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thesoulspulse · 3 years

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Regarding the Fright Knight (Part 1)

I know I’ve already written several things about the Fright Knight recently but I rewatched his intro episode and figured I’d share some thoughts on the episode itself and then later we’ll talk about his downfall as a character so to speak.

Now before y’all start yelling at me being all ‘le gasp’ just hear me out!

I absolutely love the Fright Knight, he’s literally one of my top favorite characters in the show up there with Danny himself, Dan, Danielle (aka Dani), and Vlad. I like Nocturne too but only for his voice and design, but moving on! That said, it’s just one of those situations where they set up a cool character but then he kinda dropped off the map and the series ended.

Anyways, lets get started!

1) That eel ghost at the start of the episode has the same energy redirection power that Vlad does that we only ever saw him use once, just an interesting fact. I made a gif of the eel to show that but didn’t make a gif of it shooting the actual rays back at Danny though.

2) Ugh, I was just talking the other day about how I really like Mr. Lancer’s character but I hate it when he is only there as a plot device but not in a good way. I mean, why is he on DANNY’S case when Dash’s clearly the one with the more aggressive body language here...? Sure Danny spilled paint on Dash’s jacket but it was clearly an accident and Dash is the one being hostile.

This is pure cartoon logic of “oh, he’s a jock and therefore important to the school so he doesn’t get punished, only our poor hero” when no, that’s not how things work in any school, or at least they shouldn’t. You pick someone up by the collar like this in front of a teacher you either get detention or suspended, NOT the freaking victim too.

Mr Lancer even says: “True. Still, I must at least *pretend* to be fair, and you two need a more creative outlet for your aggressions.” Seriously, what kind of teacher talks like that? I just get tired of this stupid and frankly annoying high-school trope because not all cartoon teachers are so dismissive...

3) I know its a kids show and Danny is prone to doing stupid things, but at least for me this was a bit much. Dash and Danny turned their assignment to avoid detention into a bet which is all fine and dandy, but what gets me is Dash’s side of the bet if Danny loses which is absolutely disgusting.

Tucker phrases it best: “I don’t know what’s scarier. The underwear, or the fact he carries them around in his coat!” And I agree, why would any sane person carry something like that?! Screw cartoon logic, that’s just sick and wrong on so many levels and frankly I think it’s the “scariest” part of this whole episode. I think they should have tried harder to come up with a better punishment for Danny if he lost the bet than eating someone’s undergarments. Ugh, I want to vomit just writing this...but moving on!

4) Finally we’re over most of the parts I don’t like about this episode so let’s move on to the parts I DO like such as it being canon that Danny is actually surprisingly good at drawing. I even used this later in my fanfic “Turning Point” as a character trait Dani adopted to try and be more her own person since its not really that much of a pass time to Danny...

Still, just look at how fast he drew this! Cartoon logic or not that’s pretty good, that is, if you don’t mind that the skeleton has no feet lolz.

5) This is probably one of my favorite things that happened in this episode - apart from just everything the Fright Knight does- where Sam shares the Chronicles of the Fright Knight written by an unknown author. I’m a sucker for a good ghost story or some folklore so when it turned out the book was totally accurate and there’s proof that someone human from ancient times has SEEN the Fright Knight and managed to escape the Ghost Zone to write this, I was instantly hooked.

6) I gotta give Danny props for at least trying to mimic the Fright Knight’s aesthetic for his haunted house room. And considering the poor kid doesn’t get an allowance to help him make fancier props, it’s not all that bad.

7) Ok, first of all I gotta ask. Why has no one ever talked about Danny possessing the puppet he made of the Fright Knight? We’ve seen him possess other people and overshadow his computer, but this right here really makes me really wish we got an episode where Danny’s soul got trapped in a doll or something. Also, the dramatic voice he started off with wasn’t half-bad. If he had kept talking like that and yes, I agree maybe had a scarier puppet for the centerpiece of his presentation, I think Danny had a pretty solid idea here with some potential.

8) As usual it bugs me sometimes when Danny’s parents are written to be so harsh on Danny. Especially his dad who gets instantly suspicious about Danny doing an “anti-detention” project the moment he hear’s Mr. Lancer mentioned. To be fair he’s not wrong, but it’s still sad that Jack automatically assumed that.

9) I mentioned this in another post: https://thesoulspulse.tumblr.com/post/663141889897365504/halloween-in-amity-park but I’ll get to this later because there’s something the Fright Knight says later in this episode that sparked my interest that relates to these ecto-storms Danny’s parents mention that appear every year around Halloween.

10) When Danny goes to check out Dash’s haunted house room the puppets are definitely much higher quality than Danny’s, but lets be honest, I am like 95% he bullied/paid off someone into making those animatronics for him. Dash is just NOT that smart, sorry. I can see him being pretty creative and making the first part of the room himself that’s true, but there comes a point where I just don’t believe Dash set up all of that. To give Dash some credit though, I do like his zombie jock costume.

Also, come on Mr. Lancer, the guy doesn’t even bother to hide the bullying theme in his room which isn’t even scary so why are you so impressed with it? This my friends is what I like to call “Story-written stupid” where a character acts a certain way that’s unnaturally out of character for them specifically for plot reasons and nothing else since it would make no sense for them to be this dumb or willfully blind to the obvious.

Lastly, Dash’s whole “20 minute presentation about the horrors of athletes foot” is just gross, it’s not scary at all. It’s not even a good kind of gross for Halloween so it just bugs me that Mr. Lancer is oh-so-impressed by it. Even Danny feels outmatched and I keep thinking, why? The theme is only partially good at first and honestly I don’t see how any of this has to do with Halloween.

11) One more thing, Dash has his underwear for the bet DISPLAYED in his haunted house room in a glass case that says “Reserved For Fenton” and I’m just...UGH, Mr. Lancer why didn’t you notice that?!

I’m going to stop here since the post is getting really long now and I ended up ranting more than I meant to so sorry about that, things have been a bit hectic at home. Still, I’m excited for Halloween despite all that and hope I’ll get to enjoy that a bit now that I’m at least mostly recovered from covid. And with that, I’ll see you in the next part of this deep-dive episode analysis!

Part 2: https://thesoulspulse.tumblr.com/post/666367942726959104/regarding-the-fright-knight-part-2

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jayeray-twst · 3 years

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How He Shows You Affection: Cater Diamond

Warnings: None all fluff!

He Takes Pictures of You

“Say strawberry!” Cater ordered with a toothy grin, as he snagged you around the waist and pulled you close, pressing your cheeks together with his arm extended out, holding his phone.

Several months of dating meant you were now quick enough on the draw to smile at the camera for the first snap of the shutter and were even quicker to turn your face to the side, pressing an affectionate kiss to your boyfriend’s cheek before he managed to hit the button again.

“Babe!” he whined a playful lilt to his voice that probably would’ve fooled most, but you saw right through it to the faint blush on his cheeks and the warm look in his eyes.

Cater always got a little flustered when you did little things like that to catch him off guard, which was only fair in your opinion considering how much he did it to you. Your boyfriend had enjoyed flustering you, and gone out of his way to tease, and flirt just to see if he could.

“Let me see?” you asked, making grabby hands at his phone. He immediately passed it over without complaint, pulling you into his arms and resting his chin on your shoulder so he could see the screen too as you looked at the photos he’d taken.

The first was pretty cute, with wide beaming smiles on both your faces, but the second one definitely stole the show. As per usual, even when caught off guard Cater managed to take the picture at the perfect moment, just as your lips brushed his cheek. His eyes were wide with surprise and there was the beginnings of a blush on his cheeks.

“Cute,” you cooed, pleased with the way it had come out, “You going to post that on MagiCam?”

“You know me so well,” he teased, giving you an affectionate squeeze around the middle before accepting his phone back, “We really take the best pictures together babe!”

“If you say so,” you told him lightly.

“I do say so!” he informed you, one hand still holding you to him as his clever fingers tapped away at the screen of his phone one handed, “You’re so photogenic it should be against the rules!”

You huffed in affectionate amusement. Honestly you were pretty sure the only reason you came out looking half so good in all the photos Cater took of the two of you was because he had an eye for it. Cater’s ability with a camera was exemplary, enough to put professionals to shame in your own opinion and frankly you were more than a little flattered that his favorite subject seemed to be you.

His timeline on MagiCam was full to the bursting of pictures of you, doing everything and anything under the sun, almost all of them candid or taken with only a split second’s notice and yet somehow you looked good in all of them. Not only that, but all the pictures were tagged with flattering words about how amazing you looked and how blessed he was to have you and to be your boyfriend.

Looking at it never failed to make you feel warm inside. MagiCam was a huge part of Cater’s life, and when it came to his content you were front and center. It was like his entire timeline was a testament, his own unspoken way of showing his devotion to you more eloquent than any words could ever be. After all if a picture was worth a thousand words than Cater had written entire epochs on how much he adored you.

“Alright all uploaded!” he cheered, pulling you from your fond thoughts and twirling you around in his arms with a bright laugh, “Now that, that’s done we should probably go check up on the A-Deuce combo. They’re supposed to be painting the roses, but knowing the two of them…”

You laughed in agreement and let him drag you off to go check on Heartslabyul’s two most troublesome first years, feeling immensely fond of your boyfriend.

Later when you were scrolling through your own social media you weren’t surprised to find the picture of the two of you from earlier beaming smiles at the camera, tagged with mushy cute things like #loveofmylife, #smilebabe, #aren’twecute?. However the picture of you kissing his cheek was missing.

You fully intended to ask him about it the next day, right up until you caught sight of his phone again. The picture was there both in his background and as his lock screen staring you in the face. You honestly couldn’t do anything in the face of that besides melt and give your sweet boyfriend an affectionate kiss, feeling completely and utterly adored.

He Tells You (And Only You)

Cater was the kind of guy who flirted with everyone, so at times it could be hard to take his words seriously. Compliments like beautiful, wonderful, and precious were a dime a dozen, and not limited to just you either. His whole personality seemed to be exuberant, extroverted and friendly, the kind of guy who had friends everywhere because he had no trouble making friends. He felt almost unreal with how perfect he was.

There were times, especially at the beginning of your relationship that it had made you incredibly insecure. Cater was popular, both through MagiCam and just in general, and you had no idea why he’d want to be with you of all people when it seemed like he could have anyone he wanted. In the face of your worries his words almost felt insincere, shallow and hollow, as if he didn’t really mean them because he said them to everyone he met.

However, the longer you were with him the more you realized something incredibly important. Despite the compliments that fell from his lips at the drop of a hat Cater never, ever used the word love. Sure there was an implication of love, as he said things like “I adore this’ or ‘I’m wild about that’. He said ‘I’m captivated’ or ‘I’m infatuated’ or ‘I’m enthralled’ but never ever ‘I’m in love.’

It was like the words were anathema to him, almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to say it at all. It was then you realized, slowly but surely that a lot of the face he showed to the world was a carefully crafted mask. Just as you’d suspected no one could be quite that perfect, happy and friendly all the time.

Cater got frustrated, anxious and annoyed just as anyone else did, he was just much better at hiding it. There was also a pretty vicious side to him, one that could hurl lethal insults wrapped in so many honeyed words that only those who were looking for it or really paying attention to him noticed.

Funnily enough this actually made you relax. It humanized him, and made him seem more relatable rather than the near perfect being he’d seemed before. Once you realized how much he was hiding you carefully did your best be worthy of his trust, so he could have a safe place to rest. After all keeping up a cheerful mask at all times sounded utterly exhausting to you no matter how good he was at it.

Slowly but surely, he’d begun to let his walls down, coming to you when he had a rough day, sitting in silence with you, cuddling with you, enjoying quiet little moments that you once would’ve thought he’d hate. Instead Cater seemed to relish these stolen moments with you, and as you began to truly see each other for who you were rather than the face you both showed the world you finally got to hear it.

Love. A word he admitted he hadn’t quite believed in and so had never bothered to say. A word he felt was trite and meaningless because of how often it was said over every little thing. A word you’d managed to change his mind about, one that was special and intimate and meant only for the two of you.

“I love you,” you murmured to your boyfriend as the two of you lay cuddled together on his bed, curled up and quietly watching movies together on his laptop. It was something you didn’t say nearly as often these days, as you’d slowly adapted to Cater’s way of thinking that saying it about too many things cheapened the meaning in a lot of ways.

“I love you too,” he assured you, equally quiet, his normal exuberance set aside in placed of utmost sincerity, the words so real and rare on his tongue that you had no choice but to believe them.

He’d only ever said them to you, only ever planned to say them to you, a word that was meant for you and you alone, a little piece of his heart with your name stamped clearly in ownership. It was a privilege you savored and treated with the utmost care, it was the very least you could do to prove your own affections for your boyfriend who cared so very much.

He Makes Things For You

“How do I look?” you asked your boyfriend shyly as you emerged from the dressing room.

Normally trying on clothes with Cater was a lot of fun. Even if you didn’t enjoy shopping all that much Cater made it into an experience. He had an extremely good eye for what would look good on someone and what wouldn’t. and put a lot of interesting things together. He was also perceptive enough to know what would make you uncomfortable and what wouldn’t, and work within your comfort zone.

It made him the idea shopping partner, and lots of fun, especially since he was more than happy to try on anything you asked for him as well. Honestly it was a bit unfair just how good Cater looked in pretty much everything. There were a few times you’d purposefully tried to pick silly things and yet, whether it was sheer force of personality or because he was simply that handsome he always seemed to look good. Still it was fun to try, and the two of you always had a good time together, laughing and teasing joyfully, and you almost never left empty handed.

This however was different. Cater had always had an eye for fashion, and had occasionally dabbled in making his own clothing. However, he’d never really taken it all too seriously before, despite the fact that perfectionist Riddle recognized his talent and had let him design the outfits for when they had to dress up for unbirthday parties.

Despite that, it had never occurred to you that Cater might want to try designing something for you. However he’d apparently wanted to do just that, as he’d shyly approached you with the suggestion when you’d complimented some of his work. That in itself had let you know how very important this was to him. Cater was never shy, so the fact that he’d been so hesitant to ask said a lot.

Which was of course why you’d agreed without a moment’s hesitation. Honestly even if he hadn’t been so shy about it you would’ve said yes. Cater knew your style inside and out and you trusted him more than words could say.

Your trust turned out to be well founded, and the outfit he’d made for you was utter perfection. It was done in colors that flattered your skin, eyes and hair, and had a cut that flattered your figure. You weren’t sure you’d ever felt so simultaneously beautiful and comfortable before. You absolutely loved it, you just hoped Cater loved it too.

“You look beautiful,” Cater told you, quick on the mark as ever with a compliment as he hopped up from the couch he’d been waiting on, “But then again you always do.”

You huffed at that, but didn’t protest as he circled around you, holding still so he could view you from all angles.

“Do you like it?” he asked, once he reached your front again, uncharacteristically shy again.

“Cater are you kidding I love it!” you told him fiercely, not willing to let any sort of insecurity stand.

“Pretty sure you’d have to say that even if it was ugly babe,” Cater told you a little wryly.

“I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings,” you conceded, unwilling to lie, especially when you knew how much Cater valued honesty, but also unwilling to back down, “But in this case I’m definitely not exaggerating! Have you seen me?!”

You twirled in front of him arms spread for emphasis, “I look amazing! I feel amazing which, as you’ve told me, is just as if not more important! If you don’t believe me we can march right over to Pomefiore and get Vil. I’m sure you’d believe him!”

“No need for that,” Cater told you with a huff of amusement, his eyes warm and full of affection as he gently tugged you to him, his warm hands clasping your elbows as he peered into your eyes, “You really do like it babe?”

“I really, really do,” you answered him, with all the sincerity you could muster, “So much so I might just have to wear it every day. I’m not sure my other clothes could ever compare.”

“No need to go that far,” he insisted, though the bright look in his eyes belied the words, “I can always make you more.”

“So long as it doesn’t put you out,” you replied, “I’d love to wear your clothes Cater, anywhere anytime.”

Your boyfriend gave you one of his rare soft smiles, tugging you into his arms and just holding you, clearly grateful for what you’d said. You hugged back, quietly scheming to yourself determined to help Cater realize how talented he was. He deserved it, but in the mean time you would simply savor how much he clearly loved and trusted you, letting you be his first real model. You really couldn’t have asked for a better boyfriend than Cater Diamond and you were now even more determined to make sure he knew just how much you adored him in return.

Like this or my writing in general? Feel free to drop by my ask box to make requests! Just make sure to read the rules first! Want to support me or make a commission? Please see my Ko-fi!

#twst cater #cater diamond x reader #cater #cater diamond #cater x reader #cater twst #cater diamond x you #cater diamond fluff #disney twst #twisted wonderland #twst x reader #fluff #twst wonderland #twst imagines #twst fluff

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roostertuftart · 2 years

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south park asks for u: 18. Take a moment to talk about your favorite ship.

21. Do you have a favorite adult? If so, who?

23. What was the first piece of content you created for the South Park fandom?

(no pressure to do all 3, feel free to choose any amount!!!)

18. Take a moment to talk about your favorite ship.

My favorite dynamic between two characters is Style!! I've always been a sucker for best friends to lovers and I love how devoted these two are together, as well as how much they've been through and how much they need each other- It's not the healthiest dynamic in that regard, their codependence isn't always the best, but I think that's part of the fun of the ship and I like to think as they get older, they work out a lot of their issues and become a lot healthier with time (Though they're about at the level of your average couple now, no relationship is perfect). I also really like how easy it is to take Stan and Kyle and put them in any number of dynamics or situations or AUs- I always tend to stick with them knowing each other since childhood personally but they work work well as a couple that just met and fell in love as well, and there's loads you can do with both of those as well as the canon material from the show.

My favorite ship of all has to be Stendylenny. It's a super rare poly ship that I actually hadn't seen before my friends and I started shipping it, but I've seen it begin to spread slightly which makes me EXTREMELY happy! It's a poly between Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Wendy. I really love all of them shipped one on one so putting them all together just makes sense for me!! I could talk about this ship a lot but I don't even know where to start, it's just fun imagining the different scenarios that got these four together, and I feel like it could happen pretty easily. I think ships with both Wendy and Kenny are severely underrated in this fandom and I also just really like good old fashion style and stendy ofc. There's just a really good mix of dynamics with the four of them.

21. Do you have a favorite adult? If so, who?

Sheila Broflovski for sure. She is, in my opinion, the best parent in the show besides side character parents who haven't existed long enough to be in a conflict, and is just a generally good person. I can see why characters in the show are annoyed by her actions and how she can be overbearing and pushy, but she's a fantastic mom who listens closely to her sons and really tries to do what's best for them, as well as what's best for others around her. She's also shown to be fairly kind to other people even if she has her moments, and is honest and fair to her friends (She needs better ones). She also doesn't take shit from almost anyone.

A big part of this from me might be projection because my mom is pretty similar to her (Heavy jersey accent and all) but fuck it IDC Sheila best adult.

I also like Mr. Garrison a lot but only bc he's funny af

23. What was the first piece of content you created for the South Park fandom?

So a while back, three or four years ago, my friend Starby was into South Park. I was not. I, in fact, happened to sort of,, judge her for her interests, even if I was playful about it. Anyway, one day I was trying to include them in this one RP that was a cartoon crossover, except all of the characters were cats (It's a bizarre concept but my RPs tend to be a little crazier and more self indulgent than the stuff I post) and they wanted to roleplay as Butters since he's her favorite. So my first actual South Park fan work that I ever created is this really old, ugly design for him as a cat that I completely forgot about until about a week ago:

My art has obviously improved immensely since I made this and, if you're wondering, the RP never even really happened. I've actually made a new design for Butters since then, not even remembering this old one existed at all, that I greatly prefer (though I may still update it)! This is it:

My first intentional South Park fanart was also characters as cats, it's the main four's designs:

#stan marsh #kyle broflovski #eric cartman #kenny mccormick #my art #south park au #cats #i may have posted the boys as cats on an old blog i deleted but idr #butters stotch #stan's gang #south park fanart #ask #stendylenny #allthingswritten

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okayto · 3 years

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Mini-Review: Dance With Devils

Second-year student Ritsuka Tachibana has the perfect school-to-life balance, but all of that’s thrown into chaos when she discovers that several of her handsome male classmates are actually demons in disguise.

This was a terrible, terrible show. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Because HOO BOY HAS IT BEEN A WHILE SINCE I WATCHED A SHOW SO UNINTENTIONALLY STUPID.

Let the Pomeranian Greek Chorus usher you in.

So what the description above, taken straight from Funimation, didn’t tell me was that the devils would be part of a battle between Evil and...Other Evil, fighting to find some Magic MacGuffin tied to our main character (of course).

Look, the story...it’s there. If the show had wanted to focus on the story, it would’ve been fine. But this show is the poster child for guilty pleasures: its focus is Ritsuka, a singularly boring cutout of a character, getting tangled up with extremely pretty magic boys who are determined to use her (or protect her from use), and who sing about it. so much.

Oh? Didn’t I mention? THIS IS A MUSICAL.

And it transformed what would have been an otherwise mediocre show in an extremely entertaining mediocre show.

No wait, come back, I’m not done yet.

Watching because the story sounds interesting? It falls flat.

Watching it, particularly with another person, to see how much more ridiculous and stupid it gets? Fantastic.

As we watched it veered more and more into the realm of absurd entertainment because the characters are so stupid.

Ritsuka’s defining trait as the protagonist is a blind and unrelenting inability to keep herself safe. “Don’t leave my side” a character will tell her, making it clear this is so Ritsuka won’t be killed. “Wait, I need to go do this thing. Better do it and just not tell anyone, especially the person worried about my safety,” Ritsuka will think twenty seconds later. There are multiple episodes where the plot, which this show technically has, I guess, moves forward only because Ritsuka has decided to ignore anything that might keep her safe for the fifth time this week.

(It occurs to me you could easily make a drinking game: take a drink every time Ritsuka willfully endangers her own life. Take a drink every time a male character expresses ~feelings~ for Ritsuka. Take a drink every time Best Friend Azuna, the only character with a brain, tries to bring sense into the equation. Take a drink for every character that bursts into song. For health and safety reasons, I recommend non-alcoholic drinks.)

The main devil, student council president (of course) Rem, has exactly one facial expression (annoyed), one emotion (annoyed), and one way of dealing with everyone or thing that comes up (treating them like an annoyance), which is why it’s frikkin hilarious to me that he’s supposed to be a love interest.

(To be fair, every male character is a potential love interest, the portrayals of which involve less desire than me picking out cheese at the grocery store.)

At the end of the second episode when Ritsuka’s older brother Lindo shows up, I wondered if this was a spinoff of a dating game. You already had 4 pretty devils with tissue-thin personalities and even thinner explanations for any attraction they felt toward our mushy overcooked cauliflower of a heroine, and here was yet another male character who was very prettily designed. Too prettily designed. And he doesn’t look super related to Ritsuka, I wonder if that’s relevant...

(Spoiler alert: it is indeed relevant, which I called before he got his own rock song about how he will protect her as an expression of his love.)

(Worry not, this show isn’t nearly good enough to deal with the implications of this, so it just doesn’t! One-sided pseudo-incest is just thrown in there on the side to ~spice things up~ and give Ritsuka or the audience a pretty boy who’s not ostensibly evil.)

But no, the anime is original! Which makes this all the more befuddling because there wouldn’t have been an built-in audience yet!

Verdict

English Dub? Yes. The voice acting was okay. And that would have been fine without further comments except this show is a MUSICAL. And these poor, poor English voice actors were clearly not chosen for their ability to sing, at least in most of the keys the songs are in. (I suspect in keys better-suited to their voices, and without having to try and put on a character voice, they would be fine. But that’s not what happened here.)

But no, every main character gets at least one song.

I get the distinct impression that the lyrics were translated very close to literal translations, and then they were never adjusted to make those words & syllables in English fit the existing melodies. What probably sounded fine in Japanese (and if you watch songs in Japanese, they do indeed sound melodic) comes off as clunky and awkward in English, and that’s before they try to fit these words and phrases into the melody of the existing songs. Like, there’s a duet at the end with the lines “Two dissimilar worlds, two dissimilar paths,” and they really have to rush to get all the syllables in, when “two different worlds, two different paths” would have worked JUST AS WELL.

For example, have this wonderful song from early in the series:

youtube

See what I mean? I spent so, SO much time ranting to my watching companion about how I could’ve easily rewritten this line or that line and made them so so much better to English ears while keeping the same meaning. I don’t understand why the decision wasn’t made to adjust the English song lyrics but hey: perhaps it meant the English version ran perilously close to having decent audio, which would then put the focus back on how flimsy the story itself is.

Visuals: Nothing standout, not terrible since I literally never thought about them. Too distracted by lines like So helpless and pathetic, like a rabbit controlled by Providence, those melancholic eyes reflect a life so pitiful.

Worth watching? AHAHAHAHA grab a friend and don’t warn them in advance, then inflict this on yourselves with no other preparation. This is the most fun I’ve had actively watching a show with someone in months.

Where to watch (USA, as of November 2021): Funimation (sub and dub), TubiTV (sub), Hulu (sub)

Click my “reviews” tag below or search “mini review” on my blog to find more!

#if MST3K did anime series this could be extremely entertaining #I went into this thinking I would get a decent show to watch alone but got an EXCELLENT show to watch with a friend #the songs themselves are usually very catchy but the English versions...uh.#Dance with Devils #reviews #anime #I feel v bad for the voice actors because like relistening to Rem's song above it's clear he's got a good voice!#But on first listen the weird lyrics/cadence are SO noticeable it drags the entire thing down

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consumeconstantly · 4 years

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Lady Cross (first aid)

Summary: Somehow, Marinette always ends up biting off more than she can chew. It started off with a kid and a nasty gash on their knee. The sudden escalation to treating the new head of Gotham’s underworld? It can only be explained by the fact that she’s catnip for trouble.

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Marinette supposed she should have expected something like this to happen eventually.

Really, she patches up a few street kids and offers a meal and some resources and suddenly she's made a name for herself in the slums of Gotham. It’s not like she’s doing anything revolutionary. Well, okay, maybe she does cheat a little bit and uses her healing powers on a few of the tougher cases that really should have been out of her realm of expertise, but she’s living near the slums of Gotham for a reason. That reason being Marinette is just a little broke and can’t really afford to send everyone she comes across to the hospital, and the people who are injured certainly can’t. It’s not like she can leave them to die. That would be heartless.

When she stopped treating scrapes and cuts for kids on the streets as she came across them and instead found her apartment balcony frequented by families who needed her help, she couldn’t just say no. And so, more and more serious wounds started coming in. Kids brought their parents and friends. The parents and friends brought... well, if the police stopped by her apartment any time soon, she’s fairly certain they’d have a field day.

But again, it’s not like she’s going to turn these people into the police when they’ve come to her for help and have a small army of people who swear up and down that they’re good people and only doing what they have to do in order to get by.

Morality comes in such a variety of shades, who was she to judge? Ladybug and Marinette have both certainly had their fair share of mistakes that they’d gladly go back in time to rectify, and her hands weren’t clean of blood either. Sure, the Miraculous Cure may have brought people back, but their deaths were still on her. And Hawkmoth? Yeah, he’s alive now, but she hammered him into the pavement after dropping him from the top of the Eiffel tower, and she’s not going to pretend that she didn’t take a bit of morbid joy in that moment.

But back to the matter at hand. Which was, the notorious Red Hood—responsible for a coup amongst Gotham’s drug dealers and responsible for taking down a man whose morality truly vanished with the wind, Black Mask himself— was currently bleeding out on her second floor balcony, smoking a cigarette and lounging against the rail like he owned the place.

“Lady Cross,” he inclined his head.

“Red Hood,” Marinette returned his greeting.

God, she really didn’t want to get involved with Red Hood. She wasn’t opposed to helping out street thugs and criminals, but Red Hood was a different league. He seemed to be a fairly decent guy, ensuring that kids weren’t dealt drugs and tried to keep them out of the circuit as much as possible. He took down plenty of worse criminals while he was at it. In fact, Marinette would go so far to say the Red Hood as one the good guys.

But the issue was, once she started treating people of a certain level, she’d be open game. And that didn’t seem very enticing to her. Not at all. Everyone knew that Red Hood had beef with the Bat Family for some reason or other, and also made enemies with almost every single rogue in Gotham, and a good number of enemies outside of it as well. Basically, Red Hood was a universal enemy of both the vigilantes and rogues. Someone she shouldn’t get involved with while she was trying to investigate the darkness surrounding Gotham whole running her online boutique and going to college at Gotham University.

Unfortunately, Tom and Sabine and her own stint as Ladybug taught her that she could never ignore someone in need. Marinette sighed and slid the mesh open, leading Red Hood to her living room. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Real nice place you got here,” he said.

With the mask covering the whole of his face, Marinette had no facial expressions to figure out whether he was poking fun at her current living situation or not. His voice sounded genuine, but vocal emotions were easy to fake.

The apartment she was living in was not on the nice side of town. There were three bullet holes in the wall between her living room and bedroom that she just didn’t have time to patch up, some pretty nasty looking stains on the ceiling near her kitchen, and a huge, spray painted red cross on one of her walls, which was where her street name derived from. Her floor and coffee table were also in states of disarray; she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to clean up after working on two commissions and the last guest whose wounds were heavy enough to warrant several rolls of gauze, which was now half stuffed into a garbage can sitting next to rolls of fabric. Perhaps not the neatest or most sanitary situation, but she didn’t have time to clean up before every single one of her unexpected guests came in.

Look, it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t have time to fix things up real nice and neat. She’d only been living in the apartment for a month and a half, and most times, she barely spent any time in it other than to sleep, cram last minute projects for her design course, or to help heal people. Her living situation wasn’t the biggest of worries.

“Sit,” Marinette gestured to the one of the few pieces of furniture that she specifically bought for the apartment. She didn’t mind the stained, half broken, and extremely creaky couch the last owners left behind for the first week, but after she started bringing back her first… visitors, it seemed important that the couch was comfortable, sturdy, and most crucially, cleanable.

Rummaging through a cabinet, she pulled out a tattered briefcase she thrifted a while back to keep all of her medical supplies in. Not the prettiest of things, but she tried not to keep expensive looking items in her apartment because she wasn’t a fan of getting mugged. The medicine she kept was already expensive enough, she didn’t need to attract everyone’s attention by owning one of those metal containers used in hospitals. Even though most of the people who dropped by her apartment were thankful to be treated, she had a few instances where people tried to steal things from her.

“What’s the damage, doc?” Red Hood’s voice came through rather tinny through his helmet.

Marinette grimaced. The helmet must have awful air circulation. It looked like some sort of metal, and wet and metal never smelled good together. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“Thought you were supposed to be some mystic healer who came from the far east.”

She paused and looked at the man, trying to judge whether he was racist as well as rude. “That’s rather insulting.”

Red Hood shrugged. Marinette applauded the man for showing no outward sign of pain at that, even though there was a bullet embedded in his shoulder, and shrugging had to bite. “That’s what the word on the street is, though you sound French to me. Thought I’d come and check out who’s healing Gotham’s criminals. What’re you planning?”

“Sorry to foil your plans, but I’m not planning anything other than getting my college degree and not pissing off the people I live near.” She paused, flipping the lock on the briefcase upwards. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use me as your go to healer from now on. You’re going to bring trouble my way.”

“Trouble? Me? Perish the thought.” His hand rested comfortably on the holister of his gun, ready to shoot if the girl pulled out a weapon from the briefcase. “We’ll talk about repeat appearances after I see how you do today.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Any wounds other than the obvious?”

“Just need the bullet out, and some stitches on the gash.” His shoulder and his abdomen, respectively. The gash looked nastier than the bullet; no shrapnel, but the cut on his stomach was jagged and wide. Not a normal, sharp blade. Probably needed a good cleaning.

She grabbed the tweezers, a sterilized needle, and medical thread. “That’s fine. Now are you going to undress, or am I going to have to cut your… costume… up?”

“Getting me naked already? We haven’t even had our first date yet.”

“Very funny, little Red Riding Hood. Now hop to it. I have class at 9 tomorrow and projects to finish tonight.” Somehow, trouble always seemed to find her when she least wanted it to. Not that she wanted to have trouble find her at all, but luck was a two way street, and for all that being Ladybug granted her good luck, she attracted criminals like catnip.

“And here my informants had me thinking you were a regular Florence Nightingale.”

Marinette snorted. “They wish. I’ve got to ask who told you, because everybody should know the rules. You know, the ones where they don’t speak of my existence to their higher ups?”

“I’m not a rat,” Red Hood said, taking the top part of his outfit off. “And it’s not like you would have gone unnoticed anyways. You might be treating small timers now, but people catch on to healers pretty easy.”

“Because some gauze and sewing skills make me such a prime target.”

“No, your magic does.”

Shit. Marinette never told anyone she was using magic, and she rarely used it unless it was a dire situation. If she could patch them up using regular skills, she did.

“Yeah right, if I had magic healing powers, do you think I’d be shoving my fingers into your shoulder to get a bullet out?”

“Not a very good liar, Lady Cross. You have this deer-caught-in-the-headlights look about you.”

“Thanks for the compliment. I’m also the deer that tramples through your windshield and takes a dump on the driver’s seat.” She maneuvered the tweezers a little rougher, hoping to make Red Hood hiss in pain. He just chuckled, amused. His high pain tolerance was getting rather annoying. She had half a mind to pour hydrogen peroxide over the wound just to see if that would make him show he was in pain, but thought better of it. Even though she didn’t like the man, she also didn’t want to piss him off. Or worse, have him come back and make her fix him up again.

Threading the needle, she made quick, small stitches on his shoulder, sewing the bullet hole up, then put some petroleum jelly to speed up the healing process and reduce scarring. At least the wound was in a position that didn’t require a lot of gauze. She needed to go out and buy some more soon. She barely had enough to wrap around Red Hood’s waist.

“So, the magic,” Red Hood started. “Is it a conditional thing? Can you not use it all the time?”

“Again, I don’t have magic.” Marinette did have to use some antibacterial on the knife wound. He would need to take good care of that one to make sure it didn’t get infected.

“So a meta, then. What are you doing in Gotham? Everybody knows Batman hates metas.”

“Not a meta, either, sorry to disappoint.” She tied off the gauze, then stood to wash her hands. “Make sure to clean the stomach wound well. Hope you have your tetanus shot, otherwise you should look into getting one.”

“Surprisingly, I’m inclined to believe you on the not-a-meta thing. Back to the first thing, then. Magic. Why don’t you show me the old razzle dazzle? Do you have to say one of those weird spells like the godmother in Cinderella? Bibbity bobbity boo?”

“You’re hilarious,” Marinette dead panned.

“How’s this for magic? Bibbity bobbity boo, kindly leave. Shoo.” She followed his suggestion, made a show of jazz hands as well. “Pity I don’t use magic otherwise you’d be gone now. Anyways, it’s time for you to make your exit. It would be great if you didn't visit me again. Ever. Thanks.”

She ushered him out onto her patio, then slammed the sliding door. He saluted her before dropping off the side of the building. She could imagine the man under the helmet smirking.

Marinette ran a hand through her loose hair. “He’s going to come back, isn’t he.”

@jasonette-july-2k20

#jasonette july #first aid #jasonette #marinette dupain cheng #jason todd #gotham #original content #bamf marinette #sassy marinette #miraculous ladybug #maribat #dcu #red hood hears of a mystic healer and decides to check her out

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pandawriterstuff · 3 years

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Pinehallow Summary & Character List

This is my main WIP, if I'm complaining about characters doing whatever they want, this is them.

Pinehallow Summary-Monty, an eleven year old boy who has spent most of his life traveling from place to place with his in-demand lawyer mother, Irene, is sent to live at his uncle's horse ranch because she thinks he needs roots. Used to nearly everyone but his mother not being around long enough to get to know, Monty is more than a bit uncertain about this. But in scrambling to find his place in a town different to anything he's ever known, he finds friends, both human and animal, makes discoveries, and even manages to foil a plot against Pinehallow Ranch itself.

Character List

Monty (Montgomery) Cade Waller- Main character, 11, white. Monty is curious, bright, and more than a little awkward. He has a tendency to state the obvious, which can be endearing or annoying depending on your perspective. Big vocabulary and grown-up way of speaking because he’s spent more time around grown-ups than other kids. He’s quietly stubborn, particularly when it comes to being told he’s wrong when he knows he’s right. Insecure about socializing and friendships because of constant moving and traveling. Can’t hold a grudge for the life of him, even when he likely should. He likes bugs, birds and turtles, would rather read nonfiction than a story. Fills lonely afternoons with sketching, nature sketching on the ranch.

Irene Waller- Monty’s mother, 36, white. Irene is a powerful corporate lawyer, either full of energy or exhausted, never in between. She loves using words to sway minds and deciphering documents to find exactly what the opposition doesn’t want her to find. Sometimes Irene wishes she was using her skills in more meaningful ways, but also really likes the money, the traveling, and the competition. Has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of show tunes from musicals. She has a hard time letting people get close. Would stab someone for her baby, but knows it’s better to teach him to stab for himself. Only partially joking. Dolly Parton is her hero, and as much as she loves her music, it’s Dolly the business woman and Dolly the philanthropist that she strives to emulate.

Keith Waller- Monty’s uncle, 34, white. Horse Rancher. Keith loves working hard and getting dirty, and if he’s not exhausted at the end of the day he’ll be looking for something else to push him there. Otherwise he gets antsy. Loves animals and absolutely will not tolerate anyone mistreating any of the animals on his ranch-ordinarily he’s very careful of his size and strength, in that situation, all bets are off. Times that by about ten for any of the ‘barn rats’ that help around the ranch for riding lessons/time. Loves romantic comedies and telanovas and doesn’t care who knows it. Keith doesn’t read a lot, it never came easy to him, but if he’s taking a long trip he’ll always check an audio book or two out of the library instead of just relying on the radio.

Juniper - Keith’s goddaughter, 15, white. She has a calm, confident personality with a smile for most everyone she meets. If she doesn’t have a smile for you and it isn’t because her head is in the clouds over a girl, you’ve probably earned her scorn and will be ignored as much as possible. Juniper raises rabbits and it’s taught her patience, and a lot about unfairness when a kit doesn’t make it. She helps out with riding lessons at the ranch in exchange for riding time of her own, and has become a fixture, spending more time there than she does at home, and when she can get away with it, school. Loves sunflowers and her sunflower comforter is probably her most prized possession.

Nell - Caretaker/cook for the ranch house(would cooking lunch for the workers still be a thing on a modern ranch?). 38, white(?). Not about to put up with nonsense. Will make you cookies if she doesn’t have to put up with nonsense. Please. At one point she wanted to be a chef and has a year of culinary school under her belt, but quickly decided the super fast paced and competitive environment wasn’t for her. Anything that was making her hate one of her favorite things that fast could not be good for a person. She intends to live a long, long life and that kind of stress can just walk right out of the door. Loves to go on long walks, often into the hills (BLM land) behind the ranch. (maybe she was taught/took a class on foraging, and teaches Monty to find wild onions and stuff? But this would mean *I* have to learn about foraging in Idaho.) This leads to a contented, if often silent, companionship between her and Monty, who desperately wants to explore/record/sketch everything about the natural world of his new home, particularly the parts that are off limits to him without an adult along.

Ray- Family Friend/Co-Owner of R & M General (designed to feel vintage, but shiny. Bit of a tourist stop now, they decided to lean into it.), 50, Black. He uses his background in chemistry to make amazing looking candies and chocolates, using that to deal with a time he used it in less pleasant ways when he was in the military. He never expected anybody outside of his small town, or maybe the folks at the county fair to make so much fuss over them. This might embarrass him, if he weren’t so delighted. A cheerful man with a dreamer’s heart, a magazine once referred to him as a small town Willy Wonka. He dotes on his wife, often making and gifting her small surprises. An amputee in honor of my Grandpa (missing left leg at the knee, possibly missing one arm as well, but I’m not sure how that would affect candy making.). Has certain parts of his past he just doesn’t talk about.

Mavis- Co-Owner of ____ with Ray, 48, Black. Fierce and kind in equal measures, Mavis believes in protecting what’s hers, and as far as she’s concerned the entire town of (oh my god, it needs a name) is included in that. Mavis is very selective about the battles she fights, but when she chooses one she throws herself in whole-heartedly. On several committees around town, she’d be on more, but then she wouldn’t have enough time to really get into the work of the ones she loves. She knits in her limited free time, often while listening to the news, but sometimes opera. Has started knitting stuffies in the shapes of the more unusual candies Ray makes, it’s silly, but fun, and tourists and the local kids love it. Still head over heels for Ray, even though his often dreaming about things for ages instead of just doing them is also still baffling to her.

Leanna - Juniper’s sort-of girlfriend, 15, Vietnamese. Quiet, a little cynical, but very empathetic. She avoids the news because it’s that or be mad and want to cry all the time-until she hears about something she can’t not research, and goes on a 24 hour google search and learns far more than is probably good for her about a species going extinct due to logging in prohibited areas, or genocide being covered up by claims of violent uprisings. She loves manga and comics. Leanna sometimes tries for a cottagecore* type aesthetic, but mostly thinks it's too much work. She’s starting to worry about what she’s going to do with her future, and people telling her that she’s only 15 and doesn’t have to worry about it yet is NOT HELPING.

*even though cottagecore isn’t a thing in the early-mid 2000s this is maybe/vaguely set in. Shh, let me have this. Anne of Green Gablesesque maybe?

Winnie - Leanna’s mom, 45, Vietnamese. Widow? A little ditzy, but a lot loving. Everyone in town is convinced she’s the stoner type of hippy, but no one minds as she’s someone who truly wants to know how you’re doing when she asks and strangely almost always has very spot on advice. She’s rarely on time anywhere, but that’s because she’ll have stopped to talk, and often to help, whoever she’s run into. Leanna and her bicker over this when she’s late picking her up. Always wears bright colors. Loves Agatha Christie books. Calls everyone, even people 50 years older than her, hon.

Logan - Juniper’s stepdad, 40, white. Kind of a jerk, but most of the jerky things he says are actually jokes that fall flat or have simply gotten old. Tries really hard, like *really* hard, but has a tendency to get annoyed if people don’t appreciate his efforts right away-more in his personal life than professional, possibly because of his profession. A contractor, hard worker, loyal, has worked for the same company since he was twenty even though they don’t often treat him right. Sometimes tries to buy people’s affections. Wants to have better communication with Juniper, but it’s gotten really hard the last few years and he’s never quite sure why.

Candice - Juniper’s Mom, 39, white, works at a nursery that sells seedlings and baby fruit trees, has a cheerful, calm personality, but a lot softer and more lowkey than Juniper’s version. Very house proud, but has a ‘maximalist’ approach to decorating-everything is in its place, but there are places for lots of things. Loves spending time outdoors, but would rather spend it tending her garden than hiking or riding, preferably with a cup of tea by her side. On the weekends, a fruity beer or wine instead. Wants to go on one of those train rides where you get to drink wine, eat canapes and try to solve a mystery, thinks Winnie might be a good candidate for someone to go with her.

Ura - a ‘barn rat’, 12 and a half, white(maybe a Czech immigrant? 2nd generation?) . A cheerful, rough and tumble boy who is always climbing things, and often being told to stop when he gets too high for other people's comfort. Ura is fearless when it comes to physical feats, but has a fear of ‘slimy’ things like worms and frogs. He has a thick layer of pudge and a big appetite, but is athletic and strong enough that anyone bullying him over it would be doing it at their own peril. Not that he’s the type to start fights, or even finish them most of the time. Doesn’t feel he quite fits in with his family, who are all more serious, reserved people. Redwood is his favorite of the horses, and Keith has all but given up on telling him that sitting on the floor of Red’s stall to talk to the horse isn’t exactly safe.

Elliot - Ray and Mavis’s son, Black, 19 and a college student-maybe/probably at U of I. Lives on campus, but comes home at least a couple weekends a month. Has an older car that he and Ray fixed up together, that is his pride and joy. Quiet, with an irreverent sense of humor that he unleashes somewhat at random. Interested in robotics, engines and mechanics and generally has some project he’s working on, a piece of which may or may not be in his pocket. Often has oil, grease, or ink on his hands, either from working on or designing a new project. A bit of an overachiever, he can spread himself thin trying to live up to all his responsibilities at once. He’s best friends with Randy, a friendship his parents want to disapprove of, because the few times Elliot’s gotten into trouble not only was Randy there, but 99% of the time whatever it was is Randy’s idea, but never quite manage too.

Randy - Handyman at the ranch, mixed race Hispanic and white, 21. Technically head handyman, because the old head retired six months ago, and is a little young/inexperienced for the job, but he’s not the type to back away from a challenge and has risen to the occasion beautifully. Loves rock and metal music, and spends a lot of his free weekends at concerts, the ones crammed into little venues and bars where people are practically on top of each other and the beat is so loud and solid it throbs through you, connecting you to everyone even before you hit the mosh pit, are his preference. He’s been working at the ranch since he was 16, and feels like he has a claim on it, not afraid to speak up if he thinks a decision Keith is making isn’t right or that he isn’t taking something important into consideration. Can be a bit wild when he’s not being the responsible one, definitely doesn’t always think before he acts.

Alma - Local artist/worker at R & M’s, Hispanic, 25. Alma is a painter and poet, a confident young woman who’s figured out that half of surviving as an artist is being your own agent/a salesperson as well, and in addition to several shelves at the R & M that hold postcard prints of many of her pieces, both the coffee shop and cafe have some of her larger paintings displayed, and she always has a booth at the Saturday market, though the majority of her sales come from her website. Alma is cheerful, and likes to tease, and growing up the middle child of four brothers, is very able to hold her own in verbal sparring. She’s close with her family, still living with her parents, and while at first her father was dismayed at her choice of career, he now hands out her business card to basically everyone he talks to.

Miriam - Nell’s Mom, white, 71, a little deaf, speaks loudly, partially because of the deafness, partially because she spent too long letting other people push her around and when she hit about 50 decided she was going to be the one talking over people now. She’s earned it. Age has made her more delicate than she likes, bruising and scraping easily, but she’s determined to do most things for herself. Those that are beyond her she has no problem loudly ordering someone else to take care of. Volunteers a lot, often fosters kittens for the local animal shelter. Used to chain smoke, quit when Nell was a teenager because she kept leaving pictures of diseased lungs everywhere. Still uses the candy ones as a substitute.

Places

Unnamed Town- Somewhere in Latah County, Idaho, where there is not already a town in the way. Around 200 years old and has grown and shrunk and grown again, and currently has a population of about 12,000. Having grown out from a traditional mainstreet, _______ no longer has the western style boardwalk seen in old pictures, but it does have a large cluster of local businesses and ‘hot spots’ still along that old main street, a coffee shop, a diner, a combination bookshop and independent library, a hardware store, a bar, a few places I haven’t thought of yet, and of course R & M General. There is a historical barn half a mile or so away from mainstreet that has been converted into a theater/meeting hall/dance hall, and a community center was added onto it in the early 90’s. During the summer there is a farmer’s market on the property every Saturday. The elementary school and junior high are all on one property, several miles out of town, because the majority of families live on farms, ranches or small rural properties rather than in one of the neighborhood clusters in the town itself. The junior high is 7th, 8th and 9th graders, in a newer two story building, and the elementary school is divided into lower and upper elementary with the bracket shaped building basically being cut in half, K-3 on one side and 4-6 on the other. The high school is outside of town on the other side by several miles, and actually serves kids from another town(s) as well. There is also a trailer park with about forty units, not exactly sure where it is yet, but Miriam(Nell’s Mom) lives there. There is also an animal shelter, a vet’s office, a cemetery, and a couple churches, and I’m sure more things to come.

R & M General (working title?)- Ray and Mavis’s store, a general store with a candy focused twist. A vintage Pepsi sign, neon still bright, and a charming green glass juke-box filled with hits from the 1940’s onward grace the front porch of the R & M, along with a long bench that locals are encouraged to use for a spell or to listen to a couple songs, provided they can behave themselves (teenagers arguing over who their favorite member of the rat pack is might be amusing, considering they were already ‘mom and dad’, or at least older brother and sister, music by the time Mavis and Ray were teenagers, but when they get loud it also gets annoying.). The store itself still has the original wooden counter up front and built-in shelves along the walls, but all refinished and polished to a high shine. A mixture of display types going down the middle of the store, barrels and baskets filled with skeins of colorful yarn and cloth or Mavis’s knitted stuffies(and during winter sometimes socks and mittens), other sewing and craft supplies, display racks with local arts, postcards and carvings, sometimes wind up toys made by Elliot, and of course many, many displays of candies and chocolates. They also have a lot of dry goods, and some of the simpler candy types have little instruction booklets and the ingredients it takes to try out making them yourself stocked in the same display, drink coolers, and sometimes have local produce available. Basically, they have a bit of everything, except for building equipment/home repair supplies, and that’s because of the hardware store across the street.

Pinehallow Ranch-A sprawling 100 acre ranch in Latah County, Idaho where the Waller family has been doing something or other with horses for four generations now. Originally it was a horse breeding ranch, but Keith and Irene’s grandfather felt the money was in training horses, and offered boarding as well, and Keith has continued to build that up, offering lessons for a variety of styles, ages, and skill levels. Butting up against BLM land that allows additional grazing and trail riding, the ranch has four pastures, a large corral, a medium sized indoor arena and two horse barns, one for boarded horses and one for the ranch's own stock, and an equipment barn, an old bunkhouse that is mostly used to store feed-though Randy has slept there when in between places, mostly unbeknownst to Keith-and some smaller equipment sheds, placed where they’re needed. The main house is an L-shaped ranch house with a porch that goes around the entire long front of the house with a large herb/kitchen and rock garden arranged around that. There are treed pockets scattered here and there, left alone as the rest of the ranch was developed, but the creek Monty and Juniper sometimes hang out at is on BLM land, as is most of the forested area around the ranch.

Pinehallow Taglist @sleepysera @enchanted-lightning-aes @odysseywritings @thegreatobsesso @writing-is-a-martial-art and @hiitsolivia If anyone else wants to be added just interact with the post :) (My more advanced tumblr knowledge has led me to believe this is better than asking people to reblog/comment to be added, but if I'm wrong just let me know.)

#character list #oc list #someday I'll do a proper series introduction #and an introduction for me #but today is not that day #pinehallow ranch #original writing #I tend to build my world around the characters #backwards I know

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fiveviktorklaus · 3 years

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am I picturing the umbrella academy as a soulsborne-esque video game where all of the hargreeves have been “corrupted” and you have to defeat them to get them to return to their normal selves? yes. yes, I am. anyway, here’s how I’d see the fights going:

(putting this under a cut because - phew - I kind of got into detail with some of these! why can’t I design video games????)

luther: tanky as hell. you have to fight him at range or he’ll just mow you down and toss you around like a ragdoll. his boss stage is inside of the academy and is tough because you’re fighting him in narrow corridors where it’s hard to create the space you need to fight him at range. he has a lot of health, so the key defeating him is patience, timing, and dodging so he hits the environment around you. it’s safe to say that the academy takes a lot of damage from it’s number one in this fight.

diego: fight takes place out in the city on a rooftop at night. unlike with luther, you don’t want to put too much distance between yourself and diego. he WILL win if you give him any opportunity to start sniping his knives at you. close ranged combat can also be tricky because he knows how to hold his own in hand to hand as well. you can try your hand at beating him fair and square, but ultimately this will be a gimmick fight that you can easily win by doing a side quest earlier in the game (back at the academy where you fight luther) where you are given the option to destroy grace. if you do, you can remove her head and throw it at diego during his boss stage. he will stop fighting and collapse in despair, giving you the opportunity to defeat him.

allison: fighting her is unique because - unlike with diego and luther - you will not be facing her directly. running straight up to allison is a TERRIBLE idea. she will rumor you. you will lose. every time. you don’t run right up to medusa and look her in the eye, do you? no! this stage will be more of a stealth mission than anything else. you will navigate your way through her arena (a movie set) and try to get the drop on her so that you can take her out. this can be particularly challenging as allison will have rumored several people to patrol and guard the area. don’t get caught!

klaus/ben: you’ll be fighting them, naturally, in a cemetery. and by ‘fighting them’, I mean that you’ll actually have to get through a full level of zombies and ghosts just to get anywhere near the two. once you finally reach klaus, the real fight begins! he will summon ben to defend him, which will make the fight incredibly, incredibly difficult. the trick to this fight will be wearing klaus out so that he has to take breaks in between summoning ben. it’s during those breaks that you jump in and attack, retreating to cover whenever ben appears again and tries to dismantle you with his tentacles. eventually you’ll win the fight and - when you do - klaus, now returned to his true self, will stumble off to find his other siblings.

five: want to fight an annoying boss? LOOK NO FURTHER. after finding a briefcase that teleports you to the commission (in which you will have to get through a level filled with agents and assassins), you’ll finally run into mr. five. this fight will be hard and you will probably die multiple times trying to beat him. the key to defeating five will be learning his patterns and timing because (a) he is quick (b) he hits hard and (c) he fights dirty. once you beat him (after, you know, crying your way through several deaths and respawns), you’re given the option to offer him a cup of coffee that you find earlier in the game while exploring. if you give him the coffee, he will gladly accept and will actually (hooray!) join you as an ally for the final boss.

vanya: welcome to the icarus theatre! are you ready to get your ass kicked? good! because this is where we find vanya all dressed up in her fancy suit! she (and the suit) look perfectly normal at the start. if you brought five along with you, he will engage as a distraction so you can attack whenever her back is turned. vanya will strike with sound waves and occasionally launch various objects at you. ouch. if you try to get too close, she will attempt to perform a grab attack that drains the life out of you if you get caught. this is almost always a one shot kill, so let’s avoid that! with some coordinated teamwork, you can and will take vanya down. while fighting vanya before, the music was sort of soft and eerie. as you approach her to check in after taking her down, you’ll notice that the boss health bar (which was just depleted) has suddenly refilled itself and vanya’s name on top of it has shifted to THE WHITE VIOLIN. a boss fight? with two stages? well, fuck. remember that eerie music before? it just shifted in volume and is exploding with sinister instrumentals (I like to imagine it being to something like ludwig, the holy blade). vanya, who is now transforming into glowstick mode and has upgraded her already edgy suit to Super Edgy White Suit, will wield her violin and will launch even larger sound waves at you that take up nearly the entire arena. sometimes she’ll fly up into the air and charge up particularly devastating sound wave attacks, only to slam into the ground towards you and unleash them in a circle around her. another attack? her bow. she can literally slice you in half with that thing, so it’s a good idea to avoid when she swipes it at you. the white violin is a very, very aggressive boss who rarely gives you space to breathe, so you’ll really have to take advantage of having five around for this part of the fight. this is the only fight in the game where playing it safe is punished, so be ready to strike hard and fast if you wanna take down the white violin!

the umbrella academy as a video game in general would be great. get on it, gerard!

#I....am a big soulsborne fan basically #also I just beat demons souls whoo!#vanyas fight is definitely majorly inspired by lady maria #and I kind of wanna gif this somehow hmm

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sandwichrin · 3 years

Text

A Little into You (Junkyu x Reader) (Ch. 18)

Chapter 18 - Is this a bad start?

Word count: 5.4k words

Genre: Fanfiction, PG13, Comedy, Romance.

A/N: Hello! How is everyone doing? It’s July already wow how time flies ><. Also, here’s Chapter 18! I miss you all and I hope you all enjoy this one 🧡

The next day came, and it was officially your first day as a proper tutor for the YG staff that were assigned to you. You were excited for your very own session with your small group so today you arrived at work a little early.

Opening the door of your assigned meeting room, you skipped happily towards the end of the table that was directly in front of the whiteboard. Placing your bag onto the table, you took out your small bottle of perfume and started spraying the perfume at the corners of the room to get rid of the dry and unoccupied dust smell.

“I wonder if this room was ever used, like, ever,” you said to yourself since you’re pretty sure no one has used this room before.

You exited the room and stood near your new favourite spot since yesterday, the railings in front of your meeting room. You leaned against it, scanning the interior of the building and waiting for the staff that were supposed to be in your group.

Treasure Dorm #1

“It’s almost 9am, where’s Junkyu??” Hyunsuk asked, a little concerned that he hasn’t seen Junkyu leave his room yet since they were supposed to leave early for a schedule at 10am today.

Haruto shrugged as he munched on the piece of banana in his hand, his hair uncombed and a little wet from his shower earlier.

Yoshi entered the kitchen and grabbed himself a glass of water. He was dressed in his white graphic shirt with khaki loose pants paired with his black beret.

“Hey, Yoshi, did Junkyu leave his room yet?” Hyunsuk asked.

“Oh? I’m not sure, I didn’t check,” Yoshi answered, pulling out a piece of banana for himself as well.

“Aigoo that kid. I’ll go check on him,” Hyunsuk sighed as he left the kitchen.

Hyunsuk walked up towards Junkyu’s door and knocked on it several times. “Junkyuuuu. Junkyu-aa, wake up! We have a schedule at 10 today! You better get up and get dressed,”

Hyunsuk waited for while, waiting for a response from Junkyu.

“Junkyu?”

He knocked again onto the door, this time a little louder.

Hyunsuk sighed. Might as well just enter this guy’s room, he thought.

Hyunsuk twisted the doorknob and entered the room,

“Kim Junkyu—”

Hyunsuk stopped himself when he saw that Junkyu’s bed was empty. His pyjamas were laid on his gaming chair, which meant that Junkyu had already gotten up and got dressed too.

Hyunsuk looked around the room, making sure that this boy wasn’t really there. When he was 100% sure he wasn’t just imagining Junkyu’s absence, he headed back towards the kitchen to where Yoshi and Haruto were.

“Hey guys, Junkyu isn’t in his room.”

“Huh?? Where would he go this early??” Haruto asked.

“Beats me,” Hyunsuk shrugged. “I’ll give him a call to see where he is,”

YGE Building (3rd Floor – Practice Room)

Junkyu paced to and fro in his group’s usual practice room. The air conditioner was on but Junkyu still felt restless.

He stopped walking around the room and decided to lay down on the floor. The cold floor touches his arms and Junkyu sighed out loud.

Now, why was he here so early? Sure, they were going to have a short recording for their Treasure Map episode at 10 later, but him being here 2 hours early was something rare.

Junkyu stared at the ceiling above him. Thoughts running around, making him more restless.

Junkyu groaned out frustratedly. He couldn’t sleep last night, he couldn’t bring himself to eat anything this morning, well, let’s just say he couldn’t seem to do anything because he kept thinking about his conversation with Jihoon the other day.

“Agh, this is killing me!” He yells as he sat back up onto the floor.

“Do I like y/n? Or do I not like her? Is she annoying? No….but she makes me feel weird about myself so—that means I don’t like her, right?? But then again, if I do like her…what would happen?”

That’s right, Junkyu had started arguing with his own thoughts, trying to convince himself that he doesn’t like you that way. Maybe he likes looking at you, that’s all.

Junkyu stared at his reflection in the mirror opposite him. His eyebags were showing today, and his hair looks dishevelled too.

He shook his head and started combing his hair with his fingers, trying to make it look neat like always.

“I probably just need some air,” he mumbled to himself as he stood up.

Tugging his BonBon hoodie on, he took a deep breath as he opened the door of the practice room.

His eyes were greeted by the railings in front of him. He instantly remembered how he was simply resting there yesterday and he suddenly noticed you leaning against the rails on the floor above. He remembered how surprised he was to see you since he didn’t expect you to be anywhere near their practice rooms.

Well, technically, you weren’t close, but this was as close as it could get to him.

Junkyu remembered how he decided to just stare at you yesterday, how his heart beat quickened every time you made small movements like fixing your hair or how you closed your eyes for a minute or two before getting surprised by Chani who appeared out of nowhere in his opinion.

His foot stepped forward towards the same spot he stood yesterday, eyes slowly glancing up…to see—no one on the floor above.

Junkyu felt himself breathe out a breath of relief. He chuckled to himself, thinking how crazy he felt for being so bothered by you, someone he barely knows.

Suddenly, Junkyu’s phone rang from his pocket and he pulled it out to see who was calling.

“Hyunsuk-hyung?”

“Hello?” Junkyu said as he answered the call.

“Ahh, sorry hyung, I got up early today so I thought I might as well just leave for work early today,” he said into the phone.

“Yes, I’ll see you all later. Bye,”

Junkyu shook his head as he kept his phone into his pants pocket again after the call ended. He should’ve at least informed his dormmates that he left early, he thought. He must’ve made them worried about him just now.

Junkyu leaned back towards the railings again, wanting to rest for a bit and maybe get some air before he enters the practice room again.

His eyes roamed around the floor opposite him and slowly, he raises his head to look at the floor above.

And right at that moment, he felt his breath hitched.

He felt his body stiffened up and he couldn’t even turn away no matter how many times he kept telling himself to do so in his head.

Instead, he kept staring.

He kept staring at your figure, that was staring back at him from above.

He could see your eyes, slightly widened, probably as shocked as he was to see you there.

The both of you knew that you both were making eye contact, so there was no way to pretend this isn’t happening, he thought.

He tried blinking his eyes a couple times.

Slowly, he raised his hand and waved awkwardly at you.

He notices your gaze towards him relaxing and then slowly, he sees your soft smile forming on your lips. You waved back at him as you smiled.

Junkyu felt his face heat up, and he stopped waving at you.

That’s right. He couldn’t do this. This was too much for him to handle.

Clumsily, he backed away from his spot and he ran back inside the practice room.

As he closed the door behind him, he placed his hand on his chest. His heart was pounding so fast he could literally hear the sound beating in his ears.

He walked back towards the middle part of the room, plopping himself onto the floor to rest.

His eyes caught his own reflection in the mirror in front of him, and he noticed, his face red and his hands slightly shaking from what happened earlier.

Junkyu couldn’t get the image of you smiling back at him with that pretty smile of yours out of his mind.

He’s always thought you looked pretty when you smile. He rarely sees you smile like that when he’s around, but he had always noticed this pretty smile of yours when you were around Hyunsuk or the other younger members.

But today, for the first time, Junkyu felt like he had seen you smile the prettiest smile ever. And it was for him.

Junkyu looked at his reflection again.

“No way…Kim Junkyu…you do like y/n,” he said to himself.

You were kneeling down to peel off the sticky paper that you noticed was sticking out from underneath your heels when you heard a phone ringing. You checked your skirt pocket and surely enough, it wasn’t your phone that was ringing. Then whose phone was it?

You stood back up and your eyes unconsciously looked over towards the other side of the building since you sensed that someone was there.

The ringing had stop and you saw on the other side, a floor lower than you, was a guy talking on the phone.

You continued staring at him because something about him seems familiar. Especially that hoodie design… You tilt your head, trying to figure out who that person is.

And just as you were leaning forward towards the railings to continue staring at the guy, he stopped talking on the phone and was looking in your direction.

That’s when both of your eyes met.

You weren’t expecting it to be him at all, hence, you were clueless on how to react. Instead, you just continued staring at him in shock.

Well, to be fair, he looked just as surprised as you were too.

You saw him slowly raising his hand and waving at you, and that’s when you felt more relaxed.

Okay, be cool, y/n. Why are you acting all nervous? It’s just Junkyu. Just raise your hand and wave back at him.

You waved back at him and smiled at him. That’s right, girl! Just smile and wave, just smile and wave.

But then, you saw Junkyu’s expression stiffened and then out of sudden he dashed off into the door behind him, almost tripping at it too.

Your hand still in the air, you frowned. You felt confused as to what just happened.

YGE Building / Lunchtime (Cafeteria Balcony)

You were resting your head on the table, eyes closed and enjoying the quiet surroundings when suddenly a voice startled you.

“Y/N! WAKE UP!”

You furrowed your eyebrows and lift your head up to see Chani with a tray full of food in his hands.

“What is it? Why are you being so loud??” You asked him, shooting him a glare.

Chani placed his tray onto the table and pulled out the chair opposite of you. He lets out a heavy sigh and pulled his drink closer to him so he could sip on it.

Still shooting him a glare, you waited for him to explain why he woke you up from your short relaxing nap.

Chani wiped his chopsticks with the serviette he had gotten from the cafeteria earlier and started mixing his rice with his side dishes. His eyes glanced up to look at you.

“Now, the real question here is that—why aren’t you eating anything,” he said matter-of-factly, making you roll your eyes at him.

“I’m not hungry. Now shut up and let me go back to napping,” you huffed as you rest your head onto the table again.

Chani clicked his tongue and decided to pull your hair so that you wouldn’t go back to napping.

“Ow! Hey, what gives??” you said, half-yelling. Your hand rubbed your head at where he had tugged your hair earlier.

“No way. I’m not letting you nap. You still have 4 hours left of work and you need the energy from food, not from sleeping! You can sleep at night later on,” he nagged at you.

You grumbled back at him. “Fine, fine. I’ll go get myself some food.”

Chani eyed you and you shifted in your seat slightly.

“Okay fine, you got me. I’m not getting up to get any food. To be honest, I’m not in the mood to eat anything right now, Chani,”

Chani stared at you for a while before letting out a sigh. “Okay then. Don’t get up then,”

“Thanks,”

Chani spooned some rice from his bowl and lifted it up to your face.

“What?”

“Eat some from mine then.”

You sighed. “Chani I told you—”

“I know, and I’m not telling you to go get yourself a full course meal from inside. Now eat up before I start another series of nagging here,”

“Okay, okay! Sheesh, you’re pushy,” you muttered as you leaned forward and ate up the food from his spoon.

“Good girl.” He smiled at you before he starts eating his own food again.

You looked away from him and chewed on the rice in your mouth slowly.

Chani continued eating a few spoonsful before he asked you, “Hey, is everything alright?”

You swallowed your food and pointed at his drink, in which he nodded at you, implying that he’s letting you drink it.

You grabbed the glass and took a big gulp from the drink.

“Whoa there, slow down, that’s still mine,” he reminded you.

“Sorry,” you said as you placed his glass down onto the table again.

“Uhuh, sure. Now, what happened? Why do you look so glum?”

“I don’t know Chani…today…didn’t really go as I expected it to be…”

“What? But you were so excited about today! I had to listen to you talk about your whole module plans for a whole 15 MINUTES yesterday!”

“It’s just 15 minutes, Chani. Don’t make it sound that bad,” you scowled at him.

“15 minutes of you talking about something I have no interest in? It felt like I was in prison, y/n,”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Whatever, Chani.”

“Ugh, look at you and your grumpy attitude. It’s like our first lunch together all over again,” he chuckled.

You pushed your hair to the back of your ears and sighed out heavily again.

“Hmm,” Chani said as he chewed on his food. “Let me take a guess. Your group members are all uncooperative,”

You shook your head.

“They all slept throughout your session?”

“Nope.”

“Oh my god.” Chani dropped his spoon into his bowl as his eyes widened. “DID THEY HARRASS YOU??”

“Shh! No! Now chill! You don’t have to shout!” You said, trying to calm him down.

“I mean, you were all glum! What else could it be??”

“Chani—nothing happened today, okay??”

He scoffed at you. “Puh-lease. Nothing??”

“Yes, NOTHING.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Yes, Chani. Nothing happened! You know why? Nothing could happen, since there was no one in my group!” you said, your eyes tearing up at this point.

Chani saw your frustrated expression and stopped for a minute.

You blinked back your tears, not wanting to cry in front of your friend. You reached out to grab Chani’s drink and sipped on it slowly, your eyes avoiding his.

Chani stared at you, his face filled with confusion. “Just how…Wait, what do you mean you have no one in your group??”

“Teu-bye!!” All the 12 boys said as they waved at the camera.

“And, cut! Good job, everyone! You’re all dismissed!” the director said to everyone in the room.

The boys thanked everyone in the room before they took off their mics and proceeding to pick up their bags from the back of the room.

“Hahah! You have some flour on your hair!” Jihoon said as he dusted off the flour stain off his best friend’s head.

“Speak for yourself, you have some colouring on your shirt,” Junkyu pointed out back at him.

Jihoon looked down and noticed the red spots on his shirt. “Aw man. That’s not gonna come off easily.”

Junkyu chuckled at his best friend. “Where are you headed later? You don’t have any schedules, right?”

“Nah, we can all head home now. I checked everyone’s schedule today. The only thing we had today was TMap recording.”

“Okay. Wanna go grab some early dinner?”

Jihoon slip on his bag on his shoulder and nods at Junkyu. “Sure. I’ll ask the rest if they want to join as well,”

Junkyu nods at this. “Sure. I’ll wait outside.”

Junkyu watched as his best friend jogged towards him.

“The rest said they’ll just order from home. I guess it’s just the two of us.”

“Alright then.”

Jihoon wrapped his arm around Junkyu’s shoulder. “So, anything you have in mind?”

Junkyu shrugged. “I don’t know…maybe some garlic tteokbokki?”

“Aigoo, that again, huh? Sure sure,” Jihoon said as he grinned.

Junkyu smiled back at him and the both of them headed towards their usual tteokbokki spot not far from their apartment complex area.

After their super early dinner, Junkyu and Jihoon decided to just walk back to their apartment complex since it wasn’t too far from their dinner spot earlier.

As they leisurely walked home, the both of them talked about the incidents that happened during their recording today, mostly all the funny moments.

“Did you notice how Doyoung accidentally whisked Asahi’s team’s batter instead just now? Because of that, his team had to rush and work on their batter extra time!” Jihoon said as he laughed out loud.

Junkyu too, laughed at this. “No wonder his cake didn’t bake in time!”

“Oh, oh, Hyunsuk’s cake! He wanted to mix blue and red colouring to make purple frosting but he accidentally poured green instead of blue!!” Junkyu added, still laughing.

“Huwaaaaaa my cake!!! It’s all smurfed up now!!” Jihoon imitated Hyunsuk’s wails from their recording earlier.

“Hahahahaha! You sound exactly like him!” Junkyu laughed harder.

The both of them enjoyed talking and laughing until they reached the front gate of their apartment complex.

Jihoon suddenly stopped walking.

“Jihoon? What’s wrong?” Junkyu asked.

“Aish! I forgot to buy some bread for the kids in my dorm! I totally forgot we finished up ours this morning,” Jihoon answered.

“Ahh. Do you want to run back to that convenience store down the block? We can go back there,”

Jihoon shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine. I can go on my own. I’m pretty sure you’re tired too, right?”

Junkyu shrugged at this. Honestly he doesn’t mind it if Jihoon had wanted him to tag along.

“It’s fineee! Now, hurry back. Get some rest,” Jihoon said, his eye-smile showing.

Jihoon immediately walks off outside the gate of their apartment complex and as he went, he managed to turn around and tell his best friend to proceed going home another time.

Junkyu watched as his best friend’s figure got further and further from his view.

Shrugging to himself, he continued walking towards the front part of his apartment block.

You smiled as you waved goodbye towards the cats that you had just fed.

One of the cats purred loudly and started rubbing its head at your leg and you giggled to yourself, thinking that this act of clinginess was just too cute to resist.

“Okay fine! 5 more minutes, and then I’ll head up, okay?” you said as you kneeled back onto the ground, watching over the cats that ate up the wet food you had bought on your way back from work earlier.

You petted the clingy cat and smiled at them all, feeling at peace after what had happened today.

Truthfully, you had felt a bit down since no one had entered your meeting room at all today.

Did they get lost? Were they not informed of you being their tutor??

These thoughts kept running in your mind the whole day.

At first you thought that maybe these staff had another meeting to attend and that maybe they would show up for your session after lunchtime, but alas, you literally spent the whole day staring at your own reflection in your meeting room and with no one else at all with you.

You sighed as you stood back up from your position earlier. The cats in front of you stopped eating and glanced over at you.

“I hope you enjoyed the food,” you smiled. “I’ll come back tomorrow, okay?”

You turned around to head back towards the front entrance of your apartment block, which was only a few steps away from where you were since you were just feeding the cats at the side of the entrance.

As you got close to the front entrance, your eyes landed onto a familiar figure walking up towards the entrance as well.

The both of you stopped in your tracks, both making eye contact with each other now.

“Y/n?”

“Junkyu,”

The both of you stood in front of the elevator doors, waiting for the elevator to come down from the top floor of the building.

The both of you decided to just wait for the elevators together since you both had bumped into each other. It’s not like any of you could run off, right? Because that would have been super awkward.

But then again, as you stood there beside him, his tall height looming beside you, you felt small and awkward. Maybe it’s because it’s never been just the two of you alone, you thought.

As the both of you stood there in silence, you subtly looked at the guy beside you, noticing that up close, this close, Junkyu looked like one of those perfect dream boyfriends that people would go crazy for. Okay, let’s just admit it, Junkyu is indeed a good-looking person. You wouldn’t deny it, when you first met Junkyu, you thought he was indeed handsome. But then, you also knew that the both of you never really talked much to each other. You had always been close with the other members, but Junkyu? It’s almost like as if there was a wall built in between the both of you.

Why is it like that?

“It’s on it’s way down now,” his voice said, startling you.

You immediately looked straight at the elevator doors, hoping that he didn’t notice you had been staring at him for the past 5 minutes.

“Uh, okay. Thanks,” you muttered under your breath.

Again, your mind went back to thinking. Why was it that among the rest of the members, Junkyu was the only person you had trouble being friends with? Are you both that different from each other?

But then, you suddenly remembered how cold Junkyu had treated you at times. Sometimes you notice him giving you looks that showed how much he despised you, but then again…sometimes, he acted normally around you. Like today. He waved at you today, didn’t he? That’s not a sign of him hating you, no?

DING! The elevator door opened up in front of the both of you.

The both of you entered it at the same time.

Junkyu stood at the side, near the buttons panel.

“6th floor, right?” Junkyu asked.

“Y-yeah. 6th.”

Junkyu reached out his finger to press the 6th and 16th floor buttons.

“Oh? Green,” you said in all of a sudden, making Junkyu turn around to look at you.

“Wha…t?”

“Oh, sorry. I mean, uh, your hand. It’s green,” you stammered. You lift your finger to point at the green coloured stain on his hand.

“Oh, that,” he said. “We had a bake-off for our TMap recording today,” he chuckled.

“T…Map…?” you asked him, not understanding the abbreviation.

“Treasure Map,”

“Oh! Yeah, that. Your show,” you said to him.

Junkyu nodded at you and then the both of you kept quiet again.

“Have you ever seen TMap?” Junkyu asked, in all of a sudden.

“Uhh, well, to be honest…no.”

This made Junkyu turn his head to look at you, a shocked look on his face. “Not even one episode??”

You shook your head. “No…I mean, don’t get me wrong! I know who you guys are, I’ve listened to your songs and I love your songs but well, I never got the chance to watch any of the episodes because well, I don’t watch videos much…”

This made Junkyu blinked several times, his face showing that he was thinking hard, trying to understand what you said.

DING! The elevator stopped at the 6th floor.

The door opens and you slowly made your way out. Junkyu, oblivious that this was your floor and not his, followed you, walking by your side.

“Wait, if you don’t watch videos, what do you do when you have free time??”

“Well, I read books, listen to songs, clean the house, take walks…” your voice drifting when you realised how Junkyu might be seeing you as a pretty boring person by now.

“But you have a TV! Don’t you watch anything on that thing??” he asked, still baffled with your sense of entertainment.

You stopped in your tracks. “Well, the TV… I well, I… I don’t really know how to work it…”

Junkyu shot you a weird look. “What?”

“It’s difficult to figure out the stations! There’s the mode, the channel, the freaking satellite button, like, which ones should I press anyways??” You complained, slightly in a nagging voice.

Unconsciously, Junkyu grinned at your complaint. “Look, you could’ve asked us you know. We’ve been over to your house couple times now,”

“And look like an idiot? Uhh, no way,” you scoffed.

Junkyu smiled a little at your response.

You looked around you and realised that you had been stopping for a while now and that you were only couple doors away from your apartment unit.

“Oh gosh, this is my floor,” you said, slightly embarrassed as to how you had made Junkyu followed you until here.

“Oh, right. I forgot we don’t live on the same floor,”

You nodded at this. “Well,” you huffed. “This was nice…Junkyu. Thank you for walking me up to…my floor?” you chuckled, not knowing how to describe the situation you both were in.

Junkyu pursed his lips and smiled at you with his cute smile. “Sure. I’ll see you around then. Bye,”

You walked in front of him and turned to wave at him.

Junkyu raised his hand and waves back.

“Oh, right! I still have your shirt with me,” you called out to him now that the both of you are further away from each other.

“Nah, you can give it to me some other time. I better be heading home now.”

“Okay. Bye Junkyu!” you said with a smile.

“Bye!” Junkyu waved at you as he entered the elevator doors again.

As the elevator doors closed, Junkyu breathed a sigh of relief. He felt…less nervous?

When he bumped into you earlier, he was panicking on the inside because he wasn’t sure if he could navigate any conversations with you. But then, after just now, he felt that talking to you wasn’t that bad at all. In fact, talking to you felt so natural its as if you were a friend he had known for a year or two.

Maybe talking to you isn’t that bad after all. Maybe if he had tried to talk to you more often before, he could’ve been close to you like the others do. And maybe…just maybe, if the two of you had gotten close before, you would’ve liked him too, he thought.

Treasure’s Apartment floor (16th floor)

Outside Dorm #1

Jihoon rang the doorbell of his best friend’s dorm.

He heard footsteps approaching and as expected, the door opened and Jihoon saw Junkyu behind it.

“Man, why’d you ring the doorbell? You know the combination lock to this dorm, right?”

Jihoon grinned at his best friend. “That’s because I’m not here to visit. I’m here to give you all these,” he pointed out to the bag of bread he was holding in his hand.

“Oh? But I thought you went to buy these for your dorm??”

“I bought extras, silly. Here, here, take two of these,” he said as he shoved two packs of bread into Junkyu’s hands.

Junkyu clumsily received the breads from his hyung, “Uhh, thanks,”

“No problem!” Jihoon smiled. “I’m heading back now,”

“Uh, wait! Jihoon-hyung,” Junkyu called out to him before he could leave.

“Hm? What is it?”

Junkyu looked over behind him and quietly stepped outside his front door. Closing the door behind him, he spoke to Jihoon in a soft tone, “I uh, I bumped into y/n just now after you left,”

“Oh?? Really now?” Jihoon’s teasing smile formed on his face.

“And well, we uh, talked. Like normal people do.”

“Of course,” Jihoon nodded, still smiling.

“I think…y/n doesn’t make me uncomfortable in a bad way anymore…”

“Aww look at you! You’re all grown up!” Jihoon teased him as he ruffles Junkyu’s hair.

Junkyu felt himself blush and so he defensively replied to his friend, “Hey, hey. I just said we talked like normal people that’s all! Nothing more to that!”

Jihoon tilt his head slightly, a soft smile on his face now. “And that means…you don’t hate y/n, right?”

“What, no! I don’t hate her,”

“Yup, and this means you like her?”

“Yeah, I guess it means that—HEY, WHAT??” Junkyu said, almost screaming since his best friend almost tricked him into admitting that he has feelings for you.

Jihoon laughed out loud seeing his best friend’s flustered behaviour now. “I’m just messing with you! Don’t get all worked up over this,” he said still laughing.

Junkyu pouts at this. “Just go home already, Park Jihoon,”

“Haha sure, sure,”

As Jihoon turned around to leave, once again, Junkyu called out to him.

“Jihoon-aa”

“Yes, Junkyu?” he turned around.

“Do you know how to shop for girl stuff online?”

Jihoon looked at him in disbelief. “Whoa Kim Junkyu…what happened to you,”

“Not for me, silly! It’s for y/n…Like you said, I ruined her shirt that day…so I was thinking of buying her something to make up for it.”

“Ahh, I see,”

“Could you maybe help guide me with the buying process later?”

Jihoon shook his head, amused with his best friend’s cute attitude. “Yeah, sure. Just let me know when you want to shop, okay?”

“Okay!” Junkyu said cheerfully.

Treasure Dorm #2 (Jihoon, Mashiho, Doyoung, Jeongwoo)

“I’m homeeeee” Jihoon chimed as he entered their front door.

“Welcome home!” Jeongwoo’s voice responded from the living room.

After taking off his shoes and arranging them on his shoe rack, Jihoon entered the living room to see Jeongwoo sitting on the sofa, staring at the screen of his laptop.

“What are you watching?” Jihoon asked.

“Just a video Yoshi-hyung shared to me just now,” he said, his eyes not leaving the screen.

“Okay.” Jihoon proceeded towards the kitchen and placed the bread he bought onto the kitchen counter.

He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, drying them with a paper towel right after.

Jeongwoo, who had finished watching the short video on his laptop, showed up in the kitchen.

“Oh? Hyung, why’d you buy us more bread? I thought we still have some left from the ones Mashiho-hyung bought yesterday,” he said as he checked out the paper bag that Jihoon had placed on the kitchen counter.

“Ah, I must have forgotten we still had some,” Jihoon chuckled. “Oh, by the way, did my package arrive today?”

“Yup, I kept it in your room. What’s inside it?” Jeongwoo asked, being his usual curious self.

“It’s nothing special,” Jihoon said as he grinned at his dongsaeng.

“The box looks pretty fancy, hyung. It has yellow flowers painted all over it, are you sure it’s not special?” Jeongwoo said as he looked at his hyung, sceptically.

“You know how much I like flower designs, right? I asked for the limited-edition box, that’s all. I wanted to pair up the box with some of Romy’s merch. Don’t you think it fits Romy?” he answered Jeongwoo with a soft grin on his face.

“I guess it does fit Romy…Are you gonna put in your Kaikai Kiki merch in there too?”

Jihoon shrugged. “Maybe, I’ll see if it fits,”

“Heh, sounds cool. Oh! Something funny happened at school today!”

“Aigoo Jeongwoo-yaa, you’re crowding me. I need to go shower up,” Jihoon nagged playfully at him.

“Aww come on, hyung! Hear me out for a bit, I promise this one is funny!” Jeongwoo whined as he chased after Jihoon that was already heading out of the kitchen.

To be continued…

#treasure #treasure fanfic #TREASURE IMAGINE #ygtreasure #treasuremembers #alltreasuremembers #JunKyu #kim junkyu #junkyu x reader #junkyu scenarios #kimjunkyu #kim junkyu x reader #kimjunkyu x reader #ALIY #sandwichrin

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cyclesprefectpress · 3 years

Text

[image description: a proof of a font of handset type for letterpress printing, displaying every letter, symbol, and special character in the font. it's called "Sixteenth Century Roman," 24 pt., and is a rough-edged serif font with a deliberately worn look. end description.]

hello hello i am return from a deep dive into several reference materials that assumed a little bit more knowledge about how Medieval Latin works than i actually have, but, it was all exTREMEly inch resting to me. i am absolutely not a historian but here we are, a speedrun of my pinballing around trying to ensure that I know what the fuck im storing in my type corridor:

so 16th Cent. Roman, i already knew, was a font Paul Duensing designed based on this incomplete set of old Italian punches he acquired (punches, the first step of old school typecasting, where you carve the relief letter shape into the end of a stick of steel, and you uuuh punch that into the copper matrix, which is then the negative mould-shape you use to cast multiple copies of the lead sorts with hot metal; surviving punches are precious artifacts not the least because they are. they’re hand-carved!! often by the type designer themselves. historical and also wildly cool craftsmanship). these punches were all beat up and probably water damaged, fucky and rough-edged, so he re-did and filled in the gaps in the alphabet with similarly styled letters of his own. very cool. an extremely nerdy lil passion project of a typecaster in the 1960s, very typical of type people. we all find a Thing to obsess over, and sometimes it's reviving an incomplete set of punches from the 1500s that you found in, idk, it's usually a bucket in somebody's basement.

anyway it's got a bunch of ligatures and the long s, sure sure sure, but WHAT are all these gibberish characters with tildas and lines thru the stems of ps and qs and such—

Duensing's full font is in Mac McGrew's specimen book, great, i have that, except McGrew's book has complete proofs and a little bit of history for each font but doesn't always cover what each symbol in a unique alphabet is for, and i knew just enough about Latin to guess that they were abbreviations but not what each of them stood for. a little bit of searching got me this far, which is to say, "Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography," a translation of an Italian essay on the subject from 1929. It is prefaced by the translators with gems like: "Take a foreign language, write it in an unfamiliar script, abbreviating every third word, and you have the compound puzzle that is the medieval Latin manuscript." Scribes writing in medieval Latin just tossed out letters they didn't care to deal with, constantly, and had stand-in special characters and abbreviations for syllables/words/particles and there were intuitive rules but way too many variations in time and place and person to make a reasonably-sized, static lexicon. amazing. hope all u paleographers are having fun over there.

the essay has a great big glossary of truncations and abbreviations and so on which clearly cover most of the figures in Duensing's font:

[image description: screenshots of the essay, with various symbols and the Latin syllables they abbreviated. an m with a bar over it, ex., stood in for men or mun. end description.]

ok! BUT this q with a little swoop off the end kept bugging me!! for all these dead-use symbols this essay is using handwritten samples, obviously, and there's clearly variation in execution and also typographers take liberties, and i just thought, sure my piece of type looks a lot like the quod here but it does link the staff to the swoop where the handwritten sample doesn't, and it could just as well be a fanciful ligature for qn which apparently can stand in for quando, and i have no idea which is a more common-use syllable likely to be cast in the font if you're only going to pick your top 14, and i just like to be sure about things.

SO. i went to double-check with Johnson’s Typographia. Johnson made like a thousand pages of printing manuals set in tiny tiny type in the 1820s which are rad as hell and tell you all sorts of things about how to run a shop and build your own press and cast type and going rates for work and employment and also, the alphabets/type case layout for whatever language or symbol set you might have to set type in, when handsetting type was mostly the only way to get stuff printed—English, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, musical notation, astronomical signs, aaaand it’s got a section for "Marks & characters used in the Domesday Book & other ancient records.”

[image description: a photo of a page of the manual, with similar but not always identical symbols for abbreviated use. many of these abbreviations are described as "a Domesday contraction." end description.]

and WHAT is a Domesday contraction, WELL, it's a contraction specifically from/prevalent in the Domesday book, a deeply boring and historically important tome about property distribution in England. It’s literally a survey. who owned what, in 1086. presumably mind-numbing. enormous, handwritten in Medieval Latin, EXTREMELY cool, go look at some images of it at least, very important to historians, economists, linguists, and a complete pain in the ass to set in type when that technology became available, having to cast any significant proportion of these variant characters in an alphabet. Johnson says, (in 1824) “It is an improvement of latter years only*, to have type cast to resemble the abbreviations used in the more ancient manuscripts; they being formerly rudely imitated, either from a common fount, or else were cut in wood for the purposes of any particular work.” wow that sucks. but in 1773 the government really wanted to be able to reproduce the Domesday Book in type, so a couple people tried to cut a set of punches for Domesday abbreviations and Joseph Jackson got it done and it only took 10 years to print an edited version of the manuscript. and then apparently all the type was destroyed in a fire in 1808. WOW that sucks.

but the point is, Johnson has a great big glossary of characters as they were translated into type in the making of the printed Domesday Book, and the Domesday punches were used or refrenced in the printing of other medieval latin works, which consequences a degree of standardization in the abbreviations used in those versions of the text that handwritten manuscripts never had or needed.

notably the Domesday quod looks even more different from my piece of type here which was pretty annoying, so what are the chances this thing is a quando, and anyway that's when my sister texted me back with better computer skills and a different search engine and found me a perfect match on the first try. it’s a quod. this National Diet Library digital exhibition has several different sample fonts, both black letter and roman, with quite consistent letter forms, if not choices about which abbreviations to bother casting.

*I don’t……exactly know what he means by this, since Gutenberg and contemporaries absolutely did cast many Medieval Latin abbreviations for their fonts nearly 400 years before this. His dismissal of “from a common fount” might be fair, since i think what he means by it is that you’d have a generic set of abbreviation characters which you would have to use in conjunction with whatever font was the main body of your text, and it’s messy to mix things that weren’t designed specifically to match. he may just mean that it’s new for his contemporary foundries to be casting all these expanded alphabets of abbreviations; Gutenberg didn’t have foundries to buy from and made his own type. he could include as many characters as he had the patience for. maybe Johnson is just a guy from the 1800s that didn’t have the internet and i shouldn’t jump down his throat for not knowing something. idk!! i have homework.

anyway that was my Friday!! feel free to correct me and/or suggest further reading if early typecasting is your Thing or. again. you just have better googling than me.

#letterpress #letterpress printing #handset type #lead type #typography #long post #:(( sorry #omitted: Johnson's scathing opinions on Almanacks and the people who read them #and ask you to typeset them #'''''the credulity of the vulgar''''''' alRIGHT bud #i guess if he was willing to set that whole paragraph in 8 pt.#or pay for it #it was at least an opinion he believed in very strongly.

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ravelights · 3 years

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Is Inko Midoriya abusive?

I've seen this argument get tossed around a lot, and I'll admit some people have very convincing arguments, but I think most people can agree that there always something off about those claims.

So if I can add my two cents into the whole: "Inko not doing something about Izuku bulling" Or "Inko is abusive/neglectful because she wasn't there for Izuku" ect, argument, here it is:

Inko Not Abusive, She Underwritten.

I just want to preference this by saying: Inko isn't and is not meant to be an abusive parent/character. She's not an antagonist of the story, and she's not someone that Izuku must either get away from, or do whatever's going on with the Todoroki fam. I'm sorry, but if people are seeing her as an abusive parent in the story, they are not reading it right.

What she is, is a realistic parent, that has been underwritten.

I think the problem when it comes to these debates, about whether or not Inko is a good parent, people tend to think of it in the story context. This is fair, especially when we start talking about Fanfic and Meta-analyses, people would want a in story explanation for her actions.

What the audience sees is that Izuku got bullied for several years and Inko did apparently nothing, but the confusing thing is that this doesn’t line up with her as a character. We seen that she’s more than ready to go up against All Might of all people and pull Izuku out of school because he kept getting hurt.

We also know that even though she not completely on board with Izuku being a hero, she still gives her all to support her son, even when attempting to pull him out of UA she said that Izuku was allowed to go to another hero school. She just didn’t want her son at UA (which seem justifiable, given several events)

We also see that despite her worries she still protects her son, and they have a good relationship, in no way has Izuku ever been resentful towards her, which you would think he would be, if Inko was abusive/neglectful in the story. Izuku is a good person but he’s not a pushover, if Inko was abusive in anyway Izuku would make it clear that he doesn’t like her.

The worst we seen Izuku act towards his mother was disappointed about one moment when he was four, when she apologised for him being quirkless. Which we later see her apologising for when she gives Izuku his first costume, which he wore and even when given the opportunity to change designs, he doesn’t.

Most of the time it pretty much typical teen “Mum, I’m fine” response to a nagging/worried parent, which is pretty realistic because I think most people sometimes get annoyed by their parent, especially when they are teens. And I’m curtain everyone has one moment with their parent when we felt as if they didn’t handle the situation as best as the could have.

So, what’s going on, we have a character who apparently did something (or nothing in this case) that could been seen as abusive/neglectful, but it seems like the exact opposite of what Inko would do as a character. Realistically if Inko was a good parent she would have done something about the bullying.

In the real world, yes.

But MHA is a story, not real life.

I think people need to step away from the Story perspective and start looking at it from a Writing perspective.

Let me explain, Inko is a side character in the story, but she in a very unique position because she is the protagonist mother, which in most Shonen’s is pretty damn rare, most of the time they are dead or missing. But she still a side character, and on top of that she is a female. As much as I love Hori writing, world building and character arcs, his biggest weakness is how he treats his female characters. Although he has gotten a lot better in the recent arcs, and is better than some anime out there, he still has room for improvement.

And Inko is very justifiable, underwritten, she had about one and a half major moment in the whole of MHA. That being when All Might beg her to intrust her son to UA and when Izuku was diagnosed quirkless, that’s about it, everything else has been moments with her that really don’t last more than a couple of pages, at best.

But Inko's Izuku mother, shouldn’t Hori at least show she tried to do something? Hypothetically yes, but the truth is he hasn’t, and it’s probably because he has just not thought about it, or it’s going to be brought up later. There are a million different things happening in MHA right now, with way more central characters and plot points, and the bullying thing happened all the way back in chapter one to about three.

Also, there is also the whole Izuku being bullied throughout middle school. Because it’s barely mentioned throughout the whole manga. We have moment where it’s been mentioned but it’s sort of been forgotten by Izuku and the Manga. It just starting to pick up again now and it more with Bakugou arc, because Bakugou was the bully, and is trying to atone for what he did, it doesn’t really involve Inko at all.

Because Inko is a side character, who purpose is to show that Izuku is still just a kid, that has a worrywart mum. That was literally said by Hori himself in an interview:

(Mama Midoriya Is the GOAT (greatest of all time), You can’t pick a favourite character in My Hero Academia because everyone loves them all. However, everyone loves Inko Midoriya. What was the inspiration behind her character?

KH: Well, first and foremost, I wanted Deku to be like any other kid. Not like every man, but every kid. So, I wanted him to have a kind of worry wart mum. And my own mother is a bit of a worry wart.)

Also, Izuku had to have an underdog story, meaning he had to have a rough beginning at least, him being bullied at school and being quirkless was his rough beginning. It was to show his progress to where he is now, aka someone with a powerful quirk and friends.

I saw this with Rei as well when a lot of people got kind of mad that Shoto ended up apologise to her when she the one that threw boiling water on his face. But then as we got deeper into her background of the event, we see that Rei was horrified by her actions, apologising and trying to cool Shoto burns, and people perspective on her changed.

We might get more about Inko when Hisashi eventually shows up, especially if it turns out he's All For One. But for now, she just plainly underwritten, with like three basic character traits.

So Tl;DR: Inko isn’t an abusive person in the story, she underwritten character that has been given little thought to when it comes to major events in the story. Because of that people have filled in the gaps of what it must be, AKA abusive/neglectful, when in reality she just written as a realistic mother in the beginning and then basically getting next to nothing afterwards.

#Bnha #bnha meta #inko midoriya #izuku mydoria #mha #rei todoroki #kohei horikoshi #Bnha Writting #hisashi midoriya

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collisiondiscourse · 3 years

Note

i have decided i am now going to blow up your inbox bc i csn i’m sorry codi focnnf

b u t!! anyway i’m going to rambling abt my new dad for all au [whixh was the au i sent you that ask abt]

alrighty so all might is now midoriya’s dad. that’s a thing. i like to think that inko and toshinori were high school sweethearts who broke up after graduation but met again when all might was called to recuse some hostages and inko was one of them!! anywho all might recuses her, they go on a coffee date, realize they’re still in love and start again

they get married and have izuku, who keeps inko’s maiden name [midoriya is now inko’s maiden name bc i do what i want]. he’s the cutest baby who has inko’s green hair, but has one blue and one green eye! [these are /important/] inko and all might talk abt maybe giving izuku all for one when he’s older, but they decide against it bc they don’t know if he’ll have a quirk or not

spoiler!! bitch baby has a quirk!! he gets a quirk that’s so much different than inko’s quirk and !!! ahhh!!! the basic explanation is that all might’s all of one genes mixed and then “corrupt” inko’s like 3 generation quirk-having genes or smth and izu has a very, very complex quirk now. it’s called astron, and astron allows him to fucking astral project into the center of the university and shit chxnc

astron works two different ways: using his blue eye he can project other people into his own personal astral plane and do whatever he wants. while the person’s physical body is still where it was, their mind is in the astral plane. if he uses his green eye, he can project himself to his astral plane and fuck around without consequences!!

[there’s an untold third ability of astron using both of his eyes, but izuku tried doing that when he first got his quirk and immediately fell into a coma for like a month? it was bad and his mind couldn’t handle the stress and dipped lol]

ANYWAY, izuku grows up with a bomb ass quirk and still has his kacchan with him thru his childhood so things are a lot different than canon? the wonder duo are little shitheads together and i love them, they wreck havoc and i love them

i have more ideas for this story but this is all i have for now, codi this is so long i’m sorry i’m blowing up ur inbox 🥺😭

me opening my askbox and seeing the length of this au: holy shit

me reading the actual whole au: HOLY SHIT

AJ I LOVE THIS HIGHKEY!!! I LOVE THE IDEA OF OP DEKU W A FUCKED UP QUIRK JUST TERRIFYING EVERYONE HE COMES ACROSS!!!! heterochromia is SO so good as a character design element and i LOVE THE WAY THIS IS IMPLEMENTED YELLS. I WANNA DRAW THIS SO BAD!!! THIS LOOKS SO COOL

(serious writing/plot below - blood and vomit mention)

oh god and now im imagining deku like. being this extremely feral and annoying lil shit whos extremely powerful and now bakugous got someone on his level so hes a lot more humble as hes growing up but also him and deku are the?? BESTEST OF FRIENDS. and i imagine when bakugou is being a little shit deku just. astral projects him out of his body for a while and apologizes to whoever kacchan yelled at LMFAO---bakugou comes back to his body and is all like “....fucks sake stop doing that”

AND THEN omfgkjfds imagine morally grey deku who does whatever he can to win?? he knew he wouldnt get into UAs hero course fair and square (all might offered him a recommendation but he declined because he wanted to get there on his own with kacchan) because robots didnt have souls he could astral project so he practices his quirks limits like YEARS prior and he tells bakugou about it but never rlly shows him but on the day of the entrance exam?

he shows up. everything goes as normal and he finishes the written exams and then moves on to the practical exam (still seperated from kacchan like in canon) and like. Every one goes dashing forward and deku doesnt really try to beat anyone. He waits until theyre all in the center engaging with robots when he walks to the center of the room.

and he sees the zero pointer in the distance.

“THE ZERO-POINTER’S HERE!” He yells and points at the gigantic mech heading their way. All at once everyone’s heads whip up to catch sight of the robot, enraptured by its sheer size and power.

As they all look to one direction, Deku makes eye contact with them and smiles.

All at once, every single participant in the area goes limp. Astron throws their souls into the astral plane with little fanfare and everyone watches in awe and annoyance as their bodies uselessly crumple to the ground from the outside. The green-haired boy is suddenly given free reigns of the arena and they seethe as one by one he deactivates or disables robots that were once under their purview.

(What some of the smarter ones notice however, is the way he seems to be leaving some stray 3 pointers untouched... almost as if he was doing the calculations in his head as he goes... on how to ensure the number one spot while others can still score points...?)

One by one however, they start struggling and reaching to reconnect with their bodies. Their gleaming bright souls bob up and down with frenzied energy and Deku feels it. He feels it like itches on his skin and goosebumps that turn into hills that dance up and down his back. He feels it like he feels his limit reaching.

Its still around 10 minutes though before he actually loses control and everyone comes back to their bodies. His quirk times out and almost like its angry, the astral plane takes his body in exchange for the dozens he kept in there. He gets sucked through and passes out while everyone else runs and destroys the remaining bots. It doesn’t matter though, because he knows he’s racked up enough points to stay on top. He lets himself rest and observes the blue-haired tall guy with engines who contemplates carrying Deku’s body to safety.

Until, he sees her.

Just under some rubble and very close to getting crushed by the Zero-Pointer’s foot, Deku spots a brown-haired young girl that he recalls has some kind of floating quirk. He sees as everyone runs past her, prioritizing their own safety instead of hers.

He makes a decision.

Quickly--recklessly, a familiar gruff voice says in his ear--he forces himself back into his body and looks around. He runs to the girl and attempts to dig her out from the rubble before she gets crushed. The robot comes ever closer.

Using the little strength and flexibility he’s learnt from years of sparring with Kacchan, Deku abandons her in favor of climbing up the broken concrete and metal to meet the robot’s visor. He knows he won’t save her by digging her out of there, but by god is he gonna let her get injured without a fight. These robots weren’t designed to kill, but they were designed to destroy.

Focus. Focus and listen to what’s around you, Izu-kun.

The world around him reduces to tunnel-vision and suddenly Deku is face to face with the Zero-Pointer. It stops, as if calculating how to discard of Deku without hurting him severely with its own strength.

Everything has life in it. You only need to focus and look for it.

Izuku Midoriya looks at the robot.

In a whirlwind of blue and green, he reaches inside of himself and searches for life. Cold steel and hard-wired code meet his gaze and he plunges even deeper.

Focus.

Then all at once, everything in his visions snaps into sudden clarity, like he’s never seen before. He feels everything. Sees Everything. Smells, tastes, hears--and he hears how the metal beneath him bends and groans. He feels how it winces and shudders. He sees it as it opens its maw and its visor bends in a facsimile of eyes, pleading him as if asking how?

The robot beneath him comes to life and stumbles back.

Quickly, he scrambles to the nearest ledge which happens to be a broken support beam. Distantly, he thinks he feels his arm being sliced open on the edge of it and the warmth of blood streaming down his side as he nearly falls.

“HEY! YOU WITH THE ENGINES!” He hoarsely screams to the still remaining, slack-jawed contestants. “I CAN’T KEEP THE ZERO POINTER DOWN FOR LONG! GO HELP THE GIRL AND TAKE HER TO SAFETY NOW!”

With a sudden burst of energy, the fellow participants start taking others out from the rubble while the blue-haired boy helps the brunette he was protecting earlier. As he watches them clear the rubble to drag her out, he feels a pang.

Who am I? a lost voice calls out. It’s raspy and almost-robotic sounding and only he can hear it. Where am I? What am I?

And Deku’s vision flickers.

In and out, he sees flashes through eyes that aren’t his. He hears voices that are simultaneously faraway and way too close for comfort. The world tugs at the sides of his perspective and a strain is pulling at the back of his head tearing his brain to shreds. He doesn’t know what he’s focusing or straining on, except that its working and keeping the zero-pointer down.

He grits his teeth. “Hurry the hell up! i can’t do this any longer--”

Bursts of pain appear behind his mismatched eyes and he wants to scream so bad and if he were looking any clearer he’d see the way that the zero-pointer thrashes on the ground in time with the pounding on his skull. Bile crawls up the back of his throat and Deku screams.

“SHE’S CLEAR! YOU CAN LET GO NOW, MIDORIYA-SAN.”

Izuku lets go and his vision goes black.

#ASKDZVJFXKS OK THIS TOOK.#A LOT LONGER THAN INTENDED #ok so gthis has plot now and now im thinking of. writing this actually #i love this au so much thank u aj i hOPE YOU DONT MIND THAT I WROTE FOR IT??? im sO SORRY??#anyway have more of my writing its unedited and garbage\#asks #yeets your boy #collisioncomrades #bnha #boku no hero academia #mha #my hero academia #deku #izuku midoriya #midoriya izuku #long post #cw long post #long post cw

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yeehawfolk · 3 years

Note

Hi! I think yr totally right about Felix's teeth probably not being great and how he and the rest of the crew should have more scars! Do u have any other lil appearance HCs for him/the whole gang? (:

OK! SO! I have a Lot of HCs about the crew, appearance-wise, anyway. Don't get me wrong, I love their canon designs, but I feel like they didn't utilize "Halcyon is fucked" enough with your companions? If that makes sense. I'm going to break this up character by character, so it'll be an easier read!

Also, I'm gonna put a TW on this for slight self harm on this?? It's not emotionally motivated at all, it's like when you'd compete to see who can get the gnarliest eraser burn in middle school, but nevertheless, I want to warn y'all ahead of time, it's on Ellie's part.

Parvati:

-Honestly, her eyes are gorgeous. They're brown, but an amber kind of brown, and very bright.

-I personally HC that Parvati chews her nails when she's nervous, so they're always nubs and usually pretty dirty, bc Mechanic and all.

-Her hands have faint scars from nicks and burns from working on machinery. The skin on her hands doesn't scar easily, but she still has a few gnarly scars from particularly bad burns or cuts that she wasn't able to take proper care of.

-Constantly has bruises of unknown origin on her arms and legs. She bruises very easy, and always has, which is kind of precarious when you're a mechanic.

-This might already be canon and I just haven't noticed bc I'm using the Switch version, but I HC Parv has some freckles sprinkled around her face. Not a lot by any means, but I HC she gets frequent sun when she's working on certain parts of the town, and freckles are a bi-product of that.

-She has a couple small scars on her face; one just below her eye on her cheek, and another on her chin. I like to think she fell on her chin, and the other was from her first project that blew up in her face, literally.

-Her skin is just a bit ashy because she hasn't had access to a lot of good lotions over the years.

-Despite taking a shower every morning, she accumulates grease smudges and dirt from her plants on herself very easily. She cleans up for her and Junlei's dates, but for casual visits both don't really bother. Sometimes they make a game of smudging each other with grease while they work and by the time they're finished their faces look like they were going for war paint.

-I like to think Parvati and Junlei eventually wear rings with each other (like, years down the line) and when Parvati gets deep in thought, she rests it against her lips. Junlei does something similar by turning her ring on her finger.

-Parv has ok teeth, not like great, but she takes pretty good care of them, even if sometimes she has to forgo it for a day or few while out with the Captain.

-When she's in Edgewater, she's always skinny, and if you squinted you probably could pick out a rib or so. But after she moves in with The Captain, she gains weight, and finally has the little pooch of fat that you're supposed to have around the middle. Ellie helps her keep up with nutritional needs (what you can get in Halcyon, anyway) and gets very proud when she makes her goals.

Felix:

-This boy has horrible teeth. His sweet tooth + being an orphan in the Back Bays didn't leave much time for proper teeth cleaning. He probably never really had enough bits to get toothpaste with, either.

-Oh, boy. He has scars galore. Some are from scuffles (he has some on his back from when he was a kid and used to get in trouble for stealing) but a lot are also from getting burned by pipes, or jagged metal. A fair few are from him doing dumbass things in his teenage years ("I wonder what would happen if I heat up these rounds of light ammo with a flamethrower??") because you can't tell me this boy didn't do dumb things like every teenage boy did but with more disasterous results bc SciFi.

-His nose has been broken quite a few times, so it's crooked in a couple spots.

-Can frequently be found with bloody knuckles just because he forgets that punching someone with a mask over their face really isn't the best idea. This eventually culminates into him making the "Millstone Drop-Kick!" his go-to move.

-This isn't exactly appearance related, but I HC Felix has a fucked back from his life of hauling heavy boxes. It doesn't help that he drop kicks literally everything that moves tho.

-Probably has chronic pain in his hands from his hands getting crushed by boxes at some point or another. Several of his fingers are crooked from being broken and improperly set. His bones probably aren't the best bc of poor nutrition growing up, either, so they're a little easier to break.

-Just. Me thinking about Felix in his 40s, or even early 30s: Honey, you have a big storm coming.

-This is also a little random, but I like to think that it takes a long time for Felix to grow any kind of facial hair (he has chronic babyface) so he's super proud of his scruff.

-Max: That's peach fuzz. If that.

-Felix: Leave me alone you big hairy bastard, just bc you have to shave like every other day to keep a clean face doesn't mean all men do!!

-(He's just a bit sensitive about his facial hair)

-(He one day dreams of growing a glorious beard like Sanjar's, but it would take him like 50 years)

-(Shut up Max one day he'll have an amazing handlebar mustache and you won't be laughing then)

-I have no idea if piercings or tattoos are a Thing in Halcyon (probs not, honestly, but I can dream) but if they are, he tried to pierce his ears by himself once, they got infected, and he got really sad when he had to let them close. The marks are still there but the holes have closed by now.

-ELLIE PIERCES HIS EAR AND HELPS HIM KEEP IT CLEAN

-Felix is strong, but he's skinny and gangly as all hell and it's hard as fuck to get him to gain any weight, mostly because he still has his habit of eating only what he needs and stashing the rest. It takes him a while with the crew to get over that, and when he does, he gains a healthy amount of weight around his middle. Ellie teases him a bit, but is 1,000x happier that he's no longer damn near a walking skeleton.

-Listen. Ellie and Felix are bros I don't make the rules. She denies it but she would kill for Felix.

-Usually has slight dark circles under his eyes, because he has nightmares sometimes and can't sleep.

-His eyes are really, really pretty. Like. Super fucking pretty. He has long lashes and they sparkle when he smiles. His eyes are hazel like Max's, but more on the brown side, with streaks of green radiating out from the pupil.

-Speaking of smiles. He has the goofiest and sweetest grins around. A little self-conscious about his teeth, but honestly that doesn't stop him from laughing and smiling with everyone. He has a couple broken teeth, but honestly it just makes his grin a lil lopsided and cute.

-He gets the Worst bed-head. It stands almost straight up in every direction, but it's really easy to tame. Mostly because he just runs his hands through it and calls it a day.

-He found Max's hair gel once and went Ham. He used the whole can sticking his hair up into a mohawk, and proceeded to parade around for Ellie and Parvati. Then bolt to his room and lock the door when Max shouted his name from the bathroom. Max's hair was out of whack for like. A week. He kept blowing it out of his face and Felix and Ellie would giggle like madmen when he did.

-*BANGS FISTS ON TABLE* FELIX IS BABY! FELIX IS BABY!!

Max:

-My MANS

-Listen, I am extremely gay for Max. This needs to be known before I continue, because I have a metric fuckton of Max HCs.

-So, first off, Max takes VERY good care of his appearance. Like. Insanely good. His hair is always perfectly held back by a moderate amount of gel, his nails perfectly trimmed and cleaned. He keeps a clean-shaven face.

-But don't let that fool you, Max can and will get down and dirty when need be, he just doesn't care to stay like that.

-Quite a few scars from his prison and Tossball years. But because of the clothes he wears you wouldn't be able to see them easily. Mostly on his back/sides, though he has a couple on his torso and legs.

-The Captain calls him Bigfoot because his grows hair really fast and his arms and chest have some pretty thick hair. Max is very confused, because he personally doesn't think his feet are that big.

-Not an appearance HC per se, but he smells like soap, aftershave, and books.

-When he doesn't gel his hair, it falls in his face constantly, and it annoys the fuck out of him.

-Fuckin ripped bro. Just. What the fuck. Why is a priest this fuckin shredded. Why make my gay little heart ache more than it already does, Obsidian??

-Despite his arm muscles being like. Huge, he still has a healthy layer of fat over his middle, mostly because being an OSI Priest, he got a little bit better nutrition VS. literally all of Halcyon.

-When his knee gets Bad (like hiking through Monarch with the Captain) he has a slight limp? Barely noticeable, but you can tell he's not putting weight on it. I HC its an old Tossball injury (that might be canon, I haven't played in forever).

-Its hard to tell in the different lights of the game whether his hair is Black or Silver, and I like to think he's greying, but not fully grey yet. He can have a little hair color, still. As a treat.

-Fuckin no lashes to speak of. None at all. Baldy eyes. Its the only part of him that doesn't have really thick hair and ngl he is very salty about it. Tho his actual eyes are very pretty; they're hazel with a lot of green. He has a darker ring on the outside and flecks of brown in them.

-Has very good teeth, whiter than most of Halcyon's because of the OSI providing for him.

-Broke his nose once during Tossball, though he was able to get it set alright. Slight crook in the bridge of his nose.

-He has a lot of those moles from his face scattered around. Particularly his shoulders and back.

-Also have you seen his fuckin canon thighs??? Bro. They could crush a watermelon. Once again, I must say, what the fuck, why is this priest so fuckin shredded.

-Actually takes his physical health very seriously, so I like to think he's in great shape for his age. Seeing him in some of the canon outfits though makes me more inclined to think that's canon.

-Sorry, I have thought about this A Lot, and the gay jumps out of me sometimes.

-A fair amount of scars on his arms. Not as many as Nyoka, but a little bit more than Parvati.

-Has calloused hands, but they've softened over his years as a priest.

Ellie:

-Now I feel like Ellie wouldn't have many scars that she didn't let scar up on purpose to give her an edge. They're essentially superficial; they look cool but didn't do any real damage.

-Also, her skin is very pale, so she doesn't scar easily anyway.

-Though she does have some, and they're more recent. A couple of gashes on her arms, and a bullet wound in her side. She's proud of them.

-The dark circles under her eyes are because she likes to stay up late at night. Sometimes she contemplates her life, but she doesn't like it, and usually doesn't bother too much.

-Her lashes are very thick and full, and they compliment her eyes very well. Her eyes aren't exactly ice blue, they're a bit darker, and have real pretty lighter streaks in them.

-Yes, her lips are naturally that color. Good for picking up women, bad for looking intimidating to marauders.

-Really soft skin, she's always had access to good lotion. After she leaves Byzantium, she purposely looks a bit more grimy than she did then, which is easy to do because of her skin tone.

-Has a few moles and freckles, but not many, mostly on her shoulders and back. She was inside a lot prior to her leaving Byzantium.

-Her hair doesn't really sit down when she sleeps, but it does lose some poofiness, so she has to meticulously push it up in the mornings.

-Not quite an appearance HC, but I feel like when she gets comfortable with ADA, she gives her compliments. Stuff like "Your screen is very bright today, ADA!" ADA does the same thing. "And your hair is looking very bright as always, Dr. Fenhill."

-Muscular, but lean, and puts on weight a little easier than others, so she wouldn't look like she could kick your ass without her pirate get-up, but she could 100%, no holds barred kick your ass.

-Very good teeth. Despite wanting to look like a gnarly pirate she takes dental care very seriously. Tho she thinks about getting punched in the mouth occasionally so she could like break off a piece of her tooth. Not the whole thing, just enough to make her look tough.

-Idc if piercings and tattoos aren't a Thing in Halcyon, Ellie has pierced ears. Three in each ear, and I like to think an eyebrow and maybe nose ring. She doesn't wear them when she's in Dangerous Situations because she firsthand had to fix ears that had their earrings ripped out during rich catfights that she does NOT want that to happen to her.

-She also has tattoos covering most of her back, and some of her upper arms. She got them "illegally" (meaning it's illegal to The Board, but the Groundbreaker doesn't really give a shit) on The Groundbreaker and she's proud as fuck of them.

-I have Feelings about the missed opportunities for illegal tattoo/piercing parlors. Like I know there's not a lot of self-expression to be had and no Art aside from fonts, but c'mon. Humans have drawn on their skin since the beginning all around the world and we WOULD find ways to do it again, even if it's needle-poke tattoos.

-Anyway, back to Ellie.

-You ever hear of a "lighter tattoo"? Basically, you heat up a lighter and then stamp the hot metal into your skin and it makes a mark in the shape of the lighter head. If you get it hot enough and hold it long enough it can scar. They have a similar thing in Halcyon with Plasma Cutters. Instead of Stab, you heat it up, turn it off, and press the blade to your skin and it pretty much scars within a couple seconds.

-Ellie 100% did a few of those when she was in Byzantium as like the "hahaha edgy" thing that teenagers do.

-Like I know technically kids aren't around but... bruh... you can't tell me that teenagers in a SciFi setting wouldn't do dumb ass shit like that.

-Ellie is honestly the baddest bitch and I love her, ok, she just reminds me so much of of those high school delinquent tropes in 90s movies

Nyoka:

-SO I HAVE SOME FEELINGS ABOUT NYOKA'S CANON DESIGN... IN THAT SHE'S ESSENTIALLY A MONSTER HUNTER BUT SHE HAS NO SCARS!

-Listen, ok, she would 100% have a lot of scars from her life on Monarch. I share some HCs with @nyokaacore in that she has three scars over one of her eyes, and a few others around her face, like on her lips.

-The bulk of her scars are on her arms and body, though, as she usually is able to get the Canid or Rapt off before they get to her face.

-I like to think the scars on her eye are from Freida, the first Rapt she ever killed that's taxidermied on her wall.

-But she has a lot of scars from Raptidon claws and Canid mouthplates, sprinkled with some Manti burns and burns from Rapt spit.

-She also has her fair share of bullet scars on her, and definitely has some patches of skin discoloration from incidents regarding the sulphur pools. Chemical burns are a bitch.

-She's tall, and not exactly curvy? But broad. Big shoulders, wide hips, sturdy legs. Looks like she could kill you, could actually kill you alignment.

-The sand and sulphur in the air plays Hell on her skin, so she's got some old acne scars and places that scarred up into moles on her face. Has an issue with dry skin.

-Her skin is also pretty oily, and she washes it when she can, but water is usually better spent being drunk than washed with. However, she does carry a spare bottle of non-drinkable water to wash Rapt acid off in emergencies, so sometimes she'll pull from that to wash her face with.

-Big hands, calloused, pretty scarred up from her time on Monarch.

-I also like to think that she can tell you stories about most of the scars she has, lmao.

-Her nose, like Felix's, has been broken quite a few times and is pretty crooked.

-Most often, you see Nyoka with a slight sunburn on her face. It's hard to see, but her cheeks are usually warm to the touch.

-Her teeth aren't the best, but she does take as much care of them as she can out on Monarch. Still pretty yellow with some cavities, but not as bad at Felix's.

-Honestly the dark circles around her eyes are usually because she doesn't sleep a lot. She has dreams about CHARON, and that's not her favorite thing to do.

-At a pretty healthy weight for Halcyon, and ofc, has muscles as big as your head.

-Surprisingly soft hands, though.

#the outer worlds #tow #the outer worlds hcs #headcanons #hcs #parvati holcomb #felix millstone #ellie fenhill #nyoka ramnarim wentworth iii #vicar max #maximillian desoto #appearance hcs #asks #anon #i need to stop now or i'll never stop

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tomhardysteeth · 4 years

Text

Tattooed

[ao3] Eddie Brock/Venom 5.9k words

Eddie.

“Hmm.”

Tell me what this is.

Eddie shifts in bed and blinks himself awake with a groan. Venom is at his right hip, tendrils like small streams of water passing curiously over his skin. Eddie used to wear pajama pants and a t-shirt to bed each night, but his temperature runs hot with Venom inside him so he started wearing just a pair of gym shorts instead, and now he’s regretting it.

“Venom. I’ve told you this. Stop waking me up for stupid shit.”

The tendrils press insistently into Eddie’s skin, which tickles a little bit. You slept long enough.

“That’s not the—what are you even doing?” Eddie props himself up on his elbows and looks down at where Venom is pressing into the tattoo on his abdomen. “Oh. It’s a, uh—I got it after I proposed to Anne. It says ‘til I die AW,’ which, you know, in hindsight, is, uh…”

A long silence passes before Venom says, What do you mean you “got it”?

“What—what do you mean what do I mean? It’s a tattoo.”

Venom spreads out over his body, crawling itself up over the tattoos on his sides, chest, arms and back. Are these also called “tattoos”?

“Can’t you read my mind, man? You’ve been inside me for several weeks, you’ve gotta know what a goddamn tattoo is by now.”

That is not how it works. Explain to me what a tattoo is.

Eddie groans in frustration. He sits up on the side of the bed and grabs his phone from the nightstand, checking and deleting emails like he compulsively does each morning. He is going to lunch with Anne today, but other than that, his schedule is free.

Eddie.

“Look, I’ve actually been thinking about getting another one, so, uh, maybe I’ll make an appointment and then you can see—”

Anne’s skin is not like this. Do only some people wear tattoos as part of their bodies?

“Um, hmm. Well, yeah, only some people have them. But they’re permanent. Once you add them to your skin, they stay there.” Eddie stands up and stretches his back out before heading into the bathroom for a shower.

He can feel Venom still exploring his tattoos, the symbiote moving its liquidy strands in such a meticulous way like it’s tracing each tableau: the wolf on his left forearm, the numbers near his right clavicle, the corvid over his left pec, and so on until Eddie is so mesmerized by the feeling that he spends several minutes in the shower just standing completely still as cold water pours over him.

Venom nudges him out of his trance, merging itself with the muscles of Eddie’s legs to get him to move and sending hunger signals to his brain.

“Hey, no taking over without my permission, how many times do I have to tell you?” Eddie says, annoyed as he awkwardly jerks his legs in a fruitless attempt to regain control.

This is our body, Eddie.

“No. No, there’s my body and there’s your body, and whichever one of us is driving is the one in control.” Eddie stops and tries to work out what he means. “That’s me most of the time, in control.”

A tickle runs through Eddie’s whole body, which means that Venom is laughing. Even so, it cedes leg muscle control back to Eddie, allowing him to get dressed before going to the kitchen.

I keep you alive. If I left your body, you would die very quickly.

“Yeah, well, so would you, so I’m not sure what your point is.”

Venom pulls part of its body out of Eddie and floats its head directly in front of his face. The first few times it did this, Eddie felt terrified and found Venom repulsive. Now, he feels a begrudging fondness for it. He thinks it probably has to do with the kiss they shared in the woods, but in general he tries not to think too hard about that.

You do not know the things I do for you, Eddie, Venom says, slowly.

Eddie blinks. “OK. Uh, I don’t really—don’t give me more information than that, please.”

Venom just smiles with all its teeth in response, then it turns toward the fridge and coaxes Eddie into making a heinous breakfast.

Eddie tries to get some writing done before his lunch with Anne, but Venom is more active than usual as it continues its ministrations of his tattoos, so Eddie impulsively calls the artist he always goes to, Marie, and asks her if she can fit him in by the end of the week. She tells him he can come in later that afternoon if he wants, since she had a last-minute cancellation. Eddie has been going to her for years, so she has several of his designs ready and waiting.

Eddie meets Anne at an Indian restaurant across town, one of their favorite date-night joints when they were still together, and the only difference now is that they don’t sit on the same side of the booth anymore.

Anne greets Eddie with a hug and comments on how warm he feels.

“You say that every time,” Eddie replies with a small laugh as they break apart. He removes his leather jacket before taking a seat.

“Well, you’re just always feverishly warm. I don’t know how it doesn’t bother you,” she says as she sits across from him.

“I mean, it does bother me sometimes. I only take cold showers now. And I sleep mostly naked.”

Anne raises her eyebrows at him. “Mr. I-have-to-shower-and-change-into-PJs-immediately-after-sex sleeps naked now?”

He smiles at her. “Yeah, alright, I deserved that.”

A server comes by to take their drink order. Anne makes a face when Eddie orders water.

“You never drink water.”

Now he’s the one making a face. “That’s not true. I used to drink water, uh, sometimes.”

“So what else is he making you do besides drink water?”

Eddie shifts in the booth. “Nothing. He’s just, um, mostly just irritating.”

Venom rumbles and slithers uncomfortably inside Eddie, clearly angry with his assessment.

“He’s been asking me about my tattoos today. He definitely doesn’t understand what they are.”

Anne laughs. “Does that happen a lot, him not understanding something basic?”

The server returns with their drinks and asks if they are ready to order, and just as Eddie is about to say no, Anne orders for both of them.

Eddie pouts at her.

“What?” she asks after the server walks away. “We’ve been here a million times, I know what you like.”

She doesn’t know what we like.

“Yeah, uh, you know Vee’s appetite is a little different.” Eddie clears his throat. “Which means, um, my appetite’s a little different, too. It’s OK, I’ll just have to order more food. We eat a lot.”

“Are you sure you’re OK, Eddie?” She drops her voice to a whisper and leans across the table. “He’s not torturing you or anything, is he?”

Eddie imitates her, leaning across the table and narrowing his eyes as he says, “He’s inside me, Annie, so getting closer to me and whispering doesn’t mean he can’t hear you.”

Anne bats playfully at Eddie’s shoulder before leaning back again. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re safe, that’s all.”

Venom moves and twists its tendrils through Eddie’s body, coming closer to the surface of his skin before burrowing back down into Eddie’s muscles. It was an annoying sensation the first few times Venom did it, but now Eddie thinks of it like a cat repositioning on his lap—which, to be fair, was also annoying when Mr. Belvedere deemed Eddie worthy enough to sit on, but even so, thinking of Venom like a pet makes the alien seem like less of a nuisance.

“Yeah, Annie, I’m safe,” Eddie responds softly. “We’re still, uh, just trying to figure out living together. It’s annoying, sometimes, but we’re working on it.”

“Is ‘living together’ the right term for it, though? You’re just...together. It’s kind of a big commitment, if you think about it.”

Eddie laughs and scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, which is why I don’t really think about it. But, you know, I don’t really have that much of a choice. If he leaves, I die.”

Venom moves in a way that feels like it is tightening inside Eddie, like all of its strands are taut, which Eddie’s body responds to antagonistically: he relaxes.

“OK, so if you knew you wouldn’t die if he left, would you want him to leave?”

Venom simmers, angry.

“No,” Eddie answers honestly. “I mean, there are definitely things I would change, but…”

“You like the power.”

Eddie looks around, irrationally embarrassed that someone might overhear them. He nods shyly then takes a drink of water.

“Oh, Eddie, you’re so predictable.”

“What?”

“You don’t like having your own power, you just like taking it from other people. Or, in this case, an alien.”

He leans back in his chair and defensively crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits. “What are you talking about?”

“Your career. And now this.” She shrugs. “I just hope you sort it all out with Venom, is all. You’re irritable, like you were the first couple weeks after you moved in with me. Remember that?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yes, I remember because you won’t let me forget. This is different though. I’m not—um, I’m not in a relationship with Venom.”

“Aren’t you though?”

Yes.

Eddie swallows. “Not—it’s not—I can’t think of it that way, it’s too weird.”

“Yeah, probably. But it’s something you're gonna have to deal with eventually.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Eddie changes the subject after that, asking Anne about her work and about Dan. When their food arrives, Eddie immediately orders another entree and an appetizer and tries not to feel embarrassed about it. He could actually eat way more than that, but he won’t in front of Anne. Venom complains in his head, insists their bodies are still hungry, swirls its strands frantically around Eddie’s midsection to make its point, but Eddie just sets his jaw and ignores it.

When Eddie tells Anne at the end of lunch that he has an appointment to get a tattoo, Anne just laughs and says, “Still the same old Eddie.” She pays for the meal, Eddie leaves a cash tip, and they walk out to his bike together.

Feeling relaxed and brave, Eddie gives Anne a kiss on the temple as they hug goodbye. She doesn’t acknowledge it.

On the drive over to the tattoo shop, Venom asks, How long will it take to win her back?

Eddie hates when Venom talks to him when he’s driving because although Venom can hear his voice no matter what volume he speaks, he can’t hear himself over the sound of the engine and the wind. “I told you, it’s not happening.”

But we like her.

“I know we like her, but she’s with Dan and you and I are, uh, kind of fucked up.”

I don’t understand.

Eddie sighs. “Anne’s right. Like it or not, you and I are together—a package deal, so the chances of me having any kind of human relationship with anyone is just out of the question.” Realizing how depressing that is, Eddie tacks on, "Right now."

But Anne likes us. I think she would like being with both of us.

Eddie doesn’t respond. Surprisingly, Venom doesn’t push the issue.

At the tattoo shop, Eddie is greeted by one of the artists, Solomon, with little more than a curt nod and a waiver slapped down on the counter, which Eddie signs without reading. He then takes a seat out front to wait for Marie.

Your pulse has quickened. You’re beginning to sweat.

“Yeah, well, that’s because the guy that just helped us is my ex, and it did not end well,” Eddie whispers through gritted teeth.

Oh, like Anne?

“Stop playing dumb, you know what an ex is.”

Eddie watches as Sol greets another client. Despite having dated nearly a decade ago when Eddie was only in San Francisco for a six-month temporary gig, Sol still acts like it was just yesterday that Eddie chickened out on their relationship and told him he had to get back to his “real life” in New York. Not his best choice of words.

Sol looks bigger every time Eddie comes to the shop. He is older than Eddie, has to be in his 50s by now, but he clearly still lifts as evidenced by the broad muscles of his back and the thickness of his tattooed biceps. His muscled chest tapers into a soft torso, his belly significantly more pronounced than when they dated. His beard looks thicker, too, a few fuzzy gray hairs mixed in with the black, and he is bald—has always been bald—and richly dark-skinned and six inches taller than Eddie.

You are still attracted to him.

Eddie clenches his fist against his thigh. “He’s still attractive.”

You are attracted to Anne, too. But Solomon looks very different from Anne.

“I don’t know if now is the best time for me to explain race and gender and sexuality to you.”

Anne is small, so I assumed you preferred someone smaller than you. But Solomon is—

Eddie ignores the rest of Venom’s sentence as Marie comes out of the back office and waves Eddie over to her workstation. Marie is rail thin and only ever wears baggy tank tops and baggy ripped jeans, and nearly every inch of visible skin is covered in colorful tattoos.

“Did you pierce more of your face since the last time I was here?” Eddie teases as he takes a seat.

She swivels toward him on her stool. She has piercings everywhere: eyebrows, nose, lip, tongue, all over her ears, and a barbell through her sternum. “I’m sure I have, since you haven’t been here in forever, buddy. I was wondering what the hell happened to you.”

“Yeah, uh, I’ve been going through some stuff, you know how it is.”

She pulls her long black hair up into a bun on top of her head then grabs a stack of drawings off a table as she says, “My aunt told me you ate a dude in her store.”

Venom vibrates through Eddie’s entire body.

“You know no matter how many times you tell me, I’m never gonna remember you’re Mrs. Chen’s niece.”

Marie holds out three drawings for Eddie to pick.

“Ah fuck, they’re gorgeous, Marie,” he says as he leans forward to get a better look. He points to the one in the middle, a partial skeleton of a rib cage and pelvis held together by nuts and bolts. “Let’s put that one on my left side.”

“You got it, bud.”

As Marie prepares everything, she says casually, “So you gonna tell me about the dude you ate, or?”

“Oh right, um, I have a parasite.”

Venom constricts inside Eddie, making the muscles in his arms and legs jump.

“It’s, like, an alien,” Eddie continues lamely.

Marie’s face doesn’t change. “Take your shirt off. So, can I see it? The alien? My aunt said it’s gnarly.”

Eddie pulls at the hem of his shirt and asks, “Do I have to take it all the way off?”

“Aww, poor little Eddie doesn’t wanna expose his cute body when his ex is right over there.”

I like her. I’m going to say hi to her.

“No, Vee, wait—”

It always feels like Eddie’s face is being sucked into a vacuum when Venom takes it over.

Hi, Marie. Eddie and I are Venom.

Marie blinks. “OK, so. I think I understand why you ate a guy.”

Venom sticks its tongue out then relinquishes control back to Eddie.

“Goddamn it, I hate when he does that shit,” Eddie says with a nervous laugh, looking around the shop to make sure nobody noticed anything.

“You, like, straight up have an alien inside you, bud,” Marie says. “But for real, take your shirt off.”

Eddie complies, then turns over to his side so Marie can get started. She presses her gloved fingers against his skin and asks exactly where he wants it, how big he wants it, then she cleans the area.

Venom stirs inside him, concentrating much of its mass in Eddie’s rib cage, where Marie is touching. What is she going to do to us?

“You’ll see, buddy, just be patient,” Eddie replies.

“Who you talking to, Eddie? Your alien?”

“Yeah, he talks to me. Constantly.”

Marie stands. “Ooh, sounds like that’s annoying. I’ll be right back.”

You think I am annoying.

“Yeah, we’ve established that already.” Eddie flips over to his back and crosses his arms over his bare chest. He has no qualms about his body, usually, but he does not like feeling exposed around an ex.

I don’t think you are annoying. I still think you’re a loser, but I like you.

“Can you just—can we put a lid on this until we get home, please?”

Venom’s tendrils bury deeper inside Eddie before going still, which Eddie interprets as Venom doing its best to leave him alone.

Marie returns a moment later with a stencil, and Eddie turns back to his side without having to be asked. With the stencil in place, Marie leads Eddie over to the full-length mirror.

As Eddie looks at himself to make sure he likes the placement, he spots Sol in the mirror, managing equipment at his own workstation across the room and stealing a glance at Eddie. Eddie flushes, but not with embarrassment. More like pride.

We can eat him if you’d like.

“No, Vee, we really can’t.”

He is looking at us. Do you think he still wants to be with you, Eddie?

“Why are you so nosy? Seriously?” To Marie, he says, “Looks perfect. Sorry I’m talking to myself.”

“What’s he talking to you about?” Marie asks as they walk back to her workstation.

“Sol.”

“Oh, that’s awkward.” Marie sits on her stool and puts on new gloves. “If he’s in there with you all the time, how the hell are you supposed to have any privacy?”

“I don’t.”

Eddie, what is that? Why does she have needles?

“Calm down, buddy,” Eddie placates even as he feels Venom’s tendrils pull as taut as strings of a guitar inside his body. “This is what getting a tattoo is like, and we trust her.”

Marie laughs.

She is going to hurt you.

“It’s OK.” Eddie’s entire body is rigid. “Can you please—loosen up a bit, Vee.”

It takes a moment for Eddie’s muscles to relax.

At the sound of the tattoo machine, Venom stirs but does not constrict again.

“You ready?” Marie asks sweetly, machine poised over Eddie’s rib cage.

“Yep.”

At the press of the needle, Venom turns to liquid inside Eddie, concentrating into a single point and numbing his side completely.

“Hey, hey, hey, no,” Eddie says.

Marie immediately stops. “What, what’s wrong?”

“Sorry, not you. Hold on a second.” Eddie flips to his back and looks down at himself. “The pain is OK. Don’t try to heal me.”

But it hurts you. She’s hurting you.

“I know that, but sometimes pain is...good. Just—hang out until she’s done.”

Marie doesn’t say anything, just waits for Eddie to give her the go ahead. She looks a little apprehensive as she presses the needle back to his skin.

After a few minutes, probably less than five, Venom swirls watery soft around Eddie’s ribs again, soothing the burned skin.

“Goddamn it, you’re doing it again.”

Marie stops. “Thank god I know about the alien, or else this would be a very strange experience for me.”

I don’t like feeling your body get hurt. I like your body.

Eddie sits up, groans, scrubs a hand down his face. “Venom. I am fine. Look at my body. This is how I got all the rest of the tattoos you love so much, by going through this pain. It’s not permanent, and it’s not even that bad. Please stop trying to fix it.”

Venom is quiet for a moment before saying, But why would you want to be in pain when I can fix it for you?

“I like this pain. I want to feel it. I’ll tell you what, if it gets to be too much, I’ll let you fix it. Deal?”

Fine.

Eddie lies back down on his side.

“My god, Eddie, what the shit?” Marie asks.

“He should be OK now, you can go ahead,” Eddie replies.

Marie clears her throat and tentatively presses the needle against Eddie’s skin. The pain is a single small point, constantly moving, burning, tickling, unlike any other type of pain imaginable. Eddie relaxes into it.

“So, the alien likes your tattoos, huh?” Marie asks after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah. He likes pretty much everything about me.”

“Well, that sounds totally healthy and normal.”

Venom moves the bulk of itself into Eddie’s shoulders and neck and settles there. I can feel that you enjoy this pain. I think I understand.

“Anne said he and I are in a relationship,” Eddie says quietly.

“Gross, dude. He’s an alien living inside you, you can’t be in a relationship.”

“I mean, I get what you’re saying, but it’s not like I can be in a relationship with anybody else either. Kind of hard to be intimate with another human being when an alien is always talking inside my head and moving around inside my body.”

You don’t want to be in a relationship with anybody but Anne, though, and Anne understands us.

“Huh,” Marie says. “That kind of sucks, buddy.”

I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell you this today.

“Hmm?”

We should talk to Anne.

“He’s talking to you now, isn’t he? You’re not listening to anything I’m saying.” Marie stops the machine and wipes the wound. “What about sex? Like, if you tried to have sex with someone, would he pop out your face and get in on the action?”

That might be fun. We could try that.

Eddie’s heart drops to his stomach. “Um, let’s not—can we not talk about that right now.”

“Oh my god, are you talking to me or to him? What did he say?” Marie asks.

“Nothing.” Eddie laughs nervously. “And I’m not discussing sex with you, Marie, you’re, like, 20 years younger than me.”

“You dork, it’s not like you’re my dad.”

Does sex make you uncomfortable, Eddie?

Eddie buries his face in the crook of his elbow. His body wants to squirm, to escape this situation, but he has to remain perfectly still on his side.

Venom doesn’t say anything else to him, but it spreads itself evenly across Eddie’s body and holds him in place, immediately turning Eddie’s embarrassment into a quiet calm.

The tattoo takes another two hours for Marie to finish. It’s not very big, just about the same size as the Buddha up and to the right of it, but it is intricate and beautiful in a way that makes Eddie stare at it in the mirror for a solid minute and a half before Marie asks if he likes it or not.

“It’s gorgeous, Marie, thank you,” he says softly.

Marie pulls out her phone and presses a hand to Eddie’s side to make him turn toward her so she can snap a picture. Venom moves swiftly against the touch, pressing through Eddie’s muscle tissue and pushing out through the surface of his skin exactly where Marie’s hand is.

“Oh geez, what’s that?” Marie asks as she snatches her hand back.

“I don’t know, he’s never done that before. Vee, what’s the deal?” Eddie touches the spot where Venom still lingers.

Just testing something out.

“OK,” Eddie says, annoyed. “You’ve got to communicate with me, buddy, you can’t just randomly touch people.”

Venom rumbles through Eddie’s entire body in a long-suffering sigh.

“Why does he want to touch me anyway?” Marie asks.

She’s been touching us for hours, I was curious.

“He was, uh, curious,” Eddie repeats.

“About what?”

Venom rumbles again.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Marie, he’s an alien.” Eddie glances around the shop and catches Sol’s eye before Sol quickly looks away. “Can we just—how much do I owe you?”

Marie doesn’t ask any other questions about Venom even though Eddie can tell she wants to, and she doesn’t say anything when he leaves her a much bigger tip than usual, but she does roll her eyes as she takes the cash. Eddie heads quickly out of the shop and is standing by his bike about to strap his helmet on when a familiar voice calls his name.

“Oh, hey, Sol,” Eddie says sheepishly, moving his helmet to his right hip and avoiding eye contact as Solomon walks up to him.

Stand up straight, Eddie. You look weak.

“Seems like Marie was giving you a hard time,” Sol replies, his voice deep and smooth. “You doing OK, Ed?”

Eddie scratches the back of his head. Stop fidgeting. “Yeah, I’m alright. You?”

“Your phone number the same?”

Stop moving.

“What?”

Sol tilts his chin down, making himself slightly more eye-level with Eddie. “I still have your number, if it’s the same. I’d like to use it.”

Eddie involuntarily laughs like an idiot. “OK, um, yeah, it’s the same. But, uh—”

“Good. See you later, Ed,” Sol says as he walks back into the shop.

Why did you let him talk over you? Why didn’t you stand up taller?

Eddie feels heat creeping up his neck, into his ears, as he recalls his and Sol’s relationship: there was rope sometimes, and Sol teasing Eddie about being a brat, and Sol always being the one in control even when they were out in public together, and Eddie enjoyed every bit of it.

Although Eddie is pretty sure Venom can see his memories when they flare so vividly, he still says out loud, “I didn’t wanna stand up taller. Not with him.”

You are a loser.

“Nah, this is different,” Eddie replies as he gets on his bike. “Sometimes it’s a choice to let someone else have, uh, control. Willingly giving up your own control, you know, that kind of thing.”

Like willingly feeling pain when getting a tattoo.

“Yeah, actually, kind of,” Eddie shouts over the roar of his bike as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto a main road.

Or willingly letting me take over your body.

Eddie grips the handlebars tighter and doesn’t respond.

He stops by Mrs. Chen’s before going home, letting Venom pick out whatever it wants (two bags of frozen tater tots, a gallon of chocolate milk, three different kinds of chocolate candy and a family-sized bag of salt and vinegar chips) and enjoying Mrs. Chen’s reaction when Eddie shows her his new tattoo.

“My niece is very talented, but I still think most of your tattoos are silly.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Chen.”

Back at their apartment, Eddie sits on the couch and reads the news on his phone while Venom eats all the food with its head and two arms protruding out of Eddie’s right side. Venom shares the chips and one of the candy bars with Eddie.

Eddie.

“Yeah, buddy.”

Your side hurts.

“Well, yeah, it’s gonna hurt for a while. Tattoos are like burns.”

Venom recedes back into Eddie’s body and slithers to his left side, swirling several small tendrils around the new tattoo. Is it still the good pain?

Eddie thinks about it for a moment before answering, “No, actually, it sucks.”

Venom soothes the pain immediately. Eddie closes his eyes and drops his head back against the couch; he didn’t realize just how much his side had been hurting. He reaches his hand down to cup his rib cage, and Venom responds by pulling tendrils out of his skin and lacing them with Eddie’s fingers, directly over the new tattoo.

“What are you doing, buddy?” Eddie asks even as he squeezes Venom’s inhuman fingers.

Marie called you ‘buddy,’ and now you’re calling me ‘buddy.’ It’s annoying.

“Oh good, something annoys you. Now I’m not the only one in this relationship that’s annoyed.”

Relationship.

Eddie clears his throat but still keeps his fingers tightly wound with Venom’s. “You know what I mean.”

Internally, Venom pulses near Eddie’s rib cage like a deep pressure concentrated against his bones. I think I can recreate the pain of getting a tattoo.

“What?”

You like the pain of the needle marking your skin. I can imitate it.

Eddie feels tense, his body rigid. “But—but why?”

Why not?

Eddie blinks. He can’t come up with a reason why not. He lets his fingers slip out of Venom’s grasp as Venom narrows one of its tendrils into an impossibly small point and presses Eddie’s side, gently at first and then speeding up as Eddie relaxes against the couch cushions.

“What the fuck, Vee, that’s so weird,” Eddie says on an exhale.

You enjoy it.

“Yeah. It’s weird as shit, but yeah, I do.”

Maybe we would be less annoyed with each other if we did more things that we enjoyed.

“Hey, I basically let you do whatever you want.”

Venom stops poking him. I’d like to eat more people.

“Oh yeah? Well, I’d like to have some privacy every now and then.”

Privacy? What do you need privacy for?

“I don’t know, like maybe if I had someone over and wanted them to spend the night.”

Venom moves up Eddie’s chest and wraps the bulk of itself around Eddie’s shoulders. You want to have sex.

Eddie runs a hand down his face then settles both his hands on his knees. “Yeah, well, a man has needs, and my needs aren’t exactly being met right now, so.”

Venom creeps up Eddie’s neck. I can help meet your needs, Eddie.

“I don’t know if—I’m not sure that’s a good—you know, I just—”

You want this. We can do whatever we want, Eddie. What’s stopping you?

“Well, um, for starters, you’re an alien. I don’t even know how we would…”

Venom materializes in front of Eddie, massive and solid, deeply black and muscled with a nearly fully-formed body connected to Eddie directly at his hips. It places one hand on Eddie’s side, near the tattoo, and its other on his shoulder. This body is close to what you humans look and feel like.

“No, um, not really, Vee.” Eddie puts his hands on the couch, not daring to touch Venom even though it is taking up so much space in Eddie’s lap that it feels against instinct not to put his hands near where its hips would be if it had them. “Do you even know or, like, understand what sex is? Is it something that you want?”

Venom grins and then sticks its tongue out, moving it slowly from one side of its mouth to the other. Yes. And yes.

“What? For real?”

Definitely for real.

Eddie sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and looks up and down Venom’s body, considering. “When you kissed me in the woods—”

Yes, I wanted to. Venom moves its head forward, its sharp teeth an inch from Eddie’s face. I want to now.

Heart hammering in his chest, Eddie relents and puts his hands on Venom’s sides. They almost feel like hips, but Venom’s body is more like liquid and string than muscle and bone. Eddie digs his fingers in. He tilts his chin up tentatively, presses his nose against Venom’s face before pulling back, looking at the alien curiously, then he turns his head to the side and slots his mouth against Venom’s.

Eddie tries to move his lips like a normal kiss, but Venom’s tongue fills his entire mouth, and it somehow suctions Eddie’s mouth against its own, and it’s too much, not enough, and Eddie’s arousal stirs in him so quickly that he would laugh if he could. The most he can do is make strained noises in the back of his throat.

After a minute or so, Eddie loses all sense of control and begins bucking his hips up, but there is nothing for him to buck against since their bodies are too intertwined in his lap. So he scrambles for one of Venom’s hands while simultaneously undoing his fly, and Venom gets the gist and wraps its weird malleable fingers around Eddie’s cock without breaking their kiss.

Venom’s hand morphs around Eddie’s cock, stretching and folding and weaving threads together until it feels like Eddie is actually fucking into a hole—not quite human, so not possible to define as any type of genitalia—and while Eddie thrusts his hips up, Venom constricts and relaxes around his cock in a steady rhythm all while continuing to fuck its tongue down Eddie’s throat. Then, impossibly, tendrils are everywhere, snaking around Eddie’s balls, caressing his skin, kissing his nipples, pushing into his ass—Eddie comes early.

Venom unwinds itself from around Eddie’s cock and releases his mouth. Eddie takes a deep breath, choking a bit as he realizes just how far down his throat Venom’s tongue was. Venom rumbles a laugh, licks Eddie’s face, then noses at his jaw as it fuses its mass against Eddie’s skin like a moving blanket. There is a feminine quality to Venom’s movements, which Eddie struggles to rationalize with his skewed view of the alien as a hulking beast that rips and bites people’s heads off. He decides it’s time to stop assigning gender-specific qualities to his alien.

I liked that.

Eddie tangles his hand in the tendrils of Venom’s neck. “Yeah, me too. Fuck.”

Is this the part where you freak out?

“Uh yeah, I guess I should. Fuck. That just, um, it felt really fucking good. Really good.” Eddie tries to bring Venom’s face toward him for another kiss, but Venom resists.

So if you’re not going to freak out, then we should talk.

“What? Why?”

That’s what we are supposed to do. Our relationship has been nebulous and undefined, and it has made you irritable and difficult to live with.

“Hey, you never said I was difficult to live with,” Eddie replies, feeling irrationally hurt.

I’m saying it now.

“OK. Fine.” Eddie tries to remember when he had to have this exact same conversation with Anne two weeks after he moved in with her. He thinks she may have approached him in a similar way, after sex, curled up close to him and soothing him with her touch. “It’s difficult for me to adjust to having you inside me, not because I don’t—it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that it’s, uh, different. You’re a fucking alien. There’s no human experience that could’ve prepared me for…” He points between their connected bodies. “This.”

I was not prepared either, Eddie.

“What do you mean?”

Venom kisses him. I did not expect to like you this much.

Eddie automatically smiles, then tries to downplay it by rolling his eyes. “OK. So. A relationship then? Do you even know what that entails?”

I hope it entails a lot more sex.

Eddie laughs. “Yeah. But it’s also, I don’t know, taking care of each other and—”

We already take care of each other.

“—And communicating our feelings, and spending time together.”

We spend all of our time together.

“Yeah. Um. I’m not sure you’re really understanding what I’m saying, and I’m pretty bad at this, too, so it’s probably gonna be different than, like, my relationship with Anne.”

Venom grins wide, showing every one of its teeth. Good. She can help us.

[read the rest on ao3]

#venom #symbrock #eddie brock x venom #venom fanfic #literally how do i tag stuff lm ao #whatever man if you see it you see it if you don't you don't!#my fics #sciapod #tattooed fic

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cherry-valentine · 3 years

Text

How Black Clover Gets Lady Characters Right

*Spoilers for most of the Black Clover anime (mostly character related stuff, not much in the way of major plot stuff)*

Black Clover is right up there with Gintama in terms of shows that reward viewers for sticking with them through some mediocre early episodes and arcs. When Black Clover began airing, I was excited. Manga readers had been hyping the series up, and it sounded like the next big shounen fighting anime that would take anime fandom by storm. Then I started watching it, and I was immensely disappointed. I found Asta’s constant screaming almost unbearable (to the point that I started muting the tv when it looked like he was about to open his mouth). The early episodes were totally predictable and cliche. The animation was, at times, embarrassingly bad. But I stuck with it because there were a few elements that kept me interested. One was the absolute bangers of opening and ending themes (at one point the thought crossed my mind that they were entirely too good for this show). Another was Yuno, whom I liked from the start. Then there’s the fact that Asta’s magic, or lack of magic, was the one element I didn’t predict a mile away. I honestly expected him to awaken to some super powerful magic early on. Almost 200 episodes later, he is still magic-free. I really did not see that coming. Still yet, I came close to dropping the series several times during those first thirteen episodes or so.

Somewhere around the time they went to the undersea village (I don’t remember the name of the arc), I began to notice that I was actually looking forward to each new episode. It was a gradual change from being at the bottom of my watch list to being near the top. So gradual it took me a while to realize it. The show still had some problems, sure, but it stopped being predictable. Asta talked more and screamed less. More interesting characters were introduced. The fight scenes were exciting. By the time this arc was over, Black Clover had become a favorite. So, if you tried the series and found it boring and annoying, consider giving it another shot. Like I said, it rewards you for sticking with it.

One of the best things about Black Clover, for me, is how it treats its female characters, especially when compared to other popular shounen fighting anime. It is by no means perfect, and I’ll talk about the show’s minor failings in regards to its ladies a little further down. But overall, it does a phenomenal job.

The first thing that struck me about Black Clover’s women is just how varied they are. There’s a surprising range in their appearances, personalities, and skills. And there are lots of them. Far more than a lot of other shounen fighting anime allow. There are five women in the main squad, the Black Bulls, alone. And we see that each squad has several women as well. Then there’s the all-women squad the Blue Roses. This extends to the villains, as well as the non-combatant supporting cast as well.

Speaking of skills, the women of Black Clover are unusually powerful. The two male leads, Asta and Yuno, eventually get “power-ups”, some kind of new form or transformation or whatever. This is super common in shounen fighting anime. What’s not so common, however, is the female lead getting her own cool power-up/transformation. This is what happens for Noelle, and it was such a great surprise. A little side note here: I’ve been watching the series on a streaming site that allows comments, and I was so amazed by the comments on the episode in which Noelle gets her power-up. The (mostly male, judging by their names) commenters were genuinely happy for her! They were proud of her for getting stronger and cheering her on! I didn’t spot a single comment about her looks or how great of a waifu she is (at the time anyway).

But it wasn’t just Noelle that got stronger. Another Black Bulls member, Vanessa, got an interesting power-up of her own, in the form a cat familiar that basically makes her and her teammates completely impervious to harm for as long as her mana holds out (which has saved their lives countless times). Another lady, Grey, has recently (in the anime) demonstrated some shockingly powerful magic that none of her teammates, or even she herself, realized she was capable of. Then there’s Charmy, who was already quite powerful but gained her own powered up transformation that made her strong enough to defeat an elf-possessed Magic Knight captain. If anything, the ladies have received MORE power-ups than the men.

And while we’re talking about powerful women, I have to talk about Mereoleona. If you’ve watched the show, you know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t, just imagine a character who can curb-stomp a powerful villain who is on a higher level than villains that the main characters were struggling to team up against just a few episodes before, who can then take on a whole group of these powered up villains and remain standing, even after losing consciousness, because they’re just that badass. Now imagine that character is a woman. And she’s so terrifying that one of the elf-possessed enemies (her comrades who had their bodies taken over by elves) remarks that his body froze up because, even though he’s controlling it, the BODY ITSELF was afraid of her. Mereoleona is an absolute beast, the kind of character that is almost always male in these types of shows. And the best part? The icing on this badass cake? The only person who was stronger than her, who could defeat her one-on-one, was ANOTHER WOMAN. Noelle’s mother. And a huge part of Noelle’s motivation as a character is becoming strong like her mother.

On the subject of Noelle’s motivation, I really appreciate that it has nothing to do with her crush on Asta. Sure, she likes him, but it’s not a motivating factor in her life and it’s not even really that important to her story arc. Her arc has always been about HER, about becoming stronger, living up to her powerful family’s expectations, discovering the truth about her mother’s death and then about avenging her, about becoming more empathetic to the common people despite being royalty. Noelle’s story is ABOUT HER. And it’s really sad that this is something remarkable, but we’ve all seen the “heroines” with no real arcs of their own, or worse, their arcs revolve almost entirely around their love for a male character (Sakura from Naruto is the most obvious example here but anyone who watches a lot of shounen can no doubt name many more). And Noelle isn’t an exception in Black Clover. Almost all of the women have interesting back stories and character arcs that have little to do with men (or if men are involved, they’re in supporting roles to these stories and very rarely the main subject).

An exception to this is possibly Charlotte, who is in love with Yami and this plays a big role in her story. However, even this is framed in a way that puts the emphasis on her own growth. It’s really about her learning to be honest with her feelings and getting over her own awkwardness around Yami. A big moment for her is when she admits to her squad that she’s in love with Yami, and they’re all eager and excited to help and support her, like the wonderful ladies they are.

Now, as I said before, Black Clover’s depictions of women are not perfect. There are a few issues I consider minor that I need to address. The first is the tendency the show has of making almost all the ladies be in love with someone. A large portion of the women are sporting crushes, though some of them are quite subtle or mainly used for comic relief, it’s still a little annoying that so many of them are in love. Of course, many of the male characters are in love with someone too (including the protagonist, Asta) and there are several female characters who are totally disinterested in romance, so I can overlook this. Another small issue is that, even though there’s more variety than usual in the body types (one female character is fat and another, Charmy, often gets quite pudgy for extended periods of time, plus a few ladies have more muscular builds), a significant portion of them have very large breasts, including two teenage characters (Noelle and Mimosa). It feels a little unnecessary, to be honest. Though to be fair, it’s rare that any of these characters are used for fan service and the camera never really seems to linger on their bodies. Most of them dress fairly modestly and among those who don’t, the more sexy clothes fit their characters and make sense for their personalities.

The last minor issue I have is that we often get the “designated girl fights”. If there’s a female villain, it’s likely that a female hero will be the one to fight her. This isn’t a rule set in stone, because there are plenty of male/female battles, but it happens enough to be very noticeable. Of course, these lady villains are demonstrated to be just as powerful and dangerous as the villainous men, but it’s still mildly irritating.

Those little nitpicks aside, Black Clover is still a shining example of a shounen fighting anime getting its ladies right. The women in the series are well-written, interesting characters with compelling stories. They’re powerful, have wildly varying personalities and motivations, and never feel like window dressing. They’re not just there to be pretty romantic interests. The show does all this very well, and I think it deserves a lot of praise and credit for it.

#Black Clover #Female characters #noelle silva #mereoleona vermillion #text #long post

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