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youngks-smile · 2 months

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What I Want You To Know About Long COVID

Well lads, I've been suffering from Long COVID for over a year now. My life is at a complete standstill. I'm 25 years old and I'm too sick to go back to school, I can't work, I had to move back in with my parents and I'm still stuck here.

Here are just a few things I wish people knew about Long COVID, including things I didn't know myself until I got it.

COVID destroys your immune system. Yes, even if you don't have Long COVID. Are you getting sick more often now? When you get sick, does it last longer? There are many studies showing that COVID causes t cell depletion, even in mild COVID cases! T cells are how your body remembers how to fight off infections you've had before so losing those cells? Bad news.

Your initial infection can be mild and you can still get Long COVID. Right from Yale Medicine, "Most people with Long COVID had mild acute COVID." (This is also a good link for a basic Long COVID overview).

There can be a gap of time between when you "get better" from the initial COVID infection to the onset of Long COVID symptoms. Some people get sick with an initial COVID infection and never get better. Some get better and then weeks or months later start developing Long COVID symptoms. Long COVID symptoms can even fluctuate over time, can go away for months and then suddenly come back.

So many people have Long COVID and don't realize it. Do you feel more tired lately but no matter how much you sleep, nothing helps? Is it harder to concentrate at work or school? Can you just not think like you used to? You could have Long COVID and not even know it. Even mild post-COVID symptoms are still Long COVID.

COVID can do anything to your body. Long COVID has over 200 recognized symptoms and can affect basically any part or system of your body. There is no one mechanism or cause of Long COVID which unfortunately also means there's no one cure either.

The effects of COVID are cumulative. Each COVID reinfection increases your chances of developing Long COVID. COVID is also affecting your body in other ways, yes, even if you're otherwise young and healthy! "Repeat COVID-19 infections increase risk of organ failure, death".

Once you have Long COVID, repeat COVID infections will make your symptoms worse. "80% [of Long COVID patients] saw their symptoms worsen [from reinfection]. In 60% of people who were in recovery or remission from Long COVID, reinfection caused a recurrence of Long COVID."

There is a lot more I want to say about Long COVID but I want to keep this post at least somewhat manageable to read. Like how when COVID is contracted during pregnancy, those COVID-exposed fetuses have a 6.3-fold increased risk of motor developmental delays, or that another study found 50% of babies exposed to COVID in utero had developmental delays.

You need to keep caring about COVID, for others around you and also for yourself even if you're "healthy". Everyone is at risk. And don't forget 40-60% of COVID infections are asymptomatic, which is why masking even if you feel fine is crucial. The only way right now to not get Long COVID is to not get COVID in the first place. It's not too late, if you've stopped masking it's never too late to start again! I know it's easy to get distracted by things in your life that seem more real than the possibility of getting sick some time in the future, and the peer pressure to not mask can be intense. But it only feels less real or less important until your entire life is having Long COVID. Trust me.

I know this is a complicated issue, many people can't afford to stay home when sick even if they want to because of their jobs, there are disgusting policies trying to ban wearing masks, but please if you can. Keep masking. Masking works, masking saves lives.

This post got a bit longer than I wanted so below the cut is a non-exhaustive list of my Long COVID symptoms and some of my experiences as one of the "healthy young people" who got "unlucky". cw brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Welcome to the Thunderdome that is my body with Long COVID. Keep in mind these are just my experiences and symptoms, Long COVID can cause any range of symptoms at varying severities.

Dysautonomia: Exercise intolerance, Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), fatigue, and heat intolerance. What do those things mean? Here's some specific examples. Absolutely terrible circulation I am so cold all the time but also, if I get a little too warm I will pass out. Eating hot food makes my heart rate spike, I sweat, my body feels heavy. Blood pooling and pins and needles in my feet when I walk. Don't even think about exercising past walking, it's impossible. I used to work out an hour a day 4 times a week and now walking up one flight of stairs makes my heart pound and I can't breathe. Can't take even just warm showers anymore or I will pass out. Heat rashes from being in the sun for 10 minutes.

Digestive issues: Honestly too many to name but: constant bloating, extreme nausea, constipation, slow motility, lack of appetite, just so much cramping and pain. I lost 18 pounds from Long COVID, as someone who was already considered underweight their entire life, and almost had to get a shunt put into my chest to deliver nutrients because I was nearly completely unable to eat. For the first 6 months of Long COVID, if I could manage 600 calories a day, that was a good day.

Histamine intolerance: Oh boy. My worst symptoms, I don't even know where to start with it. If you know Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) it's very similar. I can only eat 19 foods. If i eat a single bite of something not on that list, it's 48 hours of absolute hell. Coughing, migraines, itchy eyes, such extreme nausea I cannot even describe it, panic/feeling of doom, racing heart rate, derealization, rash, uncontrollable muscle tremors. I only learned about histamine intolerance 5 months into having Long COVID so before that, I was experiencing these symptoms nearly every single day. Terrifying isn't even a strong enough word to describe how it felt to experience all this and have no idea what it was, how to stop it, or if it would ever stop. Really dark times.

Neurological issues: More of that derealization. Inability to concentrate. Anxiety. OCD-like symptoms such as thoughts getting "stuck" in my head, repeating 24/7 completely unable to stop them, genuinely felt like my brain had cracked open and I had lost my mind. Constant dizziness like I'm on a boat.

Sleep issues: I sleep like garbage. I have insomnia, I wake up dozens of times every night and every single time I sleep I have intensely vivid dreams. I can't sleep longer than 7 hours total no matter how exhausted I am. It is exhausting. I'm exhausted, I'm so so tired.

And finally. Just. Really intense suicidal ideation. My body, my health, my entire life has been stolen from me because someone else decided my life was worth less to them than wearing a mask or staying home if they feel sick. Before I got Long COVID, I was preparing to go to South Korea to teach English, then on to a PhD in neurolinguistics, I was supposed to meet my long distance partner and had already booked plane tickets when I got sick. All of that has been destroyed.

Most of us with Long COVID are stuck in a cycle of being extremely sick, then if you're lucky you'll slowly get better over months, just to get reinfected and go right back where you started or worse. Honestly, I'm not scared of dying from COVID. I'm scared of living for a long time, suffering from Long COVID the entire time. This isn't living.

I don't know how to end this now. I'm still fighting, I'm trying experimental treatments, I'm not giving up yet. I hope everyone reading this stays healthy and well.

#long covid #covid 19 #covid isn't over #pandemic

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niennanir · 10 months

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Listen to your elders

So last week I posted abut the importance of downloading your fic. And then three days later AO3 went down for 24 hours. No one was more weirded out by this than I was. But while y’all were acting like the library at Alexandria was on fire I was reading my download fic and editing chapter eight of Buck, Rogers, and the 21st Century. And also thinking about what I could do to be helpful when the crisis was actually over.

So first off, I’m going to repeat that if you’re going to bookmark a fic, you really need to also download the fic and back it up in a safe place. I just do it automatically now and it’s a good habit to get into.

But let’s talk about some other scenarios. Last October I lost power for over a week after hurricane Ian. Apart from not having internet or A/C I did find plenty to do, I collect books so I had plenty to read, but maybe, unlike me, your favorite comfort reads aren’t sitting on a bookshelf. So let’s do something about that, shall we?

In olden times many long years ago around 1995 we printed off a lot of fic. It was mostly SOP to print a fic you planned to reread and stick it in a three ring binder. And that’s totally valid today too, but you can also make a very nice paperback with a minimum amount of skill and materials.

Let’s start with the download; Go to Ao3 and select your fic, we’ll be working with one of mine. This method works best with one shots, long fic tends to need a more complicated approach. Get yourself an HTML download

Open up the HTML download and select all then copy paste into any word processor. Set the page to landscape and two columns, then change the font to something you find easy to read, this is your book, no judgement. This is all you have to do for layout but I like to play a little bit. I move all the meta, summary, notes to the end and pick out a fun font for the title:

No time like the present to do a quick proofread. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first typeset. On to the fun part.

Now you’re going to need some materials: 8.5x11in paper ruler one sheet of 12x12 medium card stock (60-80lb) scissors pencil pen or fine tip marker sheet of wax paper white glue two binder clips 2 heavy books or 1 brick butter knife

You’ll also need a printer, if you’re in the US there is almost a 100% chance your local library has a printer you can use if you don’t have your own. None of these materials are expensive and you can literally use cheap copy paper and Elmers glue.

Print your text block, one page per side. Fold the first page in half so that the blank side is inside and the printed side out:

use the butter knife to crease the edge. Repeat on all the sheets. When you’ve finished, stack them up with the raw edge on the left and the folded edge on the right. I used standard copy paper, because you’re only printing on one side there’s no bleed to worry about. Take the text block and line everything up. Use the binder clips to hold the raw edge in place.

Wrap the text block in the wax paper so that the raw edge and binder clips are facing out. I’m going to use my home built book press but you don’t need one, a brick or a couple of books or anything else heavy will work fine.

Once the text block is anchored down, take off he binder clips and get out the glue.

You can use a brush but you don’t need one, smear some glue on that raw edge.

Go make a margarita, watch The Mandalorian, call your mother. Don’t come back for at least an hour

In an hour smear some more glue on there and shift your brick forward so that the whole book is covered. This keeps the paper from warping. While glue part 2 is drying we’ll do the cover. Get out your 12x12 cardstock

Mark the cardstock off at 8.5 inches and cut it. Measure in 5.5 inches from the left and put in a score line with the butter knife (the back edge not the sharp edge)

Carefully fold the score line, this is your front cover. You have some options for the cover title, you can use a cutting machine like a cricut if you have one, you can print out a title on the computer and use carbon paper to transfer the text to the cardstock. I was in a mood so I just freehanded that beoch. Pencil first then in pen.

Take your text block out from under your brick. Line it up against the score mark and mark the second score on the other side of the spine

Fold the score and glue the textblock into the cover at the spine. Once the glue dries up mark the back cover with the pencil and then trim the back cover to fit with your scissors.

Voila:

I’m going to put this baby on the shelf next to the Silmarillion.

The whole process, not counting drying time, took less than an hour.

If you want to make a book of a longer fic, I recommend Renegade Publishing, they have a ton of resources for fan-binders.

#fanbinding #fanfiction #Nir paperback

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not-magdi · 6 months

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(Not so) Quiet Evenings

Summary: Lando is alone with his son for the first time

Warnings: None, just so high risk of a baby fever

Words: 1.1k

A/N

I wanted to thank you for 1k notes on Little Update. So I wrote another dad!lando to thank all of you! <3

(I wanted to put a picture with him and a baby here but this was way too cute to not post❤️)

Carmen and Lily invited you to a small baby-free get-together. Nothing too big, just the three of you sitting together, relaxing and letting loose for a bit.

This whole thing was actually Lando's idea. He wanted to get you out of the house for a bit, sensing that you needed a little break from being a mama bear.

So he asked Lily if she could invite you over to catch up and keep your mind off of things a little. Of course, she said yes, already starting to plan the second Lando asked her.

So now the Brit is sitting on the couch, watching you rush through the apartment to grab everything you need.

"Baby, you're gonna be fine, trust me. It's just Lily and Carmen."

Halting your movements, you turn to him, your phone in one hand and your keys in the other.

"I know it's just I want this to be perfect. It's been so long since I went out."

Lando stands up and makes his way over to you, stopping right in front of you.

"You're going to be ok. Enjoy your night. Me and the little muppet are going to have a great night."

Lando strokes your arms, kissing your head to calm you down.

"Speaking of the little muppet." You turn around and grab a piece of paper from the shelf behind you. "I wrote you a little list so you don't get overwhelmed by being alone."

Lando takes the paper and reads through the different points.

Try to feed him before bed. So he sleeps a little bit longer( milk is already in the bottle)

Bath him (use the blue and the green bottles on the sink)

If he gets fussy, play the F1 intro. (Works every time!)

Try to get him to bed around 7:30 p.m.

You're going to do great. You're a super dad, and I believe in you.

"Aww, you're cute."

Wrapping his arms around you, he wishes you a lovely evening and practically pushes you out the door.

Now, standing alone in the quiet apartment, a feeling of nervousness creeps up in his body. He grips the list you gave him a little tighter and makes his way into his son's room.

Gently opening the door, he smiles at his son's sleeping figure, cuddled up in his little cot. Lando walks into the room, approaches his son and gently takes him into his arms.

Henry wakes up and looks at his dad with his adorable big blue eyes, cuddling himself into Lando's shoulder.

Lando strokes his back to settle little Henry in his arms again, feeling the soft material of his little bear pyjamas between his fingers.

"Well, hello there, little man. Slept well?" He asks, earning himself a happy gurgle.

"I take that as a yes."

He carries Henry into the living room, asking him all sorts of questions on the way.

"You also think that nobody needs fish, right? Say nothing if you agree."

Hearing complete silence from the sleeping baby in his arms, he looks down to find Henry in a deep slumber again. He laughs a little at how much they already have in common, being able to sleep everywhere.

The two continue to cuddle for a bit. Lando tells him all sorts of stories until he feels Henry getting restless on his chest.

"You getting hungry, little bud?"

Henry lets out a whine, grabbing the shirt he lays on with his little fists. Lando strokes his back to settle him again, and stands up to grab a bottle from the kitchen.

"How does Y/N do that?"

In the kitchen, he currently tries to heat the bottle while holding the baby in his arms, which turns out to be more complicated than he thought, with a squirming baby in his arm.

"How about- no, that's not going to work."

"And if I just- nope, also not."

After some time, he finally figured it out. He stuck Henry into his hoodie and held him with one hand while he prepared the bottle with the other.

Now, he is sitting in your bathroom waiting for the water to be the perfect temperature.

Let's say feeding didn't go quite as planned. The food was everywhere except Henry's mouth, on the floor, on Henry, the curtains, but mainly on Lando.

So, now that both of them needed a bath, he decided to kill two birds with one stone.

The water is warm enough now, so he grabs little Henry and climbs into the tub. The warmth engulfs their bodies as he lays down.

"Yeah, that's better. Admit it, you just wanted to bathe with me."

Henry gives his dad a toothless smile and splashes him with water. Lando giggles at his son's antics and grabs the soap to start washing him.

After he washed himself and the baby, he got both of them dressed. They are both dressed in matching quadrant hoodies, something Max gifted him as Henry was born.

Land decides the world needs to see how unbelievably cute he and Henry look, so he takes a picture and posts it on his story.

Millions of messages arrive to him in a matter of minutes, but he ignores them and makes his way over to Henry's little nursery. He is fighting to keep his little eyes open, so Lando decides it is time for him to call it a night.

The second he lays him down in his crib, he starts to whine, not liking the loss of his father's warmth one bit.

So Lando picks him up again, walks to the living room and sits on the couch.

"You don't want to sleep yet, do you?"

He coos at him and bounces up and down to settle Henry a little. Happy to be in his dad's arms again, he settles back down and closes his eyes.

"Oh, so now you wanna sleep? Little evil genius, you got that from your mom."

Not wanting to wake him up, Lando decides to stay on the couch and watch some TV until Henry is sleeping deep enough. It doesn't take long for Lando to doze off, one hand on his son's back and the other under his butt, having him in a safe grip.

And that's exactly how you found them two hours later, cuddled up on the couch, the TV playing in the background.

Smiling to yourself, you take out your phone and take a picture of the two of them, definitely posting that later. But for now, you walk up to them and cuddle yourself to your perfect little family.

#lando norris x y/n #lando norris oneshot #lando norris fanfic #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #dad! lando norris #dad!driver #lando norris #formula one #dad!lando

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toskarin · 9 months

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As someone knowledgeable about MMOs, and given the topic of SAO just came up. If you were to write a .Hack/SAO/Log Horizon style story, what kind of things would you focus on? I personally feel like there are a lot of different elements of MMO culture anyone writing about them could really delve into. So I'm curious what Tumblr user Toskarin would choose.

condensed

back when I played Perfect World, it had some empty spaces. this wasn't uncommon for mmos, and if you can name one older than 15 or so years, you can bet there were vast empty spaces on the world map that existed to pad it

but they were important! sure, they added nothing of obvious value and could cynically be read as existing just to pad travel time, but they also made the worlds feel bigger than you what you were doing in them. and more mysterious.

some friends in my guild and I got a message one day that one member was going to roll a new character and wanted help levelling. a complication: their starting zone was across the sea.

a few friends and I volunteered to swim across the sea to their zone. there were definitely easier ways to go about it, but setting out to do something just to see if it was possible seemed fun

now, they may have changed this since then, but the sea in Perfect World felt strange in a way I haven't seen any game really emulate since. the sky was a dull, and as was the fashion, everything was a bit muted. the sea itself was opaque, and when you swam under it, there was a significant amount of grey-blue terrain that seemed to stretch on forever into the fog

and of course, there was fuck all in it. nothing alive. no monsters until you got close to a shore. just vast empty sea that you swam through, only your friends' characters to break up the odd stillness of it. you probably turned the music off at this point, too, so there was only ambient sound and splashing

this is because you were supposed to fly over it, if you crossed it at all. and because there wasn't really a good centralised source of knowledge on these things, it wasn't really clear if it was entirely empty

the trip there was fine, if a bit boring and lonely. during the trip back, I accidentally clicked on something in the middle of the ocean

now, there weren't supposed to be things there. I had my friends, but I clicked on a monster, and when I swam down to look at it, I saw that it was actually an enormous sea monster

so I pinged one of the guildmates swimming with me and they thought I was lying, so I showed them, and then we repeated this several times until everyone in the group had seen this weird thing that felt like it came from a schoolyard rumour

Ancient Sea Dragon. 99,999,999 health points and none of us could find anything on it posted online. it was pretty common for players to run into it and be shocked, but we didn't know that

so we naturally let the rest of the guild know, got a hunting party together, and spent the better part of a day just whittling its health down

with the benefit of hindsight and documentation of this thing existing now, I can spoil this and tell you it didn't drop anything, but this long down the line, I still think about how deeply surreal it felt to stumble on an enormous sea monster in the middle of what my brain had come to understand as a liminal space. the sea was supposed to be mostly empty, and here was this thing

which is a very long way to introduce what I think is lacking here: we need more of those enormous empty spaces that leave characters with nothing to do but talk and feel completely isolated. sometimes you get to a sprawling castle city and it's completely empty because the players moved on. sometimes the devs threw an enormous monster in the middle of nowhere just to fuck with you, and that was kind of cool even if it sucked

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cdragons · 5 months

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Bound by Embroidered Chains - Aemond Targaryen x Seamstress!OC x Jacaerys Velaryon - Chapter One

Prologue

Summary: Dragons have a habit in hoarding the prettiest of jewels, and pearls are of no exceptions.

Warnings- MDNI 18+ Obsessive Behavior (we all knew this was coming), tiny!Aemond is delulu, tiny!Jace is delulu, Dark Themes, not betaread we burn like Harrenhal, etc. Also translations for Valyrian will be added at the bottom! Also I used an online translator for the High Valyrian, so it may not be great 🫠

Author's Note: Hello everyone! Thank you all so much for the amazing support for this story's prologue, I did NOT expect so many positive reviews! I'm sorry this took so long, but I had a ton of applications and finals. But since I am on winter break, hopefully I will be able to upload more fics! Happy Holidays and big shoutout to @valeskafics, who continues to be the HOTD fanfic writing ICON that we all know and love! If you liked reading this work, reblog and comment if you want to be tagged in future installments of this work! Also I apologize for any grammatical errors, I wanted to post this as soon as possible.

You have known your entire life that you were going to be one of the many seamstresses that serviced the Royal Family.

By the age of three, your mother would teach you how to begin your very first stitches, which soon shifted to learning the most complicated patterns of embroidery. You still remember the tears in her eyes as you presented the silk-woven handkerchief that had lovely little purple and blue flowers embroidered on the borders for her birthday. Your face flushed to an almost too bright red when she insisted on showing all the other royal seamstresses and tailors your first handkerchief. But it made you smile in remembering how big her smile was that week, as she was so pleased by how much you’ve progressed at such a young age.

When you were only six, your mother had begun to teach you how to properly extract the dye from beautiful flowers and the scales of brightly-colored insects. So skilled and nimble were your fingers that you even gave your childhood playmate, Aemond Targaryen, a thick green wool cloak with green and silver dragon embroidery. The cloak’s wool had been dyed by your hand with copious amounts of goldenrod and indigo flowers. You then carefully stitched silk to line the inside of the cloak to prevent him from overheating, as even the harshest winters in the Crownlands were hardly anything compared to the summers in the North. It had caught you off-guard in the almost too-tight embrace he locked you in, but you eagerly reciprocated as you could tell he appreciated the gift more than words could describe.

It was not just a gift for is name-day from a childhood companion, but also a way to reassure him that he will one day have a dragon. And even if the gods do not grant him worthy in their eyes, he would always be considered a prince worthy of the Targaryen name in yours. After all, there were not many princes that would willingly spend all their free time with a lowly seamstress’ daughter – even if the supposed seamstress that was your mother was so heavily favored by the Queen.

“Pearl,” came a voice with a tone far too serious despite its youth, “what are you doing in the Godswood?”

You lifted your head from old tome you were studying, only to see a young boy of only nine name-days, that stood as straight as one of the stone pillars that stood in the Sept of Baelor. His white locks nearly blinded you with how the sunshine seemed to reflect on them.

“Well my prince, as you can clearly see, I have decided to take advantage of this fine day to do a bit of studying of my own.” You lifted the near ancient tome on your lap to show him the title, Myths and Legends of the Jade Seas.

Whatever outwardly beauty the book possessed had long diminished, the spine was bent from the hundreds of hours spent looking through its contents and the letters were near faded to a dull grey as the pages yellowed from age. But the colors of the ink remained as vibrant as when they were first painted on the frail sheets, accompanied by beautiful imagery of magical dragons and elusive mermaids. The details were so fine and intricate that it felt as if you only needed to touch the ink in order to be transported into the stories. You remembered how you begged either your mother or father to read it to you every night, as utterly transfixed by the colors back then as you remained so now.

“You are more than welcome to join me, but if – and only if – you share one of those apples hiding in your knapsack.”

Finally showing an expression appropriate for his age, the young prince reached in his pouch to show two gorgeous apples – the skin was practically gleaming in the sun as your mouth watered for its taste. Aemond handed one to you as he sat by your side underneath the plentiful shade of the heart tree. Scooting over to make room on the overgrown root you sat on, you eagerly showed him strange text.

“Look Aemond!” you exclaimed as you shoved the book to his nose. “This book says that there were dragons in Yi Ti! Isn’t that amazing?”

Aemond looked at you as if you had suddenly grown two heads and five eyes. “How can there be dragons in Yi Ti? All the dragons save the ones in the dragonpit and the rocky shores of Dragonstone had perished in The Doom that sunk Valyria. Everyone knows that pearl.”

“These dragons are different! According to my kepa, Yi Ti dragons don’t even need wings to fly!”

The young prince rolled his eyes at that. “How could they fly if they don’t have wings? Even Carraxes the Blood Wrym has wings, and he looks like an overgrown red snake.” Honestly, his pearl could be so silly. “Besides, what would your father know? He’s a bastard from the Iron Islands, that’s nowhere near the Jade Seas.”

Now it was your turn to roll your eyes. “He heard so on his travels with Lord Velaryon and Prince Laenor! Apparently, these dragons use magic and live in the ocean. And they don’t even breathe fire! They make it rain and control the oceans!”

“…Pearl, I think you’ve been spending too much time making those dyes. The fumes must have gotten to your head.”

You openly gaped at your friend’s comment, completely in shock for how blatantly he dismissed you. It made you want to pound your fists on his person until he took it back. So naturally, you did just that.

“Aemond Targaryen, you take that back right now!” you shrieked. Although your actions told otherwise, the smile on your face showed that you took no true offense to his words. If anything, it pleased you to know that you could still make the stone-faced prince giggle as a boy should at his age.

“Never!”

As the two of you giggled and played, several pairs of wandering eyes spied and grimaced at the distasteful display. Although your friendship with the next generation of the royal family was no secret, much of the court disapproved of how highly the royal family thought of you and Prince Aemond’s friendship. After all, he was the second born prince of House Targaryen, born of King Viserys and Queen Alicent. By the time the Targaryen prince could toddle, great things were expected from him. From a very early age, he immersed himself in his studies befitting of a prince of Westeros. You, on the other hand, were only the daughter of a seamstress and a bastard knight who became a lord of a holding so minor that it had no name. You only skills were that you could make pretty dye, and stitch pretty pictures with a needle and thread.

But he always treated you kindly and defended you whenever his eldest brother decided to use you as his latest target for mockery. You were a precious pearl – his precious pearl – Aegon may be his brother, but he could never love Aegon as much as he loved you. True, your father being a bastard did you no favors in the Red Keep’s court, but Aemond would never tell you that himself. Instead, he openly acknowledged his bravery and commended his loyalty to the Crown. After all, how many bastards can boast that they saved the Lord Corlys Velaryon, holder of the Driftwood Throne, from a siege of pirates during one of the lord’s many voyages to Essos?

In turn, you always made sure to provide comfort and support whenever his brother and nephews decided to pick on him. Without fail, he would seek out your company – his eyes red and puffy, while his cheeks were wet from hastily wiped tears. You would take his hands and the two of you would venture out to the library’s more secluded sections. You made sure to pack whatever you have been working on with you. While you were glad that he came to you for comfort, it would do little good for either of you if you were to be punished for not completing whatever tasks your mother assigned you.

“Who cares if you don’t have a dragon?” you once asked him as the two of you laid next to each other, surrounded by books. “There are plenty members of the Targaryen line that did not have dragons, but they still lived out important lives in serving their family however they could. King Jaehaerys was considered a great ruler for how he served the realm– not for riding Vermithor. And even if you had a dragon, is that all you wish to be known for? Your grandfather, Baelon the Brave, was wise and beloved by the small folk for how he tried to make their lives easier. But all he is known for in history books is how he burned down Dorne with Vhagar.”

“Better to be known for a dragon than to disappear, not being known for anything – not even a dragon worthy of the Targaryen name.”

Sitting up against a bookshelf, you repositioned Aemond to lie his head on your thighs. Luckily the candlelight made the area dark enough so that you wouldn’t see his ears turning red. Instead, he buried his face in the soft cotton of your blue tunic as you stroked his soft silver white locks. Although his heart was beating erratically, your sweet scent along with your body’s suppleness was enough to take away any ire left in him.

“Stop that,” you ordered, “you will not be forgotten, don’t be so dramatic.” Eyes softening at his tense shoulders, you eased on the sternness of your tone. “Nyke pendagon iksā brilliant. Eman dōrī rhēdan anyone else qilōni kostagon ȳdragon Valyrio Eglie hae sȳrī hae ao. Kostā solve problems bona aegon ēza trouble lēda during aōha lessons lēda se Giēñatī. Aemond, iksā ñuha sȳrje raqiros. Gaomagon daor ivestragon kesā sagon daor rūnas.”

You pretended not to notice how tightly he clenched your dress as you ignored the how warm the spot where his hot tears grew.

As you continued to stroke his hair, Aemond made a silent vow that when he finally claimed a dragon, you would be the first person he would ride it with. He thought about how his bastard nephews would always try to take you from him, especially Jace, how he despised that boy. No, your touches would belong to him, and only him. Your sweet words and kind demeanor were his to cherish. You were his pearl – his pearl – and no one else’s, especially not the pretend Targaryen that was Jacaerys Strong.

Yes, it pleased Aemond to know that he was your best friend. But sometimes it frustrated him in how you refused to take him seriously as a man. For example, he once announced that when he claimed his dragon, he would finally be a noble dragon knight who would protect you from the most vicious of beasts. No matter how he insisted on his sincerity, you only rolled your eyes at the proclamation. You told him that you had no need for a knight, let alone a dragon knight. You had your dearest kepa for protection, and there was no finer knight in all the Seven Kingdoms in your eyes. So silly was his pearl indeed.

“Ashi’!” a new voice called out, interrupting the comfortable silence between him and his pearl. It belonged to the king’s eldest grandson, Prince Jacaerys Strong Velaryon, heir to the Iron Throne after his mother, Princess Rhaenyra. “Your mother is looking for you! She said that she needs your help with Mother’s clothes!”

“Alright!” When you stood from you spot, you made sure to brush away any dirt or debris left on your skirts. You gathered your mother’s book in both arms when you made your way to the prince. “But why did my muña not send one of her attendants instead? It would not have been difficult to find me. Everyone knows that I enjoy reading under the Hearts Tree in the Godswood during my spare time. Are you not busy with your own duties, my prince?”

Straightening his posture to appear taller, Jace did his best to sound as authoritative as his father had taught him. “I just finished my lessons for the morning, and I volunteered to escort you. Besides, I figured that it would do me some good in practicing escorting you. I’ll need to do it in the future when I am king after my mother.” His round freckled cheeks reddened to a rosy hue at that last part.

Not at all catching the terribly obvious implication, you shrugged off his words as you figured that he meant that he was using you as practice for whichever future noble lady he would court in the future. However, the suggestion was not at all lost on your friend, who was still sitting on the overgrown root, glaring at his eldest nephew with a fury that rivaled the Great Doom that sunk Valyria.

“Well, we should be on our way then. Come on Aemond, we should get going!” You held out your held for your friend to hold on to, but were quickly interrupted by the brown-haired Targaryen at the side.

“He can’t! I mean-” stammered Jace as did his best in thinking of an excuse, “-I’m afraid my uncle cannot join us. You see, um – his mother, the Queen, requested his presence in her solar.”

“I’m sure my mother won’t mind waiting for a few moments while I join you in escorting my pearl to her favorite friend, nephew.” This wasn’t a lie on Aemond’s part. While he didn’t like the idea in keeping his mother waiting for him, he despised the thought of you being alone with the Strong Knight’s eldest bastard even more. Besides, his mother adored you as if you were her own daughter. It would have gone without saying that she would be happy with her son spending time with her best friend’s daughter.

“But why would you want to risk it, uncle?” Jacaerys wasn’t going to let his selfish uncle hog all of your attention. You were his friend too! It wasn’t fair that he had find crumbs of your time and affections, while his uncle got to feast on your smiles and laughter. He had spent hours with the dragon keepers of the dragonpit to help him train Vermax, all so that he could finally show you how close he was in riding him! But you were always too busy comforting his stupid dragonless uncle!

Enough was enough. Jacaerys may have been a Velaryon like his father, but he was also a Targaryen like his mother. It was he who carried the dragon’s blood, and dragons took what they desired or felt what they deserved. And he desrved to be with you more than Aemond.

“It’s alright Aemond, we’ll talk more later! Let’s go Jace, we shouldn’t keep our mothers waiting any more than we have.” Grabbing his hand before walking out of the gardens, you weren’t able to see the younger prince throw a triumphant smirk to his uncle before once more facing you with the story of how Luke accidentally got egg in his hair.

Watching his literal bastard of a nephew walk hand-in-hand away with his pearl, Aemond Targaryen felt his fury grow more potent with each step. He hated that you called his nephew by his nickname, all while he had none. What’s worse was the fact that you allowed him to refer to you as “Ashi.” What a ridiculous name, only a lowborn such as his nephew would refer to someone as precious as you as something as study and simple like “Ashi.” You were a pearl – his pearl, in fact. A fact that he felt was important to emphasize as he watched your head being thrown back in laughter. His anger grew to an all-time high when he watched you ruffle Jacaery’s hair with abundant affection.

Not wanting to make a scene, he walked to his mother’s chambers in fuming silence. While her presence wasn’t yours, maybe he could think of a plan to get you away from his whore of a sister and her illegitimate offspring.

If worse comes to worst, he might need to recruit his sister to his cause. He knew that Helaena would especially be thrilled in receiving your presence. You were the only one besides your parents that did not treat his beloved sister like an oddity. If you were not with Aemond, you were often found stitching with the young princess. It seemed that you were the only person in the entire world that could get her to smile.

Such a sweet girl, his pearl. Someone so kind was not meant to endure the presence of lowly bastards – even if they did technically carry royal blood.

He needed to come up with something fast.

Translations:

“Nyke pendagon iksā brilliant. Eman dōrī rhēdan anyone else qilōni kostagon ȳdragon Valyrio Eglie hae sȳrī hae ao. Kostā solve problems bona aegon ēza trouble lēda during aōha lessons lēda se Giēñatī. Aemond, iksā ñuha sȳrje raqiros. Gaomagon daor ivestragon kesā sagon daor rūnas.” - “You’re brilliant. I’ve never met anyone else who can speak such fluent High Valyrian, especially at your age. You can solve problems that Aegon has trouble with during your lessons with the Maester. Aemond, you are my best friend. Don’t say that you will be forgotten.”

Tagging:

@valeskafics, @faesspace, @aphroditesmoon, @dreaming-for-an-escape, @nellychick, @asa-do-your-thing, @arcielee, @bellamys-girl1, @immyowndefender, @xxlovingfandomsxx, @elinedjarin, @meg-egg-blog, @marvelescape, @mandiiblanche, @lokiofasgard12, @boxedpandas, @anewpersonthatexists, @toodlesxcuddles, @mckiquinn, @cvspians, @aemondslove

#house of the dragon #hotd #hotd au #house of the dragon x you #house of the dragon fic #house of the dragon x reader #house of the dragon x oc #jacaerys velaryon x reader #jacaerys velaryon x oc #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x oc #jacaerys x reader #jacaerys x oc #aemond x reader #aemond x oc #reader insert

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buckyseddie · 8 months

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always hold you

pairings — tasm!peter parker x bff/gf!fem!reader

summary — in which, she needs her boyfriend's support more than anything else, after another particularly bad fight with her father.

word count — 2.6k.

warnings — a little bit of angst, use of pet-names [dove, sweetheart, darling, love, bug], reader calls peter pete, lots of fluff and this is basically just a hurt/comfort fic, protective/soft!peter, this is also sort of similar to my other peter fic (take as a part two that one), peter comforting reader, mentions of the reader's low self-esteem issues and it being explained a bit more, both physical and emotional abuse (manipulation and gaslighting, but not from peter), hugs and cuddles, forehead kisses, peter just taking care of the reader and showing her the love that her family refuses to do, gwen is in here for a second and being the comforting platonic best friend that she is to reader, peter comes off as a little harsh and scares reader a little bit but he makes up for it in the end.

notes — hi! so, this is really more of a vent fic. i know i've written in the past about dealing w/ a toxic family member and how i really enjoyed writing fics similar to my experiences with my favorite comfort characters to comfort the reader because that would usually help me deal with everything. but recently, the abuse that me, my mom, and my brother have been experiencing has become a lot more complicated and traumatizing for me to deal with. and things have only gotten worse. so, i figured i'd do another comforting fic like the other peter fic i wrote about going through that said abuse. i really just feel that it's important to not hide my true feelings and act like everything's fine behind a screen and i just want to be able to talk about this topic a lot more (especially in my writing), because it's so serious and not nearly talked about enough. but, nonetheless, if there's anyone out there that sees this and is a victim of abuse (whether it's emotional/mental or physical abuse, or both) please don't feel obligated to read this. i really don't want to trigger or upset anyone who's dealing with this situation in a very heavy and overwhelming way. just remember though, no matter what anyone says or does to you, you ARE strong and deserve the entire world. i love you all <3. anyways, i hope this makes up for the lack of posting anything (i've been really struggling with a lot, but i'm trying!). gif and divider creds to owner!

p.s., feedback is very much encouraged and appreciated <3.

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IT'S OBVIOUS NOW THAT SHE was stupid to think that he could change. it was even more stupid of her to go back to that apartment.

but, she's always been one to see the best in people — in her case, it's come to bite her in the ass.

even now, as she awaits her boyfriend to return home from his nightly patrol around the city, [y/n] knows that she should've known better.

she trembles as she sits on their shared bed, one of her legs bouncing anxiously — the thought of how peter will react to her foolish decision and the outcome from it is stressing her out, beyond words.

after how he responded the first time he found out about the truth about her father's cruelty and what she'd had to go through, she's worried of how he will react this time — it took almost everything in him to not confront her father, when he first found out.

she abruptly jumps when she hears the front door of the apartment shut softly.

a shaky breath leaves her lips, wondering if it's too late to try to hide the marks on her face and body.

but, when she hears him call out her name from the living room, she knows that it's too late — there's nothing she can do now to hide this.

and even if she wanted to for a split second, she promised peter she'd never lie to him again — after the last time, they promised each other that they'd never hide anything from the other again.

so, with another shaky breath, [y/n] sighs and hesitantly pulls the bedroom door open.

she keeps her head down, her hair falling around her face and covering the marks as she walks out and into the living room.

"sweetheart..." peter's voice trails off, eyes wide with shock and worry.

her breath catches in her throat as soon as she finally looks up at her boyfriend and sees the intense, protective look in his eyes.

"i—i'm sorry, peter." she whispers, voice too raspy to get any louder.

a flash of anger fills his eyes. "please... tell me that you didn't go back to him!" he exclaims in a quieter tone of voice as he pinches the corner of his eyes.

[y/n] flinches at the amount of frustration in his voice.

"peter, i—i'm sorry... " her voice trembles, guilt and regret quickly filling her — she just feels so stupid.

peter sighs, regretting taking his anger out on her.

his eyes immediately soften. "sweetheart, i'm sorry." he murmurs, before starting to walk over to her.

but, before he can reach her, she flinches and winces.

he stops short, freezing in place. more guilt fills him as he realizes that in this moment, she's scared of him.

"look... i—i know that i shouldn't have gone back," she whispers, tears clouding her eyes as she remembers the anger and hatred in her father's eyes.

peter's silent for a moment, waiting and giving her time to explain more — if she's able to.

"i'm... i'm so stupid, peter." she whispers, too ashamed to talk any louder.

peter's eyes widen in shock, not expecting that statement to come out of her mouth. "w—what? darling, that's not true."

this time, a tear falls down her cheek. "yes, i am. peter, who's stupid enough to choose to believe that their abusive, monster-of-a-father can change? me — it's me!"

the rambling and the self-loathing words coming out of his girlfriend's mouth becomes incredibly clear to peter as he walks over to her.

this time now, he doesn't hesitate to pull her into his chest as her voice becomes more trembling and wavering, "this is on me — it's my fault."

"it's okay now, love. don't blame yourself." he murmurs as she stops holding herself back and breaks into breathless sobs into his chest.

after a while, her crying slows and quiets down with her tears now dried on her cheeks.

she faces him and takes in a deep, calming breath as he wipes away the remaining tears away and looks over her bruises more intensely.

"i wanna kill him for doing this to you — again." the venom in his tone sends shivers through her spine — knowing what he would do to protect her comforts her.

but, on the other hand, she also knows that hurting her father isn't going to do anything for them or fix anything.

"no, peter. i know you don't mean that." she murmurs seriously.

an angry frown places itself over his lips. "no, i do."

she sighs. "okay, maybe you do. but, it won't fix anything and we both know that," she says, moving one of her fingers up to smooth out the crease in between his very furrowed eyebrows.

"it's okay now — i'm okay." she whispers seriously, grabbing his hand and rubbing soothing circles over his thumb.

you'd think from how she's comforting him that peter was the one that got hurt, not her — that's just how she is; she always finds herself taking care of everyone else, when she really should be taking care of herself.

maybe that's why they're such a good pair — while they're taking care of everyone else and their loved ones, they can trust the other to take care of the other.

"that's the thing, love. it's not okay! you shouldn't have to go out of your way to avoid him, just to protect yourself." he exclaims, ripping his hand out of hers and this time pacing around the living room with his hand now gripping his hair in frustration.

she sighs, frowning — this is exactly why she didn't want to tell him because she hates worrying him like this.

"it may not be fair, but if it's what i have to do to protect myself, then that's what i'll do — i should've kept doing that, instead of being an idiot to believe he'd change." she admits, shrugging, trying to play this all off, as if it's not that big of a deal.

"don't say that — don't do that!" he abruptly yells, turning around to face her defensively.

she flinches — once again — at the volume of his voice. "don't do what?" she asks meekly, her voice too soft.

he sighs in regret. "i'm sorry. i'm not trying to scare you." his eyes are downcast at the floor, before he looks up again, the guilt clear in his irises this time.

"it's okay, peter." she gulps, berating herself for some part of her being afraid of him — after all, she has no reason to fear him because he'd never intentionally hurt her.

"it's not. i shouldn't have gotten so angry — i'm not mad at you, i promise," he says in a much more quiet voice, sighing as he sees that look in her eyes — the one that she always has when she feels like a burden and feels like she should be apologizing.

"sweetheart, don't even think about apologizing. none of this is your fault."

[y/n] sighs in exasperation. "maybe it is. i'm the one that is always making a fool out of myself by believing in the best of everyone."

she sighs when a flash of irritation shows in his eyes. "what?" he whispers, his eyebrows furrowing together.

she takes in another breath when he walks over to her and hesitantly places his hands over her cheeks.

[y/n] sighs again.

"this isn't your fault, love. know that," he murmurs, his eyes searching hers for some kind of understanding. "please, tell me that you know that."

she sighs again, noticing the tears filling his eyes — it becomes incredibly clear to her how much the man in front of her cares about her.

"peter... " her own eyes fill with tears, even spilling to her cheeks.

without another thought, he gently wipes away her tears. "promise me that you understand me."

she sighs again. "y—yes, i understand," she murmurs, hating the hope that fills his eyes. "but, i just don't believe it."

he opens his mouth to object, but she interrupts him before he has the chance to say something, "i want to. but, i can't just shut off the way i feel — i was raised the way i was and with the trauma i have gotten along the way, i can't just forget it."

more tears fills his eyes, before he moves incredibly closer to her and brings her close to kiss her forehead. "knowing you want to believe it is good enough for me."

when he pulls away from her he smiles warmly at her. "let's go cuddle now, yeah?"

the softness in his voice makes her smile. "sounds like a plan, pete." she murmurs with a nod and leads him to their shared room.

once they're inside of their bedroom, [y/n] walks over to their shared bathroom, to change into her set of pajamas she set aside earlier in the day, after she had just gotten back from her father's home — she used to call it her home, but that all changed once her once-very-close relationship with her father changed.

after she changes and brushes her hair and teeth, she takes in a deep breath and tries to mentally prepare herself for the rest of the night.

but, when she shuts off the light and opens the door, she comes to realize that the bedroom is empty.

she walks out of the bathroom and looks around, her eyebrows quickly knitting together in confusion.

and just as she's about to call out her boyfriend's name, she hears hushed voices outside of the room.

with much more confusion filling her body, she slowly walks out of their room and into the living room, only to see peter standing at the door, talking at the door in a hushed voice.

"pete? is everything okay?" she asks as she walks up from behind him.

he jumps a little in surprise, before motioning towards the door.

the blond hair of their current guest surprises her.

"oh, gwen. hi." she greets her best friend and then her boyfriend, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning into him with her chin resting on his shoulder.

"what are you doing here?"

gwen shrugs. "i just wanted to check up on you — your dad called me, yelling at me because he thought that you'd left to go hide at my apartment."

the words that come out of one of her best friends' mouth shakes [y/n] to her very core — anytime she hears anything about her father, she gets easily nervous and scared.

in a matter of seconds, [y/n] slowly pulls away from her boyfriend's body.

she knows that she should try to pretend everything's fine and as if her friend's words don't affect her, but she can't help it.

if she had a few more seconds, she'd probably fall into a state of mind where she'd completely shut down.

but, when a light touch to her shoulder by peter shakes her out of her daze, she sighs and nervously finds her boyfriend's eyes on her.

"what's going on, guys? did something happen?" gwen asks worriedly after seeing the tense look on [y/n]'s face.

peter doesn't speak. he doesn't even look away from his girlfriend — his eyes simply say that the decision is all hers.

despite the fact that him and gwen are pretty close friends, he's always respected [y/n]'s choices.

with a sigh, [y/n] turns to gwen. "i kind of had a run in with my dad earlier."

as she hears that statement, gwen begins to notice the bruises on her best friend's face.

she frowns. "are you okay?" she asks, but after a moment, she groans and rolls her eyes at herself.

"i'm sorry. that was insensitive — of course you're not okay."

[y/n] laughs, despite the seriousness of the situation. "it's okay."

gwen gives her a pointed look, not believing for one moment that what she asked was okay.

"really, gwen," she says, finding some courage inside of her. "i'm probably not okay. but... " she trails off, suddenly feeling like everything is going to be okay with the ones that truly love her by her side.

"for the first time, i think i'm going to be okay — that everything will be okay." she says confidently, moving even closer to peter and practically burying herself into his arms.

gwen smiles. "good. i'm glad."

—————

AFTER A LITTLE BIT MORE of talking, they all finally say their goodbyes and peter shuts the door gently.

they move over to the couch, peter covering them — mostly [y/n] — with one of the fuzzy throw blankets that was lying over the front of the couch.

"you doing okay?" he asks softly as she lays her face into his neck.

she smiles, feeling reassured for the first time.

she lifts her head back up to look at him.

"i know going back was stupid. i do—" before she can continue, he interrupts her with guilt evident in his brown eyes. —"i'm sorry, bug. for how angry i got earlier."

she tilts her head in confusion. "what do you mean?"

"i shouldn't have gotten upset with you. and i'm sorry for startling you. i was just worried." he murmurs seriously, frowning at her confusion.

"i just... every time i think about your dad being near you or hurting you, well, it drives me crazy, sweetheart." he says, trying to ignore the anger in his voice every time he thinks about the type of person his girlfriend's father is.

"pete... it's okay. i'm not going to go back — i learned my lesson." she says, cupping his jaw with one hand, in order to try to calm him down.

he sighs, leaning into her hand and covering it with one of his own.

"that's the point, sweetheart. you shouldn't have to be cautious and scared to avoid him, so that he doesn't act like that. it's not okay."

she frowns, wishing that she could stop him from worrying.

but, she also knows that he needs to get these feelings out and off of his chest.

"tell me, peter. what is it?" she asks, being the understanding girlfriend that he loves — no matter how cliche that actually sounds.

"i love how good-hearted you are, sweetheart. the way you always see the good in everyone, despite what they've done to you — it's amazing," he starts, pulling her hand away from his jaw to hold over one of his legs.

"and i never want you to stop being that person. but, i also hate that you have to avoid him. you shouldn't have to give up your happiness and peace."

she nods in clear understanding.

he groans again, leaning his forehead over hers.

"it's okay, peter."

he pulls away and opens his mouth to say something in defense, but she stops him by speaking before him, "peter, i know it upsets you that he doesn't get to be punished for his actions and i get that."

he stops short, giving her a chance to finish talking.

"i know you hate that. but, i know that you love me more than any urge that you have to give him what he deserves — and that's what i need you to do, okay? love me more than you hate him." he frowns at her words.

as if noticing his hesitation, she says, "for me. please?"

he sighs in defeat and nods. "fine. for you." he murmurs as he pulls her closer into his embrace and body.

she smiles in victory as she lies her head on his shoulder. "i love you, peter parker. you know that?" she murmurs, cuddling up close to him.

"i know i can always count on you." she says, once more, smiling as he chuckles and stretches over to kiss her on the forehead.

"good. because i love you more and i'll always hold you when you need it, dove." he murmurs, smiling at her calm and at peaceful face.

and like that, they cuddle until they fall asleep with peaceful expressions on their faces.

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mirx-xko-offical · 1 month

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Falling for you?

Hurt!Floyd x GN!Reader

TWs: None<3 (I think-)

INFO~

ALREADY ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP FLOYD BEING A TOTAL DUMBASS (We still love him tho) IMPLIED GN READER Also not proof read but I'll worry abt that later-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"What do you mean by, You simply fell again?"

"I meant I fell, what else."

"YOU GOT BLASTED OUT OF A WINDOW-"

"And..?"

"Oh my sevens..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Who wouldn't just love to have their own personal nurse? Floyd surely should especially with how much [Name] needs to help him. Floyd always seem to shake it off though. Speaking about [Name], here they are patching him up YET again.

"And how did this happen..?" [Name] said as they stood in the nurses office with the twins, seeming done with their life already.

"I fell." Floyd shrugged only getting 'Are you sure' stares from his partner. "Jade? What happened to him?" [Name] Turned to the slightly smaller twin, clearly not trusting their boyfriend one bit.

"Well we had some complications while in professor Crewels class."

"And..?"

"He got blasted out of the window."

The look on [Name]'s face as they turned to look at their boyfriend who was just looking out the window as if nothing had just happened. "You got thrown out of a window and you're telling me you tripped??"

"Yep." Floyd looked over to his partner, leaning back into the bed seeming to not care. "HOW ARE YOU SO CALM ABOUT THIS!?" They panicked as they ran to cup the merman's cheeks, carefully checking for injuries.

"I'm fine~ like I said, I just fell." All his partner gave him was a sigh before shooing his brother out and simply grabbing band aids and a small wrap of bandages. "Did you at least break anything..?"

"Nope."

"How the fu... Whatever I give up on questioning things."

[Name] simply shrugged before grabbing some alcohol and cotton balls. "Well since you survived that fall without breaking anything, I don't think I'd need to warn you about the alcohol." [Name] assumed, pouring some of the liquid onto the small, fluffy ball

"Yeah, yeah whatever." Floyd simply grumbled, his mood swinging quite a bit. "Just get it over with- OW!" Floyd jumped as [Name] placed the cotton ball on Floyd's cheek, making him jump in surprise.

"Be easy jeez!"

"How the hell did that hurt!?"

"Now it stings!" Floyd whined as [Name] gave him another look. "No way you could handle a two story drop but not some alcohol..." [Name] was nonetheless getting tired of their boyfriends antics.

[Name] sighed before applying the alcohol to his cuts and bandaged him up, giving him a kiss on the cheek as a reward for not whining as much as he usually would.

"Now the hard part is over." [Name] mumbled, seemingly talking to them self more than their partner. "Meh. That just means I gotta go to work now~" [Name] smacked him on the head before dragging him out of the nurses office.

"Off you go. I have to go check on grim anyways." [Name] shoved him off of them, running away before he could latch himself on them again.

"Awh..."

Why is Floyd so silly to write 🤭

Anyways this is my first time writing on here and I kinda didn't know what to do yet so here you guys go <3

I also might start posting on wattpad again (If I have motivation-) so if you want to, go follow! (Pls do not read my other stories, half of them were given up on...)

Account<3

#floyd leech x reader #twst x you #twst x reader #disney twst #floyd leech x mc #floyd leech #jade leech #silly #kinda rushed #Mirx Writes

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ladyylavenderrr · 2 months

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Garak and Psychosis

Very self indulgent little post about instances of Garak displaying behaviors that read to me (or at least can be read) as a symptom of psychosis. I will almost certainly miss some, but I want to compile this together for myself. I completely see Garak as having some kind of psychotic disorder. Most of these examples will come from A Stitch In Time, but we have some from the show as well. Also keep in mind that many of these could be interpreted in a myriad of ways, not just as a psychotic symptom. I’m not claiming any of this is definitive proof or anything of the sort, and Garak’s past as a spy (a profession that by nature demands a lot of paranoia) certainly complicates all of this. That’s not to say this an either-or situation. He can be both psychotic and a former spy and in fact the effect both would have on the other would be quite interesting, as laid out in this post

Again, all of what I say can be interpreted in many different ways, but I just want to have it all written down in one place. Psychosis can manifest in very different ways for different people. Some people might be debilitated by their symptoms, struggling to function without assistance. Others might function just fine most of the time and only experience relatively mild symptoms, though the associated distress isn’t any less important.

Season 6, episode 5 “Favors The Bold”. Garak insists Julian examine him for a some kind of mind reading device put in his head by Starfleet Intelligence. Despite Julian telling him there’s nothing out of the ordinary in his head, Garak doesn’t believe him and insists he keep looking. Came off as a delusion to me, especially since he remains convinced despite evidence proving his delusion false.

Season 4, episode 21 “For the Cause”. Upon meeting Ziyal, Garak becomes convinced that she wants to hurt and kill him. I wouldn’t say her being Dukat’s daughter is enough evidence for the average person to be this worried. In fact, Quark even calls him out on his paranoia and we get this exchange.

GARAK: I was going to cancel. I've had visions of Ziyal presenting my head to her father as a birthday gift.  QUARK: That's a little paranoid, wouldn't you say?  GARAK: Paranoid is what they call people who imagine threats against their life. I have threats against my life.

To be fair, Kira warning him to stay away from Ziyal gets him to calm down a bit, or maybe not because he still seems quite apprehensive when he actually meets Ziyal, still afraid she might want to hurt him.

Now to A Stitch In Time.

Part 1, Chapter 7. As Garak helps Parmak dig people out of the rubble of a bombed Cardassia (highly stressful and traumatic situation), he seems to hallucinate a figure. You could read this as metaphorical, but he reacts to and tries to interact with the figure in the real world, which doesn’t come off as a metaphorical way of describing his despair to me.

“I have never lived with despair, Doctor, the way I live with it now. It's almost like a phantom companion that shadows me and casts doubt on whatever I do.

"Why save him?" it asks, as we remove a young boy from the rubble of a school. "You're only keeping him alive for a future of privation and chaos. Wouldn't it be more satisfying to join the burial unit?"

I want to scream at this phantom, to shut it up. Once I turned around suddenly and raised my hand to strike it. When I realized it wasn't there, it was too late. Everyone in the unit was looking at me; I'm sure I must have looked like a madman.”

After this, Parmak gives Garak some pills. He only calls them “relaxants” so it might be a sedative of some kind, but I’m not sure. Either way, Garak hallucinates again after swallowing the pills, panicking as he sees those Cardassian orphans from the episode “Cardassians”. I doubt the pills are hallucinogens, both because Parmak specifically gave them to Garak after witnessing him hallucinating and is seemingly trying to stop that, and because they speak about the hallucinations like an unintended side effect ("I'm afraid they don't react well with me," I explained. “I understand," he said.)

Certain drugs making psychotic symptoms worse isn’t uncommon.

Part 1, Chapter 6. As Garak and the rest of his group in Bamarren are forced to stand still in the heat for what might be hours as part of a training exercise, he begins to hallucinate multiple figures, including his parents (it’s interesting that one of the figures seems to be Palandine, even though neither we nor Garak have been introduced to her yet). If this were the only instance of Garak hallucinating in the book, I wouldn’t assume he has a psychotic disorder since this example has obvious an explanation outside of a mental health issue. People are known to experience hallucinations when suffering from heat stroke. However I’m putting this example here simply because it’s part of a larger pattern of Garak hallucinating multiple times throughout the book. It’s also interesting to note that this scene happens right before the scene of an adult Garak hallucinating that figure with Parmak.

Part 2, Chapter 18. Garak seems to hallucinate as he looks at the frieze. He sees the frieze move and the people painted on it move as well. He thinks some of the figures are he and Palandine but isn’t sure.

“The frieze now began to move in the upward direction. I was too amazed to ask if this was truly happening. People would disappear at the top while more would enter from below.

Certain faces were recognizable, but I didn't know why. Something was also rising within me, an energy moving up my spine to my head, and I began to feel dizzy. Two of the figures could have been Palandine and me, but I couldn't be sure. I was almost nauseous with the energy surging within me. The figures completed the cycle and disappeared at the top. The frieze stopped moving.”

This one can be interpreted in a more metaphorical way than some of the others, but like I said, it could also be another symptom of this potential psychosis.

I’m sure I’ve missed some examples, but you get my point.

#star trek #ds9 #deep space nine #elim garak #garashir #psychosis #schizophrenia #a stitch in time #asit #andrew robinson #meta #media analysis #schizospec #deep space 9

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Text

In Your Lavender: The Wedding Plan Episode

AND WE'RE BACK!

We originally planned to discuss Wedding Plan alongside a few other shows but abandoned that quickly when we realized we both had a lot to say about this show. Come join us as we discuss whether MAME has shown growth, what it means that the lavender marriage term has existed for over 130 years, the importance of lesbians in this story, and the fundamental nature of the closet.

If you've been missing how heated Ben gets, now's your chance!

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

01:16 - Intro 03:00 - Wedding Plan and MAME's Previous Crimes 15:18 - Realities of the Closet and Fandom Misunderstanding of the Show 29:23 - Things We Love About Wedding Plan and Final Ratings 37:26 - And Another Thing! The Wedding Plan Special

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

01:16 - Intro

NiNi

Welcome, welcome. [sighs] Go ahead.

Ben

Oh no, it's fine, you said welcome, I'm not going to do it this time. They won't get it for the Wedding Plan episode.

NiNi

[laughs] All right. Welcome, welcome to the—

Ben

I'm just kidding! And we're back!

[both laugh]

NiNi

Welcome! to the episode that was supposed to be a secret admirers episode, but instead is now the Wedding Plan episode, because everything else was a bit crap. We wanted to talk about this because we could not believe that this came fully formed from the head of MAME, of all the creatives. We were shocked, I think, but…the fandom was also kind of shocked, and we'll delve a little bit into how that played out when we get into the segment but, when I looked at the trailer I was like, ‘mm, okay, this could be cute.’ Did not expect to be…devastated, emotionally [laughs] at certain points.

Ben

I don't really think I watched the trailer properly. I went in a little bit hostile, because MAME’s got a whole thing for boundary crossing. And I was worried going in that this show was just going to be about some rich guy punking around his wedding planner, and then like, cheating on his wife. And that's not the show we got at all.

NiNi

Let’s dive into it so you can hear what we had to say!

03:00 - Wedding Plan and MAME’s previous crimes

NiNi

We are talking all things Wedding Plan. Now Ben, you and I had agreed sometime back that no matter what happened we were never going to talk about a MAME show on the podcast. And here we are [laughs] talking about a MAME show! And there's a really good reason for that.

Let's start by talking about what Wedding Plan is about. Ben, do the honors.

Ben

Wedding Plan is a story about a wedding planner named Namnuea, who is the ace at his event planning company, and a fan of McDonald's, who very much sponsored this show. He is tasked with planning the wedding for a very attractive man and his soon-to-be wife. Complications ensue immediately, because their wedding is coming up in three months and these two have no idea what they want to do for their wedding, and only the groom is the one making the choices.

We can tell very quickly that the groom, Sailom, is flirting with Namnuea; Namnuea is not stupid and picks up on this. The attraction between them is very mutual, but the complications around him being a client and a groom frustrate Namnuea. The reveals that eventually come out make this show to be way more than just a closet case trying to hit on his wedding planner.

NiNi

Reveal the reveals, because I feel like it's impossible to talk about this show in any meaningful way without knowing what the twist is.

Ben

Right! So Sailom and Yiwa, his bride, are in a lavender wedding. So for well over one hundred and forty years, we've had a term to describe queer people choosing to present themselves as heterosexually entwined for mutual benefit and safety. In this case, Sailom and Yiwa hail from fairly wealthy families that are extremely restrictive. The two of them recognized their own queerness at a very young age, and understood that they needed to hide that information. While on a trip in Europe the two of them recognized the queerness in each other when they both had a strong emotional reaction to seeing two women publicly kiss. And then became each other's best fucking friends for life, and decided to protect each other. Yiwa ends up developing a very meaningful romance with a woman named Marine, and she convinces Sailom to marry her so that they can both get out from under their families. They have a long-term plan to divorce.

So when Sailom is flirting with Namnuea, Yiwa is 100% aware of it, and extremely supportive of it, because she doesn't want her friend, who she treats like a brother, to be lonely all the time.

NiNi

That basically sums it up in terms of the mechanics of the plot. But guys, the reason that we're here talking about a MAME show, is, this hit me right in the fucking throat, man. It was so real, in a way that I've never gotten from a MAME show. It felt like MAME almost apologizing to BL for some of the shit that she's done? It felt like MAME trying to gain some understanding and learn some shit, and show that she had learned some shit?

Ben

Just so that we get a bunch of stuff out on the table for listeners: what are some things that MAME has done that you think she should apologize for? [laughs]

NiNi

Ah, [laughs] where do I even begin? MAME work tends to lean very heavily into…traumatizing already traumatized people? I have mixed feelings about a lot of MAME’s work. There are sometimes I'm just like, oh fuck you. And then there's sometimes where they're like, I see where you're trying to go with this but you didn't have the skill. And then there are times I'm just like, ma’am, get the hell out. Something like this that I don't have any mixed feelings about, I just feel strongly positive about it…it's never happened to me before with her work, not ever. And it made me recalibrate in my head—a little bit, because it's still only one show—maybe where I should place MAME as a creative.

Ben

I have a list.

[both laugh]

NiNi

Go on ahead! Read!

Ben

Let's start with Love By Chance. There are four goddamn couples in Love By Chance. Only one couple is remotely stable! We really only talk about Ae and Pete, because we do not need to talk about the other three. MAME loves to question the line between crossing boundaries and romance. There’s Tin and Can, who were the focus of Love By Chance 2—

NiNi

Which I did not watch.

Ben

Then there's Kengkla and Techno, and Kengkla is paying Techno's brother for information on him to eventually date rape him—I mean, that happened in Love By Chance! Then there's Tum and Tar, who are brothers, and Tar was a victim of horrendous acts by a character from TharnType. Moving on to TharnType, a show that I will not watch, for multiple reasons, some of them fandom related that we are not going to get into in this podcast. But the idea that Tharn is going to teach Type that he's actually into men without his consent? Yikes. I don't care how it ends up resolving. The wall is real fucking high for me on that one.

Ben

Didn't they have a spinoff with the other guys from Don't Say No? I'm not talking about that. Then we get to Love in the Air, which I mostly enjoyed, but why do both of the ukes in that show have to get kidnapped in their final episodes? [laughs] Why? It's so unnecessary! Rain and Sky were straight up kidnapped as the final complication of their show. It's insane.

NiNi

I did not watch Love in the Air. So every time you say that I'm just like, ‘that's a thing that actually happened?’

Ben

So this is the difference with Wedding Plan. Wedding Plan is so straightforward. There is no major complication to Wedding Plan. Everything that happens in this show flows naturally from the base conceit that two people involved in a lavender wedding are dealing with some difficulties and frustrations as that approaches, and then make logical choices for their characters, in response to everything that's going on.

And it kind of surprised me how much I ended up really loving this show. It's interesting for me that Yiwa and Marine’s relationship is the reason why the wedding is occurring. I've never really cared about heterosexual weddings in a lot of these shows and stories that I watch, but I feel so much about the way Lom and Yiwa care about each other and protect each other. Lom is agreeing to this sham wedding that's going to eventually lead to a bunch of complications in his life, because he's trying to protect his friend.

Normally in a story like this, there'd be all this tension about the groom struggling with his sexual identity, and what he wants for himself, and the girl's going to get hurt along the way—‘he feels loyal to the girl, we can't just do her like that!’ In this show, Lom is withholding information about the specifics about his relationship with Yiwa from Namnuea because he's protecting her. The crux of the romantic drama of this show was about a gay man in the closet protecting a gay woman in the closet.

NiNi

Yiwa and Marine's relationship is the key to the whole story, but the relationship between Yiwa and Sailom is the core relationship. The fact that they're doing this for each other, the fact that they care about each other so deeply, the fact that they basically decided long ago that they were the people who mattered to each other…and then as people come into their lives who are maybe somebody they might be interested in building a life with, it becomes a decision for everybody as to whether this person gets let in. I would have loved to see how it went when Yiwa decided that she wanted to be with Marine. I understand that's not the point of this particular story, but I would have been fascinated to see how that played out.

By the time we join the story Marine’s on the inside. She's 100% bought in. Marine has made the decision to be in the closet with Yiwa, which is sad in one way, but it's so freeing for them in another, because of what Sailom has done for them. They can be happy. And they are happy! They're happy and they're in love, and they're part of this family of the two of them and Sailom. It made me smile just watching them be with each other as a family unit. And then Lom meeting Nuea. When you're going to bring somebody into a secret like that, you have to be 100% sure. And not just you, everybody has to be on board with it. [laughs] It's not polyamorous, but it's—polyamoresque [laughs] I guess is the best way to describe it. Everybody has to be on board with what's happening. It's not just a question of ‘do I like this person?’ It's a question of ‘is this person a safe person?’ It's a question of ‘do the other people involved in this like this person?’ It's a question of ‘is this a person who I can share this secret with?’ but it's also, as it comes down to later in the story, a question of Lom knowing that he couldn't ask. He couldn't ask Nuea to be a part of the secret. He could just tell Nuea what was happening, and he could just hope and pray—and I don't even think that he dared to hope. And I think that's what the crying was about when Nuea decided that he was going to become part of the family? Lom broke down when Nuea said to him, ‘I'm going to help you keep your secret.’ Because he knew he couldn't ask it of him. And the fact that he freely offered it just brought Lom to tears.

15:18 - Realities of the closet and fandom misunderstanding the show

NiNi

This show is amazing. The show is emotionally sound, the show is beautiful, and I got so mad [laughs] watching this show get misunderstood. And if I was mad, Ben was incandescent. [laughs]

Ben, you take the floor and tell ‘em why you mad, son.

Ben

I'm going to talk about the closet for a little bit. It felt like a lot of the people who are reacting to this show have not been in the closet. I was in the closet for 11 years. Your brain does not work in the same way on the inside, and I'm going to say frankly to anybody who thought Lom should have told Namnuea a lot sooner than he did? When you've been in the closet for 13 years, you do not tell someone you have a crush on, in two months of knowing them. Not when the stakes are as high as they are. The reason they're in the closet is because there will be severe and painful consequences for failing to maintain a heteronormative status quo.

The big thing that separates Lom from Namnuea is, Namnuea is out. The truth about who Namnuea is cannot harm him. Namnuea develops feelings for Lom, and tells his boss. And she says, ‘there's nothing wrong with you having a crush on the guy, like he's hot. You know what the professional boundaries are though, do you need me to step in and take care of this for you?’ and Namnuea said no. When Namnuea fell for Lom, before they hooked up, he called his mom and said, ‘mom I think I fucked up.’ And she's like, ‘sometimes we fuck up baby boy, come home if you need me.’ And after he hooked up with Lom that's what he did! He went home, and he told his mom flat out: ‘the thing I told you about? Yeah I think I went too far.’ And she held him, and let him be a mess about it, because she understood that he already knew that he put himself in a really untenable situation, and she didn't pile on. They protected him. Namnuea can be honest about who he is, and whenever he tells the people who matter to him about something that happened, they close ranks around him and protect him. At the point at which Lom is trying to chase after Namnuea, every woman in his life pulled out their claws and was ready to slit that man's throat. They were all ready to throw hands with this man!

But when you're in the closet, your brain doesn't work right. You are under constant surveillance to maintain the heteronormative veneer over your life. The show does not make this hypothetical. Their friends and family are snapping pictures of them in public, and questioning every relationship they have with someone other than Lom and Yiwa. Lom is sitting at the table with Marine—Yiwa stepped away for a work call, and someone’s snapping a photo like, ‘why is Lom on a date with this other girl? She's trying to steal Lom from your daughter.’ Or ‘I saw Yiwa hanging out with her best friend, are they gay? I took some pictures and now I'm telling your mom.’ When you look at the reason why these two are so vigilant about being in the closet, that's literally what they're experiencing! It's super heavy-handed in this show, but it is exactly the kind of shit that I lived through. Being in the closet because you know that there are consequences and there are dangers breeds hypervigilance.

And I'm going to say it really plainly: all of the really negative takes I saw about Lom that were really unsympathetic to what this man went through? Made me, as a 30-something year old gay man who survived being closeted, really extremely uncomfortable. And I really need you to reckon with whatever you were going through that made you turn on a closeted gay man, and view him as the evil aggressor party in this particular relationship. Because goddamn!

The reason why he chose Namnuea to be his wedding planner was because he had a crush on him! And when you're in the closet you need plausible deniability. Lom is toeing the line. He can hang out with Namnuea and flirt with him, because he's talking to his wedding planner. Nobody's going to question him being around a gay man, because he's his wedding planner! And that's what the homos do, is they plan events for the rest of us! Because they're very good at it. The reason why he's being an irritating client is because he wants Namnuea to talk to him more. If he's a good client, Namnuea’s not gonna talk to him! Because Namnuea’s professional, and busy.

And Lom admits it. He says in episode…6 I believe, because I just rewatched again, that hiring Namnuea was just, in his mind, a little bit of fun before he got married. He would flirt with the guy that he had a crush on, even if it's a little fucked up to do that, and have a little fun before his wedding. He was not expecting to fall in love with Namnuea. But he's got a competency kink! And Namnuea is so good at his job. And he likes his job! He likes seeing people happy at the things that he planned for them, and he takes care of people. Lom loves these things in Namnuea. This even played out in their sex. He was happy that Namnuea was not a virgin. Very tasteful, sir.

NiNi

It being MAME, I will confess, that up until maybe somewhere around the beginning to middle of episode 4? I wasn't sure where they were going with this.

Ben

Let me tell you, I was waiting for her to do some convoluted bullshit as of episode 7. [laughs] They're like, ‘the bride’s run off!’ and I'm like, there's really only one way this should play out. Closeted people make plans. Yiwa is also not stupid. There’s this moment in episode 6—and this is again intentional, the editing on this show is actually really crisp. We get the really poignant scene on the bridge, where Lom talks about the knowing, and Namnuea’s like, ‘we need to fuck right now.’ And then, if you have access to iQiYi, they did! And then we get the scene where Namnuea agrees to be in the relationship, and all that that means.

The very next scene is Yiwa’s mom showing up at Marine's apartment to accost her and slap her. Which is immediately followed by Yiwa running back to the condo, and the way she enters that apartment? She genuinely thought that Marine might have left her. For as happy as they seem, Yiwa never underestimates or undervalues the stress that she's putting Marine under. When she enters the room and Marine hasn't run away, but is just laying in bed, clearly spent from all of this? That's the moment that breaks Yiwa. And then we flash forward three weeks to the wedding, and she's run off with Marine and leaves a note.

Lom knows her! He was not phased by this at all, when—after he's done putting on his jilted groom act, he's laughing. He's like, ‘I know what that cheeky girl did, I can't believe she did this without telling me. Look at this stupid note! I can read between the lines.’ [laughs] And then they call her, and she's like, ‘I knew you would understand my note. That's my boy, don't fuck this up! I'll take this on for you.’ Yiwa takes on the social pariah role here, of being the lesbian who ran away the day of the wedding, leaving Lom at the altar, ‘how dare she?’

The power here is that Yiwa doesn't give a fuck anymore. That's the whole thing about heteronormative shame: it only matters where you can exert that influence over people. Yiwa and Marine said, we cannot exist the way we want to, so we are leaving and going somewhere else. That is a choice a lot of us choose to make: to leave our home communities, to go build community with other people elsewhere. And then she gives Lom the ability to spin that, to soft launch his relationship with Nuea. Because they don't come out as a couple for like six months after that. They put on the act of Lom being a drunken mess for months—he's fine. He's just spraying alcohol on himself and then going to work with his hair unkempt.

NiNi

Episode 7’s so delightful. But anyway, continue.

Ben

And he's just hanging out with Nuea, and he just tells people, ‘yeah, we bonded over the wedding stuff because we had a lot of work to do really quickly for the wedding, and you know he felt sympathy for me afterwards. And he took care of me at a really difficult time, and I feel comfortable with him. I loved Yiwa, she was the only woman I was ever willing to marry.’

Not a lie! But also not the exact truth.

NiNi

I loved the big lie at the end, because it was basically Lom, Yiwa, and everybody in the situation putting two giant middle fingers up at their society, and the people around them. Aside from the people who, as you rightly said, would have protected them anyway. So all the women in Nuea’s life, and the people who he works with at the wedding planning company—basically the people who earned the right to know the truth know the truth. And everybody else gets two giant fucking middle fingers and the big lie.

Ben

It's a little bit like the ending with Bad Buddy, about them breaking up publicly but still being together? It's the same question: who is allowed to know? Something for you to think about, if you didn't get this show and you hated Lom and all this sort of stuff—ask yourself if the queer people in your life trust you. Would you be brought in? Would you be trusted with this information? Lom's mother realizes along the way what was going on the whole time, because she's not stupid. And she says quite plainly—because Lom has not properly come out to her yet, he's been hinting at it, he's like, I feel comfortable with him—and she says, ‘I'm still doing what I need to do to process this, but just promise me you won't leave.’

What she recognized is that she was playing a zero sum game that she could lose. That her son could make the same choice as Yiwa. She recognized that he and Yiwa were likely withholding important information about themselves, from their parents, for a really long time. And that can be really unsettling. It's something I went through in my family when I started coming out, that people were very put off by how I just…hid hugely important portions of my life from them, for most of my life. And she recognized that if she pushed too hard, she would get nothing.

NiNi

It really is the Bad Buddy conundrum, because this is where their parents are at the end, where they know, but if they're not willing to fully be on board? Then they don't get to fully know. And they don't get to be fully involved. Lom's mom knows, but until and unless she's willing to wholeheartedly accept Nuea there will always be now, at this point, a barrier between her and her son. All she can ask of him is that he doesn't leave. But beyond that, she doesn't get to ask anything of him, until and unless she is ready to fully accept every part of who he is. I can't believe that came from MAME's pen.

29:23 - Things we love about Wedding Plan and final ratings

Ben

Something else I really love—I really love the community around Nuea, particularly his family. I love when he goes back to Chiang Mai, and he sees that his little cousin is also out and proud now and has a hot boyfriend. And I love that Sun, Ryu’s boyfriend, is immediately engaged in in-law solidarity with Sailom. Nuea’s family hates him, and he's like, ‘valid.’ Like, ‘If you want to stay here, you got to work.’ ‘Okay.’ And he just works. Nuea's family is protecting Nuea from someone who they think doesn't respect him. Everything mean that they're doing to Sailom is because they are protecting Nuea, and it's really not that much, what they're asking. They're basically just giving him a difficult time, until Nuea decides what to do with him. But Sun is helping him the whole time, he's like, ‘this family's very difficult, I got you bro.’ And that pairs really well with the phone call that Nuea has with Yiwa and Marine, where Yiwa is like, ‘Lom and I do love each other. That is my ride or die: it's been me and him for a long time. I'm not going to pretend that he is not the most important man in my life, but he's not who I'm building my future with.’

And I love that for Yiwa and Sailom, it is love between them. The heteros just misread it. They don't have to fake an admiration for each other. I love that Marine talks to Nuea, and talks about the sincerity of their feelings, and how she's okay, at this point. Because she's the only person that Nuea can really accept any sort of perspective from, and I'm really glad that they had that moment and that was just them.

NiNi

I love that in that moment she doesn't try to convince him of anything. She just says, ‘I can't tell you what to do. This is a crazy situation: here's what I accepted about this, here's why I accepted it. These people are good people.’

Ben

Right! She says their love is sincere.

NiNi

‘Yeah, but whatever decision you make I completely get, because I made my choice. You're gonna have to make your own choice as well.’ She spoke to Nuea very candidly, and I truly appreciated that, and I think that Nuea definitely appreciated that too.

Ben

I love the reveal about Sailom's hands always being cold because he was nervous.

NiNi

Ehhhh [laughs] It was one of those romance things that I'm just like ‘eh!’ about, but it was adorable. It was.

Ben

I really like Pak in this role. A lot of the times when MAME writes her ukes, they tend to be a little bit on the demure side, and they usually need a stern counterbalancing presence for them? I really like that Nuea did not need that at all. I also liked how queer Namnuea felt. He very much feels like a gay boy.

NiNi

I love stories about love and family, and this is one of the ultimate love and family stories. For me, and I can't believe I'm saying this, when it comes to love and family, it's going maybe a half step behind Moonlight Chicken this year for me? I can't believe that just came out of my mouth about a MAME show. But that's really truly how I feel about it. For me, it was a 10.

Ben

I ended up giving this show a 9.5. It's one of the ones that's going to linger with me for a while, and I think a big part of it was just how much everyone else really hated the show. I think we went into this show with a lot of MAME blinders on—I knowingly went into the show hostile. I don't really like a lot of what MAME does. But, respectfully, watching a MAME show—the writer famous for writing romances about boundary crossing—and being mad that her characters are crossing boundaries? Is a little bit disingenuous of a place to write your criticism from. That's her shtick.

Nuea crosses those boundaries too! Nuea had agency, and I really resent the way a lot of the takes damsel him and make him seem powerless. He's not! He is the one with all the power here. It's why Sailom is pouring everything he can into, every time he says ‘I like you, Nuea.’ Sailom is such a sap, and y'all really hated that man. And I really need y'all to reckon with that. Like if you listened to us and you hated Sailom, please, examine your life. [laughs]

NiNi

I have a smidge of sympathy up until episode 4, for anybody who struggled a little bit with Sailom. But only up until episode 4. Because somewhere to the beginning, middle of episode 4, it was very clear what they were driving towards? And then at the end of episode 4 when Sailom and Nuea hook up for the first time, I said to myself, ‘Okay. I see where this is going.’ And then when they get to Chiang Mai, and Sailom finally tells Nuea what happens, because Marine and Yiwa have given their okay, and Nuea said, ‘Duh. Clearly that's what's going on, I already knew that.’ Nuea wasn't fooled by Sailom.

Ben

No, Nuea basically guessed 90% of it accurately. The only thing he didn't really guess, was that they were both in on it. Let me say this as well while we're here: in terms of queer solidarity, Namnuea never once outed Yiwa when he caught her out with Marine. He did not mention that once. Not at all. He ain't tell none of his hoes. He ain’t tell none of his people. He caught those two out, was like ‘oh shit, is my gaydar broken?’ And then he didn't say shit about that. He didn't even hold that up in his whole thing with Sailom. And I respect the fuck out of that man for that, because that’s not his thing to say.

NiNi

The show is amazing.

Ben

It really is.

NiNi

It's, for me, an easy cruise into some type of VIIB Award at the end of the year.

Ben

It's gonna be a difficult year for us, when we're sorting out acknowledging the incredible work that's been done, but this is one of them.

NiNi

Delightful, emotional, deeply gratifying, deeply satisfying. Ben gave this a 9.5, I gave it a 10, let's call it a 9.75.

Ben

It can get a 10 from The Conversation.

NiNi

You heard it here first, folks: Ben says it can get a 10 from The Conversation. MAME gets a 10 from us, and nobody is more surprised than us—

Ben

It’s true.

NiNi

—that that is a thing that happened [laughs] on this show.

Ben

I feel so intense about this show. I get so mad about the discourse around Sailom. He's one of those characters, like, if you don't like him? I don't like you. Fuck off.

[both laugh]

NiNi

And that’s…a word!

37:26 - And another thing! The Wedding Plan special

Ben

And we're back! I have so much more to say, I am not through. [laughs]

NiNi

So before we get into Ben's ‘and another thing!...’ Let's talk a little bit about the Wedding Plan special, because there was a special episode, that cost $8.

Ben

[laughs] I paid $7 for my rental.

NiNi

However much it costs, it costs money. Which I'm slightly salty about because MAME had McDonald's money on this, she didn't need ours.

Ben

In her defense, she has done this on literally every show. Except for Love by Chance…and Don't Say No.

NiNi

McDonald's money. That's all I'm going to say.

Ben

And she cashed in! Good for her.

NiNi

[laughs] Anyway, so let's talk a little bit about the Wedding Plan special. Ben, tell the people what it was about.

Ben

The show's fucking called Wedding Plan. It was the fucking wedding, guys, let’s—we're not going to beat around the fucking bush on this one. It was the wedding for the gays! It was really beautiful. The basic premise is, the guys have been dating properly for what feels like a year, year and a half at this point. They're taking a trip to go back to see Namnuea's family. Before they leave, they have one final check-in with Lom's mom, where she meets Nuea properly as Lom's boyfriend. She doesn't take it very well, but Sailom does not give a shit.

Meanwhile Sailom is working with Wiwa Square to organize a secret wedding for Namnuea. Hilariously, Im still does not like Sailom, and I thought that was an excellent character detail. So they go and travel back to the north, and Sailom has Nuea taking him around—I think they were in Chiang Mai?—to check out sites and locations while everyone else has moved to Namnuea's house to set up for this wedding that Namnuea doesn't know about. Lom proposes to him, they end up having the wedding the next day. It's this incredibly beautiful ceremony, it’s very traditional Thai, I believe. There's more I want to say about some of the stuff that happened at the wedding, but that's the basic premise: Lom organizes a wedding for Namnuea, and his friends plan it in secret. Which I actually think is lovely for a wedding planner, that he didn't have to plan his own wedding.

NiNi

That's the crux of it. You guys know, I am not the one the two or the three for these weddings. I believe in marriage. I believe in the importance of marriage. I am generally not a fan of the weddings. But, this one? It was beautiful, I do have to say. It was a beautiful wedding, everything around the wedding was beautiful. When I was talking about Wedding Plan in the main part of the show, I was talking about how much I love love and family. And that was what the wedding episode was about, it was love and family. Yiwa and Marine were there at the wedding, being Sailom's family, because while his mom is starting to come around to Nuea, she's still not there yet. So she doesn't get to be a part of this. So Yiwa and Marine are his family. They show up for him. They are hosting on his behalf. It's beautiful. It's just so beautiful.

Ben

I did not praise Pakpai enough in our recording; Pakpai’s reaction, as Nuea, to Yiwa appearing before him, for this wedding that he had just found out about? Is one of the most perfect expressions I’ve seen all year.

NiNi

Because he hasn't seen them since they left for England.

Ben

I am a gay boy who believes in community. And believes in gay people taking care of each other. And that means that I have worked in solidarity with lesbians. And it is such a beautiful thing for me, in this year of really good shows, to see two lesbians in a critical role in the lives of gay men. There's something so special about the unconditional, ride or die love between Yiwa and Lom, and how that extends to Marine and Nuea, and creates this very special little family unit. I cannot overstate how important it is to me that Nuea almost cried because he was overwhelmed with emotion getting to see Yiwa in front of him again, and for a wedding that he had just found out about. That was his first reaction: awe, and then he burst into tears because he loved her so much and had missed her for that long. That is so beautiful!

As for the other things in the special…The ceremony itself is really beautiful. There's a lot of really great moments in there. There's this very special moment between Namnuea and Im, where she comes to pay respects, and he takes her hand, and he says ‘I love you’ in this way that conveys a very special history between the two of them? That sent me over the edge and I burst into tears right away. [laughs] I do not know what those two have been through together, but that ‘I love you’ was one of the most effective I love yous I have ever experienced in this genre, and it was not between romantic leads at all.

NiNi

We always go up for the non-romantic I love yous in BL. lt's the Jim and Li Ming thing all over again. Namnuea’s co-workers being there for him at his wedding, the way that they put it together for him, the way that Marine and Yiwa stepped in to be Lom's family, the way Nuea’s actual family stepped in as well. There's a gorgeous scene, after the actual wedding ceremony, where they do—I suppose this is another traditional part of a Thai wedding, which is a bedding?—where Nuea's parents are with them in the room, and talking to them about love and commitment and marriage, and that's the part that put me into tears.

Ben

It was really funny, because like we had not really seen any of the dads in the show. Moms were a big deal in the show. Nuea’s dad is just this sweet man! It was overwhelming for me, how just beautifully sweet this man was, and the way he was pouring love out to Sailom, because he's like, ‘I never thought Nuea would get to have this.’ Nuea, the wedding planner, who spends so much of his time trying to make sure other people's dreams come true? I was floored by his dad just being there: ‘I just wanted my son to be happy, and I'm so thankful that you were able to do that for him.’ And I was like, ‘I don't know who you are sir, but good job!’

NiNi

It was really really gorgeous, and just so many other things…also the stuff that's happening between Sailom and Nuea. The way that Sailom proposes, and the way that Nuea knew it was coming but he still got surprised by the way that it happened? That was gorgeous. And then again, after the wedding and after the bedding, when it's just the two of them in the room, and Nuea does the thing where he pays respect to his husband? And says that that's something that he always wanted to do? The way that these two take marriage so seriously, and especially the way that Nuea feels about it. Because like I said, Nuea is a wedding planner; he sees weddings every day. He sees these rituals and ceremonies and everything every day. And I can just imagine him sitting thinking to himself, ‘one day, one day, and this is something that I want to do with my husband, and this is something that I want to do with my husband’—I can just imagine that. And then meeting Sailom and falling in love with Sailom and actually getting to marry Sailom, and being able to do that, and the way that he is so emotional about that. Mmh! Got me right in the feels.

The reason that I tend not to like weddings is because a lot of the time I find them so artificial, so stage managed and overproduced. I'm talking about this not just in terms of weddings in fiction, but weddings in real life. So, watching something so sincere, something so genuine, something so personal… t’s a production, yes, all weddings are, but it was real! Everything about it was so real, it was so emotional, it was so…[sigh] it was great. It was fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed that. I cried more than once watching the special. It just added to the joy of discovering Wedding Plan and this whole little universe and these characters.

Ben

There was a lot of little stuff happening around that. Like, one of the things that I think MAME is actually pretty good at, is really caring about her supporting cast in a useful way? She's very good about understanding why that character is there. There's Yiwa and Marine getting to have a private moment, being a little bit sad that they didn't get to have this, a Thai wedding with the people who love them around them. And I like that they got to have, like a quiet bitter moment about that. And I like that they didn't put that on Lom and Nuea, it's not something that they need to be consoled about, it's just one of those things that hurts about being queer sometimes, and that's part of the choice they made. They did take on that hurt, to give the boys a chance to be together, but it still hurt, and I like that the show never forgot that. This show cared about its lesbians, they mattered to this story, they weren't there just to check off boxes to make sure that we covered all of our bases. They were still telling their story.

I love Sun and Ryu listening at their goddamn bedroom, and then having to be chased off. Great comedy. But also I loved it, I loved that there were younger gays excited about gays slightly older than them getting to have their moment together. It was such a special execution of that.

I genuinely like that the Wedding Plan special episode is treated as a special episode. I like where the show ends for itself. I like thinking about the wedding as a special epilogue for the story, and not necessarily as the actual finale of the story. I think it's better as epilogue content.

NiNi

I have to agree! So all in all, when it comes down to Wedding Plan, looking back at it now, I think we definitely stand by how we felt about it. I think that… I have, you know Ben has, gotten even more in love with it? And even more, I think, defensive and vocal about it, because it's good! It's just good. And I don't like people saying it's not! That's it for me.

Ben

This is the number 4 or 5 show of the year for me.

NiNi

Yeah, there you have it.

Ben

Currently it's behind—in no specific order because we're not at the VIIB Awards yet—Moonlight Chicken, My School President, La Pluie, and probably The Eighth Sense? It's that good!

I am in this genre for queer cinephile reasons. I am here to connect with people for gay reasons. I'm not in this for, like, taboo, or to see cute boys kiss each other because it's titillating in and of itself. I exist as a queer person, it informs my decisions on the regular, and it was such a relief to see characters that were not incidentally gay, so that we can imagine two idols bumpin’ uglies.

I really love Sailom and Namnuea so much. Sailom got updated to blorbo status so quickly. Every week I'll just send NiNi a gif of Sailom and be like, ‘they really hated this man!’

[both laugh]

NiNi

He's not even kidding, this literally happens.

Ben

[laughs] It’ll just, just be a great gif that somebody made of Sailom and I’ll be like, ‘they really hated this man!’

Something else I want to say quite plainly here, and I would like you, as listeners of the podcast to reckon with this—and I would really like to talk about this, so please talk to me on Tumblr about this: Part of why I think Wedding Plan did not hit for people, is that Namnuea doesn't look like a girl, and doesn't behave like a girl. He behaves like a kind of femme man, and he feels very gay, in a way that is distinctly masculine. Additionally, the show doesn't really conform to a seme-uke dynamic very well, because Namnuea does seme things—like I noticed in episode 2 that he does a kabedon on Sailom. And I know that bothered a lot of the people who are obsessed with loyalty to the tropes. Namnuea is so self-assured, and I don't necessarily think that that resonated for the people who are in this for BL reasons and for regular romance beats. And I wonder a lot if that was their big problem.

I would really like to have a secondary conversation with the folks who listen to us about this particular dynamic, because I do think it's worth us unpacking why people—as much shit that gets talked about MAME—refused to engage with the show. This is legitimately one of the top queer narratives of the year. And we snubbed this show. I have watched people talk shit about MAME and her writing for five fucking years, and when she writes a whole show that is basically the byproduct of all of our feedback, we snubbed it! When MAME returns to her roots, I don't want to hear none of y’all who snubbed Wedding Plan saying a goddamn thing about her.

NiNi

I'm so mad at you for saying when MAME returns to her roots. Like this was clearly a fluke.

Ben

She's gonna be like Jafar! She's going to be like, ‘let's see how snakelike I can be, bitches!’

NiNi

So you definitely are of the view that this is not a change for MAME, this is just a detour.

Ben

I don't know! I don't know, like I was not expecting Wedding Plan. This show has so much goddamn heart to it, and it was gay! In a real way!

NiNi

I think you need to start subscribing to my vibes-based scoring method.

Ben

What? Absolutely not!

[both laugh]

Nah, it's always about the recommends. Legitimately, it's a 10 recommend. Everyone needs to go fucking watch this show. This is essential viewing for this year. This show represents a fascinating growth point for MAME; because we've criticized her for five years and she made something that is one of the most wholesome gay things I have ever watched in the genre. And we snubbed it, and threw it away.

To the cast of Wedding Plan: you all did a fantastic job, and I hope you all had a really fun time together. I want to thank every single one of you for the work you all did, because you all collectively created one of the most compelling community support systems I've ever seen in queer TV, truly. Especially to all of the women who are on that cast. BL women get messed around a lot, and don't often get to do a lot of great stuff, and every single one of you did a fantastic job.

NiNi

That is going to wrap us up on the Wedding Plan episode. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Y’all better watch this fucking show. Peace.

[both laugh]

#podcast #lgbtq #wedding plan #wedding plan the series #thai bl #bl series #MAME #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 3 #fall #fall series

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box-dwelling · 7 months

Text

So I've had this idea swimming in my head for a bit and I considered doing a fic about it but honestly I just want to do a headcanon write up for now at least. So narumitsu Franmaya post SOJ kids!

So I think after SOJ the elders in Kurain are going to start really getting on Maya's ass about having a baby. And it's getting really annoying. She been dating/married to Franziska for years at this point but I think they're solidly convinced she's having her "lesbian phase" and that once Pearl is of age and doesn't need looking after anymore and she's officially the Master of Kurain she's going to find herself a husband and settle down.

Maya fucking hates this. She wants them to properly recognise her relationship and while her relationship with the entire concept of having kids is very complicated, she doesn't want Channeling to die out so she condededs that fine, she'll have the damn kids but Franziska is being their mom.

Franziska has her own complicated ideas around legacy but is equally getting annoyed but she recognises this is important for Maya's culture and she doesn't dislike kids in general, she's been a good Tante to Trucy and while her relationship with Pearl is rocky she's thinks she's done a perfect job being her quasi step mother.

So they concoct a plan.

One day they sit Miles, Phoenix and Trucy down and say they're going to try IVF and they ask Miles to be the donor because in the absence of true male Von Karma DNA, honourary Von Karma DNA will do the job. Phoenix is completely on board because hes been listening to Maya complain about this for literal years and wants it to be over and done with for her. Trucy finds the idea hilarious because it promises to make their already insane family tree even more convoluted and she thrives in that chaos. She's also very aware that's she's presently the baby of the family and is a bit worried about her dad's empty nesting. Miles is honoured to be asked.

They do the thing. Then a few months later the Wright-Edgeworth's get a panicked phone call. Maya has just had a check up and has found out that she is pregnant with triplets. But one of them is male. 3 kids was going to be a lot anyway but there's enough people in Kurain that they can make it work. But Maya is very very aware of how weird the village is around men and really doesn't want her kid raised in that environment. And Phoenix and Miles, bleeding heart chronic adopters that they are agree that they'll raise the boy and Maya and Franziska can raise the girls in Kurain. So begins the chaos.

Miles does an insane amount of prep for the baby. He reads literally every parenting book he can get his hands on. He might as well have an honourary degree in child development after the amount of research he does. He calls up old contacts from universities he's taught at to get access to papers, he complies reading lists, he makes binders full of note, he goes completely overboard because he's going to raise this kid right. (I honestly think he did this when he first became involved in Trucy's life too but those stages of development are vastly different to that of a baby)

Franziska, does not. She is convinced she knows everything she could possibly need to in order to do this perfectly. Pearl turned out fine. These kids will too. Miles keeps sending her papers he's read and she will skim them, states that she already knew all of that and tell him he's over reacting. However she does do a good number of therapy sessions in preparation to get her head straight about what stuff Manfred did that was good and what stuff he did that was bad.

Phoenix is panicking and being way way too attentive of Maya. He's calling every few hours to make sure she's ok. Not because he's worried about the babies, though he is, but because his best friend/kid sister is carrying 3 human beings and he's terrified she's going to get hurt. He will cross the bridge of raising them when he gets there, he did fine with Trucy and he's kind of a dad by nature at this point.

Maya Hates being pregnant. She despises it. She can't do all the cool active stuff she's used to, Nick is being overbearing as well as all the other general stuff that sucks with being pregnant. She is not enjoying this and is actually kinda glad it's triplets because that means she has 2 female heirs an she never has to do this ever again. She is however also not stressing about raising them. She has some basics covered like making damn sure no one pits them against eachother and that they can chose among the pair of them who's going to inherit her title when they're good and ready. They'll need a certain level of spiritual training obviously but she's determined to give them as normal a life as possible and hopefully when they're old enough have them travel a lot with her and Franziska while Franziska is working.

This is a more complicated other headcanon but I think this is around the time Trucy starts properly coming to terms with the fact that the Gramaryes suck ass and she doesn't actually want anything to do with them. So she's kind of doing some soul searching and decides to take a gap year after school to figure out if she wants to be a magician or not by trying to define herself by something else. This gap year ends up manifesting by being an investigative assistant full time at the WAA while also trying out literally everything else she's ever had a passing interest in. She's figuring herself out during this time basically.

The babies come. Nick is incredibly overbearing during the labor. Franziska is just focusing on helping Maya through it and Miles is stressed the fuck out that this is happening and real.

And so Richard (after gumshoe), Sakura (named after the Pink Princess), and Brunhilde (named by Franziska because it means Armoured for battle which Maya thought sounded cool as hell) are born. The elders are very upset about how the names don't follow traditional fey naming convention but Maya doesn't care. She wants these kids to grow up knowing the exist outside of the village and giving Brunhilde a German name makes is even clearer that Franziska is her mother and nothing is changing that fact.

Maya and Franziska have a basically uneventful time raising the girls. The elders have been prepared for this for years. Maya goes by Mom/Mommy, Fran goes by Mama. As they planned they take them all over the globe with Frans work with Interpol. Maya gets to call it a holiday regularly and fobs off the elders by saying that they'll be better trained by being more worldly. She'll look after the kids as Fran works and when they go back to Kurain they switch and Fran will take cases in the japanifonia prosecutors office when the elders want to train them. They're a well oiled machine. Brunhilde ends up taking more after Fran and Sakura takes more after Miles. Brunhilde is actually really good at channeling but decides to let Sakura take the title because she enjoys it more. The elders are actually pretty glad about this because Brunhilde is absolutely terrifying. She got the Edgeworth glare which combined with supernatural powers makes her seem like something out of the Omen. Franziska and Maya couldn't be more proud. Sakura is a little more mild mannered but given her parents it's not by much. She's still a forceful presence but she's just typically a lot more easy going. She is genuinely passionate as hell about Channeling, she got Maya and Miles' autism and it's becomes her special interest. She's studious and devoted and really cares about what she does. She ends up doing a ton to revolutionise channeling when she becomes master and basically brings it into a new golden age. The two of them are close and their parents make certain to makes sure there's absolutely no bad blood there.

Miles and Phoenix have a slightly more chaotic time raising Richard. They're both workaholics and also running major legal bodies so figuring out how to make time to raise a baby amongst that is difficult.

They start with Phoenix taking paternity leave and calling in to talk with Athena. Trucy at this point is still in her final year so the office is quiet as hell and Athena HATES it. She needs a busy environment and being alone in the office is driving her mad.

So that last like a month before they just decide to baby proof the WAA and have Phoenix look after Richard while he's there. Athena likes babies (like come on, she does) but the crying is difficult on her ears so Phoenix gets her some very strong noise cancelling headphones and the pair of them come up with an insane series of methods of non verbally communicating. Phoenix and Athena barely have a braincell of common sense between them so they end up with various whiteboards all over the office to write stuff on and a nerf gun each to get each others attention.

One Apollo's first return visit from Kura'in with this as the new status quo Richard nearly chokes on a dart and he asks why they didn't just both learn ASL to which Athena and Phoenix both look at each other because the sensible solutions never even occurred to them. They learn ASL after that.

The first time they have to investigate a case Phoenix just straps up with a dad harness and takes the baby to the crime scene. This goes predictably poorly. Richard won't stop crying while they're talking to witnesses and Athena has to put on her head phones which means Phoenix has to write down everything the witness says to show her but his handwriting is terrible and he can't spell when writing so quickly so Athena keeps misunderstanding what's been said. Richard throws up on some evidence. They then get threatened by some goons which when Phoenix reports back to Miles about his day nearly gives him a heart attack.

After that one of 3 things happens. If Trucy is free, she'll either babysit her kid brother or investigate with Athena, if she isn't and Miles is free/just doing work in his office, they'll drop Richard off with him for the day where Miles has baby supplies ready. If neither of them are free, Phoenix will stay in the office and look after Richard while Athena has him on face time. That being said I'd give it 3 years before that kid's back to being dragged along to crime scenes. It's the Wright kid way.

I feel like the courthouse probably has a day care so they drop him off there during trials

When Richard is in Miles office is comparatively calm compared with the WAA. Klavier comes in to coo and sing him lullabies. Taka will sometimes take vigilant watch when he's sleeping. Simon will on occasion ask about his psychological development. But it's a lot more sane. When he's a bit older I'm reasonably certain that Simon will let him play with his katana at least once but other than that its fine.

Despite this Richard grows up to be basically fine. Weird girl energy as comes with the territory but they try to make sure he's has as normal a childhood as possible. He takes after Maya a lot which is either a biological thing or just kind of what happens when a considerable chunk of your devolpment is done in a WAA that is lacking Apollo. Miles is keeping a detailed track on all his development milestones and he's pretty far ahead but reasonably so. He's smart but he's not a Prodigy which they take to mean basically healthy. If and when he ever does struggle with something they're very good about telling him that's ok and that helping him improve while also making sure he knows it's not a moral failing to struggle. He's aware that Brunhilde and Sakura are his siblings but it's explained more as 3 kids being a lot to handle rather than the stuff about Kurain being weird. He sees them both regularly and all 4 of them love all 3 kids to pieces.

In terms of appearance as they get older, I think Richard has Maya's round soft features but Miles' grey hair and eye colour. Brunhilde is kind of the opposite, she's got the dark hair and piercing blue eyes but the sharp Edgeworth features. She also got his shitty eye sight and has glasses from a very young age. Sakura has grey narrowed eyes but round cheeks and dark hair.

#this is semi Inspired by nutmeg mayonnaise's au which is great but it mostly not #franmaya #narumitsu #Wrightworth #ace attorney headcanon #Phoenix wright #miles edgeworth #franziska von karma #maya fey #trucy wright #athena Cykes #my aa kids au #waa shenanigans #klavier gavin #Apollo justice #simon blackquill

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storiesofleftoverghosts · 11 months

Text

dating the batboys... and their Taylor Swift songs | (1.5/2)

pairings: Jason Todd x GN!Reader

warnings: angst, mention of death, arguing

requested?: kind of! @igotanidea asked to be tagged for a part for Jason so here you go!

a/n: THANK YALL SO MUCH FOR THE LOVE ON THE FIRST PART!! it truly means a lot to me! I’m also sorry it took SO long, I’ve been testing. I decided to split this into parts just so I could get something out for y’all. It also is a bit longer than others so I hope y’all like it!

its so hard only choosing two songs but if I didn’t this post would be going on foreverrrrr.

Jason Todd

i'd like to establish this by saying Jason Todd is NOT the angry Robin

but like with all of the boys, he is traumatized

like extremely traumatized

if he was to get with you, he'd have to know you for a long time

even then it's iffy

he has a lot of trust issues

and abandonment issues

issues in general

if he knew you before his death, I feel like you’d have a higher chance of him trusting you

(the angst potential here…)

but don't get me wrong

he’s the type who once he loves someone, he loves them with every ounce of fiber he has in his body

I’d like to think of him as a secret hopeless romantic

just has a hard time showing it

he would be the type of boyfriend to tease you about you wanting something badly and then go behind your back and buy it for you

this man would die (again) for you

you ask him to jump and he’ll say how high

in the beginning he would be anxious about doing mundane things with you (not that he would ever admit)

but once he gets used to it, it’s his favorite thing

do not fold laundry with this man because he’ll definitely make into a war and start throwing clothes at you

favorite pass time would be to cook with you

YES I HEADCANON HES A GOOD COOK SHUT UP

being lazy on the couch together, reading books and enjoying each others presence

as much as Jason loves touch, I feel like he would love spending quality time with you more

especially given his busy life style with being Red Hood

would keep you away from that life

he’s like Bruce in that aspect and will not risk getting you involved

especially because being Red Hood is more dangerous and he has a LOOOT of enemies

encouraging him to open up about his emotions

he’s better than Bruce about talking about his feelings, but he still has issues with it

comforting him through nightmares

also comforting him through panic attacks and whatnot

understanding his complicated relationship with his family and trying not push him about it

still developing some what of a relationship with his brothers

if you knew him before his death, definitely having that fear of losing him again

you never recovered from the loss of him and even to this day, it haunts you

having arguments about it because Jason insists he’s careful and you won’t lose him

having arguments in general because he struggles with trusting people and is paranoid

those arguments do not last long because as much as he is stubborn

he doesn’t want to lose you

longest it will last is a couple of days

staying up late waiting for him to get home

LATE NIGHT CUDDLES

I would also like to argue that Jason lives for playful wrestling

he loves making you smile as it’s his favorite feature on you

late night motorcycle rides

he is such a mother hen when it comes to you

“did you eat today? have you had any water? what time did you go to bed?” “okay mom,”

teaching you how to use specific weapons and self defense because duh, it’s Gotham (part two)

at the end of the day, Jason Todd is a traumatized man trying to love you the best he can.

Me being me, I’m going to have to say Afterglow (from Lover) would be my number one choice for Jason. It actually inspired me to even start this! I think Treacherous (from Red (Taylor’s Version)) would be so Jason too.

Bonus: Sparks Fly (from Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)) is also a very Jason Todd song. No I will not elaborate.

“Tell me that you're still mine

Tell me that we'll be just fine

Even when I lose my mind

I need to say

Tell me that it's not my fault

Tell me that I'm all you want

Even when I break your heart”

It didn’t take a genius to realize Jason Todd had messed up. He knew it as soon as the words that had tasted like poison left his mouth. All of the melting hot rage he had felt reached it’s boiling point, and it finally blew up.

“What do you know, you don’t even have a family!”

It seemed to echo throughout your shared apartment. The deafening silence that slowly poured in after made him feel incredibly nauseous. Your face slowly contorted from one of shock to one of a statue. Stoic and cold. The only sound to be heard was the incessant rain pounding against the windows.

You had slowly made your way over to the couch. For fifteen minutes you sat on the soft leather couch. Fifteen fucking agonizing minutes of nothing but Jason trying to somehow make it right. He apologized many times. He tried comforting you. But you just sat there, eyes closed and ignoring everything he had done. His side of the couch seemed to grow heavier and heavier with every attempt.

It made him feel like a child again. When his mother would get upset with him, she would give him the silent treatment. It would go on for days on end, and he would beg and apologize for forgiveness.

He never told you that though.

What you guys were arguing about seemed so small now. Jason was always one to blow things out of proportion. At one point in time, it had been about you going out with Dick and Tim for the third day in a row. He was a bit envious of your relationship with the aforementioned. He just didn’t know if it was Dick and Tim he was jealous of or you.

Instead of trying to talk to you about staying home and spending time with him or hell, even inviting him out with you, he took out his irritation you. It had been a long day, and this had been the cherry on top. He made a snarky comment to try and start a fight. Unfortunately, you were one to try to talk it out. It only added fuel to the fire. It escalated to the current situation. He hadn’t meant for it to end up like this.

Why’d he have to break what he loved so much?

Finally, you made a noise. You took a deep breath in and bore into his eyes. Tears were threatening to spill from them any second. It felt he had been burned, and he had no one to blame but himself.

“Before you say anything, I am incredibly sorry. It was all just me in my head. I should have never said those things, and I don’t want to lose you over this. Please, please, please let me make it up to you.” He has never sounded so desperate before. But then again, he’s never cut you this deep. Your eyes had travelled down away from him. The lump in your throat was hard to swallow.

“Jason. You’re not going to lose me over this. You’re still all I want,” The tears had started to roll down your cheeks by now. Seeing you cry made his heart crush, and he couldn’t stop himself from scooting closer to you.

“But what you said had really hurt my feelings. And if you ever say something like that to me again, I’m going to leave and take some time for myself.” You warned through the tears. Seeing your lip quiver as you spoke was enough for him to engulf you in his arms.

“I promise if I ever say that again, you could smack me as hard as you can. I deserve it.” You let out a tearful laugh and shook your head. However, he was being dead serious. You buried yourself in his embrace.

“I forgive you this time. Just next time communicate with me. We’re partners. It’s me and you against the problem.” Hearing how sincere you were made his heart swell. It made him feel even more guilty for starting the argument with you. But if you could forgive him, then maybe he can forgive himself too.

“You’re right. I’m sorry for everything. I just…” He paused. It was difficult for him to talk about his feelings, but he trusted you. You were his whole world after all. “I just wanted to spend time with you alone. I had a hard today today, and you always manage to make me feel better.” He murmured. His cheeks were a soft pink color. No matter how long you guys had been together for, it was awkward for him to tell you about how he felt.

You pulled away from the embrace to look him in the eyes. A small smile was on your face and your cheeks were tear stained. Your eyes had never had more of a soft look in them as one of your hands cupped the side of his face. Your thumb had slowly grazing his cheek.

“Why didn’t you say so? I don’t mind canceling my plans for you.” The smile on your lips grew, and you leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek. The rain had seemed to turn into a soft sprinkle. You got up from the couch and made your way to the kitchen. His eyes followed you, clearly confused on what you were doing.

“Come on, let’s just cook and watch something.” You called. A bright smile spread across his face as he followed your voice. It was simple idea but it meant the world that you had decided to forgive him. He wouldn’t say that arguing with you will never happen again, but he knew that no matter how frustrating the situation was, he’d never utter an insult to you again.

He loved you too much, after all.

#jason todd x reader #jason todd #batman x reader #taylor swift inspired #afterglow #red hood x reader #fanfiction #x reader #elliessodashop #taylor swift

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melrosing · 5 months

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I just find so much of the whole Lyanna Rhaegar thing so interesting. And its something I've explored more in my fanfics (that I've not really posted). But it's really weird to me that so many people's take away was that they were starcrossed lovers when... Rhaegar was like 23 (idk, an adult), married with a kid and Lyanna was a 15 yo. regardless of many factors, Rhaegar was still in the wrong in kidnapping her (no matter how willing of a victim she was). I totally buy that they thought their love story was that of starcrossed lovers.

also I love Ned having a complicated relationship with Brandon. I'm a sucker for Ned/Cat, and it's always strange to think that had things gone right she would've married Brandon. Like, it must be weird to look at the family you love and know you wouldn't have any of it if your brother (and to some extent sister) hadn't died.

Anyways, love the ending of season 1! I've found the whole thing super fun!

Yeah, I talked a bit about how I see Rhaegar and Lyanna here - like I'm sure they felt like star-crossed lovers, and GRRM the Shakespeare fanatic has certainly incorporated a handful of Romeo & Juliet tropes into their story. But they're also a lot more complicated than that. I can't disregard Lyanna's age, I can't disregard Rhaegar's obsession with prophecy and how that may have played a part in his pursuit of Lyanna (and his pursuit of a child from her body), and I can't disregard how he treats Elia and their children.

And people do minimise the affront to Elia which is really irritating to me, like as you can see per my sparknotes thing I don't believe that Elia ever came to love Rhaegar - I think at best she may have thought in the early days she was lucky to have such a worthy match, but that there's otherwise no suggestion they were close or even had any especial rapport. So, fine - it was a political match and not a love match - so if either of them privately committed adultery, that would be one thing.

But humiliating Elia in front of virtually all of Westeros by making a show of disregarding her, when she is either pregnant with his child or has just given birth to his child... and then later leaving her and their two young children in the charge of a teenager and a pyromaniac??? like sorry no i'm just not having it babes. it's not on

And yeah I definitely like the idea of Brandon and Ned having a kind of spiky relationship! I think Ned loved his brother but I can imagine there were things he disliked about him. And that Brandon could be quite callous towards Ned, treating him a bit like a doormat, condescending to him etc, and not even realising he's doing it because Ned's feelings hardly register with him.

It would kind of make Ned's close friendship with Robert more interesting, because I think Brandon was probably a lot like Robert - but here's a version of his brother who has time for him and jokes with him and confides in him etc etc. So it was easier to look past Robert's foibles and failings.

But then obviously Ned would feel a lot of guilt for having resented his brother once Brandon is gone (and Brandon dies proving how much he truly values his family), and for having inherited everything he was meant to have. It makes me think again of Jon as like a twisted outlet of penance for Ned. like he would always have cared for and protected Jon for Lyanna, yet part of him thinks he deserves Catelyn's resentment and the judgement of society that comes with Jon, but for own private guilt.

anyway thanks so much for reading they're really fun to write! working on plotting out the next bunch tonight....

#ned stark #brandon stark #rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #elia martell #asoiaf #sparknotes robert's rebellion

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nephriteknight · 2 months

Text

Thoughts on Daggerheart!!

I'll admit I haven't really been following it until today, but after watching the videos released today I got very excited and ended up building a character and reading a lot of the book, as I am wont to do (might post about them later lol).

Now, full disclosure, I wouldn't say I'm all that familiar with the TTRPG space outside of D&D, so take my opinions with a grain of salt. That said, I've played D&D, Wanderhome, Alice is Missing, and the fan-made Hollow Knight TTRPG, and I've watched some AP of Kids on Bikes, Call of Cthulhu, Monsterhearts, and Candela Obscura, which is a longer list than I was expecting. Huh. Anyways, my thoughts!

I really like the duality dice! It's such an interesting way to do mixed success that incorporates story/character into mechanics, which is great.

Related to that, I also like Hope as a fluid resource, and I think that Fear is a nice way to both prompt GM action and to just create a fun sense of dread as the GM takes more tokens

The lack of turn order/action economy is... cool, and a really interesting idea, but my thoughts on this are complicated. As we're seeing in the oneshot right now, it really helps to keep combat as part of the story and give the players and GM room for creativity. (For example, Bunnie describing a counterstrike as part of her dodge, and being able to take it as soon as the GM's turn is over, as well as the tag team feature, which is very cool.) That said, I think this mechanic might not work so well with less experienced or less confident players, who might have trouble taking the initiative (heh) to act in combat (I know I certainly would if I wasn't playing with close friends). That's not really a criticism though -- this is a collaborative storytelling game, and part of playing it is making big moves and taking turns guiding the story. If that's not for you, then you might prefer a different system, which is fine! I think this mechanic has the potential to be really, really dope, but I also think it's the bit that has the most potential to go poorly in my eyes.

The art, design, and general aesthetic feel of this game are so unbelievably up my alley. I love it. That's all.

I'm excited to see that they're working on mechanics for playing disabled characters, but since they aren't out yet I can't really comment. (I did notice that the character in the bard art is in a wheelchair, which is dope.) Also, as others have noted, Daggerheart uses "heritage" and "ancestry" rather than "race", which is a small but good choice.

Personally, I also really like the choice to move away from precise measurements of distance and gold. This one is very much a personal preference, and I know some people will rightfully disagree, but I like it! As a DM, trying to determine the appropriate costs and rewards for things has always been a headache, and this seems much easier to manage; measuring distances with convenient and tangible measurements like the short side of a playing card or the length of a piece of paper also feels much easier to use.

The downtime mechanics are great! Each of the activities you can take prompts you to describe how you heal yourself or another, destress, repair armor, or prepare yourself for what's ahead, which really encourages quieter character moments both introspectively and with others. I'm a big fan of this. This combining of role play and mechanics is also present in other features, such as one of the major level 1 healing abilities, which is more effective if you spend the time it takes to cast learning something new about the person you're healing or sharing something about yourself.

I didn't look at this too closely because I was just making a character for fun and don't have a party to play with, but as part of character creation you're given questions about your relationships to your party members to answer. Wanderhome also has these, and they were MASSIVELY successful in creating depth and meaningful connections between players -- after our table's session zero I was already so invested in all our characters, and when we actually played them they really came to life. I haven't looked to closely at Daggerhearts version of this, but I'm very excited to see them.

The experience mechanic seems really fun and creative, and I especially like the idea of using a phrase rather than something specific. That said, when I played the Hollow Knight TTRPG, which also lets players create their own skills, the open endedness of it was more confusing than inspiring, and there was a lot of potential for a usefulness disparity between players. I do think Daggerheart explains it better, though, and limiting the use of experience with a Hope cost helps to counteract any choices that might be too broad, so hopefully it will work better

I probably have more thoughts, but it getting late and I have a headache, so that's all I'm saying for now :D

Overall, Daggerheart has combined a lot of things I've liked in other games with promising mechanics I haven't seen before, and I'm very excited to try it out. I'm now realizing that I just made a list of things I like without any negative feedback, which isn't what I wanted to do, but I'm not really sure what to criticize without having played it myself.

I'm most curious to see how the non-initiative mechanic works; it has the potential to be a really excellent solve for a major problem in D&D (plenty of people have talked about how initiative limits teamwork, can be boring when its not your turn, etc, so I won't get into it here), but I don't think it's a solution that will work for everyone. Of course, games can't work for everyone, and shouldn't try to. It's working really well on CR's oneshot as I write this, but making choices and sharing spotlight in TTRPGs is literally their job, so I'm not surprised this works for them. I could see this going really well with some tables I've played with, and really poorly with others. I'm still really optimistic, though; it seems like the kind of thing that with the right table could be really excellent.

#you know its not the point of this post but im gonna say it anyways: highly recommend wanderhome #good game; thank you saltzman for recommending it #daggerheart #critical role #table top role playing game #ttrpg

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absolutebl · 10 months

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Hi!

I love your Blog and love to read your takes in everything. So thank you so much for all your Posts and thoughts about the industry etc.

Here is my question: i came across one of your posts where you wrote "actually gay, not bl gay" (it was a Post about Jojo and Only Friends) and while I FELT that I TOTALLY understood what you meant and instantly was like "yes 100% clear" Id love to read and learn more about what this means exactly and why some bls feel quite heteronormative while some dont. Would you mind explain the take on "actually gay Not Bl gay" a little bit? And why some Shows feel just more queer than others (besides the unbelievable stupid "gay only for you" trope lol)

Thank you so much and I hope you will have a nice day!

actually gay, not bl gay

There's actually quite a discourse on this right now mostly originating with @waitmyturtles and @wen-kexing-apologist (Post @killiru references above is here.)

I tend to mostly talk about this in broad brush strokes as a queer lens.

But there's a great ven diagram (which of course I've lost the link to) that approaches the idea of and queer lens by tunneling into its approach and intent:

about queers

by queers

for queers

How do different BLs intersect in different ways with these three elements?

When I said "actually gay, not BL gay" I was alluding to this discourse. Specifically the "about queers" category of BL.

There are characters in BL who read as genuinely gay (as in belonging to the queer family of this terrible reality we live in) and then there are those that seem more performative (to exist in a bubble of fantasy were sexual identity is almost unimportant, only the romance matters, everything is safe sweetness & light). For some queers this can read as manipulative or even exploitive (because it is inauthentic to most queer experiences). For me, it's fine... even desirable. I like the safe bubble. I enjoy the utter delusional escapism of it. Sometimes I will call this sanitized gay. (Since it is designed to make gay palatable to non-gay identified folks e.g. seme/uke.)

A sanitized gay BL may be unintentional but it is nested in origin yaoi and mm romance whose target market has never been the queer community, and whose authors have historically not been members of it, either.

Let's be frank, we queers are generally a terrible target market, we don't have enough spending power - especially not for a piece of pop culture as niched as BL. And as creators we really want our voices to be heard (obvs), which makes us produce content that those unsympathetic or uncaring find uncomfortable. (Yes, I know, fuck them, but also, they have all the money and the entertainment industry is a numbers game.)

So in the arena of office romances, just as an example:

actually gay = The New Employee

sanitized gay = Our Dating Sim

actual gay = Step By Step

sanitized gay = A Boss And a Babe

All of the above have the same tropes, archetypes, and premises. All of them are BL. Some are just... queerer feeling than others. And the characters in those shows (Step by Step and The New Employee) read as more "actually gay."

This has nothing to do with the actors, chemsitry, or how much we may personally like the show (Our Dating Sim is one of my absolute favorite BLs). It has to do with how closely those CHARACTERS intersect with the reality of queerness as we inhabit it today. It will be lots of little touches given to the drama by director and script:

language use,

surrounding friendships (and friendship style),

mannerisms and physicality (specially body language around straights vs other queer characters),

makeup & wardrobe,

facial expressions,

surrounding queer-coded behaviors by side characters,

layers of story nuance that indicate a complicated queer-driven back story.

Markers of specifically a queer identity are given to the leads.

These kinds of BLs are satisfying the "about queers" category. ("By queers" can be difficult to extract because IRL outting is involved. "For queers" is the rarest kind of BL, because making something specifically for us often alienates the majority of the rest of viewership/market. I could be argued that SCOY did this.)

I'm sure I've missed things, but I hope that kinda makes sense?

By/For/About discourse from @wen-kexing-apologist here:

Parts 1

Part 2

Part 3

I'm indebted to them for the links!