#this is even funnier considering his dating history

[emblazons]

what are your favorite byler headcanons?

—I never get asked this question, so thanks for being the first lmao. (I did write my “S5 hopes” before, but these are different I think?) Anyway. Hmmm.

While they both love Tolkien, Mike likes the Lord of the Rings trilogy books more, but Will enjoys the Hobbit best. Mike loves the depth of the lore and complexity of how Tolkien describes things in the original trilogy because they help him when he’s coming up with campaigns, but Will enjoys the straightforward (and a little sweeter) narrative of The Hobbit more—and also has a preference for it because the version he had as a kid was more image-heavy, and he’s an artist. :)

Speaking of Tolkien—Mike absolutely has a one-ring he keeps around his neck like Frodo. (It may even be what he chooses as an engagement ring way, way down the line, but Will is so outdone he decides to just buy it to wear it around his neck instead lol).

When it comes to getting work done, Mike is a think-out-loud type—as in, will talk to himself out loud and not even realize he’s doing it when alone, or with someone he’s comfortable getting into his head around. Will doesn’t say anything about it, because he thinks it’s hilarious—but Mike eventually learns about his own tendency when Will knows about a surprise he had planned before he can even do it…because he was thinking out loud. (He gets up in arms about how Will should have told him, but the more time passes, the funnier the tendency becomes to them).

Mike was hype as hell for the release of Jurassic Park in 1993. Will was also hype, but. Not nearly as excited about it as Mike was. When the Peter Jackson’s LOTR adaptation was announced, they were both over the moon (though Will was a bit scared. He is very picky about his movies, and adaptations even more so).

The two of them would settle in San Francisco, and would definitely be the ones who run a “teach DnD / campaign night” in conjunction with a comic book store in their neighborhood, in an attempt to keep the younger generations’ love for it alive—the same way as the bookstore owner who introduced them to the book. this is maybe based on an actual comicbook store with a dnd night in the SF Castro that I found a few years ago. The world may never know. They are thrilled in 2016 when a new Netflix show (😉) and Critical Role revives people’s love for it when they’re much, much older.

The first time the topic of “going to pride” comes up in the mid-90’s (long before it was the socially accepted event it is today), Will is mildly terrified—and so is Mike, but his “brave paladin” side absolutely talks himself up enough to get Will to join him solely out of a need to prove he can. They end up having a great time, and Mike, who has never really delved into queer history, ends up on a whole tangent of learning about it for an entire month afterward. Will finds it v endearing.

Mike sucks at poker because he cannot keep a single thing off his face. He is, however, really good at playing “the house” in card games, so that’s the role he takes on (comes from years of leading campaigns. He’s a bit of a showman that way).

Will cannot stand cold even after he’s disconnected from Vecna/the UD, and misses California—which is why they move back. When “global warming” talk starts becoming more common, his favorite dad joke to make is “if I think it’s getting hot, it must be,” but no one but the party & family know why it’s funny.

Earlier into their relationship, Will becomes a bit troubled by the fact that Mike is the only person he ever dated. It causes tension in their relationship for a little while, though Will eventually realizes he doesn't want to be with anyone else, so it doesn't matter. (Much later, Mike admits that he thought Will’s concerns were unfounded, considering the only person he ever dated outside of Will happened when he was 13 & probably shouldn’t have even been his girlfriend in the first place, given the fact that she was 3 seconds out of a lab…& he doesn’t even like women anyway).

Mike knows Will is healing more from “the events of the show” when Will starts making dark-humor jokes about being possessed and/or being lost in the upside down—though it takes him a lot to get used to it, given how scared he spent years being about losing Will. Eventually he gets on board and laughs—which Will appreciates, because it helps him to see Mike get less uncomfortable and feel safer about keeping Will safe after all that happened.

There are ten I could think of off top?? LMAO someone ask @magentamee what my other headcanons are I’m sure she’s heard them all by now 😂

Thanks so much for this ask!

#this was fun! thank you! genuinely haha #like. I do in fact have headcanons as an ‘analyst’ type? sometimes I forget haha #demonerds #byler #mike wheeler core #will byers core #the me tag #asks #st headcanons

[thehoodedneku]

Consider Scourge and Shadow as a ship, ok? They can make each other so much worse! It’d be super funny, I promise! They’ve both committed crimes! A perfect match, right? That and Shadow ditching GUN would be valid. And I can argue that would be a GOOD thing to do. I ain’t forgetting the history of GUN.

ANYWAY. Like, Shadow might help Scourge be BETTER, but Shadow could become WORSE and that can be explored! Maybe Scourge would even have some guilt if Shadow went down a dark path because of him. Angst!!!

See, I throw random characters together as like crackships but then BOOM I think about them deeper.

Also even funnier if Shadow shows up to a friend get together with Scourge and doesn’t act like anything is weird while Sonic freaks out about his anti version dating Shadow haha.

(With most Scourge ships, I like the concept that Scourge dates people that would screw with Sonic’s head, like old foes and rivals, but then the plan fails because Scourge has a heart)

#scourge the hedgehog #shadow the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #shadourge #sonic #neku speaks

[that-bitch-abbi-lynne]

I hate this myth, so help me kill it.

William Henry Harrison was inaugurated as the 9th President on the 4th of March, 1841. He would die exactly one month later on the 4th of April.

The myth says that what killed him was his inaugural speech. To this date, his inaugural speech was the longest any U.S. President has given. As well, he was the oldest President to be elected, at the time. What supposedly killed him was a cold that developed into pneumonia after he rode to his inauguration without a coat in the cold and rain, and gave a 2 hour speech, still without coat, in the cold and rain.

This myth is so prevalent that I’ve even seen History teachers spread it! This myth is complete bullshit. The only think that is accurate is that he died from a cold that developed into pneumonia.

Yes, he rode to his inauguration without a coat. Yes, he was the oldest person, at the time, to be elected President. Yes, he gave the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. But it wasn’t raining, it was a little chilly, but it wasn’t raining. It had rained earlier, but when he started his ride, it wasn’t raining, and it didn’t start raining during his speech, either.

Over the next month, he would host and attend functions, typical for the first month of a Presidency. If he was busy dying from death, how could he have had the energy to do that? No, that is not what killed him.

So what did kill him? I’ll tell you. Mr. Harrison walked the same walk pretty much every day. One day, he walked it with no coat, because it wasn’t raining, so why would he wear a coat? Half way through, however, it would start raining, and he would become drenched. When he got home, he CONTINUED ABOUT HIS DAY WITHOUT CHANGING HIS WET CLOTHES. When he fell ill, from being a dumbass, he didn’t call a doctor. He had some loose medical knowledge, having attended a medical school for a bit before dropping out to slaughter American Indians in the Army. So, he took some remedies, and tried to get past it. When he finally did call in a doctor, he was too far gone, and died on the 4th of April.

This myth is so stupid, especially when you consider the actual facts, and because the real way he died is honestly funnier in every way. Reblog, please, and help me dispel this myth.

#history #myth #myths #presidents #us presidents #U.S. history #William Henry Harrison #tipacanoe

[villain-in-love]

@canarycurse Oh boy, now that you mentioned your other s/is, I'm curious about Azalea and Madeline and their relationship with their respective f/os. And maybe some more information about Kojiro and Tauro themselves since, unlike with Musashi, I don't know much about them.

Anyways, in return to Zeroes' statement about their Halloween "costumes", Nico would obviously be the one to bring up Addams family and others would have to censure him because of the copyright again.

Your Zero suddenly stopping answering Kiji's questions during the school event and everyone realizing that where she was sitting just now is already an empty space sounds very much like a canonical joke for Nanbaka. And it sure is unfortunate that she can’t dress up like everyone else, since it’s one of the rare instances in canon where characters had a chance to wear something different from their usual outfits. I’m still curious what you Zero would have worn if she could change clothes, though.

Finding other "emotion ghosts" of the same person is a sensible suggestion, especially if your Zero wants to get more knowledge about her existence, but I don’t think tracking them down would be an easy task. Obviously, she would need to find the original source first and question her, and then she would have to take on a role of a detective and go investigating all the places where others first appeared... Or maybe you already have better ideas on how to find them?

I think your idea of your Zero’s introduction to the plot is a solid one (ha), she would do well getting established as a reoccurring character from the start and something of a local myth that is very much the truth. And with her knowing other characters that would make appearances later, she could easily drop some “easter eggs” here and there.

By the way, since he’s also one of the main characters, what does Hajime thinks about your Zero and her hanging out around his building?

Okay, giving my answers to your questions (which include some of my own questions):

About Trois, Honey, and their favourite underwear question:

For a few seconds Zero looked genuinely thoughtful. The next thing she said was: “You know, in a neighbourhood I was taught that I can and should beat people up for questions like these…” After hearing this, all characters who were near rushed in to save Trois and Honey, asking if they have a death wish.

Obviously, Zero couldn’t be actually bothered by questions like these, she was just wondering about the implications and what it says about Honey’s and Trois’s personalities. Though she still considered the option of beating them up for fun and then using their question as a justification. Really, she’s always just waiting for a good excuse to get violent.

About extra chapters with school event:

Zero does have some academic knowledge and there are subjects she’s genuinely good at – literature, biology, math, psychology, even history, when it comes to the culture and not political dates and events. But it would be objectively funnier to see her answer questions she’s not qualified to answer.

There’s an idea of her giving ridiculous answers when talking about geography. Because she wasn’t planning on travelling abroad any time soon (well, she kinda did anyway, but getting transported to jail doesn’t count), she didn’t bother to learn much about geography and only has some vague understanding based on someone’s personal stories or mentions from books. And once again, outdated information. “Ah yes, the Ottoman Empire, I remember it was there.” “And this must be Речь Посполитая – my old friend used to live there…” “Wait, Singapore is actually a country and not a city? It's so tiny, why is this a country and not a city?”

OR she might give disturbingly accurate answers in anatomy. I imagine, when asked about how organs work as a system, she will give a very detailed answer, even starting to draw a scheme on a blackboard. Then she realizes that she’s bad at drawing, so she will drag someone (for some reason I imagine it either being Honey or Nico) from their desk and in front of the “class”, swiftly ripping the shirt off them and putting a claw to their abdomen, being like: “It can get a little bloody and I can only show this once, so look carefully.” At this point she would have to get dragged away by guards who are responsible for her.

I also jumped on the opportunity to give her some new outfits, because I love giving my OCs extensive wardrobes:

She could have rocked that black-and-red sailor uniform look. Might even paint the tips of her claws red.

Or she could have gone another route and dressed up in classic "white top, black bottoms" look. Thought if she was to wear a short skirt Kiji would have to remind her to sit "properly" every so often.

"I know you said it doesn’t really fill her up but does she have a favourite human food?"

Here's the biggest difference between me and Zero: she’s not a picky eater. So even if she does have some preferences, she can eat almost anything, and I mean it. Anything.

But I guess her favourite food is pancakes with meat – as in regular thin pancakes with meat wrapped into it. Her Grandma used to make pancakes with human meat, so those were obviously the best, but animal meat is fine too. (In reality I hate pancakes that aren't sweet, but I figured that Zero would like it)

Zero also likes aforementioned sushi rolls and always throws absolutely ungodly amounts of wasabi into the soy sauce. She’s quite fond of desserts as well, for example, some belgian waffles with ice cream and several other toppings sound good.

I must note that Zero generally prefers bigger and heartier dishes – I mean, she's capable of consuming several adult human bodies in one sitting, so if it’s some light snack she might not even notice eating it.

As a bonus: Her favourite human body parts to eat are hearts and the meat from the thighs, and the spinal column is the best to crunch on. Her least favourite part is intestine – she can eat a human whole, but she often leaves those untouched, which used to really confuse police at some point.

"Could I ask her impressions of any other members of the cast?"

When it comes to other Nanbaka characters who aren’t Jyugo or Liang, Zero doesn’t hold any particularly strong opinions. She’s fine with almost everyone, as long as they provide a good show for her. But I can comment on several character specifically:

Uno – she quickly identified him as the brain, the leader, and the mom of the group. He obviously cares about Jyugo a lot, and for that she’s somewhat thankful to him. She finds his obsession with being the prettiest and most popular with girls laughable, but overall he left a good impression. (Uno himself is still trying to recover from the sight of Zero eating the guards)

Much to Liang’s and Upa’s confusion, Zero genuinely likes and admires Qi. She sees him as an intelligent and sensible person with whom they can easily understand each other, and while she finds the situation of Liang and Upa constantly berating and blaming him for everything wrong with the world funny in its ridiculousness, she majorly disagrees with their opinion. Qi is also the reason she finally took interest and started learning chemistry.

I think that Zero is likely to get along well with Man with the Scar aka Mashiro in the future and get invested in experiments his organisation conducts. She also would be highly impressed by the schemes his team pulled, like the way they sabotaged Enki or set up other people to confront Jyugo and Zakuro to make the two stronger (while putting Elf inside them as a the kind of "safety catch" to ensure that they use their powers when needed and don't die)

Out of the staff she likes Mitsuru the most – he’s chill and easy-going, brings lively and chaotic atmosphere everywhere he goes, and while it could have been easy to view him as another moron, she gets an impression that despite his eccentric behaviour, this guy always knows exactly what he’s doing. So I think they would be on pretty good terms.

Zero doesn't have anything against Kiji, but as someone who does (surprisingly) take interest and is somewhat knowledgeable about fashion herself, she doesn't quite understand Kiji's decisions when it comes to the colour scheme of his outfits. (And makeup. And hair.)

Hajime reminds Zero a bit of russian gopniks, which is funny. While Hajime dislikes Zero for several reasons, she herself couldn’t care less about it – she’s fond of him simply because he’s very fun to observe, especially when Cell 13 is involved.

Yamato and Seitaro are labelled as "Idiot No.1" and "Idiot No.2" in her mind. Not that she actually dislikes them, but they make her question the quality of the guard selection for this prison.

It’s incredibly rare for Zero to actively dislike someone, but she would have preferred to stay away from Ahato. She happened to visit Building 3 once, for educational purposes, and she does not want to deal with cosmetics and restrictive clothes again – it’s impractical and you can’t possibly expect her to care about not ruining her makeup or be careful to not tear clothes. He almost makes her regret agreeing to never use any force against staff members again. (And she's not pleased with Kiji for supporting all of this.)

When it comes to other people who didn't leave the best of impressions, she would have loved to pick apart Honey’s brain. It’s one of the rare instances when someone’s peculiar temper doesn’t entertain her, but instead makes her question “what is his problem”. She would also prefer if he dropped the act of being a gentleman, she can already smell acting from miles away. Though she is curious about those threads/strings of his, it’s mechanics and techniques of using them. Well, there's at least one thing Honey is good for, and it's making Liang lose his temper – Zero finds their squabbles to be awfully fun to watch.

She’s not impressed with Shin at all and she found it amusing to spoil his mood whenever she had to deal with him.

Also Zero and Dread tried to kill each other several times. Dread is highly irritated by Zero as a person, while Zero considers her to be a nuisance and can't for the life of her understand Dread's devotion to Shin.

#s/i: no.“00”

[sulsulwabadebadoo]

was looking back at older posts & realized i barely posted abt this guy until he and natalie were already getting divorced so here's his history.

adrian's mother & cinthia were friends/in a book club together, and natalie was equally good friends w him & jeffrey (obviously, they were neighbors/grew up together) while she was in high school. and she developed a crush on adrian so they started dating. i didn't really take any pics cause they genuinely never hung out, like they went on one date & then adrian never called again so i was like gonna have natalie dump him but then instead i thought it would be funnier if they eloped. idk i was bored. but then once he joined the household i realized he had the villainous valentine aspiration, which i didn't know before, and i was like hmm ok not gonna argue w the gods of sims fate, guess he'll be villainous. and i wasn't planning on natalie getting pregnant so soon but i was thinking she'd probably have a kid with him. i always planned for her to end up with jeffrey (tbqh i did think i'd make them divorce too but i was expecting natalie to leave him, not for jeffrey to actually make enemies of the entire family) but a girl can have some fun along the way. anyway that's the story.

also for the record i did have him remarry on purpose but i did not plan on him having 3 more kids with his wife considering he never even wanted alfie & his wife's got the "hates children" trait. i mean i love drama & my idea for this gen was, in a word, "chaos" so i figure the more half-siblings & potential for trouble the merrier.

#sims 4 #ts4 generations #ts4 #the sims 4 #ts4 story #sims #legacy #gen 6

[the-invisible-queer]

Lmao the ex was Natashia Ho, who IIRC he was only seen with like one or two times shortly before he got with his alleged domme Blanda, which is why we don't really know what title to use for her (and also lowkey makes her inserting herself much funnier lmao). I'm pretty sure she later tried to claim that tweet wasn't about Joe but like...having witnessed it in real time she 100% knew exactly what she was doing 💀

Bestie I am LIVING

Natashia Ho is so hot

She is allowed to stir drama for him

I am here for itttttt

I know of his exes by name

I don't know all of their faces because most of them happened during my anti-Joe era

But I used to have his dating history memorized even during the anti-Joe years

Because deep down I still cared 🤣

Don't ask me shit now because I've since removed that information from my brain

I had his and Nick's dating history memorized for a while

Which is funny when you consider how much I don't actually care who they date as long as they're happy

[modgirlyreposts-revamped]

Bowser and Luigi meeting your Millie’s grandpa and Funtime Freddy sounds cursed-

Bowser who treats Luigi like his own royalty and the lovely new father of his children would be horrified by Funtime Freddy’s constant sadism. Funtime Freddy is confused and thinks Bowser must not really love Luigi because love and evil are intrinsically linked in his mind- everything comes back to his instinct to maim and torture- and if Bowser doesn’t take ownership of him and get rough then he must not love him enough. Bowser on the other hand pulls Millie’s grandpa aside to ask if he needs to get out of this relationship, if Funtime Freddy is abusive or anything, and Maurice has to embarrassedly explain that it’s all a big misunderstanding, and tries to as minimally as possible hint at what Freddy actually means when he talks about playing rough, getting violent, or taking ownership.

He would take a liking to Millie I think. He’s been around children, particularly his own, she’s not too unlike one or two of his, just older and allowed to say cuss words without being sent to her room. She finds all his spikes cool, and when she says something herself about how hard it is to find good spiked stuff, Bowser totally blows her away by telling her he fashions the spikes himself and nails them to the bracelets.

Funtime Freddy is programmed to kill kids, and obviously doesn’t do too well with Bowser Jr. He just wants to tell him about all the cool torture and execution methods created by tyrants like his dad and how the nobles were beheaded in the French Revolution, even offering to “let him try [being beheaded.]” Luigi tries to cover Junior’s ears but can’t find them.

While that last bit gets Funtime Freddy a claw nearly prying out his eyeball and the treat if being ripped limb from limb if he tries ANYTHING on Bowser’s little man, Bowser is otherwise totally chill with it. “Nothing wrong with an ol’ history lesson!”

He then instructs the responsible ones (Luigi and Maurice) on where Junior’s ears actually are.

Bowser is slightly confused by the relationship between Millie and Funtime Freddy.

“So, he’s dating your old man, so to speak… is he just your grandpa’s boyfriend or, like, your step-grandpa?”

“Something like that.”

If he somehow found out Freddy tried to decapitate Millie, for some reason I just imagine him like sitting on the couch, then he stands up, does a Single Dad Clap, goes, “well, I think that about does it for me!” and then fucking charges him and tries to rip his head off and Freddy’s like THE HELL MAN

This concept is actually so funny, like-

Idk what's funnier, Bowser's reaction to their relationship and CTW Funtime Freddy's sadism, or if Millie's grandpa told him that he actually likes when CTW Funtime Freddy gets rough with him, and degrades him-

Imagine he accidentally walks into the workshop or something cuz he hears Millie's grandpa screaming, and thinks he's in trouble, only to see CTW Funtime Freddy pinning him against the wall holding a leash attached to a collar around Millie's grandpa's neck which he was busy kissing and biting until Bowser walked in, and Millie's grandpa is completely embarrassed trying to explain, while CTW Funtime Freddy's just "DO YOU FUCKING MIND, I'M HAVING A MOMENT WITH MY TOY?!"

He'd never fucking recover from that

Millie would probably initially be scared of Bowser for obvious reasons, like she can take sentient murderous animatronics but whatever he is? Nope, but when he makes it clear that he isn't going to hurt her or anyone else she'd definitely find him cool af

CTW Funtime Freddy getting the absolute shit beaten out of him by Bowser is one of the funniest mental images, considering the fact that Bowser is like over 2 feet taller than my version of CTW Funtime Freddy, and while she'd probably be all for it Millie would probably try to stop him, since her grandpa would be sad if anything happened to him

#this is actually a really fun idea- #asks #answered #valleyfthdolls

[princessofopus]

Apollo: Why do good people die young?

Artemis: Well, when you’re in a garden, what flowers do you pick?

Apollo: The ugly ones

Artemis: Exac- wait, what?

Apollo: Ugly bitches don’t belong in my garden

#this is even funnier considering his dating history #greek mythology #greek myth #greek mythology memes #incorrect greek gods #incorrect greek mythology #incorrect greek quotes #greek myth memes #apollo #greek gods #lgbtq #artemis #pjo #percy jackson #pjo apollo

[opheliawillowbrook]

How the Cookie Crumbles

To say his brothers fought would be an understatement: They warred. That. That was the better word. However, it was Dick who was the peacemaker among them. The mediator extraordinaire, translating all his brothers’ woes and misunderstandings into less doom-pending transgressions. But to say this unofficial, yet very necessary part he played was tasking was yet another understatement of unspeakable proportions. It was a FUCKING LOT.

“I swear to God, Drake. You and Brown are a special kind of stupid.”

“Shut up, Damian! It’s a good idea!” Tim grumbled in reply.

“Yeah! You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first!”

Dick’s face fell upon hearing the argument and considered turning the other way, but he’d learned the hard way that his lack of interference could result in bloodshed. Damian did have a history of stabbing Tim, and Robin had an impressive body count, according to Jason. I’d better  make sure he doesn’t add two more.

“Well, fuck me and my  entire life,” Dick droned in frustration. “What are you three bitching about now?”

“Damian keeps saying our idea is stupid,” Stephanie tattled.

“Yeah!” Tim added with crossed arms. “He says we lack the fortitude for good ideas!”

“You do!” the current robin exclaimed.

“Damian?”

The youngest batboy rolled his eyes and reasoned, “Listen, I know these two brain donors barely have two brain cells to rub between them—”

“That’s not the only thing they rub!” Jason called from the other room.

Damian again rolled his eyes in contempt and continued, “And I’ve accepted, as a member of this family, that everyone gets to act a little stupid from time to time. However, as much as I would like to respect their commitment to their shared stupidity, I feel as if they are abusing the privilege and it needs to stop before one of them gets hurt.”

“Wow, he actually cares,” Jason added from still in another room.

“Have you been sitting there listening the whole time?” Dick asked, near facepalm.

“Affirmative,” Jason confirmed, entering from the hall.

“And you did nothing to stop them fighting?”

“It’s funnier this way.”

“Do I always have to be the responsible one?”

“Affirmative,” all four said with little thought.

“Okay then,” Dick sighed with reluctance. “Damian, I know you find it hard to accept the choices of others, but you need to understand that free choice and expression is about accepting that others may not make the same choices as you, and that’s okay. It’s the same as you choosing not to take my dating advice and ask Raven out because you’re afraid of rejection—”

“Shut up, Grayson! This isn’t about me!!!” Damian spat.

“Damian has the hots for Raven?” Jason teased. “You have good taste, Mighty Mouse. She got a great—”

“Don’t even finish that sentence, Todd!” Dick and Damian ordered in unison.

“I was gonna say personality,” Jason droned. “Get your minds out of the gutter. I mean for fuck’ sake.”

“Sure you were,” Tim replied with a glower.

“Yeah Tim, cause you never stare at her tits while you talk to her,” Jason added, throwing him doubly under the bus.

“Dude, are you trying to get me killed?” Tim said, shooting an elbow into his brother’s ribs as Damian and Stephanie both glared. Spurring Dick into a further mood for murder.

“My point being is, just because you don’t like other peoples’ ideas, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.”

“Tell them the idea, guys!” Jason urged, stirring the pot.

Stephanie and Tim looked at each other and nodded, as though they’d discovered the holy grail itself. “We’re gonna write a series of YA novels and sell them on the web!” Steph sang optimistically.

“Yeah, it’s a huge and diverse market,” Tim added.

“And with established characters, we’ll make a killing.”

Dick’s brow furrowed. “That sounds like fanfiction?”

“It sounds like utter bullshit,” Damian sneered, not single fuck given.

“It’s not bullshit,” Tim snapped. “YA novels make up a huge portion of the market. People love those things.”

“Then name one YA novel that has sold more than a manga in the last 10 years?”

Tim shrugged. “I can’t think of one at the top of my head, but there they definitely exist and sell.”

“Yeah, so does my fanfiction based on this family,” Jason added under his breath.

“What?” Everyone asked.

“Nothing. Continue.”

“So anyway, I told Damian it’s a foolproof plan.”

Dick rolled his eyes with a bit of doubt, but who was he to judge or discourage their creativity. I mean, he dropped out of college after all? “I’m not saying I believe it’s bulletproof, because frankly, nothing is. But I’m curious why you would consider telling Damian? I mean, he hates most things.”

“And Drake. I hate Drake.”

“We’re all very aware, Dami,” Dick drawled in annoyance. “But yeah, why would you tell him anything important to you? Especially that?”

“Well, we kinda needed a loan. I knew Bruce would undoubtedly say no and, well, Damian has money.”

“Because I make good business decisions.”

“I don’t know why I thought of asking you?”

“You didn’t, Jason told you to,” Stephanie confessed, recalling an earlier conversation.

“Jason, really?” Dick tsked.

“Hey, Damian does make good business decisions. Who do you think cleans and invests money? It’s certainly not Alfred.”

“Because Alfred would have nothing to do with your blood money, Jason. And Damian, I’m very disappointed in you!”

“Grayson, I don’t know what high horse you are riding on today, but you better come off it. Father told me if I wanted money, that I needed to earn it and that I should get a job. So I got one.”

“Laundering money for Red Hood’s criminal Enterprise is not a job!”

“Actually it is. Mighty Mouse made us an LLC and everything. I own several Wash & Folds, all legitimate! Thanks to Hell Spawn here! I’m actually considering making him a partner.”

“So will your LLC fund our YA Novels?”

“Oh fuck no!”

“Come on, Jay! We have a solid business plan,” Stephanie pleased.

“You’re business plan is a bunch of meaningless numbers written on the back of a napkin and poorly illustrated versions of us,” Damian said, holding up the napkin in question.

“Okay, so it’s not the final draft, but we’re working on it!” Tim said pointedly.

“Yeah, as tempting as this all sounds, I didn’t make my money making half baked business decisions,” Jason reasoned

“No, you made it by taking over Gotham’s drug trade,” Dick clarified with disapproval.

“Which was a solid business decision.”

“Why do I even talk to you?”

“I don’t know why I talk to any of you,” Damian scowled, arms crossed, grateful there was no shared genetics between him and his adoptive kin. “I don’t understand what father saw in any of you.

“I can’t answer that,” Jason replied. “However, I can tell you, from personal experience, what he saw in your mom.”

“Do you wanna die, Todd?”

“Do you wanna not have a job?” Jason wanted. “Also, been there done that. But hey, if I died twice then I’d have buffy status so don’t threaten me with a good time, kid.”

“On that note, I’m leaving,” Damian grimaced. “I have to meet Raven, anyway.”

“Oh,” Dick sang. “You have a date!”

“It’s not a date.”

“Bet you wish it was a date,” Stephanie teased. “Y’know, if you just stopped acting like a dick all the time, I bet she’d go out with you.”

“Shut up, Brown.”

“Oh no,” Dick smiled. “I know it’s hard to believe, but he’s nice to Raven.”

“Hey keep that shit up,” Jason added. “If you’re nice to her, she’d be nice to you!”

“I hate all of you,” Damian proclaimed and stormed away.

“Fuck you too! See you at work Monday! Jason called, earning a tiger middle finger.

“He might be an asshole, but he’s a good kid,” Jason nodded with a sense of pride, causing to Dick to silently scoff. “Still needs to get laid though.”

“Bruce is gonna be so pissed when he finds out you pulled Dami into your bullshit.”

“You’re using Raven’s pet name for him now?” Jason mocked. “And fucker’s gonna have to prove it first; there’s a reason I hired ‘Dami’ for that job.”

“Dude, fuck you; dig your grave,” Dick lamented. “And don’t come at me with one of your tired ass death jokes, they’re getting old.”

“Suit yourself,” the Outlaw glowered as silence set in.

“So Dick,” Tim dared sheepishly. “You, um, wanna invest in--”

“Absolutely not,” the elder hero replied.

Leaving Jason to chuckle. “And that’s the way the cookie crumbled.”

If you enjoyed that feel free to leave me kudos 👉 here on Ao3 lol. If you have any remdom prompts send them my way; maybe I’ll feel inspired 😘

#Damian Wayne #dick grayson #Jason Todd #Tim Drake #stephanie brown #batfamily #BatFam #batman #damian and raven #Damian al Ghul #damirae #red hood #nightwing #red robin #robin #Teen Titans #teen titans comics #wayne family adventures #teen titans vs justice league #dcamu #batman comics #DC comics #dc comics fandom #batman fanfiction #the robins #demon birds #demonbirds #spoiler #i am not starfire #dc comics ya novels

[lottiebagley]

Snow covered courtyards- Oliver Wood

When he'd asked her to the ball he'd been certain she would say no. They'd been friends for a while but never particularly close, simply in the same year and house and therefore knew each other through mutual friends.

He'd always thought she was kind of unattainable, she seemed to always look perfect, she was smart and funny and kind and top of her classes. He never knew why but she always avoided Oliver a little, he spent nights laid in bed listening to Percy's snoring and racking his brains for any reason she might avoid him, an insult from years ago, a history between him and one of her friends but nothing quite came to mind.

It wasn't until a few weeks before the ball that he realised that maybe the reason she avoided him was because she wasn't quite as unattainable as he'd thought. He'd laughed at first when his best friend shrugged that she probably just had a crush on him, mouthful of cereal and a slightly bemused look on his face.

After that conversation he slowly allowed his brain to convince himself she just might like him back. After all why else would she blush when he catches her eye? why would she go to every quidditch game no matter how awful the weather? why would she giggle a little with her friends when he passes?

And so, Oliver Wood let a little spark of hope light in his heart and he began to plan how he would ask her to the ball.

He thought about asking her after they won a quidditch match when he was high on adrenaline but he didn't like the idea of being muddy and sweaty and with the fucking Weasley twins, their relentless teasing playing in his mind before it even happened.

Next he thought about making some production out of it in the great hall like he'd seen a few other people do, but he knew she'd hate being the centre of the entire school's attention.

He contemplated asking her at a party, figuring some liquid courage might make the prospect of asking his dream girl on a date a little easier, but didn't want her to think it was some drunk decision.

He settled on approaching her with a bouquet of flowers and just asking it, after all, he knew he was a good looking guy and most people found him charming if not a little intense. What he didn't think about though was that most people didn't make his heart beat too fast, his hands go clammy, and his words come out a stuttering mess.

Oliver announced to his friends one morning that today was the day he'd ask her out, they'd grinned widely, given him a pep talk, mocked him a little for his nerves and sent him on his way and Oliver had every intention to ask her out.

It was then that Oliver learnt the age old lesson.

Girls travel in packs.

No matter how hard he tried she was surrounded. Between classes, at meals, in the common room, christ even on her way to the bathroom. Whenever he saw her she'd have a gaggle of girls with her all of which would eye him with curiosity and smirks when he attempted to approach.

It took Oliver a further three days of attempting to catch her alone, his friends seeming to find the entire situation funnier by the hour, before it had happened. He'd caught a glimpse of her with Cedric.

Oliver Wood hated Cedric Diggory, hated that he was so often compared to him, hated that he had swoopy hair that made girls swoon, hated that he too was a good quidditch player. His newest reason though to despise the boy who showed him nothing but kindness was that he didn't clam up around her. He talked to her with ease and made her laugh.

If he'd done a little digging, Oliver would have easily found Cedric was a family friend and she viewed him like a brother. Through exasperated mutual friends sick of both their pining he'd have probably also learnt she had a massive crush on Oliver and had turned down multiple boys in the hopes Oliver would ask her to the ball.

He didn't dig though. Instead he scowled in the direction of Cedric and her, they were laughing by the quidditch pitch as the Hufflepuff practice ended and the Gryffindor's arrived for their own. She had been on her way to the greenhouses to grab a book she'd accidentally left there when Cedric had jogged over, unknown to Oliver actually asking if the Gryffindor had plucked up the nerve to ask her out. She had brushed her friend off, thinking it would be a miracle for Oliver Wood to fancy her back.

"Hurry up Wood, she's a good one, she'll get swept up all too soon," Fred smirks as he passes Oliver on his way into the changing rooms.

And with Fred's words in his mind Oliver grabs the bouquet of flowers from the office and marches towards her, Cedric spotting him coming and quickly taking his leave.

"Hi," He calls, cursing himself for not thinking to say her name when she doesn't even turn around, not used to him approaching her, "Hi-Y/N,"

She turns then, still clad in her uniform, hair blowing in the light wind and a small smile on her face.

"Oliver-uh-hey," She blushes a little as she falls over her words

"You're a really hard girl to get on her own," He comments. Fucking christ why does he sound like a stalker? The question spins in his mind but she seems to not think anything of the comment, instead blushing a little

"Oh- my friends and I are kinda inseperable," She shrugs lightly, not wanting an awkward silence so instead opting to ramble "They only aren't here now cause they are busy. Meg's at detention, Ali's with her boyfriend and Katie's tutoring some second year in potions. I'd have waited for one of them to be with me because honestly I kind of hate walking alone- not cause I'm weird or un-independent or any thing, I just, well I get a little anxious and feel like people are staring at me and-" She silences herself, suddenly coming to her senses and realising how crazy she's making herself sound. "Sorry,"

"Don't be. I think it's cute when you ramble," He admits, blushing as red as his quidditch robes when he realises what he's said.

"Did you need something or have I just embarrassed myself over a polite hello?" She questions, he chuckles a little making her feel mildly less uncomfortable.

"I was actually wondering if you wanted to go to the ball?" He questions. He feels a weight off his shoulder's once the question has been asked. Like suddenly even if she says no at least he could tell himself he tried.

"With you?" She questions, she realises she probably sounds more idiotic by the second but can't quite convince herself to believe her long term crush would actually ask her out.

"Uh-yeah," He's taken aback by the question and feels stupid for even thinking she'd consider it and suddenly the even if she says no bullshit is just that, because shit if the girl in front of him with wide eyes and a nervous smile doesn't say yes he thinks his heart might break in his chest.

"Like a date?"

"I was hoping,"

"I'd love that,"

Oliver feels like the luckiest person on earth. Watching as she blushes a little, but her smile is wide and god if he doesn't want to kiss her right there.

"Great,"

"Good,"

"Cool,"

"Yeah,"

Neither of them is quite sure what comes next and the interaction seems to run even more awkward. "You'll pick her up!" Oliver rolls his eyes at the sound of George Weasley, although thankful for the prompt, she blushes, peering behind him to see the entire Gryffindor quidditch team watching them.

"I'll pick you up," He confirms

"Right," She nods

"At 7? Outside your dorm?"

"Sounds good,"

"Okay," He grins brightly, still thinking this entire thing is his mind playing some cruel tricks on him.

"So you should go, your team awaits," She reminds, he nods, partly wanting the interaction over before he can make even more of a fool out of himself or ruin something before it even has a chance to start and partly wanting to live in this moment of pure joy for the rest of his life.

"Right, so I'll uh- see you at the ball- and- uhm- around before obviously," He stutters a little

"Great, I'll see you in both those places," She confirms, realising only after she's spoken how idiotic she sounds.

"The flowers Wood! Christ you're bad at this!" Fred shouts

"Always thought he had game," Harry comments

"We all did kid," George agrees.

"Sorry about them," Oliver apologises

"It's okay," She smiles gently, waiting patiently as he stands staring wondering why her eyes are flickering from him, to his team to his hands and-

"Oh right, these are for you," He confirms, passing the bouquet over and grinning when she blushes a little

"Thanks Oli,"

"Any time," He nods

**

When she pulls open her dorm door Oliver is certain time stops.

She looks like an angel, her makeup perfect, hair flowing in curls with a small section pinned back as to see her face clearly, Oliver is certain nothing else has ever looked as beautiful. She's dressed in a golden gown that shimmers in the light and makes her look like a princess.

"You- I mean- it- you look beautiful," He stammers over his words and his face goes redder by the second but she smiles at him

"Thank you Oli," She smiles up at him and when their eyes meet both of them feel their hearts hammering in their chests.

"You ready?" He questions, she nods, smiling when he grabs her arm in his and they walk together to the hall.

The hall looks like something out of a fairytale. Seeming to glow an ice white, lined with glittering trees and a glance at the ceiling showing a sky full of stars that gleamed in the air.

"You want to dance?" Oliver questions, eyes falling to the already slightly crowded dance floor, the students dancing to the waltz that plays.

"Think you might loose a foot if we try," She admits, glancing at the girls who swirl around the floor effortlessly and feeling a little self conscious she can't do the same.

"It'd be worth it," He grins, pulling her along with him.

"Hey Oli?"

"Yeah?" He questions as they come to the edge of the dance floor

"These heels are really high. Please don't let me fall,"

"I've got you," He assures, smiling when he notices her physically loosen the panic in her eyes dissipating.

It takes them a few stumbles and a couple of toe treads but eventually they pick up the dance. He watches with a grin as she stares at her feet in focus and with time, and a few glasses of the punch Fred and George spiked, she relaxes, feeling at ease in his arms and becoming more comfortable with the slightly confusing dancing.

Oliver whispers commentary about the ball that makes her laugh and he loves the way she talks with such excitement that he can't help but follow along with every word. He's pretty sure in that moment he could die happy and she's almost certain this is the best night of her life.

As the minutes tick into hours they become more and more comfortable with each other, sure there's still an awkward teenagers with crushes layer to the conversation, but they learn they have a lot in common and find it easy to make small talk that they both actually enjoy.

"Do you wanna go get some air?" She questions at around 11, the dancing has changed from formal waltzing to jumping around to the band who'd been hired for the event and they were both hot and a little sticky from the crowd.

He nods in confirmation and smiles to himself when she immediately takes his hand in hers to pull him along behind her, she seems to have no idea he'd follow her to the ends of the earth if she asked.

She takes him to a small moonlit, snow covered, empty courtyard.

"Anyone would think you wanted to get me alone," He teases lightly, she blushes a little but playfully shoves him

"Maybe I did," She shrugs, he grins cockily "Or maybe it was a little crowded in there and I'm a polite date who didn't want to just abandon you," She isn't quite sure where her newfound confidence around Oliver is coming from

"I'm going to go with the first option," He grins, she laughs a little before shivering at the cold December breeze that wraps around them. He's quick to shrug of his black formal jacket, wrapping it around her shoulders and blushing when she leans up to press a kiss to his cheek in thanks.

"You wanna dance?" She questions, he laughs a little at the idea of leaving a ball to go and dance but nods.

Her arms wrap around his neck as his circle her waist, he hums gently and she smiles a she glances up at him. Oliver Wood looks like a god in the moonlight and she thanks her lucky stars that it's her who got to be in that moment with him.

They dance slowly, eventually pulling each other closer. She laughs when he twirls her under his arm and he grins when her hands begin to brush through the ends of his hair.

"Tell me something," She speaks quietly, his arms pulling her even closer.

"What do you wanna know?"

"Anything about you," She decides, he takes a deep breath, figuring now's probably the best moment he'll ever get to tell her this.

"I've had a crush on you since first year,"

"You have?" She sounds shocked and he can't help but laugh at the idea of her not realising he's practically head over heels for her

"I have," He confirms with a grin

"Why'd you never say anything?" She questions. Her heart feels like it's beating a million miles a minute and she's almost certain he can feel it

"You kinda avoided me," he shrugs

"Yeah I did," She laughs

"Why'd you do that?"

"I was scared to make a fool out of myself," She admits

"Yeah I get that," He nods

"You do? You always seem so- I don't know- at ease,"

"Around everyone but you I kinda am," He shrugs, she blushes a little at that. "You wanna know something else?" He questions.

They're still swaying a little but there's not much movement at their feet, instead the entire thing looks like a loving embrace and she figured to an extent it kind of was.

"Sure,"

"All night I've thinking about if I were to try and kiss you. If you'd kiss back or you'd pull away and laugh in my face and I'd have made a fool of myself," His words leave her breathless and his charming grin only makes it better

"There's only one way to know for sure," She whispers.

His lips crash to hers in the moonlit courtyard, the snow falling around them. It's slow and gentle. Holding years of emotion and there's no need to rush, in that moment they both know they have forever to hold each other this close. It's a little toothy from both their wide grins but as his hands cup her cheeks she's sure nothing has ever been as perfect as this moment and the boy she's sharing it with.

MASTERLIST

#harry potter fanfiction #Harry Potter #harry potter masterlist #oliver wood #oliver wood x reader #oliver wood x y/n #oliver wood imagine

[arcandoria]

It's about time I fill one of those, so... let's do it!

Stolen from @ronqueesha.

Who’s the messiest one:

Woljif proves to be the messiest at first - and later either Rellihn ends up (badly) influenced or simply allows their true colors to show. Still, the one who just leaves clothes/armor on the floor before getting on bed or doesn't bother putting bottles not in the way is Woljif.

Later with Daeran it remains practically the same, except now his servants are often the ones picking up the mess.

Who feels the most uncomfortable about PDA:

Rellihn wouldn't classify as neither comfortable or uncomfortable - they display affection when the itch hits, and that doesn't necessarily has a motive.

Woljif really tries to hold back on the PDA at first (because he's a strong independent tiefling who doesn't need anyone... uh huh), but develops a terrible tic on the tail that's always wrapping around Relly's wrist or ankle, and then it becomes a matter of not doing it because everyone is making fun of said tic.

Who's the funniest drunk:

Both of them are equally hilarious for everyone's surprise. Drunken Relly loses any sort of brakes when it comes to talking shit, and Woljif already does it by default. Somehow the completely serious/determined way Rellihn speaks makes it funnier, and Woljif adding "logic" to the argument is the cherry on the cake.

It's usually sexual.

Who texts the most:

Woljif takes full advantage of dating the Knight Commander by constantly requesting help to get 'totally legal and safe stuff' from people, and Rellihn ends up with piles of scribbled notes on their desk by the end of the day almost daily.

In a modern setting Woljif would spend the entire day texting about everything and being the type who sends one or two words per line and Rellihn would be the one constantly forgetting they even have a phone.

Who has the most embarrassing taste in music:

Woljif in an attempt to seem like a fancy rich guy starts enjoying all the weird operas and musicals these people do - but it's mostly for looks because frankly he's seen better in side of the road taverns.

While not embarrassing for others, Rellihn kind of hides their fondness of elven music. It speaks to half of their blood, after all, but it's a little too soft for a barbarian of Gorum.

Who reads the most:

During the 5th Crusade it's absolutely Rellihn, mainly because a lot of the books carry important information they use on warfare and combat. That said, Relly enjoys reading about history and worldly things, so it's a habit that comes from before.

Woljif prefers picking up said stories on tavern and road conversations.

Who’s better with kids:

If you ask, they will both say none of them. Truthfully? They have a good handle with kids, even if it's more on the kinda acting like one type and not a responsible adult type.

In a normal situation leaving a kid with them is hardly advised, but both go dad-mode when a child is in serious danger or in need of help (they will never admit that).

Who’s the one that fixes things around the house:

Considering they kind of don't stop travelling and when they do it's either someplace under Daeran's responsibility or one they are personally paying for it... none of them do any house work. Rellihn could do it because growing up it was part of their responsibilities as a teen, but it's not a skill Relly particularly developed throughout the years after leaving.

Who’s got the weirdest hobby:

Like any rich person of notice, Woljif starts making weird collections of items that are shiny and expensive even if said items don't even... make a lot of artistic sense. As canon, he also develops a bizarre taste for top hats and canes that Rellihn does not intervene but also ends up making fun about.

Who cooks and who cleans up:

Rellihn cooks... but they don't clean up. Woljif much less.

After pairing them up in game once to cook I've also just got in my head that one of their 'couple activities' ends up trying to cook more complex recipes that end up in alcoholic disasters but with time grow to be kinda tasty, even if extremely weird. Like beer soup.

#Pathfinder #otp: new moon #Rellihn Drekemeth #Woljif

[the-most-pathetic-edge-marquis]

like other girls - in defense of lauren mallory (pt. 2)

the summer after sophomore year, jessica goes to california to stay with some cousins, angela flies down to mexico with her mom for her great-uncle’s funeral, and lauren is so bored that she gets a job at the hot springs.

she gives the passcode for the back gate to the entire volleyball team, mike, eric, and--after some contemplation, deciding it’s a peace offering--tyler, and spends the majority of her summer acting bewildered whenever her boss complains about the number of high school kids who show up at night.

eric drags them all out to port angeles to watch spider-man 2 when it comes out, and lauren spends the entire time bored out of her mind, desperately missing angela and her whispered commentaries, which never fail to be funnier than the actual movie.

she takes two weeks off work when her big brother andrew comes to visit. they hike out into olympic national park together, switching campsites every day, semi-chasing rumors of a giant wolf.

they never catch even a hint of it, but they do run into emmett and rosalie cullen on the trail on one of the miserably rainy days. (lauren tries her best not to blush when rosalie looks at her and says i didn’t know you hiked with perfect eyebrows raised.)

their parents meet up with them near a trailhead halfway through, and the four of them spend a night camped out together like they did every summer until andrew graduated.

all things considered, lauren does a pretty good job not thinking about anything except the summer. josie the volleyball captain moves to ohio for college, and lauren tells herself that’s the end of it, and--

jess comes back from california with highlights gilded into her curls by the sun, enthusiasm bubbling out of her as she perches on lauren’s bed and talks about beaches where the sun shines like--everyday lauren, i swear i’m moving there as soon as i graduate, i don’t even care if i get into a college--

lauren can’t stop smiling--and she can’t stop feeling her stomach dropping, her fingertips buzzing, and she’s thinking oh no, oh no, not jess, not this--

jess pauses in her story, and lauren realizes a second too late that her face must be doing something odd.

that her eyes are on the curve of jessica’s collarbones instead of her face, watching her shoulders shrug and the straps of her tanktop slide with every wave of her hands--

you good? jessica asks, and lauren finds her smile again.

i’m just glad you’re back, she says. you would not believe how many stupid superhero movies i had to watch with the boys while you were gone and jess bursts into a familiar laugh.

angela gets back a week before the start of junior year, and they throw her a beach party.

unexpected rain drives them shrieking back to lauren’s house, (which is closest), after barely an hour. lauren's mom puts her hands on her hips and squints at the rain-drenched troupe of them crowding into the living room.

it's angela's welcome-back party ms. mallory! jess yells, leaning over the kitchen island, and lauren’s mom sighs. it's a good thing you're such a good influence on my daughter, she tells angela fondly. the three of them crack up.

junior year starts, and jess determines that this is the year to try asking out edward cullen again.

lauren is drowning in the first few weeks of official volleyball practice, falling asleep as soon as she finishes her homework (and sometimes before that--once she wakes up in the morning with her unfinished stats worksheet stuck to her cheek and the ice-pack on her bruised knee melted and dripping). nonetheless, she remembers the disaster of jess' freshman year flirting well enough that she makes sure to call at least once a week and ask how she's doing--biting down a bitterness she keeps telling herself isn’t jealousy. it isn’t--

it's like he can magically tell when i'm planning to ask him out, jess complains. if it's actually a question about our history class he's fine but the second i start thinking it's my chance he's just gone--

the cullen-round-2-electric-boogaloo era (as angela and lauren have started calling it behind jess’s back), ends a week before homecoming, with the three of them sitting at the webers' dining room table.

angela and lauren are arguing over what the eye billboard in the great gatsby is possibly supposed to mean, (maybe what's-his-face fitzgerald just wanted to creep people out lauren suggests, and angela thumps her face down into her composition book--i can’t write an essay about that!)--and jess interrupts, trying far too hard to sound casual, what if i asked edward to homecoming?

for a second, lauren and angela make incredulous eye contact--and then they burst out laughing. jessica manages to glare at them until angela gets so carried away she starts snorting, which makes lauren wheeze, and jess gives up and joins in.

in the end, they go to the dance as a group.

they’re getting ready at the stanley’s house--singing along to jess’s britney spears cds, lauren and jess slightly tipsier than angela, who’s driving--and jess frowns at her curls in the mirror...and then makes eye contact with lauren’s reflection.

can you like--fix this? she tosses her hands around in the general vicinity of her head, and lauren tells herself that her mouth is going dry because of the drinks.

one of these days i’m gonna start charging you, she tells jess, wobbling slightly as she pushes herself up off the bed and into the bathroom, bracing herself against the back of the chair.

and she doesn’t think about it. she doesn’t think about how jess’s hair is still just a little damp, and cool, and how the familiar smell of her honey shampoo is washing over lauren with every curl she folds into the halo braid she’s making. she doesn’t think about her palm brushing jess’s neck, about how soft her skin is, about the shiver that slides straight from lauren’s hand into her veins and her pulse and--

she finishes, and she doesn’t look at jess, just crosses her arms and raises her eyebrows at empty space in the mirror.

she feels inexplicably shaky, a little bit like she’s going to be sick and a whole lot like her dress is too short, (which is ridiculous because short dresses are the entire point of homecoming).

jess preens in the mirror and beams, and lauren manages to smile back.

when she turns around, angela is propped up on the pillows with her head on her knees--staring right at lauren in the way she’s hated ever since elementary school. it’s quiet and contemplative and means something lauren never understands.

jess shatters the moment by springing up and diving to grab angela by the wrists. your turn, she proclaims, you’re wearing makeup for once--

angela yelps lauren, save me!--don’t you dare, jess says, this is long overdue--

and lauren tosses her hands up and backs to the bedroom door, laughing.

they meet up with mike, eric, and conner in line--they’ve got matching ties on, and angela can’t stop giggling at them. then by the time they crowd into the cafeteria ashley dowling has tapped lauren on the shoulder, so their group has swelled to include her and two other volleyball girls, plus their dates.

and it’s--

it’s not bad. it’s screaming along to lyrics and laughter until lauren can feel herself going hoarse, kicking off her heels into a shimmering pile in the corner, finding angela outside and standing for a minute looking at the stars before she grabs her friend by the wrists and coaxes her back into the dance, and they spend an entire song like that, singing to each other through the giggling, waving their clasped hands wildly back and forth--

and she ends up dancing with mike at one point, until she feels jess’s eyes settling on them one too many times to be a coincidence and shoves mike over to her best friend instead--

and she’s trying so hard not to be bitter that the familiar weight of that gaze vanishes entirely the second that jess is dancing with mike.

it’s good. it is.

it’s just also that she wakes up on angela’s bedroom floor the next morning ridiculously early, and jess is right there.

she’s asleep under the same pile blanket of blankets as lauren--which was much easier when they were kids, and lauren didn’t have almost six inches on her--and suddenly she’s watching jess’s chest rise and fall quietly, and she can’t remember how to breathe for herself.

lauren sits up as quietly as she can. there’s makeup still sticky on her face, and bobby pins she missed last night digging into her skull. a headache is winding around the edges of her eye sockets. her feet are freezing. she can hear angela in the bed above them, snoring just a little.

she’s never felt unsafe here before.

(it’s not the room that feels unsafe. she still knows every inch of this clutter, the little space heater hissing in the corner, josh and isaac’s crayon drawings tacked on the green walls next to angela’s photographs and sketches, and it still feels just as much like home as her own bedroom. no, it’s lauren, it’s something sharp and dangerous under her skin, and she can’t--she doesn’t--)

she's creeping past the kitchen on her way out when mrs. weber says oh, i wasn’t expecting anyone up this early!

lauren jumps, slams her elbow into the wall so hard it hurts, and freezes, fists clenched in her crumpled dress.

angela’s mom is at the dining room table in her pajamas, cradling a steaming mug and looking almost as startled as lauren feels.

normally, lauren wouldn’t be up this early. she would be trailing angela down the hallway with jess once the sun was well and truly risen, and mrs. weber would be cooking pancakes, sprinkling chocolate chips in some of them, coffee warm in the pot and hot chocolate simmering on the stove. they’d sit at the table together, stealing each other’s food, and talk for hours until someone’s parents called wondering where they were.

i just remembered i had to--my dad--lauren chokes on the lie for a minute. he gets back from a seattle trip early today and i wanted to be there.

mrs. weber just looks at her, and lauren wonders if her panic is as obvious as it feels, standing here in her stupid ratty sweatpants that don’t even fit anymore, barefoot because the only shoes she has are the heels dangling from her fingers and she doesn’t feel like crushing her toes back into them--

give me a minute to get dressed, dear. i’ll drive you home, mrs. weber says finally, and lauren melts against the wall.

when she gets home, her parents are still asleep, and all the lights in the house are off. she climbs into her shower and curls into a ball--she can’t stop shaking, even with the hot water thudding over her, and as many times as she tells herself she isn’t crying, she still tastes salt.

angela calls later.

by then, lauren has another five hours of sleep, lunch half-eaten on the counter in front of her, her favorite oversized sweater on, and her toes warm in a pair of fuzzy pink socks. angela asks are you okay? and lauren means it when she says yes, and she means it when she apologizes for leaving early.

there’s a pause--lauren can hear one of the twins shrieking faintly in the background--and then angela says if you ever wanted to talk, about...anything. i’d never mention it to anyone else. you know that, right?

lauren wiggles her toes, and prods a slice of tomato back into her bagel. thanks, she says eventually--and is surprised to find that she’s smiling.

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#lauren mallory #jessica stanley #angela weber #god this one got sad #there's something so isolating about thinking you're the only queer kid in your group of friends #feeling like they wouldnt trust you if they knew #and it might not even be true #but you just feel so outside of everything #like suddenly everything means something different #and its not even necessarily that it feels different to you #but youre so worried about how other people will think about it #theres like that extra layer that everything goes through in your head #i dont know im projecting a lot here #...this fic gets happy eventually i swear

[joezworld]

What is the status of vehicle rights in places like China or Russia, with rather patchy (at best) human rights records? What was it like in the USSR, Nazi Germany, or the Empire of Japan? And did Mussolini ever get his locomotives to run completely on time?

Strangely enough, it was a lot better in those countries for at least a while. 

To start, check out this post that goes into a little detail.

So, this post is going to not mention the United States or Canada - I’ve done posts on them before. 

Interestingly, three of the greatest proponents of locomotive rights in Europe came from people with some of the worst human rights records in modern history: Hitler, Stalin, and King Leopold II.

Belgium has a long history of locomotive rights, stretching back to within 20 years of the introduction of the railway in the country. During the first days of the reign of Leopold II, the king declared that locomotives and other railway equipment were to be considered “on the same level as any Belgian citizen”. Official government histories say that this was because of the king’s desire not allow slavery to happen on Belgian soil, but the existence of the very inappropriately named Congo Free State puts this answer in a very bad light. The generally accepted unofficial answer is much, much funnier - Leopold II was born after the first railways were laid in the country, and as the future king, he was kept well appraised of any new technologies in the country. He also had many, many, many, mistresses. In case you can’t tell where this is going, it is entirely likely that several of his more private extramarital affairs were with locomotives owned by the Belgian state rail company. Locomotives were at the time viewed as little more than beasts of burden, and while Leopold was more than willing to commit heinous atrocities upon the Africans, he was not about to stand here in his own country and get called an enjoyer of bestiality - so he made locomotives people in order to get ahead of his critics should an affair be made public. This had the interesting side effect of making Belgium one of the more progressive countries in Europe as far as locomotive rights went, and Belgian locomotives were very dedicated citizens often serving in civil and military leadership positions around the country. During the first world war, Belgian locomotives actively resisted the Germans for the entirety of the invasion, and a not-insignificant percentage of German locomotives brought in to manage the chaos were brought over to the Belgian side by promises of citizenship. 

-----------

This did not go unnoticed by other, much worse European leaders such as Adolf Hitler, who understood the value of a functioning rail network as far as war logistics went, and made significant strides in offering French/Dutch/Polish/Russian/Norwegian/Italian/Etc. engines Nazi citizenship if they served the Reich. Unfortunately for Hitler, Nazis are terrible people who lead out fear, and many of the locomotives who did sign up for this did so because they wanted to Not Die, not because they supported the cause. As a result, large portions of the Reichsbahn rolling stock fleet just ran away or defected as soon as the Allies started getting near, causing serious supply issues that hastened the downfall of the German war effort. 

Also, because I know someone is going to ask about it, yes, those trains still ran. Please don’t ask me to elaborate beyond what’s here. 

Because locomotives would see what was going on and objected, the Reichsbahn very quickly began staffing those trains with engines that were True Believers, or (even worse) Jewish engines. (Those usually made one way trips, and it’s just as bad as you might think.)

Following the war, many locomotives who had been cleared of any collaboration charges still possessed their Nazi-Era citizenship, and tried to get them turned into citizenship of their home countries. Most places said no (except Belgium) and were promptly glared at by the American service-engines who were rebuilding their countries from the ground up, and then agreed. 

The impact on European Locomotive Rights by the Americans cannot be understated. Most European governments were totally prepared to resume the status quo if it wasn’t for the Americans rolling around with their US Citizen status on full display. This is also another reason why England is such a laggard in Locomotive Rights - the country was not as heavily destroyed as continental Europe, and was able to rebuild itself without US "interference".

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

Stalin also was a firm believer in Locomotive Rights, for many of the same reasons as Hitler was - locomotives have the ability to bring your country to a halt, so you’d better have them on your side. He’d made attempts to make locomotives citizens before the war, but the Soviet efforts really came into their own during the 1950s - Stalin’s purges had removed a lot of humans from existence, and most locomotives at that point had been built by the USSR in the USSR, and therefore had no concept of ‘Disloyalty to The State", so they were natural fits for many roles within the Soviet government. At one point in 1982, the USSR’s Ministry of Transport was staffed only by vehicles, with no humans present whatsoever. The total integration of vehicles into the USSR reached its zenith in the late 70s, when new buildings were required to have elevators capable of lifting locomotives and other extremely heavy vehicles to at least the third floor - this requirement has remained even to this day, and most eastern European residential structures have the structural strength of a nuclear bomb shelter as a result. 

It should be pointed out that while the USSR might have treated locomotives well, it was still an authoritarian dystopia, and nothing here is an endorsement for the country or its actions/politics. 

Following the dissolution of the USSR, the hypercapitalist state of the former Eastern Bloc meant that anything and everything was up for sale, including people and machines. One enterprising locomotive used his newfound wealth to create a formidable trade union/gang that covers most of the former USSR to this day. This organization is the primary driver of locomotive rights laws in the former Soviet Bloc, but it should be noted that a lot of the pushback against locomotive rights comes from politicians trying to shut them down specifically. 

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

Japan is... weird. Locomotives have been fully adopted into their society for generations, and there was no loss or gain of rights during the Second World War, as they were already in place. Let me explain why:

Due to Japan's Shinto influence, locomotives were considered to be basically human from their inception on the island - the first law specifically related to locomotives in the world was an edict issued by the Emperor in regards to the three locomotives imported by English and European engineers for use on the upcoming Shimbashi-Yokohama railway - they were to be given the same rights as those locomotives built domestically. Since then, most Japanese laws have included locomotives by default, often making no mention of them unless specifically including them because of physical differences. [For example, locomotives are not required to partake in mandatory military service, as their service to the railways is often more valuable, especially during peacetime.] However, while locomotives in the West were free to work as they pleased, even off of the rail network, Japanese trains do so in remarkably smaller numbers, with over 98% of locomotives remaining in railway service until their retirement. Those that do not do so typically enter railway-related fields like locomotive construction, upper management in railway companies, or working in the Japanese Ministry of Transport.

In this sense, locomotives in Japan can be considered to be less free than their western colleagues, as the nation culture of "work until you die" meant that no attempt was made to allow trains to enter human society, forcing them to essentially be segregated from humans when not directly pulling trains, as land is too scarce to use for western-style 'locomotive cities' except in extremely rural areas and Nagasaki*.

*Following the atomic bombing of the city in 1945, Nagasaki was rebuilt by the American occupying forces - many of whom were USRA locomotives. The city’s bombed-out industrial areas were already layered with train tracks, making it easy to create a locomotive sized living area. Hiroshima, which suffered damage to its human-oriented urban core, was not rebuilt with trains in mind.

  As such, locomotives are considered full Japanese citizens, but most Japanese humans have never interacted with them. Exceptions do exist, mostly in rural towns and villages, where a locomotive is usually considered to be the town's 'honored elder', as most locomotives on small branches have lived in the area for many decades, making them the oldest member of the town in many cases. This has lead to many culture clashes in larger cities, where residents may be apathetic to the desires their locomotive neighbors, much to the dismay and shock of a 'country bumpkin' who lives nearby.

Of particular issue to locomotive freedoms are multiple units. Since the 1960s, Japanese railways have put more focus into EMUs/DMUs rather than standard locomotive hauled trains. This has caused even more segregation amongst Japan's rail population, as permanently coupled multiple units cannot access the few existing locomotive/human developments, as they were designed for standalone locomotives. Urban sprawl and high land prices have made enlarging these developments is impossible. To date, the only MU focused 'loco-city' (other than one-track sheds in rural farming communities) is in the Fukushima Daiichi exclusion area. However, as the line accessing it is in the traditional Japanese 3'6" gauge, the community remains inaccessible to the 4'8.5" gauge Shinkansen trains, many of whom are almost totally isolated from anyone else - despite living in Japan's largest cities - as a result of their loading gauge restrictions.  

Similar social isolation occurs to ships and aircraft, but as they are able to receive emotional support from friends and relatives across the planet, they do not suffer from this isolation nearly as much. 

-------

At no point in Italian history has anyone been able to make the right decision in regards to locomotive rights. This is not to say that Locomotive rights (and vehicular rights in general) don’t exist in Italy - they do, rather thoroughly - but rather, the Italians have never once done so intentionally, instead implementing locomotive rights by having multiple laws, written on multiple occasions over multiple decades, that are so badly written that a train could and likely was driven through the loopholes that exist in them! 

#ask response #long #locomotive rights headcanon #sentient vehicle headcanon #sentient trains #sentient vehicles #italy #japan #ussr #ww2 #belgium

[luminous-shifting-vibes]

*sequel* to actual fucking quotes from the shiftblr coffeehouse discord server

once again, it's out of context because x1000 funnier

also x1000 longer than previous post

"ur satan is gnc af"

"Bestie I’m already having gender envy over a fucking demon please"

"O_O ODEPIJHFbavevisdpvfhzdcnjawedsidjksjdkoeirjfmkdsoeirujdksodifjndmksoidfjdksidfj ITS" NOT IN MY FRAFTS IS SPEDNT 1 hour PN THAT SHIT"

"AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

"ohoho sexy"

"I am very proud of myself"

"himbo x edgy fuck"

"YOU COULD SQUISH HES CHEECKS"

"he has teefs"

"SQUASH"

"good for biting 📷"

"he's a himbo basically"

"B͂̒̄iͫ̍̈tͧ̓ͯè̄̇"

"bifth"

"i havent watched blue exorcist in years but mr okumura my beloved </3"

"MY LIFE QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED"

"is it important information to mention that the person i put up for my turn is the son of satan" "I know like 1 thing about everyone who isnt ranboo lmfao"

"crimes"

"tumblr sexyman"

"idk why but my first thought was cowboy onceler"

"I vibe with him but he is very long and twisty"

"steampunk e-girl"

"steampunk tumblr sexyman"

"Canonically bi crimelord I agree!!"

"OOO FRIEND SHAPED"

"ARTIST SIGHTED"

"they look like someone i would want to be friends with but is way cooler than me so i'd never actually talk to them"

"babby..... would die for him"

"honestly i probably kin him"

"i'm sure he's lovely but he looks way too much like my ex i'm sorry-"

"i'd be down for another rotation! i have another twink to show y'all"

"Also :00 blonde friend"

"Let us all infodhmo"

"Hsjagdvbs shhh im on phone"

"Nix woukd you like to joon?

"skitters away"

"I have two braincells and they both drink dumb bitch juice"

"oof wait whats the order again i have 0 memory"

"i want to bond with him over cosplay-"

"Awkwardly watches in band kid"

"One day I'm gonna a broadway star"

"which isnt to say they were bad. they were just fortnite dancing during rehersals"

"I threw it so hard my glasses flew off and slid under the stage right divider"

"anyway heres my boi"

"emo"

"haha emo"

"virgil sanders kinnie"

"he looks like he listens to my chemical panic at the fallout boy"

"Bro I bet he'd kick my ass with his deck"

"bird man my beloved"

"fuck i had so much to say and then i forgot it all"

"Birds!!"

"guiguhuh"

"crabrave"

"She sounds like someone I would end up stealing her personality"

"yess name collector gang"

"alias glass aiden haven absinthe fish brick rice"

"But I have Cypress, Remure, Genesis, Lemres, and Comet"

"And she's named after a mars candy bar bc alien"

"Hey, if plato went by plato, you can be king thief"

"im not dissing my gramma like that shfojd"

"My dad has seven legal names" "bitches be like *looks at fictional character* *steals their name* it's us we're bithces"

"coraline lowkey traumatized me but i adore it regardless"

"mmmmmm magic man :]"

"°0° green man"

"criminal (affectionate)"

"he would shoplift a candy bar from walmart and then brag to all of his friends about the sick stealing he did"

"despite the fact he's canonically been capable of overpowering a minor deity"

"i would commit so many crimes for him"

"Very babey"

"Yes please tell green man he is very pog"

"he also keeps a lot of dumb secrets"

"but I will sorely miss the chaos and energy of this here chat until I wake again" (by request XD)

"i just say words and if they're funny then they're funny"

"* or extremly chaotic either works"

"at this point we are just taking turns rambling"

"oH--"

"bc my brain has a schedule"

"Hopefully they have gyoza there or I will lose my mind"

"hehe yes spooky man"

"my ghost glucose guardian"

"the head of the undead group that lives there, and we end up dating. (yes I date a ghost, no I will not be taking constructive criticism /lh)"

"ghosts r just inherently sexy"

"i mean im becoming a squid thing so"

"Raven quirk raven quirk!!"

"ł â m p"

"łæmp"

"mothman: ooh lamp you look very nice today! do you come here often? mothman: wait shit no"

"I'd date a ghost"

"mine is still accurate, i am still sobbing (/j)"

"p e e p e e"

""@nick wilde is a tumblr sexyman" is the best thing i have ever seen"

"im sorry im cackling like a dying hyena"

"you're all 12 year olds"

"PEENIE"

"He once caused global warming on accident so he could get a tan"

"god, what a himbo. i love him"

"that reminds me of my friends kin assigned me jesus"

"Man outside of battle be like: princely crying but then in battle hes like: "CATACLYSM! DISASTER! DEVASTATION!" Chill out man"

"Every time I talk about satan it never fails to shock people it's my favorite thing to do"

"im kin assigning him roman sanders" ""Oh yeah he caused global warming because he wanted to get girls" "he what""

"oh damn i forgot satan was straight"

"twink appreciation club"

"give us the twinks"

"my first thought was bottom-"

"so many people to try and get his dad to love him"

"daddy issued"

"OH MY GOD ITS WILBUR"

"Big boy but"

"anyways janus is swagggg"

"........................."

"gib twink"

"give twink then i will share"

"holds him gentle like hamburger"

"This dumb bitch opened a book that said "do not open" and got possessed by a little bastard"

"he is. fragile creachur"

"klug is beauty klug is grace i would let him step on my face"

"If I'm playing swap and I have to hear one more "Pwanet Powew" Im gonna lose it"

"Who is to blame? Pandora or the box?"

"Bakugo isnt my type but I respect the drip"

"i say like my type isnt long-haired pretty boys and girls that look so gnc that people have a history of confusing them for men"

"hes a gremlin and i can appreciate a pretty gremlin"

"that is to say i am attracted to VFlower vocaloid. This is a confession."

"note i am a lesbian"

"You may like Schezo wegey"

"why does he have one single expression"

"soul soul eater passes the vibe check"

"magic wand"

"I Want To Hold His Hand"

"i would commit a war crime for him any war crime idc which one"

"my favorite one is when he sounded rlly gay because he said "Muscular bodies keep me satisfied""

"p e a n u t"

"Klug is a homophobic homosexual its just facts"

"grug from the croods is peak male performance"

"jaw drops to floor, eyes pop out of sockets accompanied by trumpets, heart beats out of chest, awooga awooga sound effect, pulls chain on train whistle that has appeared next to head as steam blows out, slams fists on table, rattling any plates, bowls or silverware, whistles loudly, fireworks shoot from top of head, pants loudly as tongue hangs out of mouth, wipes comically large bead of sweat from forehead, clears throat, straightens tie, combs hair Ahem, you look very lovely."

"tag yourself im the fireworks shooting from the top of the head"

"i like essays"

"central time gang"

"11:11 pog-" (wait... is that a suprise angel number?? yes it is lovelies just for you <3)

"Then again im also a dumbass bitch who wonders what the souls in soul eater taste like. SERIOUSLY THOUGH. THEY LOOK TASTY AS HELL!!!! LIKE GODDAMN BRO YOU'RE MAKING ME FUCKING HUNGRY. Like. that shit- it's Bone Apple motherfucking Teeth. hell yea my guy. Im hongy now.... shlorp I'm seriously considering this. Like. They seem kinda like a liquid? But a solid? Are they like jello? The fuck they taste like my guy???? I keep imagining they're like sour, like sour candy maybe? Or do they taste salty? Sweet? Maybe some combo of two? Do they even have a taste or is it about the texture? The sensation? God my mouth is watering what the hell. I am starving. I think I need to go get a cookie. I'm gonna go get a cookie. Brb. I'm better. I'm still craving souls though. Which is a weird-ass cringey thing to say but I'm being dead-ass rn. They just.... look tasty???? And I wanna eat one. Thus. I am shifting to Soul Eater for the express purpose of satisfying my fucking cravings. enjoy"

"points were made"

"jello? more like helloooo schloooAHFJDSDAIDWNALDHSJKDAIDANDM"

"WAIT I THINK I HAVE AN ANIME GIRL BITING VIDEO TOO"

"anime girl voice: mmm! mm... ahhhhmp!! mmm, mmm... aaahmp!"

"i think it sounds great i'm going to start eating like that"

"several people are typing"

"do these look edible to you"

"forbidden gummies"

"when I was on lsd I couldn't eat my fruit gummies because I thought they were alive because they had little faces on them"

"oh shit yeah don't do drugs"

"anyways general consensus is puyos are edible, ty for your input everyone"

"everypony is a word so powerful it can bring nations to its knees"

"pls the self control it's taking me not to say "hewwo everypony" in gen chat when someone new joins-"

"hewwo evewrypony uwu deaw cewestia i hopwe it doewsnt wain owo"

"ive cooked up a sowution wiwth the knowwege ive acwued. they say a kitcwen time saves niwne, but im just savwing two. Ive gathewwed the inwedients to make a time sowbet. Thewe's hawdly woom fow seconds when the seconds mewt away."

"I had a ten year old sister... you know what happened to her??? very sad, very tragic... she turned eleven....."

"NIIICE"

"Guts dont say the secks word :( /j"

"watch your fucking language in front of the president"

"im so sorry lumi"

"i think you're like ehhhh 8/10 funny"

"now me???? 10/10. Hilarious"

"sometimes i have to take a step back and remember that this is the same guts i follow on tumblr /lh"

""ok every here's some good shifting advice!!! uwu have a good day" "yeah i did lsd and ate fruit gummies""

"i have one setting and it's whatever this is"

"my bitch ass cat just pushed the door open with his fuzzy face and now my sleeping dad is being lulled into dreams by Cosmo Sheldrake's 'Pliocine'."

"me on discord: nick wilde"

"me on tumblr: shifting water! haha funne! me on here: my hermit crabs are cannibals also i want to eat souls."

"im sorry yOUR VIBESA RE JUST SO DIFFERNT"

"u give off older cousin ive never spoken to but always admire at the family gatherings vibes"

"what the fuck"

"BC I HAVE LIBERTU"

"If you adopt me then yes"

"am I qualified for dad jokes???"

"we're all a lot smarter on tumblr"

"I'm like "awww... sweet... sweet little shiftlings... posting such sweet shiftling content... so pure, so wholesome... does not even know abcs....""

"can't think before you speak if you never think B)"

"I'm not responsible enough to be a mom"

"cat pet"

"show us pictures of the cat or i will do Crime"

"maybe thats me being a coward tho"

"MOTH!!!! MOTH MY BELOVED"

if y'all want I can make this a series bc shiftblr keeps giving me more content

#tw drugs #tw swearing #tw cannibalism #tw crime #tw food #tw homophobia #shitpost #out of context #out of context quotes #lumi's quotes

[mevekagvain]

Chapter 93 - Fancy chair, love it.

- So my theory is that Raizel just never learnt how to write in Lukedonian either.

- Tbh the janitor is suspicious. Like how hard was he googling M-21?

Chapter 94 - SUYIIIIIIIIIIII

- Ah geez the first of the racistly depicted characters.

Chapter 96 - Suyi getting mad at the kids for complaining about Hansu is so funny like when she first appears you think she's perhaps a stuck up celebrity or a pushover but it turns out she's just a really sweet friend.

- Suyi being stunned by Rai's looks but not falling for him (same with Yuna) is one of the things I always liked about Noblesse. Like sure in the first meeting they get blushy but I'll just jot that down to the inherent beauty of nobles since I can't relate to it at all.

Chapter 97 - Frankenstein's house always being stocked with so much food because the kids just started coming over daily is hilarious. Even funnier since Frankenstein obviously thinks it's overkill but is the one stocking up anyway.

Chapter 98 - Regis and Seira 🥺 Seira's og outfit was the best one she had like it only goes downhill from here folks.

Chapter 99 - It would have been so funny if Frankenstein went "they must be cosplayers" instead of realising the two were nobles.

- Regis taking all the initiative shows how it's his roadtrip coming of age journey which is pretty clever. Also Seira's just like that but still.

- Shinwoo stop exercising in class bro. Do not flex on the rest of us this is so rude 😭😭😭

- Regis confidently saying he's a noble in class to humans he doesn't plan on mind controlling... Baby boy why are you so dumb? How is this hiding your identity??? And Seira just lets him,,, good for her.

Chapter 100 - Ah yes their elegance boner at seeing Raizel... nobles are so fucking weird.

- M-21 thinking he won't get any information because of his time at the Union and thus being surprised at how open Frankenstein is is actually really sweet. Like yeah I still think Frankenstein is an unethical and questionable person but he is kind to most humans (werewolves and nobles can go fuck themselves I guess lmao).

Chapter 101 - The second hand embarrassment I felt when M-21 called the two noblesse... how do I even consume content?

- Yeah 100% most union members don't know the difference between nobles and vampires. I bet they'd classify jiangshi as either mutants or werewolves. Or to be more specific, that would be the classification given to low leveled members. On one hand I think it's dumb that the Union gives members twisted information because how would they even use it? But on the other hand it makes sense since it prevents said members from seeking nobles for help. After all, if they believe even the 'noblesse' are vampires that drink blood, than obviously they won't see them as possible escape routes.

- 'Noblesse only applies to one person'. Yeah because Rai's brother is fucking dead. And so is whoever was his predecessor/parent.

Chapter 102 - Those bullies got backup so fucking fast like Shinwoo literally just asked Regis and Seira if they were okay then boom! They're back.

Chapter 103- Regis going ??? essentially when Shinwoo tells him to take care of Seira is so funny like yes ofc he's confused she's literally a clan leader + noble females aren't physically weaker + noble women work out just like the men.

- Rude, Regis. You can't just ask someone why they're mingling among humans. You're doing that too. Who doesn't mingle among humans smh. Even cats and pigeons mingle with us.

Chapter 105 - Love how everyone else in the household is so sick of ramyeon like Raizel stop please you're being selfish.

Chapter 106 - Frankenstein is the definition of the 'right in front of my salad?' meme at Regis and M-21 arguing at the dinner table. Then there's Seira and Raizel just waiting for the noodles to get soggy so he can't even eat. Wish Urokai could see him getting tortured like this.

- The soldier rejecting backup because he knows the enemy is the Union hurts my heart. Wanting to prevent casualties... iwi

Chapter 107 - Shark how tf do you not know about South Korea? That's one of the asian countries people actually know about. I guess maybe it's because this is from around a decade back? K-pop is more recent and made the country more visible I guess.

- Ah yes Takeo. Forever known as "the first time I read Noblesse and he appeared I thought he was Marie's sister since they had the same hairstyle". Like I thought that before even learning about the Aris Taivra fiasco. My power 😔

- Oh don't worry M-21, Frankenstein stopped experimenting on people 830 years ago. You know, as one does.

Chapter 108 - Shark has like no general knowledge. Geography? History? Tf is that I guess.

- Tao saying they're the worst possible people for the job is so funny like yeah he's right. "All we do is massacre people in warzones why are we in Seoul?"

- The rest of the squad complain or are confused about the peace meanwhile Takeo is vibing. He's the normal guy TM of the group.

- Ah yes noble lore. If you take canon at face value than the fact that nobles were around when humans first emerged and there being about 2-3 clan leaders before the current generation means you can estimate their lifespan. Ofc it differs wildly depending on how you interpret the 'first humans' part. I'll assume there were 3 generations before the current generation (mvp lord being the third generation) and won't be adding the current generation since a 0.5-2k years is kinda meaningless. I'll also be assuming that mvp lord entered eternal sleep at around the same age as his predecessors and that he would have died soon from old age anyway (since canonically they do have limited lifespans). If we assume it's just the first human ancestors (7 million years ago) than the average pureblood lifespan is 2.33 million years. If we assume it's when homo sapiens started to emerge (300k years ago) than it's 100k years. If it's about modern humans (130k years ago) than it's 43.3k years. Regardless I'll ignore it since my hcs are that nobles are effectively immortal unless killed and that the 2-3 clan leaders is a misconception due to a mix of Gechutel just straight up lying, because there are clans that have had fewer clan leaders, because I have nobles settling on Lukedonia only 30k years ago, and because Gechutel is factoring in his own age of 10.2k so it's more like 'There have been 2-3 Ru clan leaders before the Ru clan leader 10k years ago since after we settled in Lukedonia'. There's also the possibility that nobles didn't have lords or clan leaders until a few thousand years ago in canon but the species has existed for much longer.

- 'Nobles are individualistic... They don't despise humans but don't love them either.' Humans w/ ants. Now if the ants were capable of speaking with us it'd be exactly the same situation.

Chapter 109 - "What were they researching here?" Since when does the Union research anything aside from human modifications Kranz? Why do you even need to ask? More seriously this means that the Union doesn't actually only do human experimentation and weapons lmao. The other shit just isn't relevant I guess. It's a shame, I'd have loved to see how a lab focused on like, fixing up polluted waters, would be fit into the story.

- The fact that Tao beat Jake up is never mentioned enough. Also confirms that Jake was lying out of his ass about being the strongest.

- Marie being the weakest assassination squad member is interesting like I know why Crombel doesn't need bodyguards as the reader but you'd think the Union would be suspicious of him not having a stronger bodyguard. Also I still can't believe the Union doesn't bother learning who the members are aside from the ones Crombel tells them about like. Bro???

- Shark calling Takeo uptight is hilarious because the guy literally just shot the falling ceiling light which is the opposite of uptight. Either he was preventing them from getting hurt/being caught or he wanted that to happen considering the fact that he shot it and it shattered. And then he just goes back to leaning against the wall. Takeo please 🤣

Chapter 110 - And Shinwoo's still staying over at Ikhans place. Wonder when he's gonna move back. I really love their dynamic like yeah I beg my sister to get me food all the time too. Also love the apron and skeleton hoodie.

- Shinwoo went through the five stages of grief pretty quick huh? Like yeah it's his own misunderstanding that Ikhan is dating someone but still. Homophobia is annoying as always though.

Chapter 111 - Suyi paying for their food is so sweet of her and also I relate so much like yeah mood that's me and no I don't want to be paid back.

- Takeo,,, the fact that he just hands his wallet over because he doesn't like violence and doesn't want to beat them up,,, my heart. Otoh... how did he even get cornered in an dark shady alleyway lmao.

- Aris managing to make herself look like a teenager as Taivra is interesting since Takeo says he wants her to be able to go to school like Yuna and Shinwoo when he's treating them. I guess she looks younger without makeup.

- Takeo just straight up pointing his gun at Shark in public because he mentioned Taivra... anger issues much? I understand why but taking your gun out is an overreaction.

#noblesse #raining while reading

[whetstonefires]

Hi Whetstonefire. I have a question about the comic where Nightwing cheats on Starfire with Barbara: What happens directly after that? Does Starfire find out that Nightwing cheated on her? And, if so, how does she react? I've read online that (according to Marv Wolfman) Starfire is the opposite of everything Batman taught Nightwing to be and that Batman taught Nightwing to be repressed and cold. What did Nightwing contribute (emotionally) to the relationship between him and Starfire? (Cont.)

(Cont.) From what I can tell, from online, Nightwing was adamant about standards of mercy and monogamy - how do you think, if Starfire were to be written as her own character and not written around Nightwing and his emotional needs, she would handle and react to that? (This bit is an FYI for other readers: this is just speculation, not hate. Sorry about that.) Sorry about the questions! Have a nice day! 

Okay there are so many separate questions packed in here! I may miss some of them lol and I do not want to put in the hours it would take to produce an orderly response to all this, so this post is going to be a mess.

Initial query and important point: the cheating story was out of continuity. Like, literally, not just by ‘being rejected by the fanbase,’ it was just this weird retcon oneshot that seems to have been some sort of fuck-you to Nightwing or his fans or something. So no, it had no in-setting fallout lol. It, in more ways than most comics, didn't exactly happen.

It was just this weird thing where Dick hooks up with Babs before giving her a wedding invitation, which is both out of character for him in general and out of step with where he was leading up to the wedding--he was desperate to get married so they could have some Normal Stable Adulthood Happiness; the choice to recharacterize him as a fuckboy who regards it as a loss of freedom isn’t congruent, on much more than the level of principle.

As far as how Kori would feel about it, if she had learned...that is very hard to say. Apart from how it would require her to reinterpret everything about where their relationship stood at that point, the data is very unclear, and I don’t even have all of it. Gonna back up to cover some of the rest of the ask, get some context here.

So this actually brings up two of my biggest gripes with Wolfman’s NTT--weird Kori characterization and the weirdly negative interpretation of Batman as parent that backwashed heavily into other titles and influenced the character for the worse, in ways we're very much still dealing with today. 😩

The latter is pretty self-explanatory, though Wolfman’s take that the main thing Bruce taught Dick was repression does shed light on some writing choices and make others funnier. But Kori. Oh my lands.

So, item one, I wouldn't say that Kori is overall opposite Bruce, or even of his philosophy? There are just some very major points of opposition. She isn’t emotionally buttoned-down like at all, especially about positive feelings, although considered realistically with all the bullshit they’ve piled into her backstory she absolutely leans on repression to cope and stay positive, which makes her a lot like Dick actually.

To an extent, she was clearly written around foiling Dick’s Batman-derived traits in the same way that Robin was written to foil Batman, bright and glad and aerial. A Flamebird to his Nightwing in theme if not in name.

You could do some interesting stuff with that, and the bildungsroman aspects of this period of Dick’s life, like he has two roads forward in terms of how he’s going to define ‘adulthood’--does it necessarily require becoming more like his mentor-father, for good and ill, or can he make Kori in part a destination, as it were, and create an adult self that is derived from who he has always been as well as the man he’s modeled himself after?

To an extent I think this even was one of the things going on in ntt but like. Only a little bit.

(Given how much like Bruce Babs is in most of the ways Kori isn’t, especially once she’s Oracle, you could make a case for her as love interest being like. Symbolic of his not being in a rebellious phase? That gets weird and oedipal really fast tho lol.)

Okay stepping down one meta level lol, the thing about answering the 'what would kori' question here is that her character is deeply bound up in her culture, about which we are told and shown a great many contradictory things. Any attempt to read her as an independent character has to tackle not only the gender stuff you allude to and these inconsistencies, but how much of the sheer mess of her is rooted in racism.

'Fantastic' racism, technically, because Tamaraneans aren't real, but the 'taming the savage' narrative that kept surfacing between them and the language used in reference to it is just. The existing racism of presumably the writers, placed in Dick's mouth, and it's super gross. I hate it so much.

(I had a faint hope when they cast her for live action it was with a deliberate intent to directly tackle and better that history, but lollllllll nah. At least they didn’t double down in it tho! Can you imagine, with a black actress, in this day and age....)

So to predict and comprehend Kori, you have to make a lot of calls about Tamaran as a civilization. I like to slightly privilege stuff established earlier if there's no good reason not to, so while much is made over time of her inappropriate rage and the violence she was raised to normalize, I think what she says in her first appearance is good to keep in mind: in her culture, kindness is for friends and cruelty is for enemies. She doesn't understand why the Titans seem to have this backwards.

Kori is not a merciless person. She’s very empathetic, as a rule. With people she loves, she is self-destructively forgiving. That's not a trait only Dick benefits from--her family keeps betraying her in new exciting ways, and she keeps letting them.

Her arc of growing away from that habit is however greatly crippled by centering Dick in the narrative and by the awful 'civilizing' overtones that keep coming into it. When she comes back after the 1986 breakup, still married to Karras, she brings with her a commitment to doing things the Earth way--to eschew lethal force as more than a compromise with her friends’ values, but as a deliberate choice.

This deserved a lot more space and time than it got, and the fact that it didn’t get it is only somewhat due to her being subordinated to Dick and to general writing fail; a lot of it’s just the team book problems of everything happening to everybody all at once.

I mean, Dick’s journey later on to deciding he loves her enough to date her even though she’s married and it’s technically against his principles was packed into this absolutely heinous issue where he was inspired by a woman refusing to separate from her husband who’d just threatened to kill her and their kid with a knife, until being stopped by Nightwing. Because he’s apologizing for what he did.

This is his inspiration for accepting Kori’s marital status! It’s supposed to be heartwarming, as far as I can tell! Not heavyhanded messaging that this is a self-destructive terrible choice in which Kori will inevitably harm him somehow! This issue is pro ‘consensual open relationships under certain circumstances’ and also ‘giving abusers another chance’ as expressions of love. Welcome to the 80s ig.

(Notable is that the wife in this issue was black and the husband and son both looked very white, so it’s probably her stepkid and she probably wouldn’t get to keep him if they separated; this is not even vaguely treated as a factor.)

Point is, everyone was getting too little space to actually go through the amount of development they were getting, and it was clumsily handled; it’s not just her.

In an overlapping period Gar processed his issues with his adoptive father with whom he constantly fought and their shared trauma over the rest of their family (the Doom Patrol) having died violently not long ago via a batshit several-issue storyline where Mento went crazy, created supermutants, and abusively mind-controlled them to attack the Titans. It is literally all like this.

Back to the infidelity thing, now. So much to unpack. So like I mentioned above, their first big breakup, while partially driven by Dick’s existing conflicted feelings about their different ideas about things like ‘killing in battle’ and ‘her identity and loyalties being tied up with her home planet,’ is explicitly over different takes on monogamy.

When Dick is breaking up with her, Kori makes it clear she thinks it’s totally reasonable to have both a husband and a love, since Karras also has someone he loves and they’re both fine with it, but the story doesn't really explain how nonmonogamy works on Tamaran, or even if it's practiced outside the context of political marriage. They do do a sort of...soulbond fusion dance...thing, as part of the ceremony, so marriage is definitely serious business. There are so many levels of cultural difference that get poor to no development.

But to return to the weird ooc retcon cheating story: because of this context, no matter what her personal norms are, Dick specifically casually sleeping with someone else would be something for Kori to be mad about, because of the hypocrisy.

Then there’s the Mirage Incident, which I haven’t read through properly and which was very poorly handled by the writers. Kori is upset about Dick having slept with someone impersonating her and there’s a general vibe of this being treated by Dick’s social circle as unfaithfulness even though he was in fact sexually violated by deceit; it famously sucks.

We still don’t learn a lot here about Kori’s ideas about monogamy, from what I have seen, because her focus is mostly on feeling like Dick doesn’t care about her enough or in the right way since he couldn’t tell the difference. Which is an understandable feeling, even if it’s not an appropriate reaction to have at him at this time.

What Nightwing contributed emotionally........hm. This is a mess, honestly; he was all over the map, and not just because of having Brother Blood in his head. I cannot speak definitively on this, it’s too inconsistent.

For most of their relationship, Kori was the more intensely invested one, the one to initiate and the one who was shown at length to be excited to come home at the end of the day to their shared apartment because her boyfriend was there to see and talk to. If we set aside his more egregious white male bullshit, Dick was pretty emotionally available most of the time, though? They were cute.

Since they split up a lot of ink has been spilled making him less into her in retrospect, but he was pretty invested--leaving her coincided with mental breakdowns both times, and it wasn’t even mostly because she was doing his emotional processing for him, because she wasn’t, although it’s fair to say he often fell into using the relationship as an emotional crutch. Kori was definitely doing the same thing though so...it wasn’t the most balanced relationship in fiction history, but apart from slight codependency and the racism, it was decent enough.

She gets more evenhanded development than most superhero love interests, honestly, because she was costarring in a team book. She had her own storylines. She had other friends.

Mostly both of them just needed some space to finish growing up and stop being retraumatized long enough to process some of the existing trauma better, and I think they could have gone on being good for each other for a long time.

#long post #this did in fact take me about two hours #ask #a nonny mouse #dickkori #koriand'r #dick grayson #nightwing #hoc est meum #teen titans #new teen titans #wolfman and perez #sexism #racism #relationships #monogamy #drama #shipping #lol nonny if you're sorry why do it #do you mean sorry to inconvenience me? #do you mean 'sorry to activate your compulsive question answering?'