have suffered, at least, until the PPGs’ primary female role-models step to remind the girls and the audience that two wrongs don’t make a right. The common theme with these memorable episodes in these memorable shows is that we, the audience, should learn something from the presented morals and ideas. They encourage us to think more about our situations and our autonomy in society.

Overall, these shows attempted to help children navigate the difficult world around them--that is what made them beloved by their audience. Perhaps the greatest proof of this is that new shows that have gained popularity today seem to continue this message of helping youth transition into thoughtful adults - like, Steven Universe.

However, some of the reboots seemed to have missed this point entirely. Rather than aiming to create an encouraging message for kids, they instead aim to briefly entertain--like a meme. The episodes aren’t memorable, not really. I think the most memorable thing I’ve seen from Teen Titans Go is "Let's Get Serious!" where Young Justice characters make a unique appearance. Aqualad critiques the Teen Titan Team about their ridiculousness and, in all, a very meta-episode in which the end leads us to believe that Teen Titans Go is just supposed to be a joke and we shouldn’t be so serious all the time about a children’s show. Ha Ha. (Let that sarcastic laugh sink in.)

I don’t have kids (yet), but I have nieces and nephews that I care about--and I know how easily kids can be led astray or tricked. Hell--I remember being a kid and how easily adults could manipulate me and my peers simply because they hold the authority. Adults can be manipulated too, I mean look at the Milgram Experiment. So when I look at these poorer reboots and see nothing of substance, when I look and see things that seem to encourage stupidity and lack of thought, I don’t feel like letting them watch the show because some of them aren’t old enough to understand that Beast Boy’s inability to open a textbook is supposed to be a joke. Particularly when he “saves the day” at the end. Sure, I can laugh at it, because I can see it as a joke, but one of my nephews might see a cool and funny superhero shoving a banana into his ear and think “that’s funny, I’ll do it too to make someone laugh” and end up with an ear infection (which is something a friend of mine’s little brother actually did).

In the case of Teen Titans Go, perhaps the creators really do intend for it all to be a joke, like a subversion of the original’s message(s). But then that, to me, is evidence that these are not truly marketed to a new generation of viewers--it’s marketed to the adults that watched the show previously. The joke is that the series is meant to be a form of high comedy with low comedy dialogue (if you don’t know what high comedy and low comedy are, please see here: https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/tell-me-about-origins-comedy-whats-difference-276012). If it is, in fact, not for the older audience, but to a growing generation, then I don’t think the joke is a good one because in some cases it insults the audience’s intelligence and in others overestimates the still-developing cognitive abilities of some viewers.

If TTG is for the former audience, I can appreciate it as a joke. I mean that sincerely, as I’ve found a handful of episodes to be funny and enjoyable. However, I would not recommend the show to kids.

As for I’ve seen some of PPG 2016, I can’t remember anything story-wise, only a collection of meme-like images, like the girls twerking. It’s, again, a show I wouldn’t want kids watching simply because it doesn’t seem to have any value--even from a comedic standpoint.

Of the reboots I’m mentioning, there are many more.

In conclusion, I think that good reboots are intended to be primarily for a new generation of viewers but also hold something that a majority of the previous iteration(s)’s audience(s) can appreciate or even love. Bad reboots focus on the “instant gratification” of entertainment and seem to ignore part of what made the originals so great. They seem to be created for meme-like instant laughs, not memorable content. That seems like a flaw to me but clearly works as a selling point for some shows. Of the two reboot examples I gave, TTG continues. Why? Probably because it holds comedic value to an older audience while providing content that’s not entirely unstable for kids to see. PPG, though, struggled with its release because it didn’t really have value to the older audience that formerly loved the show and relied to much on instant comedy to create a storyline that would keep a younger audience interested. 

Essentially, TTG assumes that the new audience is smart enough to understand that the Teen Titan team is acting stupid. It likewise creates comedy that the older audience can laugh at. TTG will never have the same level of appreciation for storytelling that it’s original once provided, but it’s not intending to. PPG’s creators may have had similar intentions, but didn’t fulfill. 

#reboot #reboots #ppg #mlp #mlp fim #mlp: fim #powerpuff girls #power puff #power puff girls #My Little Pony #my little pony: friendship is magic #my little pony friendship is magic #teen titans #teen titans go #tt #ttg #analysis #long analysis

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: The Shining Beacon Pt. 1

This is a reposting from October 4th, 2017 in an effort to get all my recaps onto tumblr. Thanks!

Welcome back, welcome back. We're starting off this recap exactly where we left off--with Ruby, Yang, and Jaune approaching Beacon--which gives the first two episodes a cohesive feeling, like they're just one episode sliced in half. RWBY gets better at this as the volumes go on, but Volume 1 in particular reads less like distinct stories and more like one story that was divided up, if only because our expectations regarding form demand it. I'd love to see a supercut of Volume 1 with the credits removed to see how well it all actually flows together.

After getting another shot of Beacon we're treated to a scene of Jaune rushing off the airship and vomiting copiously into a very convenient trashcan. It's a bold way to introduce a character, especially since we've already had four trailers displaying the girls' skills, an episode all about Ruby's moral compass, and a decent amount of time showcasing Yang's sisterly devotion. Making Jaune into "vomit boy" is comparatively cruel--which is largely the point. Though he'll get his character development soon enough (a bit in this episode, actually) RWBY is making sure we're clear about where their loyalties lie, so to speak. Though they're working with a very large cast, they're much more concerned with emulating magical girl storylines (Sailor Moon, Powerpuff Girls, Puella Magi Madoka Magic) than they are the lone, male shounen hero (Naruto, Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragonball Z). By taking the blonde-haired knight stereotype and reimagining him as the fool, RWBY ensures that we know who the "real" heroes of the story are. Jaune absolutely becomes a hero too as RWBY continues, but his status as "vomit boy" reassures us that he's not going to dominate the narrative.

Instead Ruby and Yang leave him behind as they exit the airship, surrounded by more hilarious silhouette people. I'd actually love it if RWBY came up with an in-universe explanation for this (beyond the great RWBY Chibi skit). Maybe there really is a whole species of people out there made entirely of shadows!

Hell, stranger things have happened in this show.

As they reach Beacon's courtyard Ruby becomes so excited by everyones' weaponry that she turns into a chibi version of herself, another technique that touches on RWBY's anime roots and that will eventually be left behind. As the series gets darker we see fewer of these non-diegetic details, like Ruby spinning with swirly eyes or Jaune geeking out over detective badges with literal stars spouting up around him. Though these techniques do an excellent job of conveying emotion to the viewer, they have a kiddie feel to them that becomes out of place post "Beginning of the End."

For now though Ruby is enthralled. At Yang's insistence that they're "just weapons" Ruby exclaims, "Just weapons? They're an extension of ourselves. They're a part of us!"

(Art by Eunnieverse)

This is a fantastic bit of world building. As we learn later in the episode, Ruby (like all Signal students, and presumably most Huntsmen) built her own weapon, designing and crafting it over who knows how many years, suggesting that, yes, in this universe weapons really are an extension of the self. We can thus read characterization in each person's choice. Roman, who uses manners as his decoy, keeps a dapper cane with a hidden pistol inside. Glynda embodies order to contrast Ozpin's more free spirit, so she directs all of her power through a riding crop. Meanwhile Ruby is the "adorable girl" who will continually defy expectations. Thus, she wields a scythe that's taller than she is and that's also a "high impact sniper rifle,” the exact opposite of what we’d expect a cute teen to carry. Despite her sister's teasing that Ruby needs to make some real friends, she's right that in Remnant meeting new weapons is a lot like meeting new people.

Speaking of friends, Yang ditches Ruby for hers... who are promptly never mentioned again. They're clearly just a plot device to get Ruby on her own, but like our silhouette people (of which Yang's group is a part) I'd love an explanation for how she got in good with this Beacon group before ever setting foot on campus. Or whether they’re all Signal graduates who then, presumably, should all be pretty close... 

Regardless, poor Ruby is left floundering, wondering where she's supposed to go or what she's supposed to do. I feel ya. She ends up collapsing into a massive pile of luggage.

Ruby: "I don't know what I'm doing."

"What are you doing?"

Nice parallel there! Enter Weiss, the owner of said luggage, who is literally framed as the bossy, dominant personality as she towers over Ruby.

We get more world building/exposition as Weiss yells about what dust is and what it can do. Her anger is, surprisingly, not just stemming from a rich girl having her stuff messed with, but because Ruby is knocking into cases chock-full of an explosive substance. Were any of these cases to break they might set off a rather violent reaction--as we see when Ruby sneezes into a cloud of dust and lightning erupts. The irony is that this only happens because Weiss is shaking the bottle of dust erratically in Ruby's face. I love these little moments that highlight how these girls are still kids in many respects, capable of doing stupid things even as they play at being mature.

Still disgusted with Ruby's behavior, Weiss asks, "Aren't you a little young to be attending Beacon?" which tells us that, yeah, Ruby does look young. It's hard to tell with Rooster Teeth's art style, but here we're explicitly told that Ruby looks like a child compared to the other students. Her age is recognizable. That will impact how others relate to and (in some cases) underestimate her.

We learn that Beacon isn't your "ordinary combat school" (what does that mean exactly? Are there other upper-level schools where the students train but don't fight live Grimm?) and Ruby finally looses her patience with all the lecturing.

Ruby: "I said I was sorry, Princess."

"It's Heiress, actually."

Enter Blake. For a millisecond Weiss is thrilled that someone is showing her the respect she thinks she deserves, until Blake follows that little correction up with a list of critiques, including the Schnee's "controversial labor forces and questionable business partners"--more on that as it develops. Ruby cracks up, clearly more interested in Weiss getting her just desserts than thinking through the implications of Blake's words. She then wanders off before Ruby can introduce herself.

The team is now technically complete, even if the girls don't know it yet. Again, RWBY is rather blunt when it comes to many narrative devices. With the exception of Jaune we know exactly who our protagonists are by order of who the show has bothered to introduce to us. 

Ruby is still at a loss though. She hilariously collapses in the courtyard and lies there until "vomit boy" gets his real introduction.

I honestly don't understand why so much of the fandom hates on Jaune (except logically I do: it stems from a dual worry that Jaune will sideline our female cast and that he’s become a full-fledged Gary Stu BUT). He's just a nice guy here, and I do mean literally nice, not a Nice Guy with a capital 'N' and 'G.' Yes, we see his misogynistic views that he'll heap on Weiss with, "Jaune Arc. Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue. Ladies love it” and his inappropriate insistence thatt she date him, but Jaune deliberately comes across as someone emulating bad advice about how to make friends/find a date. From the start we’re meant to understand that his perception is inaccurate and he will (as seen) grow out of it. To say nothing of the fact that the narrative undermines his views twice with Ruby's "Do they?" and his more genuine belief that "Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet." That's the real Jaune Arc.

He and Ruby wander off together and it's here that we get our first glimpse at Pumpkin Pete under Jaune's armor. I'm honestly impressed that Rooster Teeth had that detail in right from the start.

They talk weaponry, with Ruby showing off Crescent Rose--"It's also a gun"--and Jaune getting self-conscious about his hand-me-downs. Besides him staring up at Beacon's statue in the opening credits, this is our first hint that Jaune comes from a long line of prestigious Huntsmen. It also provides a contrast between what fighting Grimm once was and what it has now become. Jaune's weapons are a simple sword and a shield whose only 'upgrade' is that it gets smaller so you can put it on your belt, but of course it still weighs the same. Ruby, meanwhile, has three forms of Crescent Rose: storage, sniper rifle, and scythe, and she can use all three in a variety of ways. In short, fighting Grimm has become incredibly high-tech, suggesting that the fight itself is always getting harder. Swords and shields just don't cut it anymore even if they, like Jaune, are "classic."

They keep wandering, realizing too late that each was following the other and they still have no idea where they're heading. Like Yang's vomit panic last episode, "The Shining Beacon" ends on a lighthearted note with Jaune wondering if there's a foodcourt nearby.

There is and you're both going to help destroy it in the most epic food fight imaginable.

But that's a whole Volume off.

Until next time~

#rwby #mymetas #RWBY Recaps

[fly-pow-bye]

Powerpuff Girls 2016 - “Small World: Heart to Heartstone Part 4”

Written by: Jake Goldman, Haley Mancini

Written & Storyboarded by: Kyle Neswald, Jaydeep Hasrajani

Directed by: Nick Jennings, Bob Boyle

...but after 100 episodes of this, it mostly turned into a world of fears. Mostly.

So all of the Triforces have just been collected from their various dungeons, and now it’s time to face off against Ganon. Okay, maybe I should make a better synopsis than that.

Having collected all of the Heartstones, they go back to the crater where Townsville used to be. Buttercup then gets flung off-screen as the Professor shows up to congratulate them. Already, the tone is going to be rather jokey, but not jokey enough to where it's going to suffer from what I would call "The Trouble With Bubbles syndrome." The Powerpuff Girls then fly off to Lester Van Luster's lair, but the Professor wants to come, too!

They decide to carry the Professor around, not only because he wanted to come, but because he happens to know the lair's coordinates. Instead of actually showing them these coordinates are like he did with the Heartstones, the Powerpuff Girls just carry him around while he goes "wheeeeee!" They don't really make a good in-universe excuse for this, though there is a good plot reason for it.

Buttercup: [We're going to] pummel Mojo and Lester Van Loser into oblivion!

Even Buttercup is getting into the act of giving this guy inflammatory nicknames, though I think she could have been more creative. Where’s Bubbles?

She's still with the geese. This time, she offers an origami goose to be the leader. The geese then eat it, and fly away. Joke over. Adding to the theory that any intent to show that she can speak animal in these scenes was probably unintentional is that in none of these geese scenes does Bubbles honk at them, she just talks to them like if they were people.

The subtitles in the last episode imply they do understand her, which makes me wonder if they're really going to go with The Wild Thornberrys route. Now that this special is almost over, I should say one good thing about these scenes: at least I can say they use subtitles and not just have the geese talk this time. Non-talking animals is a rare sight, and after Donny, Pug-Faced Paulie, Eddie, and that one zebra, it's a breath of fresh air that I didn't even know was possible.

They reach the lair of Funfetti Spaghetti, and move across the tons of shrunken landmarks in his “trophy room”. Apparently, this guy was really busy, shrinking the Taj Mahal, Big Ben and a bunch of other buildings that surrounded Big Ben, and worst of all, the largest ball of yarn! Nobody told them Lester was going Carmen Sandiego across the entire world while they were gone; I guess it wasn’t that important.

They reach Lester's room, where he's just sleeping on his throne. The Professor apparently decided he was the leader now, but Blossom doesn't matter. She seems to like her dad now that he's doing the planning for her. I wouldn't blame her.

They slowly sneak around Lester, with sneaky music playing in the background. The Professor decides this was a great time to shout "Girls! Way to go!" as soon as the Powerpuff Girls reach the wand. It doesn't actually affect anything; the scene may as well not exist. There's no consequences!

He may be smarter than he is usually, but he's still that Sitcom Dad, right? Well, maybe not quite, as we're about to get to a twist that I didn't see coming at all. If you don't want to be spoiled on what happens in this special, you probably should have stopped reading a few parts ago.

As soon as they touch the wand, three heart shaped slots appear. The holes, they were made for them, so they slowly float away from the Puff’s hands right into them. The green one apparently is the clumsy one, as it knocks into the wand a few times. Well, I guess having its previous form sliced in half really affected its accuracy. We hear some evil music play during this, which honestly shouldn’t be appropriate if these girls were going to use it to save Townsville.

Turns out, the music was jumping the wand a bit, as when Blossom tries to grab the wand, the wand floats away, landing right into the Professor’s hands. I mean, him actually being helpful tends to be out of character for him, too. It's here where we get this episode's biggest twist.

It was Sweety Gumdrops this whole time! Wait, how did he manage to be the Professor and still be Lester when he's hanging out in his lair, getting his Marble Sofa moved by his adoring ape?

Discount Jojo: MAGIC!

Oh, hus...actually, that would be a good explanation here, but there's a little more logic than that. We never see the Professor and Stars McShiny at the same time, and he seemed to know a lot about the Heartstones for someone who is supposed to be a scientist. I would also mention the whole "he's not anything like the Sitcom Dad I've grown to hate", but I think I bashed that into the ground.

As for the Lester that was sleeping on his chair, that was actually Discount Jojo, playing his best role: sleeping guy! He certainly plays that role a lot better than he plays Mojo Jojo, that’s for sure. The Powerpuff Girls try to rush in to do what they do the worst in this reboot.

Alas, the Magic Man Who Rips Off The Incredibles' Syndrome More Than Just His Hair’s cane is just way too powerful. Honestly, he probably didn’t even need the Heartstones to do that. He does explain to them that the Professor actually didn't make it out of Townsville; he's stuck in the snowglobe along with everyone else.

Professor: Hi, girls! I made a new friends! (points towards snowman)

Ah, there's the Sitcom Dad, confusing snowmen for actual people and being completely oblivious to everything going around him. They do a similar joke with The Mayor in a previous episode, but at least that one is more believable. I mean, it's the Mayor.

Using his newly gained omnipotence from the Heartstones, he decides to change into his Super Saiyan God form. With all of his might, I.M. Meen finally does his ultimate plan against those goodie-goodies that make his stomach churn. Oh no, he’s not going to shrink them, that’s the old magic hat!

Instead, he’s going to shrink-wrap them and also turn them into the very merchandise they were probably imagining would fly right off the shelves! They even use "tada" music on this; not nearly as blatant as the "cool toys" scene from Total Eclipse of the Kart, but the effect is still there. I wonder if this was some sort of meta-joke about the blatant commercialization of the Powerpuff Girls, which would be incredibly hypocritical for this reboot.

This toyset seems to have a lot of problems, though. How come Buttercup and Bubbles have their Snuggle Buddies, but Blossom just has two books? Why does Bubbles have the Kung Fu Grip when it's well established only Buttercup can throw a punch most of the time? One thing that doesn’t surprise me is that this toyset only gives Buttercup the ability to talk; considering how much Heartstone time she got in this special, she’s clearly the favorite. What does she say, anyway?

Buttercup: (badly acted) Mojo is a ugly green doofus!

I don't want to call him Doofus Jojo, because I don't want to give Buttercup any credit. Sadly, they're not sentient toys, so they're essentially dead. Best case scenario, of course, this could also be a "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream" situation, too.

Of course, Discount Jojo is absolutely ecstatic that they managed to defeat the Powerpuff Girls together, and he decides to make some suggestions on what these Beat-Alls can do next. One of his suggestions is blowing up Citiesville. I'm sure a lot of people would think that would not be evil, but he could have meant the "Honey, I Blew Up The Kid" meaning of blow up. Making all of those jerks that live in Citiesville giants would be delightfully evil, too. Flamehair Poofydress doesn't agree.

Lester Van Luster: Well, how do I put this gently...you're a pathetic excuse for a supervillain...

Eh, he's better in this season than he ever was in Season 1, especially in the first part of this very special, so it's not entirely justified. When he's fighting the Powerpuff Girls, not because of his fangirl tendencies, of course.

Lester Van Luster: ...and I've been using you to take over Townsville and get the Heartstones for myself.

Oh, okay, he's not going to justify anything, he's just trying to make sure someone will be angry at him so this plot can have a satisfying conclusion. But that can't be it, right?

So, for almost no reason whatsoever, he decides to kick Discount Jojo out of his castle, literally having him fly out of the castle to drop down, after all he did for him. Thankfully, anyone's ability to survive 15+ foot falls continues with this episode, as Jojo not only survives, but Lester even drops his marble couch on him to no real effect other than, "haha, he mentioned it". Hey, some continuity between the parts! Power of Four wasn't that good at that.

Sure enough, Jojo is quite upset by this predicament, and decides he should actually be against this guy. Being evil is the only thing he was good at, at least according to him. He's the most diabolical, evil, dangerous villain! Clearly, he only has one path to go...

...the path of a cobbler! See, it’s funny, because one would think he’d be mad enough to take on Hi Hi Puffy Shirt himself. However, he accidently hammering himself, reminding me of one of the better shorts this reboot managed to create. I guess I could say that's a plus. He decides to do a Plan B.

Discount Jojo: MAGIC!

Oh, hush, Discount! Oh wait, that was the episode doing a decent book-end, not my running gag. Silly mistake. The King of the Lollipop Guild did make one major mistake: Jojo still has all of his magic training, including all of his equipment! He shows this off by blowing some magic dust, which gets in his eyes. This may be the time he's getting serious, but he still has to do "a funny".

After a far too long gag where he tries to use a grappling hook, Discount the Jojo shows himself to his former idol. Macaron McMuffin asks how Jojo managed to get up here before saying he doesn’t care. These two gags don’t really go well together, because he clearly used a grappling hook for the last 20 seconds. The joke could be that he is that he’s really bad at figuring out other people’s magic tricks, but that never becomes apparent.

Before he blasts him for daring to bring light to his lair, Jojo decides to apologize and do a magic act to appease him. For he is Mojo The Jojo! Well, he’s already at least giving himself a name, something he didn’t do before. He then pulls off his Magic Hat, revealing his usual brain hat. It may be a hint that he decided to wear this hat above his usual one instead of switching his costume entirely.

He pulls out a Lester poster and a Lester party balloon, all possibly from his own collection of Lester memorabilia we just never saw until now. Yeah, that's it. Being as egocentric as his cheeks are red, he ends up being impressed by this. Discount The Jojo, eh, it doesn't really work, sees one more thing in his hat that will knock Lester's socks off! Of course, Lester doesn't think that this could be literal, as he leans in and Jojo does his most evil act yet...

...plagarizing Bubbles' trick from the first part! Jokes asie, it's good to know he can learn from previous mistakes and use them to his advantage. Most importantly, this punch was powerful enough to make Fruit Stripe Hair lose his magic cane, and having it land right in Jojo's hands.

In a rare moment of kindness to who could be arguably be his sisters if his origin story is still canon, he decides to turn the Powerpuff Girls from the marketed brand to the superheroes they should be. Even Jojo feels that this is way too anti-climactic, and the show agrees.

Lester The Not So Friendly Ghost-Like Man poofs right next to him, makes the magic stick float to him again, and turns him into a goose! He then kicks him out in the same way he did when he was an ape, making me question why couldn’t he just fly back into that window. Instead, that’s the last we see of him for the rest of the final fight. Congratulations, Discount Jojo, you contributed.

Candy Cane Man decides not to turn the barely waking up Powerpuff Girls back into toys, because he knows that no matter what, the Powerpuff Girls will eventually defeat him in the end of the story. Instead, he tries his hardest to punch them into many pieces with a Heartstone-fueled punch. The Reboot Puffs decide to go with their patented Reboot Puff strategy of just staying in one place and just take it. Blossom does add another part to this usual strategy: tell the big hand that’s coming at them to stop.

...and it does, much to both their and Lester's confusion. He shakes around his stick for a bit, yeah, maybe I should word that better, and tries to hit them with a spiked ball instead. The Deliciously Sugary Mage tries again, and the Powerpuff Girls do a slightly better strategy of commanding themselves to duck!

Sure enough, the Heartstone aura then turns into a duck, who merely just quacks at them impolitely. The Master of Quacks wonders how he can't control these heartstones.

The Puffs figure out that they didn’t just get the Heartstones, they earned them by doing the tasks they had to do. Bubbles earned it by getting over her fears and coming up with her own strategy. Blossom earned it by realizing what “leave its equal” means. Buttercup just had to beat up a monster, something she tends to do more often than her sisters.

Because of this, the Heartstones are under their complete control, even though they were pretty happy to follow Lester’s command’s before. Maybe it was one of their many tests! They fly out of the magic wand, turning Lester back to his ordinary Cupcake Shrinky Boy self, and they become their new jewel-encrusted headbands! Yay, more accessories for the potential toylines. Bubbles had to use the most effort and actually learn something to get her Heartstone, and she gets rewarded by getting hit in the face with it. Because she’s the silly blonde!

Lester The Future Snake Jellyfish Or Cerberus Food can only run away screaming as the already powerful girls get even more powerful with the Heartstone Monster Aura Shells! Blossom gets the Jellyfish, with fancy electrocution action! Bubbles gets the Snake, with the ability to suffocate anyone within a one mile radius! Buttercup gets the Cerberus, with surprisingly excellent barber expertise!

Tell your parents to collect all three of them, or they can go to hell, where Him is still wondering if he was meant to be the villain of this before they decided Jojo idolizing Satan wouldn’t fly on a kids network.

They probably could have just cut to the scene where he gets defeated, but we do get to see sort of a fight scene. At least it’s a one-sided defeat I should expect from the Powerpuff Girls, with the Powerpuff Girls dishing out the pain. Blossom electrocutes him, Buttercup swipes off his poofy hair, which apparently instantly grows back, and, in the move with the most visible contact, Bubbles squeezes poor-if-he-didn't-deserve-it Lester in the same way she was squeezed in her episode.

The Powerpuff Girls decide that jail would be too easy of an escape for him. Actually, they never seem to consider that if the police aren't around to throw them into a police car.

Instead, they decide to join in on his interest of shrinking people, though Lester apparently isn’t as fond of being shrunken himself, and shrinks him down to tiny size! Blossom exclaims that now that Townsville is back to its normal size, everything is back to normal. Well, except for the landmarks. Or the fact that the Powerpuff Girls now have these ultra-powerful heartstones they could use on far more powerful villains like Him and Gemoire.

Well, we do get one loose end tied up.

Jojo the Goose ended up being the new leader of the geese. Apparently, he’s doing this a lot better at this than being a villain, and far better than that silly blonde! The end!

Does the title fit?

Heart-to-heart, Heartstone, yeah, I could say it fits.

Since it’s over, I could say Small World isn’t exactly the best title for this special. Sure, the villain likes to shrink things down, but it’s never the focus. Honestly, Heart to Heartstone would have been a better name for this entire special.

How does it, and the whole special, stack up?

It's a satisfying conclusion, even if anyone could predict that the Powerpuff Girls would win in the end. I mean, why would they not? I like the idea of the Heartstone monsters coming back, and how everything connected in the end, which is something I wish the reboot would do even in non-specials. This episode ends up being part of a special that only managed to have one episode that didn't have this rating.

Really, with the entire special, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself actually getting some enjoyment out of it. Even the lesser of the four, Stone Cold Spider, had some okay moments. One could argue that they played it safe. Outside of the use of smartphones, this could have straight up have been an episode of the original.

This is not to say this is the absolute best episode of the entire reboot, and that it was mostly flawless. As promised, there are some general problems with this plot that I'll touch upon before giving it my final judgment.

For an episode about the Powerpuff Girls travelling through the world, the locations are disappointing. Even the Buttercup Job at least gave us Atlantis with its walking fish and Greek gods. Buttercup goes to a cave full of monsters, something that should be normal even in Townsville. Blossom goes to a sunken ship with nobody around. Bubbles gets to go to a labyrinth with a very anachronistic security guard at best. There’s no personality to any of these locations; it may as well be anywhere.

Then again, I probably should have known, considering the only place that was even on land was some random place in what appears to be Brazil judging by that map. They could have went to various countries, learning about different cultures, really giving that worldwide appeal. The best we get is all those landmarks that were shrunken, but they don’t even treat it as a big deal.

Discount Jojo’s role in the plot isn’t that bad looking back at it, but his actions in this are kind of odd for his character. Again, would he really be fangirling over someone else, especially after episodes like Mojo The Great and Not So Secret Service? This is especially true when one considers that Lester Van Luster wasn’t a well established villain.

Speaking of that Cupcake Shrinky Boy’s actions, the special never really makes you feel like the stakes are that high. Sure, they seem to care about Townsville, but once that city is saved, they don’t seem to care about anything else. People around the world are missing their monuments, but the only hint we get towards this is a scene near the end, and it’s mostly just used for a ball of yarn joke.

But, despite all of that, this is still a surprisingly decent special for the reboot. It’s a special that actually feels like an adventure to save Townsville, and not just the Powerpuff Girls having to save themselves from their own mistakes. I wouldn’t say these parts are the absolute least worst this reboot has to offer, but it is still watchable, which, compared to most of the reboot, is a huge accomplishment.

The special may be over, but PPG 2016 sure isn’t! Next, we get yet another Halloween special! They're really compensating for the original's lack of one. Either that, or they wanted more costumes for the toyline. Definitely the former, I would think!

← Small World: Maze Daze (Part 3) ☆ Witch’s Crew →

#fpb ppg 2016 #ppg 2016 #fpb reviews #powerpuff girls #cartoon network

[disneytva]

The latest collaboration of brothers Chris and Shane Houghton (Harvey Beaks) is based on their own childhoods, growing-up in the small town of St. Johns, Michigan. Big City Greensfollows the adventures of a mischievous and optimistic boy and his family who move to the big city. The series, with Chris and Shane as Creators/Executive Producers, debuts June 18 at 9:30amET on Disney Channel.

Jackson Murphy: Big City Greens has already been renewed for Season 2 even before the premiere of the first episode. Congratulations!

Shane Houghton: Holy cow! How did that happen? You’re breaking the news to us right now! No – We’re very excited. The studio and the network have a lot of confidence in the show, and they asked us to just keep things moving, and we’re very excited. We got a great crew and everybody’s just rolling on through making a ton more episodes.

JM: Where were you guys when you [really] got that news initially?

Chris Houghton: (dramatic voice) Luckily we were sitting down! (laugh) It was great. They let us know and it basically was what Shane said. It was “Hey – we got a good thing going. We want everyone to keep doing it, so keep it going!”

JM: You are brothers. You’re working on this show together. Has there always been a sort of sibling rivalry in your lives?

SH: There’s a lot of sibling rivalry, but only with a third brother who doesn’t work on the show. (laugh) That’s not true. We do have a third brother. He’s great. But we have a great, professional relationship. We’ve been working together for ten years now, professionally, on comics and animated shows – and even before that. We were in school together. We were in bands. We did theater plays. We made short films. We’ve always kinda just collaborated and got along really well. I think… it works well!

CH: We’re so different from each other and yet so similar to each other.

JM: Then that works! Growing up in St. John’s, Michigan, what were some of the animated series that you and your friends and family were into?

CH: Well, it’s funny because we didn’t have cable growing up. So we watched whatever cartoons were on but really shows that really influenced us were a lot of sitcoms. We watched a lot of “Boy Meets World” and “Family Matters”. And we read a lot of comic strips: “Calvin and Hobbes”, “Foxtrot” and “Far Side”. Those were the things that were more accessible to us than even a lot of the current animated shows. People will reference “Hey, Arnold”, and we know that now, but it’s different watching “Hey, Arnold” now than when you were 10. So we can see it and appreciate it and respect it, but we didn’t have it growing up. People have those episodes imprinted in their brains.

SH: We missed out, man! We missed out!

JM: And I’m sure being in the animated industry now, all these years later, you look back on animated series from… years earlier and you do get that different, maybe more mature, more interesting perspective on things.

SH: Yeah, I mean. Hey, “mature” – let’s not throw any accusations around, but… we work with Rob Renzetti. He’s one of the other executive producers on the show, and he’s just incredible – the shows he’s worked on. And we did get to watch quite a bit of “Powerpuff Girls” and “Dexter’s Lab”.

CH: Whenever we’re on vacation…

SH: We’d stay at a hotel and got, like, the Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network shows of the day. I think that era of “Dexter’s” and “Powerpuff” was so influential in a way because they were so rare and special. It was like once or twice a year we got to see a handful of episodes, and I’m sure they left a lasting impact on us.

CH: Oh yeah, for sure. And to be able to work with Rob: it’s surreal.

JM: Another perk of hotel rooms! Cricket is the main character on this show. Chris, you voice Cricket. Tell us about Cricket and how you came-up with his catchphrase, “BINGO! BANGO!”

CH: It’s been really fun. The voice kinda came out of just me pitching the show and Shane and I writing the Pilot together and trying to make these drawings come to life. And “BINGO! BANGO!” is something my board partner and I… I used to say to him all the time just to annoy him when I was on “Harvey Beaks”. He would say, “Hey does that sound good?” and I would just snap finger guns at him and say, “Bingo! Bango!”

And he just hated it. And he works on the show now. His name is Charlie Gavin. It was just like this funny, silly thing I would say. And like a lot of things, those things just seem to work themselves into the show. It’s funny that it’s kinda become his catchphrase – but it works! It’s fun to say!

JM: Yeah. Even after one episode… it is a catchphrase. I think it’s gonna stay for quite a while. Now with this storyline, Shane, about an outsider family coming into the big city, what appealed to you?

SH: Well this is something that I think a lot of people have experienced. Chris and I grew up in a small farm town in Michigan, and then eventually – after college – moved to a big city: Los Angeles. And we were hit with a bit of a culture shock. It was different, not bad, just different. The people had a different vibe about them.

Coming into a new city after moving away from home, you’re on this quest to look for your new home. And what does that mean, and who is that with, and where are you? And those are some big questions. After we moved to Los Angeles, we talked to a lot of people and so many people haven’t grown-up here, they’ve moved here. So it seemed like this very relatable experience, and we took that – along with a lot of people we knew back in the country (farmers, neighbors, family members) and kind of rolled all that together to make this show, “Big City Greens”.

JM: And now, is it true – I heard a rumor – that Grandma Alice on the show is based on your real Grandma Alice?

CH: Yes, this is true.

SH: Grandma Alice – she was a sweet and sour old lady. She would just as quickly yell and scream at you as she would slip you five dollars and say, “Here, put this in your pocket.” She was so wonderful. She lived with us for a couple years at the end of her life – moved in with our parents. So Chris, especially, had a lot of time in college: he’d go back home and she was hanging out.

CH: She was just so fun… from such a different generation and lived through so much and had a real tough life that she really fought through that was really inspiring and… we gave her this personality, like Shane said, just feisty but also so sweet and fun. Grandma Alice on the show is a lot like her, and of course has kind of developed into her own character.

JM: Grandmas are just the best. But when you watch this first episode, you’re gonna see Grandma Alice with a sword. Did the real Grandma Alice have a sword right next to her chair?

CH: Okay, listen, there’s some creatives liberties there.

SH: I’d say Grandma had something worse. She had her own bare hands. (laugh)

CH: She didn’t have a sword.

SH: But I bet she wished she did.

CH: If you had given her that idea, maybe she would’ve gone out and acquired one.

JM: The first episode is called “Space Chicken”. When you decided to get this series started – to kick things off – how did you decide on going with a space chicken plotline?

CH: That was Shane’s idea. Whenever Shane and I are working on our comic book series, Shane’s always very good at thinking of big, fun ideas that you just wanna see. And as soon as he said, “What if Cricket launched a chicken into space?”, I was like, “Yeah. Totally.” That’s not only our Pilot story, but that says a lot about Cricket and… how his brain works and where his head’s at.

SH: I think introducing all of the key members of the series in one episode – it’s a tall order. It’s an ensemble show; there’s a lot of characters. And you want to have a story that can try and highlight each character and what makes them unique and special. And this one follows Cricket and his goal. Tilly [his sister] is right alongside him as his partner in crime. We get to see Bill, his dad, being a worried, overwhelmed single father. And then they bump into Grandma, who is just this terror… until she says “Come here and give me a kiss.”

JM: No pun intended, or maybe the pun’s intended, but it is quite a launch for your series to have this episode.

(Both Chris and Shane laugh.)

JM: And the next part of the episode is called “Steak Night”. Is there a food, like a steak, that you cannot live without?

CH: Oh my gosh. Well, we talked a lot about family traditions for the episode “Steak Night”. And it seems like in every family there’s always some kind of holy grail – a meal or a certain dish that everyone can’t live without. In our family, it was always our other Grandma, on the other side of the family, would make these homemade noodles. And that was it.

SH: They’re German butter noodles.

CH: Oh my God.

SH: And that’s all it was. It was just noodles and butter – and some fried breadcrumbs. And that was the family tradition every holiday. We’d get so excited to go over to Grandma’s house and have Grandma’s noodles.

CH: For the Greens, it’s steaks.

JM: Those noodles sound good. And have you ever had any weird experiences in the subway system, because that’s what this episode is about as well: quite an adventure with rats and bomb threats.

CH: What is that a trick question? (laugh)

SH: Have you ever ridden on a subway? Honestly, so in Los Angeles… we had a period, both Chris and I, where we were taking public transportation – either the bus or the subway and…

CH: It’s an adventure, man!

SH: Every day – there’s some characters.

JM: But don’t you just love that – that the people you see everyday can inspire the characters you put into your TV shows – random people, people you’ve known forever?

SH: That’s our bread and butter.

CH: With this show, we’ve never wanted to say, “The country is better because of this” or “The city is better because of this.” There’s so many aspects of living in both areas that we love. I think the thing I love the most about living in the city is the… different characters and the fun, weirdness you get of putting a bunch of different people together in a close space. I mean, that’s what a city is as the broad strokes of it all. And we love that.

JM: And you have a lot of big guest stars this season, including Jon Hamm. Is he going to be voicing a “mad man”?

CH: He is indeed.

SH: I think that’s the best way to describe it.

CH: The only way he said Yes! No – he was great. He came in to guest star on an episode that will be coming down the pike a little later, and I think fans of the show will really like it.

SH: It’s a really funny performance. He did an amazing job. It’s gonna be a great episode.

#Big City Greens #BCG #Disney Channel #Shane Houghton #Chris Houghton #Animation Scoop

[lafayetteslattes-blog]

Domestic jeffmads/lams au: Chapter One

Credits: @hxxtile Lucy is their character, I just decided to make a story.

Word Count: 2000

Warning: Swearing

Plot: Lucy Jefferson starts Junior high with Philip Hamilton (who she hates) and is pretty sure she has her life figured out, until she meets Theodosia Burr Jr. (that’s it, it’s basically Lucy just figuring out her sexuality and who she is and having her dads be there every step of the way)

A/N: I hope you enjoy ??? maybe ???

      "First day of junior high! Are you nervous?" Thomas handed Lucy a plate with toast, scrambled eggs and sausage links. "It's totally fine if you are, you don't have to go if you're not ready! We can call the office and tell them you're sick or something." He was rambling now. Lucy looked up at her dad and took a bite of her sausage. This was a thing that he did every time she hit some big 'milestone' in her life.

     "Of course my daughter isn't nervous, she's a Jefferson! Isn't that right, Lucy?" James came into the dining room, still in his maroon bathrobe, and ruffled her hair. When he tried to pull his hand out, it got stuck. "Jesus, do you ever brush this head of yours?" He asked once he had finally released himself from her hair.

       Lucy was about to respond when Thomas scoffed, handing his husband his plate, "You never seem to complain when you're pulling on mine." He raised a brow. James blushed. Lucy gagged and threw a wadded up napkin at him. Thomas gave her a challenging look and threw it back. Lucy stuck her tongue out and her father copied before they both began laughing.

       "God, you guys are basically the same person." James took a seat next to Lucy and Thomas sat on her other side. They began eating while their daughter, on the other hand, was halfway finished.

      "Philip should be here in about half an hour, have you picked out what you're going to wear?" James asked. Lucy looked down at her current outfit which was an oversized pink hoodie that almost covered her purple skirt. Her matching purple flats awaited at the door. She looked back up at James as he looked over her outfit. "Lucy, it's your first stay of school! Don't you think what you're wearing is..." He looked over at his husband for help.

        "Absolutely adorable!" Thomas gushed. Lucy smiled at her dad. "Don't listen to your dad! You look just fine, you're going to be the most popular sixth grader there I can see it now!" Thomas looked at Lucy with hearts in his eyes. He felt so proud, it was like he was staring at a younger, smaller, female version of himself.

       "Thanks, Papa,” Her voice was small and smooth but strong at the same time. Thomas fell apart at the large smile she offered him. “Also, I don’t see why junior high is such a big deal?” She turned to James, “From what I’ve heard, it’s the same as elementary. High school is where the real juicy stuff happens. Dances, sports, dating…”

       James choked on his orange juice, “Dating?” He asked, looking down at the eleven year old. She nodded eagerly.

      “Yeah, papa! Dad said the two of you met in high school, right?” Thomas nodded and sipped on his coffee, “He told me that you guys met at a party that aunt Angelica threw! Apparently you were playing truth or dare and Alexander dared Papa to…”

        “Mr. Jeffersons!!!” Philip’s squeaky voice was heard from the other side of the front door, “The doors unlocked but mom told me it’s impolite to walk into people’s houses unannounced so this is me announcing myself!” Thomas sighed in relief. He never thought he’d be so happy to hear a Hamilton’s voice.

       He stood up gave James an apologetic smile. Lucy stood as well and gave James a kiss on the cheek. “Wish me luck, dad!” She gave him a toothy grin. James smiled gave her a thumbs up. She ran over to Thomas who was holding her Powerpuff Girls backpack and a twenty dollar bill.

      “Make sure no bully tries to steal your lunch money,” Thomas whispers, “And by bully I mean Phillip.” He handed her the backpack and cash and kissed her forehead. Lucy nodded and saluted Thomas before closing her eyes, taking a deep breath and opening the door.

       “Dramatic much?” Philip asked when Lucy let the breath out. She opened her eyes and looked Philip up and down. He wore a plain blue short-sleeved shirt, with a turtle pin on his chest. His hands were in the pockets of his cargo shorts and he wore sky blue vans to match his shirt. He wore his curly hair in a bun, but a few strands fell out of it and into his face. He also had a turtle shell backpack. “You ready to go?”  When Lucy walked past him without a word he shrugged and turned to the door where James and Thomas stood, watching their interactions. “Bye, Mr. Jeffersons! I’ll make sure your daughter won’t get bullied!”

      James waved and closed the door, turning to Thomas, “Why do I feel like it’s going to be Lucy protecting Philip?”

       Thomas shrugged, “It probably will.”

        “Okay, first things first! Stay away from the back of the bus.” Lucy gave Phillip a confused look, “That’s where the eighth graders sit. The very front is for the fifth graders, who only come to the junior high for band. Then there’s us, the sixth graders, then seventh. And then the back four seats. Basically thrones.”

     “You know this how?” Lucy asked as they approached the bus stop.

     “I’m in band, duh! I left my violin at mom’s house though so she’s dropping it off later today.”

      “Nerd.” Lucy giggled under her breath. Phillip glared at her but she only continued to laugh, which made him even angrier. He balled his hands into fists and stomped ahead to the bus stop. He doesn’t even know why he bothers with her. Lucy caught up to him, still laughing, and looked around, “Hey, braces, how come we’re the only ones here? This stop used to be filled with kids.”

       “That was for elementary, idiot. We’re like, the only sixth graders in this part of the neighborhood. We’re also the first stop, so we get good seats. Don’t sit next to me though, I have friends.”

        “That’s a lie,” Lucy laughed and turned when she heard the bus coming down the road. ‘Here we go’ she thought to herself. The bus pulled up in front of them and the doors opened to reveal an old, fat, white man who was a few years away from losing his teeth. Lucy could tell, because when he smiled down at them, his mouth was a mess of brown and yellow.

         “Well, hello there, Pip! Who is this?” He asked.

         “Mornin’, Bill! This is Lucy, I’m supposed to be showing her the ropes!” Lucy rolled her eyes behind Philip who was smiling proudly.

        “Oh! And I see you got a little upgrade over the summer?” Philip was confused at first, “Your braces, kid. You didn’t have them last year if I recall. When’d you get those?”

      “A few weeks ago,” Philip began to talk about the experience, but Lucy was honestly trying to get to school.

       She cleared her throat, “Excuse me, Bill? Don’t you have other stops to get to?” Philip rolled his eyes and mouthed something to the old man, which got him laughing hysterically. Lucy crossed her arms and glared at the two.

        “I’m sorry, ma’am, won’t happen again.” Bill said through laughter, he high fived Philip before the curly haired boy began walking down the aisle. Lucy sighed and followed. She took a seat two seats in front of Philip and on the other side of the aisle, not wanting to sit next to him. When the bus started moving she smiled and looked out the window and at the passing houses.

          After three stops, the bus was almost filled with kids talking about their summer and new outfits and whatnot. Philip’s friends were even on the bus as well. Everyone knew everyone. Except Lucy. She mentally cursed her dads for making her go to a private school, but also thanked them, because a majority of the kids on this bus were in desperate need of a shower.

       At the fourth stop, though, the boredom was knocked right out of Lucy. After a few eighth and seventh graders, a sixth grade girl walked onto the bus, looking down at her phone with furrowed brows. She had her dreadlocks pulled back into a high pony-tail and wore a pink shirt that read “#Vote4Burr!” in blue lettering. She wore dark blue denim shorts, black flats and a stitch backpack that was covered in pins from shows such as Bob’s Burgers, Adventure Time, she even had a few Melanie Martinez ones. “This is the bus to WJHS, right?” She had asked. A few kids in the back laughed but she seemed to either ignore them, or not care. Lucy liked that.

      When Bill nodded, she smiled anxiously and began typing vigorously into her phone, walking down the aisle. Lucy wanted to say something when she passed her and walked to the eighth grade section, but she was too late. The whole bus had gone quiet as well and watched her.

        “Hey, you, what grade are you in?” An eighth grader, who Philip had referred to as Mia, asked, the bus began moving, causing the girl to stumble a bit.

       She looked up from her phone and stuck it in her back pocket, “Sixth, why?” She asked. Lucy thought that the girl was genuinely confused, but Mia took it as sass.

      “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I’m gonna need you to lose the attitude.” Mia replied coldly. Lucy was getting mad now.

      “Hey, leave her alone! She was just confused, you douche!” Lucy stood and turned around to glare at Mia from the front of the bus. A chorus of Ooh’s was heard from the bus, Mia’s face began to turn red and she stood up from her seat.

       Another eight grader, who had their ear buds in, heard the commotion and took them out. They took one look at Mia and the confused girl and sighed, standing up as well. “Mia, sit the fuck down. It’s obviously this kid’s first day, don’t make it as hard for them as it already is.” The person’s voice was calm yet stern as they spoke to Mia who crossed her arms and sat down and pulled out her phone with a huff, but it turned soft and sympathetic when they turned to the still confused and honestly bewildered girl, “I don’t know if you know this, but the back seats are taken for eighth graders, you can sit up front, though.” They smiled down at the girl.

        “Thank you,” She breathed out and turned around to walk back down the aisle. All the seats were taken except for (conveniently) the one next to Lucy. “Can I sit here?” She asked hopefully. Lucy felt her face grow hot and she nodded. Her first new friend, wow. “Thanks for defending me by the way.” She smiled after taking a seat.

        Lucy nodded back with a nervous grin and couldn’t help but peek over at the girl as she pulled her phone back out. Lucy wasn’t allowed to have a phone (Thomas disagrees but James thinks she too young) so she was nothing short of surprised to see that the girl had an IPhone 7 in her small hands. The lock screen was a selfie taken of her and a man (bald) laughing at how they looked with the snapchat dog filter. When she unlocked the phone (with her thumb print, which also amazed Lucy) the home screen was her and the same man with the flower crown filter, smiling whole heartedly. Lucy smiled, guessing that man was her father and turned back to look out the window silently.

       “I’m Theodosia Burr Jr., but you can just call me Theo.” The girl spoke as the bus finally left their neighborhood. Lucy looked over at the girl, who was smiling and holding her hand out.

       “I’m Lucy Jefferson, nice to meet you, Theo.” She smiled back and took her hand.

       “Nice to meet you, Lucy.”

#Jeffmads #lams #hamilton #hamilton musical #lucy jefferson #thomas jefferson #james madison #WJHS AU #Domestic #alexander hamilton #philip hamilton #john laurens #aaron burr #theodosia burr #theodosia jr #hamilkids

[lilyemrys]

 Rules:

1. Always post the rules. 2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you. 3. Write 11 questions of your own. 4. Tag 11 people.

Tagged by: @kasumi-chou, @miraculous-katsukii, @iceprinceofbelair, and @where-his-towel-is​ 

(woah I have to do a lot but I absolutely love getting tagged in stuff omg ily guys)

——— kas’ questions

First letter of your real name  F

Age/birthday 28th November! I’m turning 18 :))))

Favourite season THATS REALLY TOUGH. I’m gonna say autumn because its cold but not too cold y’know? And the fall colors are gorgeous. 

Favourite fruit Oranges! and mangos! And strawberries! Uhhhhhhhhhh I have too many ooops

Do you have short, medium or long hair? I had long until a week ago, but now they’re medium

Hanahaki or soulmate? *googles hanahaki for this* I’m gonna say soulmates, because I like everyone getting at least one person they could spend their life with. (Tbh soulmates irl would be kinda problematic because what if they died? What if you fell in love with someone else? who knows!)

Angst or Fluff? Depends on the mood, but most likely angst. I love love love angst with happy endings. (But then I’ve also read several MCDs when I’m that kinda mood). But I also absolutely loVE fluff because CUTE.

Soundboard (help the writer with ideas) or beta (help the writer with wording/grammar)? Personally I think I’m much better as a beta (because grammar ayeee), but I can be a soundboard too! Idea bouncing is always fun (although tbh I don’t know how good I am at it)

Do you still have an active ff.net? If yes, link I never had one haha!

Would you trade one of Phichit’s hamsters to bring Vicchan back to life? ......how dare you ask me that. ACTUALLY WAIT. Yes, yes I would. Because you said trade, aka I could trade the hamster to a friend or something and still get to see him everyday. (#lawyered)

Should Victor and Yuuri both wear white at their wedding? Should they? Nah, man, let them wear whatever they want to. (I mean......they’re gonna be naked by the end of it anyways, so does it really matter is the real question)

————- andi’s questions

Spring or autumn? *sweats* I love them both oh gosh. I love autumn weather, but spring clothes and spring also means summer break is coming soon. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Classical music or EDM? *googles EDM to answer this* I like them both! Although tbh I don’t listen to either as much

Morning person or night owl? NIGHT OWL FTW. My average bedtime is 3am

Pastel or punk? I’m a pastel princess

Painting or singing? *sweats some more* HOW ABOUT BOTH. I love singing while painting, how about that. 

Piano or violin? Piano! Although I really love love love the sound of a violin. But like, nothing can beat a piano for me.

Jeans or skirts? I want to say skirts because I always feel so flowery and pretty in them (but low-key I always get hella annoyed with them)

Extrovert or introvert? I thought I was an extrovert for a second. And then I laughed at myself for thinking of such a weird thing. I’m like an Introvert™

Fantasy book or non-fictional book? fantasy yes please. need me some action. some DRAMA (also dragons)

Discovery channel or disney channel? *uses fairy wand to draw disney logo*

Hair up or hair down person? hair down ftw. My hair looks extremely poofy and frizzy when its down and I just get really annoyed with it.

————- adrian aka light of my life’s questions

What’s your favourite planet? Oh man I have so many good answers to this. okay a) Uranus, because I’m a teenager and cannot help it b) Pluto, because VIVA LA PLUTO its such a smol planet that just wants some love (also side note: I was tying smol and my laptop corrected it to smoldering and I can’t stop laughing) c) Neptune, because I love Percy Jackson’s dad Poseidon and d) Earth, because it has all of you lovely folks

Do you speak any other languages? I do! I speak English and Hindi fluently. I can understand and can speak sometimes Punjabi, and I can speak/understand Spanish to a limit.

What’s your dream job? oh mAN. *side eyes all the future career quizzes I’ve taken* Honestly, at this point I have no clue. Something with design preferably. Or a film director! That’d be fun. Yeah idk, just something I would have fun doing :)

If you were choosing a new name for yourself, what would it be? .....that is a good question. I’m gonna say Lily because thats my internet nickname and its really cute

Do you like flowers? I love flowers. Give me all the flowers

Is there a nickname you’d like people to call you but have never asked? Not particularly. I just like when people give me nicknames in general because its like a special thing y’know

What colour would you dye your hair? I just dyed my hair yesterday actually! It’s a really pretty reddish brown. I think in a couple years I might go for some non-natural hair colors like blue or something. (I also love how pretty silver/grey hair looks but alas, I could never pull it off)

What’s the best birthday you ever had? I was going to be cliché and say my sweet 16, but I’m gonna go with my 10th birthday. I had absolutely no idea we were doing anything until I came out of my room and my best friend at the time just pounced on my back. Soon a couple others came and we had a blast. (This was the night before my birthday) And then the next day my mom took us all to go watch a movie. The best part though was when used the wrapping paper from the gifts to hide away umm some provocative movie posters.

Do you play any instruments? I play the piano! But I haven’t practiced in such a long time oops

Can you swim? I used to be convinced I was a mermaid when I was a little kid. I LOVE swimming.

What are you afraid of? Our inevitable doom and destruction and the realization that one day, none of what we do will ever matter because we will be dust. No, I’m kidding. I’m gonna have to say just being completely alone and nobody liking me. Also, lizards.

————- ellen’s questions

Where is wally/waldo if you’re one of those weirdos from Across The Pond *sweats*

favourite tv show theme tune? DOO WEEE DOOOOOOOOOO. Actually I’m pretty sure that isn’t my favorite, but its fun to say.

If you could live in an AU what AU would you write for yourself? One where I am successful and happy and someone loves me as much as Victor and Yuuri love each other. (probably not the answer you were expecting oops)

Which powerpuff girl are you? Blossom!

Which ship in YOI do you think needs some more lovin by the fandom? Sara/Mila haha. (ngl I don’t really have that many ships in YOI other than Victuuri)

How long would you last in a horror movie? .0000002 seconds. Self preservation? What self preservation. I would totally just trip into the murderer’s knife or whatever

leopard print or tiger stripes? and which half of victuuri would you put in which clothes? Hmmm I’m gonna say tiger stripes. I feel like they could both rock either, but in the end it wouldn’t even matter because somehow those clothes would end up in Yurio’s closet.

how much would you pay kubo-sensei for the down low on the YOI movie? one corn chip (sorry oops I was just thinking about memes) Probably nothing because I don’t like spoilers. (but then again, I do like knowing more than other people so who knows)

favourite type of sky? (e.g. sunset, cloudy sky, overcast etc) A clear night sky when you can see all of the constellations glittering down on you

why did the chicken cross the road? It wanted to get hit by a car after those ap exams. (actually did you know “To get to the other side” was supposed to be a joke about after life because I never got that until recently)

if you could send a message to all creators with your newly acquired psychic powers, what would that message be? “GIVE ME STUFF. ALSO YOU ARE AWESOME AND MAKE GR8 STUFF (but you need to totally give me all the stuff)” because I’m a selfish butt

OKAY, now for my questions. Let’s see.

What is your favorite part of the day? (This can be a time, like the morning, or an action, like seeing your pet)

What is something you’ve always wanted someone to do for you, but never told them?

If you could do something for the rest of your life without fear of going broke/getting hurt, what would it be?

Can you describe the color blue without using the word? (I’m so ready to hear these responses aye)

Best compliment you ever received? 

What is your favorite au trope?

What is your favorite memory?

What is something you’ve always secretly wanted people to compliment you on?

Hogwarts house?

What is your favorite song at the moment? (Or your #1 played song on your phone if you don’t have one)

Do you cry during movies/tv shows/while reading books/fanfics?

FFFFFF I don’t even know if I know 11 people and most of them either a) already tagged me, or b) have already done this. But anyways

Tag: @sea-goddess-amphitrite, @cary-onmywaywardson, @islandsofjohnmontagu, @iceprinceofbelair, @kasumi-chou, @nikifirov, @where-his-towel-is, @rayrayswimusic, @miraculous-katsukii, @flowercrownyuri, @accioharo, and @overcome-chihoko (I’m tagging 12 people because fight me)

(I’M SORRY FOR TAGGING YOU BACK IF I DID and I hope its okay that I tagged all of you guys. I just really want to know what you guys would say :) also if you don’t want to answer these its totally fine. <3 you)

#lily speaks

[thewritingstar]

Sorry for asking so much but if u dont mind i like to think that blossom sees boomer like his little bro so lile one day boomer having panic attack and blossom helping him. God i love my bby boy suffering

Oh don’t apologize! I love it! Ask as much as you want love. Fun fact, I used to have panic disorder from the age of 6- 17 so I know all about panic attacks. That wasn’t a very fun fact but uhhh, hope you enjoy!

Everything in this fic is from my own experience and I also took psychology as well. 

So I’m going to write this with my version of my own attacks so what you see boomer having is equivalent to mine. From my own experience just so that no one comes for me, I can’t speak for about ten minutes and its had to move so im either sitting or under neath something like a desk. Once I can talk, I stutter and can barely form full sentences. Its important to know that panic attack and anxiety attacks are much different as the first doesn’t have triggers but the second does. Also the first thought you have when you going into a panic attack is thinking you are about to die, scary but its true. 

Now that is out of the way, I hope you enjoy this fic and sorry that it took so long to do!

Pairing: Blossom and Boomer (non shipping) 

Fandom: Powerpuff Girls 

——

She never really knew how or why she heard it. Super hearing gave you many things but hearing the worlds smallest sob escape trembling lips was never something she usually picked up on. 

It buzzed in her ear and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up with a slight chill. Soon her feet were taking her upstairs and it was the first time she had ignored the hall pass rule. 

Being a hero meant she had to be ready for anything. Monster attacks, demons rising from the pits of hell and even gangs shooting up stores, it was all part of the deal, yet there were some problems that not even super powers could handle. 

She opened the door to the roof slowly before stepping out and feeling the crisp and cool air of the morning. It would have been peaceful if someone wasn’t crying. Her foot steps were that of a ghost as she walked towards the other end and she dropped to her knees before placing a hand on a trembling shoulder. 

“Boomer?” she asked quietly. 

The blond boy looked up, his eyes had been blown wide and were rubbed red to the point that they might scar. His lips trembled as he said nothing stared at her with an empty look. 

She felt frightened in that moment, not for her well being but his. She watched as his lips parted but nothing came out. He tried to speak but his voice was like a desert. Dry and bare. 

His eyes searched for an answer, something to cling and grab onto so he could swim.

“Boomer, are you okay?” She asked knowing the answer already. Again, no words but blue eyes that begged for help. 

His breathing picked up, hyperventilation coming into play and he brought his hands to his ears and slammed his foot down as if to drown out the silence. Blossom searched for any sign of what could have hurt him, she had to think. There was nothing, no monster or attack and he didn’t seem physically hurt, so what could- 

Oh. Oh. OH. 

She should have known what was happening the minute it she saw him. Her advanced psychology classes came into handy just now. 

“Boomer.” She said softly and he opened his eyes. “I think you are having a panic attack.” His eyebrows furrowed and she bit her lip. “Okay maybe you are aware of that but I’m going to help you through this, okay?” 

Boomer said nothing and she didn’t expect him too. She made a mental note that he was going non verbal during these and maybe that's why he couldn’t call for help. 

Blossom dug through her bag for her notes and found it in record time. “Okay lets see, panic attacks.” She began to read. “The first thing that happens during an attack is the thought of death. Oh.” She frown. “There is a constant state of panic that last five to ten minutes but the after math of the fear could last hours. In order to stop a panic attack, the person experiencing it must wait it out or an extreme reaction can help quicken the process, other than that, there's nothing to do.” She scoffed. “Gee that was helpful.” 

All she needed was a distraction, she could do that. She could tell a joke? No, she wasn’t good at those and only got a humorous reaction from her clumsiness. Instead of trying to figure it out, her phone was her next best guess. 

“Don’t worry Boomer, I got you.” She smiled. She went to a few different sources and found one. “Ice in the mouth. It should trick your brain into thinking about it instead.” Blossom looked around. “Where can I get ice?”

She suddenly felt a finger poke at her cheek. She looked at Boomer who was point at his mouth then to her. Oh! 

“My ice breath!” She cheered and held out her hand and carefully blowed until a small cube formed in her hand. “I’m not sure Boomer that might be a little gross-” 

The cube was taken and before she could protest, it was in his mouth. 

“Okay then, how's that working?” She questioned with a soft expression. 

He looked from the left then to the right as he shifted the ice in his mouth. Slowly he opened his mouth, his voice breaking as he spoke. 

“I-” He tried to say as tears formed in his eyes again. 

Blossom put her hand on his and ushered him not to speak. 

“Its okay, you don't have to say anything. You got through it, I’m sorry I was only here at the end but you did it, Boomer.” She said proudly. 

He wiped his tears with his sleeve that was already soaked from earlier and leaned to grab her shoulder and pull her into a hug. She felt the tension from his shoulders fall instantly and his heart rate slower to a more desired rate as he hugged her tighter and held her for a moment. She didn’t dare budge but gave him a squeeze and ruffled his hair as he pulled away. 

“Your face is awfully red, maybe you should go home.” She said as she helped him stand. 

He nodded and grabbed his bag. “T-thank you.” He croaked. “No one has ever been with me before.” He said sadly. 

She frowned. “Does Brick know?” 

Boomer shifted on the balls of his feet. “No.” 

“Do...do you have these often?” She was almost afraid to ask. 

“Once a month maybe. Most of the time I’m at home, haven’t have a public one in a while.” 

“Was there anything that could have caused it?” 

He bit his lip and shrugged. “No. You read those books, they are random but Brick and Butch fighting constantly and the stress of school doesn’t help. But it's okay.” He offered her a smile. “That ice trick worked really well. Without you, I probably would have been there until school got out. I’m just really happy it was you and not anyone else.” He said honestly. 

“I think you should tell your brothers. You can barely speak in that state and I would hate for something to happen when you couldn’t call out for anyone.” 

He tightened his hold on his backpack and gulped. “I don’t want to. Its embarrassing. I’d rather keep it to myself, I can handle it.” 

She knew there was no way he would budge. She exhaled and pulled his phone  from his pocket. 

“hey what are-”

“Im installing a safety button. My sisters and I have a button that we can push that automatic lets us know when we are in danger and can’t speak. It's mostly for missions and things like that but this is just as important.” She handed him his phone back. “So when ever this happens and you feel like you need some help or someone to just sit there with you, I’m one click away.” 

He stared at the button and placed his thumb over it. A beeping noise came from Blossoms phone and she pulled it out to silence it. “See like that.” 

A wave of emotions came over Boomer as he began to tear up for the hundredth time. “Blossom, I don’t think you know how much this means to me.” 

Blossom brought him in for another hug. “You won’t be alone any longer, I promise.” 

She felt him nod against her shoulder and wiped the tear steaming down his cheek with her thumb. “Lets go get you check out to the office and sent home, you should rest.” 

“Yeah. I’m a little dizzy.” 

She wrapped her arm around his and the began to walk towards the office just as the bell rang. 

“Damn it, I miss third period.” Boomer sighed. 

“Its fine. Buttercup will give you the homework and I’ll get anything else you need.” 

“You really don’t have to Bloss.” 

“As a hero and more importantly, a friend, I will.” Blossom said.

“Boomer.” They heard a voice behind and she knew instantly it was Brick. 

They stopped walking just as Brick came in front of them. “The hell are you doing?” Brick asked as he looked at their conjoined arms. 

Boomer was about to say something but Blossom squeezed his arm. 

“Hes not feeling well and I’m sending him home.” Blossom stated. 

“You were fine this morning.” Brick narrowed his eyes. “Buttercup said you ditched class.” 

“He didn’t ditch. Some of us have emotions and right now Boomer is not feeling too well, he can explain on his own time but as his now older sister, I am making him go home and rest.”

“What she said.” Boomer said just as he yawned. 

Brick rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Fine, go home.” 

Boomer gave him a small smile. 

“Go on ahead, I’ll meet you in the office.” Blossom said as Boomer walked ahead. 

“Is he really sick?” Brick asked and she could sense that he was really worried.

“I wouldn’t say that but its also not my place. Just go easy on him, he's having a hard time right now and I think having his brother help him through it would be good for both of you.” She reassured him. 

“Alright, whatever. I’ll make sure Boomer is fine.” 

Blossom smiled and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “You're so sweet.” She gushed dramatically. 

Bricks face flushed slightly as he took her hand and tried to hide his smirk. “Yeah. Yeah. Let’s not be late to chemistry.” 

“Would love too but I have to go use my puff powers to get my new little brother home.” 

“Little brother?” Brick shook his head. “What are you adopting him next?” 

“I just might.” She smiled. “I’ll see ya in class.” She winked as she headed towards the office. 

She found Boomer sitting in one of the chairs. “If you could stop canoodling with my brother, I would like to leave, I got a massive headache and my face is a disaster from crying.”

“We weren’t canoodling.” She said under her breath as she went up to the office lady. 

Boomer sat and watched as she talked. He felt better by a landslide since she came to help him and hearing her refer to him as a little brother made him a little more happy then he cared to admit. Watching Blossom talk and win over the woman made him smile as he hugged his arms together. 

“Yeah, big sis would be nice.” He said to himself but he didn't miss the way her lips turned up into a small smile. 

----

I hope you enjoyed! I actually really liked this prompt and sometimes its good to read things that can help you in daily life. 

#ppg #ppg fic #boomer ppg #blossom ppg #blossick ppg #thewritingstar

[calvinwatchesstuff]

Let’s Watch Invader Zim Episode 2: “Bestest Friend”

Yes, much like Invader Zim itself, the liveblog has returned from the depths of the Internet and has been reborn! I never know what to say for these blurbs, so let’s leap right in. 

Oh hey, we have an actual title sequence this time around!

Yeah, that basically looks like the cafeteria food at my school.

And of course now Zim is paranoid that not having friends will make people suspect he’s an alien. Trust me, Zim: I know from personal experience that that doesn’t happen.

Well this may be the creepiest portrayal of friendship I’ve ever seen. (Hobbes just shouted something about someone named “Starlight”. I have no desire to follow that conversation thread to its end.)

I love the way Zim said his own name there. It’s like he randomly spliced in a soundbite of himself from a completely different context.

You know, Zim, this absorbance test is FAR more likely to get you investigated than not having any friends.

…I’m not sure I want to know how that third kid did that.

NO! NOT THE SQUIRREL AND TOY TAXI TEST! THEY’RE NOT READY!!!

And now we have Keith, I think. I’m not certain whether or not he’ll become a recurring character; I’ll just wait and see.

Best method of playing tetherball ever. Of all time.

Okay, Zim spelled his name as “Keet”. Until further notice I will too.

Ooh, that’s not gonna be good, Zim. I’m pretty sure these types don’t give up easily. (Susie just shouted something at me that I neither could nor care to hear. Why must everyone bother me during video time?)

How…did he just call Zim on both lines simultaneously?

Oh, well based on the way he just drove past the window twice, there are clearly two of him. That would explain it.

You’re trusting GIR to handle this? Your funeral, man.

“Leprechauns!” GIR’s non-sequiturs are one of the best things about this show.

Oh shit now he’s in your house. There is officially no getting rid of him.

AND GIR JUST GRABS THE BACON OH MY GOD

Is this kid aware that he’s talking to a robot? Or is he just totally cool with a talking dog and that doesn’t surprise him at all?

Yeah, Zim’s gonna find out in about five seconds, isn’t he?

“Nothing…or something?” Okay, aside from being an amazing line, for some reason Zim sounded exactly like Peridot on that line. I know there’s a common tendency to compare them, but it really was uncanny for that line.

GIR is just a goldmine of funny line delivery.

I was going to guess that no one was going to show up and all Zim’s preparations would be for nothing, but then I remembered that this is school; there’s ALWAYS someone that desperate for social status.

Zim has some weirdly detailed hallucinations. (Also, autocorrect is now trying to change that to “Him”. This is not fucking Powerpuff Girls, autocorrect.)

The random slow-mo makes this scene absolutely perfect.

NOPE GIR MADE IT EVEN BETTER

…did that kid just have his eyes removed.

DID THAT MACHINE JUST TAKE OUT HIS MOTHERFUCKING EYES AND REPLACE THEM WITH MIND CONTROL WHATEVERS

You know, I was told this show was kind of dark for Nickelodeon, but holy shit that is messed up. Although considering the creator’s other works, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

I didn’t think it was possible for Keef to be any lower on the totem pole, but I have a feeling this might bring it about.

…what was with the random GIR nightmare fuel at the end? Is it supposed to say that Keef died? Honestly I wouldn’t put it past the show at this point, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on…right?

Well, that got a LOT darker than I was expecting. I mean, I knew this show had some kind of messed up humor, but I’m genuinely surprised Nickelodeon let them get away with the eyeball thing. Still though, lots of great humor, especially from GIR. Tune in soon for more of this, as well as a return of my Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V liveblog! Until then! 

#calvin watches stuff #invader zim liveblog