#biology loves my extremely lesbian brain | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

homespork-review · 4 years

Text

HOMESPORK ACT 5 ACT 1: Mobius Double Plusungood, Part 3

TW: """funny""" sexual and physical assault of a child by another child, extreme bullying, extreme ableism, a very brief discussion of shipping characters outside their canon sexuality.

CHEL: We get some implications of the part of troll culture we ended on last time when a slightly baffled-looking Nepeta, watching through the viewport, updates her SHIPPING WALL. Instead of hearts, some of the hypothetical pairings she’s painted are marked with diamonds. What this means will be explained shortly.

I can’t help but feel it’s slightly creepy to hypothetically matchmake your own friends, but I’m pretty sure the other trolls know at least that the shipping wall exists if not exactly which ships they’re in, and they do live in a society in which it’s stated later that mating is mandatory, so it would indeed be helpful to have at least emergency-doable matchmaking done well in advance and they might appreciate the help.

I’d like to take a moment to note a ship at the bottom row, left of centre; GA/Tavros. Hussie, on his Formspring, later said that GA was “obviously” a lesbian, or anyway was only interested in women, which doesn’t have a specific term for it in troll culture. It’s actually hard to tell going by what’s shown in canon, because she only displays specific interest in girls except for in a complicated case we’ll discuss later, but trolls are supposed to be bi-normative, plus it’s not like the male selection here is particularly inspiring, so, yeah, the evidence we actually see isn't conclusively "obvious". The fandom, knowing this, systematically harass anyone who even muses vaguely about the possibility of shipping her with a boy, even if they don't know about that Word of God. This is why I’m wondering whether the trolls knew about the shipping wall, because if they did, we can presume GA didn’t care. For the record, I’m sex-repulsed ace and have in fact written about.my own imaginary persona fucking (admittedly fucking an opposite sex clone of herself, it was a complicated injoke) and my reaction to someone else writing it would depend on context and reason, so I can imagine her reacting similarly, but not everyone would. A similar thing with a canonically gay male character explicitly on-screen not caring about hypothetical shipping of himself with girls comes up much later; he’s not a troll, but his upbringing was troll-influenced (long story).

BRIGHT: Harassing people over the ships they make content for always baffles me. It’s not like fanart/fanfic for a ship which contradicts canon has any effect on the canon, and playing around with character dynamics (often in a pornographic manner) is a major part of fanfic.

CHEL: On top of all this, gender and sexuality are really shaky concepts to even try to apply to a species which reproduces hermaphroditically. On this side of the fourth wall it’s obviously because Hussie is a not-very-reflective cisgender heterosexual man, and didn’t think about it any further than “girls wear skirts, right?” Plenty of people fanwank up possibilities for how it could happen on the other side. I think we may have to make a “What The Fuck Is Alternian Biology And Sociology” post or two separate from the sporking at the very end.

Discourse discussion over! Next page, we see some of the relevant terminology used in troll culture, though we still don’t get any explanation of what any of the words actually mean, which is a tad annoying for new readers. The context is a discussion between Karkat and Vriska about getting her into the game.

BRIGHT: Specifically, Karkat wants Vriska to get Tavros into the game, leading to this exchange…

CG: WHY DO YOU EVEN HATE HIM, IT'S FUCKING RIDICULOUS. CG: IF ANYTHING YOU SHOULD PITY HIM. CG: ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU WERE THE ONE WHO PARALYZED HIM. AG: I know. I don't really understand it. AG: It's just a really special kind of h8! It never goes away and it doesn't make a lot of sense. CG: THIS IS KIND OF A WEIRD TIME TO BE CONFIDING IN ME ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS OF BLACK ROMANCE BUT OK. AG: Oh god, what? CG: I MEAN IF YOU'RE REALLY IMPLYING TAVROS IS YOUR KISMESIS I THINK YOU'RE BRAYING UP THE WRONG FROND NUB. CG: BOTH PARTIES HAVE TO HATE EACH OTHER EQUALLY, I MEAN LIKE TRUE HATE. CG: MAYBE YOUR FEELINGS COME SOMEWHAT CLOSE TO FITTING THE BILL BUT I DON'T THINK HE CAN HATE ANYONE, IT'S WEIRD, HE'S KIND OF BROKEN IN THE HEAD.

Finally, our long-awaited introduction to troll romance!

And the introduction is an effective one. We now know that there’s something called ‘black romance’, that it concerns hate, and that one’s black-romantic partner is a ‘kismesis’. The conversation also flows naturally and fits the characters having it, rather than being an awkward as-you-know infodump, although brace yourselves, there’s one of those coming up. Thirteen is about right for kids starting to have romantic feelings and being confused about it, not wanting to talk about it is pretty normal, and Karkat lecturing people at a good opportunity is absolutely in character.

Karkat goes on to lecture Vriska about the emotions involved in different sorts of romantic relationships, and wow, it really says a lot about troll culture…

CG: OK, MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T HAD THEIR LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED ARE CAPABLE OF FEELING THE TWO PRIMARY EMOTIONS, HATE AND PITY. CG: PITY IS OF COURSE JUST THE TONED DOWN VERSION OF THE CENTRAL EMOTION, HATE. CG: AND ALL THE NUANCES OF PITY MANIFEST AS VARIOUS OTHER KINDS OF FEELINGS LIKE WHATEVER CHEMICAL REACTIONS TRIGGER MATING FONDNESS OR THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT ARE BEHIND MOIRALLEGIANCE.

CHEL: It’s never really clear if this is just Karkat’s idea of it or if this is how trolls actually work biologically. Trolls do use the word “love” later on, so I always interpreted it as “pity” being a euphemistic term because “love” in such a warlike and oppressive culture could be exploited as a weakness. Fandom has played it with their love actually being based on a weird form of sympathy/seeing the other as needing protection, which is also plausible.

FAILURE ARTIST: I have played with the pity thing before but in retrospect Karkat is the only one who seems to see it that way. Maybe this is all his fake deep teenager view of romance.

BRIGHT: Vriska makes a performance of how bored she is, but Karkat’s on a roll.

CG: A WELL BALANCED PERSON IS IS GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN HATE AND THE VARIOUS PITY HUMORS. CG: HAVING A GOOD BALANCE KEEPS ALL THE EMOTIONS SHARPER, SEE I THINK THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM. AG: Oh???????? AG: I hope you know I already wore out some good note-taking pens today. All the pens. AG: All of them. CG: SEE, MY HATE IS LIKE A FINELY TUNED INSTRUMENT BECAUSE I'M AWARE OF THESE PRINCIPLES. CG: I COULD HATE A HOLE IN PARADOX SPACE ITSELF, STRAIGHT THROUGH TO A NEW REALITY FRESH FOR THE HATING. AG: Hahahahahahahaha, you don't even know how much I'm laughing at this. CG: BUT SEE, YOU'RE TOO HEAVY ON THE HATE SIDE, OR AT LEAST YOU PRETEND TO BE WHICH IS MAYBE WORSE. AG: You aren't reading anything I say are you? You just want to talk and talk and talk. CG: AND YOU THINK YOU'RE HATING UP EVERYONE HARD WHEN YOU'RE REALLY JUST BURNING OUT THAT ENTIRE EMOTIONAL HEMISPHERE. CG: IT'S LIKE LUKEWARM HATE. PRETENDER'S HATE, WITH NO COUNTERPOINT AT ALL. CG: AS SUCH THERE'S NO REAL SUBSTANCE TO YOUR HATE, IT'S LIKE A CARDBOARD MOVIE PROP. CG: WHICH IS WHY YOUR BRAIN IS BROKEN, KIND OF LIKE TAVROS'S BUT ON THE OPPOSITE HEMISPHERE I GUESS. CG: OR MAYBE YOUR BROKEN BRAIN LED TO THE IMBALANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE, I DON'T KNOW. CG: WHATEVER THE CASE IS, YOU'RE KIND OF EMOTIONALLY SCREWED, SORRY TO SAY. CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION. CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU. CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA! CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU. CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED. CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.

Whew.

So now we have ‘kismesis’, ‘moirail’, and ‘matesprit’ as terms for romantic partners, as well as the concepts of black romance, red romance, and ‘moirallegiance’ as the relationship one has with a moirail. Troll romance is not going to get any less confusing for a while.

If Karkat’s grasp of psychology strikes you as amateurish, there’s a reason for that: He gets all his knowledge from romance movies.

AG: Hey asshole, stop watching movies for girls.

I think that’s another strike against the ‘girls are the dangerous ones on Alternia’ argument. Romance movies, per this exchange, are both female-coded and seen as inferior -- Karkat defends his viewing choices by saying they’re INTRIGUING SOCIOLOGICALLY, but Vriska isn’t buying it.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 42 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 33

CHEL: I’m not sure an interest in the workings of romance should be a socially gendered thing in a society where, as it turns out, you have to have an acceptable romantic partner by a certain time or die. You’d think most kids would be trying as hard as they could to learn and put into practice everything they could about it, and you’d also think there’d be better information for them than romcoms.

BRIGHT: Has the mate-or-die part come up yet? I’m not sure when Hussie thought of it.

CHEL: I don’t know if he’d thought of it yet, but it does come up very soon.

BRIGHT: Karkat then moves on to the original reason he contacted Vriska -- he needs her and her mind powers in the game, because he’s just run into a double agent called Jack.

Over on the next panel, Karkat is still talking to Vriska, but he’s glancing back over his shoulder at Jack Noir. His hand is covered in blood, which keeps cycling through a range of colours. The blood, it transpires, is because Jack stabbed him. Karkat is amazingly calm about this.

CG: HE'S COOL, IT'S FINE I DON'T REALLY MIND THE STABBING, IT WAS ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING. CG: WELL OK I'M PRETTY SURE HE MEANT TO STAB ME. CG: BUT I KIND OF THINK THAT'S LIKE CG: THE WAY HE GREETS PEOPLE? AG: This game is so stupid. CG: IN ANY CASE I THINK HE'S PROBABLY ALL STABBED OUT.

This would be ridiculously chill even from someone who isn’t extremely cagey about his blood colour -- and it’s not that Karkat suddenly doesn’t care any more, because as soon as Vriska says she’ll ask Terezi or Jack what colour he’s bleeding, he tells her that he’s out of Terezi’s range, Jack is sworn to secrecy, and Sollux (who’s incommunicado) is the only one who knows how to make Trollian’s viewport feature work. (Given we saw how easy it is to use earlier, I’m surprised Vriska doesn’t try to figure it out herself.)

Over on the next panel, the viewer is now Jack, a few minutes prior to this conversation. Contrary to Karkat’s protestations, Jack stabs him because He's got a pretty sharp tongue and can't seem to keep it sheathed. He is curious when Karkat cares less about the wound and more about Jack seeing his blood colour, which is apparently some freakish mutation. Jack looks at his knife…

CHEL: While it’s not a realistic depiction of the colour, recall that this is the shade of red used in-comic to depict human blood. This reveal probably isn’t a surprise to anyone by now, if you’ve encountered fanart, and honestly it wasn’t a huge mindblowing revelation on my first read before I knew, but I do think it’s a clever little “aha, THAT’S why!” moment. Skilfully done.

It seems he's the only one of his kind with this mutant candy-red blood. An outcast. He thinks he was put on this planet covered in an ocean of his own blood to be taunted. Punished for something. Saddest story you ever heard. Got to do something to shut him up.

BRIGHT: Awww. That’s kind of sweet.

This little interchange gave rise to the ‘Stabdads’ fandom phenomenon, where Spades Slick is envisaged as Karkat’s father-figure. In Homestuck canon, it’s dubious how much affection Slick has for Karkat. He seems more irritated by him than anything else, but that’s about on par for how he treats the rest of the Midnight Crew. On the other hand, it clearly makes a massive impact on Karkat. We’ve seen how important blood colour is on Alternia and how insecure he is about his own; his sudden rush of fellow-feeling towards Jack is understandable, even if it does make him way too forgiving about having been stabbed.

CHEL: Karkat and Jack shake hands, and proceed to be in cahoots. Cahoooooooots. Doodling on the defaced parking ticket from earlier, they draft OPERATION REGISURP.

Your whole team executes the plan along the course of its journey, employing espionage, mind control tactics, political sabotage, vicious interrogations and cold blooded assassinations. Everyone does their part and you begin to learn the true meaning of teamwork, as well as this troll disease called friendship.

Yeah, it actually happening is skipped over with one paragraph, but that’s probably a good thing with all the complexity already going on, and we do hear more details about it. First, we’re reminded of the existence and functions of the Queens’ Rings, the magic rings the queens of Derse and Prospit have which give them traits and powers from whatever the players put in their sprites. The trolls have put their lusii in their sprites, except for Aradia, whose lusus died long ago, so she got in the sprite herself. The Queen could put up with getting bits and pieces from eleven hideous monsters (well, ten hideous monsters and one adowable little fairybull thing oh my gosh it’s cuuuute) tacked onto her, but what she absolutely won’t stand for is the other thing Aradia put in her sprite…

She could not stand bearing the visage of the most loathsome creature known to existence. So vile is its appearance, so contemptible its purpose, all depictions of the creature let alone members of its population are permanently banned from any jurisdiction in the reach of her agents. Those of its kind go by many names, and so does the reviled patron god they herald - THE GREAT DETESTATION, KING PONDSQUATTER, SPEAKER OF THE VAST JOKE, or most commonly, BILIOUS SLICK.

Recall that AR thought of the hieroglyphs in the Frog Temple as “illegal pictography”. We’ll find out later why the Black Queen has such a revulsion for frogs, it’s important. But the important part right now is that she took the ring off. At the time of planning it’s in the ROYAL VAULT.

We briefly see a moment in the future of the Black Queen wrapped in rags, just like the human sessions’ White Queen, wandering the desert as the BANISHED QUASIROYAL, and the caption notes the plan was a success.

However, Doc Scratch appears in the desert in front of her, and it’s noted she was given a new purpose. This, it seems, is the origin of Snowman.

FAILURE ARTIST: I would like if there was some canon Homestuck material expanding on this REGISURP plot.

BRIGHT: Same! It sounds really interesting. One example of Homestuck’s idiosyncratic pacing, I suppose -- we spend pages and pages on trivial alchimeter nonsense, but skip over something more meaty.

CHEL: The Red Team work on that, while the Blue Team battle their own session… or so they think. Yeah, I’m sure you’ve all already figured it out, but the trolls hadn’t just yet. They note that their prototypes are affecting the opposite team’s underlings, and the readers are shown Alternia’s two Frog Temples, one near Aradia’s home and the other near Kanaya’s, each with six pillars outside (one seems to have five, but the sixth is hidden behind the building). Superimposed on each other, the pillars make a full ring of twelve.

The truth was it had always been the same session all along. That your teams were not competing, but cooperating toward a common goal. In the more drawn out form of this adventure's narrative, figuring this out would have been a huge deal. We would have been completely blown away by this stunning revelation. Wow. Same session all along. Really? Huh.

This is what Aradia’s been so mysterious about. She knew. We’re provided with a handy diagram, in case we haven’t been able to keep up.

After watching the phrases MOBIUS DOUBLE and REACH AROUND toggle for a few minutes while in a sort of stupor, you finally snap out of it.

(I just noticed, the Blue Team are the Derse dreamers and the Red Team are the Prospit dreamers. Neat!)

The reader’s attention is drawn instead to the Aquarius and Pisces symbols in the top left, belonging to characters we haven’t met yet, and the narration promises we’ll learn about them soon. Drawing attention again to GA’s Virgo symbol, the narration muses about her.

It will probably be quite some time before you get to be her. It could very well be pages and pages and pages.

Naturally, we jump right back to her.

GA’s intro is long, so we’ll take it piece by piece.

Your name is KANAYA MARYAM.

The Sanskrit name for Virgo is “Kanya”, and it’s also the name of a town in Japan. “Maryam” is the Arabic version of “Mary”, as in Jesus’ mother. It may also be a reference to Marya Zaleska, the title character of the movie “Dracula’s Daughter”.

You are one of the few of your kind who can withstand the BLISTERING ALTERNIAN SUN, and perhaps the only who enjoys the feel of its rays. As such, you are one of the few of your kind who has taken a shining to LANDSCAPING. You have cultivated a lush oasis around your hive, and in particular, you have honed your craft through the art of TOPIARY, sculpting your trees to match the PUFFY ORACLES from your dreams. You have embraced the tool of this trade, which conveniently is the weapon of choice for those who would hunt the HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD which crawl from the sand at sunrise to feast on the light and the living.

Couple things established here; trolls are not only nocturnal but actively harmed by their planet’s sun, and undead beings other than ghosts exist. Said traditional weapon for hunting them is a chainsaw, which we can see lying against her bookshelf, a reference to the Evil Dead movies.

It would be convenient if you actually hunted them, but it is of course far too dangerous, every bit as suicidal as attempting to poach the terrible MUSCLEBEASTS who roam at night. So you indulge in your bright fascination with the grim through literature. Just before the sun goes down and you join your flora in rest, you immerse yourself in tales of RAINBOW DRINKERS and SHADOW DROPPERS and FORBIDDEN PASSION.

Rainbow drinkers are, as discussed later on, troll vampires. I don’t think shadow droppers are ever expanded on, but they might be zombies or werebeasts. Troll goths, apparently, are the reverse of human goths, dressing in bright colours and staying up in the daytime, which makes sense for a species who can only safely go out at night.

You are one of the few of your kind with JADE GREEN BLOOD. As such you are one of the few who could be selected and raised by a VIRGIN MOTHER GRUB, an event so rare as to elude documented precedent. She would defend you from desert threats, and though her life would be short, in time you would assure her of progeny.

Recall that the Mother Grub is required for troll reproduction.

You are a SEAMSTRESS or a RAGRIPPER or a TREETRIMMER or a LUMBERJACK, whichever you care to be, and your unique hive is equipped with a great supply of advanced technology to accommodate your interests. The technology and indeed the hive itself were all recovered from the ruins nearby when you were very young. The seed of your hive was deployed on the volcanic rocks beneath the sand with the assistance of your lusus and her remarkable burrowing skills, and you have lived there happily together since. You know the ruins and the hive and everything here that is not sand and rock originated from the world of your dreams. You also know that one day you will visit this world while you are awake. That day is today.

Like Jade, Kanaya has been awake on Prospit for years, and the technology in question is Skaian in origin, so that’s how she knows what’s going on with the game.

Kanaya is prompted to equip her chainsaw, which promptly turns into a lipstick in a Problem Sleuth reference. Like Jade, she has a Wardrobifier, set to randomise, which suddenly turns her black shirt and red skirt into a red leaf-print dress. She takes out the lipstick.

You can choose between your trademark jade or black. Even though a troll's lips are naturally black. But they can always be blacker, and a lady with a true sense of style knows this.

She goes with green, her dress turns into a blue kimono, and she’s messaged by someone with a fuschia Pisces symbol. This person, named cuttlefishCuller, turns out to be rather excitable, greeting her in all caps and following it up with Glub glub glub glub glub!

BRIGHT: This conversation is pretty sweet, with some friendly joking about CC’s quirk (they stick hyphens in front of their capital Es) and mention of their Collapsing And Expanding Bladder Based Aquatic Vascular System. There’s another mention of moirails, with CC saying they’ll have to join the game late to keep an eye on theirs.

It also turns out both CC and Kanaya are having some premonitions of what’s to come! Kanaya is seeing visions in the clouds of Skaia, the same way Jade does, but CC hears whispers from a mysterious ‘she’ who needs her voice keeping down. It’s implied to be CC’s lusus, as both Kanaya and CC are aware their lusii are going to die soon.

Kanaya hopes to be with her lusus as she dies, but looks out of the window to find the Virgin Mother Grub has already passed away, apparently of natural causes.

CHEL: The Mother Grub was seen briefly before; it’s a moth-like creature with a huge fat body the size of a bus, with wings too small to ever lift it, horns the same shape as Kanaya’s, and a skull-like head with big lips. The skull on Terezi’s Doomsday Scale was, we can tell now, a Mother Grub, except quite a lot bigger - presumably a breeding Grub.

BRIGHT: Kanaya changes back into her original outfit, and goes down to live up to her end of the bargain… which entails slicing a hole in her lusus with her chainsaw and pulling out a round object covered in spikes the colour of trolls’ horns, called a Matriorb. Kanaya stores it in her sylladex; she’s using a CHASTITY MODUS, which locks each card away, and the key will serendipitously be discovered when it’s time for the card to be unlocked. These modii are getting more and more esoteric.

Kanaya proceeds to have a conversation with her own moirail, Vriska, which we already read earlier.

You then proceed to have the rest of this conversation we already read, bugging and fussing and meddling through the special and magical union one can only describe as being in moirallegiance with another. At least, you guess that's how you would describe it. Maybe. Troll romance sure is confusing!

Yes, yes it is. (Spoiler: It’s not that confusing once it’s explained.)

Kanaya doesn’t have long to dwell on the conversation, as she’s contacted by caligulasAquarium, someone with a violet Aquarius symbol who she doesn’t seem to think highly of. It rapidly becomes apparent why.

CA: kan make her talk to me do somethin GA: Who CA: your no good connivvin fuckin backstabbin girl crush thats wwho

CHEL: Trolls are supposed to come bi/pan as standard, so why does he need to specify “girl crush”? I wonder if Hussie hadn’t decided that yet when he wrote this part, but I’m not sure.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 34

CA’s gender hasn’t been revealed, but let’s not kid ourselves, we know from how he’s talking that he’s a dude. Nice Girls certainly exist but they don’t tend to get portrayed as so whiny in fiction, plus CC comes off as very girly, and that leaves us with six boy and six girl trolls. Balance and opposites and counterparts are a running theme throughout Homestuck. Not that there can’t be nonbinary characters, as some show up in Hiveswap; just that there would most likely have to be an even number of them, split evenly between the groups of players. Fine by me as a nonbinary person with a thing for balance and even numbers of my own.

Also, note that we’ve seen this guy, or at least his hand and foot, before. This is the litter-hater in the bowling shoes.

GA: Overstating Our Relationship Wont Make Me Feel Very Cooperative GA: Its Paler Red Than That Ok CA: pshhhhhh that is a fuckin laugh and you knoww it evveryone does CA: so help me out tell her to talk to me i think she blocked me you got to GA: Why Do I Got To GA: I Dont Got To And Every Time You Take My Help For Granted I Feel Like I Got To A Little Less CA: wwhatEVVER you are so the vvillage twwo wwheel devvice wwhen it comes to auspisticing CA: you cant let a grudge go by you wwont stick your busy stem betwwixt so get wwith the program fussyfangs

BRIGHT: Oh hey, another troll romance term! ‘Auspisticing’ is the last of the lot, don’t worry.

CA: wwho givves a shit wwhy she blocked me or about my fuckin manners come on youvve got a wway wwith her CA: i figure if youre going to auspisticize any twwo brinesuckers wwho sneer at each other a funny wway you might as wwell make it official and be ours right GA: Your Black Solicitation Just Seems Really Indecent

Funny words aside, Hussie does a good job at laying down context for what auspisticism is here; we now know that it involves mediating between two parties who dislike each other and that it’s a form of black romance. Meshing worldbuilding naturally into the dialogue is something Homestuck does really well at times.

Anyway, CA is trying to get in contact with Vriska because he asked her to make something for him and now she’s blowing him off.

GA: What Is It CA: kan stupid wwhat do you think its a fuckin gizmo to bloww up the wworld or somethin CA: ok wwell not that obvviously CA: but somethin thatll kill all land dwwellers wwhat else wwould i be after GA: Can You Just For A Moment Entertain The Thoughts Of One Untouched By Megalomaniacal Derangement And Tell Me Why Id Want To Assist You With That CA: wwell CA: im not goin to vvery wwell kill you am i that wwould be fuckin unconscionable CA: wwhat kind of friend wwould i be

While CA is obviously a douche, there’s something funny about how over-the-top he is about it and how utterly oblivious he is to the idea that Kanaya might have a problem with a device that would kill all landdwellers, although the humour is inversely proportionate to how likely he is to pull it off.

CHEL: Maybe I’m strange, but I think he’s adorable. I get the impression of a small kid trying to puff himself up to adult size.

BRIGHT: There’s also more romance talk, and this next bit is one I find interesting:

CA: you could either play along as our auspistice and do a little mediating like you wwere fuckin hatched to CA: or wwatch she and me devvolvve into fuckin full fledged kismesisses the kind like you dont get once in ten thousand swweeps CA: you knoww thats wwhat it wwould be there wwould be rainboww rivvers runnin through star systems and all nebulizin like liquid firewworks CA: it wwill be beautiful and heartbreaking all at once CA: you should read up on your history instead of poring through that godawwfull sunny rubbish

I’m going to take a step back from Homestuck itself for a moment and talk about kismessitude as it’s portrayed in fandom. People tend to envision it in a variety of ways -- some see it as a BDSM relationship, some as a way of pushing a rival to be better, some as just straight-up hate-sex -- but most depictions show it as something that only affects the two people involved.

Here, though? CA’s talking about kismessitude as something that’s potentially really damn dangerous, to other people besides those involved, and cites history as a backup -- implying it can really be that dangerous, and it’s not just a teenager’s flight of fancy. (Although, that said, CA is clearly using this to try and get Kanaya in a relationship with him, so how sincere he is is questionable.)

CHEL: Later on we do see a little bit of one of the historical cases he might have been citing. We’ll discuss it more then. Also, I do like him saying “sunny” instead of “gloomy”. Makes sense!

Kanaya tells CA none of this matters, and he sneers about the “purity of the bloodline”. That’s an… uncomfortable turn of phrase, especially since he’s speaking to someone not covered by the “purity” standard, but since it applies to aliens and it’s in a society where that’s hammered into its inhabitants it’s not a Problematykks issue. Kanaya tells him it still won’t matter because their race will be wiped out entirely, and his reaction is remarkably understated:

CA: huh CA: wwell ok HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 11

CA says he knows Kanaya doesn’t lie except to herself, surprisingly perceptive for one so puffed-up otherwise. CA might be smarter than he’s letting on? He asks if her clouds told her that; that was the reader’s assumption too, but she says no, she has a different source. Uh-oh. We know what the last source of information was, and it cost Vriska an arm and an eye-sevenfold. CA’s own clouds “hide nothin but misfortune and monstrosities”, so we can guess she’s Prospit and he’s Derse. He goes back to nagging her to tell Vriska to talk to him, and when she continues to refuse he poutily steps off.

CA: you dont wwant to be our auspistice cause you dont wwant to get locked into that sort of relation wwith her i can respect that

Kanaya denies this, and CA says everyone knows, including Karkat.

GA: Its Unbelievable GA: Her Patience CA: wwhat CA: wwhoa wwait wwho GA: Never Mind CA: ok wwait did she talk to you today CA: wwhat did she say CA: or glub or wwhatevver

They’re talking about CC, if it wasn’t clear. Kanaya, in a callback to John’s comment to Terezi, facetiously tells him that she talked about Longing To Touch You Indiscretely and That Shes Basically In The Scarlet Throes For You. CA, flustered, picks up that she’s teasing him, and she tells him the truth, that CC’s just concerned as a moirail.

CA: if youre not savvvvy about howw you define yourself to people CA: you can just splash into the moirail zone before you knoww wwhich wways upwward

I’m going to comment on this attitude in a bit more detail when we get a clearer explanation of what moirallegiance actually is. CA leaves her with some arc words.

CA: being a kid and growwing up CA: its hard and nobody understands

Kanaya heads back to her room, planning to emphatically not meddle but help her friends, and consults her source; it’s fortunately not a Doc Scratch-related one at all. It is, in fact, Rose’s long-forgotten GameFAQ, saved on a server floating in the Furthest Ring, to which Prospit’s clouds directed her. I have to show you the panel for a moment though…

I’m sure there was a way we could see the screen without having it facing away from Kanaya who’s supposed to be reading it.

You can only assume this took place a long time ago. This race is likely ancient, preceding yours by millions of sweeps. Maybe billions! You like to try to imagine the adventures of these players. Were they successful in repopulating their race? Did they manage to protect their matriorb and hatch a new mother grub? Could they hold it together, or were they torn apart by the complex social dynamics, the matespritships and moirallegiences and auspisticisms and kismesissitudes that will surely plague your group along the way? You have little doubt they succeeded with flying colors.

Oh dear, dramatic irony. Kanaya fantasises about a troll version of Rose, thinking she must have been the leader of this supposedly long-ago group.

And yet they appear to have been the only of their kind to have risen to the challenge in a session stacked heavily against them.

Huh. So is this just because Kanaya can’t find more information, or are the four kids in fact the only humans who successfully got into the game? Picking four specifically white-coded kids to be the last of the human race due to supposedly their own competence is… not a good choice. And why the hell couldn’t other people succeed? This strikes me as more of the whole theme of “nobody matters except the people we’re focusing on”. A good lampshading of video game tropes, but in a literary story, that’s the opposite message to everything I’ve ever read, and it’s a creepy one.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 43 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 12 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 35

BRIGHT: I thiiiiiiiink it’s at least implied later on that there are other sessions going, it’s just that each session is a closed loop of players so we don’t see the others...although if that’s the case, does that mean Earth’s getting hit with meteors from multiple Skaias?

CHEL: That over with for the moment, we cut to Tavros’ house as you take your place as the PAGE OF BREATH in the LAND OF SAND AND ZEPHYR. Vriska, his server player, gets down to the business of building up his house towards the Gate…

… entirely out of staircases.

AT: i THINK THIS, iS, AT: pROBABLY MEANT TO ANTAGONIZE ME,

Okay, this probably makes me a bad person, but I’m crying with laughter at his expression and that line.

It’s more disability slapstick, but here the point of the joke comes off as being more that Vriska is a jerk and Tavros’ reaction is really understated than any reasonable person being supposed to assume Tavros is wrong for not being able to climb stairs. Emphasis on “comes off as”, unfortunately. I’m still gonna give a Problematykks point, and further experience with Hussie’s attitude to disability has soured the joke somewhat, even in just the next couple of pages.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 44

BRIGHT: Vriska tries to get Tavros to crawl up the stairs, first by telling him that he promised not to be boring anymore and then by saying that she’s trying to help him get stronger. She caps off the rant by demanding that he apologise.

AT: oKAY, AT: tHANKS, i GUESS, AT: bUT, AT: sORRY FOR WHAT, AG: For 8eing crippled, you ass! AT: yOU WANT ME TO APOLOGIZE, AT: fOR BEING PARALYZED, AG: Yes. AG: Say you're sorry. AT: i DON'T MEAN TO BE RUDE, oR bORING, AT: bUT THAT'S RIDICULOUS, gIVEN, AT: uH, tHE CIRCUMSTANCES, AG: 8ullshit! AG: It's something called 8asic decency and civility you fudge8looded 8oor. AG: Now get down on your useless wo88ly knees and apologize. AT: nO, i DON'T WANT TO, AG: >::::O

Vriska, what the fuck.

Tavros is really great here. He’s obviously not comfortable fighting with Vriska, and repeatedly tries to redirect her into building him ramps instead of engaging. But, at the same time, he holds his ground and doesn’t let her push him around, and won’t let go of solid hard reality in the face of Vriska trying to emotionally manipulate him.

FAILURE ARTIST: And yet people still call him a wimp.

BRIGHT: Vriska retaliates, because of course she does, by grabbing his wheelchair with her cursor and shaking it about. If Hussie left it at that, everything would be unobjectionable, at least in terms of narrative voice. Instead, well…

Now she's done it. She has awoken the mighty inner fury that is... RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

CHEL: It just occurred to me to mention that the name Rufio comes from a character in the movie Hook, the leader of the Lost Boys after Peter Pan left, played by Dante Basco. Tavros’ mental image of him is a reference to that character.

FAILURE ARTIST: Dante Basco did read Homestuck, with hilarious results as we will see.

But unfortunately, Rufio is not real. He's imaginary. A fake. Like a made up friend, the way fairies are. You continue to be sad and alone.

BRIGHT: Eurgh.

Let me be clear: Tavros having no further recourse to deal with Vriska’s abuse beyond his visualised self-esteem is a problem for the character, but it’s not necessarily a narrative problem per se. Escapism is a thing. You could get a decent character arc out of Tavros learning better ways to deal with harassment he can’t escape. It is a narrative problem when the narrator mocks it and makes him out to be pathetic for even trying it.

CHEL: I’d consider this to be just Tavros’ own thought process, but, sadly, this kind of narrative sneering at him carries on throughout Tavros’ presence in the comic and the fandom seems to buy into it. Tavros gets a lot of hate for reasons which mostly boil down to him being a male abuse victim; there’s a feeling that he should “try harder” to fight back, despite him being physically disabled and a member of a caste out of sight beneath her on the social ladder and legally permitted to be killed by her on a whim. Might that count as a point for WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM, for Huss and the fandom not taking the social dynamics into account for why Tavros can’t defend himself?

BRIGHT: I don’t know if it’s fair to count against the fandom when we’re reviewing Homestuck proper, but we can definitely count against Hussie!

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 36

CHEL: It’s also notable that the common fandom interpretation of Tavros is as Hispanic-coded, at least partly due to his Spanish username, and of Vriska as white-coded. That’s probably not helping.

Since Hussie appears to expect us to agree with Vriska that this is funny, I’m adding another to these as well.

ALL THE LUCK: 2 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 45 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 3

BRIGHT: What’s weird about this whole mess is that Hussie doesn’t — yet — try to say that Tavros should be trying to get stronger; his disability is fully acknowledged. I feel like this kind of mockery is usually accompanied by the attitude that disabled people should just get over their disability, but Hussie’s clear that Tavros can’t. Which means he should do...what, exactly?

CHEL: Not have let Vriska disable him in the first place, presumably. Never mind that, you know, she has mind control powers so he didn’t really have a choice in that either. That is, however, an argument Vriska fans actually make. Apparently some of them actually blame him for not flying when she threw him off the cliff, which… well, unpowered flight is a thing that can happen in the comic but he certainly couldn’t do it then.

BRIGHT: ...Apparently I retain the capacity for surprise at how awful people can be. The fuck?

Back in the comic, Tavros fortunately does have one other means of recourse. Back in her hive, Vriska is suddenly prodded in the back with a flying toilet, courtesy of Kanaya.

GA: Just Presenting A Floating Reminder That Tavros Will Need Plenty Of Inclined Surfaces For His Ascent AG: That's silly. I made so many ramps, you wouldn't even 8elieve it. AG: I specifically decided I wanted to 8uild something ugly and 8oring. It is now the land of ramps and yawns. GA: Hes Reported Otherwise AG: That lousy snitch! May8e I should take his computer away so he can't go crying to fussyfangs anymore. GA: Maybe I Should Upend This Load Gaper Over Your Head AG: No, don't! GA: Im Still Learning The Interface GA: It Could Happen Accidentally At Any Moment AG: I'm only trying to help him. ::::( GA: Think Of Another Way To Help

CHEL: Did I mention Kanaya is my zodiac troll? I can only long to reach her heights of awesome. Of course the ability to levitate toilets would kinda help.

BRIGHT: Vriska heads down to her treasure vault and retrieves a pair of ROCKET SHOES. The captchalogue code for these is ‘PSHOOOES’, which amuses me greatly. Vriska sends the code to Tavros, who combines it with the code for his wheelchair to create a flying wheelchair. Now that is a good use of alchemising!

CHEL: Awww!

Tavros flies up to the Gate, and we cut back to him later on, leading an entourage of communed-with imps and ogres to move obstacles and help him solve puzzles. Using his skills well, I see! In another set of ruins the imps load jigsaw pieces of rock into a frog-shaped alcove,

Things, however, don’t continue to go so well, because Hussie hates this poor kid. I do not mean that facetiously. Statements he’s made elsewhere imply he has a hell of a lot of contempt for several of the characters he created, which I don’t understand at all. We’ll go into this after Act 7, but I get the sensation that the characters are merely tools to show off the complexity and meta references, which are the parts he really cares about.

BRIGHT: It’s not unknown for authors to dislike characters they wrote; the great Terry Pratchett reputedly hated his character Rincewind. The key difference is that in Pratchett’s case, the audience couldn’t tell. Hussie, on the other hand, tends to make his disdain pretty obvious, to the detriment of the story.

CHEL: That’s a point. Conan Doyle grew to hate Sherlock Holmes, too. He didn’t, however, set up situations solely to shit on Holmes in his books.

BRIGHT: I think that’s the key. I’ll forgive a multitude of failings as long as the author seems to be treating the characters fairly. That doesn’t mean that good things have to happen to them — plenty of bad things can happen and I’ll enjoy it — it just means that the author has to...respect how the character feels and would behave, I guess.

Of course, respect is Hussie’s antithesis, so.

Also, nothing so far has shown Vriska to be anything other than a (granted, entertaining) bully. I wasn’t around while Homestuck was updating, so I’m not sure when her fandom took off, but it has to be later than this, surely?

CHEL: I don’t know. I wasn’t around till about mid-Act 6.

What was I on about? Oh yes. Tavros is interrupted by Vriska again, who bitches him out for doing things the boring way and seeking the boring lore.

AG: The minds of your consorts are very soft and impressiona8le. AG: As easily manipul8ed as all those imps you've 8een 8ossing around. AG: I have picked apart their tiny little lizard 8rains and seen through all the smoke and mirrors of their riddles. AG: I have gotten to the truth they are guarding. The great 8ig mystery 8ehind this planet. And you know what it is, Tavros? AT: nO, AG: It's 8ullshit! AG: Meaningless, 8oring, fanciful 8ullshit wrapped in flowery poems to keep you guessing. AG: It all leads to one thing anyway, and that's what we should put our attention on. AG: Real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold. AG: They cheat, Tavros. AG: It is time you learned to start cheating.

Interesting theory. Tavros thinks befriending his monsters instead of killing them is cheating, and Vriska grudgingly agrees but is annoyed he isn’t killing anything. She claims to have designed a better and more challenging quest for him; he asks after her own quest, and she says she has time because Kanaya’s busy.

AG: Which is just as well 8ecause I was starting to get nannied HARD. WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 37

Strange word choice for a species raised by animals, but okay. Vriska sends Tavros a map to the next Gate, and he sets off in his little rocket chair. Little does he know.

You proceed through what seems to be your second gate, into the LAND OF MAPS AND TREASURE. The THIEF OF LIGHT lies in wait.

In a callback to our last meeting of Breath and Light players, Tavros crashes through Vriska’s wall and is left hanging upside-down in the rocket chair from the large cobwebs across the room, while Vriska sleeps on a pile of broken eight-balls. Doesn’t look comfortable, but trolls rest in worse places later. Vriska wakes, and Tavros falls head-first onto the floor.

Here is where it gets incredibly uncomfortable, and we have to show it in detail to assign points properly and so that there’s no ambiguity about what’s happening, so if you have any sexual assault, ableism, underage, mind control, or victim-blaming triggers you may want to skip this part. No clothing is removed but it’s very unpleasant to read and the attitude toward it is worse. Seriously, this is Taklamakan Zoo levels of bad.

(This heading below’s not part of the comic, I just put it there so you can skip. The sequence ends with the piece of fanart of Kanaya looking at the sideways screen.)

~*THE ASSAULT STARTS HERE*~

Vriska sits up. She’s wearing a very short strappy white Tinkerbell dress with her sign on it, and what look like over-the-knee socks, a commonly fetishised style of clothing. I remind you these characters are supposed to be thirteen years old. The dress is also the same as the one worn by the fairy in the artwork on Tavros’ desktop background. I don’t know if Vriska had seen that or not.

FAILURE ARTIST:

To be fair she’s just in an actually-more-modest version of what Peter Pan’s sidekick/love interest wears and the socks come off as more dorky than sexy.

Oh my! It appears Pupa Pan himself has flown through your window while you were asleep. How exciting! Surely he is here to take you away on the adventure of a lifetime. He is more dreamy and heroic than you ever imagined. But what's this?? It seems the legendary Boy-Skylark has misplaced his shadow. He is looking EVERYWHERE for it, to no avail. He is having a devil of a time, what with being paralyzed from the waist down and all. He clearly needs your help.

CHEL: Vriska is prompted to Help Pupa find shadow, and approaches Tavros with a nasty-looking grin on her face, while he lies on the floor, gritting his teeth in noticeable pain.

Pupa! You truly are a silly goose. Your shadow has been trapped underneath your useless torso the whole time! Honestly, where else would it be you stupid sack of shit?

Charming. Vriska proceeds to kick him in the head, or at least nudge him with her foot, while he lies unresponsive.

Of course, the secret to reuniting with your shadow is to get up and walk around. And play and dance and frolic! Your shadow will surely join in your gaiety. But it appears Pupa has lost the use of his legs. There will be no frolicking in this young man's future. ::::( Unless...

Everyone knows that just a pinch of SPECIAL STARDUST along with a happy thought will allow any boy to get up and walk again. Everyone knows this because it is in the classic tale, PUPA PAN. Young Pupa flies through the window of a fairy girl's respiteblock, falls on the floor, and has trouble getting up like an enormous pansy. The fairy girl then helps him walk again, and in return, he teaches her to fly, even though she probably already knows how to fly. Because she's a fairy. They fly out of her window together, and have magical adventures for many sweeps thereafter. To be honest, you hardly know a damn thing about Pupa Pan. But you do not care.

Pupa remains as pathetic and useless as ever.

FAILURE ARTIST: The story just keeps mocking Tavros for being disabled.

CHEL: Not to mention for being interested in fairies. Because how dare a boy have a gender-nonstandard interest, or a young teenager enjoy whimsical escapism from an increasingly horrible and guaranteed-to-be-short life.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 39

I might be projecting because the fandom has made me loathe her, but it honestly comes off like Vriska dressed up like this in the first place less to seduce Tavros and more to make sure she thoroughly ruined his favourite thing to hurt him further, especially if the narration is supposed to be things she’s actually saying to him.

The stardust did nothing! Probably because it is just glittery powder with no magical properties whatsoever and is basically bullshit. Because in case it wasn't clear, magic isn't real, and neither are miracles. OR It could just be that Pupa has failed to have a happy thought! Your duty is clear. You will have to MAKE him have happy thoughts. Vriska: Make Pupa have happy thoughts.

He certainly doesn’t seem to be having happy thoughts now. Notice his expression, what we can see of it, looks terrified, he’s trembling, and let’s recall that he’s paralysed from the waist down. Even if he wasn’t, she’s of a far, far higher caste than him, legally permitted to do whatever she wants to him, including killing him if he tries to resist. It’s kind of gone back and forth on, but higher bloods are a few times stated to be a lot stronger than lower bloods, and if they work like humans, they’re in puberty right now, a time at which human girls tend to get taller and stronger sooner than boys. Again, it’s gone back and forth on, but a common interpretation is that female trolls are stronger than male trolls in general and/or have the social power advantage. Let’s also remember that, even if none of those factors apply, Vriska has mind control powers. There is no point here at which Tavros has the advantage, nothing he can use as leverage on her. She can do whatever the hell she wants, and she does.

BRIGHT: We’ve also been explicitly shown that Vriska has little to no respect for anyone else’s autonomy if she finds it inconvenient, and that Tavros is her favourite punching bag, and that his ability to stand up for himself when she gets going is extremely limited.

CHEL: Despite the odds stacked against him, Tavros struggles against the kiss forced on him, and when Vriska pushes him back, doesn’t respond with anything but a look of horror, though she appears to expect him to, as a flickering heart-spade with a question mark over it appears between them. I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to be the thought process of him or her or both.

Vriska hurls him onto the floor with some force...

… and activates her mind control, causing little hearts to light up in Tavros’ eyes.

BRIGHT: Vriska has used her mind-control powers on Tavros before, and when it happened she walked him off a cliff. There is basically no way that her doing it again isn’t going to be a traumatic experience for him, above and beyond the inherent horror of losing control over one’s body.

I’m inclined to think that forcibly altering his emotions is worse, though. Being paralysed was bad enough, but Tavros knows what happened and he knows how he feels about it. Making him fall in love with her is just…on one level, it’s a horrible assault on his autonomy as a person, and on another level, it’s tailor-made to make him doubt himself and believe the encounter was something he wanted.

FAILURE ARTIST: I hadn’t thought that he might now consider the encounter as consensual, which would explain his later reaction.

CHEL: Tavros paws at her legs, making kissy faces, and she looks vaguely concerned. Note the background still depicts wavy blue rays coming off her, showing her power is still active.

Looking defeated, she drops the control and dumps him on the floor again.

I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be thinking in this last panel. Is she feeling guilty? Is she disappointed that he didn’t like her under his own power? Has she just decided he’s too useless to be worth the effort? Any could be true.

BRIGHT: I read that as disappointment that even when he ‘liked’ her, he didn’t act the way she wanted. (And the way Tavros acted is kind of disturbing. ‘Mindlessly pawing at someone’ is not what I’d expect from him if he was legitimately attracted to someone.)

FAILURE ARTIST: The common interpretation these days was she was realizing she wasn’t into boys which okay that’s good for her but she should feel more bad about molesting him.

CHEL: That also makes no sense, because she shows interest in multiple boys later.

I’m also not entirely sure if Vriska had the intention of actually raping Tavros here (in the standard way, I mean, as one could argue that mind control is a form of rape), or just making out with him. The fact that she dressed up in vaguely fetishy clothing isn’t making it look good, though. Yes, she’s very young, but traumatised kids in particular have been known to lash out sexually like that. It’s a way of reasserting personal power, and I imagine it would be more prevalent in a society with no sapient adult supervision. While there are mitigating circumstances involved in their social situation and Vriska not really having ever had a chance to learn better, that doesn’t make this not a horrible thing to do, or not traumatising for Tavros.

BRIGHT: The clothing could potentially be down to Vriska wanting to look ‘adult’ without fully understanding why it looks adult. That does come up sometimes with teens — they want to experiment with clothing because that’s how adults dress, not because they want to look sexy, or they might dress a certain way for dates because that’s the social model they have for How Dates Work.

And if I read it like that, this basically looks like Vriska having the date equivalent of a dolls’ tea party. Which says volumes about how she views Tavros’s autonomy.

CHEL: Good point. Though honestly it would say volumes about same either way!

BRIGHT: I said earlier that Vriska is better than Equius at recognising when other people’s desires conflict with hers, and she is, but that doesn’t mean she respects those differences. She just recognises that they’re there, and overrides them. This is a prime example of Vriska viewing Tavros as something between a chew-toy and a prop. First she kicks him around and terrifies him, then she expects him to be able to get over those emotions at the drop of a hat and respond to her advances — and, moreover, she wants him to respond in a certain way, which Tavros has zero way of knowing. This is the first time she’s shown that sort of interest in him, unless her earlier behaviour was the Alternian equivalent of pigtail-pulling.

...I think maybe that was in fact Alternian pigtail-pulling. Or at least Vriska’s version of pigtail-pulling.

CHEL: That’ll actually make more sense, once we explain what the spade symbol means.

Okay, how many counts does this cover?

ALL THE LUCK: 12 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 31 CALL CPA PLEASE: 26 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 55 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 13

It also occurred to me during this sequence to think again about how Karkat contemptuously swears at and hangs up the phone on the injured Tavros. This, at first glance, seems to be very much at odds with the “cranky but caring” impression we’re supposed to have of Karkat… but it fits precisely with Hussie’s opinion of Tavros and how pathetic he is for allowing a much more powerful person to permanently disable him. I know at the moment it looks like I’m not separating the character from the author, but it’ll become clear as we go that that is what he thinks.

IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 14

Why didn’t we start a FUCK YOU, HUSSIE count?

BRIGHT: It would have ended up longer than all the other counts combined.

CHEL: The actual assault is over now, but there’s one more picture of it. The ramifications must continue to be discussed, so tread cautiously. The actual act is over now, though.

Said ramifications come pretty quickly. Kanaya, having dealt with getting herself into the game and prototyped her own lususprite, decides to check on Vriska.

Ideally she has not gotten herself into too much trouble. And ideally the dramatic irony has not gotten so thick you could draw a dotted line on it with a tube of lipstick and cut it in half with a chainsaw.

Of course, she sees the exact moment Vriska kisses Tavros.

(Fanart source has now been deleted, sadly.)

~*THE ASSAULT ENDS HERE*~

Humorous art aside over, let’s watch Kanaya’s reaction in more detail. She angrily looks at a copy of the Tinkerbell dress, which she presumably sent the alchemiter code for rather than the actual item to Vriska, hence why she still has it.

So THAT'S why she had you make this dress for her??? And you just went along with it like a sucker. Argh, you are such an IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Like Karkat, Kanaya is presented as the caring one, the protective one. The “mom friend” of the group. And yet, she looks at this, in which Tavros is clearly frightened and struggling, and her reaction is to be mad that Vriska didn’t want to wear the dress for a date with her. I’m not sure whether this says more about Hussie’s opinion of Tavros or the social system of Alternia or both, but it certainly says a lot.

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 56 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 13 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 15

BRIGHT: Kanaya has had to corral Vriska on Tavros’s behalf already! Possibly more than once! She has all the information to realise that this is abusive, even leaving aside Tavros’s reaction! Sure, teens can be self-centred, but even so this is egregious.

CHEL: Kanaya’s Grubsprite comforts her and she throws the dress out the window.

Being a kid and growing up. It's hard and nobody understands.

Yes, I’m sure Tavros thinks so too.

Charles: "I know Sir can be prickly, but you have to understand he had a very terrible childhood."

Klaus: "I understand. I'm having a very terrible childhood right now."

-A Series of Unfortunate Events

#homestuck #homestuck review #homestuck meta #homestuck reread #let's read homestuck #Homespork

6 notes · View notes

jxllydrummr · 4 years

Text

( airi suzuki, female, she/her, bang dream! girls band party! ) * &. i know it must be scary for you, kanon matsubara, after not surviving the takeover. to turn into someone like ichika nonomiya, a twenty-two year-old clerk at ‘sno problem, right here in castle town. just remember that you are as kind as you are anxious, and to be wary, be safe, be true to who you are : heroic through and through. ( mage / she/they / 21 / est )

(( Yes hello hello again! It is Mage, who decided that she wanted to play her BABEY Girl, her sunshine, her DAUGHTER!!!!!!! I care abt Kanon so much I can only hope I portray her half as good as she truly is. Also YIKES I WRITE A LOT LMAO… but she’s my baby so I have to… tw for food mention! ))

Before The Snap - KANON MATSUBARA

She’s a 16 year old drummer in the band Hello, Happy World!

She’s an anxious, quick to tears girl with a heart of pure gold. When she gets stressed out (so, VERY OFTEN), she says “fuee”.

She was going to give up on drumming, and was about to sell her drum set, when the lead singer of HHW, Kokoro Tsurumaki, convinced her to jam out with her. This event made Kanon realize how much fun she had drumming, and because of this, she sees Kokoro as a real-life hero.

In my personal headcanon, Kanon almost gave up on drums because her little brother made a joking comment about how she never really touched the drum set, and Kanon started to worry that she wasn’t good enough at all for it.

Made friends with a baby penguin.

Her favorite animal is the jellyfish, but she loves all marine life.

The band consists of Kokoro Tsurumaki (vocals, rich as hell and has the energy of a thousand red bulls), Hagumi Kitazawa (bass, sporty tomboy who hates seeing anyone lose and has zero thoughts), Kaoru Seta (guitar, the Best Lesbian, literally has to do a wedding photo shoot with another girl and Kaoru was dressed up as the groom, another character canonically has a crush on her), and Misaki Okusawa (DJ, tired 24/7 and the only one in the band with a functioning brain besides Kanon, unfortunately has to DJ in a fur suit named Michelle, and only Kanon gets that Michelle and Misaki are the same person).

Kokoro taught her the chant “Happiness, Happy, Magical”, which fills Kanon with courage when she chants it, helping her do what she has to. It’s not magic or anything; she just thinks about how Kokoro saved her by (in her eyes) being brave enough to talk to a stranger dragging drums in the street.

Despite her anxiety, she actually works at Copyright Friendly McDonalds.

She has a pretty good memory, able to recall huge orders and can repeat them back without messing up once, or can remember tiny details about what someone’s wearing.

Kanon’s sense of direction is terrible. It’s so bad that she can often get lost while walking in a straight line. Often, Kaoru has to come and lead her in the right direction. Despite this, she can always find her favorite cafes from how they smell. It’s pretty much her anchor point.

Kanon has gone to every cafe she can find and not get horribly lost on the way to it. From tiny hole in the wall places to a special 3D latte art cafe, she loves them all, but her favorite always will be the local Hazawa Coffee.

After The Snap - ICHIKA NONOMIYA

Kanon did not survive the snap, so now… meet Ichika!

Personality wise, extremely similar to Kanon; anxious, but kind. Ichika is a little bit more extroverted than Kanon, enjoying spending time with friends and not having to be dragged to fun activities. She still says ‘fuee’, not nearly as frequently as Kanon, though.

She’s still into drumming, spending some time at The Record Scratch looking at the drum sets, and sometimes, if she’s lucky, playing them.

Now, she works at Sno Problem, which is still as stressful as ever, but nothing she can’t handle.

Her memory is still good, but she has to write something down in order for it to really stick.

Ichika’s life is very… unnoteworthy. She grew up in a lower middle class family, as the little sister to an older, extremely distant brother. She never really got to know him, although all the memories she has with him are positive, but knew of his garage band, trying to make it big without the record labels. Her parents were often working late hours, so Ichika had a lot of free time. She spent it reading any books she could get her hands on, and listening to her brother perform in the garage, although he would often be away “on tour”.

Because of her reading, she became a massive bookworm, going to libraries and running them dry of any book that caught her fancy that day.

Ichika learned drumming from her older brother. It’s one of the few times he’s gone out of his way to spend time with her, and she adores it. Whenever she plays, she feels connected to her brother.

Her family life isn’t terrible, but she does wish she could be as close to her mom as some of the YA heroines seemed to be with their moms.

She adores the sea, and will often just wander around near it, but she has to have a landmark near her, or else she may wander off and never find her way back.

She started going to school for marine biology, but nearly dropped out after the first sememster because of her work load, and it nearly burning her out. Talking to the college, they let her take on a much lighter work load, while making it clear that she would not be graduating on time. That was fine with her, because that meant she could spend a little bit more time really getting to know herself outside of books and drums.

When she’s not at work, school, the beach, or Record Scratch, she’s usually found at any of the eateries around town, nose buried in a book. Her favorite place is Beans Beans Beans, and she always orders the same thing, a small black tea with perhaps an illegal amount of sugar and cream in it.

She is often seen with a scrunchie around her wrist, almost like it’s just a bracelet. She wears one at work to tie her hair back. Lately, though, she’s taken a shine to a particular one that seems very floral…

She has a stuffed dog named Eve. This has nothing to do with anything I just think it’s vital you know she has a stuffed dog named Eve.

Also her name has a subtle reference to who she really is: ichiKA NONomiya

#castletown.intro #castletown.ooc #( how fueeting ; ooc )#( what i call home ; castle town information )#( pitter patter pitter patter ; past life )#( you really gotta be here ; about ichika )#long post #food tw

2 notes · View notes

virgogh-away · 7 years

Text

Not the First - Cheryl Blossom x Reader

A/N: Hey so I wrote this a while ago and just decided to post it, so the whole struggle for Kevin to get over Joaquin is pretty much already over in the show. Anyway, I love Cheryl a bunch and I hope you like this!

Ever since B and V became what they were (a beautiful friendship between two girls supporting each other) they threw slumber parties every other week. The location switched between their houses every few weeks or so and, while the first few get togethers only consisted of the blonde and raven-haired girls, eventually the invitation was opened to both you and Kevin.

Since that fateful day, you spent most (if not all) of the week leading up to those sleepovers in eager anticipation. It’s not like your time at school wasn’t fun, you were a straight A student and had a great group of friends to spend the days with, but de-stressing with the girls was a great way to end the week and let loose. Nobody ever got exceptionally wild, in fact, the only person who was ever really itching to go out was Kevin, and he always got shot down.

You were now at one of those slumber parties, jamming to some bubblegum pop while sitting on Betty’s bed, filing your nails. You understood how cliché of an action that was, but you also cared about your nails and needed to be doing something with your hands, so it just worked. Kevin was lounging at the end of the bed, pouring over some trashy gossip magazine (you constantly remind him about how idiotic those things are but then he starts dissing your guilty pleasure, Twilight, and you shut up real quick). Betty and Veronica, meanwhile, are sitting on the floor while the latter braids the former’s hair.

Your conversations typically revolve around school and everything that’d been stressing you all out. Kevin had already vented emotionally about Joaquin leaving, to which you listened to intently and gave him your best motivational mini-speech. You knew that Kev really liked him, so you understood why the serpent’s absence was so heartbreaking for him. He finally had someone who liked and understood him. You had never known that kind of love, but you wish you had.

You all also talked about lighter subjects, like upcoming assignments and tests that were making you worry about your grades slipping (yes, these nerves were mostly coming from you, but you had a GPA to keep up). The other three always reassured you that you were doing completely fine and, so long as you didn’t let procrastination strike, you would be fine.

The topic inevitably always turned to guys.

Kevin zoned out during this segment this time around, which you all understand and didn’t let affect your gossip. In fact, you wished you had an excuse like Keller did, but instead you had to nod and act like you were listening as closely as you would if Michelle Obama was standing in front of you.

Eventually, both Veronica and Betty noticed that you weren’t paying much attention, and weren’t speaking up at all. They realized that they were being somewhat selfish and gushing solely about their respective boyfriends. That wasn’t fair to you and, as Betty racked her brain to talk about something that would interest you, she remembered a juicy conversation she overheard a few days ago.

“Oh my god, Y/N! I can’t believe I never told you,” she announces as she begins to tell her story, both you and Veronica waiting with bated breath to hear something amazing (hopefully), “Well I was in Biology this past week and I heard Reggie telling Chuck how cute he thinks you are!”

You deflate somewhat as you realize that this is what you were momentarily excited about. You knew you shouldn’t have gotten too hopeful, since you tended to be let down when these conversations occurred. And now, thinking back over what she said, you turn red, fairly embarrassed about it all.

“Aww, B, she’s blushing! That’s so adorable, you so like him!” Veronica squeals as she no doubt starts to imagine multiple humiliating ways of setting you two up. And, honestly, you can’t wait to burst the duo’s bubble.

“No, that’s not it I just, uh…don’t really roll that way,” you begin to trail off as you expose your long-held secret (which you thought was pretty obvious but whatever).

“I knew it!” Kevin nearly yells as he throws the magazine that he was previously so enthralled in across the room, “My gaydar is pretty impeccable so I expected as much, but I didn’t want to assume anything or out you.”

You smile gratefully at him, but quickly turn back to the two girls sitting in front of you, since they haven’t reacted at all yet.

This wouldn’t be some kind of friendship deal-breaker, would it? Sure, Kevin was gay, but lesbianism was a whole ‘nother ball game (in fact, no balls were involved at all). Maybe this would be too much for them to handle.

“Y/N!” Betty exclaims as she sits beside you and Veronica follows her lead, sitting on your other side, “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

You let out a breath that you didn’t realize you had been holding in. Slightly scolding yourself for thinking so little of your friends, you think up some reason for withholding such an important part of your identity, “I don’t know I guess I just…wanted to feel things out? Riverdale isn’t the most welcoming place, despite the town motto, so I just wanted to be sure I would have people nearby who will always have my back. And now I know for sure that I do, you guys are the best.”

Both girls wrap you up in a hug as they simultaneously “aww” and Kevin dives from the end of the bed to join the Hallmark moment. Your heart swells as you realize that you’re exactly in the place you belong, until you feel a hand slap your shoulder.

“Next time you have some major secret eating away at you, tell us! We don’t bite, and I know it’s hard to be vulnerable, but sometimes that kind of openness pays off,” Veronica says as she stares at Betty in a way that you are very much familiar with. Her speech comes across a little hypocritical as you witness this, but you keep your mouth shut.

“Well, unfortunately you’re not the first woman who likes women at Riverdale. Cheryl Blossom beat you on that one,” Kevin says nonchalantly as he goes to retrieve his riveting reading material.

Your eyes widen despite yourself and you aren’t fast enough to stop yourself from hopefully emitting, “Really?”

Kevin stops in his tracks and turns around to look at you in shock, while two other pairs of eyes shortly join his. Veronica is the first to get out her surprised reaction.

“Oh my God! I thought I saw you checking her out the other day at practice, but by the time I looked at you again you were tapping away on your phone. You sneaky minx!” She hits your shoulder again, but this time it’s much more playful and you blush in response. You try not to make your ogling so obvious, but sometimes you just can’t help it. She fills out that River Vixen uniform very well.

“Go for it, Y/N! There’s no logical reason why Cheryl would reject you, I mean, you’re smart, you’ve got a smokin’ hot bod, you’re insanely nice,” he stops momentarily as he processes what he just said, cocking his head to the side, “Actually, maybe she won’t like you.”

B and V giggle at this but you proceed to throw a pillow at the sheriff’s son. Naturally, he dodges your shot and smirks at you, knowing that he’s won once again. The spry bastard.

***

When you walk into school on Monday things seem to be going as normally as usual. You wave at a couple of people as you make the trek to your locker and have a short conversation with Juggie about some movie he’s gushing over, before he leaves to go do whatever it is that he does. You’re grateful that you haven’t run into any of your friends that were at the sleepover, until you catch sight of your locker and see B and V standing there, looking like they just murdered your dog.

“Okay Y/N, before we tell you what happened just know that we had nothing to do with it and we don’t know how she found out,” Betty nearly shouts out at an extremely fast pace, so fast you almost miss it. She.

You cross your arms and glare back and forth between them, letting them know that you’re not happy with whatever it is that’s happened. Hopefully it’s not what you expect, but you tend to think of the absolute worst-case scenario.

“Alright, what happened? Who knows?” It’s clear that your little secret is out, you just need to understand if the person who knows will keep your secret.

“Um, Cheryl?” Veronica says meekly, waiting for you to blow up and turn into a nervous wreck. She doesn’t have to wait very long.

“What the hell! Oh my god guys I trust you with one of my biggest secrets ever and you immediately spread it!” They begin to open their mouths in protest but you scowl at them like an angry mother would and they both stop, “And even if it wasn’t either of you that blabbed, there was only one other person at that slumber party and you could’ve stopped him.”

You open your locker, find the textbook you need for first period, and slam it closed. The two girls standing behind you jump and you almost smile, but you’re still upset and witnessing your scared friends isn’t helping anything. You begin to storm off before either girl can say anything to try to calm you down, and after a few seconds you realize that they aren’t trying to stop you.

Good.

***

When you arrive outside of your English class room you let out a few breaths of air, attempting to cool down and look nonchalant before facing the dramatic redhead. You try not to think about how the whole school might know something about you that not even your parents did. You thought of Cheryl highly, but not so much that you expected her to hold onto a piece of gossip like this. It was in her nature to bring chaos everywhere she went (in fact, it was one of the things about her that intrigued you, just not today).

You walk in, bracing yourself for grating stares and awful slurs to be thrown at you, but for everyone else today is just a normal Monday. Those who never noticed you before don’t bat an eyelash now, and those who do like you simply wave like normal. You make the walk to your desk in silent shock, but still have your defenses up. As you sit down and begin putting the necessary materials on your desk, you realize that Cheryl typically doesn’t show up until a few minutes before the bell rings.

You busy yourself by scanning over the required reading for the weekend (which you already read twice but decided to brush up on before having to discuss it) until the Blossom girl walks in. Of course, this takes quite a while as she’s someone who likes to make an entrance. But soon you catch a glimpse of her signature color and your heart starts to beat faster than it ever has.

You make eye contact with her and expect to see disgust but instead find amusement and…happiness? She struts directly up to your desk, which is certainly unusual as you sit directly in the front and she sits all the way in the back. She’s going out of her way to talk to you, which is both terrifying and exciting all at once.

“Um, hey Cheryl I just wanted to explain what you might’ve heard,” You start to tell her but she shushes you shortly after you start to make your speech. And, since you’ve been wrapped around her finger for a while now, you immediately close your lips and become the best listener the world has ever seen.

“So, Keller told me something very interesting a few minutes ago,” She sizes you up and cocks her head to the side, one hand already resting in its natural place on her hip, “Is it true?”

You consider telling her no and that you’re super straight or whatever, but you know that would only push you further into the closet and away from a happy, open life. So, instead of saving your ass and preventing eminent heart ache, you nod your head and prepare for the inevitable onslaught of embarrassment.

Her reaction is something that you never would’ve expected in a million years: she smiles at you.

“Sweet! So, do you wanna come over to my place tonight? We can watch movies and eat popcorn, the whole shebang. I hear you love getting chatty at sleepovers,” She says smugly as she smirks at you, punctuating her statement with an exaggerated wink that makes you laugh and blush simultaneously.

“I can’t be spilling all my secrets on the first date. That would be no fun!” You smirk right on back as your typical confidence returns to you, now assured that your feelings are reciprocated.

“Also,” Cheryl says loudly before she turns to walk to her seat. It’s clear that she wants the whole class to hear this, “If anyone gives you a hard time, send them my way. I’ll give ‘em hell.”

You watch her walk to the back of the class in complete awe. The girl of your dreams likes you back. If it wasn’t for some stupid slumber party and your loud mouth of a friend, this moment wouldn’t be happening. Kevin Keller is gonna rub this in your face for the rest of your life, but as your eyes land on Cheryl once more, you realize that it’ll all be worth it. She’s worth it.

#riverdale #riverdale imagine #reader insert #cheryl x reader #cheryl blossom x reader #cheryl imagine #cheryl blossom imagine #idk what else to tag this i just hope you like it!!!#and can find it lmao

174 notes · View notes

courferrevevo-blog · 7 years

Text

l’amis headcanons

these are just my personal opinions but i do get most of my info from the Brick + basic history, message me if u have questions or a different opinion tho! Enjolras -v v gay -for Grantaire specifically -french native (via the Brick; his family were likely French aristocrats) -studying law when he’s not arguing with a teacher -literally incapable of writing an essay within the given parameters it's always at least a page too long enj tag

Grantaire -bi as fuk -loves enj with every fiber in his being -moroccan on his father’s side and romani on his mother’s, hopped on a boat to france one day bc he heard the wine was good -actually is a genius, studying art but he took one Popperian philosophy class and hasn’t stopped trying to falsify enj since. -reads too many Greek mythology books he Needs to Stop -he has severe depression and is an alcoholic (this is straight from the brick!! however, this is not ///cute/// in any way; i don’t romanticize it at all but it’s important to acknowledge that he has mental health issues) taire tag enjoltaire tag

Combeferre -hes jus doin his queer lil thing being bi -literally!!! cannot!!! express!!! his love!!! for!!! Courfeyrac!!! -his family are Cargèse la Grecque (Corsican Greeks) -double majoring in philosophy and physics as an undergraduate degree before med school -his blood is probably 95% coffee ferre tag

Courfeyrac -very pansexual and somehow?? everyone he flirts with is attracted to him -he mainly flirts with ferre tho because ferre is the Love of his Life -spanish, moved to France from Spain to study law -“study” law lmaO he has a fuckin bookshelf full of trashy romance novels that he calls his “legal library” jhsdbfjkhsdg -he brings his mother’s sangria recipe to every meeting and nobody drinks it but him and ferre because it’s ridiculously sweet but ferre is a good supportive boyfriend and dutifully has one glass every time courf tag courferre tag

Feuilly -he makes fans thats…. rly gay -i guess u could say he’s BahoreL’S BIGGEST FAN LMAO -lil redheaded nerd from Poland (according to the Brick, “He had for his specialty Greece, Poland, Hungary, Roumania, Italy. He uttered these names incessantly, appropriately and inappropriately, with the tenacity of right. The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of Russia on Warsaw, of Austria on Venice, enraged him.”) -English major with a minor in Eastern European history -he really went to the fuckin barricade with a sword :’) a fucking sword :’))) dramatic impractical femme ass bitch :’)) feu tag

Bahorel -gay are u kidding…. -forever trying to get Feu to arm wrestle just so he has an excuse to hold his hand :)) -his family probably originated from Port-au-Prince in Haiti before being trafficked into France via the slave trade– he reminds me a lot of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, who really was a general in the French Revolution -very lazy law student who is only in school to spite the system lmao -sdgfhjkdgh he literally has a ritual of cursing and flipping off the law school every time he passes by (“Every time that he passed the law-school, which rarely happened… he took hygienic precautions… He wasted a tolerably large allowance, something like three thousand francs a year, in doing nothing.”) -tends to get into fights easily especially when drunk… he needs 2 chill…. bahorel tag feuhorel tag

Joly -poly + bi -constantly trying to get musichetta and bossuet into medical cots if u catch my drift :)))))))) -i headcanon joly as chinese-french, since that’s currently one of the largest immigrant groups in Paris. however, this characterization would be difficult for canon-era since Chinese immigration began in early to mid 1900s. however, once the Chinese immigration wave did begin, it resulted in the popularization of Eastern medicinal practices in Europe, which goes along w the brick’s characterization of joly as a med student -majoring in biology for his pre med and when he had to dissect a cow brain he almost puked on it -canonically, has some kind of anxiety disorder, most likely OCD and/or severe germaphobia (again, not to be romanticized!!! it would be a legitimate issue that would realistically affect his life in some negative ways) -always trying weird teas and herbal medicines -he thought that grantaire’s crush on enjolras was symptomatic of a brain tumor for the longest time joly tag

Bossuet Laigle (Lesgle) -who the fuck knows lmao he’s poly and ????? pan?? all he does is make gay jokes -chetta and joly know :^) -his mother was probably one of the 50k+ free black people that migrated to Paris after Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to the United States and most likely met Bossuet’s father after he was given the posting office in Meaux, Paris by the king (the Meaux part is canonical and results in one of the best puns in the brick) -he’s a year behind Bahorel in law school and honestly……… his grades are abysmal help him -its not even because he’s stupid he’s literally just lazy and his professors always???change due dates without him knowing lmao -let! bossuet! be! bald! bossuet tag

Musichetta -bi + poly -started dating joly and bossuet after L'Amis began using the Musain as a meeting place, maybe she hooks up with Éponine too??????????? idk -french native, light skin, dark hair and brown eyes (in canon, she is “…white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortune teller,“ this may indicate Romani origin) -works as a bartender in the Musain (for modern headcanons I think she studies English on the side, since Joly describes her as “very literary”) chetta tag jolsuchetta tag

Marius Pontmercy -he’s literally the only str8 here lmfaO -i mean maybe one time courfeyrac convinced him to dabble but it didn’t work which is fine bc he is devoted to Cosette -french native; like enj, his family were rich and closely affiliated with the monarchy -he’s an English major working towards becoming a lawyer and is the epitome of the Poor College Student -!!! freckly and shy and full of LOVE (it’s canon that his Bonapartist views conflicted with the more extreme politics of the rest of L'Amis. he’s not a doormat in any sense, but he is a quieter character since he’s learning the way of the revolution from the rest of L'Amis) -he’s so fuckign dramatic jshdbfhjdsb once he stood with his head against a tree in angst while cosette cried in the background like thats in the text actually marius tag

Cosette Fauchelevent -bi and proud!! -Marius is her angel -french native, “chestnut” hair, blue eyes, v innocent look about her -majoring in political science and interning as a journalist (obviously i’m ignoring the sexism of canon-era, but this career choice fits her canon personality: “Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her”) cosette tag marisette tag

Jehan (Jean Prouvaire) -nonbinary af, pan -they’re “married to Romanticism” jhsbjkfhe they’re like the Queen Elizabeth of L'Amis -french native, according to canon, he too came from an extremely wealthy family -poetry major who is never matching ever at all -,sjbkjhdhj they literally learned four fucking languages just to read their four favorite poets and their past times include “saunter[ing] through fields of wild oats and corn-flowers” they’re Extrá jdhvfjhds jehan tag

Éponine Th��nardier -shez-a-lesbian and the mess w marius is compulsive heterosexuality, genderfluid imo -she’s totally over marius but cosette…. come 2 think of it cosette is kinda cute… -her grandparents were likely immigrants from the french territory of guadeloupe (this is possible in canon, give or take a decade, because France received an influx of black immigrants in the late 19th century. also, guadeloupe’s enormous amount of internal conflict would account for the Thenardiers’ crooked ways and affiliation with crime gangs) -she’s gotta be an english major bc her entire adult introduction in the brick is a scene where she shows marius how well she can read and write despite being a plebeian -KBFKJHB SHE HAS SUCH A DEEP VOICE (“It was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice of an old man, roughened with brandy and liquor”) ponine tag

54 notes · View notes

peanutbutterclydesdale · 7 years

Text

From a Facebook conversation

I'll be honest. I consider myself genderqueer (gender nonbinary? just nonbinary? NB? idk) but I get a headache trying to reconcile all the various terms and theories and points of view. I'm honestly confused. It was weird to me when 'queer' became a slur again (at least on Tumblr?), after I thought we'd reclaimed it. And I thought one of the distinctions, one of the ways transfolks explained things about being trans /was/ being in a body that was not biologically the same as the wiring in your brain. That you were, essentially, 'male' on the inside and 'female' on the outside, or vice versa. That was how trans folks actually described themselves, and the disphoria was a huge aspect of of their condition. Heck, the entire difference in Transgender and Transsexual was that Transsexual people deeply desired full transition and transgender were fine being 'male' on the inside and 'female' outside (once again, or vice versa) I understand our understanding on sex and gender have come a long way since the 90's, but to a certain extent I feel like something got lost along the way. Like... I DO feel like we need terms to describe the outwardly physical aspects of biology, if for none other than medical purposes. Maybe a new term? one that isn't as full of societal stigmas? I've seen people rail on scientists/zoologists for using terms like "male" or "female" even when referencing animals. I've seen people get mad at the pokemon franchise for making a lion-based pokemon have two different appearances for Male/Female lions. I've seen people say the entire concept of XX and XY being transphobic, despite it's general basis in reproductive science. Saying an organism with two X chromasomes is EXTREMELY LIKELY to have a vagina, uterus, and ovaries while one with an X and a Y is EXTREMELY LIKELY to have testes and a penis is not transphobic in my opinion. It's observable fact. Are there other factors? Of course. There are those with XXY syndrome (roughly 1 in 500 penis-bearers) and those with XYY (1 in 1000 penis bearers) as well as XXX syndrome (1 in 1000 uterus-owners) and Turners syndrome (1 in 2000- 1in 5000 Uterus-owners) Beyond chromosomes, there's also brain chemistry and personality and general feelings that all come into play. Biological creatures are tricky, complex things. But I feel like.... idk..... declaring there's no spectrum at all and that the whole thing is just social construct really just.... It feels like it completely breaks down the need for the term trans at all and waters down the severe issues someone seeking transition deals with. They were born with the wrong body parts. Right? That's the idea? If there is no binary, and even biological sex is a construct, then... um... how would you define being trans even? IDK MAN. However, I know that I am the one confused and everyone else has their things sorted. I'm the one that's not up to speed. Maybe it'll click sometime. I feel like I need a new refresher course on my terms, I think. I really do. And I don't want to demand/ask for an explanation from anyone in this thread (not your job after all) but I feel more lost than before. I get there being more than one gender in societies, I took anthropology classes, but the physicality I feel is still on a different, separate, spectrum. I could see the increase of that to four (born penis-bearing, born uterus owning, born intersex, born sexless, everything else being on a sort of chart between those extremes). Transsexual, then, would indicate you feel transplanted in the wrong physicality. Right? Whereas transgender is less about the physical disphoria and more about, well, gender and.... But... If we accept that gender is all a societal concept anyway and try to look beyond that, then... what... makes... someone transgender? And then... is... Transsexual ultimately "I was born in the wrong body"? Or if it isnt... what is it? I guess... I grew up with these definitions of things and what qualifiers make said person fit said label. But all of those things are now irrelevant and excluded from the definition now, so I'm left in a fog. Again, it's not anyone's job to explain these things to me, I'm mostly just rambling at this point. I do know that it all makes me freshly confused about my own identity all over again, which is a feeling I haven't had since high school. Do I count as genderqueer anymore? Am I trans? Am I cis? Further, I've always been attracted to girls, thus, a lesbian, right? But I fell in love with a supportive penis-bearing figure. Does that now make me bi? But bi implies 'two' and that, in itself would then be reinforcing the binary system, so is that even a thing anymore? And if we are saying it isn't, isn't that bi-erasure? Should I be saying I'm pansexual? I just feel all the terms have gone through a blender in my head now. In general, I try to just go with whatever someone tells me they are. It's not up to me to decide that for them. But thinking about it on my own... @_@

2 notes · View notes

a-dinosaur-a-day · 7 years

Text

A Story about a Balaur and a Dakotaraptor

Oh Geez what have I done

Just, picture a universe like Zootopia, but the animals are all Reptiles (including birds) from 70-66 Mya (The Maastrichtian age). Also, they aren’t physically anthropomorphized.

Trigger Warning for emotional abuse, weed and alcohol, I guess? Anyways this is the story of the Adorable Sapphics:

By Tas on http://tasmagorical.id.au. Thanks to @ryuukiba for giving me important Spanish Insults. It’s long, but feel free to reblog.

I first saw her in my Intro to Philosophy class.

I was only in the class because my girlfriend of the time – Jinny, an Anzu from my hometown who came with me to this strange, giant university – wanted to major in Philosophy, and well, I need to fill some electives, I guess.

The teacher was rambling about something that I didn’t give a flying pterosaur crap about – I think it was ethics, which is embarrassing in retrospect – and I was just staring around the room. It was an “international” school, meaning that people from around the world came just to attend the world-famous classes. A giant Deinocheirus, one of the weirdest people I had ever seen, ever, was sitting in back, chewing on a piece of… water plant? A Simosuchus was in the front, and couldn’t really take notes – being quadrupedal and all – so he was using his tail, and it was an amusing sight. An Alamosaurus – who was much too big for the classroom – had a hole cut out of the wall of the room for him – and he was falling asleep in class.

And there she was.

Sitting a few rows from the front, on her own, using one of her feet to take notes. This was amusing in and of itself – did she not use her fingers buried in her wings to grab things, like I did? Jinny didn’t, but Jinny didn’t look much like me, either, and she just looked like a mini version of me.

I looked closer at her foot, and saw she had two Big Claws.

Two!

I watched her in surprise, now completely disconnected from Philosophy. Who cared, anyway?

She had two pens in her claws – using one to manipulate an actual pen, for notes, and the other a highlighter – to highlight back over her notes.

Wow, I thought to myself, maybe she could give me some tips on being a better student. Or at least, she could for this class. I was pretty good at calculus, didn’t need help with that.

“Setha!”

I looked over at Jinny, brought back rather rapidly to reality.

“Have you been paying attention at all?” Jinny laughed, the sound coming out like a loud, abrasive caw.

“Not really,” I shook my head, “I told you, Jin, I’m just not that interested in all this.”

“Then why did you take the class with me?” Jinny demanded angrily as the professor wrapped up and we all shuffled to leave the lecture hall; a Quetzalcoatlus had to fly up and peck at the Alamosaurus’ face to get him to wake up.

“I dunno, cause you wanted to take it together?” I snapped back.

“So stupid,” Jinny muttered as we left the room. I could feel my head feathers puff up in annoyance, but I tried to keep it to myself.

I looked around wildly for the two-clawed girl. I had seen so many others, closely related to me, who had big claws as well – there were the small cousins of mine from home, the Acheroraptor – but there was also Adasaurus, from the same place as Deinocheirus; and Atrociraptor, from a few miles North of where I lived. There was even Austroraptor, who was as big as I was, but from South America!

I had never seen anyone like her.

I finally locked eyes on her. She looked so small – but I knew plenty of distant relatives of mine who were small – but she also walked differently. More like my distant distant relatives, you know, the ones who were experimenting more with the air? And branches and stuff?

Anyway, she was cheerfully getting out of her seat when another animal walked up to her – it was one of those weird digging things, you know, the kind that dig up insects all the time and just kind of run around? He was a big one, much taller than the double-clawed girl, and he kind of shoved her forward with his nose.

I felt my feathers raise more in annoyance.

“What are you looking at?” Jinny asked.

“Oh – uh – nothing,” I said, and we walked together through the campus to our next class.

“Maybe you’ll return to normal in calc,” Jinny groaned.

“Usually do,” I offered, but the image of the digger pushing the double-claw forward was burned into my brain.

Still, being a freshman was hard – and I had other things to worry about. Like intro to chemistry. Which was probably going to kill me – slowly – in a vial of acid – used in the laboratory portion.

So I studied a lot. My best friend from home – Mik, a Tyrannosaurus who was increasingly getting huge and terrifying – was really good at chemistry, so we usually spent our time studying together.

“So are you going to actually come with me to the review session, or are you going to sit in your dorm and play video games with Nikko?” Mik asked as we poured over textbooks together, two nights before the second exam of the term (and I needed to pass).

“Nikko is busy trying to find a girlfriend,” I snorted. Nikko was our newest friend from the school, who Mik had met in his Biology class. He was a Velafrons, and he was terrible at speaking English, but man, could he swear and yell at us for not even trying at Spanish, so to each their own.

“Dammit,” Mik groaned, “I guess a relationship between a hadrosaur and a tyrannosaur is too crazy anyway?”

“Dude, you’re literally wanting to bang what you could consider a prey species,” I snorted at him.

“Yeah,” Mik sighed, “Why did he have to be straight?”

“Cause them’s the breaks,” I paused, “But no, I guess I’ll go to the study session tonight.”

“Thank God,” Mik groaned, “You need it.”

“Watch it,” I snarled.

“You know you haven’t been able to beat me in a fight since we were kids,” Mik paused, “Don’t try it.”

I snorted again and went back to studying, burying my nose in the book.

“By the way,” Mik said, “On the subject of Romance –“

“Oh no,” I groaned.

“Jin says you two like, never hang out anymore?” Mik asked.

“Jin only gives a crap about philosophy and history and all this shit that’s meaningless to me – and oh man, she’s just gotten more annoying about being against religion – like I’m not religious but does she have to belong to a club that’s literally a militantly atheist group? Really? How freaking rude, right?” I snapped.

“Well you know I agree. I don’t know why you dated her in the first place. We made fun of her in junior high,” Mik shook his head.

“Look, I’m a lesbian, tail is hard to come by,” I paused, “And she… had a nice phase in high school.”

“You mean that phase when she tried to make Ethel and Jacob atheists? Because she ‘didn’t care’ that they were ya know, Avialan, and therefore Jewish, but she did care that they believed in God?” Mik snorted, “There’s a reason they didn’t come here with us.”

“How are they doing at Hell Creek U, by the way?” I asked.

“Oh good,” Mik said, “They’re probably going to get married soon, honestly. They don’t see the point in waiting around.”

“Aww!” I gasped, “That’s so sweet. Are you going to go?”

“Dude, I’ve been friends with them since we were hatchlings, of course,” Mik paused, “Do you think it’ll be like Greg and Winnie’s wedding?”

“Because… they’re all Avialans?” I asked, laughing, “You do know there are differences between Avisaurus and Brodavis, right?”

“Yeah, course I know that,” Mik said defensively.

“Like, I don’t think that Ethel and Jacob will have as many water-related components –“

“I’m sorry, I was just wondering if there would be commonalities, that’s all!” Mik snorted.

“Well we’ll find out,” I paused.

“But back to the main topic,” Mik said, “You go to Maastrichtian University. The biggest school in the whole world. Reptiles from far and wide come here to get a fantastic education. You can definitely find someone nicer than Jinny.”

“You really want me to get rid of her, huh?” I laughed.

“If she could stop saying that I, because am a Tyrannosaur, am naturally violent, that would be great, that’s all I’m saying,” Mik roared.

“Yeah, okay, I’m going to break up with her,” I said, “You have a point.”

“Thank God,” Mik groaned, “Racist piece of shit –“

I snorted loudly and buried my nose back in atomic structures, but honestly, the relief at realizing I didn’t have to be with the only lesbian (that I knew of) from my home town was Huge.

Jinny didn’t take it well, and honestly, I don’t really care that she didn’t – she was a huge bitch. But now, of course, I was stuck in philosophy.

The things I do for love, I thought dejectedly as I sat in a different corner of the room, next to an Albertonykus, named Renee, I knew from the LGBTQ+ club (she was bisexual, but in a stable relationship with a boy from home, so that was a bust).

“What do you think we’ll suffer through today?” she asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” I groaned, “Why am I in this class.”

“Because you liked a mean girl and didn’t break up with her until after the add/drop period?” Renee offered.

“Why are you in this class?” I asked, sighing deeply.

“Because Lim is a philosophy major back at ‘Shoe College and I’d like to know what he’s talking about,” Renee laughed, “See, I, unlike you, am in a happy relationship –“

“Don’t rub it in,” I shook my head sadly.

“Ahem!” the professor called out. I quickly turned to pay attention, filled with embarrassment so my feathers puffed up all over.

“This week I would like you all to work on a project on personal perceptions of the existence of higher beings,” the professor began, “You’ll be working with someone I will pair you up with based on previous papers. I think it is extremely important that you work with someone with a different perspective on the subject than you.”

I nodded. Made sense.

“This is a rather large lecture hall, so your partners are all in a document on the online class portal,” she explained, “Emails are provided so you can get in touch with your partner. Now, back to the arguments presented by Fluffcart –“

I opened up my computer, wondering who I’d get paired with. Reading down the sheet, I was being matched with Nami, a name I didn’t recognize, so I pulled up my email.

Hey, looks like we’re partners for this thing – where do you want to meet up? I typed, tapping my claws against the floor.

I didn’t get a responding email for the duration of the class – though, I supposed, I should have been a better student and paying attention anyway. In fact, I didn’t get an email until later in the day, while I was hanging out with Mik and Nikko.

“You are so bad at Super Smash Dinos, Setha, I don’t know why you even try to play,” Mik teased.

“YOU HAVE TO USE YOUR FEET, DON’T EVEN – “ I shrieked.

“Tiny armed tonto,” Nikko laughed.

“How dare you make fun of my arms –“

“Estás bien way, ‘course I’m making fun of your arms-“

“You fucker –“ Mik flicked his tail at Nikko, hitting him in the back of the crest.

“Ow! ¡Fíjate, pendejo!” Nikka shouted, “Keep those feathers away from me –“

I got a buzz from my phone, so I picked up while they bickered over video games, reading quickly.

Hey Setha, Let’s meet in the student center tomorrow at eight. I can’t really do later than that. ~ Nami

I sighed. Eight was when I had LGBTQ+ club, but, if she couldn’t do another time, well, there you go.

Sure, see you then. I’ll be the tall as fuck raptor, I sent, snorting quietly as Nikko beat Mik single-handedly. Literally. Nikko was playing with one hand. Nami didn’t respond to my message, so I just went back to playing.

I hardly ever went to the student center, mainly because I was super broke, and didn’t really feel like spending money I didn’t have on crappy junk food. It was also crowded and loud, and so many students were just… everywhere. Not my thing.

“Are you Setha?” a thick accent greeted me with. I looked up from my bad phone game – Angry Pterosaurs – and up into the most adorable, perfect face I had ever seen.

It was the two-clawed girl!

“Oh, hi! Nami?” I greeted, trying to not get too flustered. She was so small and gentle looking.

Oh no.

Not again.

How many times must I fall for a straight girl?

I had seen her since then with the digging boy – I didn’t know the kind of animal for either of them, they were from somewhere I wasn’t familiar with – and it was painfully obvious they were together.

“Yes, hi,” Nami said, sitting down, “I’ve seen you in class, nice to meet you –“

“Nice to meet you, too,” I paused, “I – uh – guess we should get started, then?”

“Yes, sounds good,” Nami said, “Let us see here – the assignment says we should discuss our differing perspectives of the possibility of the divine, and then explore those perspectives, and write up a report about the differences and similarities.”

“Right, well, I’m easy,” I said, “I’m agnostic.”

“Ah,” Nami nodded, “I see.”

“What about you?” I asked, tapping my claws against the floor again. I was much too flustered by how pretty she was. How could anyone’s feathers be so green? Was that even possible?

“I’m Jewish,” she said, “Avialan, you see.”

“You’re… Avialan?” I asked in confusion, “But you look like… a raptor, you know, like me.”

“No,” she shook her head, “I’m a Balaur. We’re Avialans from Romania.”

“Wow that’s… really interesting,” I paused, “Why do you guys look like raptors?”

“Why does anyone look like anything?” Nami said sharply, “Does it matter?”

“No,” I shook my head, “No, it doesn’t, I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have asked.”

Nami nodded in satisfaction and pulled out her planner, “Well I go to shul every Friday and Saturday, of course. I suppose you could come with me, and we could talk afterwards about everything, if you don’t have other plans?”

“No, I shouldn’t,” I said, “Um, I don’t really have… services, being agnostic and all.”

Nami laughed, “No you wouldn’t, would you? Well we can just talk here about it if you’d like.”

“Uh… sure,” I paused, “I mean, we don’t have to get this all done so fast, we have a few weeks –“

Please let me hang out with you more –

“Oh, I don’t have a lot of free time,” Nami said sadly.

“Why not?”

“Coyle likes us to spend all our time together,” she shrugged.

“Coyle?” I asked, trying to play dumb.

“My boyfriend,” Nami said, “A Bradycneme.”

“Ah, okay,” I said, “So he… doesn’t let you do things on your own?”

“Not really, no,” Nami sighed, “Really, just my classes and shul.”

“So he’s not Jewish either?” I asked.

“Well, he’s a Digger, not an Avialan, so…” Nami laughed.

“People convert,” I offered.

“True,” Nami paused, “No… he doesn’t show much interest in it.”

“Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It alright,” Nami said, “Anyway, so, tell me about what you believe?”

“Right, well, I guess I just don’t think about it much?” I said, “I wasn’t raised in any particular faith. It just didn’t matter to me much. I say I’m agnostic because I don’t really know if you can empirically prove whether or not there’s a God, and well, I like to believe in what I can prove.”

“Why?” Nami asked, writing down some stuff as I talked, lifting up her leg and using her toes like I had seen on that first day of class.

“I dunno. I’m a physicist,” I paused, “I like numbers, and calculations, and reasoning through things. It makes sense to me. I find a problem and I solve it. The universe can really be reduced to numbers, and… I dunno, I like combining them and finding answers through that. Measuring things, testing things, and using that to find my answers. That’s what matters to me, that’s what helps me understand the world. I question it. And I questioned God… I guess I did. I dunno, I never really thought about it extensively… but the times I did… I questioned God, and I couldn’t find evidence either way, and that was good enough for me…”

“Hmm,” Nami paused, “I see, yes.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you,” I said, grimacing.

“Oh you didn’t!” Nami said, “No that was very polite.”

“It… was?”

“Yes. Coyle is much ruder about how he’s an atheist. Keeps trying to get me to stop going to shul,” Nami looked embarrassed, “I shouldn’t have said that much.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said, feeling furious that someone would treat this girl I barely knew so rudely.

“I’m famished,” she looked at her phone, “And I have some time before he’s done with his writing club.”

“Do you wanna go to the burger place? Serves some great Mammals,” I offered.

“Uh… I’m an herbivore,” she said, looking even more embarrassed.

“Oh! I shouldn’t have assumed, I keep forgetting you’re not a raptor,” I groaned, “That’s completely my fault.”

“We can go to the sandwich place,” she offered, “They have kosher veggie wraps.”

“Okay!” I said eagerly, glad she wanted to spend so much time with me when I had literally put my foot in my mouth.

“So for you, physics is a religion?” she asked as we got in line. She was so much shorter than me.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” I admitted, “I don’t really… worship it? But it makes sense to me. It’s how I understand the world around me.”

“So what made you take philosophy?” Nami asked, “I mean, it’s also very logical, of course, but it’s not really… empirical.”

“Ugh, I had the worst girlfriend in the world and she’s a philosophy major, so I took it with her to take a class with her,” I groaned, “We’re broken up now.”

“You’re gay?” Nami asked.

“Uh… yeah,” I said, now feeling scared.

I’d had people be dicks to me before.

“Are you in the LGBTQ+ club?”

“Yup, I’m missing it right now,” I sighed.

“I wish I could go,” Nami lamented, ordering her sandwich and moving out of the way for me to do the same.

“Oh – are you…?” I didn’t finish my question.

“I’m… yes,” Nami paused, “I’m asexual, but I’m panromantic – I’ll date anyone.”

“Ah, gotcha,” I said, suddenly very cheerful indeed.

“I’ve only ever dated boys though,” Nami explained, “I had a… wonderful boyfriend in high school, but. Well. I’m with Coyle now.”

I didn’t push it.

“Why can’t you go to the club?” I asked, changing the subject for her. She looked especially uncomfortable, her feathers puffing up dramatically.

“Coyle doesn’t want me to,” Nami said simply, “He’s… very protective.”

“I see,” I said.

I didn’t like Coyle.

“Well, you should still hang out with people other than him,” I said, “Want to do something this weekend after we do stuff at your shul?”

“Oh… I… well,” Nami looked torn, “I would like to, yes, I think, but I don’t… I’ll make an excuse.”

“You should!” I eagerly wrote down my dorm room on a piece of paper, “My friends and, I we play a lot of video games.”

Nami laughed, “That sounds like fun. I can say I have a thing with my shul, he won’t question it.”

I nodded, but I still felt uncomfortable inside.

Mik, Nikko, and their new friend Tuoma – a trans girl Kritosaurus that Nikko met through his biology lab – were all in my dorm when I got back, playing Dinorio Kart.

“Eyyy there she is!” Tuoma greeted.

“Hi guys,” I paused, “Don’t you all have like, a huge biology test tomorrow?”

“We’re having a study break!” Mik protested.

“How are you guys expecting to get into medical school if you don’t study?” I snorted, sitting across from them.

“I am doing no such thing,” Nikko reminded, “I’m going to grad school.”

“Right, then it’s the other two who are stupid,” I shook my head.

“Hey!” Mike groaned as he lost, “Come on, Setha –“

“Don’t come on me, if you flunk out I’m gonna be all alone…”

“So how was your meeting with your philosophy partner?” Tuoma asked.

“Um,” I paused, “Good…”

“What’s wrong?” Mik asked instantly, stopping mid game.

“Oi! ¡Cabrón!” Nikko shouted.

“If you think that someone’s in an abusive relationship, but you barely know the person, what do you do?” I blurted out.

Everyone fell silent and looked at me in worry.

“I’m… not sure,” Tuoma sighed.

“Maybe befriend them?” Mik offered. Nikko nodded in agreement.

“I… I mean, I’m going to try, obviously. I just… I’m scared for her, and I don’t know her like, at all,” I sighed.

“Well, ease into it. Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems from the outside,” Mike said soothingly.

“Maybe…” I frowned, “She’ll be hanging out with us Saturday evening, after I do stuff with her for our project.”

“Ah – Tuoma’s bringing a new friend too!” Nikko said.

“Oh?” I asked, pulling out dried meat from Mik and my’s bowl of snacks.

“Yeah, their name is Qindo, they’re agender, we met at the trans support group,” Tuoma explained, “Thought they’d make a fine addition to ‘getting high and attempting to play Super Dinorio Bros’ club.”

“Ha! Awesome,” I laughed, “It’ll be an interesting evening for her.”

“What’s her name? What is she like?” Mik asked.

“Remember when I told you about a girl in my philo class with two foot claws?” I held up my foot and swiveled my claw back and forth in demonstration.

“Eww, get that out of my face, stinky,” Tuoma laughed.

“Yeah, I do,” Mik snorted.

“Well it’s her,” I paused, “She’s an Avialan, actually.”

“An Avialan? ¿Realmente?” Nikko asked.

“Yeah. A vegetarian, too,” I paused, “I really stuck my foot in my mouth, to be honest.”

“Kept assuming she was a raptor?” Mik laughed. I threw a pillow at him.

“Yes, you dumbass,” I paused, “She looks like a weird Adasaurus, okay? Geez.”

“So what’s your philo project about?” Tuoma asked.

“Religion, oddly enough,” I paused, “So I’m going to go with her to Shabbat stuff this weekend.”

“You know, we never went with our friends from home, that should be interesting,” Mik offered.

“I hope so,” I paused, “I’m looking forward to it, for sure.”

Mik stared at me critically for a minute before shouting, “Oh my God.”

“What?” Tuoma asked in confusion, looking between us rapidly.

“Setha’s fallen for her!” Mik laughed loudly.

“Fuck you, too!” I shouted, so embarrassed I wanted to melt into the floor.

“She’s in love! Oh no! Oh this is fucking typical!” Mik roared with laughter, making Nikko shout in instinctual fear.

“Leave me alone!”

“Why are you like this?” Mik chortled.

“Hey – you had a giant crush on Nikko before –“

“HEY”

“Wait you did?”

“I…”

“This should be interesting,” Tuoma said, sitting back and munching on some leaves in glee.

“I thought you were cute, but then I realized you were straight –“

“I mean, yeah, but like, I’d still be flattered, man!” Nikko shouted.

“I didn’t think you wouldn’t be – “

“So why didn’t you tell me?”

“Cause I was embarrassed!”

“I’m a flexible person! I mean, I’m not attracted to you, but like, I wouldn’t freak out about it! Again, I’d be flattered!”

“Well by the time I realized you would be I had gotten over it!”

I snorted loudly, satisfied that they were off the topic of my crush on Nami, and opened up my computer to work on an online homework assignment for calculus.

That Friday, I met Nami at her shul, which was just off of campus. It was a small place, but quiet; I wandered through the halls curiously, looking at all the pictures and names on the walls.

“It’s much bigger than the one from my home,” Nami said quietly. I turned around to see her, feeling embarrassed when I nearly knocked her over with my tail.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Yes,” she paused, “We’re still… recovering from. Well. Everything that happened.”

I nodded. I didn’t bring it up, for her sake. She already looked sad, and she hadn’t even said allowed the word.

“Do you get along with the people here well?” I asked.

“It’s a modest place, so yes,” Nami smiled, “It’s my one relaxing moment of the week, really.”

“I’m looking forward to participating,” I nodded as we went into the hall together, sitting together and taking out prayer books.

It was a beautiful, if quiet, affair. Almost everything was sung, and everyone was really friendly. Wine was drunk, and candles were lit, and I didn’t really know what was going on – or how to say, any, of the words – but it was nice. Nami looked really relaxed and happy, which made me happy, much to my chagrin.

God dammit.

Afterwards we all went to another room and sat down to eat dinner, which was almost entirely vegetarian, so I couldn’t eat it. Still, I enjoyed sitting there, listening to everyone talk.

“We hardly ever see Balaur anymore, but it’s really nice to have Nami with us,” an Enantiornis named Lolla said.

“So what are you going to write about in your project?” another Enantiornis named Poppy asked.

“I dunno, I think just… well, I liked what your Rabbi was saying about social justice and all that. I dunno, my main perception of religion has always been… thou shalt nots, that sort of thing,” I explained.

“Well, yes, but that’s not how it is here, or at least, not in this shul,” Nami said happily.

“Sin is more missing the mark, than some sort of inherent state that we’re all trying to escape,” Poppy nodded, “And it’s much more about fulfilling mitzvot than anything, really.”

“Belief in God is important, but it’s also about community, and coming together, and studying Torah,” Lolla explained.

“And debating the meaning of it!” Poppy laughed.

“Oh yes, can’t forget that the biggest part of being in this tribe is… arguing,” Lolla giggled.

“Nothing is really dogma, there is no one ‘right’ way to be Jewish,” Poppy said.

I wrote everything down in my phone, nodding and listening as they continued to discuss. It was really enlightening and interesting, and it was nice to learn about how Nami had grown up.

The next morning I met Nami there again – way too early in the morning. I was so tired I needed coffee.

“Sorry,” she greeted, not even saying anything before offering that comfort.

“It’s alright,” I yawned, “What am I in for this morning?”

“Torah, of course!” Nami said happily, “Come on.”

There were more prayers and singing that I didn’t understand, but also reading from their Torah, which was beautiful, ornate, and huge. They read that in Hebrew, too, and I just listened to the poetic sounds of the words, amazed at how I had no idea what was going on – but I felt connected to everything anyway.

We then met with more of Nami’s congregation members, talking and laughing as we ate lunch, with people discussing and debating the Torah portion for that week – even though I had no idea what it was, they still managed to talk about it and eagerly discuss, and eventually I caught up with the story as I listened.

“So, do you think you know what you’ll write about?” Nami asked as we walked back to campus together.

“Yeah I do – do you?” I offered.

“I’m not sure. You kind of gave me less to go on,” Nami laughed, “I’m hoping to learn more about you and what you believe tonight.”

“By watching me goof off with my friends,” I snorted.

“Well, that’s what you saw me do, didn’t you?”

“Fair point,” I frowned, “You weren’t really goofing off, though.”

“It’s still fun, to me, anyway,” Nami paused, “I’m a Jewish Studies major. Well, double major. That’s why I’m in philosophy, I need to take a few philo classes.”

“What is your other major?” I asked.

“Geology,” Nami grinned, “I like studying fossils.”

“Really?” I gasped in surprise.

“Course!” Nami paused, “I appreciate the ancient, whether it’s Torah, or the ancient fossil ancestors of Avialae, or just those weird mammal relatives from before the Great Dying.”

“That’s so neat,” I exclaimed, “We should talk about that more.”

“Heh, alright,” Nami nodded.

“You seem more cheerful than when we met,” I offered as we stepped back on campus, heading towards my dorm.

“Well, Shabbos is my time,” Nami explained, “Time just to myself.”

“Yeah,” I frowned, but I didn’t push it.

Which, of course, didn’t sit well in my stomach.

“Ey! You must be Nami!” Mik greeted as we went inside.

“Hola!” Nikko greeted.

“Hi,” Nami said shyly, sitting down in a corner. She was easily the smallest person there. Tuoma was there too, and her friend Qindo, who was a Champsosaurus.

“Setha’s told us so much about you!” Mik grinned. I hit him with my tail.

“Right, I’m Mik, I’m Setha’s friend since we were like, freshly hatched,” Mik began, “This is Nikko, a dork from Mexico –“

Nikko swore a long string of angry Spanish words in response.

“Tuoma, our other friend from Biology –“

“Hi,” Tuoma greeted cheerfully.

“And Qindo, who is also new –“

“They’re weird, I’ve been here five seconds and I’ve determined this –“

“What are your majors?” Nami asked nervously.

“I’m premed,” Mik paused, “So is Tuoma.”

“I’m going to go into genetics,” Nikko said.

“I’m an English major,” Qindo explained.

“And you know I’m physics,” I offered needlessly.

“Ah, I’m Jewish Studies and Geology,” Nami paused, “Qindo, do you know a Bradycneme named Coyle?”

“Ugh, him? He’s a dick,” Qindo said immediately.

I groaned softly.

“Uh… he’s my boyfriend,” Nami said.

“Oh. Um. Uh,” Qindo looked like they wanted to melt into the floor.

“Anyway!” Mik said, “Have you ever had edibles, Nami?”

“I… what?” Nami asked, laughing weakly as we all sat around the dorm.

“You know, pot brownies, that sort of thing,” Tuoma offered.

“Oh I – no? I have never had pot of any sort,” Nami said, looking embarrassed.

“This should be interesting,” I giggled as we all took some from the plate Qindo was holding. Mik then put in Dinorio Bros as Nami stared out into the distance, just chewing on the brownie.

“I should probably have asked if this is Kosher,” Nami said softly.

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry,” I groaned, “I should have thought of that.”

“Eh, it’s alright,” Nami sighed.

“I’m pretty sure it is?” Tuoma grimaced, “I didn’t… think of it. Sorry Nami.”

“Not your fault, just mine. I forget to check sometimes,” Nami shook her head.

We sat around and let it set in, me reaching that lovely euphoric state I looked forward to every week. Nami perked up considerably as it hit her, and we all started shouting at each other and playing games, laying and being ridiculous as we failed spectacularly. We weren’t good at the game high, or anything. It was just fun to be terrible – as a group.

From then on, Nami joined us every week, because she just lied to Coyle and said that she was doing stuff with her shul. She started personally preparing the brownies, and none of us minded – in fact, she was better at it than Tuoma. We got an A on our project (which ended up being an elaborate discussion of the perceptions of God and the similarities between agnostic and Jewish thought) and I even managed to pass Philosophy despite having never, not once, paid attention during lecture.

Even though I still found Nami beautiful – both inside and out – I didn’t really get to see her except Saturday evenings. We weren’t majoring in the same thing, so we didn’t really take any classes together past that point, and even though I think she knew how the rest of us thought of her boyfriend, she didn’t break up with him.

So I dated a few other girls - including Tuoma, for a bit, though we broke up amicably – but never really stayed with any of them.

“Yo Setha!”

“Yeah, Mik?” I asked, looking up from my project. We were juniors, now, and I was doing a lot of research with one of the professors on optics and electromagnetism.

“Look man, we should take a class next semester – the whole group,” Mik offered.

“All of us?” I asked in surprise.

“Yeah!” Mik paused, “Cause look – there’s this class on Dinopology, the history of the evolution and culture of Dinosaurs – shouldn’t we do that?”

“I mean, Qindo might object,” I snorted.

“Qindo can suck it, come on, it’s an intro class that none of us have taken – not even Nami! Let’s do it!” Mik said eagerly.

“You know full well Nami won’t be allowed to do that without Coyle,” I snarled.

“Wow, you haven’t even tried to seem like you approve, have you?” Mik laughed.

“Do I have to, really?” I paused, “At least when she isn’t here.”

“No, I guess not. I just kind of… I dunno. At least he isn’t physically hurting her or anything,” Mik sighed.

“Yeah, but come on, Mik,” I paused, “You see how she is with us – after a full day of being with her shul, and then with us, and not seeing Coyle at all – versus seeing her randomly in the week. She’s a completely different person.”

“I know,” Mik sighed, “But we’ve gone over it a thousand times. She won’t tell us why she’s with him, she won’t break up with him, and there’s nothing really we can do about it, without ensuring that she won’t even be able to hang out with us the small amount that she does.”

“Yeah,” I groaned, “I guess. But count me in for Dinopology.”

“Excellent,” Mik grinned.

Nikko and Tuoma were automatically on board, and Qindo’s reaction was essentially “Might as well learn how you people think, I guess.”

“I dunno,” Nami sighed as she got to the dorm on Saturday, pulling out brownies from her bag.

“Come on, it’s not like Coyle is a double Jewish Studies and Geology major,” Qindo said, their mouth filled with a large mammal steak we had cooked earlier.

“Yeah, you can’t have taken every class together,” Tuoma nodded.

“We want you with us! It won’t be the same without you,” Nikko begged.

“Please? We had so much fun in Philosophy together,” I said.

Nami looked at me sadly, “I can try. He just kind of insists that we take all the electives together, since we can’t take major classes together.”

“Well you should ask tomorrow! Then text Setha or someone,” Mik paused, “The rest of us should sign up for sure. Please do ask to morrow, Nams, registration is this week.”

“I will, I will. It definitely fits into my schedule, weirdly enough,” Nami paused, “Nikko, what are you doing?”

Nikko had decided to attempt to balance my stuffed animals on his head.

“… No sé,” Nikko admitted, his speech very slowed down.

“Oh no,” Tuoma giggled.

“Someone keep him away from sharp objects,” I grinned.

The next morning, as I attempted to work through the haze of a morning hangover and finish up my report, I got a text.

Coyle says that I can take it as long as he takes it with us…

I sighed. Better than nothing, I supposed.

Sure, I responded, We should probably know him better, I guess.

You can’t tell him about our weekends, Nami immediately responded, I just told him I knew all of you from classes and such.

Well, I quickly typed back, That’s not a… total lie?

Just what I thought. Thanks Setha. You’re always so understanding about this.

I gulped quietly.

And so guilty about that understanding.

Yeah, ‘course. I’ll let everyone else know.

“Fuck that!” Qindo said, literally calling me after I texted them.

“I know, but –“

“Come on, Setha, you more than anyone would be pissed about this!”

“Of course I am, but I’d rather Nami get to enjoy something with her friends for once! Geez, Qindo!” I shouted back.

“I’m with that dick in all my other classes, and this isn’t even something I’m interested in!”

“Look, we’ll all take a class you want first semester next year, and Coyle will not be allowed to come, how’s that?”

“Fine,” Qindo sighed, “Fine. You all owe me.”

I had never really had to interact with Coyle before – in Philosophy, I just kept sitting with Renee more often than not – so I really didn’t know what I was in for as I entered the large lecture hall the first day of the next semester.

“Hello,” Coyle greeted, in a gruff, angry voice.

“Hi,” Tuoma greeted cheerfully.

“I recognize some of you,” Coyle looked at Mik critically, who he definitely would have missed seeing in a class, “So you’ve all taken classes with Nami?”

“Yup,” Mik answered immediately, “I took a geology elective.”

Nami nodded, “I told you that, Coyle.”

“Yes,” Coyle said slowly, “So why Dinopology?”

“It’s an elective we can all take?” Qindo said sternly.

“Right,” Coyle sneered, sitting with us. The professor started talking about the subject and I took notes quietly, seething that this complete dick was with us.

“For the first week of class, I want you to pair up and work on a presentation on the origin of Dinosaurs…”

Of course, Coyle paired with Nami, but at least she was having a class with us for once.

“I just want to pry her away from his single fingered, grubby hands,” Mik sneered as we all watched a movie during the week, Nami of course not there.

“I want to smash his cabeza into his cuerpo. Cabròn,” Nikko hissed.

“Nikko, take a deep breath,” Tuoma soothed, nuzzling her head against his. They had started dating only a few weeks ago.

“Seriously though, the boy is infuriating,” Mik growled, “Maybe me and Xin could go and teach him a lesson.”

“You and your Tarbosaurus boyfriend attacking him sounds wonderfully appealing,” Qindo sighed dreamily.

“Any move we make will just make him reign in his control more. The two live together,” I sighed, “There really isn’t an option.”

Mik looked at me in annoyance, “Why are you like this?”

“What are you on about?”

“We’ve been friends with Nami for two fucking years and you are still just as in love – no, MORE in love – with her as you were when you first saw her!”

“Leave me alone!”

“But you won’t do anything to save her from this situation!”

“She doesn’t love me back, so it doesn’t matter, you douchecanoe,” I hissed.

“So you’re saying the only reason to save her from a terrible relationship is, so you could be with her?” Tuoma asked angrily.

“That doesn’t seem like love,” Qindo said quietly.

I growled, “That’s not what I meant – “

“It sounds like what you meant!” Mik roared, “Setha, I can’t believe you!”

“It’s not what I meant at all – I mean – look,” I sighed heavily, “You’re right. That was a terrible thing to say. I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t. I just. Don’t want to risk having her get into an even worse situation because I intervened, or anyone intervened, and it didn’t go successfully. What I meant by what I said was just… I dunno. Maybe if I saw that she liked me back or something, I could try and use that as a reason for her to get herself out?” I offered.

Everyone relaxed considerably.

“I still think you should try regardless,” Mik grumbled.

I frowned, but focused on the movie.

Eventually we were given a huge project – a research one, where we had to study a topic in dinosaur evolution, and write a paper and make a presentation for the class – and we had to pair up with other people, so Nami and I worked together. Mik took Coyle, mainly because Mik wanted to find an excuse to eat him.

“No one would ever know, I’m telling you,” MIk insisted.

“Do not eat him, Mik!” Tuoma shrieked as I, Nikko, and Qindo cackled in the corner during the exchange.

I met with Nami during the week, us sitting in my dorm while Mik was out doing other things.

“So, what do you want to do for the project?” I asked, flipping through the pages of the book.

“I don’t know,” Nami sighed, “I’m so tired.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” I looked up from the book, frowning at Nami sadly.

“No,” Nami shook her head, “Let’s just pick a topic.”

“How about the evolution of Avialans? You know that really well cause of your major,” I offered.

“Eh,” Nami groaned, “Yeah, I do, but consider: I know it too well.”

I laughed appreciatively, “How about the evolution of Titanosaurs, then? Doubt anyone else will want to do that.”

“Sounds impossible,” Nami grinned, “I’m on board.”

I snorted and we got to work, compiling as many sources as we could. The project would be a long, drawn-out one, and take most of the rest of the semester, so we got to hang out alone a lot without worrying about Coyle.

“Okay but why would your favorite character be Neville!” Nami laughed.

“He has so much untapped potential!” I grinned, “He’s the most underrated character in Harry Potter –“

“But Hermione!” Nami insisted, “An Avialan Icon!”

“Hermione is great! A pure rolemodel! Adorable! Not as great as Neville!” I grinned.

“What kind of Lesbian are you –“

“A perfectly good one, thank you very much!”

Of course, we saw completely eye to eye on other pieces of media we both loved.

“The most infuriating part of Star Wars,” I said as we took a break from examining fossil evidence charts, “Is that everything in episode three is completely avoidable.”

“SHE JUST HAD TO GO TO AN EGG DOCTOR!” Nami shrieked.

“That’s all she had to do!” I agreed.

“Then they would have actually kept track of her condition!” Nami nodded.

“Made sure she was healthy!”

“Focused on the important things!”

“Maybe even,” I fake gasped, “Tell Obi-Wan!”

“Oh no, such logic is impossible for Anakin and Padme!” Nami snorted, “How far Padme had fallen…”

“She was such a good character before three ruined her,” I agreed, “On the Clone Wars, especially.”

“Oh don’t bring that up,” Nami groaned, “I still get mad about how that show makes me feel worse about Order 66 –“

We also discussed, well, non-media related things as well.

“I hate that Nikko doesn’t have enough accommodations,” Nami sighed.

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking up from the powerpoint we were working on.

“I mean…” Nami frowned at me, “I mean, he’s got a bad leg, right? He should have easier ways to get to classrooms and stuff, but this school is terrible at large-sized elevators.”

“You’re right,” I sighed, “I never really… thought about that. Since he hardly ever, you know, talks about it?”

“We should do something about it,” Nami offered.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Write to the school! Raise awareness! We really aren’t disability friendly at all!” Nami demanded.

“When are we going to do that, miss maximum-load-of-classes?” I offered.

“Um… at some point,” Nami admitted.

“We should, I agree,” I paused, “We’ll talk to the others about it on Saturday.”

The night before the project was due, she had been spending more time with me than with Coyle, and she acted like it – much more confident, much happier, much more excited about, well, everything.

“Nams?” I asked tiredly as we worked late into the night, piles of papers around us as we composed a large paper.

“Yeah?” she looked at me, her eyes drooping with sleepiness.

“Why do you stay with Coyle?” I murmured.

Nami sighed deeply, “I suppose I should tell you the story, I guess.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” I quickly offered.

“No, I want to,” Nami closed her laptop and stared at me for a long time.

“I dated this guy in high school. His… name was Olne,” Nami paused, “He was an Elopteryx. A troodont.”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“We were… I really loved him,” Nami was crying now, “I really, really loved him.”

“What happened to him?” I asked softly.

“He got into a car crash,” Nami drew in a shaking breath, “Didn’t live very long afterwards.”

“I’m so sorry, Nams,” I whispered.

“He was so sweet. And nice. Like you, really,” Nami paused, “I mean, he liked the same things as you. He was nicer than you are.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, which made her laugh.

“But… Coyle was his best friend. He was so upset after what happened. We just kind of… fell in together, because, well, we both knew what the other was going through,” Nami sighed, “He was so… scared of everything after that. He got overprotective. Constantly worried, since we’re in a new country and everything, that the unknown will cause something to hurt me.”

“That’s… not what I was expecting,” I admitted.

“He’s very mean, I know,” Nami paused, “And… controlling. But his heart’s in the right place.”

“Except you’ve been living here for two years, Nams,” I paused, “And you… I dunno. You’ve adjusted really well. You can take care of yourself.”

Nami sighed heavily.

“And you don’t… seem to be in love with him,” I muttered quietly.

Nami looked up and stared at me critically, “No, I don’t.”

“Then?”

“I’m not sure how he’ll react,” Nami paused, “And I have no where to live. And he’s a reminder of home”

“You can crash with me!” I offered eagerly.

Nami laughed, “Are you sure? Mik takes up a lot of room.”

“I’m used to Mik,” I said dismissively, “He’s basically my brother.”

“Very true,” Nami paused, “Thank you for being understanding, Setha. I’ll think about it”

“Of course,” I agreed, “It’s up to you, obviously. And I understand not wanting to give up a reminder of home. Why do you think I put up with Mik?”

Nami laughed appreciatively, and we got back to work.

We turned in our paper the next day and delivered our presentation, and it was one of the best ones of the class. Nami looked so happy, and confident, that I was shocked to not see her that Saturday at our weekly hang.

“Maybe I should text her?” I asked softly.

“I’ll do it,” Mik sighed, “If nothing else, I think Coyle ‘trusts’ me now.”

Qindo growled softly.

Mik texted quietly as we all sat around, staring at each other worriedly.

An hour went by without a response, and our worry only grew.

“This is my fault,” I groaned.

“What do you mean?” Tuoma asked.

“I mean – I encouraged her to break up with him. I shouldn’t have done that,” I cried.

“Look, we encouraged you to encourage him,” Mik said, “It’s all of our faults.”

“Definitely,” Qindo agreed.

“I know, but… I won’t be able to live with myself if…” I cried.

“If what?”

“He could be hurting her… like, physically,” I whispered.

Mik looked at his phone again – nothing.

“I’m going to their apartment,” he said softly.

“No, I’ll go,” I said, “If we need to emergency extract her, you’re the better choice for that; let me ruin any chance of me seeing her again.”

“Setha –“ Nikko said.

“Just, let me go,” I shook my head, “This is my mess.” I left the dorm in a rush and ran across the campus, running as fast as my fluffy legs could carry me. I even flapped my wings a little to get some slow-moving Alamosaurus to move out of the damn way.

I had to, eventually, just hop onto them and over them, to keep going towards the student housing apartments on the other side of campus, running through the small streets that reeked of weed and alcohol, running up some stairs to their small apartment.

I could hear shouting.

My heart clenched in my chest and I rammed my head roughly into the door.

“OPEN UP,” I screamed.

Coyle opened the door, glaring at me. He was covered in blood.

“You!” he shouted.

“Yeah, me, you dick,” I pushed him out of the way, “Did you hurt her?”

“No, she hurt me!” Coyle roared.

I looked around for Nami, and found her in the middle of the room, looking ruffled and angry. In fact, she was completely disheveled, but she didn’t look to be bleeding – but her claws were covered in blood.

“I told him – I told him I was leaving him – and he tried to… He tried to attack me so I fought back!” Nami hissed, “What, did you think these claws were just for Supreme Studying Techniques?”

I grinned in pure, utter pride.

“You bitch –“ Coyle hissed.

“Come at me again, I dare you,” Nami shouted. Coyle did, though, and he was bigger than her, so he pinned her down.

“HEY!” I shouted, but they both ignored me. Nami kicked at Coyle roughly, scratching at his stomach, making him scream in pain and back away.

“Eventually you’ll tire out!” Coyle hissed.

“Not before you run out of blood!” Nami snapped.

I didn’t want to see her get any more bruised and beaten, so I ran forward, shrieking at the top of my lungs. I pulled him off of her and held him back loosely, not drawing blood with my teeth.

“Let go of me you bitch!” Coyle roared.

Nami threw out another kick, more blood coming from him, and I dropped him on the floor.

“We’re done. I don’t need you, and Olne would be ashamed of you,” Nami snapped.

“You take that back!” Coyle demanded.

“No,” Nami paused, “I’ll be having Mik collect my things. Goodbye, Coyle.” We left the apartment together, Nami limping heavily.

“What did he do to you?” I asked quietly, horrified that she had gotten hurt at all.

“Ugh,” Nami sighed, “He tried to use his large size to overpower me. I think he broke my leg, maybe? But I could still kick, so I did.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said honestly. Nami laughed.

“Thank you for encouraging me to do that. I’ve wanted to… well, since we met, to be honest, but I never had the courage,” Nami sighed.

“Why did you want to when we met?” I asked, helping her walk by just straight up putting her on my back, walking slowly to the student health center.

“He was getting insufferable? Surely you noticed. I’m not… okay, I wasn’t… really about drugs but I joined you guys just to have some way to avoid him. I’m just. I was scared of him. He’s big and well, he has a lot of emotional weight on me,” Nami sighed.

“Still, that’s just. An odd thing to say,” I sighed.

“I’ll tell you some time,” Nami explained, “Let’s just get me to a doctor, yeah?”

“We certainly shouldn’t let Tuoma and Mik practice on you,” I laughed. Nami laughed with me, as we went together to the center. She did have a slight fracture, but it was easily patched up.

She moved in with me and Mik and it was wonderful – and honestly, Coyle was way too afraid of Mik to try anything.

“To Nami’s freedom!” Nikko cheered the first weekday we actually all got to hang out together.

“To Coyle’s butt being kicked! Literally!” Tuoma cheered.

“To never having to look at Coyle’s stupid face again!” Mik laughed.

“Unless it’s to kick it!” Nami giggled.

“HUZZAH!” I cheered.

We all clinked together our glasses of wine and laughed, drinking and cheering together about the beauty of this latest development.

“So what do you want to do with your newfound freedom, Nami?” Qindo asked.

“I want to figure out who I am without the dick,” Nami said honestly. Mik laughed loudly and Tuoma clapped.

“But besides that, what I really want is to just be happy,” Nami paused, “I think being with him kept me in a shadow for… all of college. I haven’t been able to move past my past.”

“Well, we’ll help you any way we can,” I said happily.

“Any way?” Nami asked, grinning at me.

“What are you asking?” I snorted.

“Never mind,” Nami paused, “Let’s play some rock band?”

“Oh no,” Mik groaned.

“Oh yes!” Nikko cheered.

“I love watching you being completely unable to do anything!” Tuoma giggled.

“This isn’t fair –“

“Mik, you’re the largest predator on the planet, you don’t get to talk about what isn’t fair,” I grinned.

“Setha, you’re a dick.”

“Thank you!”

Nami was laughing more than I had ever seen her do, and the sight just gave me hope and joy. She was free, and she was happy, and that dick would never hurt her again.

Senior year we all got a large house together off campus, but Nami and I were the first to move in – Mik was off volunteering in some of the poorer countries, giving health care to people who really needed it; Nikko and Tuoma were on vacation at the Nemegt; and Qindo was still working their crappy summer job at home.

“Hey Setha?” Nami asked as I put up my posters in my room.

“Yeah Nams?” I answered, looking over at her and getting flustered as I always did when I looked at her beautiful, adorable green face.”

“Um. Can I talk to you?” Nami looked rather flustered herself.

“Sure,” I agreed, stepping down and cocking my head to the side, “What’s up?”

“Er, so you wondered. Back in the spring. About how I knew I wanted to break up with him from the moment I met you?” Nami asked.

“Yeah?” I said, what a strange thing to bring up.

“Er… well, okay,” Nami laughed nervously, “This is really hard for me to say, because, um, I’m still in… a weird headspace. After Coyle.”

“Of course,” I frowned.

“Er… you see… I think you’re really cute,” Nami admitted. I felt myself flush in amazement.

“You… do?”

“Yeah,” Nami said, now talking very fast, “Yeah, you see, well, I thought you were really pretty, and I love how brown your feathers are, and I watched you in class and the way your feathers would perk up whenever you saw something you actually cared about on the computer, and well, I was really excited to see it was you that I was working with, but I didn’t want you to know because I knew Coyle would like, not approve of me having friends, because who can trust these Americans right, so I just pretended to not like you, but then you were so respectful and kind and thoughtful at shul, and I was like, I have to hang out with her more, and it was so nice to have somewhere to go and someone to hang out with every weekend who wasn’t from shul, and I just had so much fun with you, and you were always so nice to talk to, and so pretty, and I just. Wow. I’m rambling, I’m sorry,” Nami said.

“Don’t be!” I said, my heart pounding loudly.

“Um, so yeah, I think you’re pretty, and funny, and smart, and interesting to talk to, and you can be nice, but you’re really brave, and yeah,” Nami rambled, “Um… I like you.”

“I like you too,” I said immediately.

“You do?” Nami breathed.

“Dude, the first time I saw you I was just, fascinated by you, and how beautiful you were, and I was so curious about everything you are, and when we talked and went to your shul you were so sweet and thoughtful and you just want the best for everyone, and hanging out with you was so great and I was so glad you wanted to, and I just – yeah,” I stopped, feeling embarrassed.

Nami’s four curved claws were all tapping together in happy unison.

“I just, think you’re really beautiful, and wonderful, and I’m happy we’re friends, and I’m happy you’re in my life,” I said firmly.

“I’m happy you’re in my life too,” Nami paused, “Because eyou’re really beautiful, and wonderful, and a great friend, and, well, I wouldn’t have stayed with Coyle forever, but you definitely helped me get out of that… faster.”

“Thank God,” I said honestly. Nami laughed softly.

“Well… um… do you wanna…” Nami paused.

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?” I asked immediately. Nami nodded eagerly and I bounced with excitement, my floof going every which way as I did so.

“We should go on a date,” Nami said eagerly.

“We should,” I paused, “First… can I… nuzzle you?”

“Oh!” Nami looked embarrassed and flushed again, her feathers all sorts of directions, “Yes! Yes please!”

I leaned down to her and gently nuzzled her, pressing my snout into hers. She felt nice and soft and fluffy, and she smelled like the fruit they ate at her shul, and I couldn’t help but giggle. She giggled too, and we pressed our noses together for a minute, before pulling away and laughing with each other.

“Well then,” I said.

“Yes,” Nami grinned.

“Wanna go see a movie?” I asked.

“Ooh yes!” she agreed, and we walked out of the house together, laughing and talking about nothing in particular –

And we have made each other infinitely happy since.

#dmm2017 #dinosaurs #birds #balaur #dakotaraptor #I AM TRASH #story #maastrichtianU

224 notes · View notes

imoonyluff · 4 years

Text

Floundering

At an aquarium but behind the scenes where a college biology class has students doing internships.

girl A: strong looking, maybe a bit masc in face?, freckles, thinks low of herself and doesn’t understand her own sexuality, 22 years old (a college senior)

Girl b: thin, blond?, beauty and brains, extreme lesbian but tries to keep it on the down-low (except she deadass can’t help herself), 25 years old

A: *sitting at a desk currently taking notes on water pH readings, hair is looking so soft & has a single braid, not her typical style and she’s obviously fiddling with ut*

B: *walks into room* A! Oh my god, you look so cute! *rushes over to the other girl*

A: *startled and blushes but continued working after giving B a quick glance* What? No.. No I don’t.

B: seriously! You look like a mermaid. *wide smile and obvious love in her eyes*

A: psh... If anyone looks like a mermaid it’s you. *casts a quick side glance at B* I’m more like a scruffy pirate.

B: *a bit shocked by the compliment but also sad A thinks herself scruffy but after thinking for a second, leans in closer to A, dropping her voice low* Y’know pirates were said to fall madly in love from a mermaid’s song and throw themselves overboard in order to join the sirens... If I sang to you, dear pirate, would you join me?

A: *shocked and flustered, finally stops writing and is staring at B*

-a man appears in the doorway to the room, both women seem to startle-

Man: There you are, A! You were supposed to turn in your work 30 minutes ago. It’s time for you to head out so that James can have his turn.

A: S-Sorry! * scrambling to gather her papers, pencils, and her notebook* I just finished so I-I’ll go now. *rushes past the man, out the door*

B: *groans and slumps into the abandoned chair, face blushed*

Man: *looks from the leaving A to the obviously flustered B* Did I interrupt something? You know—

B: No, you didn’t. I was just helping her... *gets up* I’m going to go check on Augustus. *brushes past the man and heads in the opposite direction that A went*

Man: just don’t let him out this time! No matter what you think you’ve agreed to with him! We all know he’s a liar!

#lesbian #Floundering #lgbt #sapphic #sapphic ladies #idk i had a comic thought #wanna guess what Augustus is?#ill give you 8 tries #i wanna draw this

4 notes · View notes

forkanna · 6 years

Link

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

NOTES: So this fic was a loooooong time coming. Sailor Moon was my first anime, waaaaaay back when there were maybe three anime on TV at all, and one that remains extremely dear to my heart. As with so many of my faves, I always feel a little gunshy about attempting fic in that genre, which is why it's taken me until now to take a walk through the Moon Kingdom. It was very satisfying in many ways.

These outtakes were a lot of fun – this whole fic was! Thanks to all the reviewers again (especially those who also love Makoto - thank you for the validation)! Hope you guys liked it, and liked celebrating Hanukkah with me! Stay tuned for Yule, and eventually Christmas!

Jessex

Act 6. NG (outtakes)

Usagi felt her heart pounding as she walked into the kitchen, where Ikuko Tsukino was standing by the stove. Somehow, the woman looked different than usual. Her eyes were distant and forlorn, mouth turned down in a worried frown. The way her tone had sounded calling for her was what got her adrenaline rushing behind her ears; her mother never sounded worried like that when she called for her.

"Mom? What's wrong?"

"Usagi…" Her face was a little flushed as she raised the magazine to show her the page it was open to. Usagi's cheeks darkened to the same shade, and surpassed it into an even deeper rouge. "Can you please explain this to me?"

Swallowing hard, she turned away, trying her best not to think about how much her face was burning. "M-Mom, I didn't think… you went through my room? And found it?"

"You left it open on your table. All these dog-ears in the pages; you're not just flipping through it. This is something you're into. I didn't… I mean, this isn't usual. Is it? Your mother is a bit old-fashioned, but…"

"No, no, you're right; I don't…" In a whisper, she said, "Don't tell anybody? Please? I know it's weird, but I'm not ready for all my friends to know I'm like that."

"Well, I… I mean, were you planning on exploring this sometime? Of all people, I didn't think my own little girl…" Her hand gestured to the page, a weak laugh falling from her lips. "This is just very strange to me, and I'm not sure how it would even work for you."

It took a lot of bravery for her to whisper, "Actually, Mom… I wanted to try it with you."

"What?" The roundness of her eyes hurt Usagi; she didn't think this would ever come up, let alone be talked about in such detail! But the cat was out of the bag now.

"Like you said, I'm not sure how to do that. Really don't have any clue. So if you could help me… teach me what you know…" She approached hesitantly, hands coming up, pulling back, then finishing their movement to rest on Ikuko's forearm. "You have to be better at this than me. I mean, look at the proof!" She gestured to herself.

"Usagi…" Her hand came up to cup her daughter's cheek. "This is very unexpected, but I can't deny… I'm very curious. And interested."

"You are?! I thought you would… laugh, or be ashamed of me."

"No, no. Well, it's very strange to me, but I suppose I don't mind trying something new. With you."

Ikuko leaned closer and pressed her lips into her forehead, and Usagi sighed, thinking it had been so long since she felt the softness of her mother's kiss. She sighed, leaning up into it, heart soaring on wings at her mother's acceptance. Sometimes, your parents really could surprise you.

"Alright. So, um… I guess you saw the jeans are pretty basic, might have to dye them turquoise? Orange socks, I can borrow those from Minako… gloves shouldn't be a huge problem, or the shoes; I think I have some like those. But I don't know about the little black vest. I mean, do they sell those?"

Leaning over the counter to look at the page with her daughter, she said, "I'm sure we can alter a normal-sized vest. I just… please, please tell me you aren't going to cut your beautiful hair just to look like this manga character. I know children like to dress up for parties and things, but that's too far!"

"Well, it's cosplay, Mom." Seeing the obvious confusion, she went on, "It's not just for children; I know that's probably why you were so wigged, but I promise, lots of grown-up people do this, too. And Naru and I want to go to one of the conventions, and… I dunno, I thought I might look good in this!"

"As I said, I'm not going to judge you," she said in a carefully patient tone, still looking a bit embarrassed. Maybe it was secondhand, or maybe she had felt slightly ashamed that her daughter was seriously contemplating doing something she thought to be immature. "And if you really want to do this, I will support you all the way. Unless you cut your hair!"

Smiling at her mother's concern, she reached up to pat her shoulder consolingly. "No, no, I was going to try to style it that way without cutting it. Like, maybe some bobby pins? I think we can do it. And if not, there's always wigs."

"Are you sure you couldn't cosplay as someone more wholesome? She looks like some kind of loose woman…"

"Actually, she's an android! Do you wanna know her backstory? She's pretty rad!"

Ikuko clearly didn't. But she did listen patiently, and helped to plot how they would fashion the costume with her daughter. Maybe it wasn't the ideal way for her, and Usagi felt the same way, but they were both glad of an opportunity to reconnect after feeling such a gulf between them — especially now that she had a secret identity that her mother could never know anything about. At the very least, this was something they could do together as a family.

~ X ~

"Serenity, I've waited so long to find you," Tuxedo Mask breathed as he swept in through the window to land deftly on the carpet, slowly removing the white eyemask and revealing himself. "It is I, Mamoru Chiba. I know I have deceived you, and for that, I'm sorry… but now, I have at last remembered our past. You and I were destined to b-"

"What?"

His eyelashes fluttered as he saw Usagi's head raise from where it had been pointed down at a shojo manga, legs gently kicking over her back as she lay on her stomach. Apparently, she had been so absorbed in the reading material that she had missed part of his announcement. "Well… I've remembered something. We were destined for each other. I, Prince Endymion, and you, Princess Serenity. Our reign over the… I'm sorry, am I distracting you from something?"

"Yeah. It's just getting really good." Her finger poked at the pages as she looked back down at them. "Dunno, I think the grandma might be coming back. Really gonna shake things up!"

"Usako, I'm trying to tell you that I'm in love with you."

"Oh, that? Yeah… no thanks. I'm a lesbian."

"What?!"

"Lesbian. You know, yuri? Girls' Love?" Her index and middle finger pushed against the corners of her mouth and her tongue flicked out and flailed up and down. It was lewd, but it got the point across. "Get it? Nothing against you, Chiba-san, but I'm not buying what you're selling. Sorry!"

Clearing his throat, Mamoru glanced between the window and the bed where Usagi was lounging easily. His mind seemed to be taking its sweet time absorbing this new information. Then he tried for a patient smile. "Oh. Well… I beg you to reconsider. Our destiny…"

"Whatever, bro. Destiny doesn't get to tell me who to date, and I can't pretend to be attracted to you if I'm not. Biology doesn't work that way. Also, isn't it kind of creepy jumping into a junior high girl's bedroom in the middle of the night? Somebody should call the police."

"Well, uh, it's not creepy if you wanted me here! But if you don't, I suppose I'll… get out of your way…"

"Thanks. Oh, but hang on!" Hopping up from the bed, she pranced over to him with a small smile. "Actually, there is something you could do for me."

"Yes, my love?"

"Teach me that thing where you throw roses! Like, she'd really flip her lid if I could do that out of nowhere like you do, and it might be enough to get me to second base!"

"Ehrm… with who?" But when her finger wagged back and forth, he guessed, "You're… not going to tell me?"

"Can't risk you blabbing, now, can I? Gotta try working my magic first! Anyway, thanks for stopping by — and think it over! We can still help each other out saving the world from the Dark Kingdom and all that, right?"

Laughing, he scratched the back of his neck as she began gently shoving him toward the open window. "Yes, of course. The Legendary Silver Crystal is of the utmost-"

"Yeah, yeah, crystals. I'll put in a good recommendation to one of the other Senshi; some of them like boys, so hey, keep hope alive!"

Then she was slamming the window shut behind him. Tuxedo Mask only spared himself a moment to shake his head out, trying to rid himself of that dazed feeling before he took off into the night.

~ X ~

Never before had a hand so strong caressed Usagi's face the way Haruka Tenou's was. It shouldn't have been possible; not even Mamoru's touch soothed her this way. What was happening in her brain? Every atom of herself was alive, her heart thudding against her chest like a fist pounding on a door. If something didn't happen soon…

"Haruka… are you a man? Or are you a woman?" That was one thing she needed to know.

"Man, woman…" Haruka leaned down to bring their faces closer, messy blonde hair swishing in front of her eyes, lips twitching into a lazily confident smile before she spoke again. "What difference does it make?"

That clenched it. There was no point in saying anything like that if she were a man; most boys she'd ever met would say something like "I'll show you I'm a man!" in response to a question like that. Fragile masculinity wouldn't let them be labelled a woman for even an instant. Besides…

This close, she could smell her. Maybe she wasn't as sweetly perfumed as her friends, or her mother, but she definitely used a floral body wash. Even her sweat seemed feminine.

And she tasted equally feminine when they connected. What a kiss! It mixed her up inside, feeling soft lips being pushed so firmly into her own, the strength and the tenderness blasting her with conflicting signals. She was kissing a girl! But it still felt like a boy-kiss! Maybe that was because she was the same height as Mamoru, and probably stronger. Her hands slid up Haruka's jacket lapels and tugged her closer, opening her lips to prove that she was not afraid, was ready to be kissed like this. What on earth was this feeling…?

Then she felt the connection being shifted to one side. Usagi tried to lean with the motion, to maintain their tryst, but eventually she couldn't, so she was forced to open her eyes and find out what was the matter.

"I'll tell you what difference it makes!" Michiru shouted at Haruka as she dragged her away by the ear. "You know that tonight is our date night — you were supposed to take me out for French cuisine! And instead, I find you Frenching another girl!"

"Ow, owowow!" Haruka protested, finally wrestling out of her girlfriend's grip. "Hey, I still had plenty of time! We weren't supposed to meet at the restaurant for five hours!"

Michiru folded her arms and glared up at her. Even though she was five inches shorter and more petite, and her soft waves of teal hair made her seem like a benevolent sea-goddess, at that moment she looked more like a towering force of nature to be reckoned with. Like a tsunami.

"I don't care if you play around with children, Haruka. It's a little unseemly, but if that's your hobby, fine. But you could at least save it for a day when we're not supposed to be together later that night! You're the only woman for me, so you could at least make me the only woman for you within a single day!"

Together?! Not only was Haruka a woman, but she was with Michiru! Like THAT! Not that it should have been much of a surprise, but Usagi had been a little too wrapped up in being kissed so sweetly to have given any thought to Haruka hanging around with Michiru all the time. What their 'friendship' might really mean.

"O-oh!" she burst out in sudden realisation. "Lesbians! I'm sorry, I didn't… I didn't mean t-to interfere, I'll just…"

The smile on Haruka's face when she glanced back toward Usagi was a bit wicked, but mostly fond. "Maybe we could bring her with us tonight. Double our fun and excitement."

"Hmph," Michiru scoffed, turning her face away. "One would almost get the impression that one wasn't that important to you anymore if you already need to spice up our relationship with a third wheel."

Usagi felt her ears going red. What were they discussing?!

"Baby, don't be like that," Haruka said earnestly, kneeling at Michiru's feet and clasping one of her hands. "You know that at the end of the day, no one else could hold my attention the way you do. I'm yours for all eternity."

Both Michiru and Usagi melted and cooed "Awwww!" Hearing she hadn't been alone, Michiru did briefly glare at Usagi, but then when she turned to see her lover was still gazing only at her, the glare softened and she reluctantly smiled.

"Alright. I suppose… Usagi is rather sweet, for a baby gay. But look, don't touch. She has the Earth Prince, remember, you homewrecker?"

"I'm not a baby!" Usagi muttered, mostly to herself. "I'm barely two years younger than you guys!"

"Oh?" she giggled, casting her dazzling blue eyes in Usagi's direction. The thrill that shot through her body was not a subtle or a moderate one. "Then you do want to come along tonight? We should probably warn you, after dinner, things are likely to get… a little intense."

About five minutes had passed before Usagi could move or think again. By that point, both of the mysterious Mugen Gakuen students had long departed, leaving her a quivering mess of burgeoning homosexuality.

~ X ~

"Miss Haruna?" Usagi Tsukino whispered hesitantly as she edged into the classroom. "I… know I'm a little late for my detention, but I can explai-"

"Oh, you ravishing creature."

"H-Haruna-sensei?"

Slowly, her voluptuous frame turned, long waves of auburn hair bouncing lightly as she faced her student, hazel eyes shimmering with emotion. "How many hours I have stared across the room, wishing to take your hands into mine and kiss them… to show you the depth of my heart. But circumstance holds us apart from one another! Oh, cruel fate, why do you thwart me so?"

Usagi was frozen just inside the door. This couldn't be happening. Her teacher, Haruna Sakurada, was really confessing her feelings? It was so unexpected! Especially since she had literally never spent a single moment entertaining the idea of any romantic connection between her and the dazzling instructor. On the other hand, she was passionate, and beautiful, and not that much older than her for a teacher…

"M-m-m-miss Haruna, I… y-you really feel…?" Her face was turning slowly redder as she backed up to the wall, heart thudding in her throat. "B-but we're both women, and I'm y-your student, and we-"

"Hm?" The teacher's expression clarified, and she blinked a few times. "Miss Tsukino, what are you doing here?"

"Huh? B-but I have detention today, don't I?"

"No, it's tomorrow." Then she suddenly took a long step backward to sit on her desk. "Wait, how long have you been standing there?!"

Squeaking in alarm at the sharpness in Haruna-sensei's tone, she said, "I d-dunno, a minute?"

"NO! You can't have overheard my rehearsal!"

"Rehearsal?" Glancing at the desk, she saw a stack of printed pages, stapled at one corner and folded back. A script? "Wh-what…?"

Now it was Haruna's face that was red, and she was pushing her hands into her cheeks. "Please never tell anyone! I'm auditioning for a local production, it's… oh, I'm so embarrassed!" Turning away fully, she snapped, "Y-you can consider tomorrow's detention taken care of if you promise to keep this a secret!"

"Y-yes, of course, Haruna-sensei! I will!"

All the way down the hallway, Usagi felt like a complete idiot as she sprinted on flailing feet. How could she have possibly thought those words were intended for her?! How conceited her poor bun-head was! The sooner she could forget this whole incident, the better.

~ X ~

"Yes, Usagi Tsukino," Dark Lady purred as she reached out to grasp Sailor Moon's face, caressing her tear-stained, flushed cheeks. "I was once your pathetic Chibiusa. But now… I have transcended that form. Thanks to the power of the Black Moon, I can now remove you from my life. Take Mamoru for my own. And you are powerless to stop it."

Usagi had to swallow hard to keep her heart from racing ahead of her. She found herself leaning closer and closer to the gorgeous face above her, breathing, "Chibiusa…"

"My name is Dark Lady now, Moon Face." But their lips were getting closer and closer. "W-wait, what are you doing? Stop, don't you understand your position? You've lost! Both your love and y- STOP IT!"

But Usagi was already blowing into Chibiusa's nose. The taller, glamorous version of her future daughter squawked and tried to push her away, but it was no use; Usagi had latched on and formed a perfect seal around the tiny nose, which was causing a harsh razzing noise to issue from her open mouth, since the air had nowhere else to go.

"AAGH!" she finally gasped out when she had freed herself, both hands rubbing at her nose and her mouth to rid them of the lingering discomfort. "That's disgusting! How dare y- wait, let go of me, let go!"

Bending her over her knee, Usagi shouted, "And THIS is for thinking we didn't love you! Silly little brat, you can't marry your father and destroy the universe! If you take him away from me, how are you even gonna be born? That doesn't make any sense!"

Every time her hand crashed into Dark Lady's behind, she called out "AH!" or "NO!" until the tears began to fall. Not long afterward, her slender supermodel body began to shrink down into the chubby child that Usagi had come to know and find annoying.

"There, there," she whispered gently as she drew her up into a tight hug, letting her bawl into her shoulder. "It's okay, Chibiusa. It's okay. Mommy's not going anywhere."

"You're not M-Mommy! You're just a dumb… dumb Bun-head I… I'm s-so sad and my b-butt hurts!"

With a little chuckle, she kissed the side of her head. "I know, I know. Your mom from the future's a thousand years older and probably way smarter… but I'm still her. We both love you and want you to be happy. And if you think killing me and everyone else is going to do that…"

The tears only got louder. Somewhere in all her blubbering, Usagi heard the word "sorry" being screamed, so she smiled to herself as she cradled Chibiusa close.

"Shhhh. It's alright, sweetie. Everything's going to be alright."

Well, once they took care of Wiseman and the Black Moon, of course. But things were already looking up. How difficult could they be?

~ X ~

"Actually, I'm serious. You have Sailor V right here, in your room, ready to listen. What have you always wanted to tell her?" Turning around, she caught sight of the comfortable bench in front of Usagi's vanity and took a seat — though she kept her posture erect, hoping that was how a "superhero" would sit. "Go on."

"Well… no, I couldn't." But Minako didn't flinch, or do anything other than sit patiently. So eventually, Usagi sat on the edge of her bed, looking down at her knees. "You really want to hear all that?"

"Of course. Sailor V fights to protect the world in the name of love and justice! What her fans think of her is very important, too."

The blush was coming back now that they weren't tittering so much. After a few seconds of kicking her legs back and forth, toes skimming over the pink area rug, she finally whispered, "I… oh, this is so lame! I'M so lame!"

"You're not. I promise. Come on, tell me anything."

"Well, alright." Clearing her throat, she straightened her back and forced herself to be brave. "I'm actually not Sailor Moon."

"What?" Minako's eyes narrowed behind her mask. "I mean… what are you talking about? Of course you are."

"Actually, I just start the transformation sequence flashing, and then I call for my stunt double. Serena?" Another blonde with pigtails emerged from inside Usagi's closet, waving bashfully. "Look how cute she is. Seriously, can you believe how cute?!"

One of Sailor V's fingers raised, then lowered again as her mouth opened and closed. No, she definitely didn't have the words for this. So she asked the only thing she could think to ask right off the cuff: "Where… does she live? Like, you can't seriously expect me to believe she just sits in your closet until the world needs Sailor Moon?"

"Ohhh, don't be silly! Okay, look."

They both got up, and Serena seemed more than happy to slide the closet door aside for them to peek in. Behind the clothes was a somewhat comfortable-looking chair, a book light, and a few trashy magazines. Most of them were in English, which Minako knew Usagi couldn't read very well.

"Is she, like… not from Japan?"

"Hey, we don't have actual magical girls here, do we?"

"What about Rei, and Ami, and Makoto?"

"Okay, besides them," she whispered, waving a hand as if that were an unimportant bullet point in an otherwise flawless presentation. Meanwhile, Serena was examining her nails and waiting for them to get done with this show-and-tell. "Anyway, I bring her snacks, and she has weekends off unless an emergency comes up. Those days when I look really wimpy and can barely do anything against the enemies? That's because I have to wear the suit myself. Just not nearly as great at the job as she is, but I mean, I'm the Moon Princess. Not an actual Senshi."

In a weirdly stilted dialect, Serena said, "Yeah. Moon Princess. She is so beautiful, and good! I want to be…" In English, she said, "God, I'm never gonna get this. The tapes aren't helping."

"It's okay!" Minako replied in the same language. "We can speak English if that's easier."

"Thank GOD. Normally, I try to stick to the lines Usagi coaches me in, but like, WOW is it hard to remember the conversational stuff." Then she smiled a little wider. "I like fighting alongside you guys! Y'know, when I can. Too bad we have to keep up appearances or I'd just fight with you and the Princess."

"Now, now, that would just get confusing," Usagi said reasonably, her own English not quite as good so she stuck to Japanese. "Besides, the whole point was to keep me out of danger, and not make you do the stand-in work, right, V?"

"Oh yeah! In that case… yeah, thanks, Serena."

"Anytime," the double said with a huge grin. "Y'know, we should all go out to eat! I mean, I still don't really know much about Japanese food besides rice and ramen…"

Warming to the subject, Usagi bounced over and looped her arm through both Minako and Serena's elbows. "C'mon, let's go right now! I mean, I'm not busy if you're not — you'd just have to do something about that hair so we don't raise suspicions by looking too alike."

"Yeah… hey, why not?" Mina said with a slowly-growing smile. "We have all this time to ourselves, and I think we could all be awesome friends! Blonde Brigade for life!"

"Yes!" Serena said, again in Japanese. "The friends for us to be!"

And away they skipped to find a decent restaurant. Right after Minako de-transformed, and the stunt double stuffed all her hair up until a giant hat, to keep her from being recognised; wouldn't want their connection to the Sailor Scouts to be that public.

~ X ~

"Luna, no one understands me!" Usagi burst out as she threw herself down on her bed. "Rei is so mean all the time, and Tuxedo Mask acts like I'm not even alive…. Wh-what do I do?"

A paw came to rest on her head. "Don't worry, Sailor Moon. I'm always going to be here for you. Even when they all turn a blind eye to your inner pain, I won't. Even though I'm hard on you sometimes… it's because I care, and I hope to make you better than you are. To show you the path to your best self."

Her hand came up to rest gently against the back of her feline companion. "Oh… oh Luna, you're so sweet…" Her lips moved forward, and pressed into a tiny muzzle. "If only you were Tuxedo Mask… someone as kind and caring as you would be way better than that selfish creep. All he cares about is the Silver Crystal and throwing flowers! Not like my Luna, who sees who I really am… who's so soft…"

The room was mostly silent for a moment. Then Luna muttered, "If you start trying to make out with me, I'll scratch you blind, Bun-head."

"What? Oh, sorry; I wasn't going to, I promise!"

Usagi flopped over onto her side and curled up with a pillow, feeling bad that she made Luna uncomfortable on accident. Maybe she needed to start chewing ice, or exercising… anything to take the edge off these annoying desires.

"You ought to go and see Koan," Luna suggested with a large sweatdrop over the crescent moon symbol on her forehead. "After all, you seemed to get along fairly well with her, and her hairstyle resembles cat ears. Vent your strange urges on her and leave me alone."

"Ehh? Luna, please, you really don't-"

The small feline face now bore a smirk. "I've heard you calling out her name in your sleep…"

Blushing to the roots of her hair, Usagi curled a little harder against her pillow. It was true that she was very glad Koan and her sisters had been saved from Black Moon's influence, given a new chance to live honest lives, but she hadn't realised the tall, glamorous woman was on her mind so deeply. And it was true that she liked her, and looked forward to seeing her…

"Maybe I will." When Luna chuckled, she sat up and grabbed her pillow to slam it down on the cat. "TO SAY 'HELLO', kitanai neko!" There was a lot of squabbling and flailing underneath it as Usagi stood and stomped toward the door. This was the last time she would ever trust her cat-shaped companion not to tease her over nothing.

~ X ~

"So which of us is it gonna be?!"

Usagi backed up shakily from the glares of the five women in front of her, hands held up to ward off their negative radiation. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"We can't all be your girlfriends," Ami told her reasonably, arms folded over her chest. "Be rational."

"Yeah!" Makoto chimed in. "Isn't it hard enough being a lesbian in Nineties Japan and taken seriously? Just make up your mind already!"

"But I'm only dating you guys in separate 'verses!" Usagi protested, backed against the wall by now. "God, I don't even know how you guys found out about it — technically, it's against the laws of physics!"

Rei slammed her hand against the wall next to Usagi's head. "Doesn't matter, bubble-brain! You can't two-time us, and you sure as hell can't five-time us! That's just too far!"

Unable to help herself, Usagi muttered under her breath, "Sheeeeeze, when you or Makoto act so strong, I get chills…"

"Um," Naru put in nervously, scratching the back of her neck. "I feel a little out of place here for some reason. Maybe I should just go…"

"That'd probably be for the best," Minako confirmed.

"Wait, don't!" Slipping out from behind Rei's arm, she ran over to grasp her old friend's arm, clinging tightly. "Don't go, I can't let you leave thinking that you're not as important as my new friends!"

"New girlfriends," Makoto corrected, sounding jealous but also hurt. And Usagi's heart was breaking.

"Alright," Ami finally said after having spent some time typing into her miniature Supercomputer. "There seems to only be one logical course of action. Usagi should spend time with each of us, and reach a decision as to which woman she wishes to date. If she can reach no such decision within an appointed trial period, she will forfeit all dating rights."

As the others were all pondering that, beginning to nod, Usagi slumped. "But I told you, I'm not dating all of you. Not really! It's like, five different Usagis are dating you, not just one for five girls! You get that, right?"

"Shut up and decide!" Rei snarled. "And it better be me — you've seen me naked!"

"Hey, that's not our fault," Minako protested, hands on her hips. "Just because you're some kind of slu-"

"OH!" Naru burst out, hopping up and down with an index finger raised. "How about a kiss-off? Best kisser wins!"

Before Usagi knew what was happening, they were all muttering their agreement and pressing in closer to her. Their lips were puckered, all vying for the attentions of her own, and she felt sweat break out over her forehead. Suddenly the bed was rising up to meet her back, and all five of them were atop her, warm bodies pressed in close, kisses being left all over her face, she couldn't get away, couldn't breathe-

The blare of her alarm clock woke Usagi from the feverish dream. It took her several seconds of heaving breaths before she realised… it had been a nightmare. The sheets were somewhat coiled around her, and a thin layer of sweat coated her entire body. Also, she felt warmth blossoming in her face.

"All five of them?! I must be crazy…"

"What's the problem, dear?"

Rolling over, she curled around the presence beside her in the bed. "I had this bizarre dream. All of my friends were coming onto me — girls, I mean. No more coffee cake before sleepytime!"

"Oh, Usagi-chan…" Rolling over, Gurio Umino adjusted his glasses as he leaned closer to her face. "Too much time spent on the Internet. Leave that to me! Maybe I can find upskirt pictures of them for you in one of my newsgroups?"

Usagi Tsukino was still screaming, even as she woke up from the nightmare that had been sandwiched around the other nightmare. The first thing she did was throw her sheet and duvet aside, making sure she was alone in her bed. Then she pinched her own leg; success. She was actually awake this time.

"Phew… there's a bad dream, and then there's a horrible nightmare. I'd rather be mauled in the first one!"

"Usagi!" came the call from outside her bedroom. "You'll be late for school if you don't hurry up!"

Still a little dazed, she called out "OKAY, MOM!" as she got changed and raced downstairs. Another day of school awaited. She only hoped she wouldn't feel too awkward around her friends after such dreams as the ones she had been plagued by the night before.

"Seriously, all five of them?!" Usagi burst out as she raced down the street, fuku flapping behind her in the wind that her speed was creating. "You're out of your mind, Sailor Moon!"

THE END [for real this time]

#through the moon prism #sailor moon fanfiction #forkanna writes #sailor moon #forkanna the writer #i'm such a little shit #incest tw #(not that it's really incest but I mean some people could get squicked haha)

0 notes