#< realization made by person who forgot some people actually look at Tumblr tags.

[fearcicada]

I wish there were more tma agere fics that weren't just the archives polycule 😭 or even ones that just didn't include Martin in them PLEAAASEE

[enduracarrotchips]

YouTuber AU

Hello welcome to Dating Scandal but with Twitter Involved (nightmare)

A little exposition here: 

Link, Zelda, Sidon, Revali, and Riju are the most popular group of youtubers on the internet and have a huge fanbase that likes to theorize, draw fanart, and write fanfiction about them. Disclaimer, I don’t actually interact with real-person fandoms myself lol there’s just too much potential for drama and misunderstandings & they’re always bound to end in a dumpster fire but that is sort of what this au is about so.

Impa, Mipha, Daruk, and Urbosa are family friends that appear in a lot of their videos/streams. 

(This is an art blog I swear)

enter vidcon 20XX

Link: 

blows stuff up/sets stuff on fire with a side of cooking vids and gaming

most are filmed outside, he does those challenges where you try to cook stuff with limited ingredients/materials

has the largest fanbase of all of them, but not the most…intimidating.

does a lot of collab videos, mostly with Impa, Daruk, and Riju because they have similar interests/channels, but Zelda appears in his videos and is seen filming and the stans read too far into it

simps. i’m pointing at you.

Most popular videos are “shield surfing on rock!—how I broke my leg” “can Daruk eat Impa’s motorcycle?” and “how to inhale ranch dressing.”

Twitter handle is @ arsonistslullabye because he’s a hozier fan

45m subs

Zelda:

theories, analyses, conspiracies, and the occasional e x p e r i m e n t

she once got link to eat a frog for 50 bucks.

most people argue that she’s better than more popular YouTubers because she actually has quality content to give to the world and she has a lot of defensive supporters

She used to get a lot of hate before Urbosa spoke up about it and scared the bejeezus out of everyone

has an actual posting schedule

“Happy Sunday everyone, it’s Zelda Hyrule and today we will be talking about cryptozoology and why blupees exist, you cowards.”

Twitter handle is @ zeldaofhyrule and she is pan. just so you know. One of those calm extroverts that mystify me to this day.

18m subs

Sidon:

fashion/life hacks. Like gourmet troom troom but if they were real people.

Has the 2nd largest fanbase

most of them are girls

Sidon has a boyfriend though, which he told everyone at VidCon a few years ago

cue the drama and shipping and the entire fandom trying to figure out who the boyfriend is. A well known reddit thread emerged that presented the common guesses being Link, Sidon, and Zelda.

“But it can’t be Zelda, Sidon’s gay.”

“I’m not in the fandom but I thought Zelda was a boy??”

“Did you just say Sidon? Is that a typo? Are you saying that Sidon’s dating himself?”

Sidon x Sidon became a fandom joke.

Don’t look at me I’m just setting up all the worldbuilding. every fandom has their weird dark sides and Sidon x Sidon is the Linkcest of the Sidon YT fandom.

Mystery BF is actually Bazz, a pretty inconspicuous guy who appeared in a few of his videos. This was confirmed a year ago, but everyone still ships him with other YouTubers because they’re convinced he was lying to throw them off his scent. He really can’t catch a break and this is why you should not ship real people.

Twitter handle is @ officialprincesidon

says “beguiling” a lot

21m subs ᕙ( ͡❛ ▿ ͡❛)ᕗ

Mipha:

Sidon’s sister, hasn’t posted a single video but just has the channel for show because she appears in so many of Sidon’s videos as a model for his makeup tutorials and whatnot

has 328k for that. Everyone loves her, she’s great. @ mimipha

Revali:

Link’s sworn rival

Link thinks they’re friends

He kept popping up in link’s Twitter threads and making snarky comments until zelda called him out for not even following link (so why was he stalking his acc) which kept the Twitter drama to a minimum

Revali was the catalyst of a few popular memes and that’s where most of his subs come from.

drags link into a few challenges that always get a ton of views because of how competitive they get

“ITS JUST ASININE” is a running joke that everyone tries to get him to say. His @ is itsjustasinine as well

Urbosa is the only person who can win an argument with him

5m subs and growing rapidly. newer to youtube than everyone else.

Impa:

Doesn’t have a channel she’s just a mutual friend of Mipha, Zelda, and Link

Rides a motorcycle, so she is used in a few of Link’s videos.

@ ihaveamotorcycle because she thinks having a motorcycle is a personality trait. the most unruly on Twitter when it comes to replying to fan’s stuff, leaking upcoming videos and generally causing chaos.

Mipha’s girlfriend. That’s how she met Zelda and Link.

Urbosa:

Is actually a model, but she has a ton of YouTuber friends because she’s known Zelda since birth.

when she entered the youtube community she didn’t realize she would be adopting like 15 children

5m subs. her videos are professional & related to her modelling career. @ urbosasfury

I feel like she would do unboxing vids. I’m not sure what she’s unboxing.

Daruk

Just a friend of Link’s, fun guy. yells a lot. once ate a rock and had no reaction.

people are scared of him for that reason

Riju:

yoga & gymnastics & “ha look at how flexible I am its eAsY” videos

you know the type

she also does reactions and is sponsored by save the sand seals charities which she is very enthusiastic about. She’s also Urbosa’s niece and the only minor in the gang (15). I like to think that the champions YT community is actually not creepy so everyone respects her a ton

doesn’t post frequently, she mostly appears in Link’s videos to jump out of airplanes or whatever. And sometimes Zelda’s if she’s interested in the topic. 500k subs, but she’s always really popular when she appears in Link’s videos.

VidCon:

In the months leading up to VidCon, some fans on the internet made a few discoveries: first of all, that the inside of Link’s house is painted green. This is a big deal because all of his videos are filmed outside either in his backyard or on trips that he and the brosquad go on to do…whatever bros do. explosions. idk. The point is he had some announcement about VidCon and filmed it inside. Only the wall and a potted plant were shown.

However, the colour was similar to the the shade of Zelda’s living room. Fans dug through years and years of old videos and found a clip of Zelda walking through a hallway, where there was an open door and a glimpse of a houseplant.

There were 2 types of responses to the theory:

“They could just be roommates guys calm down”

“and they were ROOMMATES?”

others pointed out that Link could just not have a house and had to crash in Zelda’s

Some guy on reddit claimed he had a botany degree and declared that the houseplants in the clips were not of the same genus. Normal people pointed out that the plant would have grown 4 years between the clips and would look considerably different.

#Zelink trended on twitter for a while and people posted other old clips from both of their channels and the frog video blew up again

Impa retweeted a post tagged as #zelink with “rofl” and later publicly apologized for causing confusion.

Fans noticed that in the “can a motorcycle drive over my arm” (it was clickbait he’s fine) episode 2 years ago, Link was eating out of a paper lunch bag with his name written on it in handwriting that a few people claimed to look like Zelda’s, leading people to believe that she had packed him a lunch.

However, this theory was shot down with the counterargument that Zelda can’t cook. although. i mean how much skill do you need to make a sandwich.

No one knows what tumblr is doing at this time

Zelda wore a scarf in her “Save the Sand Seals” video that matched identically to the scarf Link wore when he travelled to Hebra to film a shield surfing video, but it’s been debated wether it’s actually the same scarf or not.

Neither Zelda nor Link has spoken up about the theories, and besides Impa’s one slip on twitter, neither has any of their friends. Zelda received a lot of backlash for the assumption that she was dating Link because he has a lot of delusional fans that didn’t want her to “steal their man” or whatever the hell that type of fan would get mad about

Oh yea and bolson & karson run a zelink fanpage on twitter sorry I forgot about that

after that whole mess, everyone was even more anticipant of VidCon in the hopes that some of their questions would be answered.

The whole batch went to VidCon this year: Link, Impa, Daruk, and Riju are a gang while Sidon and Mipha go together and Zelda & Revali each go separately. Urbosa is there for supervision moral support

Zelda has always been much better at dodging questions that she doesn’t want to answer than anyone else, so her Q&A went without a hitch. When asked to confirm the rumours she said “which one?” and then moved on to the next question (without actually confirming any rumours).

Link is generally a more awkward person but eventually said that he had filmed the video in Zelda’s house because it was nicer and didn’t realize it would cause such an uproar. Fans were disappointed, but Bolson claimed he saw Link and Zelda exiting the hotel elevator on the same floor after Link’s Q&A session. No one believed him.

Fans went back to theorizing over who Link, Zelda, and Sidon were all dating, because apparently they can’t just be dating unknown people and have to be with other YouTubers

Sidon and Bazz got engaged about a week after VidCon, making at least 4 preteen girls cry

actually try 4 million

Sidon x Sidon made a brief comeback but Sidon spoke up about his fandom for the first time ever on twitter and told everyone that no, he was not dating himself. eventually, everyone settled down and accepted that none of them were in a relationship save for a few loud fans.

Link and Zelda still got the occasional “when will you tell us who you’re dating?” comment but most of them were joking and the people who still hardcore shipped them were generally frowned upon. Zelda’s popularity went up after VidCon and she regained the 200k subscribers she’d lost after the first theory dropped.

Two months after VidCon, Link posted a video titled “Zelda and I’s House Tour!” and gave around 45 million people a heart attack

as revealed in the video, they had actually been dating since they were 16 and everyone’s just a fool.

the potted plant is named Hestu.

[jimines]

2021 Year in Review - post your favourite and/or most popular posts of 2021

Tagged by: @kimtaehyunq, @blooodsweatandtears, @jeonjcngkook, @min-boongie, @hobeah, @jiminswn, @hyunsung, @gimbapchefs, @kithtaehyung, @taeyoonge and @bisexualrapline thank you lovelies❤️

Looking back on all of my gifs and such from this year made me feel... a range of emotions, baha. For one, I was shocked to see I had posted more than like 100 sets😂, I almost cracked 300 this year and it really didn’t feel like I’d been that active asdfghjkl. I also felt a bit nostalgic coming across certain sets that reminded me of past times, both the good times and the bad. There were a lot of bad times this year that bts and creating helped me cope with and escape from, and I’m very grateful to that. And above all, I was oddly really proud to see my works evolve from what they were when I first came back to present. I used to really hate my own content, and I mean I still joke about it a lot, but this year in review made me realize I actually do have some nice thoughts about most of them. I’m glad I pushed through and worked hard to improve my knowledge and skills to the point I’m mostly content with my creations. However, I will continue denying the existence of any of my sets before VS, even if a few are listed here. I believe i deleted the worst one’s though, lmaoo, which means that from January to March I don’t have any sets to put down👀. 

And as a special little note, I want to thank anyone who has ever supported my content, sent asks or left tags/compliments on my sets. some of you leave the sweetest, most simp-worthy words on my sets I could cry. It really makes me so happy that my content is enjoyed by you guys. this whole bts tumblr community is so kind and welcoming and encouraging, I’m so glad I came back to tumblr and discovered bts and all of you lovely people. I love you guys.❤️

I’m going to put the list of sets I actually do have under the cut since it’ll be quite long, I think.😗✌️

🌻 - January ↳ Most popular: N/A ↳ Favourite: N/A

🌻 - February ↳ Most popular: N/A ↳ Favourite: N/A

🌻 - March ↳ Most popular: N/A ↳ Favourite: N/A

🌻 - April ↳ Most popular: jimin & jungkook being cuties (1.4k notes)  this is one of the sets I pretend doesn’t exist, so no comment💔 ↳ Favourite: jimin being a hot bitch in shades  i only chose this one as my favourite because it was the first jimin comp i ever made and i remember slaving on photoshop for the whole day because it kept shutting down on me. so it’s a traumatic set for me and worthy of being mentioned i guess.😭

🌻 - May ↳ Most popular: jimin in the MOTS ON:E concept shooting sketch (2.5k notes) i think this is one of the first sets i made with vs and with a little more education on colouring. i’m pretty proud of this set and i’m happy it was well received. i kind of mark it as the turning point of my content. i stopped completely loathing my gifs after this point, lmao ↳ Favourite: jimin giving me an aneurysm in the butter mv  ok so, i think this is one of my favourite sets i’ve made in regards to colouring. took me a lot of trial and error to get the yellows to cooperate but I was really, really happy with the outcome. i miss these times tbh, butter era was fun :(

🌻 - June ↳ Most popular and Favourite: ahhh the jimintonin set, my beloved (2.6k notes) this is definitely one of my favourite sets, it just makes me really happy. he’s just so darn soft and cute, i look for this set when i’m really sad and it makes me feel better. call it an emotional attachment, if you will. 

🌻 - July ↳ Most popular: jimin in one of the xylitol advertisements (2k notes) ok this is one of the popular posts that confused me asdfghjkl. i’m not really a fan of this set anymore, the colouring in particular aksalsklkas i lowkey forgot about it until now bahah, but i’m glad y’all liked it regardless of my personal opinions dhsgkjlsdhg ↳ Favourite: tae in 5th muster japan  this colouring is just sexc, what else can i say. very proud of this one considering i usually suck at concert gifs, i try to avoid them like the plague.

🌻 - August ↳ Most popular: jungkook being the sexy beast he is (2.5k notes) dang, i seriously went for the kill with this one. i remember a lot of the tags on this set were just pain and suffering from those so unfortunate to be smacked in the face with it, so you’re welcome. 😗✌️  ↳ Favourite: jimin’s vlive (210830)  listen, when i tell you im so emotionally attached to this jimin i want to break something, i mean it. this vlive is one of my favourites, the audacity of this man. i can’t even put into words how much i love this set and his stupid cute face💔. anyways my fave gif is 6th one, it makes me want to bang my head against the wall, bYE.

🌻 - September ↳ Most popular: yoongi from memories of 2020 (2.2k notes) all i’m gonna say is i’m glad cute n’ squishy yoongi made ya’ll happy.❤️  ↳ Favourite: hoseok being adorable af in memories of 2020  this one was an easy favourite to choose. sometimes my adjustments just sit so perfectly on a clip and i gskdljgkjdh i just really love how these turned out.

🌻 - October ↳ Most popular: jimin being adorable as usual (2.8k notes) this set is actually my second favourite of the month, very close behind my true favourite. i’m really proud of the colour isolation i did with this set, it took a lot of time and patience with my old nemesis camera raw filter. it’s not my usual colouring style I don’t think but i like it a lot. ↳ Favourite: jimin’s birthday set  i really like the colouring and consistency of this set. of course it’s not perfect, but i feel like i did better on this set than previous ones? Idk. it’s also one of my biggest comps, or my biggest comp, i’m not sure. it took a lot of effort regardless and i’m very happy with it and all the pain it caused my followers.❤️

🌻 - November ↳ Most popular: osaka live jimin (1.7k notes) i think i squeezed this set in in-between aggressive note taking and several mental breakdowns lmaoo. the quality is poopy bUT he’s still hot so i like this set. osaka jimin has a special place in my heart. ↳ Favourite(s): jimin from the 211128 vlive // jimin giggling and hurting my heart  the vlive set would be my #1 favourite if the dark times of tumblr grain hadn’t come for it, i did quite like the colouring of it before posting😭. the butter set though... the audacity, really. for him to look like that and still manage to be adorable. i think the balance of red and yellow i accomplished with this set is why it’s my second favourite. usually reds and yellows are the bane of my existence but i feel like i did well on this set.

🌻 - December ↳ Most popular: jimin gq korea photoset (5k notes) this isn’t a gif set or even an edit, but it’s my most popular post of this month so decided to include it. i will say i was shocked to see it get so much attention👁️👄👁️. it’s valid though, that photoshoot came for all of our throats and i will think about it until the day i die.👍 ↳ Favourite(s): jimin’s deep af thoughts // jimin in that fit for vogue again, i really like the colour isolation i did with that 7fates set, his lips be poppin’, and for once i have a font i actually like for captions bahaha, only took me 9 months to find. but the vogue set though....😳 i could talk about that look for hours, my gosh, he was so stunning... but anYWAYS, i love how the reds came out in that set and i really like how dark and saturated the gifs look. it really was a hassle to colour isolate and make them somewhat consistent, but it was worth it and i’m very proud of the final product overall. 

fini

Dang, that was a lot, lmao. OK tagging: @taehyungq, @taejinnies, @intokook, @suga-ssi, @namgination, @filmsout, @kkulmoon, @boyswthluv, @honsool, @jung-koook, @eternal-bangtan, @kimtaegis, @userjiminie @introtae @vjimin @seokjinite @m0ontaeil + anyone else that wants to do it! (feel free to ignore this though if you don’t want to or if you already have)

Let’s all hope for an amazing 2022, haha

[cozy-the-overlord]

For the Lobster of Loki

Summary: Exposure to terrigen mist during a mission-gone-wrong results in you developing some newfound aquatic abilities. Unfortunately, this opens the door for your Avengers teammates to make use of the bane of your existence: fish puns. 

Word Count: 2,850

Pairing: Loki x Fem!Reader (first person)

A/N: I can’t believe I actually wrote this.

For those of you wondering what the hell this is: a few weeks ago, I had autocorrect change the word "love" to "lobster" while writing a fic. I found this hilarious and made a joke about it on Tumblr and it kind of turned into a meme on my blog. A couple of my friends told me I needed to turn this into a story and so now I present to you the stupidest thing I have ever spent precious time creating. Also, I usually don't like writing in first person at all, but my go-to third person limited just did not feel right with this nonsense, so I decided to experiment with a different style

Thanks for reading! :)

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

I was going to murder Tony Stark. I was going to murder all of them, but I was going to murder him first because he was the one who started this nonsense and now it had been going on for two weeks and I was one fucking smirk away from scalping myself.

It all started when I woke up with gills. Waking up with gills is a strange experience. Don’t get me wrong—I realize all things considered, I had it pretty good. I’ve heard about some really horrific transformations since I experienced my own— people who came out of the midst having lost their eyes or their limbs or their minds. There have been people who came out of the mist looking, sounding, and feeling like completely different creatures than when they went in. And there have been people who don’t come out at all.

No, I know damn well I was lucky to come out of the experience with nothing more than a pair of gills stuck in my neck. Still, it was an odd feeling—there was a heightened awareness every time I breathed in, pinprick chills trickling across the newfound ridges as I exhaled. It didn’t feel right, but it didn’t feel wrong either—it was a stiff feeling, a bit like putting on a new pair of shoes for the first time, if that makes sense. I didn’t know what to make of it.

When I woke up, there was about a hundred doctors hovering around me, each with some new sterile terminology to throw my way about my condition, none of which made anything close to sense. I was losing my mind until Bruce showed up. He was able to put it simply: during the mission, I had been exposed to terrigen mist. Instead of killing me, it triggered a transformation in my DNA. I was inhuman.

My inhuman gift, it seemed was the magical blessing from the Black Lagoon. I had gills now—that was the most immediate realization—but there was also the fleshy webbing between my fingers and a weird film over my eyes that I didn’t notice until I tried to rub them with the heel of my palm. All of these wondrously fishy attributes added up to one glorious result: I could swim like a fish.

That was the first thing they tested. As soon as the doctors said I was good to go, SHIELD dumped me in a pool and told me to have fun. And I did. I had never been a fantastic swimmer or anything—the extent of my swimming knowledge came from the lessons my mother had forced me to take as a kindergartener because she was afraid I’d fall into the pond at the park down the street from our house and just die, which … fair. I still hated those classes. But now, now—oh, it was a completely different experience! I cut through that water like a knife, like Michael Phelps who? I was a bullet, shooting back and forth across the pool and just hanging water for as long as I liked.

Because I could breathe underwater now. That’s what gills are for, I guess, although it doesn’t really feel like breathing. Like, I’m not inhaling water while I swim. I’m just … I don’t know, my lungs are still filling with air, my chest is still going up and down, but it’s not through my nose. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s weird. But it’s really fucking awesome.

The team was very supportive of everything. I had only been living at the Tower for a little while, so I had still felt like something of an outsider—I didn’t have powers, and I certainly didn’t have the years long rapport that they had with each other. But they were really cool! Tony designed me a sleek new suit that was able to move well in water while still offering protection, and everyone had the time of their life trying to think up a pithy new code name for my newfound superhero status (we still haven’t quite decided, but I’m leaning towards Torpedo, because isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?). Everything was great.

Well, almost everything. There was one thing that was kind of bothering me. Loki hadn’t talked to me since I got hit with the mist. That might sound like a weird thing to get hung up on—oh no, the psychotic extraterrestrial terrorist is ignoring me!— but Loki’s not really like that. He doesn’t really talk about the whole New York thing much, but he’s said enough to make it clear that it’s not something he did of his own volition. If you saw it you’d understand what I meant, the way he tenses up whenever someone brings up the Chitauri and his eyes go all glassy like he’s not really there behind them. You can just tell that whatever had been waiting for him on the other side of that portal, it wasn’t good.

We never talked about New York, but we talked about other things. I’m not really sure how that happened. He does this thing where he acts all annoyed with everyone, like he’s just so over everything, and it irritates everyone so much that they all avoid him like the plague, which of course is what he wants. I guess I just didn’t avoid him when I arrived—I was too busy avoiding all the other superheroes who made me nervous to bother trying with him—and he grew to tolerate my presence.

We started talking about stuff one day, random shit like the purpose of nutritional facts on the side of poptart boxes and the boiling point of water on Earth vs on Asgard because apparently that’s different. And then we’d do things like make fun of the way Steve talks because he’s just so easy to make fun of, and Steve would overhear and tell us to knock it off and that would just make the whole thing funnier and Loki would mimic his voice and say something stupid like “I can feel the righteousness surging!” and Steve would just shake his head and walk away while we laughed like idiots. So yeah. We were friends. Or at least, I thought of him as a friend.

But I was starting to think that maybe he didn’t see me in the same way. We had been partners on the mission where I got hit with the terrigen mist, but he didn’t even come to visit me while I was still in the hospital. And literally everyone came to visit me. Friggin’ Director Fury came to visit me, although I’m pretty sure that was more because he wanted to see what my transformation had entailed and not because he had any particular interest in my wellbeing, but still. And then when I got out, he never said a word to me and everyone else wanted to talk to me so I didn’t say anything to him, but I was worried about him just the same. He was avoiding me too—he wouldn’t ever look at me when I was looking at him, and a lot of times he’d get up and leave the room if I came in. And I didn’t know what was going on.

I probably should’ve asked, but I don’t know … I was afraid, I guess. Like, what if he was really mad at me for something, and just me trying to talk with him would make him upset? So I just didn’t say anything—went through my day pretending everything was normal and ignoring the ache in my chest constantly reminding me that it had been weeks since I got my powers and Loki still hadn’t asked me if I was okay.

But I kind of forgot about all that when Tony started this bullshit. Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t start it sooner, because it was the type of low hanging fruit that had his name written all over it, but once he started it there was no going back.

He started it one day when we were in the kitchen. I had been making a sandwich (tuna fish, because I’m a cannibal) and Tony was leaning over the counter watching me, and we were just talking about my general fishiness.

“I’m jealous, really,” he was saying. “It’s definitely something that would come in handy. You need to get something underwater, you just dive down—no tanks, no masks, no suits. Very sophisticated.” His eyes lit up, which is never a good thing. “Sofishticated!”

I groaned. “Stop it.”

But Tony was cackling. “Sofishticated! That’s rather gilliant, if I do say so myself.”

“Tony …”

“It doesn’t get any betta than this!”

I waved the bread knife in his face. “I will throw this at you.”

“Alright, alright.” Even as he held his hands up in surrender, he was giggling like a child. “I’ll stop.”

He did not stop.

The next morning, it was fish puns. Everywhere you turned, it was fish puns.

“Can you get that report back to me soon, or do you need more time to mullet over?”

“Just let minnow when you’re ready to try on the new suit.”

“Don’t trout your abilities, we all know you’re fintastic.”

It was only breakfast and I was inches away from crushing my face against the china cabinet.

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “What the hell have I walked into?”

Tony grinned. “It’s fish puns!” he said. “Because, you know—” he gestured vaguely in my general direction. “It’s her brand.”

I moaned, face in my hands. “Just kill me now.”

Clint perked up. “Don’t you mean krill me now?”

Laughing, Tony gave him a high five over my head as I writhed in pain. “That’s the spirit.”

I don’t know how he did it, but in the matter of hours Tony had the whole damn tower on the pun train. Natasha was joking about how she was having a whale of a time with this new game. Clint was telling me to clam down and enjoy the fun. Steve asked me if I could get kraken on my o-fish-al business. Even Bruce—Bruce, who always made a point of staying out of Tony’s nonsense—even he was coming up to me with shit like “Cod you come help me with somefin in the lab?”

I glared at him. “Why would you ask me that?”

He hesitated for a moment. “Well …” Bruce inhaled. “Salmon had to.”

I stormed off as Tony roared with laughter from behind the corner.

It was inescapable. Wherever I went there was someone armed with some new fishy atrocity. You’d be surprised at how many fucking fish-related words exist in the English language. JARVIS was so overloaded with the amount of Internet searches for “fish puns” that he started bookmarking lists for easy access. It was an absolute nightmare.

“Don’t play koi, sweetheart,” Tony teased one night while we were waiting for Clint to choose a movie. “We know you lobster it.”

“Lobster?” I scoffed. “That doesn’t even make sense!”

“You just don’t appreciate my ingenui-sea.”

“OH MY—”

“Ignore them, my lady.” Thor smiled gallantly “They are only jesting. You should just relaks.” He grinned, stepping back as he waited for a reaction. We all just blinked at him. He frowned. “You understand, yes? Re-laks? Laks? That’s a fish!”

“Lak is not native to Midgard,” Loki interjected without looking up from the book he was reading. I jumped. He had been so quiet I had forgotten he was in here too. “Their oceans are too warm.”

Thor was surprised. “Truly? But I thought we’ve tasted lak since we’ve been here!”

Loki rolled his eyes, still without looking up. “That’s salmon. It tastes similar, but it’s much smaller.” He turned the page, muttering something that I didn’t quite catch. I was suddenly struck by the fact that it was the closest we had come to talking since before the mist, and that ache came back, gnawing at the edges of my heart. He didn’t look at me. I didn’t say anything.

About a week later, it was my birthday. I don’t really like birthdays in general, but I had really been bracing myself for this one all week because there was no way in hell these morons weren’t going to something infuriatingly stupid to mark the occasion. I guess I didn’t do enough bracing, because when I walked into my bathroom that morning to find a big fat lobster scuttling around in my sink I nearly had a fucking heart attack.

Across the mirror, someone had scrawled a message in red lipstick.

Sending you birthday fishes and lots of lobster!

And that was the moment I decided I was going to murder Tony Stark.

I stormed out into the hallway with no weapon, no plan of action, nothing except the pajamas on my back and the lobster in my hand. Additionally, this was the moment I decided that I hated lobsters more than any other creature on this earth. This thing looked like something from outer space, with its antenna and its bulging eyes and its spindly spider legs—that what it was, an overgrown spider in a slimy red shell. It was disgusting.

I was on my way to Tony’s floor, so engrossed with this half-baked notion of busting down his door and throwing this extraterrestrial arachnid on his face while he snored in bed, that I didn’t even see the Asgardian prince until I walked right into him.

Luckily, Loki grabbed me before I stumbled backwards, because I recoiled so quickly I probably would’ve gone flying. He raised his eyebrows as he took in the sight.

“I assume there’s a reason for the crustacean?” he asked.

There was something ever so slightly condescending about his tone, and I bristled. “They left this thing in my room! I swear, I’ve had it up to here with this fish bullshit—”

He hushed me, pulling the lobster from my grasp. With a wave of his hand, it was gone.

I inhaled. “You didn’t kill it, did you?”

“Oh no. I merely moved it to a more preferable location.” He frowned at the moisture left on his palm, conjuring a handkerchief to wipe it off with. “You know,” he said slowly. “The more visibly upset you allow yourself to become over this, the more encouraged they’ll feel to continue.”

“I know, I know. I just—” I sighed. “It’s so annoying. It’s been going nonstop, for two damn weeks! Puns are the absolute lowest form of humor, it’s just obnoxious.”

Loki only nodded as he turned to make his way down the hall. “I’ll take your word for it.”

And just like that, it was back to ignoring me. I watched his retreating form, the ache in my chest quickly bursting in to flames.

“Why are you avoiding me?” I snapped.

He froze, slowly turning around. “Pardon?”

“Why are you avoiding me?” I repeated. “You won’t talk to me anymore, you barely even look at me— did I do something wrong?” Maybe the fish jokes really had fried my brain, because I was dangerously close to tears. “I don’t get it Loki, I thought we were cool and now you just hate me!”

“I don’t hate you!” he said. “I just—”

“Just what? What is going on with you?”

“You could’ve died!” Loki yelled. I had never heard him speak that loudly before, and guess I was shocked into silence. “With the mist, on the mission. It was only pure chance that you didn’t.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“I was supposed to cover you. I should’ve realized sooner that they were using terrigen crystals. Instead I miscalculated and you nearly died.” He let out a shaky breath. “I thought you were dead. When I found you, enveloped in that shell …” His voice trailed off and I realized with a start that his eyes were glistening with tears.

“Loki …” My gills tingled on my neck as I reached out for him. Is that what this was all about? Guilt? “Loki, you can’t blame yourself for that. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. And besides, I’m fine now. It all worked out in the end.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. You didn’t see yourself. You were gone, I was certain you were gone—”

I griped his hand. “I’m here now though. I’m here and I’m fine. Stop beating yourself up about it. I want to be friends again. I—” For a moment, the words caught in my throat. “I missed you.”

He gulped. “Truly?”

“Of course! Besides, I need your help getting back at these idiots.”

He smirked. “Oh, I’ve already started on that.”

A high-pitched scream broke out across the floor. “How did the fucking lobster get in my shower?” Tony bellowed from his bedroom.

We exploded into laughter.

“Oh,” I wheezed. “That was fucking perfect!”

Loki grinned, squeezing my hand. “Only the best for you, my lobster.”

[isa-ghost]

JSE Renaissance Week Days 2 & 3

Day 2 (June 26th):

Favorite memories day. Bring back memories of your favorite times in the community, whether they were with other community members here or with Seán himsel. Even if it’s something small or obvious!

MOTHER. FUCKING. OVERNIGHT WATCH.

I have NEVER been so focused, so enthralled, so unshakably invested in something so quickly. And it was something ARGUABLY SO STUPID. GREYSCALE LOOPING FOOTAGE. ALL NIGHT. I STAYED UP ALL NIGHT. 8 HOURS OR SOME SHIT. JUST STARING. LIKE THE OBEDIENT PUPPET WHORE I APPARENTLY AM. AND I HAD A GODDAMN BLAST.

I’d do it again in a heartbeat, and it was my first experience seeing the community band together. Screaming info, dots we connected, theories we made, updates on glitches, SLEEPING IN SHIFTS AND COVERING DIFFERENT TIMEZONES, clipping & giffing moments, screenshots, art, THE WAY WE IMAGINED OURSELVES LIKE SOME SORT OF LEGIT TEAM/ORGANIZATION WHOSE JOB WAS/IS TO MONITOR ANTI ACTIVITY LIKE SOME KINDA SCP SHIT.

For me, it made Mayhem 2018 10x more fun. It felt like slipping into an old favorite outfit that still fit perfectly comfortable like it used to. And if shit ever kicked off that hard and frequent again? Same thing. I love dutifully waiting in the wings for the slightest legit sign of REAL, not overanalyzed activity. Even if we never get anything.

Overnight Watch was AMAZING, it was my spark to become genuinely, regularly active here, and Mayhem 2018- My FAVORITE JSE memory, intensified that even more. I owe those two events for having the “platform” I do on this blog. It gave me the friends I have here and the ones I talk to every single day. Those two things will live in my heart rent free forever. <3

Day 3 (June 27th):

Theorist’s day. I know there hasn’t been much by way of canon ego content lately or for a while, but if you’ve got a favorite theory or theorist in the community, give ‘em some love today. Don’t be afraid to bounce ideas off each other, too; even just musing can lead to some incredible things!

DO YALL FUCKING REMEMBER THIS CHASE THEORY I MADE? AND SEAN RARELY INTERACTED WITH THEORY CONTENT BUT REBLOGGED THIS FOR SOME REASON?? WITHOUT CONFIRMING IT LIKE A LITTLE SHIT OF COURSE??

To this day, I think that is my best theory.

AND LEST WE NOT FORGET THIS FUCKING MOMENT. WHICH STILL HAUNTS ME.

Or this simple detail I picked up on that also ended up getting Sean-approved!

Some more theories & such of mine I really really like!

I actually forgot this one existed and just blew my own mind when I reread

This “What is Anti?” theory I made

My Corrupted Chase Rambling

The timeline of Chase possibly becoming corrupted

The chronological timeline of Chase’s appearances so far

THIS THEORY THAT TOOK ME 6 HOURS TO WRITE OUT

This big brain realization of numbers (8/3/17) that turned out to be nothing but were one hell of a coincidence I noticed

And honestly? Every time I’ve ever taken timestamped notes. Those are so helpful to people and that means everything to me. I’m very proud of them. :’)

If yall want to, send me asks about my theories & such you guys remember! Favorite ones, comments on any of them, etc. You can look at all my theory stuff neatly organized on @isas-theory-wall, and here’s a list of tags to browse it easily! My main content here has been theories, so I’d love to have a nice beefy proper discussion about them through asks :D

When it comes to other theories from fellow theorists, I can’t actually instantly recall very many. :P BUT, anything I agee with or found amazing was reblogged to my theory wall blog, so anything there that isn’t mine counts as a favorite, I guess. xD

Specific theorists I love? Well- There’s a lot. But I think I’m obligated to shout out @fear-is-nameless, @huffletrax and @rogue-of-broken-time especially, because those three (and someone no longer on Tumblr) are who ignited my interest in theorizing in the first place and are my personal go-to resources for whatever stuff I don’t catch or connect. <3 Thanks to them and their amazing brains and dedication, I myself became other people’s go-to resource, and that means so much to me.

Whether our interest, passion, ideas, or fuel has gone down or fizzled out, they still- and will always -hold a special place in my heart. Not only as fellow theorists, but as friends. <3

[julieandthefandoms]

Housefull 2 MDZS/The Untamed AU

HELLO THERE MY LOVELIES! I’M MAKING A WILD TUMBLR REAPPEARANCE AND I BRING WITH ME SHINY NEW SHOWS I’VE WATCHED AND PERHAPS THE GREATEST AU I’VE EVER WRITTEN DOWN! 

Okay, so, I’m going to preface this by saying that I finally watched the Untamed over the past summer and now am slightly obsessed. I am also in the middle of reading the novel and watching the animation, so... that’s something.

Anyway, today, I decided that it would be a good idea to rewatch my favorite childhood film, a little Bollywood comedy titled Housefull 2. Upon rewatching this, I realized that the MDZS characters would fit really well into the convoluted mess of this plot and so I wrote a little bullet pointed AU idea thing. 

(I don’t think I’ll have the time to write this, so if anyone wants to use this concept, pleaseeee tag me/tell me about it. Also, if anything like this is already written, pleaseee tell me too, I need the crack content.) (I’m also desi, by the way, so I don’t know much about Chinese culture, so please tell me if anything is offensive or just plain inaccurate.)

So, without further ado, I’ll be presenting this Housefull 2 MDZS/The Untamed AU! 

-As per canon, JZX is emotionally constipated and couldn’t communicate until after his engagement with JYL got split up. Having made their sister cry, JC, WWX, and NHS (who gets roped into it) plan to crush JZX for hurting JYL. 

-They send WQ to crush JZX by breaking his heart but give her such vague instructions that she accidentally falls for Mianmain. 

NHS: “So... who’re we supposed to use to crush this Peacock. I mean, it can’t be any of us.” 

WWX: “I don’t know about y’all, but I’d be great at this mission.” *wiggles eyebrows*

JC *rolls eyebrows*: “I think you forgot that mom will have your head if you do something like this.”

JC: “Hey, you remember her from university?” 

WWX: “Who?” 

JC: “You know, *her*, the one with the needles who could murder anyone and get away with it” 

WWX: *laughing* “Holy hell, the Peacock doesn’t know what’s coming for him!” 

NHS: “And who might this mystery lady be?” He says, knowing exactly who this mystery lady is. 

JC and WWX: “Wen Qing.”

-All the while, JGS thinks that WQ and JZX are engaged because the Idiot Trio sent an envoy ahead that claimed WQ was a head disciple of Jiang and is a replacement for JYL. JGS has now set the engagement of WQ and JZX in August. 

-They find out about Mianmian/LQY and WQ too late, and now JC, WWX, and NHS send someone else, LWJ, to crush JZX’s heart. 

JC: “You can’t continue to do this, what happened to our deal?!” 

WQ: *death glares* “What our deal said was that I needed to woo someone vaguely in relation to the nickname “Peacock” and happened to be in Lanling as payback for JZX breaking your sister’s heart, I don’t think I’m the one who forgot our deal here.” 

JC: “And your first thought was that Mianmian/LQY was Peacock?!” 

WQ: “She’s pretty and a Jin, so…” 

Before there would be a throw down in this place, WWX interrupted: “Okay, WQ it’s alright that you feel for Mianmian/LQY, but who is supposed to help us teach JZX a lesson now?”

NHS: “I don’t know, but it could maybe be someone who’s already close to JZX.” 

JC: “That sounds like a horrible ide- Wait, that’s lowkey kinda genius. Do you remember him from university?” 

WWX: “Him?” 

JC: “Yeah, you know, him, the one who’s entire vocabulary was the syllable “Mn” and whom you pined after for years.” 

WWX *blushing like there’s no tomorrow*: “We can’t send him, he’ll probably send me off to do 50 handstands” 

JC: “Please, he’s do anything you ask him to” 

NHS: *flutters his fan while knowing to an extreme degree what’s going to happen*

-They send WWX as LWJ’s ‘driver’ for him to make sure the plan is on track, but it just ends in LZ/WY pining. JC is also sent there as a businessman since he needs to make sure JGS doesn’t suspect anything too suspicious. At the same time though, because JGS thinks WQ and JZX are engaged and since LWJ spends most of his free time talking to Mianmian/LQY about his hopeless pining, JGS starts to think that Mianmian/LQY and LWJ are to be engaged and plans another engagement. JGS is quick to inform LQR about this and now LQR thinks that his nephew is married to Mianmian/LQY and that they’re getting married in August. 

-At some point here, LXC is in Lanling to visit his bud Meng Yao and that’s when JC and LXC begin talking and stuff. (This can be platonic or romantic, I don’t have a personal preference). 

-Additionally, this is also when WWX and LWJ begin investigating the happenings of Lanling and discover the extent of an asshole JGS is. They'd probably be reported sporadically and NHS definitely sent this evidence to detectives XXC and Song Lan. 

-So far, no one has gotten to properly executing this plan, and JC & WWX are beginning to question things. Because things couldn’t possibly get worse, this is the moment when Madam Yu decides that it’d be a good idea to visit the Jins in order to remind them of their arranged marriage between JYL and JZX. So now, JC and WWX have to drag both LXC and JYL into this convoluted plot because otherwise everything would go horribly wrong. JC, WWX, NHS, JYL, LXC, WQ, LWJ, and Mianmian/LQY (WQ directly told the boys that if they don’t let Mianmian/LQY in on this, she’ll personally shove a needle where it hurts) are in this room together, attempting to processes the absolute mess that has occurred. (Poor JZX is still living obliviously, his father didn’t even tell him that he’s technically engaged to WQ now. JZX is just vibing in confusion and thinks he’s just being buds with LWJ because LWJ is horrible at flirting with anyone that’s not WWX so his job of breaking JZX is... not going well.) In the end, after being on the receiving end of many of JYL’s disappointed looks, JC and WWX convince her to help them with their plot just this once. (She wouldn’t tell anyone that she was secretly pleased, but hey, JYL kept her vengeance deep, deep down low and deserved to exercise it just this once.) 

-(it is important to note here that in this AU, Madame Yu doesn’t know what JZX looks like) 

-The plan would be that LXC would (reluctantly) pretend to be JZX in front of Madam Yu. Additionally, Madame Yu thinks the actual JZX is NHS (because JC panicked and that’s the first name he could come up with when Madam Yu asked who was that kid if LXC was JZX). This was to drive JGS off their tails as he still believed that WQ is engaged to JZX now. (He did email LQR about this as well who now thinks his nephews are now engaged to JYL and Mianmian/LQY, respectively, and are going to be married that August.) This is the part where WWX and LWJ finally start realizing that their feelings are mutual after a pep talk from Mianmian/LQY, LXC, and WQ (who’s pep talk sounded more like a shovel talk) for LWJ and from JC, NHS, and JYL for WWX. This is also when Mianmian/LQY and WQ grow closer and also decide that the rest of the group is useless and team up with NHS to knock some sense into JZX. Finally, JZX becomes less emotionally constipated and confesses to JYL, and because WWX, JYL, and JC think that an intervention from the scariest trio (WQ, Mianmian/LQY, NHS) is apt punishment, they call an end to their payback. (Also partially due to JZX having character growth as different characters grilled him throughout this AU). While this is great for our mains, it can only cause a bunch of shenanigans because of the way the parental figures interpret this situation. 

-JGS and Madame Jin think the pairings are: WQ/JZX, LQY/LWJ, LXC/JYL, WWX/NHS

-Madame Yu thinks the pairings are: JZX (except it’s LXC’s version of JZX)/JYL, LWJ/WWX, LQY/WQ, and (maybe?) JC/NHS (except it’s JZX who got confused for NHS)

-LQR thinks the pairings are: WQ/JZX, LQY/LWJ, and LXC/JYL

-Meanwhile, the pairings actually are: JZX/JYL, LWJ/WWX, LQY/WQ, and (maybe?) JC/LXC

-In conclusion, they’re all utterly fucked. Therefore, they have to bring everyone into this convoluted plot now, and finally JZX’s experiences over the past months make a little more sense to him. While discussing this mess they’ve created, WWX has an idea. 

WWX: “Okay, so, looking at the actual chart of who everyone thinks is who, the biggest disparity is between Madam Yu and JGS’s viewpoints, right? What if we just removed Madam Yu from the equation, make Madam Jin and Madam Yu have a falling out so that Madam Yu won’t be invited to the wedding so that we can focus on one of the false interpretations of all the relationships happening.” 

JC: “Madam Jin and Madam Yu have been the best of friends, how are we supposed to make them hate each other?” 

JYL: “I mean, we could stage something, a betrayal of some sort.” 

NHS: “I’m liking the way you think.”

-So through this plot and NHS’s concerning amount of connections, our group succeeds in breaking apart Madam Yu and Madam Jin’s friendship. JC and WWX also manage to worm their way into convincing the Jins to let JYL marry LXC to “spite Madam Yu’s wish of combining the Jiang and Jin families.” Because of JGS arranging and emailing parents throughout this fic, JYL, JZX, LXC, Mianmian/LQY, WQ, NHS, WWX, and LWJ are basically set to be married in August, except it’s to the wrong person! Soon enough, the wedding day arrives and the gang has a plan: they’ll dress the exact same and have the most elaborate and disruptive headpieces so that their faces are covered. 

(Note: Instead of NHS being part of the people getting married as it should be, JC is replaces him for the actual ceremony. Since the our marrige folks have their faces covered, nobody really notices that JC replaced NHS and is marrying LXC. This can be either because of a marriage of convenience to combine companies, or out of actual feelings. I’m cool with either interpretation in my head. Meanwhile, NHS is out in the crowd and People didn’t him because of his surprisingly useful camouflage fan.) 

-And so, the group sets NHS as their distraction while JC pretends to be NHS for the wedding ceremony. NHS basically knocks into the most expensive vase he can find so that most of the parental figures turn around, giving the group getting married the opportunity to switch places with one another until they’re in the right spot. So, a bunch of stuff happens, Madam Yu barges in to yell about how disgraceful it is for the Jins to go on with this marriage even though they broke the engagement in the first place and betrayed the trust of the Jiang corporation. Madam Yu also just, airs out JGS’s dirty laundry in a real badass way. 

-It’s all chaotic. Hell breaks loose. JGS goes batshit crazy and starts bringing our firearms. And so, basically, everyone ends up hiding behind pillars and stuff, though, eventually, after everyone has to run out of their hiding spot’s because Su She cannot shut the fuck up and keeps getting the other’s exposed, they all pile behind JGS in the world’s worst game combined game of Hide & Seek and Slither.io. It all finally ends when JGS gets arrested for a shit ton of crimes, and everything finally ends with a joint wedding between 8 people, except this time it’s with the right partners. 

So, yeah, that’s the AU that I wrote in a dazed craze in the past 2 hours. I hope it was at least partially understandable. I hope y’all have fun with it! Again, if you know of a fanfic that’s got a similar energy or want to write something similar, please tell me, I need more fanfiction. Also, that last scene is basically a direct copy of this scene from the movie Housefull 2. (I’m sorry though, I can’t find an english subbed version of the scene. :(

[luxuriantegg]

POV: you're watching Loki episode 5. Loki and Sylvie share a blanket, and then five minutes later sylvie’s like “we’re the same :)” which comes after them holding hands to cause a Nexus event, Mobius implying they're in love, and Loki appearing to want to confess some sort of adoration for her before being pruned,,, and so far, it seems the showrunners/writers are on board w/ calling it a love story,,,,,,,,,,

let’s dive a bit into this ship.

(note: i'm not going to tag this as "syl//ki," and i will not put any ship in the body text without the "//", but tumblr may take the "syl//ki" out of "anti syl//ki" and put it in the ship tag. that's out of my hands. you need to block "anti syl//ki" if you don't want to see that.)

when it comes to defending or being anti syl//ki, I think a lot of people sort of missed the memo on or forgot about the fact that Loki is a frost giant. I have looked on both Twitter and Tumblr and literally have not seen a single person talk about it in the selfcest debate so far. I've probably missed something. So if you have seen this argument, well, here it is again!

so, syl//ki defenders will say,

It’s not selfcest because they are genetically different. They might have different parents since they were adopted by the Asgardians.

If they were genetically similar, then they would also be genetically similar to Boastful Loki and Alligator Loki.

First of all. Loki’s last name is Laufeyson. Sylvie’s last name is Laufeydottir. Due to the naming conventions used here, both can be assumed to be children of Laufey. I realize we haven’t seen Sylvie’s Laufey, but who’s to say they look any different than the one we saw in Thor? Furthermore, there’s nothing to suggest that they weren’t adopted by the same exact couple (i.e., Odin and Frigga or some variation), and if you’re not ok with Thor and Loki, you probably should consider this. Probably. We'll really just have to see what happens if they develop Sylvie further. Who knows, they might get cold feet in the last episode and actually make her Enchantress (Sylvie Lushton) proper.

The second point really pisses me off not just as someone who loves Norse mythology but also just. The race card. Does no one remember the fact that Loki is actually supposed to be blue? He’s not genetically white. There is nothing in his genes that command him to be white. That is a disguise (originally put on him by Odin if I’m not mistaken? feel free to check me on that).

Loki could literally be any gender and/or any color he wants to be. Hell, we've seen him shapeshift into Steve Rogers briefly and Odin presumably for a good while. Really, it's hard to pass judgement on the relationships that the other Lokis have to their respective timelines. We can only make assumptions based on the evidence we have. (but also have fun with headcanons of course)

(also the funny part about bringing up Boastful Loki is ,, everyone is always like “well, are you trying to tell me that our Loki has the same genes as Boastful/Hammer Loki? 🙄🙄🙄” and like, they won’t come out and just say one is white and one is black like,,, :) they’re trying so hard not to sound racist it’s hilarious. AND THEN TO PUT ALLIGATOR LOKI IN THE SAME CATEGORY. LAUGHABLE. str8 up.)

But concerning the alligator, in Norse mythology, frost giants can have kids that are really just. Out there. Jormungand is a snake that can wrap itself around the world, Fenris is a gargantuan wolf, and Hel is a half dead child. Those are just Loki’s kids (note: in the mythology. they also exist in the comics as his children, but I am also aware that Fenris and Hela are not his children in the MCU and trust me, that peeves me a lot). I’m sure there’s more examples though. So like. Potentially????? Yeah, Loki Prime could be genetically similar to Alligator Loki.

Furthermore, according to this Gizmodo article, Alligator Loki is a Loki (2021) creation, and they admit to playing with the idea that Alligator Loki may not even be a Loki. So take that how you will.

So my verdict is that Loki and Sylvie are the same person with different looks, possibly some difference in genetics, depending on the mother.

(note: Loki is marked in his file as genderfluid, technically we cannot know what he was assigned at birth. we only know his pronouns. he could be AFAB. Sylvie may be AMAB.)

I don’t ship lok//ius, and I don’t care if Loki gets with a girl (I actually really like Loki and Darcy) so don’t come at me with the biphobia excuse that’s running around. I will say that yes, I would adore seeing Loki in an mlm or wlw relationship. Yes, it is really cliché to have the two opposite gender-presenting leads get together. Yes, I want to see Loki and Sylvie as friends/family. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m just here to ask if this is selfcest or not.

So yes, Syl//ki really does appear to be a selfcest ship and like, if you’re willing to own that, own it. It looks like that’s how the show’s going so far so,, uh,,, enjoy it if that’s something you want to do I guess. I’m ,, probably not going to though. But congrats on the canon! If it is!

I’m not asking you to stop shipping it, if you do. I'm not even asking you to ship with caution. Overall, I just hope I made you think a little more about it and maybe get a discussion going that doesn't revolve around the same arguments we've heard for the past three weeks.

Because like, it's not hurting anyone to ship it, and if you send hate speech to any shippers or the showrunners, literally what is wrong with you???? there are civil ways to discourse, my lord.

Personally, if I had to ship it, I would only do so as a self-love metaphor, and I think that's as far as I would take it. As it currently stands, it's on the same level of Oncest, so like. it's weird but honestly it doesn't hurt anyone. (and if you don't know what Oncest is, give this video by Sarah Z a watch.) Really it all just amounts to this test from Buzzfeed that you've probably seen in fandom memes before. So you can use that as your squick-o-meter when it comes to this ship.

I will end this by saying I am not pro-ship. Inc//est and pedo//philia have no place in fandom and thinking these are okay could lead to harmful thinking in real life, especially with regards to children in fandom.

Selfcest is not technically on the same level as inc//est, and yes, I know, in the words of the great Buzzfeed Unsolved team, "anytime you have to say technically that's not great" but I really mean it here. We can still say technically here.

TL;DR: yeah syl//ki is more than likely selfcest. don't send hate to people who ship it tho (this includes the showrunners).

[rhosyn-du]

Never make a mess when a total catastrophe will do - Chapter Two

Pairings: Jimon, past Clace, background Clizzy, a bunch of other minor background pairings Rating: Explicit Art: @cor321​ Beta: @all-thestories-aretrue​ Tags:  Alternate Universe - College/University, fake dating, oh my god they were roommates, friends with benefits, idiots to lovers, pining, miscommunication, holidays, drinking games, mistletoe, symbolically significant Oreos, domestic fluff, brief mention of past character death, Jace’s self-worth issues deserve their own tag Summary: What do you do when you find out your sister is not only dating your ex and love-of-your-high-school-life but is also bringing her home for Christmas? Bring your annoying, hot, annoyingly-hot roommate as your fake boyfriend to show them you're totally fine with it, obviously! There's no possible way this could backfire. Link: AO3 , Tumblr Master Post

Chapter Two

They didn’t talk more about it later. Jace barely saw Simon at all over the following couple weeks, in fact. It’s not that he was intentionally avoiding Simon, but they both had final exams to study for, and Simon was wrapped up in guitar ensemble rehearsals for the winter concert on top of that. If Jace had spent a little more of his study time in the library than was strictly necessary and that just happened to prevent any further discussions of dispays of physical affection and practice dates, that was entirely beside the point.

What Jace hadn’t counted on was how unprepared he’d feel pulling up outside the Queen Anne style townhouse he’d called home for most of his childhood. He suddenly wished he’d let Simon talk him into driving together and using the drive as a last minute planning session, even if it meant they’d need to coordinate their trip back to Boston. As much as he’d been avoiding talking about their plan, it really only occurred to Jace on the drive how much he wished they actually had, you know, a plan.

“Wow,” Simon said, hopping out of the hand-painted van he’d parked right behind Jace’s car. “Is that an actual turret?”

“Yup, gotta love those late 19th century architectural fads,” Jace answered as he pulled his suitcase out of the trunk. “The house belonged to Maryse’s grandparents, and I’ve never been able to tell how much she actually likes the style and how much is just childhood nostalgia, but she hasn’t even changed much of the interior except for renovations and repairs.”

“I have a hard time imagining growing up in a place like this,” Simon said as he joined Jace with his own suitcase in hand. “And it’s not like my mom’s house is tiny or anything, but this is just...” He waved a hand vaguely at the house. “A lot.”

He didn’t ask why Jace was sharing a tiny apartment furnished entirely secondhand if his family lived in a house like this, and Jace didn’t offer an explanation.

“You don’t need to be nervous,” Jace said, even though there was plenty to be nervous about. “I promise the house doesn’t bite.”

“Yeah, less worried about the house than the people in it,” Simon told him.

“I thought you were, like, the parent whisperer,” Jace teased. “Isn’t that why you offered to come with me? Because you make a great boyfriend? Trust me, as long as Alec and Izzy think you make me happy, they’ll love you, and you know more about comics than anyone I’ve ever met, so Max will love you regardless.”

“Okay,” Simon said, releasing a heavy breath. “Okay, thanks. You’re right, I just got a little intimidated by the house, but this is all going to be fine.”

“Maryse is probably going to hate you, though,” Jace continued, keeping his face carefully deadpan. “She hates everyone we bring home. It’s like a rite of passage. But you’re great with parents, so I’m sure you’ll at least avoid intentional food poisoning.”

Simon stared at him in horror, and Jace couldn’t keep a hit of a smile from breaking through.

“I hate you,” Simon told him.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Jace said, “I’m pretty sure the food poisoning wasn’t actually intentional.”

“Wait, there was actual food poisoning?”

“Come on,” Jace said, heading toward the door. “I want to get inside before we freeze to death.”

“You are such a dick sometimes,” Simon muttered, catching up to him.

Then, he slipped his free hand into Jace’s like it was a totally normal thing to do, and Jace had to catch himself from tripping over the steps.

“Careful,” Simon said, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m not going to make a very good impression on your family if you fall and break your neck before we even get inside.”

And there was just nothing to say to that, to how uncomfortable it wasn’t to have Simon’s hand in his like this, to the way it made him want. So Jace simply rolled his eyes and pushed open the front door, letting the scent of home wrap around him like a warm blanket.

“Okay,” Simon said quietly as he surveyed the entryway, complete with antique chandelier. “Feeling a little intimidated again.” And it was so easy for Jace to just give his hand a reassuring squeeze.

“Hey, you made it,” a warm voice greeted them. “With as bad as traffic has been, we thought you’d be another hour at least.”

“Hey, man,” Jace said, dropping Simon’s hand so he could pull his brother into a hug. “People must be staying home for the holidays this year, because we barely hit any traffic at all.” He glanced around. “Where is everyone?”

“Iz should be here any minute, Max is holed up in his room playing video games with his friends, and Magnus is helping Mom with some last-minute grocery shopping for dinner tomorrow.” Alec held out a hand to Simon. “I’m Alec, since Jace apparently can’t be bothered to make introductions like a civilized person.”

“It’s okay,” Simon said, giving his hand a quick shake, “I gave up on the idea of Jace being civilized the first time I saw him eat pizza that had been sitting out on the counter for three days.”

“That was your pizza,” Jace pointed out.

“Yeah,” Simon said, “which I was going to throw away because I forgot about it for three days.”

“On the subject of uncivilized,” Jace said, turning back to Alec, who was looking just a little too pleased, “you really sent Magnus shopping with Maryse? Buddy, if you decided you don’t want to marry the guy, just break it off with him. You don’t have to throw him to the wolves like that.”

Alec’s tiny smile became a little less tiny and a whole lot softer. “Magnus and Mom have actually been getting along lately. She wanted his opinion on wine pairings, so they went to the store and left me here so I can pull the bread out of the oven when it’s done. It’s very weird, but also nice.”

“That does sound very weird,” Jace told him, “but I’m glad things are working out and Maryse has found some level of chill somewhere.”

“Hopefully that means I won’t get poisoned,” Simon said.

Alec snorted. “If you want to avoid it, you should probably avoid mentioning you know about that. Or any other embarrassing family stories Jace might have shared with you.”

“And don’t eat anything Izzy hands you,” Jace added. “Anything she cooks probably won’t kill you, but the taste will make you wish you were dead.”

“So, I should just fast while I’m here,” Simon said. “Good to know.”

Jace led Simon upstairs to drop off their bags while Alec checked on the bread.

“Just toss your bag anywhere,” Jace said, opening the door to his old room. “We can argue over who gets which side of the dresser later.”

“Sure,” Simon said cheerfully, “as long as we can be civil deciding who gets which side of the bed.” He stopped just inside the doorway. “Wow, okay. The apparently very small bed.”

And this really was something that should have occurred to him, Jace realized. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered that he’d be sharing a bed with Simon. They’d even talked about it, briefly, and agreed it was no big deal. But Jace hadn’t considered exactly how much smaller his childhood bed was than the generous queen he slept in back home. It was technically large enough to fit two grown men, but only technically.

“Don’t worry,” Jace said, falling back on his trademark bravado, “I won’t get mad if you cuddle me in your sleep. I know you can’t help it if your subconscious recognizes that I’m irresistible.”

“I’m more worried about your freakishly sharp elbows,” Simon muttered.

“As long as you don’t snore or steal the covers, you won’t have to worry about my elbows,��� Jace told him. He was planning to keep his elbows, and the rest of him, as far away from Simon as possible. Which, given the size of the bed, was maybe three inches.

“Dude, I do not snore,” Simon protested. “You know that; we live together.”

“You absolutely snore after your fourth drink.”

“I wasn’t planning to get drunk with your family,” Simon said, tossing his bag onto the bed.

“You say that now,” Jace said, leaving his own bag next to the door. “But wait until you get the full Lightwood Christmas experience before deciding you want to spend the whole thing sober.”

“If your family drives me to drink, you don’t get to blame me for snoring,” Simon countered. Which was probably fair, but Jace was saved from having to admit that by the sound of voices coming from downstairs.

“That’d be Izzy,” Jace said, “and we’d better get down there before she accuses me of trying to hide you from her.”

“Jace,” called a singsong voice, right on cue, “quit making out with your mystery hottie and get down here so we can actually meet him.”

“You should be careful making demands like that,” Jace called back. “What if I’m not wearing any pants?”

“We’ve all seen it. Get your ass down here “

“I like your sister already,” Simon told him.

“You say that now, but wait until she decides you count as family. She won’t be any better with you.” He took Simon’s hand. Because it helped sell their relationship. Because he could. Simon laced their fingers together, and Jace tried not to feel any way about that at all as he led Simon back down the stairs.

They only made it a couple steps before Simon came to a complete stop, almost causing Jace to trip the rest of the way down the staircase. He heard Simon mutter a soft ‘oh crap’ at the same time a bright, redheaded whirlwind came rushing up the stairs at them.

“Oh my god, Simon?” Clary grabbed Simon into a giant bearhug, effectively tearing his hand out of Jace’s. “You’re Jace’s mystery boyfriend? How did I not know about this? You didn’t even tell me you were dating anyone, you jerk! What happened to best friend gossip privileges?”

Clary pulled back from the hug, and now that Jace could actually see her face, he could see the hint of concern she was trying to hide under her wide smile.

“Clary. Hi,” Simon said, eyes wide. “I was going to tell you, I swear. It’s just, this is kind of new and so...” He trailed off, looking panicked. His eyes caught Jace’s. “But, uh, yeah. This is Jace. My boyfriend. Jace, this is my best friend, Clary Fray.”

“Yeah,” Jace said, looking between the two of them and feeling more than a little out of his depth. He’d planned for things to be weird, but not this weird. “We’ve met.” He flashed Clary a smile. “Fray, huh?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t keep his name. Not after...after everything. Fray is the name Mom used before she married Luke. It’s the name I remember her having when I was little, so.” She shrugged. “I filed the paperwork to have it legally changed the day I turned eighteen.”

“It suits you,” Jace told her, and let himself be pulled into a tight hug that he suspected was as much because she needed one as that she was glad to see him. Clary had never told him much about the biological father she barely knew, but she’d told him enough to know that Clary held him responsible for her mother’s death, even if the courts had cleared him of any wrongdoing.

“Thanks,” Clary whispered, before surreptitiously drying her eyes on his shoulder and pulling back to flash a smile that was less forced than Jace expected. “So, tell me how this happened without me hearing about it.” She bumped Jace with her shoulder. “And if it’s so new, what possessed you to subject Simon to your family holidays?”

“Hey,” Izzy said, walking up behind Clary and wrapping her arms around her girlfriend’s waist. Jace had to admit, they looked...well, right together. “That’s my family, too, you know.”

“Oh, I know,” Clary said, offering a soft grin over her shoulder. “And the fact that I’m here should tell you exactly how much I love you.”

“Fair,” Izzy said, then looked at Simon. “So, how’d my brother convince you to join this circus?”

“We made a trade,” Simon said, straight-faced. “I put up with his family for Christmas and he puts up with mine for my cousin Rachel’s wedding.” He leaned in and told Izzy in a stage whisper, “Also, I’m weak for his smile, but don’t tell him I said that, because he will abuse it.”

“You say that like I don’t already abuse it,” Jace said, sliding his arm around Simon’s waist in a mirror of Izzy and Clary’s pose. “And to answer your earlier question, us being officially together is new, but we’ve been sort of on the verge of dating for ages. Practically since we started sharing an apartment last year.”

Clary let out a peal of delighted laughter. “Oh, you’re the roommate. It makes sense now.” Before Jace could ask what made sense, she was pulling the both of them into a tight hug. “I’m really happy for both of you.”

“If I’d known you were going to be this excited, I definitely would have mentioned it sooner,” Simon said, pulling back from the hug.

Jace tried to catch his eye, wondering what on earth was going on. He knew both Clary and Simon well enough to know he was missing something, but he had no idea what it was. Simon ignored him, and that just made Jace more suspicious.

“Come on,” Izzy said. “You can have your hug fest later. Right now, I want to help Alec get things set up in the kitchen and maybe surprise Mom by getting dinner started before she gets back.”

Jace and Clary exchanged a panicked look, and Jace frantically searched his mind for excuses to keep Izzy busy. He didn’t actually want a repeat of the food poisoning episode, after all.

“Actually,” Simon said, turning a bright smile on Izzy. “I was kind of hoping you’d be willing to show me your Lego Star Wars collection before we get too wrapped up in family stuff. Jace mentioned you have the deluxe Imperial Star Destroyer set from the early 2000’s, and I’ve never actually seen one in person.”

“Oh,” Izzy said, looking torn. “I’m not sure—”

“We can help Alec in the kitchen,” Clary said quickly. “You two go do your nerd thing. I knew this was inevitable when I finally introduced you two anyway. And this way I get the chance to harass my bestie’s new boyfriend without him in the way trying to keep me from learning the embarrassing details.”

“You know, on second thought—” Simon began, looking slightly panicked.

“Come on,” Izzy interrupted, smiling brightly and grabbing his hand.

Simon flashed Clary a betrayed look, then looked to Jace for support. Jace simply smiled at him.

“Don’t worry, love muffin,” he said mildly. “I’d never intentionally embarrass you.”

“I want you to know that I hate both of you,” Simon said before allowing Izzy to drag him back up the stairs.

“My collection is all still in my old room,” Izzy said. “Clary and I have been looking for an apartment big enough I can actually move the rest of my stuff out of here, but so far we haven’t found anything in our price range.”

Jace turned back to Clary. “Exactly what kind of embarrassing stories were you hoping for? Because I have many.”

Clary shook her head. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got more embarrassing Simon stories than you do. I’ve got almost two decades worth. But I was actually hoping to talk to you alone anyway, and this seems like the best chance we’re going to get.”

Jace followed her down the stairs and into the study. “Sounds serious. You planning to give me a shovel talk?”

Clary laughed, shaking her head. “No, I know you, remember? I’m not worried about you hurting Simon. Well,” she amended, “not any more than I am about him hurting you.” She met his eyes with a soft smile. “You might be the only person I know with a heart as big as Simon’s, as much as you try to hide it.”

Jace looked away. It had been two years since the last time he’d seen her, and she could still see right to the heart of him. He didn’t want to know what she’d see if she kept looking. “Clary—”

“Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me,” she teased. “But I didn’t actually bring you out here to talk about Simon. I wanted to apologize.”

Jace frowned, looking back at her. “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.” He was more than a little grateful not to have Clary grilling him about his entirely fabricated relationship, but he wasn’t sure where this conversation was going.

“No, I do,” she insisted. “I promised to keep in touch when you moved away, and I didn’t.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Jace said, even if maybe it had been at first. Those first few months at school had been hard. Jace always thought he was used to being alone, especially after his mother’s suicide, but he found out just how much he’d come to rely on his new family when he didn’t see them every day. They’d kept in touch, of course, but with Izzy immersed in her studies and Alec all wrapped up in his new relationship with Magnus, it wasn’t anything like what it had been when they were all under one roof.

For a while, he and Clary had been in touch nearly every day, sometimes texting multiple times a day. Jace told her about his classes and how much he liked Boston, and Clary told him all about trying to narrow down which art schools she wanted to apply to. It was almost the same sort of easy friendship they’d had before he left, after they agreed they were better off as friends.

But after a couple months, Clary’s messages came less and less often, and eventually stopped altogether. Jace tried not to let it bother him, but he started drinking a bit too much and going to a few too many parties. Which was how he’d met Maia, his attempts at flirting somehow leading to him getting his ass handed to him at beer pong, and soon he found himself with an entire group of new friends. Although Maia insisted for almost a year that she and Jace were merely antagonistic acquaintances.

Clary gave him a look that told him she knew exactly how full of it he was. “It was a shitty thing to do, and I was a shitty friend,” she told him. “Especially because I did it on purpose. Izzy and I started getting close and I started to have feelings for her, and I didn’t know what to say to you about it. I didn’t know how to even talk to you about what was going on in my life without mentioning that she was becoming such a big part of it.”

“You didn’t actually have to hide it from me, you know,” Jace said. “I was surprised when Izzy first told me, but I’m mostly just glad you’re both happy. And seeing you together, I know you both are.”

“Thanks,” Clary said. “I didn’t want to hurt you or make things weird. For a while, I thought I could just ignore what I was feeling, but Iz is just... She’s not someone you can ignore, you know?”

“Oh, I know exactly how hard my sister is to ignore, believe me.” Jace stopped, considered, then admitted something he had never said—would never say—to another person. But this was Clary, and he knew she would never repeat it. And even if she did, he could always play it off as part of the act. “She and Simon have that in common. You know, I actually thought I hated him at first? He’s so enthusiastic about everything, and so sincere, and just.” He shrugged. “Not the kind of person I thought would ever do it for me.”

“But he won you over with his boyish charm?” Clary guessed.

“Mm,” Jace agreed. And the way he loved without reserve. Not just his family and friends, but his music, his favorite films, even the crappy nachos from the 7-11 down the block from their apartment. Simon loved every part of life, and being around him, Jace could almost imagine what that felt like. “Well, that and his abs.”

“Can’t forget those,” Clary laughed.

“Not with how often he eats breakfast shirtless,” Jace agreed. “Come on. If we aren’t in the kitchen by the time Izzy gets back downstairs, you know she’ll try to help Alec herself, and I was kind of hoping for dinner to be edible.”

~~~

Dinner was surprisingly painless. Maryse was more relaxed and happy than Jace had ever seen her, and he couldn’t help wondering how much of that was related to the very unsubtle smiles she kept exchanging with Clary’s stepfather. Even Max, who was deep in throes of preteen scorn, grudgingly admitted that Simon being in a band was “pretty cool” and joined in on some of Simon, Clary, and Izzy’s excited nerd talk that went entirely over Jace’s head.

After dinner, they retired to the living room for eggnog and carols. Jace limited himself to a single cup of Magnus’s infamous eggnog, knowing better than to let himself get drunk when he was putting on a show for his family. Or sharing his tiny bed with Simon.

As usual, Jace let himself get pushed over the piano to play. He felt something in him settle as soon as he rested his fingers on the keys of Maryse’s baby grand, the feel different and so much more familiar than the ancient keyboard he had back in Boston or the well-used uprights in the practice rooms at school.

When Jace had first come to live with the Lightwoods, he’d been afraid to touch the piano. His mother had put him in lessons as soon as he was old enough, but she hated to listen to him play and often chastised him for not being a better player, saying he should be better at it with how talented his father was. Now, he understood that it was just another manifestation of the combined grief and mental illness that led to Celine’s death, but at the time he’d hated how awful he was at playing, no matter how much he enjoyed doing it.

But Maryse knew he played and encouraged him to use her piano. She told him that it had been her father’s, and though she’d taken lessons herself as a child, she’d never really loved it the way he had. She said that the instrument deserved to be loved, and as long as Jace loved playing it, she didn’t care how good he was or wasn’t.

It was the first time he’d really felt like this could be his home.

“Okay,” Jace said after the third version of O Tannenbaum with ridiculous altered lyrics—this one courtesy of Simon rather than Max or Clary, about an ill-fated toad who chose the wrong moment to cross the street, “I think my fingers are done for the night.”

“Oh, come on,” Clary said. “Simon and I have at least a dozen more of these we came up with when we were kids.”

“When we were little, I only knew the lyrics to the Christmas songs they played on the radio, so Fray made up silly lyrics to the other ones and told me they were real,” Simon explained. “And it made her so happy that I went along with it even for the couple I did know.”

“There will be plenty of time for more singing tomorrow,” Maryse said. “But if I know this one,” she continued, smiling at Max, “we’re all going to be dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn for presents.”

“Mom,” Max whined, “I’m not a kid anymore. I know the presents will still be there whenever I get up.”

“I seem to remember someone who looked an awful lot like you waking us up before sunrise last year,” Magnus said with exaggerated confusion. “Perhaps you have a twin I haven’t met?”

Max fixed him with a withering look. “Last year, I was eleven. This year I’m twelve,” he said, as though that explained it.

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’ve grown out of it,” Alec told him. “Because I intend to sleep in. And if you try to get me out of bed early, I’ll remind you of this conversation.”

“Oh, no need for that, darling,” Magnus said cheerfully. “I’ll just barricade the door before we go to sleep so he can’t get to us.”

“Brilliant,” Alec said, giving Magnus a frankly sappy smile. “I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

“And on that note,” Jace said, “I think I’m going to head to bed before I die of sweetness overdose.”

“Oh, please,” Magnus said, giving him an unimpressed look. “We all saw you and Simon making eyes at each other over those cookies you were frosting earlier.”

“It’s true,” Izzy said before Jace could protest. “You don’t get to tease Alec about being a sap anymore, not now that we’ve all actually seen you with someone you love.”

Jace froze, his mouth half open, then quickly snapped it shut. It made sense that Izzy would assume. He’d brought Simon home for Christmas, after all. That was the story they were selling even if they hadn’t actually discussed it, even if it wasn’t something Jace had said or even implied. And whatever he did feel for Simon, it certainly wasn’t love. It was, at best, a friendly crush. A very intense friendly crush.

Izzy seemed to realize her mistake, glancing between him and Simon with a look of dawning panic.

“No, you’re misunderstanding how this works,” Simon said easily, because of course Izzy’s words hadn’t sent him into a panic the way they had Jace. “Jace gets to tease Alec, and you, and you both get to tease him back.”

“Yep,” Clary agreed. “Those are the rules, because that means I still get to tease Simon.”

“Please,” Izzy said. “Clary and I are too sophisticated to be sappy.”

“I’m pretty sure I heard you call Clary ‘cuddle bug’ earlier,” Alec said.

“And I definitely saw you laugh at that terrible joke she told at dinner,” Jace added.

“She ate one of the cookies you made,” Max accused.

“Yeah, sorry, cutie,” Clary said. “We’re really pretty sappy.”

“Fine,” Izzy huffed. “But I just think you’re all jealous because I’ve got the cutest girlfriend.”

“Yes, Izzy,” Alec said drily. “You’ve uncovered my secret. I’m extremely jealous of your girlfriend.”

“I knew it,” Izzy said smugly, as though Alec had been perfectly sincere.

“Definitely in danger of dying of sweetness overdose,” Jace said.

That set off another round of teasing, this time with Izzy throwing in not so subtle attempts to drag Maryse and Luke into it. Jace wasn’t sure why Izzy was so determined to make the two admit there was something between them. It was obvious there was just from the way they acted around each other. Maryse would tell them when she was ready, just like she had when she and Robert filed for divorce.

It was almost another hour before Jace finally made his way up the stairs toward his room. He was surprised when Simon rose to follow him, but didn’t say anything until they were back in his room.

“I’m surprised you didn’t stay to nerd out with Clary and Iz some more.”

“I get to talk to Clary all the time,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, it’ll be easier to keep up the whole fake boyfriend thing if I don’t let her get me alone. She’d definitely figure out something’s up if I let her start grilling me about our relationship. Also, you don’t get to call me a nerd when you know just as much about Star Wars as I do.”

“It’s impossible to grow up with Izzy and not know way too much about Star Wars,” Jace said, pulling off his shirt and tossing it over a chair. “Are you still sure about doing this? Neither of us counted on Clary, and I’ll understand if you want to back out.”

“Huh?” Simon said, sounding distracted. Jace turned to look at him and thought he detected the faintest flush on Simon’s cheeks when he met his eyes. “I mean, yeah, no, I’m not backing out.” He gave an uncomfortable shrug as he pulled a set of pajamas out of his suitcase. “The last thing I want is to have to explain this whole thing to Clary.”

“Good point,” Jace agreed, turning around to put on his own pajama bottoms. It was tempting to watch Simon change, but it was also a very bad idea. “I don’t want to think about what she’d have to say to both of us if she knew.”

There was a beat of silence before Simon asked, “So, do you, um, have a preferred side of the bed?”

Jace turned to look at him, only a little disappointed to find Simon fully dressed in his pajamas. As usual when someone asked a question he didn’t want to think about, Jace flashed a smirk. “In a bed this small, I usually just take up the whole thing.”

“Well, unless you want me on top of you, you should pick a side,” Simon said, unimpressed. “Because I’m not sleeping on the floor.”

“I’ll take the left,” Jace said quickly, trying and mostly failing to avoid thinking about exactly how much he did want Simon on top of him. “I’m just gonna hit the bathroom real quick.”

Which was how Jace found himself locked in the tiny guest bathroom, lip caught between his teeth as he frantically tugged at his cock. He hadn’t planned on jerking off, but he couldn’t get Simon’s words out of his head, and he sure as hell wasn’t getting into bed with Simon half-hard, which was really the only other option.

He could picture it far too easily. Simon pressing him into that ridiculously tiny bed, hands gentle but firm, mouth just a little bit desperate.

He came to the thought of rutting up against those ridiculous abs.

By the time Jace cleaned himself up and returned to his room, Simon was nestled under the covers on the right side of the bed. Seeing him like that made something in Jace’s chest clench, and he flipped the light off just so he wouldn’t have to look anymore.

“‘Night,” Simon said as Jace slid into bed, taking care to stay entirely on his side.

“Don’t even think about snoring,” Jace answered.

He lay in the dark for a long time, staring into the darkness, listening to the sounds of the city that didn’t quite drown out the soft breathing of the man beside him. He tried not to think about how easy and relaxed the night had been, how perfect it would have been if only half of it weren’t a lie.

[ollieofthebeholder]

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 44: Tim

Tim can pinpoint the exact moment he knows he’s screwed. Later, when he takes the time to think about it, he’ll be able to trace the progress of things and see all the signs, from his fear for them to his instinctive desire to reach out for them when he’s scared to the quiet comfort he feels when they’re together. He’ll remember that weird knot of jealousy he felt the very first morning when he saw the Primes cuddling and realize that it wasn’t a general I-wish-I-had-someone-to-love-me thing, it was specific to who was involved. He’ll figure out that he’s been quietly in love with Martin probably since the moment he saw him trying to apologize and look contrite with an armful of spaniel doing its level best to lick his face off with its tail going like a windmill, and that if there’s a moment he can point to later and say is the one where he completely fell for Jon it’s probably the soft look on his face as he tucked a quilt around Martin’s sleeping form.

But that’s all going to be in retrospect. The moment he knows comes a lot later and is a lot easier to detect.

After an exceptionally extended lunch that only ends when the afternoon crowd starts shuffling in, they part, Melanie with a promise to come by the Archives on Monday, Georgie with an offer to stop by and tell her story after she’s put her next episode of “What the Ghost?” to bed, Sasha with a cryptic reference to some sort of appointment and a promise to see them later. They discover what she means later that night when the doorbell rings and Tim opens it to find her and the Primes on their doorstep. Neither of them seem surprised to learn that Elias is forcing Jon on his grand tour, but they don’t seem pleased about it either. Jon Prime warns Jon, over and over again, to be careful. Tim would almost expect Jon to get exasperated, but he doesn’t. They actually have a pretty pleasant evening; Jon Prime cooks for them while they take turns telling him about dealing with Elias. He does seem pleased to hear Jon has reconnected with Georgie, and he and Martin Prime make the others laugh by sharing stories of dealing with their Melanie and Georgie. They pull out some board games after dinner, and while they all agree that with at minimum three people at the table who can literally access the sum total of human knowledge at a whim, Trivial Pursuit is right out, Monopoly is fair game.

Charlie comes over Saturday while his grandmother hosts one of her bridge nights. He’s extremely distressed to learn that Jon is going away again already, to the point that he throws himself into Jon’s arms and starts to cry. It takes all three of them the better part of an hour to get him calmed down, and it ends with Charlie curled on Jon’s lap, the two of them sandwiched between Martin and Tim. Tim looks at Charlie’s tear-streaked face and the heartsick look in Jon’s eyes and the tender concern in Martin’s, and he tightens his arms around them and tucks his chin over Jon’s head and hopes.

It rains pretty much all day on Sunday. Martin makes breakfast and brings it into the bedroom on a tray, and they sit close together and eat quietly and don’t talk about what’s bothering them. Finally, in desperation, Tim reaches under the nightstand on his side of the bed and fishes out a book he’s been meaning to read for years. He wraps his arm around Jon and manages to get a hand on Martin’s shoulder; Martin, evidently taking the hint, scoots closer and does the same, and Tim begins reading out loud. It transpires that the book is one of Martin’s childhood favorites, but Jon’s never read it before and is both delighted at the novelty and enraptured by the story. They spend the whole day curled up together, rain lashing at the windows, underneath the apple-leaf quilt Tim’s grandmother made him, heads touching as they take turns reading aloud. It’s a stolen moment of peace in a world gone crazy and Tim tucks it away in his memory to cherish later when he needs it.

He wakes up in the middle of the night and rolls onto his side, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The first thing he’s able to make out is Martin, doing the exact same thing he is—just watching. Jon, curled into a knot between them, is still asleep, but from the twisted, pained look on his face, it’s not an easy slumber.

Tim meets Martin’s eyes over Jon’s head and reads there the same worries and fears he has himself. Jon’s nightmares are bad. They’ve known that from the beginning, when Martin was recovering from the worms and they were all camping out in Tim’s living room, and they’ve only grown worse as time goes on. The screaming terrors from reliving what he went through with Orsinov have stopped…for now…but Tim knows in his heart of hearts that what’s making it easier these days is him and Martin bracketing Jon and doing their best to physically shield Jon from the Eye. There’s no real stopping it, but they can at least help.

But now Jon is going to Beijing, and God knows where after that, and he’s going alone. They won’t be able to help him with the nightmares if he’s not there to protect. And that’s besides the fact that Tim knows they’re both trying not to consider the possibility of some other monster trying to take Jon away from them when they’re not there to protect him. It doesn’t even have to be a supernatural one. As easy as it is to blame every horrible thing that happens on one of the Fears, there are ordinary people that are perfectly capable of being horrible on their own, and it would be just Jon’s luck to be caught up in something at random and get hurt, or worse. And they won’t be there to help. Again.

“I guess we could just…go with him,” Tim says, keeping his voice low. “Whether Elias wants us to or not.”

Martin shakes his head slowly. “I still don’t have a passport. And…I don’t think we can leave Sasha alone in the Archives. You can go, maybe.”

“I’m not leaving you behind.” Tim sighs and gently tucks a strand of hair back from Jon’s forehead. His skin is damp and clammy. “It’s a mess. He might be safer away from the Archives than we are, but…I worry, you know?”

“I know. I do, too.” Martin closes his eyes for a moment. “We just got him back. And we’ve got months to the Unknowing.”

Tim hesitates. He’s been thinking about that. “I don’t know that we do, actually. I—I don’t think it’s time-sensitive. I mean, I don’t think they have to wait for a certain time or anything. I think they just have to be…ready.”

“How will we know when they’re ready?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re waiting for.” Tim stares down at Jon’s face. “I can’t decide if I’m afraid they’ll be ready before he gets back—”

“Or hoping,” Martin completes. “Because if the Unknowing happens while he’s overseas…at least he won’t be caught up in it. At least they’ll leave him alone.” He’s quiet for a moment. “At least it’s one thing we can protect him from.”

“God. I just…want to wrap him in bubble wrap and a blanket and fight off the world with a stick. Or at least keep him right here with us. I wish we could just stay here and let the world sort itself out for a change. Why do we have to be the ones doing all this?”

Martin reaches over and brushes Tim’s cheek with his fingertips, ever so lightly. “Anything worth having is worth fighting for,” he says softly.

Tim reaches across Jon’s sleeping form and pulls Martin closer, but he doesn’t say anything further.

The alarm goes off not long after; Jon is taking an early-morning flight by virtue of it being the cheapest available option, and he’s got to be there close to three hours early to check in. It’s too early for any of them to be properly hungry, but Martin makes tea while Jon takes a shower and Tim…sits around feeling useless.

As if sensing that, Martin glances over his shoulder at Tim. “Does he have any statements with him?”

“Oh, God, yeah, let me check.” Tim heads over to where Jon’s bag is. It’s a simple messenger bag he’s probably had since university, if not longer, frayed in spots and festooned with patches and pins. Jon never brought this to the Institute, instead using a professional faux-leather laptop bag, which isn’t surprising; it’d be pretty hard for him to sell the “serious academic” persona if he’s walking around advertising that he listens to Sinner’s Gin.

He opens the bag and looks through it. Jon’s packed a couple changes of clothes, some toiletries, a couple of paperback books, and of course the tape recorder, his personal one. But no statements.

Quietly, Tim goes over to the end table and opens the drawer. Inside are two tapes and a slim folder. He takes a deep breath and relaxes his hold on his powers, bracing for the colors to pop up. It’s surprisingly easier to filter out the Eye and see the beneath colors than usual—whatever’s in the folder glows orange around the edges but green in the middle, and one of the tapes just seems to have indigo stripes through the green rather than them  being layered on top of each other. Like the Eye isn’t hiding the truth from him anymore, like it’s letting him really See.

He files that information away to deal with after he’s got some caffeine in him and nudges the Stranger tape out of the way; it’s probably the one he and Martin listened to, so it’s no good, it’s already been used. The other one is pure, blinding green—an Eye statement that Gertrude recorded, which is unusual. Tim seals off his ability and reaches for the tape. It takes him three tries to pick it up without dropping it—his hands are shaking, he guesses because he’s upset about Jon leaving—but he finally carries it and the folder over to tuck them into Jon’s bag, then seal it up again.

“He didn’t,” he tells Martin, heading back into the kitchen. Martin sighs and hands him a cup of tea. “But you never took back the ones you brought home after that whole thing with the Not-Diana, so I put them in his bag.”

“God, I can’t believe I forgot about that,” Martin murmurs. “Still, it’s been a hell of a week.”

Tim pauses, cup halfway to his lips. “God, how has it only been a week?”

Jon comes into the kitchen, hair still damp from the shower; it’s down to about his collar now and takes a while to dry. Martin silently hands him a cup of tea, too. None of them speak while they drink. It’s as if these last few minutes at home are too precious, or too heavy, for words. At last, though, Jon glances at the kitchen clock and swallows hard. “Time to go.”

Pure devastation flashes through Martin’s eyes, but he simply nods and takes the cups from him and Tim to put them in the sink. Tim worries at his lip as he studies Jon. “You’ve got everything? Passport, wallet, phone?”

A faint smile tugs at Jon’s lips briefly. He reaches into his pockets and produces the requisite items—a burgundy passport in near-pristine condition, a black billfold that’s seen better days, and the new phone they picked up for him Saturday morning that he’s gone to a lot of trouble to set up. “Charger’s in my bag.”

“Okay. Okay.” Tim takes a deep breath. “I guess that’s it, then.”

They take Tim’s car, not because Jon minds them driving his car but because Tim’s has a column shift and a bench seat in the front, which means Jon can sit between Tim and Martin for the journey. Traffic isn’t too bad this early in the morning, at least not until they get closer to the airport, but Jon is apparently far from the only person traveling today, so there’s a bit of a snarl before Tim is able to navigate up to Terminal Three.

He hesitates at an intersection and looks at Jon. “Do you want me to drop the two of you off at the door or—”

“No. There’s time,” Jon says softly. “You can park first. Then you’ll both know where it is.”

There’s more to that than what Jon is saying, but Tim doesn’t question it. Instead he finds a space in the short-term lot for Terminal Three, and if it’s one of the farthest spots from the terminal doors, well, there might not be a lot of people here dropping off or picking up at this time of day, but who knows what the situation will be by the time they go to leave? Jon slides out of the car and doesn’t take Tim’s arm or Martin’s, but they walk close enough together that it doesn’t really matter.

The doors open up into an enormous space. Martin, who’s clearly never flown before, looks around him with wide eyes, and Jon shrinks back slightly. Tim gently ushers them to one side of the door, where there are a couple of benches, and heads off to the departure boards to make sure they’re in the right terminal. Once he’s located Jon’s flight on the boards (on time, unsurprising for an early-morning flight), he makes his way back to where he left them. Jon has edged closer to Martin and Martin has an arm wrapped around Jon’s shoulders, and both of them look both terrified and heartsick. Tim looks at them, unobserved for the moment, and he’s struck by the urge to drag them both home, shut the door of their bedroom, draw the curtains, and stay there until the Unknowing collapses on its own. As badly as he wants revenge, as much as he wants to hit back at the thing that murdered his brother, he’ll give that up in a heartbeat if it’s the only way to keep Jon and Martin safe.

The penny drops then, bounces off just the right pegs, lands squarely in the right cup and oh.

Tim stands stock-still for a moment, stunned by the swift and sudden revelation. In retrospect, he doesn’t know why it surprises him so much; it’s not like he hasn’t known he’s polyamorous since he was fifteen, and God knows he’s wanted to kiss both of them more times than he can count. But, somehow, he’s been convincing himself they’re just friends, as close as brothers maybe, but nothing more than that. And, well, maybe they are. It’s more than that on Tim’s end, though.

He’s in love with Jon and Martin both, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses either of them. And Jon’s about to go haring off across the world alone, and Martin keeps accidentally coming to the attention of things that want to hurt or kill him, and oh, God, Tim is so incredibly screwed.

He shakes himself out of the stupor. He can deal with this later. Or never, as the case may be, but he promises himself he’ll deal with it later and heads over to the other two. Jon sees him and pulls, with obvious effort, away from Martin. “Is this the right terminal, or—?”

“No, you’re good. Your check-in counter is down this way.” Tim indicates the large sign for the airline Jon will be flying on the first leg of his journey—he’ll apparently be changing planes in Copenhagen.

They stay at Jon’s side all the way up to the check-in counter, where he provides his identification and credit card to the rather stiff old man behind the counter, who keeps sneering at the three of them in a way that makes Tim very much want to hit him. The man asks rather more questions than Tim is used to, even for an international flight, and he’s about to step in and explode when the man finally, finally hands Jon his boarding pass and moves on to the next person waiting.

“How did he manage to make ‘have a good trip’ sound like a curse?” Jon says under his breath as they turn towards the security checkpoint.

Martin snorts. “It’s like ‘may you live in interesting times.’”

“I’ll pass. After this, I would like my times to be as un-interesting and quiet as possible, thank you.” Jon smiles, but it melts away almost instantly.

There’s virtually no wait at the security checkpoint, Tim notices, or at least not compared to how it would be later in the day. Jon will be able to breeze through it in a matter of minutes. And according to the signs posted everywhere in huge letters, Tim and Martin won’t be able to accompany him. Martin stares at one of the signs boldly declaring TICKETED PASSENGERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT for a long minute. His face is implacable, but Tim knows what’s behind it, because he’s feeling it too.

Jon looks at the queue, and the security gates, and the signs telling him to remove his shoes and have his ticket and passport ready. He turns to face Tim and Martin, opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, then suddenly gives a small, choked sob and lunges forward, clutching them both by the front of their shirts and burying his face in the narrow dip where their shoulders touch.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispers.

Tim wraps one arm around Jon and the other around Martin; Martin does the same, and the three of them cling to one another tightly. He can feel Jon trembling and hear Martin’s breath hitching in his chest and he almost dares to let himself hope, but he pushes the thought out of his mind. He can’t let himself think that, not now, or he’ll drive himself crazy with wanting and fear. And if he’s wrong, if they don’t…it’s better to assume they don’t and possibly be surprised later than believe they do and almost certainly be crushed.

There’s soft music coming from somewhere, a gentle and soothing melody in a choked and broken voice, and it takes Tim a second to realize that it’s Martin, singing quietly so that just Tim and Jon can hear him. It’s a plaintive melody and the lyrics are a little melancholy, but the line when I return united we will be does at least warm Tim’s chest, just a little.

Jon gives a deep, shuddering breath and pulls back, almost reluctantly. “I—I’d best—I shouldn’t miss the flight.”

“We’ll wait,” Tim says, his voice unexpectedly hoarse. “Until—until you’re through.”

Jon nods. “I’ll let you know when I get to the gate, and when I board.”

“And when you land,” Martin insists. “I don’t care what time it is.”

“I will. I promise. I—” Jon swallows hard, looking from Tim to Martin and back, then steps forward and hugs Martin tightly. Martin hugs him back, and they murmur something to one another before Jon eases back, turns, and hugs Tim just as fiercely.

Tim hugs him back. He’s still too thin, feels too frail, somehow. He’s barely recovered from the hell Orsinov put him through and now they’re sending him off on his own, and Tim wants to keep him here, but he knows he can’t.

“Please look after him,” he whispers in Tim’s ear.

“I will,” Tim promises. “You be careful, you hear me?”

“I hear you. And I’ll be as careful as I can. I promise.” Jon squeezes him briefly, then slowly, almost reluctantly, lets go. He takes a deep breath, slips out of his shoes, and heads over to join the queue.

He doesn’t say goodbye. Tim’s strangely relieved by that.

True to their promise, Tim and Martin stay where they are, side by side, watching as Jon inches ever closer to the metal detectors and security checkpoint. When Jon places bag and shoes in a bin to go on the conveyor belt, Martin reaches over without looking and grabs Tim’s hand. Tim grips his tightly in return, and they only…watch.

They can barely see him on the other side of the security gate, but for a brief moment, Tim sees Jon hesitate and look over his shoulder. Tim waves, Martin does too, and Jon raises his hand in farewell before slowly turning and walking away.

Martin lets go of Tim’s hand, but before Tim has time to regret its absence, he puts his arm around Tim’s shoulders and pull him closer. Tim slides his arm around Martin’s waist. They don’t need to say anything; they just turn and walk away.

People mostly ignore them, although one or two give them inscrutable looks. Tim doesn’t know if they think they’re a couple and disapprove or think they’re mourning something or what, but he decides he doesn’t care as long as they leave him alone. They make their way slowly back to Tim’s car, but don’t get in; Tim leans against the back of it, and Martin joins him, arms folded as they look up at the still-black sky.

“What song was that?” Tim finally asks. “That you were—before he left.”

Martin rubs a hand over his face. “It’s called ‘The Leaving of Liverpool.’ I think. It’s—it’s the song my dad always sang the night before he left, when he was putting me to bed.” He doesn’t say anything for a moment, then adds softly, “I fell asleep.”

“What?” Tim turns to look at Martin, frowning.

“The night he—we had this whole routine at bedtime when he was about to leave for the fishing run, and one of them was him singing that song to me. I sang along on the chorus, once I learned it, which didn’t take long.” Martin isn’t looking at Tim, his eyes still on the sky, but Tim can see the glint of tears in them. “Normally I’d settle down and close my eyes after he left, but that last time…I was tired. I don’t remember why, but I fell asleep before he got to the last verse, so I wasn’t awake for the whole song.” He turns to look at Tim. “And then he never came back. I thought it was my fault. I thought—it’s stupid, I know it’s stupid, but at first I thought it was like a-a magic charm or something, and I broke the ritual and that’s why he didn’t come back. I thought something had happened to him and—”

“Oh, Martin.” Tim reaches over and pulls Martin into a tight hug. Martin hugs him back, and Tim can feel the tears spilling over. “It’s not your fault. And—and Jon’s going to be okay. He will. He’ll be back soon.”

“I know,” Martin says softly. “It’s just…”

Tim doesn’t need Martin to finish. “I know.”

They don’t go anywhere. They probably should, probably don’t need to sit in the parking lot, but they do. They lean against Tim’s car and watch the stars, occasionally punctuated by the lights of planes taking off or landing. Jon texts them both to let them know he’s through customs, and then that he’s at his gate. Still they don’t leave, and still they don’t speak.

Finally, finally, the text comes to both of their phones. [Just took my seat on the plane. Have to turn my phone off now. Will text you when I arrive.]

Martin’s hands shake as he sends the reply. Tim waits for it to pop up on his own phone. [Have a safe flight.]

Jon’s next text comes almost at the same instant; he must have been typing it to send while Martin was trying to reply himself. Three simple words. Their meaning can’t be clearer. Still, Tim has to stare at them for a long moment.

[Miss you already.]

Slowly, Tim raises his head to look at Martin and finds Martin staring back with a look that’s probably identical to the one on Tim’s face. He’s pale, his eyes red-rimmed, but he’s not crying. They’re probably both past tears at this point. It’s just fear and longing and the ache of missing a part of themselves.

Tim fishes out his keys and holds them up; Martin nods, and they both climb into the car. When Tim turns the ignition on, the entire dashboard flashes for a moment—there’s a short in the electrical system somewhere; he’s been meaning to get it looked at, but he doesn’t drive much these days and this doesn’t happen every time, just occasionally—and the radio kicks on of its own volition. A reedy American tenor belts out the last line of the first verse. Already I’m so lonesome I could die…

Tim scowls at the radio. “It should be illegal to play this song within ten miles of a major airport.”

Martin gives a soft, slightly broken laugh. “Breakfast?”

“I don’t know that I can eat, but we can give it a shot.”

“Yeah, but…” Martin gives Tim a sideways look. “I promised I’d look after you.”

Tim grins and tries, once again, to kill the sudden flare of hope in his chest. “Same.”

“God, he’s such a worrywart.” Martin holds up a hand. “I know, I know, pot, kettle, et cetera. Want to call Sasha and see if she’s up?”

“No, I don’t want to die today.” Tim puts the car in gear and backs out of the space. “Come on. There have to be a few places open this early that won’t be too expensive for us to not eat at.”

Martin reaches over and puts his hand over Tim’s, not squeezing or holding, just resting it there. Tim slips his thumb over the back of Martin’s hand and rubs it gently, feeling it catch against the very, very slight roughness of Martin’s skin. The scars from the worms have faded as much as they ever will, mere pale circles against his skin, but there’s one on his right pinkie finger where the worm very nearly went all the way through, and there’s an ever-so-faint ridging there that Tim keeps rubbing at, over and over, as if he can erase the hurt and the marks from Martin’s skin.

It’s not until they get to the café that it occurs to Tim that what they’ve just done is exactly what the Primes did in those early days when they were still trying to conceal their relationship. It seems too dangerous to consider the ramifications of that, though, so Tim settles for sliding into the same side of the booth as Martin and leaning against his shoulder, needing some of his strength and warmth and softness.

Martin lets him.

[bijvoorbeeldja]

HERE SHE IS

The full enemies-to-lovers, “You’ve Got Mail” Sobbe AU, sprinkled with a few little surprises ***

I was NOT playin around when I said I was going to write ALL the fics during this quarantine y’all ain’t ready

Hope you enjoy! <3 I’d love to know what you think (even if you hate it)

……

Robbe’s phone buzzed on his nightstand.

earthlingoddity: good morning

He smiled into the screen, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

sterkerdanijzer: already awake?

earthlingoddity: yep

earthlingoddity: had some early morning inspiration

sterkerdanijzer: r u gonna let me see what you drew this time?

earthlingoddity: nope

earthlingoddity: against the rules

Robbe sighed, shaking his head.

Rolling out of bed, he contemplated what to type in response. This back-and-forth had been going on for months now, always coming back to this: the rules.

Clearly, they could text all they wanted. But that was it: just text. No voices, no photos showing their faces, locations, or anything else personal. Like drawings, for example. Nothing personal.

But really, everything they had been doing, all they had been talking about, felt personal to Robbe.

Screw the rules, Robbe thought. Even just through texts, he’d gotten closer to this person than anyone else in his life. Their conversations often started at dawn and spread throughout the day, lingering into the night until one of them fell asleep.

Of course, he’d agreed to the rules at the beginning. Hell, he’d made them. It was just talking, nothing else. But the more they talked, the more he wanted.

….

In a weird turn of events, Robbe had met Earthling in the comments of an Antwerp street art Tumblr, where teenagers flocked to share and comment on their latest masterpieces. Masked by alias handles, no one involved in the group knew the identities of the others. When they met up to tag at a location, everyone wore masks, hoodies, and dark clothes. Then they rehashed their work online, sharing photos and comments before planning their next meetup.

Robbe, using his disguised handle, had commented on a photo, when a stranger named earthlingoddity had commented back. Robbe had laughed and responded. The two passed banter back and forth before finally moving to DMs.

earthlingoddity: so you’re an artist, then the stranger had written him.

sterkerdanijzer: no, definitely not

sterkerdanijzer: I’m just in it for the vandalism

earthlingoddity: Hahahaha fair enough

earthlingoddity: u live in antwerp tho right?

sterkerdanijzer: pretty sure we’re not supposed to share details, STRANGER

earthlingoddity: ;-)

earthlingoddity: youre right. but i mean, we are talking now. and we’ve probably already seen each other

sterkerdanijzer: yeah maybe

earthlingoddity: I probably would have recognized a vandal tho…

sterkerdanijzer: not a chance. you’re probably one of those uppity art hoes who makes his masterpiece and doesn’t even acknowledge the little people

earthlingoddity: so you’re short then

sterkerdanijzer: enough! no personal details

Earthlingoddity: ok, so no names, no locations, no personal details. Any other rules?

sterkerdanijzer: uhm

sterkerdanijzer: no phone calls. And NO pics of your artwork. I might recognize it 

Earthlingoddity: so definitely no dick pics, then

Robbe had nearly choked at this. Even though their chatting had started as nearly nothing, it had rapidly become...something.  At least for Robbe. The past few weeks, their conversations had grown from occasional back-and-forths to constant communication, nearly-endless banter, and then...not-so-subtle flirting. Whatever was going on with this stranger, Robbe couldn’t bear to lose it. 

…..

Once he was finally ready for school that day, Robbe grabbed his skateboard and headed out to the street. Before mounting his board on the sidewalk, he opened his last chat with Earthling, trying to muster the courage to send him the message he’d been wanting to for days.

sterkerdanijzer: what if we said screw the rules….and met up? Like IRL?

Robbe’s fingers hovered over the keys, trying to gather the courage to hit send. It was stupid, he knew, but he was so terrified of scaring this stranger away. For reasons he didn’t fully understand yet, he needed him. Assuming it was, in fact, a him. I guess it was bold of him to assume Earthling was a boy. And gay. He took a breath and kicked off, starting to roll down the street. 

Then, out of nowhere, he was crashing, thrust back off his board and onto the ground as he collided with something. Or better, someone. 

Ugh, he groaned. Slowly rising up, he grabbed his phone and bag, which had been expelled violently from the impact. 

“What the hell, Robin?” the boy said, picking himself back up off the sidewalk where he’d fallen. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?! Do you even know how to ride that thing?”

Brushing the dirt off his hands, he looked up, already feeling stiff aches form in his joints from the fall. Looking up, he groaned again.

Of course, it was Sander Driesen. He should have known immediately. No one else had the nerve to call him Robin.

Robbe rolled his eyes. “Maybe you shouldn’t be meandering in the middle of the sidewalk,” he threw back. “Pick a side and stay out of the way of people who actually need to get somewhere.”

Sander scoffed, dusting himself off and grabbing his bag, rearranging the now-disorderly contents inside. “Right, I forgot. You’ll be late for class,” he said, the words dripping with disdain. “Ahh, to be young and only concerned with high school drama.” 

Oh, how Robbe hated Sander Driesen. 

Clad head-to-toe in black, with a noisy leather jacket, combat boots and a shock of (badly) bleached-blonde hair, he was a walking cliche. 

The two had grown up together, coexisting side by side in school and social circles. But the two could not be more different. Because of this, their relationship didn’t amount to much more than swapped insults in passing, tense confrontations, and merciless teasing. Now that Sander had graduated high school, their interactions were fewer. But for Robbe, that was still too often. 

“So tell me, O Wise One,” Robbe  shot back. “If you’re so above all of us children, why are you still dating Britt? She’s not too ‘high school drama’ for you?”

Sander grimaced. “I’m not with Britt,” he said, almost clenching his teeth.

“Right, whatever,” Robbe said, ready for this encounter to be way past over. “I don’t give a damn about your personal life. In fact, I don’t give a damn about anything involving you. I have to go.”

He turned to leave, realizing he skateboard was still on the ground, rolled out of his reach, an end tucked under the heel of Sander’s boot. He smirked at Robbe. 

“Oh, right. Your toy.” Sander rolled it back to Robbe, staring him down with an obnoxious smile. “See you around...Robin.”

Robbe grabbed his board and walked off in a huff, flipping Sander off as he passed. “Screw you, Sander.”

Rounding the corner, he stopped to steady his breathing. Why must his day be tainted with the influence of that fake blonde, edgy wannabe pyscho? Inhaling deep and taking advantage of his high tide of emotions, he pulled out his phone again, returning to his chat with Earthling. Do it, he told himself. Do it before you lose your nerve. Typing fast, he wrote:

Sterkerdanijzer: what if we said screw the rules….and met up? Like IRL?

He hit Send, waiting breathlessly.

Within seconds, three dots appeared. Earthling was typing.

……

The music was blaring, thumping against Robbe’s heartbeat. The crowd at the party was so thick that he was pressed up against Jens and Aaron, their combined heat making him slightly nauseous. 

But all he could focus on was the neon glow of the screen in front of him, and in his mind running over and over the words Earthling had texted him hours earlier: Earthlingoddity: probably not a good idea.

Robbe had stared at it again and again, feeling that same nosedive in his stomach as he had when he first got it that morning on the street. He didn’t want to meet Robbe. So all of it had been...nothing after all. Deep down he’d known that. It was just talking. But it still felt like rejection. How could he so intensely have misread their connection? Even virtually, Robbe had felt the magnitude of it. Or so he’d thought. 

All of this considered, he hadn’t been a very good wingman for his friends tonight. They’d dragged him to this party at Noor’s, scanning the room intently, looking for girls to pursue. Robbe just stood by, slumped and sipping lukewarm beer that just made his stomach turn.

Earthlingoddity: probably not a good idea he read again. Ugh. He was going to be torturing himself all night.

“Dude,” Jens elbowed him suddenly, or maybe just shifted, their proximity making it impossible to tell. “Dude, ten o’clock. That guy is totally checking you out.”

Robbe scoffed, not even bothering to look up. Gay guys at this party? He doubted it. 

“Seriously, Robbe,” Jens pushed again. “He’s definitely staring. And he’s actually pretty hot.” 

“Yep, totally,” Aaron agreed, nodding as he took a swig of his beer. “Definitely your type.”

“I don’t have a type,” Robbe sighed, finally tucking his phone back in his pocket and looking up. Shifting his gaze to his left, he looked in the direction the boys had indicated, trying to find a pair of eyes seeking his.

Whoa. Okay, so he was pretty hot.

Tall with messy brown hair, a boy with blue eyes was meeting his gaze. When the corners of the boy’s lips lifted in a smile, Robbe blushed, looking down. Now he looked desperate. Super.

“Go get another beer,” Jens said, shoving him forward. “See if he follows you. And act cool!”

“What? I—” Robbe protested, but the two were now pushing him together, forcing a parting of the crowd in front of them. 

Robbe swallowed, palms starting to sweat. He wove slowly through groups and couples dancing, making his way to the kitchen. Inside he sought out more drinks among the counter full of bottles and cups. It only took a few moments before he heard it.

“Hey,” the voice behind him said, deep and raspy. 

Robbe turned slowly, trying to swallow the dryness from his throat. The tall boy stood behind him, his beer dangling from two fingers. He leaned down to Robbe, putting his mouth close to his ear. 

“I’m Nathan,” he leaned back again to look Robbe in the eyes. 

“Uhm,” Robbe stammered. “I’m Rob-Robbe.”

“Hi, Robbe,” Nathan said, smiling. “Do you dance?” He took a step forward, dangerously close.

“Not if I can help it,” Robbe laughed nervously. The boy laughed too, revealing a set of perfectly white teeth and dimples. Robbe wiped a hand across his mouth, worried he was drooling now.

“Maybe another drink, then?” the boy asked. Robbe just nodded.

Nathan smiled and reached around to the counter, searching through the bottles. When he finally found an unopened one, he popped off the top easily, making Robbe’s stomach flip. So hot.  

Nathan handed it to Robbe, smiling. As Robbe took it, their fingertips brushed together. Robbe looked down, blushing. Then, again, the boy’s face was leaning down. They were cheek to cheek. 

“Want to get out of here?” he whispered, sending a wave of goosebumps down Robbe’s arm and spine. With a small nod, Nathan grabbed Robbe’s hand, leading him through the crowd.

…..

Outside, the air was much cooler, and Robbe felt like he could breathe again. The music blared from the door of the apartment building onto the street, but now it was just a dull throb instead of a deafening pulse.

Deep inhales of the outside air made his head feel lighter, his thoughts clearer...that is, until Nathan would brush his arm. Then he felt fuzzy again. With one arm leaning against the brick of the building, the other was casually touching Robbe’s every few minutes and Robbe could feel his knees going weak.

They had been talking for almost forty-five minutes and Robbe forgot how nice it was to talk intimately with someone he could actually be face to face with. Why had he even been bothering with Earthling? Clearly, that was going nowhere. Nathan, on the other hand, had potential. He was interesting, asking Robbe about his life and sharing details about his own. They talked easily, their touches getting progressively more frequent. Then, Nathan went silent, his gaze flicking down to Robbe’s lips. Robbe’s stomach was fluttering, licking his lips in anticipation. Nathan was leaning in, the hand against the brick sliding down to Robbe’s waist….

“Well, well well,” a loud voice behind him announced, breaking violently through their moment, causing the two to pull apart quickly. “If it isn’t my pal, Robin!” 

Sander Driesen, in dark jeans and a white t-shirt, appeared next to Robbe, followed by Britt in tow. He looked from Robbe to Nathan, smiling widely. 

“You have got to be kidding me,” Robbe muttered under his breath. Nathan looked confused, glancing from Robbe to the bleached-blonde boy.

“Robin?” he asked, biting his lip in bewilderment.

“Ignore him,” Robbe said, grabbing his shoulder. “C’mon.” 

“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Robin?” Sander replied, cocking his head and raising his eyebrows at Robbe. 

Robbe groaned. “Seriously, Sander,” he said, “Not now.”

“Oh, c’mon, buddy,” he gave Robbe’s shoulder a soft punch. “Introduce me to your friend,” the last work thick with implication.

Robbe rolled his eyes as Sander stuck a hand out to Nathan, who took it with a polite smile.

“I’m Sander,” the boy said. “Robbe and I….well, let’s just say we have a looooong history.”

Robbe glared at Sander. “We’re going now.”

As he was leading Nathan back down the street, Sander called out again, louder.

“We didn’t mean to interrupt the moment, love birds,” he said, smirking. “Carry on!” With a chuckle, Sander threw an arm around Britt’s waist and walked into the apartment.

A few feet down the sidewalk Nathan turned to Robbe. “Who was that?

“Nobody,” Robbe answered quickly, trying to turn the conversation anywhere but on Sander. 

“It didn’t seem like nobody,” Nathan said quietly, rubbing a hand through his hair.  “Is he...an old boyfriend, or something?”

“What?!” Robbe near-shouted, stopping to look right at Nathan. “No. No. Not even close. He drives me crazy.”

Nathan bit his lip. “Look, Robbe. I should probably get going.”

“What?” Robbe said, his face dropping. “Because of him? You can’t be serious—”

“I was probably moving too quickly,” Nathan said slowly. “I’m sorry.” He gave Robbe a quick kiss on the cheek and walked away, turning the corner out of view. 

…..

Robbe didn’t care who was spilling drinks or getting their feet stepped on. Plowing through the crowd with his elbows, he found his way into the party and back to Jens and Aaron, who were in the middle of telling a story to two girls bearing plastic cups and bored expressions.

“Uhm, hey guys?” Robbe said, tapping Jens on the shoulder. “I’m going to take off.” Jens turned, quickly motioning a be right back to the girls, who nodded vaguely. 

“Wait, what happened with the guy?’ Jens asked eagerly. “Are you going to his place?”

Robbe frowned. “No. It didn’t exactly...work out.”

“Sorry, man,” Aaron said, slapping Robbe’s shoulder. “Want us to come with?”

Robbe shook his head. “Nah, you guys stay. I’m going to call it a night anyway.”

Finishing his goodbyes, Robbe ditched his bottle and stepped back out in the night air, now considerably cooler. Finding his bike, he started unlocking the lock when a voice behind him again shook him out of his thoughts.

“Headed home already?” Sander. Again.

Robbe whipped around on him, finding him alone this time. 

“Seriously, Sander? Can you please just leave me alone?” Robbe said, almost whining now. “You already managed to ruin this night for me once.”

This sobered Sander a little, who swallowed and took a step forward.

“Robbe, I—”

“No, I mean it, Sander. Go back to Britt, who’s apparently not your ‘girlfriend,’” Robbe did air quotes, making Sander clench his teeth again, “and leave me the hell alone.”

There was silence for a moment before Sander spoke.

“I’m sorry, Robbe.”  

Robbe shook his head and turned back to his bike lock.

“I was doing you a favor, okay?” Sander spoke, his voice insistent. “That guy seemed like a real douche.” Robbe scoffed. Seriously? 

“I mean, did you see his hair?” Sander continued. “Total poser.”

Robbe laughed to himself. “Yeah, like you’re one to talk,” he mumbled back at Sander.

Sander smiled at this. “Touche.” 

Robbe had his bike unlocked now and he started to wheel it down the street. 

“See you around, Robbe.” Sander called out.

“Yeah, don’t count on it,” Robbe replied.

As he mounted his bike, his phone vibrated. A message.

Earthlingoddity: You know what, forget what I said. Screw the rules. Let’s meet. When? Where?

………

Robbe didn’t respond to Earthling’s message for several days. When he did, he wanted to come off cool, casual. He drafted and redrafted the same message in a hundred different ways. Finally, he sent back:

Sterkerdanijzer: Yeah, okay. I guess we can. I can do Friday at 18h. Drinks at Jardim Antwerpen?

He got a reply almost immediately.

Earthlingoddity: Absolutely. I’ll be there. Without a mask ;-) 

So there he was, sitting at a table watching the sun go down, turning a near-empty glass in his hands over and over again in his hands. Even with the condensation from the glass, Robbe’s palms were clammy. He was so nervous he had to occasionally reach down to calm his shaking legs. 

Milan had helped him pick out an outfit, a white linen button up and jeans. Zoe had mussed his hair until she insisted it was “perfect.” But he just felt ridiculous. Why was he even doing this? If he’d learned anything from the past few weeks, it was that he knew nothing. And he was probably going to be single forever. And for all he knew, Earthling would turn out to be a serial killer. 

At 18h15, Robbe started to get antsy. He messaged the boy:

Sterkerdanijzer: I’m here. White shirt, brown hair. U close?

But he got no response. He bit his lip anxiously, checking his phone constantly. At 18h45, after he had downed one more drink than he should have, he got up. Leaving a tip on the table, he shoved his phone in his pocket and headed to leave. This was a ridiculous idea, he scolded himself. So stupid. Of course he wouldn’t show.

As he neared the exit, he saw a flash of white in his peripheral. Turning, he saw a boy sitting at a table alone, phone in his hand. Sander.

As if he’d spoken his name out loud, Sander looked up, green eyes glowing. He smirked. “Small world,” he called out to Robbe. “What are you doing here?”

Robbe glared at him. “None of your business. What are you doing here?”

Sander just looked at him for a minute. “I’m, uh...waiting for Britt. She’s supposed to be here soon. Were you waiting for a date?” His knowing smile made Robbe’s insides twist. 

“Right,” Robbe said, nodding. “Well, I’m going to…” he turned again to leave.

“Uhm, actually, Robbe?” he called out. Robbe turned back slightly. What was he going to say now?

“Do you think I could borrow your phone to text Britt? Mine is dead.”

Robbe hesitated. Gone from Sander’s tone was any hint of teasing. He sounded genuine. He sounded desperate, almost. 

“Yeah, fine,” Robbe seceded, walking over to Sander’s table and handing over his phone. 

“Thanks,” Sander said, giving Robbe a small smile as he met his gaze. 

Robbe stood there as Sander typed, concentrating hard on the screen. Waiting, he glanced around again. No sign of anybody new. No sign of anybody looking for him. He was so stupid. 

“So, were you supposed to meet Nathan here?” Sander asked, not looking up as he continued to type.

“Why do you care?” Robbe asked.

Sander looked up. “I’m just making conversation. I hope it wasn’t him, though. You could do better.”

Robbe scoffed. “Okay, thanks for the tip, Sander.” He turned away again. ‘Cause Sander cared SO much about him. Right.

Then Sander stood, downing the rest of his drink. “Look like she’s not coming.” But as he handed Robbe back his phone, he didn’t look sad. He was smiling. Walking toward the exit, he turned back toward Robbe. 

“You coming?” Sander asked.

“What, me?” Robbe asked incredulously.

“Uh, yeah you, Robin,” Sander laughed. “Let’s go.” Walking away again, Robbe stood there, mouth open. 

“Come!” Sander’s voice reached Robbe again. He was probably too drunk to think straight because next thing he knew, he was following Sander’s silhouette into the sunset. 

…..

“Sander, you cannot be serious,” Robbe stood obstinately away from the door, shaking his head at the boy, who was jiggling with the lock on a door, labeled boldly with a “No Trespassing” sign. “I assumed your plans were more drinks, not jail.”

Sander kept his hands on the door handle, but turned to face Robbe, a teasing grin on his face.

“Would you chill? We’re not getting arrested. I’ve done this a hundred times.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that makes me feel better,” Robbe retorted. 

Sander just laughed and continued jiggling until click. The door squeaked open. He turned and raised his eyebrows at Robbe. “Come.”

Robbe shook his head again. He could not believe this. Not only was Sander trying to ruin his social life, he was trying to get him arrested. But Sander had disappeared behind the door, and finally, reluctantly, Robbe followed behind him.

Illuminating the stairs inside with the light on his phone, Sander led Robbe to the top, where he held his hands out in a ta-da! motion, so clearly pleased with this reveal. 

Reaching the top and taking in the scene, Robbe’s jaw dropped. A large, open-air pool laid out before him, neon blue water rippling with the cold wind.

“No,” Robbe started, his voice escalating. “Sander, no. We are not—”

But Sander was starting to shrug out of his jacket, then reaching down to undo the laces of his boots. 

“C’mon,” he whisper-yelled. “We’re doing this!”

“You’re insane!” Robbe yelled. “There’s no way I’m getting in that pool. We will die!”

Sander laughed as he lifted his shirt over his head. “We will not die, Robbe. Just come!”  

Robbe just stood there in disbelief as Sander kept shedding clothes, not stopping at his briefs. In a blink of an eye, he was completely naked and running towards the pool, jumping in with a yelp.

Robbe’s jaw dropped. Sander was actually insane. And was his skin always that golden? And did he have abs?

Emerging from the water with a screech, Sander called out again. 

“Robbe, come! It’s amazing in here!”

“No,” Robbe said defiantly. “No way.”

“You’re missing out, Robin,” he called out to him in a sing-song voice.

Robbe shook his head. “It’s freezing cold!”

“Yeah, it’s freezing cold,” Sander said. “But you have to do it. Get in! Now!”

Treading water, the light from the pool making his blonde hair glow neon, Sander waited for him, smiling.

Before he could think, Robbe started unbuttoning his shirt, dropping it on the concrete. Stepping out of his jeans, he watched Sander’s eyes roam across his bare chest. He swallowed hard.

Down to his underwear, Robbe started toward the pool, berating himself for giving into the demands of a pretentious — but weirdly captivating — boy. 

Okay, that was clearly the alcohol talking, he thought, shaking the idea from his head. 

“Hey, hey!” Sander yelled, stopping Robbe in his tracks. “All the way or no way.”

Robbe balked at him. Was he serious? He exhaled, biting his lip. Reaching down, he stripped off his underwear, now completely bare in front of Sander Driesen. He was going to regret this. But for now, he jumped into the pool.

He had been right. It was freezing. Easily the coldest water he’d ever felt. When his head exited the water, he yelped. 

“Oh. My. God.” he squealed, teeth chattering. “I am going to kill you, Sander!” He splashed around violently, trying to keep his limbs from going numb. 

“Dude, can you even swim?” Sander yelled, laughing.

Robbe splashed water Sander’s way. “Are you kidding? I can swim better than you any day!”

“Was that a challenge?” Sander quipped, circling around Robbe. 

“Well, yeah, I think it was!” Robbe answered. “You scared Driesen?” 

Sander smiled at him. “You’re on, Robin! First one to that opposite side of the pool wins! On three!”

“One….” Robbe started.

“Two….” Sander echoed.

“Three!” They yelled in unison, taking off for the pool’s edge. 

Robbe stroked, gasping deeply as he tried to find his stride. He was not going to let Sander beat him, no matter how drunk he was.

But when he reached the ledge, cheering in victory, he couldn’t see Sander. He wiped the water from his eyes, and looked beneath the water for Sander. He couldn’t see him anywhere.

“Sander?” He called out. “I totally kicked your ass!”

Still, nothing. Now, Robbe was starting to panic.

“Sander?!” His yelled, desperation creeping into his voice. He was about to call out again when Sander popped out of the water directly in front of him, so close, stealing Robbe’s breath and pinning him against the ledge.

“Sander, what the hell? What are you—” Robbe started, but before he could finish, Sander grasped the ledge behind Robbe, covering his body with his. Robbe felt Sander’s chest rise and fall against his as he tried to catch his breath.

“You won, Robin,” Sander spoke deeply. 

Then, he was kissing Robbe, keeping one hand on the ledge, the other sliding down to Robbe’s waist, holding him in place. Sander’s hand was firm, making Robbe melt beneath him. Robbe reached back a hand to hold himself to the ledge and the other found the nape of Sander’s neck. Using his fingers, he pulled Sander towards him, then let those fingers tangle themselves in Sander’s hair. Feeling his pull, Sander kissed Robbe deeper, grasping at any part of Robbe’s mouth he could find, sliding down to his jaw and his neck, sucking the skin there. Whining, Robbe’s eyes rolled back. Sander found lips again, tugging on them gently. Robbe licked the soft skin of Sander’s lips and heard a gentle moan escape the boy’s throat. It was happening so fast. Their limbs and breath were tangling, mixing together in explosive energy that made them both weak. 

He was kissing Sander Driesen. He was kissing Sander Driesen. When these words came together and made sense in his mind, he startled, shoving Sander off of him. 

“What are we doing?” Robbe spoke, trying to catch his breath. “What are we doing?! This isn’t….we’re, we’re drunk!” His voice was rising, filling with disbelief and exasperation.

“Robbe, I—” Sander said, water dripping off his golden skin, tempting Robbe more than he wanted to admit. He approached Robbe again slowly. 

“No, no,” Robbe said, reaching for the ledge and hefting himself out of the water. “This was a huge mistake. I’m drunk. We’re drunk. We shouldn’t have—”

“Robbe, wait!” Sander called, swimming towards the ledge and following Robbe out.

Robbe ran and gathered his clothes. “I have to go, Sander. Let me go.” 

Sander stopped, a look of confusion and hurt painting his face. “Robbe, don’t….”

Robbe spun on him, his voice rising. “Don’t follow me, Sander. And don’t you dare tell anyone about this. Swear it.”  

Sander just looked at him, lifting up his hands in submission. “I’m sorry, I swear I won’t—”     

Then Robbe ran down the stairs, struggling to pull his clothes on over his soaking-wet body as he left Sander behind him.

……

Robbe had hoped that when he woke up, the whole night would have been a dream. A ridiculous dream that would have made him blush...and probably need to take a cold shower. But still, a dream. A dream he could forget about. But the pile of wet clothes on the floor and phone full of messages from Sander proved otherwise. He groaned, aching from the memory and the hangover. 

His phone vibrated again and exasperated, he turned to silence it when he saw it — a message not from Sander, but from Earthling. 

Earthlingoddity: Hey….I know that there is probably nothing I can say to you right now that will make up for what I did last night. I didn’t mean to stand you up. I promise. Something just...came up and I couldn’t make it. I promise it wasn’t you, okay. Please, please forgive me? 

Robbe just stared at the message. As he did, another message from Sander came. 

Sander: Robbe, please answer me. I’m sorry about last night. Can we please talk, face-to-face?

Robbe rubbed his face. What was he going to say to either of these people? Why was everything such a mess?

Kissing Sander last night...that had been the biggest shock to his system. Sander hated him. He hated Sander. That was their relationship. But in an ice-cold pool they’d entered some alternate universe and crossed a line. They were drunk. That was it. Right?

Robbe went back to the message from Earthling. Typing slowly, he sent:

Sterkerdanijzer: you were right. We should have never agreed to meet.

He got a response back almost immediately.

Earthlingoddity: No! No, it wasn’t a mistake. We should meet. I promise, something just came up that I couldn’t say no to. I want to meet you so bad. Please, can you give me another chance? I’ll do anything.

Robbe closed the message. Not now.

Taking another deep breath, he opened Sander’s message. 

Robbe: Fine, we can talk. Come to my house in an hour.

Sander: I’ll be there. 

……

After Robbe had showered and straightened up his room, he took a deep breath. He had no idea how he was going to survive this interaction with Sander, after all that had happened between them. They’d kissed. ALOT. They’d been naked, for heaven’s sake. Robbe groaned, flopping back down on his bed. What was happening to him? The world was turning upside down.

With that, there was a knock on the door. He could hear Jens shuffling to get it, but he raced to the door, sliding past Jens. 

“I got it, I got it.” 

Jens just looked at him, yawning. “What the hell?”

“It’s...it’s uhm...for me. I’ll get it.”

Jens stared blankly. “You’re being weird.” But he just went off towards the kitchen, yawning again.

Taking a breath, Robbe opened the door. 

Sander stood there, his hair also wet, clearly brushed into submission. He had on a cream-colored sweater, which shocked Robbe. He looked good. 

“Robbe. Hey.” He smiled, taking a deep breath.

Robbe just stood there, unsure of what to say.

Sander smiled again. “Soooo….can I come in or….?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, come in.” Robbe opened the door wider so Sander could enter. 

Glancing towards the kitchen, where Jens was making coffee, glasses clinking, he motioned to the hallway. 

“Let’s go to my room and talk,” Robbe spoke quietly.

“Sure, yeah,” Sander nodded. “Lead the way.”

Robbe walked hesitantly toward his room, opening the door for Sander. He entered, looking around. 

“Nice place,” he commented, looking at Robbe with a wink. “Thanks for inviting me.”

Robbe smiled, feeling flushed all of the sudden.

Sander went and sat on the edge of the bed. Robbe followed.

Sander cleared his throat. “So, I know what happened last night surprised you. I know it surprised me.” He smiled to himself. “I just wanted to say that….I’m not sorry.”

“What?” Robbe looked up at him, confused.

Sander was firm, sure. “I said, I’m not sorry. For what happened. For kissing you.”

“You’re….not sorry….” Robbe repeated slowly, trying to understand.

“I wanted to kiss you and I did. And I don’t regret it. I know we were drunk, but I think you wanted to kiss me, too.”

Robbe felt heat rise to his cheeks. He spoke quietly. “Sander…it doesn’t make sense. We don’t make sense. At all. We are at each other’s throats constantly.”

“So what?” Sander asked, laughing. “Maybe what we thought was hate was just passion.”

“Passion?” Robbe choked. “Passion? We can’t stand each other! We drive each other completely crazy!”

“Well,” Sander began, biting his lip. “That, I guess, is true. You do drive me crazy. But not for the reasons you think.”

What? 

“Sander, what are you—” but Robbe stopped as Sander turned towards him, sliding a hand to cup his jaw. 

“You do drive me completely insane, Robbe,” he said gently. “But in a way I want to feel all the time. That kiss was….” he put his hands together over his head, imitating a mind-blown gesture, “pppppffffffeeeewww.”

Robbe’s lips were curling up in a smile he couldn’t hide. He felt warm. But something nagged at him.

“Sander, I can’t do this,” he admitted quickly, before he could stop himself. “I know this sounds silly and stupid, but….there’s someone else.”

Sander sat back. “Who, Nathan?”

Robbe shook his head. “No, not Nathan. You ruined that one, remember?” He slugged Sander’s arm.

“No, it’s….” Robbe put his head down, embarrassed. “It’s someone I don’t even actually know.” He covered his face in his hands. “I know, it’s so stupid. But I think I really care about this person.”

To Robbe’s surprise, Sander didn’t laugh. Or come up with some stupid insult. Or even seem surprised by his revelation at all. 

“Okay,” he began. “So, who is he? Where did you meet him?” 

“Well,” Robbe said, blushing again. “We met online. On a stupid street art blog. We talk through DMs all day, everyday. Yesterday, when we ran into each other, I was waiting for him. We were supposed to meet each other for the first time in person. But….he stood me up.”

“Hmmm,” Sander sounded. “Sounds like a real asshole.”

Robbe laughed. “He’s not, though! Sure, I was devastated that he ditched me...and then, we kissed...and, everything is just a mess.” He fell back on the bed again, hands over his face.

Sander was silent for a minute. “So did he apologize? For last night?”

Robbe sat up slightly. “Well, yeah. He messaged me again saying he was sorry, and that it wasn’t me.”

“So?” Sander asked, probing for more. 

“So what?” Robbe asked.

“So, what are you going to say? Are you going to forgive him?” Sander asked.

“Well...I don’t know,” Robbe admitted. “I want to. You’re going to insult me mercilessly for the rest of time for saying this, but...I think Earthling is my soulmate.”

Sander grinned. “I’m sorry, who?”

Robbe laughed, embarrassed again. 

“Earthlingoddity, it’s his handle. I just call him Earthling.”

Sander looked down at his lap, biting his lip to hide a grin.

“I knew you would make fun of me!” Robbe shoved Sander. “I knew it!”

“No!” Sander held his hands up innocently. “I’m not making fun of you! I think it’s cute. I mean, it’s a Bowie reference, he’s obviously got good taste.”

Robbe smiled. “Yeah, he does,” he said.

“So,” Sander continued. “If you think this guy is your soulmate, I think you should talk to him. Give him another chance.”

“What should I say?” Robbe asked. “Do I ask him to meet up again?”

Sander thought for a minute. “I think you need to give him an ultimatum. His last chance.”

“An ultimatum?” Robbe asked.

“Yep.” Sander said, scooting to sit cross-legged on the bed. “Take out your phone.”

“What, now?” Robbe asked incredulously. 

“Yes, now!” Sander said firmly. “C’mon. Get your phone.”

Robbe shook his head. Of course, his rival, the guy he’d made out with last night, was now helping him attempt to snag a man. He officially understood nothing.

Taking out his phone, he pulled up Earthling’s message. 

“So what do I say?” He looked at Sander.

“Just say….” Sander began, looking off in thought. “You hurt me yesterday. This is your one chance to make it up to me. Meet me tonight or we’re done with this. No more talking, no more messages. This is it. Your last chance” Damn. Looking at Sander once more, he typed it out. Taking a deep breath, he hit Send.

“Oh no, oh no, I sent it. What now. What if he doesn’t answer? What if he thinks I’m desperate?” Robbe rattled off, starting to hyperventilate.

Then, Sander’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out. 

“Sorry, hold on a sec,” he said. “I gotta respond to this.”

“Sander!” Robbe whined. “Focus! I need you! If he responds, you have to help me!”

“Don’t worry. Robin,” Sander said with a smirk. “He will. And I will.”

Sander typed quickly, then put his phone back down on the bed. He was hiding another smirk.

Robbe glared at him. “Sander! Are you texting Britt right now? Should I remind you that we’re focusing on me right now? Or should I remind you that you kissed me last night? What is wrong with you?!”

Sander shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t texting Britt, Robbe, calm down.” 

But Robbe ignored this as his phone buzzed again.

“Oh my god, okay, it’s him,” he cleared his throat. “This is what he said.” 

Now, Sander was laughing. Loudly. 

“Sander!” Robbe whined again.

Sander tried to stifle a laugh with his palm. “Okay,” he tried to turn the laugh into a cough. “Right, I’m focused. Well, what did he say?”

Robbe swiped and opened the message.

“He said...I choose you, Robin. Always, one hundred percent, forever.”

Robbe’s phone fell in his lap as he looked up at Sander. 

“Sander…..what kind of joke are you—”

Sander just shook his head and grinned. “Don’t call me, Sander. From now on, you have to call me Earthling.”   

Then, Sander was crawling over to Robbe, pushing him back down on the bed.

Hovering over him, he spoke gently. 

“When I saw you with Nathan at the party last week, I got jealous. You looked so hot and I knew I was starting to want you. It scared me. I knew you hated me. But I did. I wanted you. Trust me, Britt and I aren’t together. I just wanted to make you jealous. And that obviously backfired,” he said, laughing.

He continued to Robbe’s breathless stare. “Then I found out it was you I had been messaging when I borrowed your phone at the bar yesterday,” he said. “I saw the messages I’d sent you as Earthling. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe Robin was the boy I’d been talking to. The boy I’d been falling in love with, online and in real life. I was going to tell you right there, but you were so mad at me and so cute and I couldn’t resist trying to see if I could get you to fall in love with me, too. As Sander. And after that kiss, I knew what we had was real. Whether over text or in a freezing cold pool, it was real.”

Robbe blinked in disbelief. Was he really hearing this? It wasn’t some colossal joke Sander was playing on him? 

“Sander….” he said carefully. “Is that true? Is that really—” but before he could finish, Sander was kissing him again, winding a hand into his hair, immersing him completely, deeply into him.

It was true. 

.....

So, telling their friends about their relationship had been interesting. 

First, Jen had walked in on them, sloshing coffee all over himself when he saw Sander pulling off Robbe’s shirt. That had been a hard one to explain.

But the weirdest part was that no one had really seemed surprised. Sure, Jens was taken back initially, but as they sat in the kitchen sharing coffee (after Robbe had reclaimed his shirt and gotten dressed), Robbe sitting on Sander’s lap, Jens had smiled at them like a proud dad. 

You’re like yin and yang, he’d said. Somehow you two just fit.

And they did. In so many ways. Their minds, their souls, their bodies...

They just fit. 

[weyheyjxlya]

Ｔｉｍｅｌｅｓｓ

*•.¸♡ pairing: asahi azumane x reader

*•.¸♡ genre: sfw | fluff | a lil angsty (hehe) | wc: 2.3k

*•.¸♡ prompt : Amnesia

*•.¸♡ warning: anterograde amnesia | blind panic attack | fist fight | a little cursing

*•.¸♡ a/n : so henlo! been so busy recently but I promise! I’ll continue where I left off You’re Back. so this is my second time writing for a prompt for the server collab of Haikyuu Headquarters. this is a hard one and it is expected to be long so this will have two parts. also, I created a playlist for this in spotify so listen to it as well. so ya, I hope u enjoy this mi lovely people.

also, I just reached 100 and I’m crying because this is a milestone for me. I did not ever expected that I would write for tumblr and here I am enjoying it. so omg thank you very much minna!! ilysm!! <3

[♬• playlist ���♬]

part I | part II

Life never felt so good every time you are talking to this specific person over the internet. May it take minutes or hours, error messages, internet connection problems, etc. You both never failed to stall conversations. It's like the world revolved around the two of you. You two found each other's presence like it's the most precious thing in the world. Hands may get tired from making the keys clack and eyes may hurt from looking at the screen for a long time but it's all worth it. Every single word you receive from each other is worth it. It may seem addictive to the eyes of other people but for the two of you, it's like a heaven-sent gift. Both of you are hopeless romantics. Both of you are each other's shoulder when problems set foot into your lives. You found comfort in each other, a loving comfort that made the both of you yearn for each other. Yearning for each other while slowly realizing that the two of you are already falling into the depths of love together. That should've been the case already but there's one thing. One thing that' stopping both of you. Real names and real faces. Recognizing each other by only your original created avatar and usernames made the love stop its way into the battlefield. You don't recognize each other genuinely, doubt, and fear still in place between the two of you. Therefore, one day you both agreed to take it to another level. You both decided to finally meet one another.

02 | 11 | 2018

depressed_epiphany: ha! u got me there

insouciance_flower: well, that's how smart I am lmao

depressed_epiphany: but hey, let's take this to another level. how bout we meet next week?

insouciance_flower: so eager to see my beauty huh?

depressed_epiphany: you disgust me. but how bout the hamaya isobashi next town? I wanna try their foods so badly

insouciance_flower: deal! 7:30 pm it is?

depressed_epiphany: oh yes it is! see you!

insouciance_flower: see you <3 (ew)

02 | 18 | 2018

"Ma, do I look good?" you asked for affirmation as you twirl around in front of the mirror while admiring the frills upon the ends= of your dress

Excitement made its way upon your whole system as today is the day that you'll be seeing the other person that you've been talking for months with. Despite the animosity, you've found tranquility in the hands of the guy with the username "dxpressed_epiphany". For the whole day of wondering, you've been wondering about what's his name, age, height, personality. Is he the same in person or he's just nothing like when he's online. You've been worried about those pieces of information throughout the waiting process for this day to come. What if you wouldn't like each other after meeting up? That would be devastating, you thought. But despite all of those unending thoughts, you've decided to just let it be and go with the flow then walked your way to the driveway to fetch your car.

With trembling hands, you hopped into your car and started it. As you go out of the driveway, your resolution becomes firmer.

"Don't be nervous now Y/N," you scolded yourself

As you got further away from your house, your speed also accelerated. The restaurant's a bit too far from yours so that's why you've decided to drive there an hour earlier, so if in case of loss you can still find your way back again to the right track.  As time pass, roads are getting darker and less crowded. Trees and open fields filled your peripheral view. As the sun makes its way down to exchange places with the moon, your eyes wholeheartedly admired its beauty and followed it, forgetting for a while that you're driving. Just as you put your eyes back on the road, you've noticed that you're going towards the end of the road. So you reflexively stomped on the breaks and shakingly took the wheel and forcefully steered it which made your car turn 360 for plenty of times until you...

~~~

05 | 18 | 2018

"Pa, what am I doing here in this hospital bed?" you asked

"Oh thank God!" your parents sighed as they hug you together tightly as if they lost you

"What am I still lying here for? I'm supposed to be having a date today," you've mentioned

08 | 17 | 2018

As months passed, after being stood up by the girl that he had been hoping for. He received no replies after that day. The program where they had been talking to got out-of-date. And those lead Asahi to who he is right now. Negativity got its way on his system, even if Sugawara karate chops the negativity out of him. He thought there's no way in hell that he'll ever be able to be in a proper relationship anymore. Asahi got into various kinds of relationships and got off with it in just a short time. He thought that there's something wrong with him.

"Why are you still in my mind insouciance flower?" he wondered as he skims through his finished business in his laptop

"Please let me go," he agonized as that day left a mark on his heart that made all of his hopes flew away with the wind. He is certain that that girl would be the one once they would meet. That incident left him in a devastating state as he waited hours for her to arrive in the restaurant. His heart broke and contacted Suga and Daichi later that night as he drank his sorrows away at the nearest pub that they can get laid off to.

As he reviewed all of his thoughts, he came up with a thought of finally letting go with all of his yearnings and hopes that he could once again talk to and meet her for once, even if it's just a coincidental event. He has decided to repeat that day, to do all the things that they were supposed to do, and to go to the place where they're supposed to meet. It's more of a pilgrimage just so he could let go of the sorrow that he had been feeling ever since.

08 | 18 | 2018

Asahi wore the same attire that he wore on that specific date. While readying himself up inside the car, hands are shaking as he grabs the handle of his car as he went down and tidied his clothes as he walked into the restaurant where they're supposed to meet.

Fingers fiddling with the buttons of his cuff links, nervousness crept its way into his system as he recognized some servers that had seen his terrible state from the last 6 months. He came a little later than the actual time that they've agreed together. Eyes scanning throughout the restaurant as he subtly hoped for the last time that he would encounter a coincidental event where he could meet her for once.

~~~

As Asahi continued to scan around the whole restaurant, one subject caught his eyes. It's a lady, alone, has been circling her wine glass ever since, and has been circling her pasta with a fork and made portions of it as she successfully twirled it into mini pyramids of pasta.

He didn't noticed that he had looking at her for quite a while now and got snapped back to reality when he saw the lady stood up from her seat and started walking towards his table, in which he doesn't know because he flinched and returned his gaze over his food. Fear came into him when he felt someone poking him from behind but he slowly turned his head and...

"Hi! Are you my date for today?" you innocently asked the lone guy as you wore your wonderful dress that has the frill that you've wasted your time with as you admire how pretty it is made

"Hi I'm sorry, but I don't think so" he gulped as he continued focusing on his food because your face is too divine to look at it much further

"Oh sorry for disturbing you then," you replied with a courteous smile as you go back to your seat

Thirty minutes have passed since the time that you should've left. Also, you've noticed that the lone guy had been alone for a while, who's just there, aloof and lost in his sight. Devastated, you nonchalantly walked over to him.

"Hi! mind if I just take the other seat?" you inquired

"Sure," he replied and right away, you asked for assistance to transfer your tables from yours to his and started conversing the night away.

~~~

"I've had a great time. Can I see you tomorrow as well Asahi-san?" you asked

"Yes Y/N, same time and place right?" Asahi giddily confirmed

"Yes, see you tomorrow then!" you giggled as you walked out first from the restaurant

Asahi never felt happier as he paid for his bill because for once he forgot his purpose for revisiting this place. He became certain that he finally would get to let go of the insouciance flower.

"Hi, Sir!! Thank you for finally making her enjoy and smile for this night. She had been here for 6 months already but still, thank you!" the staff at the counter thanked wholeheartedly

"You're welcome?" Asahi replied as he can't register what's inside the all of the sudden gratitude of the staff but he just brushed it off and started walking towards the car

08 | 19 | 2018

"Hi, Y/N!!" Asahi blurted as he walked towards your direction

"Uhh hello? I'm sorry but I don't think I know you?" you replied as you wondered how did this guy get to know who you are. You've thought for a moment that this stranger just saw your name from a name tag or something, so you've checked yourself and your table if there's any but there's none. How did this guy even got your name?

"Uhm but we just talked yesterday, we even got to agree to meet here again after yesterday," he mentioned while you noticed that he shakingly fiddles with his fingers

"I'm sorry, but as long as I can remember, I was picking out a dress with my mom yesterday. Don't you think you're just mistaken?" you justified

"But what just happened yesterday? I know I'm not mistaken, it's you. I remember perfectly just how beautiful you are," he replied

"Hi, I appreciate the compliment but the thing that I don't appreciate is flirting with someone I just met," you replied with a straight face

"But," he replied, and before he gets to explain himself more staff that he recognized from 6 months ago approached him and dragged him out of the restaurant.

~~~

"Hi, sir! I've heard that my staff yesterday thanked you but I want you to please dismiss it and I hope you just don't meddle with Y/N-chan anymore. She's a special case. So please sir! could you please just stop it here." the staff that looked like the head one pleaded and bowed

"I'm very sorry to hear about that but I just can't. Before I would give you a yes to your request if you could just please explain to me why she's a special case?" Asahi begged as his hopes are being crushed furthermore

"Well if that's the only way to stop you. Everyone in this restaurant and the community knows about her case. Y/N-chan has anterograde amnesia meaning she cannot create new memories right from the event when the accident happened. So after she sleeps the night off, all memories from today will be erased. So every day she always thinks that it's still Sunday and she has a date for tonight. It's the same routine for 3 months now, she had the accident 6 months ago and they've mentioned that she has a date in this restaurant back from that day. But on the way here, the accident happened. So to prevent her from knowing everything and to blind panic, her family mentioned to us to just don't mind her when she's doing the same routine every single day,"

"6 months ago right? can you please provide me what Sunday that day is and the time that she usually goes here," Asahi pleaded as he's realizing something from the sudden shock of tonight's event

"Yes, it's February 18, the year of 2018. She mentioned that she goes here one hour early from the actual time of her date to prevent her from getting lost so it's 6:30 pm" the staff answered

"I think I got all the details that I need. Thank you very much!" Asahi thanked the staff wholeheartedly but got his heart to soften as he believed and realized one thing. It was you. You are insouciance_flower. The one that he had been waiting for. The one that he loved dearly over the animosity. So that is the reason why he forgot things yesterday because you had met his vibes and taste. It is you.

Asahi blankly walked to his car and drove home as this sudden news hit him so bad. His heart was filled with guilt. Blaming himself why you got involved in an accident.

The idea of giving up from meeting you came to him once, but he persisted. Persisted to make it up to you. He absorbed Sugawara's words from 5 years ago that he needs to get rid of that "negative goatee" in himself. He would do everything to meet you up every night so that he could fulfill that agreement that you two made before you got into that accident. He would do everything even if every single day and effort would be disregarded as you'll soon as you sleep and forget about it. That is his resolution and will be his only resolution to make it up to you.

Meanwhile. back from the restaurant. The head staff contacted your parents as this sudden threat to their daughter came.

[eldritchteaparty]

Chapters: 14/20 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane, Melanie King, Georgie Barker, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Basira Hussain Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting

Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.

Chapter summary: Martin tells Tim everything that’s happened to him and Jon, and about the fear entities that now inhabit this dimension.

Read above at AO3 or read here below!

Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters is here.

***

“Damn.” Tim stood up and looked down at Jon lying on the bed, where he and Martin had just deposited him. “He is really out of it.”

“Yeah. That—that happens.” Martin decided it was a little cool in the bedroom, and pulled the blanket over Jon. When he looked up again, Tim was staring at him in a very specific way that he decided to ignore. “Thanks for helping me get him back here.”

“Well, you definitely weren’t getting any help from him. So… are we still doing this?”

“Yeah.” Martin took one last look at Jon; at least he still looked peaceful. “Let’s, um—let’s go to the sitting room. Can I get you some tea? Or—”

“No.” Tim shook his head as they made their way back out of the bedroom. “Can I ask—are we doing this now because Jon is knocked out?”

“No,” Martin said immediately, then thought a little more. “Well—mostly no.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means—” Martin tried to think of the best way to say it. “Look, he knows we have to tell you. I just don’t get the feeling he—I think it’s better if I do it.”

“Better for who?”

“I—” Martin sighed. “Look—we can wait until he wakes up, if you want.”

“Nope.” Tim sat on the couch and turned to Martin. “That’s all right.”

Martin grabbed the chair from Jon’s desk and brought it over to face Tim. As he did so, he realized he’d thought through how to tell certain parts of the story quite a lot, but others not nearly as much. One thing he hadn’t really thought about at all was how to start.

“Are you sure you don’t want tea?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Fine. Ok—ok. So.” He took a deep breath. “Five years ago—about—we all started working in the archives together. Sasha applied for the head archivist job and she got it; she asked you and Jon to take assistant positions, and I interviewed for the third one and—well, Sasha gave me a chance. Right?”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Right…”

“And since then—I mean, we’ve done, like—pretty normal archive stuff. And sure, the Institute is a bit off, like—the stuff people want us to store for them and the research and all that, but it’s been fine, right?”

“Um…”

“I mean compared to what’s been happening since—since Jon and I disappeared.”

“Yeah, ok. I’ll give that to you.” Tim continued to look at him expectantly.

“Ok. Ok. Well—it happened a different way, too. Some—somewhere else.”

“Ok.” Tim sat back and crossed his arms over his chest.

“And look—no matter how I tell this—it’s not going to make sense until I really get it all out. So—”

“I’m listening.”

“Right. It’s just that it’s—”

“Martin.”

“Ok. So five years ago, in this—other place, we all started working in the archives. Only—only Sasha wasn’t the head archivist, Jon was.”

Tim shifted his weight on the couch, but didn’t uncross his arms. “You know he applied for the position? I’m not supposed to—no one knows I know that, actually. Not even Jon.”

“Huh.” Martin hadn’t been aware. “I mean—I didn’t know either, but that makes sense.”

“Does it? We all knew Sasha was applying, and she was way more qualified. Nothing against Jon, just—objectively, she was.”

“I mean that it makes sense given—well, ok, we’ll get to that. So you know the people here that started coming in to talk to us—the interviews and the—the statements, the written ones—the thing is, there, that was what we did. It was what we’d always done at the Magnus Institute, in the archives. The written statements, they went back years. Like, two hundred years and then some from before the Institute existed. And we researched them and filed them and we all just—it was normal.”

Tim was listening, which was all Martin could ask.

“So we—we didn’t necessarily believe all of them—though maybe we did more than we said—but then—Jane Prentiss happened.”

Martin told him everything he could remember about it, everything that he could organize into sentences, and Tim’s expression stayed almost the same the entire time. He realized Tim was still trying to decide what to make of it when he got to the part about Sasha being replaced, because even after hearing about what happened to him and Jon with the worms, that was really the first time Tim’s face changed.

“Wait.” Tim finally interrupted him. “This—this happened, or—”

“Yes,” Martin said, “and I know, it doesn’t make sense yet—”

“But—this happened to you? Us? Sasha?”

“Yes.”

“When, though? When you—disappeared, or—”

“No. That happened at the end. Just—”

“Ok. Ok—but Sasha, she—she changed? She became this—”

“No. She—she was replaced. Sasha—” He didn’t like thinking about it now any more than he ever had. “Sasha died. She was gone. And none of us knew.”

“But if none of us knew—”

“Well, that’s not entirely true, Melanie knew, sort of. And then later Jon figured it out, but—well, there’s more. Just—just listen.”

“Does this come back to—to now, though?”

“Yes. In the end, it—it will.”

Martin took another breath and continued; Tim seemed much more invested now than he had been initially, and that unfortunately made it a little harder to tell the story. He eventually got to the part about Tim and what happened to Danny.

“Wait.” As soon as Tim realized where it was going, he leaned forward, uncrossing his arms. “Start over again.”

So Martin started over again, and this time he got all the way through to the end before Tim interrupted him.

“Why Danny? Why would that happen to him?”

Martin shrugged, then regretted it as he realized what a casual gesture it was. “I don’t know. It’s not really clear why—why anyone.”

“But what did he do? Why?”

“Tim, he didn’t do anything. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Why didn’t I stop it, though? Did I say why I didn’t at least stop him from going back? I mean, he came to me.”

“Tim—” Martin stood up from his chair and sat next to Tim on the couch. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t have.”

“But if this happened—this happened?”

“Yes. It happened.”

“I would have known something wasn’t right. He came to me. How hard would it have been to—to just stay up with him?”

“Tim, that’s not how they work.”

“They. The—the fears?”

“Yes. And the people and the—things—that serve them.” Martin ran a hand over his face before continuing. “They manipulate you. They—they trap you. Like they trapped all of us at the Institute.”

“So you said. So what—I just let it go? I went to work at the Institute but then just forgot about it?”

“No. Not at all. Actually, after that, you—well, ok.” He told Tim everything he’d learned about the Unknowing, everything that Basira and later Jon had told him about it.

“Good,” Tim said, after Martin told him how it had ended. “At least I knew how to go out, anyway.”

Martin cringed as the memory of cleaning out Tim’s desk after Peter Lukas took over the Institute hit him all over again. Tim might have seen it, or maybe he didn’t, but either way he sat back on the couch again and seemed to collect himself.

“Go on. I still don’t know where this is all going. And you still haven’t said anything about why Elias was doing all this. Why he was trapping everyone into working at the Institute for the—the Eye?”

“Yeah. Right. Well—he wasn’t. Not really.” Martin continued the story, explaining how he had done his best to try to protect everyone after Peter had taken over the Institute, but ultimately hadn’t done anything at all except fall into another trap. He explained how Jon had woken up and his abilities had been stronger, how Jon had done everything he could to keep everyone safe and to prevent any further rituals—but in the end, that too had all been a manipulation. He told Tim how he and Jon had learned that Jonah Magnus had been operating through the successive heads of the Magnus Institute.

“So—Elias, then—”

“We never met him. Not really.”

“Ok—go on. So Jon came after you, and then what?”

“We left. We went as far away as we could get quickly.”

“You and Jon—together?”

Martin had left out some of the more personal details of the story, but Tim had read between the lines. Martin nodded.

“Fair enough. Go on.”

“Well—it wasn’t far enough. Jonah knew where we were—”

“Well, yeah—”

Martin sighed. “—and he used Jon to trigger an apocalypse. It turned out that everything Jon had been doing—all the avatars he’d confronted, all the things he’d done to try to save us, the rituals he’d been trying to stop—they’d all marked him. He’d been marked by every single entity, and Jonah used that to start an apocalypse. He unleashed all the fears.”

“What?”

“Like—the world ended. It was just fear. Everywhere. People were trapped in these domains and they couldn’t leave them and they just lived their fear. And the Eye—watched it all. Through Jonah.”

“What? I’m sorry, I just—”

“Literally the end of the world. I can’t really say it any differently. Like there was one where everything was on fire, and another one that was just a giant carousel but—well, never mind that—and oh god, once we had to jump off the side of a cliff—”

“All right, I’ll just—accept that, I guess?—I did not think that was where this was going—but ok, how did you say Jon started this exactly?”

“He didn’t. Jonah did.”

“Ok but—he used Jon—how?”

“He sent a statement. And Jon read it. He still needed to do that. Obviously we didn’t know it was from him—we thought Basira sent it—”

“Fuck. Really?”

“Yeah, well.”

“And you didn’t stop him?”

“I wasn’t there. Just—for a moment. I told you, they always had this way of—”

“Never mind. But I still don’t get it. You said this all happened. So… why are we here?”

“It didn’t happen here. It happened—I’m getting there.”

He skipped most of the journey through the apocalypse; he picked up again when they got back to London and reunited with Melanie and Georgie. He explained how they had found Jonah, and how Jon had realized he had the option to take over the apocalypse in Jonah’s place.

“And—what?” Tim asked. “End it?”

“No.” Martin shook his head. “He couldn’t do that. We weren’t sure what he could do exactly, but he knew he couldn’t do that. He could maybe—shift things around. Maybe make it not so bad for—for some people. For a while.” He deliberately didn’t explain exactly what that meant, and very deliberately left out the other option Jon had eventually arrived at.

“So—did he?”

“Not—not then. We didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on—that.”

Tim nodded.

Martin decided to skip some other details too. “Well—not long after, Annabelle Cane—”

“The—the spider person?”

“Yeah. She told us about another way. A way that we could end it. By—by letting the fears out.”

“Out? Out where?”

“There was a—a crack. A gap. Um—between dimensions. That place—where all this happened—it turns out it was just one of who knows how many realities.”

“Ok. Why would she tell you that, though? Didn’t they like it there?”

“She said—she said at the time that, eventually, that whole world was doomed. In the end, the—well, Death—the fear of Death—would kill everything, and the entities would remain alone with nothing left to—to feed them. And obviously she didn’t want that.”

“Oh.” Martin could see that the wheels in Tim’s head were starting to turn; he’d have to pick up the pace a little bit more if he wanted to tell it himself.

“So—we voted.”

“You voted.”

“Yeah. And we voted to let them out. To end it.”

“Right. Ok—makes sense, I guess, but—what did that mean? I guess you would get rid of them, but—then where would they go?”

Martin paused a moment. “We—we didn’t know. We talked about it a lot but in the end—we couldn’t know, and we knew the people in that place were suffering. And the other option was Jon taking over. Given that he couldn’t stop it, that didn’t seem like it should be a real option to—to most of us. Well, some of us.”

Tim glanced back in the direction of the bedroom. “I can see that. Ok—so you voted to let them out. Did you?”

Martin considered what he should say; he opted for the short version. “Yeah. Yeah, we did.”

“And what happened? Did the apocalypse end?”

“Jon says it did.”

“What—what does that mean?”

“Jon and I—we—we ended up here.”

“Here? What do you mean?” Tim narrowed his eyes and looked hard at Martin.

“Jon and I ended up here. On the—in front of the Institute. And you found us. Eventually. After a couple of months, I’m guessing.”

Tim didn’t move for about thirty seconds, then his eyes went wide and he jumped up from the couch.

“No. No no no no—”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to the Jon and Martin that were here, then? Where did they—”

“We’re them, too. It’s really hard to—”

“Wait. Did they—the—fears, the entities, whatever you call them—did they come here too?”

“Yes.” Martin looked down at his feet.

“And that’s why all this—no. No. Did you—did you know? Did you know they would end up here?”

“I told you we didn’t.”

“You didn’t know what would happen and you all just decided to send them on out? Like a big goddamn gift to—to—”

“We didn’t know. And—” Martin took a breath. “We didn’t all decide that. Jon—Jon didn’t want to.”

“But he let you. And anyway, it doesn’t count if he only didn’t want to because he got to be some kind of—what, apocalypse god?”

“It wasn’t like that that.”

“All right, what was it like then? Explain.”

“He didn’t really want to do it. It was—he would have—”

“I would have ended it.” Martin on the couch, and Tim in front of it, both turned their head toward the hallway where Jon was now standing.

Tim answered faster than Martin could. “Martin said you couldn’t end it.”

“I couldn’t make it go away. There were other ways to end it.”

“Jon—”

“Don’t protect me, Martin. Not—like that.”

Martin looked at Tim’s face again; he was deep in thought.

“It was your decision, then?” he finally asked Jon.

“Yes.”

“Why did you let them out?”

Martin interrupted. “I told you, we voted, and—”

“Martin,” Jon said gently, and Martin stopped.

Tim waited.

“I tried to keep them there, but I didn’t—I didn’t plan for everything. And in the end, there were—sacrifices I wasn’t willing to make. That I still wouldn’t make.” He met Martin’s eyes, and Tim also turned slowly back to Martin.

“Jesus Christ.”

Martin continued to hold Jon’s eyes, but he could see Tim furiously typing into his phone next to him. For the first time ever, he vaguely wished that he could know what Jon was thinking. It would have almost been worth it.

“Jon—”

“It’s all right.” He was still speaking in the same soft voice. “It really is. It was time. But I am—I am going to have a cigarette.” Jon walked out to the balcony, and a few moments later the faint smell of smoke wafted in through the door. Everything felt like it had slowed down for Martin; Tim seemed able to move at an impossibly fast pace as he answered his phone and started shouting into it.

“Just—just come over here,” he was saying, as Martin began to make sense of his words. “No, you need to hear this from them, there’s no way I can—well if they’re closing the place, it sounds like you have to leave. No, just come straight here. Sasha—no, believe me, none of it matters. None of it. Just leave.”

He hung up his phone and looked blankly at Martin for a moment; he started to say something, but then shook his head and held out a finger toward Martin.

“No. No, there are some things I need to hear from him.” He started out toward the balcony, and Martin stood up.

“Tim—leave him alone. He’s—”

“It’s fine,” Jon called into the flat. “I’ll—I’ll talk to him. It’s ok.”

“Damn right, you’ll talk to me. I need to—” One of them closed the door to the balcony and Martin could only hear Tim’s general intonations; he could barely hear Jon at all. In a moment he gave up trying to listen, and sat down on the couch. He leaned back and closed his eyes, and tried not to have too many thoughts for the moment; he didn’t open them again until he heard an anxious knocking at the front door.

“Come in,” he shouted, and Sasha opened the door just wide enough to poke her head in; once she saw Martin, she walked in and closed it behind her.

“Tim said I should—” She stopped as she focused on Martin’s face over the back of the couch. “Martin, are you all right?”

“No,” he answered.

“Look, I’ve—” she came around to the other side of the couch and set her bag on the coffee table as she sat down. “They’ve closed the entire Institute while they’re investigating the—I just have no idea what to do right now. Tim called, and he’s been sending messages since then, but to be honest I don’t understand any of them. I’m lost.”

“Yeah.” Martin nodded, then dropped his forehead into his hand. “I just told Tim about—everything.”

“I gathered that,” Sasha said. “He seems—upset.”

“Yeah, well, he should be.”

“That’s him outside with Jon?”

“Yeah.”

“Hang on.” Sasha walked to the back door that led to the balcony and opened it. “Tim, I’m—”

“Oh god. Sasha. Oh shit.” Clearly whatever they had been discussing had not calmed Tim down at all. “We are so fucked.”

“Tim, I can see you are upset, but—”

“No. Upset does not even begin to describe what I am right now. I am—I am leaving. I need to leave.” He walked toward the front door.

Sasha started to follow him. “Tim—”

“Let him go,” Jon said.

“Fuck off,” Tim said, then turned to Martin. “You too. Screw both of you. Sasha, just—call. Call later.”

He left, slamming the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said, sighing. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but—”

“No,” Jon said, “he’s right to be angry.”

“Do you—think you can tell me whatever you told him?” Sasha asked.

“I can tell you,” Jon said, and then looked to Martin. “Are you all right?”

“No,” he said again. “How are you feeling? You were pretty out of it.”

“I’m—I’m all right, actually.” Jon took a seat next to Martin on the couch, and picked up his hand. “You don’t have to stay here for this. If you—”

“Yes, I do.”

Jon nodded. Sasha went to sit on the chair Martin had brought over earlier, and Martin protested. “No, Sasha—I can sit there—you can—”

“No, stay there.” Sasha smiled weakly. “I’ll be fine here.”

It wasn’t quite like listening to a statement—Martin could have interrupted if he’d wanted to—but Jon’s voice held that same contradictory combination of emotion and detachment it always had when he’d been reading a statement. The end result was that he seemed to explain everything twice as well in half the time that Martin had, and Sasha had remained drawn in and silent until the end.

“Tim should have heard it from you,” Martin mumbled, while Sasha took a moment.

“No,” Jon said. “I think—I think Tim needed to hear it from you, actually.”

Martin started to ask him what he meant, but Sasha broke her silence.

“So—now what?”

“Wait,” Martin said. “Aren’t you mad?”

“I’m—” Sasha considered. She looked tired, maybe in shock, but not angry. “I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, this—sucks—but… I don’t know. What would I have done? I mean—” She laughed awkwardly. “I guess I would have died—”

Martin flinched.

“No—no, I’m sorry. I just meant—I really don’t know how to deal with this—there weren’t any right answers, were there?”

“If there were, I never chose them.” Jon absentmindedly reached for Martin’s hand again, and looked at him briefly when Martin held on to it harder than expected.

“I mean, I know why Tim’s angry,” Sasha continued. “But in the end, you—you really did save all those people.”

“I’m not sure I’d say—”

“But you did,” Sasha said. “Yes, they went through something awful, and I’m sure they were worse for it, but—their lives still had value. They still wanted to live, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” Martin said.

“And here—I know it’s already cost a lot—but we still have a chance. Don’t we?”

Neither of them answered her.

“Fine, but—I have to believe we do,” Sasha said. “I mean, Jon—even the—the Eye—it can’t see into other dimensions, right? And the Web probably—probably didn’t really anticipate all of this, right?”

“No,” Jon said. “It doesn’t work like that. At least not for the Eye.”

“So maybe—just maybe—things are different enough here that—I need to think.” Sasha pressed her knuckles to her mouth for a moment. “Jon, I imagine you still have some—influence over this situation?”

Martin looked at him, and Jon nodded. “Some. Yes.”

“How exactly do you plan on using it?”

“I don’t know,” Jon replied. “One way or another, I don’t—I need to make sure they don’t get out again.”

“Understood.” Sasha continued to press her hand to her mouth. “But we have time, right? Some, at least?”

Jon nodded again. “Yes. Of—of course.”

Martin squeezed Jon’s hand again.

“All right. Give me—give me a day or so just to—to really absorb all this. Then we’ll talk it out. Tim—oh, hang on.” She checked her phone, and scrolled down through a few messages that had gone unchecked while she’d been listening to Jon. “He says he’s going to visit Danny.”

“Good,” Jon said.

“Anyway, he’ll come around.” She thought a little bit more. “And I guess we should tell Melanie, and—and Elias.”

Jon stiffened. “Do you really think he—”

“After what he went through today, he—he deserves to know.”

Jon didn’t exactly relax. “Yes, fine. All right.”

“Will you two be all right if I go? Just—like I said, to gather my thoughts?”

For some reason they were both looking at Martin.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll be all right.”

“I’m glad you told us,” Sasha said, standing to grab her bag from the table. “I know that took a lot. And Tim—he really will come around.”

Jon walked with her over to the door and she said something quietly that Martin couldn't hear; then she left, and Martin crumbled into the couch.

***

“Come to bed.”

Martin, who had been doing his best to bury himself between the cushions and the back of the couch ever since Sasha left, turned over to face Jon. “I can sleep out here tonight, if you want.”

Jon knelt to be at eye level with him. “Why would I want that?”

“I don’t know.”

Jon sighed and crossed his legs to sit on the floor. “Martin—what did you think would happen when we told them?”

“I don’t—I mean, of course Tim is mad, but—Ok, I guess I really wasn’t actually thinking about how they would react at all. I just thought it would be better to have it out. That it would feel better.”

“Does it?”

“Obviously not.”

Jon nodded, and reached out to touch Martin’s face. His touch was comforting, which Martin had somehow not been expecting.

“I mean, Tim was bad—but at least it felt—”

“It felt right. That he was angry.”

“Maybe. It’s just that when I was telling it to him, and I was hearing myself say it—I’d really forgotten how bad it was. I mean, I hadn’t forgotten, but—I guess I’m not living it anymore. And that’s not fair. It’s not fair to the other Sasha and the other Tim and everyone else we left behind. I just guess I feel—”

“Guilty.”

“Hm.” Martin closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of Jon’s hand. “And then Sasha—it’s like she just didn’t get it. I mean, no—I think she got it. She heard all of it and I think she believed it, but she should have been angry? At least—a little.”

“She still might be. They both have a lot to process.”

“Sure, but—she was so optimistic. She just doesn’t know. She never felt—”

“She just said what you’ve said.”

“I know. And when I heard her say it—it made me wonder if that’s how you think about me when I… I mean—we were both there, but you went through so much more than I did. I felt—I felt sorry for her.”

“Martin,” Jon said, “I have never once felt sorry for you. Worried, or—or sad, or—but no, never pity.”

Martin opened his eyes to look at Jon again.

“Are you mad that I told them?”

“No. I told you I understood. It was time.”

Martin sat up, and Jon moved to sit next to him.

“What are we going to do?” he asked.

“Go to bed,” Jon answered.

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” Jon touched his leg. “We let Sasha think. She tells Melanie and Georgie and—Elias, and Tim makes up his mind about what he wants to do.”

“And then what?”

“We talk.”

“Jon—” Martin sighed. “I don’t want to push, but—how does this all end up different from before?”

Jon pulled his hand back. “I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t.”

They sat a little while longer, until Jon stood up and held a hand out for Martin. “Let’s go to bed.”

“All right.”

“Wait,” Jon said, after Martin got up. “Would you—would you eat something first? I didn’t want to interrupt you earlier. I thought you could use a moment.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You know, Martin—you are a bit of a hypocrite.”

“Yeah, I know.” He put his arm around Jon’s shoulders and kissed his head, and was briefly pulled back in his memories to the day he’d cut his hair for him. That was all he wanted; just that—or, well, a future where some days got to be like that one.

Why was that so much to ask for?

“But I love you.”

“I love you too,” Jon answered.

[steve0discusses]

The Full Metal Alchemist Live Action Movie Part 8: Watch This Episode Covered in Butts be the Only One Not Flagged by Tumblr

Gonna be risky business and not only upload all of these caps the way I screenshot them--which has just SO MANY poorly CGI’d butts but also gonna do it on the Tumblr Drafts folder, which I have been assured works now.

I’m so worried about so many things, but considering all the fears I have about like...everything else in the world right now...I guess I’ll take a risk on tumblr.

Edit: I cannot believe that I had 8ish episodes of Kaiba’s tall dueling tower get flagged but not this movie. I just....wow I cannot.

So anyway, last we left off, General Hakuro stepped in and was like “Hi guys, you like my wily plans that no one in their right mind would have ever guessed???”

Yo remember this part of the anime? Where the bodies drop from the ceiling and it’s a hunk out of the final arc--it’s here. In this movie. This movie that can’t possibly afford to do that. Lets get some CGI animated bodies in here ASAP.

(see some texture regrets under the cut)

It’s like a Monet, as the Mean Girls say, because far away and shrinked to 500 pixels this looks kinda neat. They sort of look more like those slime ball that grow in the back of your throat rather than human bodies, but they still look pretty gross hanging up there.

But then.....we zoom in. Remember again that this was full screen on my computer, and at one point was on a freakin movie screen. This level of 3d...was on a movie theater screen.

The mind boggles. The mind boggles!

Like as you know, I am an artist, and I’ve dabbled in...basically everything in my pursuit to make a dollar...and I have taken about 2 years of classes in 3D art with Maya and all those. I’m not thaaat great at it--I’m much more an illustrator/painter--but I feel like I have that reference point. Can I just say--the model is...fine...you can do a lot with layers of bump maps so you don’t need a truly detailed model (not like they did that, because they didn’t do that, but I can figure that maybe they had an intention to do that and forgot?)

But, there’s no connection of the wires to bodies. They just kinda float? The bodies are also all the same shiny-ness? To the point that it looks like a copy paste? (I don’t think it is, the wires are slightly different on a few of them) There’s just not much in the way of a texture map or a bump map. It just...there’s also something missing from the skin.

Skin is actually kind of rough to render, so when I did it back in the day, I followed like a checklist to make sure I had all the layers and steps to make someone look...clammy. Some things are kinda translucent, they reflect light a different way...especially white skin like this wouldn’t be just...white like putty. Dunno if you ever saw a white person, but we got so many veins...there was so much potential to make something really gross and fleshy.

Instead we got silly putty. It’s fine. I’m fine.

So General Hakuro decides to just...kill everyone right now.

This makes no sense to me.

That means that the whole thing of Lust killing Hughes was completely unrelated to General Hakuro. All Hakuro needed was Shou Tucker, who has been in prison for...I assume months since Ed shipped him off. And Shou was only released today? Just now? Just now when Hughes was shot?

So this all just happened at the same time by accident?

I mean the General sent us to the wrong lab initially, so he didn’t actually want us to be here, and now that we are here, he’s going to set off an entire army as a reaction to three people walking in and going “oops”?

So, lets get a look at our army.

Oh it was so disappointing, this reveal. Not just the eyeball that has a bounce light coming from below the top lip there (how did that even happen???) but also when it opened it’s mouth, it had a flat animation of skin breaking--it wasn’t actually rendered 3d skin, it was like a jpg wrapped around it or something (or at least that was the illusion I got. That is fine for a video game or a TV show, but this is a movie. This is shot so that it can be displayed in a size bigger than your own house.

What happened to the animation team on this one? Not saying I can do better, cuz no, I can’t, that 3d chapter in my life was a while back, but I’m just one guy. This was an entire animation studio and they just...didn’t render 3d face ripping (which is their entire job, to work in 3d) and then they kinda just turned on the stock physics dynamics and dropped em instead of animating them.

The way they fell was like fish from a bucket--the same amount of speed, too. they all ragdolled like a 3D shooter, their rigs just hanging on for dear life (and yes, you could see the deforming happen on the joints of these models.) I’m fine with having a computer program render something out with a physics engine...but there is a balance.

You do have to still go in there and finangle it back because...real life is hella stupid. Real physics? So stupid. It was hilarious how nonthreatening it was, too because they’re like...the size of shrimps in that zoom out image. The scale is just so wild!

It was like one bored guy in a sound booth and they multiplied his voice three times. Golden. Absolutely golden.

So these guys stride over, all of them with the same amount of speed (leading me to think it was probably a recorded walk cycle they all share with slight alterations between all of em) and they kinda just...pile on eachother in a weird way.

I will give them this: I was happy to see something that wasn’t physics or procedural. They mo-capped and animated that part for sure. It had the touch of an artist’s hand. It was also a very funny way for Hakuro to die because this guy was on screen for like 5 minutes, and maybe 7 minutes of this whole movie.

Youknow...I think it really says a lot about your nude 3d models if they’re not disturbingly human enough to trigger the tumblr filter, youknow?

Anyway, Envy looks on.

And then Gluttony saves the city.

Meanwhile, they decide to bust out the fire effects and Mustang becomes the most useful person in this entire movie. Like honestly this movie was poorly named, because it should have just been “Mustang saves the FullMetal Alchemist’s Entire Ass.”

The next part seems like I forgot a cap, or maybe missed something. I swear to you, I did not.

First off, Al becomes fullmetal and makes this happen without an alchemy circle. The show doesn’t really care to talk about that though, it’s just a thing he can do now, and you’d only notice it if you were writing a Tumblr post about it.

I swear to you, Winry is just inside of Al and there is no explanation.

There is no explanation for this.

She was on the couch...why is she not on the couch? What?

And then when you think they might have a moment, Ed’s like.

Damn.

For reals what the hell was that entire scene except for a way for Ed to get his arm stitched back on in like 2 minutes?

Outside, Envy and Lust are just strolling around the back-alley of this red brick building we have seen used for this entire movie.

And like...it’s so funny to me because they weren’t trying to run or hide. It makes complete sense why they got shot. This is what happens when you just...walk away when the whole military guard wants to kill you.

Now lets go see how Hawkeye is faring.

Luckily, all of the ambling bodies have decided to walk slowly through this one weird grass section between extremely long buildings.

And Hawkeye tells everyone “You have to shoot their heads off” and I want you to look at that scene and tell me how many of those bodies still have heads.

Oh, all of them. Don’t worry about it.

Kinda hard to see, but Ed shows up to give Mustang a hand, which was fully unnecessary but we’ll get to that in a bit.

This movie is such a gem.

Ed goes big brain and realizes that Envy is still burned up, and thus is about to pass on.

And whatever, I’ll take it. It’s not like the movie has told us that they are made out of 1000000 lives, for all we know, in the movie universe, they really are only 4 lives. Like half a cat. Maybe Father only killed half a cat instead of an entire city.

Yugi Muto would be so freakin proud of Envy for how often this guy gets hit square in the chest with fire balls. It’s basically every scene where Envy and Mustang share screen time.

And don’t worry, I don’t think Envy died? But they sure made it look like he did, which I’m sure everyone everywhere was really happy to see, since Envy’s death was one of the climaxes of the whole series. Like people used to make these lists of “top 10 saddest anime deaths” and how many people had Envy on there? Like everyone? People freakin love Envy and they did him so much dirty in this movie.

Again I have no explanation for Winry.

So Mustang is like, Ed, you make sure Winry doesn’t biff it in that corner, and I’ll do my actual job over here on this side. And yo, he did.

And so then that’s it, Lust is dead, and now we have a Sorcerer’s stone.

Man it looks delicious, right?

I’d eat the hell out of that.

Anyway, we only have one more update and we’re done with this movie!

I know!

I know! They only have 10-15 minutes to resolve pretty much everything, and that’s assuming that the credits don’t take up a heap of that. Hell, I might only have 3 caps next episode if that’s all credits. I honestly don’t remember.

Anyway, hope y’all take it easy this February, here is a link for people who just got here to read these FMA recaps in Chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/fma/chrono

[aceandart]

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.)  the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc).  the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else.  hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were.  (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot. 

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.) 

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast.  I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season.  aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot?  spn should have it's own page for both. 

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser. 

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties 

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc.  huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke. 

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...  

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind"  (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women.  {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.} 

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes"  (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

 the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"  

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes 

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development. 

usually Black men but in general men of color: 

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death  

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color.  again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc) 

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie.  they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub.  the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically.  (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.) 

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.  

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.)  other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.) 

d) "buddy"  

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.  

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???)  minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place 

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are).  How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one. 

[razanartuk]

about me tag game thing

i was tagged by the wonderful @nothingunrealistic! thank you very much ily <3

under read more bc i was not capable of keeping my answers brief this time around

why did you choose your url?

this...was supposed to be a short explanation but it turned into quite a tale so strap in i guess because we are going on a ride. back in 2017 i was just getting into musical theatre rp and i was still feeling too shy to really talk to anyone ooc so i would just wait for people i wanted to interact with to post starter calls so i could just do things in character with them the easy way. So i did this with my friend cam, who posted a starter for me using a lyric from If I Could Tell Her. she linked the song so i could listen to it, so i did and i went ‘wait a minute, is that Ben Platt from Pitch Perfect?? (and other things too, but i only recognized his voice at the time bc of the acappella girl movies)’ and yes it certainly was.

i had zero idea what the plot of Dear Evan Hansen was about at that point, and for some reason based off Just That One Song and the poster art of who i assumed was Some Guy in a Polo Shirt i started to think it was about some jock guy who broke his arm and had an emo/goth friend who had either died or gone missing under mysterious circumstances. also i intuited that Evan had a crush on his friend’s sister but he couldn’t tell her that directly or his emo friend would kick his ass. so i was like mostly wrong, but a little bit right.

oh and i knew jared and alana were characters from the show bc cam said that they were i think?? but i had no idea what their role was. so after listening to if i could tell her, i listened to good for you and all i really got out of that was that evan the apparently not-jock guy had done...something... that really hurt jared and alana. and at that point i finally decided to go look up a plot synopsis and i found out i was waaay off base. but honestly this is why cast recordings should include scene dialogue in the songs bc otherwise you just get soundtracks like dear evan hansen where the songs have like. zero context. we really just go from waving through a window to for forever to sincerely me without like. any reason as to what is happening huh. It’s honestly not a surprise anymore that all those people on twitter had no idea the plot isn’t about gay teenagers.

anyways. cam was writing jared and she made a post at one point about wishing somebody would write alana and i was like ‘oh i could do that!’ (after i had actually Seen a bootleg and finally knew what the whole story was, of course) so i made a multimuse rp blog featuring alana beck, nabulungi hatimbi, chloe valentine and some other characters, and cam started sharing her headcanons with me that alana is trans, jared and alana were close friends when they were little kids but they sort of drifted apart as they got older and their priorities in life changed, jared was the first person alana came out to when she realized she’s trans, etc.

one night i started talking about wanting to pick a more theatre-relevant url for my blog and trans-[character name] urls were getting pretty popular, and at least 3 of the friends i made through rp had changed theirs to coordinating trans-[character name] and i think it was cam suggested i should make mine be trans-alana so i did. eventually i realized the unhyphenated version was available so i changed it to transalana with no hyphen and i have lived here ever since. sometimes i think about changing it but i feel like transalana has become a part of My Brand and i am not so great with coming up with cool names for things.

any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them

in theory, i have sideblogs... i don’t really use them, but of the ones i do have, there is:

emsbookblog - this was supposed to be where i would post excerpts of the book that i’m working on, but i think i did that maybe one time roughly 2 years ago and then promptly forgot about it/got nervous about my writing and was scared to share anything else. the rest of the stuff that is there is assorted writing tips. i don’t really know what to do with it now. i probably should post all my little thoughts about em and anita and caleb there instead of infodumping on my main from time to time, but if i do that then i have to promo a sideblog and direct people over to it which is always annoying to me when i could just do it on this blog which is much easier

dearnovelhansen - this is basically no longer used, but was a sideblog i made specifically to talk/complain about the novel adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen which was about 3 years ago?? maybe? i can’t be trusted to understand the passage of time. but to summarize: i thought it was an honor just to have the story be made more accessible since many of us couldn’t see the stage performance, but i hated a lot of the creative liberties that were taken. my main grumbles are that everyone who isn’t evan or connor is done so dirty in the novel. connor’s still kind of done dirty in the book, but not as much as like. heidi, alana, jared, and zoe are.

horseisle3 - this one was meant to be a place where i could just enthusiastically post screenshots from hi3, but instead it turned into a blog where i occasionally reblog other players’ hi3 content and bitch about how bad the game admins are bc hi3 is the tumblr famous (infamous?) homophobic horse game. the game where it was once okay to call your club store the gulag bc according to their head of hr, ‘it’s just a russian word for prison’ but you can’t say ‘im gay’ without somebody accusing you of corrupting young children who play the game. unfortunately there aren’t very many good interactive horse games out there, so this one is still about as good as it gets. it’s either that or star stable and i don’t care about star stable.

mlaenie - i’ve had this url saved for i don’t even know how long. way way way back in the day when i wanted to escape from the clutches of the onceler fandom i abandoned my first blog where i basically had an alter ego i guess?? and i decided to just be myself on the new blog. i don’t fully remember who came up with it, but one of my sister’s mutuals suggested that if you scrambled the letters in your name you could come up with aesthetic-looking urls. so lauren’s url became lrauen, and to match with her mine became mlaenie, which i abandoned on tumblr after about a year or so? but have continued to use as my main username on twitter, reddit, youtube, xbox, steam, and discord. i barely ever use any of these accounts aside from twitter, steam, and xbox, but yeah. so i’ve decided to try and turn this empty sideblog into a place for video game thoughts maybe. we’ll see how long it lasts this time around.

how long have you been on tumblr?

i made my first tumblr account in december of 2010, but i didn’t understand how to use it at all or how to customize my theme to look cool and unique so i quickly abandoned it. i made a new account in september of 2011 after some kids at school and my sister told me i should and i have been trapped here with varying degrees of activity/inactivity ever since. i have witnessed the rise and fall of the lorax/onceler fandom, hyperfocused on lord of the rings, star wars and back to the future all at the same time, and for the past 4 years i’ve mostly been a musical theatre blog with assorted other fandom stuff mixed in. i feel i have seen everything and nothing, but mostly i’m just tired and bored.

do you have a queue tag?

no bc i don’t use a queue. i’ve tried using it in the past but i irrationally feel pressured to sustain a coherent theme to queued posts and my brain simply does not vibe with that so i just don’t use it at all anymore. Instead i instantly reblog or post several unrelated thoughts in succession and then don’t post again at all for 3 days. the way god intended

why did you start your blog in the first place?

my very first blog was intended to be a place for me to post all of my petz 5 animals’ profile info, but i didn’t have any understanding of how coding worked at all and i don’t think i really wanted to learn, either. so it just sat there, unused. my second attempt at blogging was as a classic rock fandom person, so as you can probably imagine i was pretty pretentious about ‘modern pop’ vs the beatles, the rolling stones, the who, the monkees, and so on. and then i slowly devolved into a lorax fandom blog and everything went to shit so i made a new blog for lord of the rings/the hobbit which later evolved to include star wars and back to the future blogging. and then for the past 4 years i’ve been mainly a musical theatre blog with other random stuff i like thrown haphazardly into the pot. wonderful.

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

because my url is transalana and two of my most prominent lgbt headcanons are that alana beck is trans and a lesbian. i gotta be shouting out @kinqmike though bc she’s the one i adopted the trans alana beck headcanon from in the first place!

why did you choose your header?

in 2017 i was hyperfixating on Dear Evan Hansen (and Be More Chill, but there weren’t many gif-able videos then considering it ran for a month in New Jersey in 2015 and there was only one yet-to-resurface 35 minute bootleg) so i just grabbed a random gif off of google. i really should get to replacing it with a new header of my own though. i just don’t know what i should do for it.

what’s your post with the most notes?

i have lost track of how many notes it has (i think it’s somewhere around 200 now?) but when Will Roland and George Salazar performed Two Player Game on Good Morning America, i posted a screencap of their Jeremy and Michael along with that one quiz answer meme that says stuff like ‘i want to see it grow up healthy’. i didn’t tag it with any ship names or anything because i was anxious about having it show up in the tags, but somebody who reblogged it from me did tag it as boyf riends and i firmly believe it took off because of that. i don’t think i make posts that are relevant enough to amass thousands of notes, even by accident. which is probably a good thing bc if i did i would have to block so many of them.

how many followers do you have?

on this blog? 175 according to the counter. how many of those are still real people and how many are bots and abandoned accounts? i have no idea.

how many people do you follow?

i try to keep it somewhere around 200. i think i’m sitting at 180 right now but i kind of need to go through and clear out the really inactive blogs.

have you made a shitpost?

let’s think about this for a second. i’ve been on tumblr for nearly 10 years. you might even be able to say i’ve made more than one. they’re just not what you would call...popular shitposts.

how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ post?

that stuff makes me so incredibly anxious that i have to fight the urge to want to yeet my laptop or mobile device through the closest window whenever i read it, so i try very hard to avoid any sort of ‘if you don’t reblog this, i’m judging you’ posts. i find them very manipulative and not particularly helpful

do you like tag games?

yeah babey!! i just frequently forget to do them, but please know that if you have ever tagged me in a tag game i felt incredibly touched by the gesture and the @mention even if i completely forgot to do the thing afterward

do you like ask games?

i do! but also rip to literally anyone who has ever sent me an ask meme bc it takes me so long to answer them. i’m still working on a micro fic prompt from a few weeks ago. also, horrified to realized that it has in fact been a few weeks and not 3 days anymore.

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i don’t know that any are tumblr famous as a whole. but probably @neverheardnothing

do you have a crush on a mutual?

in any sort of romantic connotation? no. not that i’m aware of. there are mutuals that i have friend crushes on where i want to be friends with them but i get so anxious when it comes to meeting new people that usually nothing ever comes of it. i’m really not good at small talk or other casual conversation either which, as you may or may not be able to imagine, sucks. i just wanna skip over all of the awkward introductions and ‘hey how are you, how is life, what are you doing with yourself?’ stuff. not because i don’t care about it. i do, but i think most of my friends/the people i want to be my friends are also depressed and anxious so asking these basic questions about life tends to uh. make us all nervous. and i don’t do much with my life so i always have the most boring answers anyways.

i’m not tagging anyone officially bc the @ thing has just completely given up on me at this point, but if you want to do it, go for it. and then say i tagged you so i can read it c:

[chemicalarospec]

Genuinely Don’t Say Anything Interesting Here But I Like Talking So Thus I’m Posting This

okay I did like nothing productive today but have a ramble on youtube fanbases, specifically the new gen of mcyt. This was two posts and then I made it one so sorry when I repeat myself. I did edit it tho lol. But that means I also inserted more, so this is just all over the place now. 

me from the future: oh god. all over the place. wait wtf this is so long. I don’t even have much to say I just like writing the same sentence three different ways and refusing to cut any of them. I’m sorry; I don’t know how to edit; this is informal AF. (can I use three semicolons? at least one of those is wrong anyways lol.)

edit: I’m so sorry I forgot about having a “read more” last night laksjdflksjad. Also idk if I even agree with myself lmao.

it’s so funny how mcyt is like The Thing now. It’s not cool to like it anymore lol, cuz everybody does. (This is a me thing. I like being special lol. I also self-define “cool” so you should not take it to heart when I say it’s not cool.)

I mean, just thinking about the Dream SMP as something I *do* want to get into, it doesn’t feel like “our thing” -- it’s has the feel of a HUGE fandom. Seriously, I’m in the phandom, which ngl has been dead since 2018, and the fanbase for the SMP has a much different, bigger feel. Idk what i’m getting at, it feels imposing? looking at the Dream SMP fandom seems similar in scope and slightly in atmosphere to pre-2019 phandom, at least to me, and it’s actually making me grateful that I joined now and not all that time ago.

Also I brought up the “our thing” bit because of the mcr post that goes “funny how MCR seems like our little secret and the biggest thing in the world at the same time” and I kinda thought that was just how all fandoms worked? idk I was going to assert that the truth is different but I thought some more and now I’m not sure.

but yeah I like the “our little secret” feel and somehow the phandom has (re)gained that while technoblade (and the new gen of mcyt as a whole) is loosing it.

I mean, I’ve been watching Technoblade since the bedwars winstreak. He had less than a millions subs but most people I brought him up to actually did know who he was. He was big but he wasn’t *famous* -- we all knew about him and we all cared. Like the only person who knew who he was and didn’t care had a little brother(s?) that loved him (wait why is this all in past tense this is all still true). (Yes AFC this has become a callout post for you mocking techno lol.) (If you’re still reading my miNeCRaFT yOuTuBeR fAnBaSe MEta. cringe culture is dead tho; I don’t have to say it like that.) 

Anyways, I didn’t follow Technoblade’s Dream SMP streams and now I feel like I’d just be tagging along if I did get into it. (also didn’t watch SMP Earth lol.) This is because I’m a gate-keeping jerk. Or hate missing out. One of those two things. 

(awkward transition where I don’t know how to make my tangent meaningful and have to make it back to the original train of thought I violently interrupted)

As a long time Techno fan, I’m really proud of the growth he’s experiencing, but a little sad too as the community is being -- well, I don’t want to say “infiltrated,” as I don’t want to shade anyone who was simply late to the party -- perhaps diluted? overwhelmed? yeah, overwhelmed by newer fans, and becoming “unmanageable” in a sense; it feels like we’ve lost a bit of our sense of community with the influx of new fans -- no shade to any new fans! This is just the way fandoms work. When the crowd is larger, it becomes harder recognize each member as a person, even if everything else is the same. (”The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”) (look this is how my brain works deal with it)

I just really like this small community feel, and it’s a bit daunting looking at the smp fandom. 

Also the growth Dream experienced this year is genuinely ludicrous. I mean, the wide appeal of shipping is part of it, not going to beat around that bush, but there’s just so much and I wanna read an essay from a long-time fan who saw it on why he’s got so much growth. 

I really hate to shame fans and stuff, but part of it, at least for me, is that most of these new fans probably aren’t “minecrafters” like we were. I doubt the majority of them grew up on Stampy, DanTDM, and whatever the other ones I didn’t watch were. I mean, some of this is because Child. For them, the distinction is really pre-quarantine post-quarantine i guess? Really, whether they played Minecraft or not. Again, I know it’s bad to shame fans, but apparently I’m just a terrible person and I feel like it’s more shallow or disingenuous to get into MCYT when it’s popular without already being into Minecraft. 

WAIT that’s it -- Minecraft community, as a whole, is special. It’s a LARGE umbrella of fandoms in general, but that’s the thing: they’re all more communities than fandoms -- from the casual builders to the pro parkour players to those who watched the og youtubers to those who followed the Great Potato War, there was Minecraft Culture. 

And the expanded fandom that’s sprung up around the Dream SMP and possibly Dream in general (???) is more of fandom. It feels like a fandom. People treat it like a fandom, they talk about it in fandom spaces, it is fandom, a modern fandom. Not a quaint “little” Minecraft community. 

I’m not going to say it’s because of the shipping, but... I have no data but at least I can say that it certainly creates an appeal for Fandom People as opposed to Minecraft People. And then also it’s just a fandom thing so it makes the space more fandom. 

Also I realized this is all based upon a feeling, so where did the feeling come from? I was reading in-fandom texts a lot today, and I think the storyline actually might have something to do with it. Also maybe the “talking behind their backs”? I can’t be bothered to remember what I’m comparing to what at this point but that’s definitely done in a lot of other spaces I’m in, so idk.

OH FRICK I’ve mostly been *in* the fandom spaces for real things lmao. (Read: I’m 100% making up everything at this point.) 

(awkward transition because I inserted the last two paragraphs later on)

And really, I played minecraft today for the first time in months. But it’s still with me, you know? The memories of being introduced to it, growing up with it. Going to the Nether with my cousins, my uncle’s giant survival mode cathedral. Mojang being bought by Microsoft and everybody hating it. (... me, my brother, my two friends, essentially... how did we even know??)

[I had part about the minecraft.net writers here but it was completely unrelated so it became it’s own post. I should do that more.]

(With every sentence the target audience of this post gets smaller.)

What was I saying? I’ll just wrap up. 

TL;DR: Dream SMP fandom feels like a fandom and not a Minecraft community and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’ve realized I prefer a community feel, which makes me grateful I joined the phandom now. Also I shouldn’t be allowed to post things past 9:00pm. 

Oh my god I’m so sorry to all my mutrals. My tired loquacious reflex has kicked in. This is essentially a dan and phil stan blog, and though I know a few of you know what I’m going on about, I’m so sorry to the rest of you. 

Well, at least *I* think I’m a fascinating person with interesting things to say hahahahha. 

This is like a diary post. Should I post this? Yeah, other people should share my thoughts lol. OH NO: Late-night Tumblr fandom ramble posts are the new social-justice tirade/generally useless blog-like Goodreads reviews. At least it’s what Tumblr’s made for :P.