#so yeah to cut a long fucking story short i now have myself an entire Drink
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Rhea Ripley x Liv Morgan oneshot! You know one of these times I’ll stop myself from cutting it short before the good stuff happens. But you have to keep the readers wanting more 😅 Anywayyyys, enjoy!
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She was stood up. Again. This was the third time in the last two months and exactly why she hated these modern dating apps. No one knew what the hell they wanted these days or how to make their mind up.
In the corner table of the bar, Liv Morgan sat with two glasses of beer. Well, the one she ordered for herself was empty. The one for her supposed date she downed more than half of its contents while she waited patiently, and then impatiently. She checked her phone one last time at the messages she had sent that were left unanswered before she ended up blocking said person. But in her sudden frustration, that wasn’t enough. Three times in two months? Liv deleted the app from her phone and down the second glass of beer before heading over to the bar counter and took an empty seat at the very end.
“Can I order a Manhattan please?” Liv asked the tall tattooed bombshell of a bartender that she didn’t remember seeing on her way in here earlier, but she was also really excited for this date tonight that she put a lot of positive vibes towards. “You know what? Fuck it, make it two.”
“Coming right up, love.” Liv wasn’t expecting the accent, she stared for a moment with a smile then leaned her elbows on the counter with intrigue. “Rough night I take it? I’ve only started my shift half an hour ago, but every time I glanced toward your table you were by yourself still.”
Liv nodded her head and let out a soft sigh. “Yeah, you could say that. Sort of one of those ‘disappointed but not surprised’ kind of deals.” A frown flashed across her lips. “They didn’t show up again.”
“You poor thing. Well love, my name is Rhea and my job tonight is to make sure you walk out of here in higher spirits.” Rhea put together one of her finest Manhattan drinks she could make and set it on a bar napkin in front of Liv. “Starting right now. Oh, hang on. This one’s on me.” Two shot glasses were set up on the bar counter between Rhea and Liv so Rhea could poor them out two shots of straight whiskey.
“To new friends?” Liv asked while raising her shot glass.
“To not letting down pretty girls.”
“You can call me Liv.”
“To Liv.” Rhea raised her glass with a slight smirk and tapped their glasses together before knocking it back at the same time as Liv. She noticed how the blonde wasn’t affected by the stinging sensation in the back of her throat and raised her smirk even more.
Throughout the night, Liv sipped at her Manhattan while she got to know Rhea the bartender, or Rhea Ripley as she soon found out. It was a slower night than steady being only a Tuesday night so Rhea didn’t have much to do other than tend to the occasional patron that walked up. Some tried to get her attention more than others but it was almost to no point, as her attention was completely fixated on Liv Morgan the entire night. They talked about various topics from where they were from, what they did for a living, a few embarrassing stories from their childhood to present, etc.
It didn’t take that long for either of them to memorize each other’s smiles and what they sounded like when they laughed.
Liv was more pleased at the fact that she stuck around here in the first place rather than calling it an early night with some ice cream and late night television. And she was glad that she did. The only depressing part, after sharing another shot with Rhea and ordering another Manhattan, was how quickly the night passed by talking with her.
“Get them in everyone, last call.” Rhea called out.
When Liv closed out her tab for the night, she waited patiently at her stool for Rhea to close up for the rest of the night, the two chatting casually as the bartender wiped down the counter, refilled ice and replace empty bottles. Once everything was in order for the night, the two walked out together as the last two people for the night.
“You sure you’re okay with getting yourself home now??” Rhea locked the front door to the bar and grabbed out her car keys while noticing Liv didn’t do the same. Then she looked at the parking lot and then back to the blonde.
“It’s a long story.” Liv giggled out. “I’m just going through it right now. Got stood up tonight, my car broke down a few days ago, everything’s a mess. But I’m fine with-“
“Oh get in, would ya?” Rhea chuckled and the two got inside of Rhea’s car, taking Liv around their quiet town at the end of the night with light music on the radio playing, she took directions from Liv to find the way to her apartment. When she parked, that was when the tension slightly built up when the radio was the only sound they heard other than complete awkward silence.
“Well Rhea, you certainly performed well above my expectations. My spirits could not be any higher, thanks to you.”
“What’s that saying again? When you love what you do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life?” The accented Aussie chuckled to herself for throwing a cheesy line at her so suddenly and then cleared her throat. “It was great meeting you tonight, Liv, and-“
“Would you be okay with walking me to my front door?” Liv suddenly asked. “I mean, I’m not staggering or anything. But hey, wouldn’t wanna hit my head or anything?”
Rhea nodded her head and turned her car off while hurrying to grab the passenger door on the other side for Liv to exit from. The two walked up slowly to the front door to Liv’s apartment and their slight height difference showed better now that there wasn’t a bar counter between them as the two gazed at each other.
“It was beyond amazing meeting you tonight as well, Rhea. And if I’m being honest?” Liv took out her keys and turned towards her door to unlock it. “Like brutally honest, actually. I haven’t connected with someone like this in, like, forever. And I really would like to do it again, so maybe-“
When Liv turned back around, Rhea had closed the space that was between them, leaning her head down to capture the blonde’s lips between hers. It wasn’t too sudden to take Liv off guard but just at the right time for her liking. Their kiss broke slowly to turn into another kiss with Liv’a hands finding Rhea’s waist and Rhea’s hand cupping Liv’s face.
After a few several moments of locking lips and testing how well their tongues danced together, they broke off and the two chuckled at one another.
“Can I be brutally honest too?” Rhea asked and Liv nodded her head. “I thought about kissing you probably….twenty minutes after we met.” The taller girl bit her lip nervously unsure of where to go from here. “Maybe I should spend the night with you. You know, to make sure you don’t hit your head on anything besides your pillow…”
“Yeah…and in the morning?” Liv asked with an innocent look in her eyes, biting her own lip cautiously as well. “I might suffer a hangover and could smack my head on the corner of my drawer. Or slip in the shower.”
“You shouldn’t even be walking right now if we’re being honest.” Rhea raised her eyebrow and Liv caught the hint instantly. The blonde’s arms wrapped around the taller girl’s neck and Rhea hunched down to pick Liv up and wrapped her legs around her waist tightly. “Much safer this way.”
“So strong, my hero.” Liv giggled with their faces close together, alcohol infused breath coming out of their mouths, with something so much more sparking between them that they both felt. Reaching back, Liv opened her door and crashed her lips back to Rhea’s as she led them inside the apartment, quickly locking the door back up, and carrying her and Liv quickly but carefully to her bed, quick gasps escaping both of their mouths after every time as they craved each other more once behind closed doors.
#liv 4 brutality#writing#liv morgan x rhea ripley#liv x rhea#rhea ripley x liv morgan#rhea x liv#liv morgan#rhea ripley#women of wwe#WWE
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so while I've been reading doth---and I'm sure this is mostly cuz I'm a sucker for good family dynamics---I've been all for draxum and galois and Casey getting to be a good healthy family unit, and have been righteously annoyed on the family for not being able to see that Donnie and galois are two separate people now and trying to treat gale like he's still they're brother when he's now functionally NOT, but then I got thinking about how, if when Donnie got new memories and became galois 'Donnie' continued existing as like a spirit or something, how he would feel about current events. And. I came up with this.
"Oh, no no no no, no no NO NO NO!!! HOW DARE YOU? How dare you care about him? How dare you comfort him? YOU DID THIS! You're the one who gave him those traumas! You don't get to pretend you didn't do anything! You don't get to erase what you did to me, like it didn't happen! How dare you erase my life, erase ME like I didn't matter. Like you can just make up this perfect son without having to deal with such silly inconveniences as the CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR OWN ACTIONS. Because the stupid thing is, you do might have won me over. Because you DO have a point. I really didn't know about all the bloody history, or the reality of life for yokai. And maybe I would've been willing to help you with a less crazy plan. But what kind of fucking conversation starter is chaining someone to a table? It's YOUR fault I wasn't willing to compromise. I can forgive you for having a cause. But I find it fucking HILARIOUS that you think it's reasonable to, after KIDNAPPING ME, make one (1) offer to let me choose to help you, WITHOUT REALLY GIVING ME A CHOICE, and when I said no just going, 'WELP, I TRIED. TIME TO FUNCTIONALLY MYRDER THIS TEENAGER.' BECAUSE THATS WHAT YOU DID!! You shattered me and shoved my broken pieces back together to make this perfect new person, caring so much that my 'personality' was intact, like you can just pick and chose parts of me that you like and get rid of the rest. How dare you? How DARE you reduce me to that?
You know it will destroy him, don't you? He's smart, just like I was. Eventually, he'll find a piece of evidence that you can't explain away, or my family will finally find a way to get through to him, and he'll finally put two and two together and realize what you did. Who he used to be. And when he does---when he finds out you've been lying the entire time, that all his memories aren't real---you know it'll destroy him, don't you? who he is and who he used to be will slam back together, and it'll be like a meteor crashing into a moon, and there will be no survivors. He'll break into pieces so small that you won't be able to build anyone new out of it this time. and then you'll have no one. And it's all you're fault. And there's no avoiding it now. It's inevitable. And I hope you know that by taking the short cut and cutting away the pieces of me you didn't like, my history and my loyalty and my love for my family, you've put a count down on his existence. you only have so long left with him, and there's no minimizing the damage. I hope you know. And I hope it eats you up inside.
and I can't wait for it to happen.For it to all come crashing down on you. I hope he gets dragged from your arms. And I don't care if we suffer in the process. I'd kill Galois just to make you feel his loss. I would have died to keep myself from you."
So I mightve gone a little overboard (and also a little out of character, but I like to think rage does things to a person), but long story short I'm not voting for them to be a happy family by the end of this anymore :/
Sorry that this is stupid long haha
Thanks for writing! I do really love your fic. It makes me think deeply
Donnie saying he would kill Gale is...interesting. Carry on.
Donnie and Galois don't really have separate consciousnesses or anything, but...yeah, this works.
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SORRY GUYS I DIED AGAIN
This is an announcement post for the Basil Buffet, but it's kinda long so it's under the cut lol. PLEASE READ!!!
Hey what's going on guys!! It's been a while, huh? I will say that that has been entirely my fault, I've been kind of procrastinating for a hell of a long time now. Sincerest apologies for that. Uhhh okay so where do I begin. Oh, just to let you guys know, THE BASIL BUFFET IS NOT CLOSING ITS DOORS. In case you were worried, I was just kinda uhhh. Taking a hiatus?? I don't know, I wasn't feeling very good I guess. But anyway, you're probably gonna say something like "Okay so you missed a lot in the OFA story" and I know. I know that. So the problem was that I couldn't keep up with the story, I think it was all getting out of hand and I didn't exactly know what was happening. It was getting way too complicated way too fast, much more than my liking. Call me a coward or whatever, but I'm just gonna take Basil out of this story. Which is like. Really awkward for me personally since I literally set up an entire arc for him where he fucking snaps and everything goes kablooey til someone helps him, and it's so weird just automatically resetting him back to the default as if nothing happened. Because, well, I guess nothing DID happen. He won't know. So uhhh yeah! That's basically it, I'll try and keep this restaurant running like normal. I don't know if I'll ever include myself in any more OFA stories/lore, but if it's a short and silly interaction between blogs then you can bet your bottom dollar I'll join. I'm also deleting everything in my inbox as it pertains to nothing but the whole mafia thing, so sorry about that... And if you're an OFF fan, you're probably worrying about the Batter and Zacharie. Don't worry, I'll give them the spotlight every now and then hahsgdgd. I think that's it! You ready, Basil?
"I sure am!"
That's the confidence I like to hear! If you have any more questions, don't be afraid to hit the inbox! I think that's all from me. Thank you guys once again for staying with me til the end!!
Until next time, Ultra
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A Changing Shoe Sizes Tale
(This is not mine, it was a story I loved back in the day and I just found a version of it but couldn’t share it, so I copy/pasted it)
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR MIKE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!” My friends sang to me as I blew out my candles on my birthday cake. I immediately went to go open my presents while my parents cut the cake and started handing out pieces to everyone.
I unwrapped a rectangular shaped box and to my surprise I got the special branded SUPRA shoes that they only made probably a handful of them. What makes these shoes so special, is there is no actual size on these babies, but they have a special dial along the side that makes the shoe shrink and grow, as well as whoever wears them. The catch is though is the shoe registers itself to the user who wore them last, so try not to let anyone mess with them as long as you were the last wearer.
I immediately slipped the things on and turned them up one shoe size, going from an 11 to a 12, and immediately felt myself grow a good two inches and swell in size a bit. “Thanks Mom and Dad! You guys are the best!”
“No Problem, Sweetie. Now why don’t you go up stairs and put them away for now.
After I put my shoes away I really needed to go use the restroom. As I made my way there, my friend Andrew was coming out from using it himself. “Damn, Mikey, I would love to have a pair of those shoes!” I hated being called Mikey, and I haven’t been called that since my growth spurt at 14. Now 21 and legal, people better call me Mike!
“Maybe you can try the shoes out sometime Andrew,” He also hated being called by his name as well. He liked to be called Andy, and because he stopped growing at 14 as well and was stuck at 5′2″ in size 5s, I had to give him a hard time with it.
“Yeah that would be cool,” he said.
I couldn’t hold it in any longer as I pushed my way past him and entered the restroom. I whipped my cock out and began to take a long, hard piss into the bowl.
Moments later a dizzy spell hit me and i grabbed onto the wall for support. “What the fuck?!” I steadied myself as my hand began to slide down the wall and my body slowly began to compact inward on itself. The bowl beginning to look closer and closer as my body slowly began to shrink smaller and smaller.
I stopped pissing and ran up the stairs, tripping over my shrinking feet and legs. “Why is this happening?! my voice changing a pitch as I try to pull myself up the stairs to my bedroom. I know someone must be messing with the shoes, it was the only way I could be shrinking and so fast. As I finally reached the top of the stairs I was a good 5′6″ 140 lbs… By the time I reached my door handle I was easily 5′4″ 120… And by the time the door was open, I gazed at my friend, Andrew, wearing my Supras…. now size 5′s… and I looked dead on at him, we were eye to eye.
“Dude, how could you do this to me?!” I was hurt.
“You said I could try them, thought now was a good time,” he just gave me a smirk.
“Take them off now!” I walked towards him and as I got closer, my shorts got caught around my ankles and I tripped, I landed right between his legs, my hands on each side of his body. What I didn’t realize though until it was too late is one hand hit the dial on the shoe, and brought it to as far as it could go… Size 18s…”
“Oh Fuck!” I watched his feet push outward as they grew to the size of my forearms. His calves becoming thicker by the second, I tried to grab on to them and steady myself as they grew more denser by the second.
Next thing I saw was his thighs and ass as they filled out his shorts, his cock growing in them too as it slid down and stuck tight to the material. His entire body growing proportionately to his now massive feet size. His legs grew longer like trees planted in the ground and my eyes had to travel upward as I saw his shirt becoming tighter and tighter by the second.
Not only was the shirt becoming tighter, it literally bunched themselves up onto his expanding pecs and biceps, exposing a washboard hard 8 pack and a perfect V taper leading down to his prized growing meat in his uncomfortably tight shorts.
Soon I wasn’t even able to see his face as his pecs had grown so immense, and in my position, completely overshadowed anything above them. I began to hear some tearing sounds from his clothing as the shorts began to explode off of him, his semi hard phallus appeared monstrous to me. Next came the shirt and with a quick flex, tore right down the back and up the arm sleeves.
In one last moan, my nightmare came true… the sound of tearing cloth and leather as his feet began to tear through the Supras, “NO!!!!” I shouted, watching his toes push through the front ends. I guess there was only so much material a growing pair of shoes can actually contain in them.
Andrew slowly bent down, his cock brushing over my body, until he was once again eye to eye with me. “Happy Birthday, Mikey…”
Changing Shoe Sizes - The Locker Room
(Again, not mine, but a sequel that I wanted to share)
“Come on man, let me try on your shoes!” I asked Chad. The lucky bastard won one of the new prototype’s from Adidas new shows that can change the wearers size of their feet with a quick turn of a knob on the shoe. The original model was by Supra, but people went a bit to far in terms of seeing how big they could grow, causing the shoes to literally burst off of peoples feet. Some guy decided to sue them and made a huge profit, even though getting a chance to get one out of a hundred pairs of them that were invented and being a now 8 foot god shouldn’t have been payment enough.
“No way Arthur! These are my Adidas. You can get a pair when they launch in a few months.” He practically laughed under his breath. He knows I can’t afford a pair of those shoes, they are already retailing for pre-order for $2500. I watched as he twisted the knob, growing to a nice 6′8″ before getting dressed in his workout clothes to go hit the basketball court. He took off his shoes and put on an impressive pair of size 15 Nike’s on before leaving the locker room, tossing his Adidas in his locker and slamming it shut. “Catch you on the court dude, he walked off and left me alone to get dressed.
I sighed to myself, Pulling off my shirt, shorts, and boxers. I gave a tug on my 6 inch cock before pulling my jock strap out of my gym back and slipping it on. I readjusted my package before picking up my shorts that I had dropped on the floor to put back on.
To my surprise, I noticed the locker that Chad was using never actually closed all the way. It has been a while since he has been gone. I made a quick look around the room before pulling the door open and grabbing the shoes. “Fuck yes…” I whispered to myself, bringing the shoes up to my nose and taking a whiff from the inside of them. He must have not broke them in yet, they still smell new…
I myself wasn’t really a small guy. I stood about 5′6″ and weighed around 180lbs… But I needed to be bigger.
My hands shaking, cock throbbing in my jock, I placed my hand on the knob and turned it till it was at a size 8… I watched in amazement as the shoes shrank and then heard a Wallop of noise from outside, as I heard the noise of shoes screeching against the polished basketball court. It’s all true… He must of just shrunk, maybe doing a layup… or trying to dribble… he probably just fell on his ass and made a full out of himself.
I quickly pulled the shoes on my feet. I know at any moment, Chad would be coming through those doors, wondering what just happened. I stood up, bent down, and twisted the damn things till it hit Size 18…
“Oh FUCK!” I moaned as a wave of pleasure hit me, my body firing up a few inches. My muscles expanding to keep up in proportion. Then another wave fired through my body. My jock filling up more and more as it grew to epic sizes in the thin material used to just keep my junk in place as I worked out. Another… And another….
I watched the doors swing open, and in walks Chad. Still bent over, feeling the euphoric bliss wash over me as I hit 7′6″ and over 350lbs of muscle.
“Those are my shoes!” He had to hold up his clothes as he ran towards me. “Take them off!” I watched as he tripped, falling over his gym shorts and much larger shoes that he still tried to wear back into the locker room. He fell face first right between my legs as I watched his hand make contact with the knob, and send it flying towards 25…
I grinned, feeling the power begin to wash over me again… My cock already stuffed to the max in this tiny g-string of a jock… I hope it explodes with this next wave…
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[Audio ID: The stuff written below the cut.]
Long story short...miss Shiawase Suzuhime and Pallas Feldspar Shirogane will be joining me now. And I'll be taking a vacation to Unova with them at some point, thank you very much.
(OoC) I'll still be using #shiroposting and #suzuposting to keep track of those two, jsyk. So don't worry about that.
Okay, audio recording... testing, one, two, one, two...
...well, that's boring. *ahm-hmm...*
*Boy meets gir-rlk--!*
[Sounds of something striking the head of what must be a large Pokemon.]
You need better songs.
Owww... that hurt, Shia...
It was just a love tap to the head. You've had worse.
Myeeeh...I have to listen to that happen again, Shia! How else am I gonna make sure the microphone works?
Wouldn't it be a better idea to call one of the girls in order to test the reception at the same time?
Well yeah, but...
[Sounds of water splashing. Someone is using Waterfall nearby, but not immediately next to the microphone.]
Oh dear, is this another Pelipper? What on earth could they--
[Sounds of something landing on what appears to be stone, wet, and maybe even clawed if you've got a sharp ear. Panting, of some kind.]
...oh, Chevalier. You're here early, did something happen at the--
YEAH something happened!!! Have you guys been screwing around on my Rotomblr this whole time?!
Wh--PALLAS! I told you he wouldn't be so keen on that!
Well, I got curious, is all! I was gonna make one myself, but uh, not, really, sure, how well that would work for hiding, eh...
Yeah, like taking over my account is any better?!
... we didn't mess around with much.
Dear fucking Arceus-- okay, you know? Sure. Why not. But you couldn't have bothered to ask first?!
Well...I wanted to, but you left before I could. I saw this neat ask game, too, so at that point, I figured, it couldn't really hurt.
... okay. Pallas. I'm gonna ask you something, and you're gonna answer me straight, okay?
Okaaaaaay...?
Does this not establish an incredibly direct connection between us, now?
It... might?
...oh, no.
Shia's catching on. So if there's a direct link between us, now, don't you think people are gonna realize, that if they wanna know anything about you--
Oh. OH. That. Mm! Uh-huh. I think I understand.
Yeah. And now you're gonna need to help me figure out a way to explain all of this without giving away the entire fact that you two--!
Actually...I don't think you need to do much to explain at all.
And why not, Shia.
[Silence. Sounds of...feathers? Picking up the microphone.]
...uh-huh. And it's recording.
I was testing the mike before you came in... you seriously don't think we can...?
Followers of Rotomblr blog "Silverott-Chevalier"! It appears that our ruse is up. My name is Shiawase Suzuhime-- or Suzuhime Shiawase, if you wish to follow Nippon traditions. And my blue friend over here is...
...uh, Pallas Feldspar Shirogane! I'm, uh...Shiawase and I are Cooper's, uh...
... they're my mentors. And they like screwing around with me sometimes. No pictures-- they like their privacy.
Thank you, Chevalier. Now. Chevalier. Would you mind if we continued using your blog to do things? As spontaneous as our takeover was...
... one condition.
... very well, we owe you that much.
... two conditions.
... speak.
First of all, we go to Unova for vacation. Not Galar. Okay?
...I suppose that's fine. Pallas?
Yeah, yeah, I'll make plans for that...
And your second?
[Sounds of water being displaced as it's falling, followed by sounds of flapping wings, and then something hitting a countertop heavily. And then another something. And another.]
...ah. I see how you found out, now.
I dunno who sent popcorn as soon as I got Pelipper Mail active, but I'm glad they did. ... you didn't happen to--
We did.
... and did they manage t--
They did.
...shit. Pallas cut the audio, cut the audio--
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TELL ME ABOUT THE VAL/WHI AU!! Please
GUH let me drop a lot of pieces i wrote down hehe
its going to be lengthy so ill tuck it under the cut
akito starts off as a florist (based off of his vivid old tale card) but after the disappearance of touya (and nene) he enlists and trains to become a knight in the 2-3 year time frame before the main story begins
touya and nene are childhood friends too!! i need more touyanene content so im just appealing to myself here with that lol but they met when touya used to run off to get away from his father - touya would watch nene practice acting and all the like :]
when touya was a little older (13ish) he would then meet akito. the two hit it off very well too - they became very close and akito would trespass into the castle grounds to visit touya at night. sometimes with flowers
the entire cast makes an appearance in this au for sure just many will have lesser roles outside of the gamer quartet, tsukasa, saki, amia, and rui. some are apart of the kingdom, some are just villagers, others are beings who help guide akito and emu to touya and nene
i have made it clear that touya and nene (and rui too) are fucked up and evil in this au yes... the two are mostly controlled by rui... touyas sword is the source of his powers and also controls him heavily.. and nene can become a dragon. yeah <3
touya is abs merciless and at the beginning of the main story. he attacks the kingdom with nene. injures tsukasa and some others. and kidnaps saki.
emu is a close friend of nene, tsukasa, and rui and thats another reason why she wants to travel with akito bc she too has been trying to find nene
emu is also somewhat clairvoyant, can read minds, purify and heal injuries, and has magical powers teehee so where akito falls short emu def can carry. the two balance each other out and end up making a good team
mafuyu, ena, and meiko appear as hermits (footsteps event set) who akiemu encounter and they end up helping guide the two
same with shizuku, haruka, and luka who appear as fairies (shizukus recent focus event set)
also to backup a little but bc emu was a close friend of nene. and that touya and nene were childhood friends. and that touya and akito were very close. these four have def interacted as a group before and consider each other friends. though akiemu was prob the dynamic where they were the least close of them all
((im going to add in that akty established qpps in this au teehee yeah its my au and i get to make the rules))
rui is also corrupted hes not evil by default no he used to be apart of the kingdom too in the past but he left on a quest several years back and never returned. he was in search of an ancient and powerful magic that ended up being imbued with evils and took him over...
when touya and nene ran away and were overall very vulnerable rui convinced them that he can make sure they can have the power to protect themselves if they agree to work with him. they did. and boom. fucked up and evil........ this also is what ends up happening to saki..
rui being corrupted with this evil magic desires to take over the kingdom....
((and yeas everyone becomes purified by the end of the story and theres abs a good ending bc i REFUSE to kill anyone off permanently))
and despite touya being corrupted. there are several moments where akito has been able to break through to him just a little. these two are insanely close ofc so it makes sense right? touya sees the rose earring he gave akito. a memory resurfaces briefly and he stops attacking and whatnot for a moment. haha. its emotional. explodes.
also epic akito and touya sword duel bc yeah. i think it would be cool. and AUHGHFFHHGHD
its akito and emu vs. touya and nene really tho. which god. the image is in my head and. explodes explodes explodes.
okay i think thats all i have for now. this is really long oops. teehee <3
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Help why do you hate him so much… it’s very funny
okay the fact that you didn't have to specify who you're talking about is killing me. like yeah you're right we all know it's sasuke. also thank you for finding my haterism funny and being nice about it.
the short answer is i think he's way too boring to justify how much he cannibalizes the narrative.
the long answer is under the cut. sorry if it's incoherent, unfortunately i am insane.
so. let me start by saying sasuke was never really going to be my favorite character ever, because it is frankly hard to make me super invested in characters who are The Specialest Boy Ever, Heir To A Long Line Of Specialest Boys Ever. i like characters that are just some guy who's now in a fucking situation. especially with shounen.
when i DO get really invested in characters like that, it's because they've got something else going on. for example, gen from the queen's thief series is the latest in a long line of thieves -- a position with divine origins! -- who is personally the gods' favorite poor little meow meow, but as much as he loves being a thief he absolutely hates being The Specialest Boy Ever because all it does for him is make his life a fucking nightmare, consistently. or for an example from another shounen, killua from hunter x hunter (i'll probably bring hxh up a few times because well kishimoto loves to steal from togashi, but i'm using killua for this example over kurapika because as far as we know kurapika's clan were actually just regular people with a genetic mutation that got them murdered, BUT WE'LL GET BACK TO THAT SO ANYWAY). killua's the heir to his insane family's whole assassin business and he is a prodigy but he fucking hates it, he just wants to be a normal 12 year old boy, so he leaves and immediately gets involved in the least normal shit a 12 year old boy possibly could. also he's funny.
but with sasuke, being not only The Specialest Boy Ever but the Sole Survivor Of The Specialest Boy Ever Family, is pretty much his whole deal. like that's it. that's all he's got. and that's not enough for me! it's a starting bullet point for a character being treated as something full fledged and the longer naruto went on the more boring and frustrating it became to me. like, let me be clear, he's still not my FAVORITE even then but i do kind of like sasuke during the chunin exam and konoha crush arcs! he is attempting to experience friendship and struggling with that vs his goal of revenge, and it's interesting. even after those arcs, throughout the rest of part 1 he's having a pretty clear conflict of identity that, even if i don't love watching it, at least....makes sense, and it's SOMETHING. and my problem is that's pretty much all we get. sasuke becomes even more of a massive focus of the story after the timeskip, but he also entirely stagnates. when he leaves the village the narrative is asking the question, what would sasuke do for his revenge, and the answer is anything. and that is the ONLY question the narrative ever asks him, and the ONLY answer we ever get. he never really truly has to wrestle with his goals or question himself. even when he finds out itachi was ordered to kill their clan, he just switches targets to konoha instead. and that's not character growth, that's just the same shit in new INCREDIBLY STUPID clothes and i'm so tired of it. i'm this kakashi. i'm so deeply unimpressed and i want my suffering to end. go ahead and kill me sasuke. i hope you die i hope we both die.
ANYWAY.
speaking of the stupid new clothes. i've talked a few times before about why i think the "actually the uchiha have been oppressed for generations and konoha ordered their massacre" twist was very dumb very annoying writing but so help me god i'm going to do it again. so if i repeat myself well that's just how it goes.
so obviously kishimoto is a horrible writer and could not carry a theme/plot/character arc/[insert literally anything necessary for a story, especially a serialized one, ESPECIALLY A SERIALIZED ONE AS LONG AS NARUTO] if you put a gun to his head, but i think the uchiha twist is one of the biggest examples of that, for a couple reasons. i'm gonna try to break those down into a list just to TRY to insert some organization into this beast. and unfortunately tumblr doesn't let me do paragraph breaks in its built-in numbered lists but i need them so this is going to look insane. sorry.
REASON ONE
for me personally, the twist happens way too late in the story, specifically because it's too late to make me care about the uchiha family as a whole for reasons beyond what they mean to sasuke. i know that sounds really harsh but let me explain.
until the twist, the uchiha family tragedy is just that -- a family tragedy. it's a personal revenge mission for sasuke. we're given pretty bare scraps about the rest of the family -- there's some information about itachi and shisui, a couple flashbacks to sasuke's dad, etc -- but it really is scraps. like, his mom has the most generic anime mom design ever. most of the rest of the uchiha are not actual characters in their own right, they are background mythology that informs who sasuke is.
and the thing is, THAT'S FINE.
to circle back to hxh: sasuke's whole entire concept is ripped off of kurapika. like. all of it. from the murdered clan to the red eyes to the revenge mission. and with kurapika, we're also given scraps about the kurta clan. we know very little about them and their culture, save for the trials they had to go through to enter the outside world, and if i recall correctly, nothing at all about kurapika's immediate family. but we as readers still care about the kurta clan, because we care about kurapika. and we care about kurapika because he's a well-written, complex character. from the very beginning he's presented to us as a paradox and a hypocrite: he has a very strong sense of honor and looks down on leorio for wanting to become a hunter for the money (before he knows why leorio wants that money), but also has a very clearly warped and gray sense of morality, given that he himself wants to become a hunter because it will give him the authority to carry out extrajudicial killings for his revenge mission without being arrested. like sasuke, he chooses his revenge over his friends, but unlike sasuke, he does so BECAUSE he's fiercely loyal to and protective of them and doesn't want them to get hurt while they try to stop him, and the narrative is very clear that this choice is QUITE LITERALLY killing kurapika. what happened to the kurta clan is a tragedy, and what it has done to kurapika's life is a tragedy.
so, back to sasuke: by the time the twist happened, kishimoto had spent probably close to 10 years (i don't remember exactly when the chapter came out. do not tell me i don't want to know) hinging 95% of our interest in the uchiha family on our interest in sasuke. and that is FINE. that's a fine choice to make. it'll work or it won't reader-to-reader based on whether or not they like sasuke, but for it to work at ALL you have to STICK TO IT. otherwise it just feels like you've been wasting my time for a decade.
REASON TWO
if you're NOT going to stick to your original choice of keeping the uchiha tragedy a family tragedy, and you're going to drop some game-changing lore that late, you at least need to follow through on it. which obviously kishimoto doesn't. nothing about the shinobi system changes (i'll get back to this in a minute), so making the uchiha massacre ordered by konoha does nothing and adds nothing besides like, more agony for sasuke i guess, but like i've already said it's the same shit remixed and i don't care.
REASON THREE
the twist frankly makes no fucking sense lol. it's a pretty huge aspect of part 1 that sasuke gets special treatment for being an uchiha, because the uchiha family was well-respected and highly revered, and along with the hyuuga clan was considered one of the noble, ancient bloodlines of konoha. and that's important to the story specifically because of how it contrasts with naruto, a fuck-up orphan whose family name bears no weight and garners no respect, who is ACTIVELY HATED by a large portion of the village and is never given half the leniency sasuke gets just for being an uchiha. that is why naruto makes sasuke his rival. it's the basis of their whole deal. so why the HELL am i suddenly supposed to take it seriously that the uchiha were actually oppressed the whole time when, A) there is no indication of that ever being the case throughout all of part 1 and B) it undermines the foundation of the main relationship of the series. like. i'm not going to do that.
REASON FOUR
THEY'RE COPS THEY'RE COPS THE UCHIHA ARE LITERALLY COPS. like yeah everyone is a soldier they're all ninjas but the uchiha are ALSO LITERALLY COPS ON TOP OF BEING NINJAS. NINJAS COPS. i'm not going to buy that the cop family was actually oppressed for generations and i'm sure as HELL not going to buy that tobirama let them be cops as part of that oppression. it's bad writing and i'm not taking that shit seriously!!!
END LIST
okay. so those are the reasons why i think that twist is stupid. well there are probably more but those are the 4 main ones that come to mind. as for what that twist being stupid has to do with my feelings on sasuke, this is a big part of what i was getting at when i said he cannibalizes the narrative.
like i said, the twist doesn't pay off, so the fact that kishimoto brought in this plotline that so clearly (and, imo, heavy-handedly) is meant to make readers question whether the shinobi system should exist and then did not follow through on ends up feeling like a cousin to the smol bean emperor problem. i say cousin because the cause of it isn't exactly what's detailed in that article -- i don't think it'd even cross kishimoto's mind to be at all worried about making sure readers know he thinks military ninjas towns with child soldiers are Bad In Real Life lol -- but the result is the same: he's unwilling to have his narrative fully buy into its own premise of the shinobi system, but he's equally unwilling to actually commit to the complex writing that would be required by a narrative interested in dismantling the shinobi system, so he wound up with a half-baked story that did neither and was very annoying to read.
because HERE'S THE THING: if he was interested in writing a story that dismantles the shinobi system, i really don't think he'd have done it via making the uchiha the BIGGEST SPECIALEST victims all along. that twist going nowhere is annoying as hell but it's also literally the only place i can see it going because, like i talked about this in one of my posts i linked above, the entire time he's wanting to burn konoha to the ground sasuke is still buying into the myth of clan superiority. what i mean by that is, he believes he's special because he's an uchiha and his suffering is special because he's an uchiha. and because he's bought so heavily into that myth of clan superiority, he does not and CAN NOT realize that it goes hand in hand with and could not exist without the shinobi system. the uchiha would not be special or unique without the shinobi system, so sasuke and his suffering would not be special or unique without it, and both sasuke personally and the narrative itself NEED his suffering to be special and unique. so of course sasuke was never going to actually destroy the hidden villages. he can't. not when the twist that makes him want to destroy that system hinges on him not actually cashing out of it. for all fandom likes to call him a revolutionary and act like it comes from a place of altruism, he's literally just not, and it doesn't.
if he was and it did, he probably would have thought twice about joining up with the akatsuki and going after the jinchuuriki. part 1 and much of the beginning of part 2 are very very VERY explicit that the jinchuuriki are some of if not THE greatest victims of the shinobi system. they have the tailed beasts sealed into them usually at birth, usually without their consent, usually with the express purpose of turning them into a weapon. they are then thoroughly abused by the same villages that did that to them, ostracized or stripped of all autonomy to be made a weapon or both. most of the jinchuuriki get ZERO protection when the akatsuki starts coming after them, because their villages don't fucking care. and whatever else i think about the akatsuki and their motives, you are never ever going to convince me that a group that takes the most vulnerable members of society and literally grinds them up into fuel are right about those lives being a necessary price. sorry. you're just not. #TeamJinchuuriki
that hypocrisy in sasuke joining up with the akatsuki could be interesting in the hands of a better writer, but kishimoto is a bad writer. and also i want to be clear: without that twist, the uchiha would still have, in a different way, been victims of the shinobi system. everything with neji and hinata during the chunin exams makes it extremely clear how horrifically abusive clans can be, especially when they buy into their own mythology so heavily, and how there's no winning whether you're born into the main family (hinata) or are naturally extremely gifted (neji). but at the same time, even though they are victims of their own family and thus the system that encourages their family's practices, they still have the social capital that comes with being from a clan, which we see come into play in the naruto vs neji fight. i really wish kishimoto had gone further into what is frankly a class struggle between clan and non-clan shinobi as well as the horrors of what the shinobi system does to families who buy into it for generations instead of largely abandoning those storylines after the chunin exams, and i'd have LOVED if he applied that same framework to the uchiha clan. but he didn't, and instead he did that dumb twist, because he thinks everything needs to be about sasuke all the time. so sasuke -- who imo already got more than enough screentime -- became central to the entire akatsuki plotline, as well as everything else, and other characters and plotlines (NAMELY THE JINCHUURIKI but others as well) got sidelined even further. and i found that incredibly frustrating and annoying. this show is called naruto! naruto is a jinchuuriki! this show should be more about the jinchuuriki! and yet, and yet, and yet.
oh also it just makes for a bad revenge narrative lol. if you're gonna commit to the revenge then COMMIT TO IT. and if you're not then how about you steal a little bit more from hxh and take some fucking notes on how togashi writes revenge as an act of self-destruction (kurapika's whole deal, gon vs pitou).
another reason i don't like sasuke is. well. well i just don't think his bond with naruto is that convincing lol. like it's fine but it's like.....it's just kind of there. i am way more compelled by almost every single other relationship naruto has. i think it would have been really interesting if kishimoto had actually grappled with how naruto didn't actually know sasuke that well before he left the village and has been chasing an idea of sasuke, and how part of why sasuke finally snapped and left is because he was mad that naruto (a person he considers kind of a failure) was actually getting stronger than him, but for the 800th time, this man is a very bad writer. it was simultaneously very funny and EXTREMELY FUCKING GRATING to see him try to backpeddle and make naruto constantly say that sasuke was the first person to truly understand and accept him when that is simply not true. you can't lie to me kishimoto i read the manga you wrote. i was there.
also i actually genuinely and extremely fucking hate how kishimoto made almost every female character have a crush on sasuke even when it did not/no longer made sense for them to have one and prioritized those crushes over character development every single time, because it's deeply sexist, and how the fandom uses that as a reason to hate said female characters, because that is ALSO EXTREMELY FUCKING SEXIST. like sorry to be a hag and a hater but i don't think the constant joke that sasuke is a feminist for treating women badly because he's gay so it's in service of yaoi is funny, actually. i think you all just hate women and give way more grace to the male characters who are poorly written than the female characters.
uhhh okay that's all i've got for now. there's probably more because this horrible shounen manga has tormented me for most of my years on this wretched earth but this is almost 3000 words and i am very tired so i'm calling it here. tl;dr i am just mad because i am angry but also i'm right. thank you for letting me explain my passions.
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hi yeah holy fuck holy shit y'all
gotdamn this is a story for the ao3 author hall of fame. im still homeless and i promptly realized a couple of days afterwards that uh yeah no can do the whole living independently thing so im looking for a group home. in the meantime i managed to get into a decent shelter, get acchs insurance, and am working on getting a case manager.
holy fuck it's been quite the. week or so? the days have kinda been blurring together so idk. hopefully i'll get into a group home soon. i've got some family that i'm gonna try and contact in case they'd be more understanding than my parents about the whole 'being disabled' thing.
anyways that's the short version. long version under the cut
so basically bc im an exmo i've been incredibly isolated as i've tried and failed to build an entire new support system from the ground up. i had one singular friend who i could reliably talk to (i think i have two now and a few case workers so that's an improvement) and even then it was only over the phone. aside from that, i do have y'all online here, but again, i need a device in order to be able to chat with y'all.
and because my body is an absolute shitshow - in addition to my executive functioning issues - i wasn't able to get much done around the house. now, for some reason, my parents looked at me and decided that this shit is all a lack of responsibility. don't get me wrong, i couldn't exactly be responsible for much. but the key word there is couldn't, not wouldn't.
and for some reason, they look at the situation and decide, time and time again, that the best solution is punishment - by taking away my phone and internet access. not necessarily out of the ordinary for most parents, but given the circumstances, that's absolute dogshit for my mental health.
so, when i literally developed a new fuckin health issue that left me bedbound for a couple of days, my mom told me that we were going to 'have a conversation'. aka my shit was gonna get taken. again.
and that would've been it for me. isolated, in pain, sick, tired, without anybody to lean on. so i said fuck that shit, packed my stuff, and walked out.
i started off at a shelter that used to be a prison, and oh my fucking god i don't think i've ever been more pro-prison-abolition or whatever the fuck it is. like goddamn that shit's inhumane. i ended up having to take a trip to the ER because they didn't stock enough water, resulting in me becoming so dehydrated that my ribs cramped to the point of keeping me from breathing.
not long after that i spiralled a bit so i went to a crisis center where i got people that started working on my case. we determined that i'd be best off in a group home and they transferred me to a transitional facility while they got that figured out.
I get there and discover that my hip, which i thought had just popped weird, felt like it had dislocated. Thankfully, i think i just sprained it, but I was in a lot of pain that first night. Night shift came around to take vitals, I told them what was going on, and they proceeded to not only wave me off, but also one of them looked at me - as i was writhing in pain, crying, trying to keep quiet, and digging my nails into my skin to distract myself - with the look you reserve for dog shit you've just stepped in. So, you know, that was fun. Also nobody there got their medications that night. The shitshow that was nightshift there is gonna be important later.
i had tried to make friends with some of the people there that evening, and, being myself, I spoke very openly and honestly about my queerness and sexual history (or lack thereof), like a dumbass, and obliviously believed them when they said that I was one of the guys.
I later overheard them making plans to correctively rape me. Thankfully, I was on my way out to the hospital for my hip, so I notified day shift before I got into the ambulance.
I spent that night at the hospital, sleeping in a lobby chair (the hospital staff were very sympathetic to my situation, thankfully), and then called the crisis center that was attached to the transitional facility. managed to get taken into the crisis center, where i stayed for a couple of days. one of the guys who'd been making the plans ended up transferring into the same crisis unit, so that was a fuckin' blast to deal with. thankfully, the people at the crisis unit cared and did their jobs well, so i had eyes on me at all times and stayed safe.
eventually, i got sent back to the shelter i started at, then transferred back to the original crisis unit where people had been working on my case. i got some rest, got sick from eating gluten because i was so sleep deprived that i didn't care, then they got me into a much nicer shelter. i have a meeting with someone in about an hour and a half to try and get into a youth shelter, and I'm also going to attempt to contact some family members that might be more understanding and willing to help me while I pursue a group home.
I am very fucking tired, and despite everything that I've been through, I still wouldn't go back to my parents to save my life. Definitely gonna be a lot to unpack with my therapist.
o7
#byrd chirps#byrd's business#tw rape mention#tw sa mention#tw corrective rape mention#tw homelessness#tw ableism#also i have a theory about god that's like. you know i don't necessarily believe in him#but if there is a god i think my theory would be a kind way of looking at it
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*stares very aggressively , I’m foaming from the mouth.*
Howdy-hey! I’m here to pester you abt your works! So I reread “From your memory” and I was like wowza and then I wondered…
What was your inspiration? That concept was just entirely new to me and in the good old year of 2011 I was practically ascending bc I was so invested in the story and it was actually the first fic I ever read from you. (and I fell in love teehee) So what made you write that or inspired yo to do so? Did you have an original storyline that was scrapped, and or changed ?
You don’t have to answer any of this if you don’t want to btw :)
I answer all my asks (eventually lmao) fish! Especially yours!
Long answer under the cut because I'm incapable of giving a short answer. Information about my own fics are constantly on the tip of my tongue ready to be spilled out at their first opportunity, and I'm incapable of resisting.
From Your Memory was actually genuinely inspired by the song mention in the A/N of the first chapter, which is Paramore's Ignorance. This is also where the title comes from.
"I'm not the same kid from your memory
Well now I can fend for myself"
I listened to the original and acoustic version on loop. Basically what happened in teenage me's brain did was have an animatic in my head about how this song could figuratively apply to a fanfiction, developed the premise, and went from there.
This is gonna be really funny to explain because there's like legitimate scenes developed around individual lyrics in this song.
Ignorance sounds and sounded a lot to me like a dialogue. It sounded, to me, like one person was saying some parts, and one person was replying in a sort of escalating argument, but at least one party was 'ignorant' (huehuehuehue) of all the details about why they were even fighting in the first place. Based on that premise, the song will (hopefully) make more sense. I'm going to write the lyrics 'assigning' lyrics between two people, and tag them (1) or (2), depending on who I am is talking/replying, with 1 being Zim, and 2 being Gaz. I vividly imagined two people interrupting one another while fighting, hence a lot of the weird breaks.
This is gonna be so convoluted and I'm sorry ahead of time lmao.
Lyric Breakdown
(1) If I'm a bad person—
(2) You don't like me
(1) Well, I guess I'll make my own way
(1) It's a circle, a mean cycle
(1) I can't excite you anymore
Just on that dialogue, it's basically like. Zim starts off the story blaming himself for not being there when Gaz was injured, and wars between doing the easiest thing for Gaz, which is to shut up and pretend not to know her, or what he wants, which is to tell her the truth and re-involve himself in her life. Gaz is meanwhile obviously oblivious to his turmoil and is like "why are you even talking to me, you hate me." Zim of course originally chooses to aid her from the sidelines, but he's not happy about it. He essentially is "not allowed" to involve himself in her life anymore.
(1) Where's your gavel? Your jury?
(2) What's my offense this time?
(1) You're not a judge, but if you're gonna judge me
(1) Well, sentence me to another life
Zim's resentment about the situation continues, especially with Dib being irritated about Zim choosing to keep secrets and forcing him to go along with it. Gaz is still like "dude what the fuck is your problem??" while Zim continues to be extra pissy, wishing things were different.
(1) Don't wanna hear your sad songs
(1) I don't wanna feel your pain
(1) When you swear it's all my fault
(1) 'Cause you know we're not the same (no)
(2) We're not the same (no)
(2) Oh, we're not the same
(1) Yeah, the friends who stuck together
(1) We wrote our names in blood
(1) But I guess you can't accept that the change is good (hey)
(2) It's good (hey), it's good
At this point, Zim's dealing with being incapable of helping, desperately wanting to help Gaz, but not actually able to do so. He's just constantly watching her suffer without ever being able to help ease her pain.
Mentally, this was also just more arguing, but with Zim being forced to swallow the fact the meaningful friendship and borderline-relationship he and Gaz had developed is gone, and she's not interested in developing a new one the way he is. Things are different now. They simply aren't friends. He's done nothing for weeks but try to save her life, has had her literal blood on his hands, and now it doesn't even matter. He's got to move on, and he's got to continue to convince Dib that their situation has changed, and his idea is for the better. Lacking context, Gaz meanwhile is like dude take your angst and fuck off. She's also trying to convince herself that whatever is clearly happening behind the scenes, it doesn't matter, and she's better off keeping her head down.
(1) Well, you treat me just like another stranger
(1) Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
(1) I guess I'll go
(1) I'd best be on my way out
(2) You treat me just like another stranger
(2) Well, it's nice to meet you, sir
(2) I guess I'll go
(2) I'd best be on my way out
(1) Ignorance is your new best friend (x2)
This is also another parallel back and forth, with Zim still coming to terms with Gaz genuinely not knowing their formerly intense, meaningful relationship. It's more resentment about what he lost. It's meant really sarcastically and snidely. Gaz, for her part, means it really literally. She doesn't have any relationship with Zim aside from 'that guy my brother hates,' and blows him off.
And of course, "ignorance is your new best friend" is pretty straightforward in its meaning. Gaz isn't Zim's best friend anymore, and all she has to keep her company is her new amnesia.
For this next part, queue Membrane (3). The really fun part is after this analysis, if you wanna go back and listen to this song nearly entirely from a Gaz vs Membrane perspective, it also can fit! From a Membrane-centric perspective, if you think of Membrane as he sees himself (aka not in the wrong), needing praise from the public, shrugging off criticism since it's "for the greater good," etc with Gaz (and Dib) shoving back at his preconceptions, it's easy to hear the dialogue. But continuing on, this part was mentally Membrane for me:
(3) This is the best thing that could have happened
(3) Any longer and I wouldn't have made it
(3) It's not a war, no, it's not a rapture
(2) I'm just a person, but you can't take it
(2) The same tricks that, that once fooled me
(2) They won't get you anywhere
(2) I'm not the same kid from your memory
(2) Well, now I can fend for myself
This was more later in the story and/or right before Gaz lost her memory during her confrontation with Membrane, where Gaz knows what's going on, and Membrane's trying to convince her to cooperate anyways. Membrane is convinced this isn't something that needs to be difficult, while Gaz is warning him that she's dangerous now, has backup, and isn't going just hand over her independence at his whim.
Further Development
From that context, you can see that the story just kind of happened from there. I filled in the gaps. Why was Zim so mad at Gaz, and why wouldn't she know why he was mad at her? Originally, I wasn't sure who the (3)rd person in the lyrics was that Gaz was fighting with, but to me, it sounded like an authority figure. There's not a lot of those in the IZ universe, let alone one that Gaz would legitimately be threatened by, and eventually, it started to sound like an argument with someone gloating, and then someone who didn't even notice their gloating was actually cruel. They'd also have to be someone who Gaz knew since she was little. Someone she was invested in. Someone exactly like Professor Membrane. But then what would Gaz be arguing with dumb, well-meaning Professor Membrane about?
And thus, a metamorphosis occurred:
This is a meme I made awhile ago for my Discord friends when we discussing From Your Memory. It also makes me laugh every time I see it because it's really spot on to the vibes.
I started to consider the angle that Membrane was actually the bad guy, which, when you consider how many times 'evil mad scientist who think they're in the right' was fed to kids as a trope (and still is, tbh), it was an easy jump. And THAT was when the story really started kicking in.
This was around the time I started to hear the 'Dib is a clone' theories. If Dib was a clone, why couldn't Gaz be? If you were a scientist whose entire life was dedicated to advancement for the betterment of mankind, why would that just be relegated to advancement in technology? Why wouldn't someone just a liiiiiiittle off find themselves stumbling right into advancing the evolution of mankind as a species, too?
So then Gaz and Dib became experiments. And if you were going to make a boy and a girl, you could argue it'd just be the typical white picket fence dream of having a son and a daughter. But if you're me, and grew up in a religious environment, the creation of a man and woman as a pair sound less like siblings and more like Adam and Eve. And that's where the whole 'Gaz is an angel with wings' things came from.
The origin of evil!Professor Membrane was mostly that I thought that no one would ever see that twist coming, but reading back through it, I can definitely see small-me taking digs at my own super-scientist parent lmao.
Evil Membrane is also so incredibly fun just in and of itself. Professor Membrane is the guy above all guys in Invader Zim. He's respected, well-loved, commanding, imperial in so many ways.
I simultaneously started formulating this idea that Gaz had amnesia to keep her from being too OP and dunking on everyone. So the story pretty much fell into place after that. Obviously, the amnesia had to be caused by Membrane, to reset his 'experiment.' Dib and Gaz, as his own form of Adam and Eve, were abominations. Abominations tend to be malformed in some way, meaning they were imperfect creations. Dib was first, and therefore more of a prototype. It'd explain why he lacked Gaz's powers, why she tended to be smarter, stronger, etc in the show.
I also deeply loved the idea of Zim being in love with Gaz, while Gaz is completely indifferent in a way that was atypical than usual ZAGR stories (including MHNY). Zim wasn't fantasizing for a relationship that could be, but pining for a relationship that had been. It made their will-they-won't-they dynamic painful instead of lovey-dovey-ooey-gooey-sentimental, and ya bitch is always down to mix a good dollop of pain into my stories lmao.
Changes Down the Line
This one I'm gonna preface with to anyone reading this: don't go digging through my reviews. I'm too old and my bones are too tired to stir up shit, or incite drama.
I lost focus/desire to finish this story somewhere around I think when Gaz got kidnapped the first time (ch 19ish). I had a whole (now lost to time/deleted) chapter of her being in a warehouse, losing her shit, and breaking free via her powers.
ORIGINALLY, in a world where that version of the story happened instead of what's published, this was going to lead to Gaz being an actual, active threat to humanity incapable of controlling her powers. There was going to be a scene where Dib has to really debate on killing his own sister, or let her destroy the world in a fit of grief. Zim and Dib turned against one another because of it, with Zim fully willing to let her destroy as much of the Earth as he needs to as long as she stays alive.
It was undecided whether or not I was going to make Gaz kill Membrane, or just get really close. Most of the end of From Your Memory was me winging it and losing steam, so I was going back and forth on it.
However, I did know Dib would eventually manage to get close enough for the 'moment of truth,' so to speak, but find himself unable to actually kill his little sister. That moment of humanity would snap her back to cognizance. She'd realize just how much both Zim and Dib care for her in their individual ways, and sort of collapse. They'd eventually disappear, and the rest of story would play out pretty similarly to the published ending (assuming Membrane didn't die).
This all was scrapped legitimately because of one singular review.
Someone, and I genuinely do not remember who but I vaguely remember getting into it in my A/N's with them a few times, wrote this really rude review about how predictable the story was getting, and wrote out basically that it was obvious that Gaz was about to have a power freakout, how played out that was, blah blah blah. In 2011/2012 however, I was like 15, so instead of rolling my eyes and/or patting myself on the back for leaving enough narrative hints that the entirety of my story could be devised from what was already published, I got really mad lmao.
So in an effort to not be 'predictable' and prove that person 'wrong,' I deleted the entire chapter and rewrote it to what's now ch 20. That whole storyline was gone just cause one review really rubbed me the wrong way on the right day lmao. I think there's even an A/N even at the end of 20 that mentions offhand the scrapped rewrite.
As a reminder, this fic was finished over 10 years ago. I am not interested and would in fact be really irritated by anyone digging up the review to go harass someone who probably isn't even active on fanfiction anymore (I mean god, is anyone? Lmao). But that is what happened, and it is relevant to the question, so there.
Additionally, I was debating on writing out a few prequel chapters and inserting them somewhere in the story. Maybe 1 - 3(?) chapters written out, with a beginning, middle, and end of how Zim and Gaz's relationship developed. Like a lot of small, detailed flashbacks of when Zim first started treating Gaz, some middle bits when they stared falling for one another and really began to allow themselves to lean on one another, and then the final kiss scene, just before Gaz lost her memories.
I don't know quite remember where I intended to put that. I had vague ideas of Gaz being knocked out, those 1 - 3 chapters of flashback, and then her 'waking up' right after she slips into a coma, back in the present. These chapters were never written, partially because I couldn't figure out where to put them, and then by the time I got to scenes that could work for that kind of transition, I was really burning out with the story and just wanted to be done with it.
.
I think that's everything! Hopefully somewhere in this mess was a cohesive answer that answered your question! If I missed anything specific you were looking for, please let me know, and I'll be happy to answer! <3
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Dressup games my beloved! From click-n'-drag pixel dolls on a Neopets fan site, then flash games, then Gaia Online, and now Flight Rising, Love Nikki, and Piccrews. If you give me a thing to play pretty pretty princess dressup in by GOD will I ever use it.
That's my way of saying I'm going to share some of my Love Nikki outfits and nobody can stop me.
I'd put more of the pics behind a cut but it doesn't seem to let me do that and have pics grouped together.
Alternately if you just want to go right to the Google Photos albums, I have one for regular dressup and then one for the bi-weekly competition. Highest rank I've ended at is 14th, highest I've seen myself at is 4th. I usually place in the top 5%.
I'll put my thoughts about if you should play after the outfits, but in short: don't. I have fun, but that's in huge part because of the group I'm in & having already invested a huge amount of time and a not insignificant amount of money. This is part of my daily routine and the sunk cost fallacy has me by the throat.
So, my thoughts on the game.
I really can't recommend it in...basically any capacity? Despite being two years younger, the international server (English, French, a couple other languages) is about 10-15 paid currency events behind the original server, the Chinese one.
We're literally two years behind on story updates. It takes ages for QoL updates-- including updating the interface and home screens. They avoided bringing a big spending event (aka a hell) for so long it became a meme within the LN Discord. There's a general vibe that the devs & the original company don't really care about players much. And the story, despite being surprisingly interesting, is hamstrung by iffy translation and, again, slow as hell updates.
Hard to get invested in a story when it only updates every 8-10 months and is told in awkward, broken English. I can't speak to how it reads in the other languages on this server, but I'd bet it's not great.
Some choices are genuinely baffling. Why aren't they doing reruns of events? That's functionally free money for them! The assets, translation, and everything else is already done. Yes, some of them come back for crafting, but plenty haven't. I've been waiting over two years for a certain event to come back! If it showed up tomorrow I would complete it in a heartbeat!
There's hell reruns too, which seem to have stopped entirely.
Edit: OF COURSE THERE'S AN ANNOUNCEMENT FOR A HELL RERUN AS I WROTE THIS. STATEMENT RETRACTED, I FUCKING GUESS.
Yeah, it's great that we can actually save now instead of a constant stream of up to three events running concurrently! But this feels like it's too far in the other direction.
It feels downright janky at times, despite being big enough that there have been collaborations with Barbie and MOTHERFUCKING DISNEY! I don't think a dressup game can have a bigger jewel in their proverbial crown than official, licensed Disney princess outfits!
So, yeah. If you aren't already playing, don't start. It's not worth it. Admire from afar, maybe, but don't be suckered in.
#LoveNikki#LoveNikki critical#long post#I have no idea what the general vibe of LNblr is#here's hoping I didn't take a swing at a hornet's nest lmao
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7/20/23
Today has been... kinda crap, honestly. I didn't really do anything and I've been very depressed.
I woke up after 2 hours and had this dream that was... basically like a YouTube video but as though I was the camera. And it was in this style that's been growing in popularity of like... AI-generated scripts and storylines and dialogue and shit. And it just really upset me. This is really the next extension off of reality TV, where the primary goal is to produce as much "passable" script and material ("content") as possible to flood the market, to optimize your chances of getting views. Then... farm the ad revenue. Aka the new business model for entertainment media.
It upset me deeply because the theme branched off into... it being about how YouTube is blatantly and openly marketed towards families... read that as - marketed towards kids. So.... what I was seeing... was a generation of children being raised on stories that not only don't have any specific lesson to teach or moral to pass on... but are essentially just scraps of other stories mulched by an AI algorithm and pasted together as something passing as unique. Like that cheap particle board that all fucking furniture is made of nowadays, just chipped pieces of wood glued into a mass that looks like a board, that's covered in paper painted to look like woodgrain. And we're doing that... with the socialization and cultural education of an entire generation of children. And I fast-forwarded 20 years and imagined how that generation would grow up. And it made me really sad.
I don't really like this world, honestly. I don't like this culture. I don't know why everyone is in such a hurry all the time, or tries so hard to stay busy as much as possible. I don't know why we always need more more more, and need to push the edge further and further.
I really hope it's not everyone. I really hope there are people out there that are content with a simple life. That still appreciate someone taking the time to tell a story, or share their own story, or to make something by hand, out of real things. Rather than take short-cuts in order to mass-produce. I swear, any idea I have... I feel this social pressure to immediately ask myself "but how do I make 5000 of these?" Fucking why? Why the hell would I want to make 5000 copies of something unique and special? What does that contribute?
The more I see people content in imitation, the more it makes me feel like... the world doesn't really have a place for what I feel compelled to do.
And yeah, I guess I'm kinda in a depressive existential rut right now. I didn't paint the board today. I just kept putting it off and never came back to it. I added a second coat of wax to the beads, I'll see how they look tomorrow.
I'm just... kinda exhausted and depressed and weighed down. And that just kinda turned into a day of sitting around and watching YouTube. I wish I had been more deliberate about the decision to take the day off, I wouldn't feel so bad about it.
I just don't really know what my place is here. And I'm getting a lot of conflicting ideas pouring into my life about... setting goals. Like... a lot of the "live Here and Now" stuff is very contrary to making life plans. So... if you're truly living in the moment... why would you ever apply for a college program? Why would you ever sign a lease? Why would you plan a long-term decision... like taking courses for qualification in a career path. What's the point? Because you're supposed to just... do whatever comes your way and make the best of it. Because setting goals leads to suffering. Even if you achieve your goals, it's never what you want, and the gain is fleeting and then... gone. Where true bliss is being in the moment and making the most of it. So... what's the point of aspirations?
I don't know. I have a lot of conflicting ideas floating around in my head, and that combined with... feeling like I don't have a lot to show for my efforts...
Okay, here's the core of it. My work is my contribution to society. As a member of society, of Life, of the history of the Universe... my contributions are my work. My words, my stories, my thoughts, my experiences, my poetry, my music, my drawings, my paintings, my creations. It feels like society doesn't want them. Any of them. And they are direct reflections of me, just as a writer's writing is a direct reflection of the way they communicate. I don't feel valued. I don't feel... wanted? I feel like a burden on society.
I just smelled a skunk. XD What a wake-up call! Talk about "not valued by society..." Hey, at the end of the day? People are more willing to tolerate me "wasting" all my time painting designs on skateboards or polishing rocks or wooden beads... than they are tolerant of just letting a skunk live its fucking life. So... I guess I can count myself as lucky?
Ever since I truly applied myself to reconnect with my artist-self 5 years ago, and kicked my own ass out of critical creative block... I have been constantly pressured by every source around me to simply do ANYTHING else. I've even asked, what do they want me to do other than this? Because I've really felt this sense of urgency from them... as though my vacancy from where I'm "supposed to be in society" is causing problems in the mechanical function of society. As though others are suffering because I'm choosing to make art instead of... deliver pizzas? Am I supposed to be stocking shelves at a soon-to-be-extinct brick and mortar shoe store? Am I supposed to be checking out groceries at a grocery store right next to the self-checkout? Am I supposed to be prepping vegetables for the chef of a trendy vegetarian restaurant? Am I supposed to be helping customers at a board game shop? Where am I supposed to be? And the resounding feedback I have gotten has been essentially, "yes, any of those, literally anything but what you're compelled to do with your existence." It makes me wonder... if my compulsion as a human was to... teach... or cook... or repair cars... rather than make eclectic art and dabble in spiritual practices and write a ridiculous amount of stream of consciousness journaling every night... Would I have gotten support? Or would I have gotten the same message? To just pick literally anything else, because fuck me. To go work for someone else, who did have social support, who did have investors, who did have customers, who people were willing to take a "risk" on. Who society gave the thumbs up to.
Yep, whenever I talk like this... the depression is hitting hard.
I just don't really know what to do with my time. I have so many ideas that I really would love to just sink all my time into every day... but it just seems like... like I'm talking to a wall with every piece I make. Like none of my accomplishments and achievements mean anything at all to any other living being. Like my contributions to society are entirely meaningless.
Yep, that's definitely depression. And isolation. Yep. I'm not gonna feed that beast anymore, he got his fill. I'm gonna go take a late-night shower and try to watch something funny to cheer up before sleep. Therapy tomorrow, after 3 weeks of isolation. 1 hour of real human interaction. We'll see how it goes.
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everyone who told me to drink something i now have sambuca in a water bottle are you not entertained
#funny story actually#you know those 50 ml bottles of absolut vodka you can get#well ages ago i had like 2 shots worth left in a sambuca bottle and i was like#'am i fuck carrying around a whole sambuca bottle'#so i downed the 50ml of vodka and put it in THAT bottle instead#and i've just carried around this sambuca-in-a-vodka-bottle for EASILY 3 months now#and it's like my emergency bottle that i've just never cracked into#and i also have this fucking crate in my room#this fucking bright red crate with an explosives sign on the side and a massive hole in it that i got at an antique place#and it's where i store all my alcohol (my mum is clueless that this is what i use it for and i fear the day she finds out the truth)#and i was rooting through it bc i was like yeahh how we feeling out there tonight yeah i am not feeling good-#and found this mango flavour prosecco mixer that i have NO MEMORY of obtaining???#so yeah to cut a long fucking story short i now have myself an entire Drink#don't yell at me i'm doing my best out here
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I hear everything about spn through Tumblr but whaaaat exactly happened with Sam? Why don't people like the actor anymore? I've noticed people censoring the actor's name but I haven't seen anything to indicate why that is :/
the short version is that the series finale cut out castiel completely and not only killed dean but largely minimized him through the whole episode to focus entirely on sam, which viewers theorized and pretty much were ultimately proven right in theorizing that all of this was a slimy effort to prioritize jared padalecki to promote his new show walker. the head of the cw went on about how they think jared is their golden goose and they want to bet on him being a success.
re: the finale, jared was quoted as saying that dean’s (meaningless, accidental) death was a “success story” because it allowed sam to live a ~normal life~, which, considering that dean has dealt with suicidal ideation for years, sends a HORRIBLE message to mentally ill people that your loved ones would be better off if you just died. this is compounded by the fact that jared has for years had a campaign called “always keep fighting” that’s supposed to support mentally ill people.
the finale also completely ditched sam’s season-long love interest eileen, who was not only loved by fans but notable for being a deaf woman played by a deaf actress. instead sam was paired with “blurry wife”, a woman seen in the distance who served no purpose except to birth a male child. in an interview jared approved of sam not being paired with eileen and claimed that dean wouldn’t have wanted sam to marry eileen because she was “part of the life” (monster hunting) and compared her to another love interest sam had, a demon who corrupted sam and used him to summon satan. that’s pretty fucked up. it seems like eileen was removed from the finale for no reason besides ableism and jared did nothing to fight that.
all of this aside, jared is the one who came up with the concept for walker (a reboot of the chuck norris tv show walker, texas ranger) and said that he came up with the idea for the show when reading an article about a border patrol agent who resigned because he was conflicted about putting migrant children in cages. jared apparently took from this story that he should make a tv show about cop who is ~conflicted~ about balancing his duty and his humanity.
yeah, the guy read a story about migrant children put in cages and decided he wanted to make a show sympathetic to the sort of people who put them in cages. and from the way he’s talked about it, he seems to actually think he’s being progressive in doing it, because, i guess, the cops are conflicted about what they’re doing instead of just roundhouse kicking people in the face.
jared has done a lot of dumb shit over the years that made people dislike him, like a couple years ago when he got drunk and assaulted a couple people in a restaurant, but all of this is what sent a lot of people (such as myself) from the position of “he seems like a kind person who fucks up” to “no actually, fuck that whole guy.”
i can understand saying dumb things and making mistakes, but he’s displayed inexcusable racism as well as ableism, and apparently allowed the cw to fuck over his friends to further his own career.
okay that turned out to not be so short, but yeah that’s why people hate him now.
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Okay, wow, never in my life did I think a music video involving giving Satan a lap dance would delve into a conversation about gay rights ( and how gay men are portrayed in media ), but Lil Nas X broke the world with MONTERO, so here I am. We’ve got three things here that I think are important - Internet culture, religion, sexuality. These are the things that I think people are getting too uptight over/not upset enough over, and I wanna rant for a bit, so bear with me on this one.
First, I LOVED MONTERO. I’m a whore for religious imagery/theming/etc. being used in media, and as a former Christian and an openly gay woman, it makes me very happy to see it used in a spiteful manner. MONTERO was gorgeous - sexual, unapologetic, and so clearly pulling straight from Biblical stories. The religion used commonly against us ( here in the US, at least, because I know other religions can be just as oppressive, if not worse, and Christianity isn’t the dominant religion everywhere ) being used in a way that’s expressive of our lives is beautiful. The very clear message of “Oh, I’m going to hell? That’s okay,” is perfect - for so many LGBT people in this country, we’ve been told that we’re condemned to eternal punishment because of something we can’t help. LNX took that in stride and made it art, with MONTERO and the video. I am in full support of it and will be throwing it on my horny playlist.
But here’s why I think this is so important - MONTERO’s release has exposed, in my opinion, where the real issues lie in Western culture. WAP did this too, a little - both of these songs, and their accompanying videos, were criticized using children. “Children watch you”, “how could you expose kids to this”, etc. were complaints hurled at Cardi B and LNX over their music. And in LNX’s case, people used his previous success with Old Town Road - I saw one tweet saying Old Town Road is “every kid’s anthem”, and that their children love Old Town Road. Which is problematic - how can you complain about MONTERO, but allow your child to listen to a song with lyrics such as “Lean all in my bladder”, “Cheated on my baby, you can go and ask her”, “Bull riding and boobies” - Old Town Road is not a child-friendly song by any means, but LNX didn’t include naked breasts, or ( as far as I’m aware ) market the song in a way that showcased those lyrics. So parents let their children enjoy their funny horse song, never looking into the words their kids were hearing daily. But with MONTERO, because they saw at a glance that it was an issue, they assumed this meant the previously “child-friendly” artist LNX, the man behind the funny horse song, was suddenly trying to indoctrinate their children. When in reality, LNX has never catered to kids. He’s always been open about his music and himself, and it’s entirely the parents’ faults for not better monitoring what media their children take in. It is never the responsibility of the creator to change their content for an audience they didn’t want. MONTERO, and WAP, both exposed just how internet culture has allowed parents an excuse to be lazy, hands-off pieces of shit, and demonize creators further.
MONTERO also exposed how homophobia continues to follow us, in how many comments there were calling LNX predatory, claiming he was indoctrinating children and pushing agendas - and, with Kaitlin Bennet’s actual racist comments, now he’s being slandered. ( if you didn’t see that beef, TLDR: Kaitlin asked “do you still see your dad?” w/ blatant intent to hurt, LNX replied with “yeah and I’ll fuck yours”, to which Kaitlin accused him of threatening to rape her father and several small, conservative ‘journalists’ ran with it ). I don’t like throwing around the word homophobia, but this isn’t new - gay men have been called predatory for a long time and demonized for even small gestures like holding hands. And now, an openly gay man made a video celebrating his sexuality ( which isn’t a new topic: look at any music video from the early 2000s for more examples of people expressing sexuality ) and given fuel to these idiots to continue pushing their narrative of “gay man predator, gay man bad”. Fortunately, it’s a lot less than it would’ve been thirty years ago. But the fact that it still happens on this scale, enough that journalists pick it up as a story, and governors, Candace Owens and other prominent homophobic conservative figures jump on the bandwagon....it’s sad. A man celebrating his sexuality shouldn’t be demonized the way it is, and MONTERO is doing an amazing job at spitting in people’s faces.
Cutting myself short here, I think MONTERO was a gift. It’s a work of art in many ways, but the social response it generated is also a blessing in that it shows what we need to prioritize - which is self responsibility. No one is forcing you to watch the gay man give Satan a lap dance, nor are they forcing you to buy his shoes. No one will ever force you into that - you, a consenting adult/teenager, willingly watched it. You’re reading this now of your own choice. If your child is watching MONTERO, you should blame yourself if you’re mad - why didn’t you monitor them better? Teach them to avoid things they don’t recognize online? You failed as a parent to protect your child from what you deem harmful. That isn’t anyone’s fault except your own as their active guardian.
Sex, talking about sex, grinding, lap dances....those aren’t new to music videos. They’ve been happening for decades, actually - early 90’s and 2000’s videos had a lot, and I think some 80’s had them. MONTERO didn’t invent NSFW music videos, the only difference is it’s gay and dared to use religious imagery ( which also isn’t new, but that’s another rant I don’t want to get into ). For once, I actually agree with the masses - this outrage was mostly fueled by homophobia and dumb Christians. And to any Christians reading this ( that didn’t get offended, because if you got genuinely upset by this drama, fuck you ); you’re cool.
Anyways, yeah. I think MONTERO was awesome, LNX killed it as always, and I hate conservatives. Goodnight.
#lil nas x#lnx#I sound like an sjw#but in a good way#might burn down a church later idk#Davey sleepy rants
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“Are you in love with him?” - Tony Stark Imagine
Notes: I wrote and editted this in two hours instead of going over my notes. Was gonna be spicy fluffy but it just turned into fluffy, and one of the lines/paragraphs (smth like that i dont remember how long that segment was) is based on/inspired by a fanfic on ao3 I bookmarked. I think it’s debt-free, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and I’m so sorry im not on here more oftennnnn
- - -
“Of course I am. He’s Tony Stark.” You sighed, a weight finally lifted off your chest. “Who isn’t in love with him?”
Bruce blinked a few times, the confusion evident on his face. “Then, why don’t you tell him?”
You scoffed. These geniuses think they know everything, but they couldn’t see what was glaringly obvious to you. “He’s Tony Stark.”
The perplexed expression didn’t disappear from your friend’s expression. So, you explained further, “It’s already a privilege, beyond that really, to be talking to you, to any Avenger. To work with any of you is an honor, and to be friends with you” -you laughed- “it shouldn’t even be possible for someone like me.”
“Don’t say that. You’re amazing, too.”
You tried to find any tick, any clue that he was lying. But Bruce seemed to really believe this. “I know I’m amazing.” You shrugged. “I’m great. I love and I care deeply, and I have a stable job. I have a place for myself, and I take care of myself.” You clicked your tongue. “However, you all, all you Avengers… Forget out of my league, more like off planet.
“And Tony? He said it himself. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Add superhero, figurehead, public figure, ex-CEO, and savior of the universe. Bruce, I have confidence in myself, but Tony is something else entirely. No one is worthy of him or his affections unless they’re a god or another Avenger.”
It was hard to keep up with the statistical analysis you were trying to run. The literal one on your hologram and the one keeping your view of Tony in check. So, defeated, you sighed and leaned back in your chair.
Bruce closed his own work and stood across the lab bench. “Weirdly enough, I’m sure none of us Avengers think that way.” After a few taps of his pen against his palm, he added, “Aren’t there fans making posts about you, too? Tony showed me the, uh, Instagram videos.”
You laughed. “Fan edits don’t make an Avenger. Saving the world does.”
He shrugged. “You help us save the world.”
“From inside Avengers Tower on a computer.” You took a deep breath. “Look, Bruce, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But, I’m not telling him.” You shrugged and brought your statistical analysis back up.
You knew your own worth. You were worthy of an amazing partner and person. Tony Stark, though, was easy beyond that. You had accepted it soon after you realized your own feelings, and while they haven’t dwindled, you knew it was for the best.
~ - ~
Tony had never resorted to this before. It was never a question of his ability to code. In the past, it was because he didn’t need a program or an AI to do it for him. He could always tell if someone was into him. He knew when Pepper was into him. The moment Rhodey gazed at him back in their MIT days. Every single reporter and heiress and model he slept with, he knew when their thoughts turned sexual or romantic.
You, though. With you, he couldn’t fucking tell, and he knew it was because of his own feelings. Tony felt intensely for people before. Pepper, Rhodey, that one reporter all those years ago. However, with you, it wasn’t just that fluttery feeling in his gut or the immediate smile he can’t seem to stop when he sees you. It was the comfort he felt when he heard your voice or the softness he could feel in his heart when he saw a picture of you.
It was like his entire life was full of panic, never resting, never stopping. But when you entered his life with a gentle smile and a quick wit, it felt like he could finally breathe.
It was addicting.
“Sir, I have the calculations.”
“Hit me.”
“Speech diagnostics of you and of Ms. (Y/l/n) are similar. Whenever you speak of her, 79.4% is positive and 18.8% is neutral. Ms. (Y/l/n) has 78.9% positive and 17.2% neutral dialogue regarding you. When she speaks of you, her heartrate increases by 4.6%, and similarly, yours increases by 4.1%. When speaking to each other, heartrate initially increases by 7%.”
Tony nodded. “How does this compare to other Avengers? I gush about Banner like a teenager.”
“Well, sir, while you and Ms. (Y/l/n) have high positive dialogue about other Avengers, all of them have at least a 10% decrease compared to each other. And heartrate varies depending on the topic of conversation.”
Tony snapped his fingers. “Am I excluding all non-super friends? Include any agents, co-workers. Pep isn’t an Avenger after all.”
Friday took two seconds and responded. “You and Ms. (Y/l/n) have a significant difference in speech diagnostics when talking about or to each other compared to any other Avenger, co-worker, and friend.”
When Tony remained quiet, Friday added, “Do you want me to repeat the results?”
“You don’t need to, Friday.”
“But you’re not doing anything with the new information. Would you like me to save these findings?”
“Friday,” Tony warned.
There was silence as the love-wrecked scientist pressed his fist between his brows. Data and cold hard facts said yes, but was it right?
“Sir?”
“Yes, Fri?”
“Would you like me to play examples for you?”
He blinked. “Examples?”
“Yes. Of you and her talking about each other positively.”
It was an invasion of privacy. Tony shouldn’t.
“Play examples.”
Before his rational mind could tell Friday no.
“Are you in love with him?”
Tony’s eyes widened. This was too private. It might not even be about him.”Friday-”
“Of course I am.”
“-stop playback.”
“He’s Tony Sta-”
“Playback stopped.”
Tony scrambled. “What? No, wait, go back. Play it.” Screw rational. You knew he was a narcissist. You wouldn’t expect him to hear that and stop.
“He’s Tony Stark. Who isn’t in love with him?”
“Then, why don’t you tell him?”
“... He’s Tony Stark.”
Tony started to fiddle with something on his desk. “What does that mean?”
Friday answered, “Dr. Banner asked her if she loved you, and she said yes. This means that she’s in love with you.”
Why did he program Friday like this? “I know that. I mean, those two lines. Why does me being Tony Stark stop her from saying something?” Was it the attention? Did you want some sort of normal life away from cameras and international gossip? Maybe it was the Avenging. Having a partner who was always out risking death wasn’t ideal.
Sure, you could be in love with him. But you couldn’t be with him.
“Maybe you should ask her.”
There were celebrities who were able to live normal lives. Some paid to have prosthetics for going outside of moved to a remote country to get out of the spotlight. He thrived off attention, but he could give that up. Avenging, he couldn’t give that up, but maybe he could cut back. Take a mission a month instead of one a week. Or maybe take more digital missions. He wasn’t just Iron Man after all. He was a genius, could hack into the Pentagon if he really wanted to.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe I could talk to her.”
~ - ~
The moment you put your bag down on your lab table, Tony said, “You’re gonna be mad.”
You narrowed your brows. “What did you do?” You pressed your palm to your chest. “Oh my god, Peter overwrote my data, didn’t he? Ugh, I know he said he’s great at managing holograms, but really, Tone, you should’ve given him a tutorial before giving him access.” You brought up your holograms to check your data and analysis.
“That’s not it.” Tony stood next to you as you looked through your files. “I did something that invaded your privacy.”
You tilted your head. Closing the holograms, you took a deep breath and slowly asked, “How?”
Tony flashed an embarrassed grin before sighing. “You’re gonna be shocked, too, so prepare yourself.”
You did not know where this was going at all. What horrible thing could Tony have done? Steeling yourself, you took a deep breath and nodded at him to continue.
Tony cleared his throat. “Usually, I can tell when someone has feelings for me. People are obvious about it, but you? You aren’t. So, I had Friday do some analysis on our speech patterns. Me, being in love with you, was one of my controls. You and your dialogue regarding me was the main variable.
“Long story short, I accessed some audio of you and Bruce talking, and you said that you loved me but could never tell me.” He glanced at you. “So that’s why I need to apologize.”
Your expression didn’t change. No, that wasn’t it. You, at first, looked confused. Now, there was just nothing. No expression. No wrinkled brow in anger of flushed cheeks in embarrassment. Nothing.
Tony blinked. “You can shout at me now. If you were confused about when to shout at me.”
You licked your lips before taking a deep breath. “Ok, that was a lot.” You pursed your lips then opened it. But, you couldn’t really think of anything to say. You didn’t even know how to feel. “So you know that I” -you pointed at yourself and then at him- “and that I didn’t wanna tell you.” You shook your head. “Wait, do you know why I didn’t want to tell you?”
A broken scoff left Tony’s lips. “Yeah. I’m a mess.”
It was your turn to scoff. “Wait, you’re a mess? That’s why you think I don’t want to tell you?”
“Among other reasons?”
Other reasons?
You crossed your arms. “Ok, what other reasons?”
Tony looked offended. Still, he listed, “I’m surrounded by cameras, and everyone wants some privacy. Can’t get it if you’re with me. Then, there’s the Iron Man of it all. I went into a wormhole with a nuke. That was also all over the news. Then, there’s the whole daddy issues thing. I’m working on it, but it takes a while-”
He rambled on and on, listing reason after reason, and with each one, you felt tears well up in your eyes. It was a weird mix of heartbreaking, confusing, and enraging. The emotions built up slowly with each word that left his mouth, overwhelming you to the point that you couldn’t even say how it happened.
But, as Tony paced and talked so horribly about himself, you somehow ended up in front of him with your hands on his cheeks.
You only realized it when Tony stopped talking and when his breath touched your lips. “What?” he asked.
You didn’t answer. You kissed him instead.
It was a hard press of your lips against his. It was short, and it wasn’t much.
But by the way Tony gripped the back of your neck and pulled you back for another kiss, you’d think it was his first kiss. You knew it wasn’t. Not just because you knew he had kissed all sorts of people before you, but because he somehow knew how to make you gasp and melt into him.
While one hand kept you steady, the other trailed down your back and pulled you closer to him. His lips moved fluidly against yours, pushing and pulling, and everytime he moved back, you chased his lips to continue the kiss, because the softness, the passion, the fact it was finally happening, was all too good. You didn’t want it to stop.
Your hands started to move. For someone so rich, his t-shirt was rough when you twisted it between your fingers and pulled it to you. Slowly, you trailed your fingers along the side of his neck. You rubbed your thumb along his pulse point, a reminder that this was indeed real. You were kissing Tony Stark, and- He was pulling away again.
Desperate, you leaned forward, reached around to hold onto his shoulder, and kissed the side of his neck.
He let out a breathy laugh, and before you could suck on his skin, his stubble scratched your cheek.
You looked up at him and giggled when his nose bumped into yours. When your giggles turned into a smile, he kissed you again, a soft and short kiss, before leaning his forehead against yours.
His thumbs rubbed circles into your waist as you lightly scratched the back of his neck. He didn’t say anything. In fact, he seemed busy gazing at you.
“Speechless, Stark?” you teased.
He laughed. For a few seconds, he just gazed at you, seeming to prove your point. Tony’s hand began to wander, from stroking your cheek to pushing back your hair. “More confused.”
Remembering why you interrupted him, you brought your hands to his cheeks again and held him there so he couldn’t look away from you. “You are amazing, Tony. That’s the reason I didn’t want to tell you.” You shrugged. “You’re too good for me.”
His fidgeting stopped. “Well, that’s not true.”
“Tony, you’re an Avenger.”
“Technically, you are also an Avenger.”
“You’re a genius.”
“Who can’t cook scrambled eggs.”
“You literally saved the universe.”
“After producing weapons of mass destruction for decades.”
You glared at him.
He glared back. Then, he fought back. “I don’t plan on retiring.”
“Wouldn’t want you to.”
“I have severe PTSD, anxiety, maybe ADHD, all mixed with trauma galore.”
“And I will learn to help you.”
“I couldn’t give you a normal life.”
“I’d rather have you anyway.”
He opened his mouth, but you instead told him, “I’d rather have you than anything. As long as, well, for as long as you’ll have me.”
He raised his eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
Tony shook his head with a smile. “Cause, I’d rather have you for, well, how does til you get tired of me sound?”
You laughed. “Won’t happen. But, sure.” You kissed him again.You would’ve kept going, but there was something to settle first. “By the way, Tony?”
“Yeah?”
“Is Friday recording right now?”
“Friday records everything. It’s in the contract.”
Friday added, “I record everything that happens in the tower.”
“Ok.” You could work with that. “I’ll forgive you for the invasion of privacy.”
Tony beamed, and you couldn’t help your own smile when he did. Still, you continued, “On one condition.” Your own smile turned devious. “I want evidence that Star Spangled Banner took my ice cream.”
Tony burst out laughing. He kissed you again, a deep kiss, and when he was done, he mumbled, “God, I love you,” against your lips.
#tony stark x reader#tony stark imagine#tony stark oneshot#tony stark#mcu x reader#mcu imagine#mcu oneshot#tony stark fluff#im so sorry im not on here oftennnnnnnnnnnn#dentla schools too busy and i dont wike it#thats not true i do like it its just busy and stressful and doesnt give me time to write#and smut takes me longer to write than fluff#so i can only write fluff rnnnnnn#anyway i miss you all#love you all#hope the universe treats you welllll
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BnHA 326: What’s up Kids, It’s Me, Your Old Pal Stain
Previously on BnHA: Ochako shamed the U.A. Clown Mob into letting Deku go back inside his own fucking school by giving them an hour-long speech about how not to be humongous dickheads. Kouta and Gigantic Fox Lady saved the manga by being the only ones brave enough to give Deku a hug. Shouto was all “man, all this togetherness sure does remind me of that promise you made that we would handle Touya together which you immediately bailed on, doesn’t it, Dad.” Aizawa was all, “for the one and a half people out there who thought that my losing an eye and a leg might actually make me less sexy, I’m very happy to prove you wrong.” All Might was all, “[standing outside the U.A. fortress alone in the rain talking to someone or something??].” Like seriously, what was up with that though.
Today on BnHA: All Might is all “here I am in Kamino having a belated mid-life crisis because Deku abandoned me and I’m a terrible mentor and everything sucks and I hate myself.” Stain is all, “don’t make me come over there and give you a ten page speech about why you’re still the goat while menacingly holding you at swordpoint the entire time” because idk if you knew this guys, but Stain is pretty crazy actually. Anyway so he does that, and then All Might gets all emotional, and then the lady from chapter 92 shows up and gives All Might’s statue an encouraging pep talk, and then Horikoshi is all “and it even stopped raining lol can you believe this shit I’m not even a little bit subtle,” and he really isn’t. But I still got emotional anyway, because seeing people reassure All Might that everything he’s struggled for his entire life hasn’t been in vain just got to me okay. Horikoshi knows I am weak to the All Might feels and he just goes for the jugular every time, that bastard.
lmao. “in the neverending downpour, All Might is...” yeah, thank you, glad we’re getting right to that then
“All Might is driving 95 mph in his busted ass car in the pouring rain, is what he’s doing.” huh
so basically a day or two after his adopted child refused to accept the handmade bento that he packed with love, my man is out here acting like he’s got nothing to live for anymore. this sure bodes well for certain prophecies on which the clock is still ominously ticking down
his fucking face though omg. is it weird that I’m kind of hoping more people ambush him just because I think it’d be funny to see them get their asses kicked like the last bunch
(ETA: or maybe he will just stand there openly not giving a fuck and basically daring them to stab him!! get it together please All Might.)
side note, “anti-hero supporters” is such a strange way of saying “people who hate heroes”, which I’m assuming is what they actually wanted to say?? this makes it sound like it’s a group that really loves antiheroes. “these Hannibal stans have been a real menace lately. time to go deal with them”
ha ha ha, fucking ouch
are you really gonna do it Horikoshi you bastard. are you really going to let that be the final encounter between the two characters whose relationship you once described as the vertical axis of the entire fucking story. are you really gonna?? huh??
huh
you’re telling me you were driving 112 mph and you still didn’t get there in time. you’re losing your touch old man. lol Todo’s ice is almost fully melted already, how late were you
(ETA: so apparently this is taking place after the end of chapter 325, meaning he went to U.A., hung out for a bit, saw the kids come back with his bedraggled half-dead protégé in tow, watched as they shamed the civilians into some long-overdue character development, and then was all “welp, time to go argue with the hero-hating faction or something because I’m feeling useless.” and Edge just let him go, just like that. though to be fair I have to imagine it’s pretty hard to say no to All Fucking Might.)
also belated lol at the fact that the kids were all “yeahhhhhhh we are definitely not gonna touch that thing, let’s just leave it here, he doesn’t need it anyway.” probably the right call to make since they couldn’t get a hazmat team on such short notice
fuck. ha ha ha fucking ouch part two
All Might please put that thing down before you get gangrene. also yeah, you dropped the ball, good for you to acknowledge it. nobody’s perfect and you did your best. but yeah you could have handled a lot of things completely differently. but I still love you
is Horikoshi really putting this flashback here. are you serious. what kind of fucking sadist
look, I swear I’m not one of those people that runs up and down the street shouting “DEATH FLAG!!” at every third panel lol. but this shit screamed Death Flag when we originally got it, and it’s screaming DEATH FLAG!!! even more now. like with the capital letters and exclamation marks and all. and that’s just a fact. I don’t like it but that’s how it is
ffkdjslk
“DID YOU READ THE SIGN??!” Horikoshi asks while zooming in maniacally because he thinks we’re blind or something. lol what
-- though actually, it only just occurred to me that this sign is actually written in English. I never really paid attention up until now and had been assuming it was written in Japanese and translated by the scanlators, but the writing here is clearly part of the original image. anyway so maybe that’s why he’s zooming in?? just to make sure everybody pays attention lol
okay fuck this
see, this is the whole problem right here. once again All Might is all on his own. Deku’s self-destructive angst spiral was fortunately brought to a grinding halt because he actually has support from his friends and family and teachers and classmates. but All Might never had that same kind of support, and it’s made all the difference between the two of them, and not in a good way. Katsuki wasn’t wrong when he said All Might and Deku were both cut from the same cloth. but now when it’s All Might’s turn to go all “I WALK A LONELY ROAD~~” once again, there’s nobody in sight
just, after forty plus years of him carrying this torch, I just wish someone would finally come along to let him know he doesn’t have to. all those things that he wanted to say to Deku are also things that he needs and deserves to hear himself. Aizawa was making a little progress there, but now he’s got his sad zombie cloud boyfriend situation to deal with, and we can’t expect him and his perfect hair to solve all our problems. someone else has gotta step up
oh my god
“you rang?” never mind I take it all back sob
omg why am I laughing. shit
this man truly has the best PR game in the series. we were truly convinced he was gonna suddenly become a good guy and defend All Might against the other villains or some nonsense. as if this wasn’t the same man who decided on a whim that Iida Tensei deserved to be paralyzed, and that his fifteen-year-old brother deserved to die for daring to be upset about it
lol even All Might is all “I genuinely never saw this coming” lmao
just want to say, for the record, I have always harbored a very sensible hatred toward Stain. feeling very vindicated right now. good job Past Me
adsfklwkfsdwgkj
ffffwefjslkg. ghsdlkg. dsfkkkslkjldwkjrg
STAIN: heard you talking shit old man
ME: smh that’s what I thought you’d say you dumb fucking Stain
STAIN: how dare you talk about All Might that way
ME: gljfljgk
(ETA: in hindsight I have no idea how I didn’t clue in sooner that he didn’t recognize him -- or, well, ~didn’t recognize~ him, to be more accurate lol. I think it was the whole “is that a slight against the heroes?” thing that threw me. Viz’s translation makes it much clearer that he’s offended on behalf of All Might specifically, not heroes in general. anyways.)
sob. so All Might is all “yeah I don’t blame you for not recognizing me in this sweet leather jacket”
good thing he still knows how to do this party trick
A+ reflexes on Stain’s part presumably pulling the sword back a few inches to keep this dumbass from impaling himself with his whole pufferfish routine. can you imagine if that was the gruesome death Nighteye foresaw. and he was just too embarrassed to say anything
lol anyways guess I was wrong about Stain everyone
way to fucking go, Past Me. you really biffed this one
oh wait
Stain sure is one wacky rollercoaster ride
oh fuck me lol I forgot how much I did not miss this
(ETA: “this here is the sacred ground where All Might gave up the last of his power and turned into a shriveled old man!! please ignore the part where I admit to knowing all about that, and yet pretend not to recognize said man when he’s standing two feet in front of me.”)
Past Me, I know we’ve had our ups and downs these past ninety seconds, but I’m really starting to think you were on to something. this dude has always been kind of insufferable. always acting like his high horse is a fucking giraffe when it’s actually a Shetland pony
dammit now he’s got All Might going off on a depressed monologue
oh my god my heart
shit
why the fuck does that hit so hard. he became a hero because he couldn’t bear to just sit back and let bad things happen to people who didn’t deserve it. I mean that’s basically the same as every hero ever, right? so why does it still hit so fucking hard every single time though. what is it about seeing someone so determined to stand up for other people and fight on their behalf. it just never loses its impact no matter how many times I see that determination mirrored in so many of my favorite characters
“I wanted to make the world a better place.” omg. but you did, though. like seriously, I feel like people are always dogging on him for not being 100% perfect, and fandom really doesn’t give him enough credit for everything he still managed to accomplish. this man came of age at a time when Japan was by all accounts a total shitshow, and singlehandedly managed to bring about an era of peace that lasted for four fucking decades. can you imagine having peace for that long?? that’s longer than I’ve been alive. shit
and he gave people hope. he inspired them and protected them and made them feel safe. and no, he couldn’t save everyone, because he’s only one fucking dude (and also because the whole time AFO was also out there desperately working to undermine him so that he could keep preaching his narrative of “heroes are bad actually”). but you know what he did do, is inspire multiple new generations of heroes who, if they can all manage to work together, will finally be able to accomplish everything he never could
so yeah. forty years of peace, and inspired the “that’s how we all became the greatest heroes” generation -- that’s a fucking win in my book. talk about having a net positive impact on the world. lol anyways now I’m all fired up and ready to fight anyone who tries to talk any shit about you, All Might
“but what if I talk shit about myself” okay listen up All Might I’m gonna need you to try just a little bit harder to work with me here okay. please calm down and stop blaming yourself for every single bad thing that’s ever happened in the world. do you remember that time Bakugou was blaming himself for Kamino, and you gave him a hug and told him it wasn’t his fault, and that he was only a boy, and that even though he was strong, even strong people can struggle with the burdens they place on themselves, and that you were sorry for not seeing that earlier? do you remember all of that? that’s what I want someone to tell you too, dammit. anyway please stop breaking my heart please and thanks
wtf
are you dead All Might
um
I don’t even have the slightest idea what’s happening lol
oh snap did he grab him so they could hide??
hold the fucking phone. don’t tell me this person in the background with the umbrella is here to actually do something decent??
oh my godddd
and here come the feels. oh boy. okay don’t mind me, I’m just gonna sit here sobbing over this fictional lady and her simple act of kindness in this weekly shounen manga that I care about way too much
FUCKING DAMMIT AND HERE’S A SECOND HELPING
DON’T MIND ME, I’M JUST GETTING DISPROPORTIONATELY EMOTIONAL OVER THIS WOMAN’S DETERMINATION TO HONOR A MAN WHO SACRIFICED EVERYTHING TO SAVE HER AND COUNTLESS OTHERS. I’M JUST HAVING SOME FEELS OVER HERE ABOUT HER HEARTFELT, DOESN’T-EVEN-KNOW-ANYONE-ELSE-IS-WATCHING FEELINGS OF GRATITUDE THAT COMPELLED HER TO COME OUT HERE AND MAKE THIS SMALL BUT POWERFUL GESTURE. I’M JUST OUT HERE GETTING ALL PROFOUNDLY WORKED UP ABOUT STATUE MAINTENANCE AND THE HUMAN RACE. NEVER MIND. JUST IGNORE ME AND CARRY ON
holy shit. I was not even remotely prepared. you can’t just do that to me. you can’t just leave all these death flags on my lawn and then suddenly shift gears to show me the best of humanity in a chapter where I was expecting the worst. that fucks a person up lol
OH ARE WE STILL GOING
my heart. you see that, All Might. your legacy is so much more powerful and meaningful than you think
...has. has Stain actually been giving All Might a pep talk this entire time
I give up lol. this dude is a fucking enigma
YAYYY
it may just be a metaphor panel, but I’ll take it lol. I missed them. nice to see the traffic light trio front and off-center. I know the whole “this is the story of how we all became the greatest heroes” thing had left some questioning whether certain characters would continue to play a central role in the narrative, and hopefully this will help to ease those concerns just a bit
anyway, so idk if it’s getting a bit chilly down there in hell, but damned if Stain didn’t just give an actual decent fucking speech
I have to say, earlier when I was whining about All Might not having a support squad, I really was not expecting Stain to be the one to come over and pat his head and reassure him that he made the world a better place
-- okay LISTEN
YOU CAN’T JUST COME INTO MY HOUSE AND HIT ME WITH THOSE ALL MIGHT TEARS AGAIN GODDAMMIT THIS ISN’T FAIR. my god. first 317 and now this
holy fucking shit
“I’m just gonna pretend like I haven’t been stalking him for two days and didn’t see the entire Deku bentogate thing go down, and then I’ll give him the whole big speech that I rehearsed, and then I’ll turn around and be all ‘BUT IF YOU’RE A TRUE HERO’, and then I’ll toss him the super-secret AFO wifi password that I stole from Tartarus. god I’m such a badass. fucking give myself chills”
so basically what you’re telling me is that this whole time my “what’s up kids” characterization of Stain from this shitpost has actually been 100% accurate. just want to make sure I’m understanding this right. okay then
“and then I’ll dramatically spin around and be all NOW COME KILL ME BITCH”
it must be so much fun to write Stain. drawing this coked-out maniac who talks like a chatbot that was trained to speak by reading Alan Moore monologues. that must be a trip
anyway so All Might is still crying, the awesome lady from chapter 92 is admiring her handiwork totally oblivious to the batshit insanity going on fifty meters to her right, and it’s finally stopped raining lol
“THE RAIN WAS A METAPHOR YOU SEE” yes, yes, we got it lol. thanks for that Horikoshi. don’t think we needed any help putting the pieces together on that one but I appreciate the effort
so that’s the end! and as I mentioned in another post, I had the count off by one chapter, but next week should be cliffhanger week! so break out your U.A. Traitor bingo cards, friends and fiends. either that or something else happens that I’m completely not expecting at all. which, based on my success rate with Stain predictions, I’d say is more than likely lol
mmm but anyway, so now that the Hug Deku 2021 campaign has finally come to an end, what’s it gonna take to get a hug for my struggling bento-preparing jacket-rocking world-weary death-flag-waving husband who is the worthiest man to ever live and deserves the fucking world, goddammit
#bnha 326#all might#yagi toshinori#stain (bnha)#bnha#boku no hero academia#bnha spoilers#mha spoilers#bnha manga spoilers#makeste reads bnha
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