#—IT IS *SUCH* A WEIRD FEELING HAVING THE MAN WHO... TECHNICALLY CREATED YOU LOOK INTO YOUR HOSTS EYES‚

[suzukiblu]

WIP guessing game: "Robin"

Superboy has existed for about six months at best (five months, two weeks, and six days, but who's creepily spying on their fellow heroes and vigilantes? not Tim, for sure) and was created in a lab full of extremely niche genetic experiments whose creators very rarely bothered making look human, which is probably why he has some weird ideas about certain social norms.

Tim assumes that's why the guy just decided to drop a very annoyed Catwoman on him out of nowhere, anyway.

"The fuck?" he says, though through his vocoder it comes out more like the incoherent screeching of the damned. That being, well, the whole purpose of the vocoder and all. Superboy grins down at him from the nighttime sky all bright and sunny and weirdly adorable, for being a lab-grown weapon and a guy who is technically capable of disassembling Tim down to his individual atoms with, like, a touch and about two seconds' worth of thought.

Not that Tim has been creepily spying on anyone or said anyone's Cadmus files, again.

Also Superboy might not even know he can do that yet, so it's really not a smart thing to mention right now.

"Hey, man!" Superboy greets cheerfully. "She was breaking into that big museum a couple blocks over, figured you'd care about that. As opposed to, like, breaking into some rich asshole with insurance's penthouse. Figured you would not have cared about that."

"The museum also has insurance, for the record," Selina informs him sourly as she makes an art of getting off her unceremoniously roof-dumped ass while looking like being on this roof was her idea to begin with. Because, like: Selina. "And has not properly sourced the artifacts in their new Bast exhibit."

I know, that's why I was on my way to the museum to keep an eye out for you, is what Tim does not say, since Robin is supposed to be a splintered aspect of a mysterious all-knowing city spirit given human form and not just, like, a really dedicated teenager surviving on semi-legal energy drinks and conspiracy-board detective work and the occasional occult ritual to summon the Batman.

What he does do is jerkily cock his head and say, "Preyyyyy?", and let his vocoder horribly mangle the word into a sound usually best described as "unholy avian screeching". Superboy beams, which is not a normal reaction to hearing Robin's voice. Selina just rolls her eyes, but Selina of course knows about the whole "really dedicated teenager surviving on semi-legal energy drinks and conspiracy-board detective work and the occasional occult ritual to summon the Batman" thing.

Like she's never summoned the Batman for anything, geez. Or "Bruce", as an eight year-old Dick Grayson had once upon a time decided to randomly dub him. Tim still can't call the eternal and unsleeping eldritch protector of their city that without feeling like he's going to spontaneously combust, but it is in fact a thing that the Batman will answer to.

Might as well call Pennyworth "Alfie", though.

Jason was even worse at names than Dick, Tim is pretty sure.

"Yeah!" Superboy says, sounding still more cheerful and floating down the rest of the way to the roof to land lightly in front of Tim. Selina eyes him in a way that would end very badly for anyone who was not functionally invulnerable. "I mean, she seems cool and all but I dunno, figured the Bat wasn't big on Cats in his territory. And also the criming. Definitely also the criming."

"How . . . find Robin?" Tim asks. Superboy doesn't have enhanced senses, as far as he knows, so . . .

"Oh, I've been stalking you," Superboy explains. Tim blinks behind his unblinking mask and feels several ways about that statement. "That's what you Bats all do when you're interested in somebody, right? So I figured you'd like it if I did it back."

. . . Tim feels several ways about that statement.

[filmbyjy]

MINESTREAM

SYPNOSIS > Wanting to start a new stream series with his best friends, Jay had a bright idea of playing some simple Minecraft with them. Everything was normal, until he realises there is another person in the call with them. He quickly learns that it was ni-ki’s older sister, (name). Watch how streaming a simple game of Minecraft can dig up some interesting feelings between the main leads.

EIGHT – asscrack

MASTERLIST | PREVIOUS | NEXT

a/n: the inspiration behind jake’s little world naming…that was the first word that popped into my head. don’t ask why. I’d like to know too.

finally after so long with multiple technical issues on jay’s end, the minecraft series could officially start. he could hear jake and ni-ki just chatting about the free online soccer game they found on steam. his eyes gazed the mute button right beside your username. the other boys had turned on their cameras in discord while you and angel(Yvette) didn’t.

he hasn’t once heard your voice. well, he could barely hear your voice since he shut ni-ki’s stream off earlier due to the boys attempting to catch something. he only heard your giggle once and that was it. nonetheless, in that short moment he thought you sounded adorable. his heart drumming in his chest, wondering how your voice would sound like.

he shook his head and clicked on the stream button. as per usual, he puts on a waiting screen to tell the viewers that ‘hey, we’re going to play soon. please wait.’

he unmutes in the discord, “hey, everything has been set up. I just wanna ask what should the server name be?”

“asscrack.” jake suggests as he looks up from his computer and directly into the camera.

“what?” heeseung speaks up as he was caught off guard by the weird name.

“I don’t know, don’t ask me. I’m shit at giving names to things.” jake shrugs. the other boys deadpanned at him.

“let’s name it…sunoo and the boys.” sunoo suggests.

“as if. just put the default ‘My World’ that’s the easiest. not a single hassle to the world.” jungwon adds.

“Alphas.” sunghoon voices out.

“uhh, have you forgotten there are two girls here?” ni-ki says.

“well, who cares about that. Women can be dominant too.” sunghoon shrugs.

jay sighs, “I’m just going to call it MineStream.”

“lame ass name.” jake says. jay turns on his camera on discord and zooms in the camera to his face. he gave jake a death stare and so jake awkwardly laughs it off.

“okay, you scare me. I’m sorry.” jake pouts.

as for you, the moment jay opened his facecam. your eyes widened, a tiny gasp left your throat. since no one could see/hear your reaction due to you being muted and your camera was turned off, you were basically in shock. that man is most beautiful man you’ve ever seen.

the way his eyebrow raises as the rectangle glasses suited his face. he was just in a simple black shirt and his jet black hair was parted prettily. good lord. you were going to play with him? you were going to play with all these pretty boys?? oh lord.

“okay, the world is loading so wanna do the intro when we all load into the world?” jay asks.

“yeah, we should. we have new guests here and we have to introduce the fans too!” sunghoon says.

“alright, I’ve already loaded in. I sent the world invite into the discord. by the way, there are mods that I added to make the game more interesting.” jay says.

“the only interesting thing we should try to do is do hardcore mode or like a ‘if one person dies, everyone dies’ kinda thing.” sunoo suggests.

“we could do that for another time.”

you had clicked on the link and waited to load into the world. since ni-ki helped to create your account, you could easily go in and of course he was your first friend in the game. you had finally clicked turned on the camera in discord and so everyone could see you. you weren’t exactly streaming but you were recording for a video since ni-ki suggested that putting up videos onto YouTube also generates money. once everything was settled, jungwon claps his hand and starts off with the intro.

“hello everyone, today we are-” ni-ki’s character punches jungwon’s as he was talking. “ni-ki!”

“whoops misclick.” ni-ki says. jungwon rolls his eyes.

“today we are playing minecraft! woo!!”

“the premise of how this started. jay hyung wanted to do a series together that was nostalgic and so we decided to go with minecraft because who doesn’t love minecraft!” sunoo says.

“besides our normal friend group, we have two other people on here! let’s welcome angel and (name)!”

“hello hello.” angel says. her little vtuber character moves and tracks her movement.

“woah, cool character, angel. it’s really pretty.” sunoo says.

“oh, thank you.” angel smiles. everyone’s attention was now on you.

“oh umm, hi. I’m (name). I’m ni-ki’s older sister.” you waved towards the camera. everyone was mesmerised (excluding heeseung and ni-ki), you were beautiful.

“good god.” jake says.

“you have a very sexy voice. would love to hear that all night-” sunghoon gets cut off.

“sunghoon hyung, i will find a way to ban you from this server.” ni-ki warns him.

you giggled and jay’s heart melts. god, he’s a simp but he can’t show that…his facecam was turned on. jay turns to read a couple of his comments. most of them were simping for you. kinda made him jealous, not going to lie. plus, it didn’t help that jay had this overlay thing where whoever talked, it would display the person’s facecam (if turned on) from discord to his livestream.

— “she’s so pretty.”

— “wow, she’s so…no wonder she’s ni-ki’s older sister. the family genes are so strong.”

“let’s just start playing. gather resources everyone.” jay says.

and so everyone does. each of them collected wood, from the trees. you sat there looking clueless and so jay comes up to you in game.

“something wrong?” he asks.

“oh, sorry. this is my first time playing minecraft so I have zero clue how to do things.”

“want me to guide you?”

“sure.”

jay happily guides you on how to play the game, from punching wood to making crafting benches and finally making tools. jay turns to read the comments for a bit,

— “woah, what is this visual couple going on?”

— “yoooo, they would look cute together! like wow.”

jay was satisfied by the comments. he can’t help but look at your facecam, your concentrated face as you mined for stone and attempted to make stone weapons.

“hyung!” jungwon whacks jay’s character. it causes him to turn around.

“did you have to hit me.” jay deadpans.

“whoops, anyways. ni-ki and sunoo found a cave. I don’t remember minecraft caves being fucking huge.”

“there was a huge update I believe 1-2 years ago so yes, huge cave.”

“they also found a mob spawner with saddles in the chest and jake hyung stole them to try and get horses.”

jay sighs, “can’t say I’m not surprised.”

“are you and (name) noona flirting?” jungwon suddenly asks. it causes you and jay and to look at each other in game before turning to jungwon.

“no? he’s just teaching me how to play minecraft.”

“yeah, she doesn’t know much about the game so what better way then to teach her?”

“don’t believe it one bit. next thing you know, we will have a couple in a minecraft server who share a house together, sleep together and have cats and dogs together.”

— “oooo, jungwon is onto something.”

“the comments are agreeing with me.” jungwon smirks.

“shut the fuck up, my friend.” jay shoos jungwon away. the younger boy runs off to find sunghoon, who wants currently getting chased by a creeper.

jay sticks by you throughout the whole thing, he gives you tips and even hands you some stuff.

“we are making a community.” heeseung says.

“and why?”

“because with 9 people on this server, all the resources are going to be sucked up. also I am not sharing a house with any of you. especially, (name). she’ll make the house with pink wood.”

“there’s pink wood?” you say.

“there is, you just need to find a cherry blossom biome.” jay explains.

“why are you helping her?” heeseung asks.

“because she doesn’t know how to play and I’m just being a gentleman since you guys aren’t helping her, clearly.”

jake bursts out laughing, “I’m sorry but this is the first time I see you being so gentlemanly to a woman.”

“do you want me to set myself into creative so I can blow up your shit dirt house.” jay threatens.

“go ahead, I feel like renovating it anyways. just let me move my stuff first-”

sunoo quietly hands jay some tnt and a flint and steel. before jake could even grabbing his things from the chest. jay covers his base with the tnt and ignites it. it hisses.

“(name), I suggest you run if you don’t wanna blow up.” jay warns.

“oh.” you quickly dashed out of the way and the explosion was massive. it causes sunghoon to yell.

“I had a pet dog in there…” jake says.

“too bad, mess with me again and I’ll burn your next house.” jay says.

jake definitely learnt his lesson of not teasing jay during this session.

-

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[mindscapers]

HI, IT'S ME, BILL CIPHER. YEAH, I GOT TO SHAKE HANDS WITH THE MAN WHO'S EFFECTIVELY GOD TO ME. YEAH, I'M BEING TOTALLY NORMAL ABOUT IT. DON'T LOOK AT THE TAGS.

HELLO MUTUALS I'M BACK FROM PORTLAND OREGON AND I GOT TO MEET

ALEX

HIRSCH

[ohraicodoll]

i see a prompt request 👀 what about “stop trying to help me it’s just hurting you” with feral reader… maybe joel is the one helping her with the adjustment to settlement life in wyoming? or they’re out on a run and she gets hurt? anything tbh you decide

Yesssss I am all for this one. I had some downtime and managed to write this so fast. So have some angst and maybe some lore and both of them fighting lol

Left Behind Joel Miller x f!Reader/OFC The Last of Us 2.5k Words (3rd POV) (Lots of callbacks to Monsters but not necessary to read first. Feral Reader's name is used sparingly so yes, she's technically more an OFC as you get lore in this one) Summary: Settling into life in Jackson wasn't going so easily and Joel is hit with the possibility she may not be welcomed to stay.

“Joel, she’s trouble, man,” Tommy ran a hand through his hand exasperatedly, pacing the hard packed ground in front of both their homes, “I know shit was rough out there. Hell, the three of you were practically hissing at everyone when you came through that first time, but it’s been a couple months. She’s scaring half the town and you’re scaring the other half acting like her goddamn guard dog.”

The older Miller brother clenched his jaw, hands on his hips and trying not to show how much his split open knuckles smarted, “I wouldn’t have to if those assholes would stop treating her like a fucking pariah or giving her shit every time she tries to stand up for herself.” “You have got to admit it’s not exactly like she’s giving them much reason not to act that way,” Tommy sighed and spread his hands pleadingly, “She threatened to stab Johnny at the lumberyard through his hand for looking at her weird, not to mention I’ve already had to take her off patrol duty with anyone but you after she beat Grant-” “That boy learned the hard way to keep his hands to himself,” Joel cut him off.

Tommy pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head, before glancing back at his house where his very pregnant wife currently was, “Brother, I can’t have her acting this way. I get it’s not perfect here, but we can’t have trouble like this. Maria…she’s already considering that if Red doesn't get her shit together she may not be welcome to stay.” Silence fell between the two, boiling and tense. He didn’t have to even look up to know the look on his older brother’s face at his words, could feel it as if flames were on his skin. It was like lighting a match around gasoline, waiting for the whole thing to ignite. He knew that as much as his brother cared about the young girl in his charge, he also cared about the woman that came along with them. And when Joel Miller cared about something, he’d go through hell for them. “That’s not gonna happen,” Joel bit out harshly, snarling. His irises had darkened to almost black, the hints of hazel swallowed almost entirely. His body was tight, a wire begging to snap. But the younger of the two could only shake his head, feeling lost and unable to comprehend what to do. Torn between the home he had helped create and protect, his wife who had the weight of the community on her shoulders while preparing to give birth to his first kid, and his brother’s protectiveness over the rough woman currently inside the house. “Just get it sorted. Talk to her. My hands are tied, I can only do so much,” Tommy sighed, turning and heading back across the lot to his own home and life. Joel didn’t watch him leave. His eyes were trained on the ground, blood roaring in his ears as he replayed the words over and over again. They were considering kicking Red out. He’d dragged her all over the country, to Wyoming then Colorado and Salt Lake and back to Jackson, forcing her to settle down only for her to get kicked out. He knew she was having a hard time. She’d never stayed in a QZ, had stayed out in the world too long alone or with the wrong people and didn’t know how to deal with a community like this. Normal people who didn’t have to tear each other apart for scraps. While he and Ellie didn’t have the smoothest transition and were still rough around the edges, they’d managed while the woman had hit wall after wall. She was defensive, quick to react and bare her teeth. It was fine out beyond the gates but inside Jackson where everyone was trying to find a new normal it had caused issues. One of the steel workers was Grant’s brother and hadn’t taken kindly to her beating the shit out of him. He had refused to give her some parts they needed for the house and then called her a bitch when she’d slapped his payment down and went to snatch the items. But he hadn’t registered Joel around the corner listening and before they all knew it his fist was flying into the man’s face. He’d have done more if Tommy hadn’t broken them up. But his brother was right and she did have a reputation, had scared a lot more than half the town. He’d seen the way mothers had pulled their kids away or the looks some of the guardsmen gave her. Ellie had told off more than a few, shouting across the plaza when she’d catch it, defensive. He’d watched Red shrink in the settlement, only fully confident like she usually was outside of Jackson. He’d figure it out. He had to. 

With a deep sigh, he turned and went inside. Ellie had been sent to take care of the errands and get the groceries they both knew Red wouldn’t be able to get. The teenager was understanding and was doing the best she could to help, keeping any complaints to herself or to him when they were alone to not burden the woman. She was as protective of her as he was of both of them. The house was quiet. It was all something he was still getting used to. Having a house again, a home where he didn’t have to worry about getting attacked or FEDRA raids, no more furniture salvaged from garbage dumps and pipes that rattled without a drop of hot water. Jackson made it easy to get comfortable, to feel like it was before the world was ravaged. Easy for him at least. He paused and waited a moment, hearing the almost imperceptible sound of breathing on his good side before he rounded the kitchen counter and looked down. Red sat on the tiled floor, knees pulled up to her chest, head resting back against the cabinet doors. Her face was blank but he’d learned to read the small hints of thoughts on her face. Lips pressed tight, eyes focusing on her nails even as he hovered. She’d heard. He knew she had. “Should I start packing my bag now or wait for Maria to give me the word?” she chewed on her lip, feigning nonchalance. “Neither. You ain’t going nowhere,” Joel bit out with a furrowed brow. She laughed humorlessly, mouth turning into a grimace, “That’s not up to you, Tex.” Those eyes looked up finally, met his, and he could see the resignation there. This wasn’t something she was going to fight if they made her leave. She’d do it and he knew why, knew it was for them, but refused to accept it. “Like hell it ain’t.” “Stop,” abruptly getting to her feet, she hissed at him, “Just stop it. Stop trying to help me. It’s only hurting you and Ellie. You have actual family here, Joel. Flesh and blood family. You could murder someone and they’d still keep you here and Ellie as well, but I’m a liability. To you, to her, to all of them. I get it.” “I don’t give a fuck if you get it, Red,” Joel was angry, getting into her face, “They’re not kicking you out. End of conversation.” “Not end of fucking conversation,” she growled, “I’m not risking yours and Ellie’s only chance at a safe, stable life. If that means I go back out there then so be it.”

“God, you’re so fuckin’ stubborn sometimes,” he all but yelled through his teeth. A laugh tore from her, sharp and loud, her brow raised, “Oh that’s hilarious coming from you.” He wanted to beat his fist through the fucking wall, pick up a glass and shatter it if only to release some of the frustration dealing with her gave him. That damn martyrdom that he hadn’t ever been able to get rid of, scream out of her no matter how many times he told her to stop it. She was so willing to throw herself away for his or Ellie’s sake as if what happened to her didn’t matter and it drove him insane every single time. “You better quit that shit,” Joel ground out between clenched teeth, “That stupid fucking selfless bullshit. For what? As punishment because you lost some people? That…fucking Harry you were with?” He hadn’t ever brought up the name she had mentioned once because he knew what it was like for someone to bring up the past. She hadn’t offered much of her background and he never asked, but there had been small moments. That name had stuck in his brain though, like the little stars tattooed on her collarbone and the “love ya” on her skin in someone else’s handwriting. 

The silence following his words were deafening, all emotion wiped off her face. It was as if someone had scrubbed away anything that made her a person, human, in seconds. 

Then something darker took over and twisted and she smiled, a showing of teeth, and eyes so hollow they seemed like caverns, “Is that what you think? That I’m punishing myself over some boyfriend that died when the world fell apart as if most of the fucking population didn’t also die too? That I’m what? A sad little heartbroken girl pining over some lost love?” A laugh left her lips and it felt like poison, dripping venom. He clenched his fist, anger burning hot, but he knew better than to say anything or approach her when she was like this. Dangerous. Sometimes she was so dangerous he wondered how he had ever thought it was safe to turn his back on her. “That’s real sweet, Tex…I shot him, you know?” she laughed again, not a bit of humor on her face, “Not because he was infected. No. He wasn’t even bit, didn’t have a scratch on him. He was fully alive and healthy before I blew his face right off.” She’d mentioned the man’s name long ago on the road when they’d gotten drunk out. It had slipped out of her covered in pain and regret, Harry and her younger sister, how she'd been barely starting her life when the apocalypse hit. A singer. Ellie had mentioned she had been trying to be a singer and he’d always pictured a bright eyed girl unprepared for what was to come. He had wondered if that death had been what had broken her, guttered her and tore out her soul to the point she lived on instinct only, how that girl had become the hissing creature before him. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Stepping closer to him, he resisted the urge to back away, to show that he was like the rest of them and scared of her too. She almost smiled wider and he knew she was expecting him to, a test almost, “You see we were on a run. Harry, me, and Annie. Spooked some runners so we booked it out of the building because back then I wasn’t much of a fighter, hadn’t learned yet. So I trusted him to keep us safe. Yet, lo and behold, when we get through the front door and I turn around, I see him.” Her words were made of broken glass that cut her apart and made her mouth bleed, devastation and rage coating each one but he didn’t move or try to comfort her lest he got cut too, “Harry had shoved my sister behind so he could get through first then shut the door in her face. I watched them through the glass tear her apart, screaming my name, because I had trusted him to have her back. Instead he got her killed. So I killed him.”

There was no smile then.  He remembers how they met. Ellie had fallen behind while running from scavengers because he hadn’t put her in front of him. It had been Red who had saved her and like a missing puzzle piece, he could see the picture come together. Knowing her now and how it wasn’t normal for her to go out of her way to help strangers, but she’d helped them.

Because Annie had fallen behind once before and she couldn’t save her. Blamed herself for her death.

“It was my fault and I’ll be damned if I ruin both of your chances at staying here where you are safer. Not because of me,” the snarl had left her face, hackles dropping until just the woman was left. Exhausted and a little sad and lost. It’d broken her, he knew that. In the same way Sarah’s death had left him a shell. But he’d kept going for Tommy, Tess, and eventually Ellie.

She hadn’t had anyone until them and now she thought she was putting them at risk.

Joel frowned and stepped forward, their chests almost pressed together, before cupping her face between his hands. His knuckles were bruised and bloody still, but neither of them cared, had never cared about getting blood on the other, “I hate to break it to you, darlin’, but if you think after that I’d still let you go then you’re wrong. I learned my lesson last time we were in Jackson. We stick together. No one’s getting left behind.”

Her eyes squeezed shut, a broken sigh leaving her lips. Her hands came up and gripped his waist, fingers wrapping around his belt tightly like he was a lifeline. Resignation wrapped her entirely in its embrace and he knew the fight had gone out of her, “I…I don’t know how to be around these people. There’s too many of them and they all stare…I’m going to mess up.”

The admission brought a slight smile to his lips, a crack in the defense she had attempted to put between them and a sign that she was giving in, “Well I think as long as you don’t try to maul or kill anyone and maybe limit to punching one or two people a month, that’ll be good enough.”

She huffed exasperatedly, head falling forward and leaning against his chest. His thumb traced her cheek, the other combing through the tangled mess that was her hair. For all she used to gripe at Ellie for taking care of her own, she wasn’t much better. But the strands were still soft and he took advantage of it when he could, feeling her relax against him.

“I’ll talk to Tommy and Maria. You just give yourself time to adjust and try,” Joel murmured, “We’ll figure it out, but you’re not going anywhere.” She nodded against him and at last wrapped her arms fully around his body, sinking into him while he held her tightly back. They both stayed there for a while, arms tight, standing in the middle of the kitchen.

Joel would pull every string, get every ounce of leverage he could get to ensure she stayed. No one was going to take her away from them.

[the-universal-sun]

Do you have any little Fiddleford hcs?

I haven’t really thought about before, but you’ve inspired me. Thank you! Please let me know if this is what you were thinking of!

I don’t really think he’d start regressing until after the memory gun is created and Ford goes through the portal. His mind is in shambles, he’s stressed, anxious, and neurotic all the time basically. He’s probably homeless/living in the dump at this point, too. So all that combined leads his mind retreating to a safer age, a younger age. It’s the one good thing besides the Society that he has.

Now, let’s imagine he goes to the Mystery Shack to confront Ford after a memory is triggered and he finds Stan instead, after Stan explains his connection to Ford, Fidds tells Stan that he used to be Ford’s research partner but left for reasons he couldn’t and didn’t want to remember. Stan, feeling sorry for the squirrelly little man, offers to drive him home, but when they reach the dump he’s been staying at, he offers Fidds to stay back at the shack. He doesn’t do it out of kindness, though a part of him is sympathetic given he was homeless for a decade up until a year ago, but because he thinks he can convince Fidds to help him with the portal. Stan’s a conman, so it doesn’t take him too long to get Fidds to agree to stay, just for the winter at least.

I would imagine that they don’t spend time together until Stan convinces Fidds to help with the portal, which took weeks to do. And he’s still not happy about and refuses to go down to the basement. He’ll do the equations and teach Stan the engineering bits, but that’s all he does, and he’s only doing that much because Ford still is his friend.

Onto the actual headcanons:

- Stan doesn’t really notice anything too out of the ordinary at first, Fiddleford is already an odd, fluttering, and anxious mess with a fractured mind, so seeing him act less like an almost 30 year old and more like a 7 year old isn’t out of the question, who knows the effects of the memory gun?

- It only clicks for Stan after living with and observing Fidds for a couple of months. Stan is actually not surprised or weirded out. He’s lived on the streets for 10 years, he’s seen his fair share of different behaviors, and this is one he actually sort of knows about. One of the prisons he was in made him go to weekly group therapy and this was brought up more than a few times.

- For all the fronts that Stan puts up, he’s a deeply caring and emotional man when it comes to his loved ones, and Fiddleford wiggled his way into his heart quite easily, so he’s going to look after the little guy. That being said, he won’t make it obvious that he knows and cares (he’s being so obvious it’s painful). He speaks softly to Fidds when he notices him feeling smaller, offers kid friendly food and shows, and doesn’t let him work on the portal’s math. And sometimes rocks him to sleep. He’s not obvious at all.

- Fidds is a smart man, he knows what’s going on, he knows that Stan knows what’s going on. But he doesn’t mind so much, having Stan there just helps his anxiety and quiets his mind. Plus, he hasn’t been called “Little Fella/Guy” since he was actually 7 years old, and it feels nice to be taken care of instead. He took care of his 5 younger siblings, his cousins, Ford, his own family, technically he takes care of the town with the Society of the Blind Eye, so this is a nice change

- He does have the energy and eccentricity of Old Man McGucket when regressed. He’s just a boy from the south who loves to run in the dirt and hock loogies sometimes. Stan encourages it, encourages Fidds being loud and playful and full of energy, something he never got to be. It was beaten out of him, but damn if he ain’t gonna make sure that his boy can experience childish joy

- You know how sometimes kids from the south have the strongest and cutest country accent? That’s how Fidds sounds when regressed and Stan cannot get enough of it. He usually hates the accent, but coming from his Little Man? It’s the best sound he’s ever heard, and if he hears anyone making fun of it, he’s punching their lights out

-Fidds is an engineer at heart, always has been, so Stan swipes him some wooden stacking blocks, some child’s robotics sets, and some advanced looking Rubix cubes. Of course when Fidds is feeling overwhelmed and super anxious, not wanting to think for a little bit, Stan acquired some kid friendly books from the library, some crayons and marker, and regular old printer paper

- About every picture Fidds ends up drawing gets put on the refrigerator by Stan. He’s so happy and he loves them

- I headcanon that Stan shows love through home made gifts and quality time, like with Dipper and Mabel’s fishing hats and the time he spent with them, so he makes gifts for Fidds. He’ll draw with him and give him the drawing to keep afterwards (they’re all in Fidds’ little treasure/memory chest), he’ll spend time learning and making food he grew up eating, home made biscuits and gravy, buttermilk pie are the first he learned and are what Fidds wants to eat the most. He hand sews stuffed toys for him, Fidds’ favorite is a dog that was made with different cloth patches, he carries the affectionately named Copper with him everywhere

- Fidds loves being with Stan, his Bubba, he loves the care he can see and feel with each action. His soft touches when Fidds gets into a fit, his soft voice, he never yells and somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows why, but his head is too fuzzy to think on it. Fidds was always the one in charge, the big brother, so it’s nice having his Bubba take care of him. He gets fed, he stays warm, and on the days when Fidds feels awful in his mind, he gets wrapped up in a blanket burrito and just held and carried everywhere, all day. He loves Stan

- When Fidds gets scratches and scrapes from playing outside, Stan kisses his boo boos for healing and puts a colorful bandage over it. And then kisses them again for good luck

- His juice has to be watered down or he’s bouncing off the walls and talking a mile a minute, which is cute and all, but not when it’s been nonstop running for 4 hours

- He once had an accident after a nightmare during his nap. He just sat there sobbing until Stan came, he was so scared that Stan would be disgusted and would yell at him. But when Stan found him, all he did was whisper a soft “Little Man”, pick him up, and bring him to the bathroom to give him a warm bath, wrap him up in a burrito with a clean blanket and Copper, and rock him back to sleep.

- Stan loves taking care of Fidds, he likes being needed sure, but he truly does care for Fiddleford, whether he’s the genius engineer helping his get his brother back, or his Little Guy, who loves to draw horses and pigs and can solve a Rubix cube in 15 minutes. And Fiddleford loves Stanley, his best friend who’s helping him stop with the memory gun use and eagerly listens to his engineering lessons, and his Bubba who draws with him and kisses his boo boos when he falls down

- In conclusion, Fiddleford H. McGucket is just a little guy

[utilitycaster]

Can you share your name examples? Please!

under a cut in case people feel like guessing or something

putting syllables together and they sound nice: literally almost any fantasy book that doesn't use modern names but like, off the top of my head: Essun from The Broken Earth Trilogy. Sabriel and Lirael from The Old Kingdom Trilogy. Shallan from the Stormlight Archives. The vast majority of women's names in ASOIAF that aren't too close to irl names. No shortage of names in Wheel of Time.

putting syllables together and they sound like arthuriana: Egwene (Wheel of Time) is the big one for me.

Slightly altered irl name: Bunch of names in ASOIAF notably Eddard and Alicent. Really common in actual play (Revvetha is sort of a joke but sort of not; Belizabeth).

Extremely apt character descriptor you know who you are: Kaladin of the Stormlight Archives. As a paladin stan I must stan and the character genuinely is great but like. c'mon man.

Mashup of irl names: Brennan Lee Mulligan does this EXTREMELY often most notably with Raphaniel.

Something meaningful in an irl language: SILAHA is a great example. Idk Dune probably did this.

Something meaningful in an elaborate self-created conlang: welcome to Lord of the Rings, an opportunity for Tolkien to take his conlangs for a test drive.

Something meaningful in a foreign language siri set alarm etc: self-explanatory. look to your left look to your right if no one at the D&D table used an Elvish Translator then it's bc they used the fantasy name generator for a different fantasy race.

IRL names not in common usage: I suppose it's not exclusively but The Locked Tomb does have Palamedes and this is also a Classic D&D Naming Strat.

This is Linda and she fights dragons: Robert Baratheon, whatever the fuck is going on in Dune, when D&D characters are named things like Kristen or Beauregard or Imogen or Ashton. Also obviously true in almost any Earth-set fantasy; I have a taste for like, regency/Napoleonic Wars-set fantasy novels and so people are just named things like Thomas and Catherine and they are worried about Their Place In Society but also they are wizards.

Series of complex and mysterious titles: The Man with the Thistledown Hair from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (speaking of normal-ass names in fantasy); The Emissary; The Man in Black. Often some kind of eldritch/otherworldly being but like, you could just decide that's your name in a D&D game. no one is stopping you.

Rigid Naming Conventions: offhand my problematic fave The Belgariad has some weird naming conventions (dryads all have names starting with X or, when softened into Tolnedran, Ce' as a prefix; acolytes of Aldur all have Bel- or Pol- prefixes to their names based on gender but the names themselves vary); the weird palindrome names in Stormlight Archives; The Vorkosigan Saga is sci fi and set in a future of our universe so many names are existing ones but the naming convention is often passing down the two grandfather's first names to the eldest son and other such things.

Pun or meme: again, D&D classic; Percival Friedrickstein Von Musel Klossowski De Rolo III, every Crown of Candy PC.

Fantasy name generator already covered. who knows how many people are using it. who knows what data set it uses.

Acronym: I believe this is what Tav is in BG3; This is also I believe where Thedas comes from.

Literally just a noun: Fjord, Keg; The Belgariad has characters who technically are going by codenames bc they are from The Spy Country but practically speaking I cannot actually recall what Silk's actual name is off the top of my head and I've read those books like 5 times and he's a major character. Shadowheart is i guess two nouns but it's the same principle.

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

I'm literally about to sleep but Kate and the 141 being a sense8 cluster is this anything

THE WAY MY EYES WIDENED HOLY SHIT

(Gonna ignore age differences. Maybe they all technically died and "breathed their first breath together" upon resuscitation I love shit like that anyway)

They would be in a cluster for the LONGEST time and not realize it. The guys would BE in the task force together and NOT REALIZE IT. But also. I love the angst. And I kinda want Kate to visit with Simon as he's buried alive. Because how fucking horrifying????? And his fear/panic is so great that it yanks her consciousness to him. Maybe this is before they are born as a cluster? But the trauma is so great that Simon's brain is reaching and reaching and reaching for the connections that should be there!!! And Kate is the closest geographically.

nooo no this is really interesting. i think the trauma could trigger the birth of the cluster, OR, Kate and Simon are kind of like...preemies? They can sort of sense each other but their sensate biology isn't fully developed so it's a very incomplete form of visiting/sharing (it would be interesting if trauma is why their cluster is all different ages? like they were all supposed to be in DIFFERENT clusters. Simon and Kate would have had the same cluster "parent" and the rest of the 141 would have been in separate clusters but trauma+proximity made those connections form with each other? Near death experiences? I'm thinking about when Gaz falls out of the helicopter. The sensate part of his brain is like FUCK I NEED CONNECTION and Simon's sensate brain is all untethered and goes oh HELL yes, FINALLY, cluster here we come! (sensate scientists are fucking feral over this cluster and the IMPLICATIONS )

BUT ANYWAY

simon is just like "sometimes I hallucinate a woman, it's a trauma response"

Gaz: huh weird me too sometimes. First I was freaked out, you know? But then I got used to her

Soap, joking: she's not American, is she?

Gaz, Ghost, and Price turn as one to look at him.

Price: what

So THEN they all think they are having a shared hallucination. Is that something that can be spread? Ghost seems like patient zero but he never said anything about her til now???

Naturally Kate chooses this moment to bebop in. "So I'm a shared hallucination? I don't feel like a hallucination." "How would you know?" Soap points out. "You've got me there. Counterpoint: Why would you create a hallucination that is American?" The four men lean back. Which. Well. "I mean, me hallucinating four hot British guys? Believable. Four hot British guys hallucinating me? Not so much." "You think I'm hot?" Soap says. They ignore him. "You're saying we are the hallucinations," Ghost says flatly. "Or, get this," she says. "None of us are hallucinations." Gaz makes a disbelieving hum. "Okay fine. Easy test." She sticks out her hand, palm up, wiggling her fingers. "Someone give me a phone." After some hesitation, Price pulls his out and slaps it into her hand-her oddly solid hand. She taps the screen for a few seconds before handing it back. "Okay, call me." "What?" "I put my number in. Call me," she repeats then disappears. "Cap, "Gaz says when he finds his voice. "Did that hallucination just put a number in your phone?" "Oh, thank Christ," Soap interjects. "I'm not the only one who saw her." Price looks down at the phone in his hand before answering Gaz. "Appears so." "You gonna do it?" Soap bounces of the sofa. "'Spose it could be a detonator. You call it, something explodes." (Kate, appearing on the sofa next to Soap: oh, PLOT TWIST! I didn't do that, though. Don't know how to. Do you know how to do that? Soap: yes!!! Kate: omg can you teach me? Soap: YES :DDDD loml i will teach you how to make SO many things explode) Ghost kicks him. Gaz tugs the device out of Price's hand. "Video call," he says decisively. Price hits call. It rings. It rings It-- A man's face fills the screen. He's familiar. He is not, however, hallucination woman. "Clinty-boo, can you tell me what you see on my phone?" "What?" "Just tell me what you see.' "Three very confused dudes and someone in a mask, who could be confused and a dude, I just can't tell for sure." "Cool, thanks!" The familiar voice chirps before a familiar face fills the screen. "See?" she says, proud. "None of us are hallucinations. Yay!"

Ok for some reason I see Kate in Egypt doing something slightly sketchy to get info on Rama tut with Marc Spector and Layla El Faouly and she is like "can you see those creepy British guys?" (They cannot) Kate says something about how they are glaring at her and saying they're a 4 hour flight from her, she better not be doing anything illegal, yada yada, they keep following her around or vice versa??? And Marc, apropos of nothing, says, "Yeah, they're your cluster."

"Of what???"

"Fellow sensates. You're sensates."

WhAT

(idk i just liked the idea of Marc being like oh yeah nbd. and kate is like no no i think it's a VERY bd. also Marc knows Ghost.)

when kate visits them she koalas on to one of them. they're so used to it that when they meet in person Soap just carries her around because she's not supposed to walk!!!!

when they visit her Gaz is the one constantly touching her, always has an arm around her. always shows up when she starts to get irritated at her PI work

Her sleep schedule is super fucked because Ghost (NEVER asks her to) sleeps better if she is visiting him. since she has a more flexible schedule (aka is not in the military) she'll stay up late and take naps at random times during the day so Ghost can get some sleepy snuggles companionship to help him drift off

price will visit when she's strategizing to offer helpful advice. gives her scalp massages when the young avengers are on her last damn nerve.

ok i've been sitting on this for a while so i'm gonna stop here!! i love this idea

[tyrantisterror]

While we’re on the subject of Dungeons & monsters, what are your top ten favorite D&D monsters & why?

I'm going to limit this to monsters that are either original creations of D&D or so divorced from their mythological roots that they might as well be original creations, or else this would just be me listing dragons. This is also in no particular order.

I'm gonna start with the Otyugh, because I think it's a result of D&D creating a very interesting ecosystem to justify its mechanics. You have all these artificial dungeons filled with different man-eating monsters, right? Well, what about the waste products they create? Carrion, yes, but also, you know... poop.

Well, you get Otyughs, a species that, depending on the setting, was either artificially engineered to take care of the waste products of a dungeon, or naturally evolved to clear out the waste of enormous megafauna predators like dragons. Is it mostly just an excuse to introduce yet another weird monster with a unique attack mechanic (say hello to sepsis and other infections, players)? Yeah, but it's a good excuse, it gets the imagination flowing.

I've actually played a lot more Pathfinder than D&D proper, and Pathfinder went out of its way to give Otyughs love by exploring all the aspects of their ecology that were only lightly outlined or implied in D&D, including the fact that they're technically intelligent enough to be capable of speech and reason - and thus, not necessarily a monster you have to deal with using violence alone. It really endeared me to them, to the point where Otyugh characters became something of a trademark of mine when running Pathfinder/D&D campaigns - and to the point where I ended up making up an expy of them for my own fantasy setting.

Bulettes are one of the coolest looking D&D monsters for my money, especially given that their modern designs take two inspiration from two very different animals - sharks and tortoises - and manage to combine them so beautifully to create something at once very cool and yet perfectly plausible as a "real" creature.

I love Rust Monsters for the same reason I love Otyughs - it's a monster that was made to showcase a game mechanic (namely, destroying players' weapons and armor, making sure they know how valuable those things are) and ends up creating a weird but plausible and interesting aspect of the ecology and world-building as a result. Also like Otyughs, they're very cute in a groady monster way.

Not every monster needs to have a big mind-blowing concept for me to be happy, though. Sometimes a creepy guy with a squid for a head who eats brains is enough. Mind Flayers are iconic and often imitated despite/because of being such a simple and easy to grasp concept.

Speaking of iconic monsters, Beholders feel like such an obvious cool concept that is shocking to me that they're more or less an original D&D creation - and it kind of sucks that they are, because a giant monster head with one main eye and several smaller eyes on stalks feels like it should be as ubiquitous in fiction as dragons and unicorns, and yet it can't be without paying Wizards of the Coast a shit-ton of royalties.

I will say that the lore D&D gave Beholders is pretty good, though - namely that each Beholder thinks it is the apex of their kind, and hates all other beholders for their perceived imperfections. Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, you see. It's great, no notes, but beholders should belong to the people, not copyright holders.

I'm pretty sure Mimics originate from D&D, though I guess they just couldn't keep the idea of "a treasure chest that fucking eats you" from the people, since they appear in a lot of non-licensed stuff. As they should - man-eating treasure chests are another monster concept that should belong to the people.

I was talking about Froghemoths the other day on here but I want to reiterate that I love them despite/because of the fact that there really is no greater concept at play here than "what if there was a big fucking frog freak," and not once in the long history of this game has anyone decided there needed to be more at play than that. A big fucking frog freak is enough for all of us.

I just think this one looks neat.

D&D kobolds are in the category of "so far removed from its mythic roots that it's basically a new monster," and in that case the new monster is "scrabbly little dragon people with extreme anxiety," and I love that. Kobolds are my favorite humanoid species in D&D, and I'm glad 5th edition finally gave them a stat block that's actually playable, as opposed to previous edition's attempts, which made the prospect of being a kobold character the equivalent of having a public humiliation kink.

Finally, and also in the category of "technically named after a mythic monster it no longer resembles in almost any way," we have the Tarrasque, which went from a turtle/lion hybrid dragon in myth to a nigh-indestructible monster that's explicitly compared to natural disasters for its immense size, vast destructive power, and near inability to be harmed thanks to its armored hide and insane healing abilities. Or, in short, D&D lawyer friendly equivalent of Godzilla. How can I not love D&D Godzilla?

[mentalisill]

tractor au we really goin at it now huh

They’re waiting for their dinner to get delivered when Ren realizes just how gorgeous Martyn is. They’re not doing anything really special, just too out of it to cook so Chinese takeout it is.

Originally, Ren had been saying lines for some movie his manager helped score him a role in. Some highlights from a scene between the main character and Ren, who's playing the love interest.

He says some stuff, it's cliche and sappy, and Martyn throws in small remarks here and there.

They have a system. Ren doesn't actually remember how it started, it kinda just happened one afternoon of sitting around and doing nothing, Ren looked at Martyn and just, stars, Martyn in the orangey lighting of Ren’s kitchen in his jeans and a dark green sweater, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, using his hands to tap absently tap at the counter. Ren had never been more gone for anyone.

That afternoon, they ended up on the couch, Martyn's hands in Ren's long hair and Ren's hands on Martyn's shoulder and neck, practicing a kissing scene Ren had.

And since they'd first begun doing that, Ren had started repeating his favorite lines for Martyn whether they included a kiss or not, it was something fun for both of them. Martyn made witty jokes and improved lines (Sometimes going against the plot of the movie to create some mess of a roleplay in some raspy over-exaggerated accent)

Tonight,  Martyn taps absently on the counter as Ren just plucks strings, it’s a very jumpy beat, but Ren makes due.

RD#1 

“Okay, uh–you ready dude?” Ren smiled, shifting his guitar on his lap as he sat on the marble island counter, watching Martyn as he moved around the kitchen. 

Martyn hummed, giving him a thumbs up.

Ren pressed the record button, this was technically a first draft, right? A demo?

The lyrics start as hums, nothing more than white noise in Ren’s ears as he thinks about if they’re good enough to be said out loud, he almost doesn't want to speak the words he's thinking up.

And when he sings the first word, the first verse, he wants nothing more than to just shrivel up and die. Nothing's more embarrassing to him.

Dream of my hands in your golden hair, “When I wake up, will you still be there?”

It's the first thing that he sings, he's honestly just spitballing here.

As Ren sings, he kinda has a problem closing his eyes and swaying, rocking back and forth in slow movements as he plucks and strums his guitar strings. But this time? He is still as a rock, wide-eyed, and looking at Martyn (who's still cooking, which requires his back to be turned, and Ren guesses that's a bit more comfortable than having Martyn stare at him as Ren sings the song he literally wrote about the blonde)

Because this song is not Ren the actor. It's Ren, just a regular guy. Just Ren, the guy who just so happens to be in love with his best friend, the guy who knows how Martyn takes his coffee, Martyn’s favorite weird food combinations, how he spends his Sunday afternoons, the guy who is hopelessly in love with his personal assistant.

They aren't exactly dating. They're well aware of their mutual feelings for each other, yet have no label on what they are. They're just them. And that's enough for Ren, and if it's not enough for Martyn they can put a label on it. But, they're in no rush.

Ren put everything into this song. Everything he loves about the man in front of him. He hums through the chorus, something, something, loving how Marytns jacket smelt that one night they were out late and Ren didn't have a coat so Martyn gave Ren his green jacket, something about how Ren stayed in bed an extra hour the next day just to not have to take the same jacket off when je got dressed, something about how Ren is actually drowning when he looks into Martyn's blue eyes and it's so much that he doesn't want to save himself anymore (he can deal with drowning if it's Martyn).

“I'd love to show that love's worth running to.” He finishes the song with the chorus, then an instrumental that fades out.

Martyn looks over his shoulder with a cheeky grin, “It sounds great! I like it!”

“I hope so. I don't think people would be happy to know I'm in love with someone who works for me, so…”

“What's the worst they can do?”

“I think getting canceled would be real scary, like it's my whole career on the line!” 

But, really, does any of it matter when Martyn snakes his hand into Ren's hand and entwines their fingers? Does any of it matter when Martyn uses his other hand to take the guitar from Ren and lean it against the counter next to them? Does anything need to worry Ren when Martyn pulls him down and kisses his cheek?

He's smiling like an idiot but decides that, no: his worries are kinda stupid, and a couple of angry fans aren't going to kill him.

[thedevilrisen]

This is Embarrassing.

Word count: 1.3k

Description Jamie and Trevor help Trevor's daughter with her period.

Hornet POV: 

Thunk. “MY KNEE!” My dad cried after running into the living room coffee table while playing Just Dance. 

“HA HA! That's what you get for being a tryhard Z!” His best friend and Teammate Jamie Drysdale teased.

“Well at least I’m not stuck on one star!” My dad, Trevor Zegras fired back, continuing to dance, albeit awkwardly with his now sore knee.

“Why do I feel like the most mature person in a room of adults?” I questioned brushing my knotted brunette hair out of my eyes in a short lived attempt to see the television screen so I could continue beating my Dad and my technically not Uncle, Uncle, Jamie. 

“Oh, OH, GET THE GOLD MOVE TO FINISH! LET’S GO BABY!” Dad cried while standing in the questionable ending position, his overgrown hair falling over his eyes. As the screen faded black then white to show the ending scores I moved to sit down and gritted my teeth as my lower abdomen cramped suddenly, moving to grab my water and take a seat next to an exhausted and couch-hogging Jamie I leant back and started sipping on my glass while pushing his feet away from me. He fell to the floor dramatically with a THUD, followed by an exaggerated groan. Jamie Drysdale the Professional Athlete my ass. This man can’t handle two rounds of Just Dance, how's he supposed to have the endurance to play hockey? I inwardly laughed at that thought.

“I’m going to get some more water, I’ll be back in a second.” Dad announced trudging off to the kitchen.

“Ok!” Jamie and I shouted back in unison,

I settled back into the couch and cringed when I felt a warm and damp sensation in my pants. I gasped and shot up, almost knocking a kneeling Jamie over as I rushed to the bathroom in my room.

“Sorry Jamie!” I rushed out shutting my room door.

“All good Kiddo!” He shouted back, still dazed from the dancing and falling on the floor. I rushed over to my wardrobe and grabbed a new set of underwear and a pair of black sweatpants so that way, if I had another leak it wouldn’t be super obvious. Groaning as I doubled over my dresser, I waited for a moment for the pain to subside before speed-walking into my bathroom, the cold marble tiles harsh against my feet as I recklessly put my clothes down on the stone countertop knocking over some items and even knocking my toothbrush off of the bench. I hissed, doubling over again this time leaning on the countertop, I yanked my top vanity draw open, eyes widening at the fact that the clear acrylic container that normally was full with everything I needed in this situation was empty. “Crap.” I mumbled under my breath, I completely forgot that I needed to get more pads and tampons as I ran out the last time I had my period. I needed to create a temporary solution so I changed into the new clothes and made a makeshift pad out of toilet paper while I figured out how to ask dad to go and buy me some. This is going to be embarrassing. 

Trevor’s POV: 

Wandering into the kitchen I walked over to the glasses cabinet and pulled down one of the basic IKEA glass cups with my right hand and opened the fridge door with my left pressing the glass to the dispenser button for the chilled water. Once the glass was nearly full I pulled it away and lifted it to my mouth and took a sip, “WHO WON!” I shouted back into the living room as I made my way down the hallway.

“WHO DO YOU THINK!” Jamie yelled back. I walked around the corner and saw my daughter’s silly-looking icon with her nickname Hornet written on the screen under the gold first-place badge, mine followed and as expected Jamie’s weird punk-rocker dude was last. I sighed out a laugh, 

“She’s too good, dude!” 

“I know it’s crazy.” he murmured looking up at me from his position leaning against the couch.

“What are you doing on the floor anyway?” I asked, the couch would be much more comfortable.

“Hornet pushed me off,” he replied. “Then, when I tried to get back up she rushed off to her room and knocked me in the process.” 

“Right then,” I extended my hand to help pull him back up, which he accepted gratefully and did just that, almost making me spill my glass of water over both of us. Once he was up I moved over to the hanging chair that Hornet insisted we get because it would be fun, I do have to admit though, the gentle swinging can be quite soothing. Jamie flopped down onto the couch and moved his hand around looking for something.

“What are you looking for?” I inquired.

“The TV remote, so I can turn this wretched game off.” he grumbled, continuing to move his hand aimlessly looking for the remote. “Z,” 

“Mm?” I hummed, turning my head.

“Is your knee bleeding?” he asked, lifting his hand, fingertips covered in a deep red substance. Glancing quickly down to my knee that was spotless, I looked back up with wide eyes.

“Where did that come from?” I shot up from my seat, sending the hanging chair swinging into the wall as I rushed over to the couch taking in the bloody stain on the gray material. “You're not bleeding are you?” I questioned as he got up and started down the hallway to the kitchen, I walked in after him to see him scrubbing his hand with soap.

“No, I’m not and have no reason to, that’s why I asked about your knee.” he explained.

“Oh.” I replied as I shuffled over to the linen closet across the hall to grab some bleach and cleaning rags from the shelves.

“Oh indeed.” Jamie replied from his spot in the living room, where he was using paper towels to wipe the excess blood off of the chair. Once he moved out of the way I knelt down and screwed open the bleach container lid, putting it on the floor next to me and pouring some of the bleach into the cleaning rag and using it to scrub the red-ish brown stain from the soft material. Putting my weight down through my arm I used the added leverage to scrub harder causing the majority of the stain to begin to lift, using some left over paper towel to wipe off the excess. I folded over the cleaning rag and poured more bleach into the soft fabric and turned back to continue scrubbing the stain.

“You're really putting your back into that aren’t you?” Jamie remarked, observing from the hanging chair on the other side of the room.

“It’s tough to get out!” I exclaimed, whipping my head around to look at him while still aggressively scrubbing at the material. “It’s almost out now though-”

“What’s almost out?” Hornet asked, awkwardly standing in the doorway.

“The mysterious blood stain that was on the couch.” I responded, “there, that is as good as we are going to get I reckon.” I threw the rag onto the couch and stood up, dusting off my knees. Reaching back down to grab the rag and bleach bottle, shuffling out from between the coffee table and couch to return the bleach bottle to its spot on the linen closet shelf and making my way into the kitchen to rinse the cleaning rag clean of the bloodied bleach.

“Hey dad?” Hornet asked, timidly for her normal self.

“Yeah,” I turned off the faucet and turned to hang the damp rag over the oven door handle, turning back around drying my hands on my shorts noticing the visible wince on her face as she moved to sit down on one of the barstools, “what’s up?”

“I-uh this is really embarrassing, but uhm y’know the blood you just cleaned off the couch.” she looked away embarrassed. “That’s uh my blood, because my period started early and I had a leak.. And I kind of don’t have any pads or tampons left. So, I was wondering if you could maybe go get me some… please.” 

“That solves the blood mystery then, doesn’t it?” Jamie conceded as he walked into the kitchen. Hornet's face was filled with pure mortification as she looked down at her hands that were clasped together. Jamie eased himself into the seat next to her and grabbed one of her hands from its bundle to hold it in both of his to assist in calming her down. 

“Nothing to be embarrassed about Hornet, it’s natural. Are you sure you have nothing left?” Jamie asked, stroking his thumb tentatively up and down her hand. 

“No, I was meant to get more the last time we went to the shops but I forgot.” Hornet responded quietly.

“That’s all good kid.” I responded in the same tone of voice “What do you need me to go get you?”

“I’ll write it down, just wait here.” She mumbled sliding off her chair and disappearing down the hallway. 

“It’s weird to see her so quiet.” Jamie admitted “I mean, considering half of her came from you.” 

“You say that like all I do is talk.” I replied, turning to face him.

“I mean, you are the enemy of silence.” He replied in an amused tone. 

“Wipe that smirk off your face.” I snapped back, walking around the other side of the island counter, pulling out a chair and sitting down as Hornet walked back into the room with a list written on a green post-it note.

“Here you are, that’s everything and the brands are important.” She emphasized pointing to the brand names in brackets.

“Okay, alright” I mumbled reading over the list. “I can do that.” I stood up and walked to the shoe rack pulling off slides and chucking them on the ground so I could slip my feet into them. Grabbing my keys off the wooden hook next to the door, I opened the door “I’ll be back as soon as possible.” Two voices responded in tandem with ‘Ok!’ I shut the door and walked down the short driveway to my car, unlocking it, swinging open the door and hopping in. The engine roared to life, I shifted the gear stick to reverse and pulled out of the driveway, changing the gear back to drive and speeding down the road. 

Hornet POV:

I walked down the hallway and into the living room, around the front of the couch and tried to sit down but a hand stopped me.

“Just wait a sec Hornet, let me get a towel just in case whatever you’ve done in the meantime falters.” Jamie requested, as he looked at me for confirmation, which I gave in a nod, and he rushed down the hall, heavy footsteps followed by the squeak of hinges as a cupboard door was thrown open and the squeak and slam of the door being forcefully shut. “Here we go, Hornet.” He stated, leaning over the back of the couch laying the towel over the soft gray material for me to sit on. Jamie walked around the couch to the large rattan basket that was against the wall in the little alcove next to the hanging chair and opened the basket to pull out the ashen gray weighted blanket. Walking back over and draping half of it over my knees for me to adjust how I want, he sat down next to me and pulled the other half up and over his knees and lap. “Want to watch a movie?” he asked, holding the TV remote and pointing it at the screen.

“Could we watch Shadow and Bone?” I requested. 

“Sure!” He smiled, opening Netflix and going into my account clicking on the show. “I like this show. It’s very thought out, like the story line.” 

“Eh, I prefer the Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom Duology.” I return, Bringing my knees to my chest. “Y’know, Ben Barnes kind of looks like Tyler Seguin.” Jamie laughed at this, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and pulling the blanket up a bit higher on me so I could cuddle up to his side, and get as comfortable as possible in my current condition. 

“Do you need anything, or are you good for now?” He inquired, turning to look down at my head which was poking out of the blanket enough to see the show.

“No, I’m ok. I should be fine till dad gets back.” I mumbled in response.

“Alright.” he whispered back in the same tone, gently running his hand up and down my arm in a soothing motion.

Trevor’s POV:

Tick, Tick, Tick. I looked at the little green indicator around on my dashboard as I waited for a break in the traffic so I could turn into the parking lot. After the red car. Driving up the first lane I couldn’t find any parks so I turned left down another lane, three minutes of diving around the parking lot and one stolen park later I found a park under a tree. Grabbing my phone, wallet and the green post-it note I opened the door, minding the car next to me shut it again, locked it and ran towards the glass sliding doors. Grabbing a basket from the stack and looking at the list before deciding to take a quick detour heading to the confectionery isle I grabbed a packet of strawberry creams, snakes alive, melody pops, two Cadbury marvelous creations and two caramilk marvelous creations bars, as well as packet of milky bar kids. Each landing in the basket with a plastic THACK. Scanning the aisle for anything else Hornet might want, maybe something minty I thought,

“A-ha.” I whispered to myself reaching to grab a darrell lea mint-choc bar. Walking down the aisle I turn left looking at the signs hanging from the roof for the toiletries, wandering past a few aisles quickly scanning the signs sparing fast glances to make sure I wasn’t going to run into anyone. About five aisles down the overhead sign had toiletries in bold white on the black background. 

“That’s the one.” I smiled to myself, walking down the aisle at a fast pace, stopping at the feminine products and pulling out the list. Looking between the list and the shelves I determined what I needed and grabbed double what she wanted just to make sure Hornet had what she needed for the foreseeable future. Grabbing the last packet off the bottom shelf, I stood up and placed it in the basket with the other items and briskly walking to the self checkout lane, grabbing a paper bag as I walked past the shelf. Scanning all the items, I pulled out my wallet and from the pocket my card and held it up to the eftpos machine to pay. Seeing the green tick I slid my card back into my wallet and my wallet back into my pocket, grabbing the paper bag filled with items in my left hand and pulling my phone out of my back pocket with my right I sent Jamie a message as I walked to the car.

‘Got the goods + extras. On my way home now.’

Jamie POV:

PING, glancing over my shoulder at my phone on my right side which was haphazardly thrown onto the couch next to me when we sat down I noticed Trevor’s icon. Picking up the phone and swiping up to get to the home screen I clicked the green messages icon on my taskbar then Trevor’s icon, skimming over the message and then looking at Hornets small figure curled into my side I whispered,

“Your Dad’s on his way home.” She looked up at me, stretching out slightly, visibly wincing when she wiggled the wrong way.

“OK.” she mumbled, getting comfortable again. 

“Do you need me to get you anything?” I queried the small ball of girl who looked like she was actively trying to crawl out of her skin. 

“Could you get me a heat pack, please.” she mumbled.

“Ok.” I said, trying to  get up, “Y’know you’re going to have to let go of me?” Reluctantly unclasping her hands from my side and dragging them timidly back to her small, curled form, silently allowing me to make my way down the hallway into the kitchen to retrieve the wisteria coloured heat pack from the top cupboard and place it into the microwave, setting the timer for two minutes. My attention was drawn from the spinning glass plate to the front window when I heard a car’s engine pull into the driveway and the porch light turned on. 

“Hornet! Your dad’s home!” I called the living room.

“Tell him he’s not allowed back if he doesn’t have chocolate!” she called back irritably. I locked eyes with my teammate who was standing in the hallway with two shopping bags in his left hand and a pair of shoes in the other.

“Good thing I thought ahead then! I yelled out, placing his shoes on the rack and walking toward the living room with the bags. I heard some distant mumbling and then the shuffle of feet down the hallway along with a door opening and closing.

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Turning around to the microwave and pressing the button to unlatch the door I grabbed the purple heat pack out, throwing it up in the air a couple of times because it was too hot to hold in my palm. Walking back down the hallway and meeting Hornet at the entrance of the living room I handed over the heat pack and she moved to sit down in between the corner of the L corner of the couch and her dad who handed her a packet of strawberry creams. Walking around the couch and settling myself a respectful distance from Z getting comfortable, I looked at the two Zegras’s and asked. “All good?” 

“Yeah, Thank you.” Hornet responded with a weak smile.

“Anytime kiddo.” Trevor responded. “Now, what are you watching?”

[formulatrash]

What do you think about team accounts using ship names? Williams has started posting about Loscar a lot but do you think they know what it means?

I have a bunch of thoughts about this but to start off with: yes, I am absolutely sure they know what it means.

the Williams social admins will have seen thousands of Loscar edits on TikTok. they will have read lots of comments and replies about Loscar on their other social platforms. beyond their official, professional commitments to monitoring the Williams stuff they're also F1 fans and they may well be on here or even AO3. you would be surprised how direct the pipeline from WattPad to PR is.

(a fair number of people who started off writing fic on livejournal are also quite high up in engineering these days and other technical roles obviously, just using WattPad to PR as an example there; basically, some people in F1 absolutely know about this sort of thing)

it's pretty innocent for social media admins to play on trends, especially if they know they get more interaction if they post Loscar than if they just post Logan. at the end of the day, it's a metric-based job and their task is to make numbers go up, not wonder if this might feel weird to some of us on tumblr. when I ran the F1 account I never would've used the word Maxiel but did definitely speed right on over to post anything that I thought might get picked up that way. was this kinda dirty cheating? yes but I had engagement targets to hit and the niche knowledge to know this was one way to do it.

(also technically my most unhinged work was creating this gif in staggering high definition for 2019. anyway!)

I do think there's two ways it's quite problematic for teams to lean into shipping, though. the first is that shipping is fictional and they're team accounts that are, well, real. the little guys that they have a sandbox to play with (coming up with sponsor content ideas and convincing the drivers to do them) are different from the dolls people make kiss on AO3.

the other is that it's queerbaiting, innit. we know how poor LGBTQ+ representation is in racing in general and how homophobic a lot of fans are - look at the abuse directed at Matt Bishop. or me, I guess but people (entirely reasonably, he's an absolutely brilliant man) like Matt more. anyway, the point is motorsport does not like LGBTQ+ people and therefore, probably shouldn't be allowed to use the idea of fictional versions of us for marketing.

[lottins-only]

Sweet Tooth | Rodrygo Goes

pairing: rodrygo goes x fem!reader

word count: 3.1k

A/N: based on this request. so sorry for the delay anon, had some writer's block. i hope you like it <3. let me know what y'all think!!

summary: a text to the wrong number sparks conversation with the mysterious 'baker boy', die hard rodrygo goes fan and fellow dessert enthusiast. as the friendship progresses, an undeniable connections grows between the two of you and you start to wonder about his real identity.

you: hey! those chocolate things you mentioned are called brigadeiros, right? wanna make sure I’ve got the right dessert lol 😅

You attach a link to the recipe you’d found online before shooting a quick text to sofia, your co-worker. earlier that day she’d mentioned trying these little fudgy chocolate truffles when she visited brazil. as someone with the biggest sweet tooth known to man, you’d immediately wanted to try them yourself. so after work, you headed straight to the store, picking up cans of condensed milk,cocoa powder, and sprinkles. now, standing in your kitchen, you’re ready to see if they live up to the hype. but then, a tiny worry popped up in your head: were they brigadeiros, or was it another brazilian dessert she mentioned? To be sure, you decided to double check with sofia.

 you get a response a few minutes later. 

+34 680 123 456: that recipe’s kinda bad. I should know, I’m brazilian. 

you blink. sofia was definitely not brazilian. glancing back at the number, you feel a jolt of realization.

“shit,” you mutter under your breath. you’d sent the message to a complete stranger.

you debate texting back an apology, but before you do, a new message comes through. it’s a detailed recipe. along with the steps, the person’s included specific tips, like their favorite brand of cocoa powder to use and a suggestion to roll the brigadeiros in coconut flakes for an extra touch.

you smile at one of the little notes:

+34 680 123 456: stir until your arm hurts. trust me, it’s worth it :)

you’re touched by this stranger’s kindness. shooting them a quick thank you text, you roll up your sleeves and get to work, following the recipe to a T. An hour or so goes by and you gaze down at the tray of gooey, fudgy treats you've created. when you take a bite out of one them, you close your eyes and actually moan. 

you carefully arrange the brigadeiros on a plate, trying to the best of your ability to make them look as aesthetic as possible before snapping a picture and sending it to the stranger.

you: omg thank you again for the recipe! they turned out to be so good 😍

+34 680 123 456: no problem :) they look really good!

+34 680 123 456: let me know if you have any other queries regarding dessert recipes i'm kind of an expert 😉

you: did i accidentally text a professional baker 👀

+34 680 123 456: haha no. far from it. it's just a hobby. my actual job keeps me busy so baking is a nice distraction

you: i get you, there's nothing like melting chocolate to remind you there's life outside spreadsheets and emails

+34 680 123 456: my job's a bit more physical but yeah, baking is like instant therapy.

you don't respond after that, because what else is there to say to someone who is technically a stranger? letting the conversation go on as long as it did was kind of weird and maybe a little risky, but you're grateful for the recipe, so you don't run to block the number.

instead, you lock your phone and munch on another brigadeiro.

a couple of days later, you're curled up in bed, watching your favorite romcom. when it gets to a scene where the main character indulges in a delicious looking chocolate souffle, you get an idea. bolting out of bed, you head to the kitchen, pulling your cupboards open to check if you have the ingredients needed. you've arranged all of it on your kitchen counter when another thought hits you and you impulsively grab your phone:

you: any tips for making chocolate souffle?

when a few minutes go by and you don't get a reply, you start feeling a twinge of regret. why did you think it was alright to text a stranger at 11 at night? you face palm, cringing at your own actions.

but then, your phone buzzes.

+34 680 123 456: chocolate souffle huh? that's ambitious

you: i'm up for the challenge 😌

a few minutes later, you receive a detailed recipe along with tidbits of helpful tips. it's a couple paragraphs long, and yet again you're hit with gratitude for this stranger's kindness.

you: thank you!!

+34 680 123 456: no worries , fair warning though it might take some patience

you: uh oh. now you have to promise to stay on standby in case of a souffle emergency lol

+34 680 123 456: i'll be here 😊

you can't help but smile down at your phone, feeling an unexpected warmth inside you.

you follow the recipe, and although it isn't as picture perfect as you'd liked it look, it does come out tasting amazing.

you: another success!

+34 680 123 456: no picture this time?

you: it doesn't look that good i have to admit..

+34 680 123 456: i still wanna see! come on, just one pic

you sigh, looking over at your deflated dessert. after a moment's hesitation, you quickly snap a picture and send it over.

+34 680 123 456: hey it's not that bad

+34 680 123 456: also you're really pretty, by the way :)

confused, you zoom in on the picture you'd sent and realize with a jolt that your reflection on the oven's glass is visible. it's not exactly your best angle, but your heart still flutters.

+34 680 123 456: sorry was that weird?

you: maybe a little, but i don't mind.

+34 680 123 456: promise i'm not some old creep. just a regular 23 year old guy who appreciates souffles (and accidental selfies apparently)

you feel a wave of relief at the knowledge he's age appropriate. but now you're curious, so you go and save his number, then open whatsapp.

you do a double take. his profile picture is a photo of rodrygo goes, real madrid's #11, beaming as he holds last season's champions league trophy.

you cringe a little. there’s nothing more off-putting than football fanboys who plaster their favorite players everywhere. you were hoping to get a glimpse of his face, but oh well.

you send him another text, this time on whatsapp:

you: can i get a pic of you? it's only fair

baker boy: you're looking at it

you: no i mean a real picture of you. that's just some footballer

baker boy: hey, that's a future ballon d'or winner, not just 'some footballer' 😌

you roll your eyes, fighting off the ick you're getting from the fanboy vibes.

you: right... but if i wanted a picture of rodrygo, i'd just google him

he doesn't argue with that, and a few moments later you get a picture. your breath catches at the sight of a lifted shirt and a toned, muscled brown torso decorated by a striking tattoo of an eagle. you swallow hard.

you: ok definitely not what i expected 😳

baker boy: you asked, i obliged

you: is there a story behind that eagle?

baker boy: yeah. but if i tell you, you'll have to tell me something about yourself in return

you: fair enough

and just like that, a steady stream of messages start to be exchanged between you two, and the most unlikely friendship of your life begins. what started as baking tips suddenly turns to late night conversations about everything from your favorite movies to bucket list activities. you don't pry much, but he gives you just enough information for you to piece together that he's well travelled, an avid surfer, a huge fan of football, and extremely well off. you start wondering about his job— you think that maybe he's in finance or tech, but that doesn't line up with what he said about having physically demanding work. nonetheless, you find that you enjoy his conversation very, very much. each text feel like peeling back another layer of someone so funny, thoughtful and kind. and more often than not, you find yourself grinning at your phone like an idiot.

one afternoon, you're hanging out at a friend's place, a real madrid match on. just as you look up, rodrygo scores an amazing goal. you immediately go and text him: omg your fav player just scored!!

he doesn't respond for about 3 hours. usually, when he's off work, he's quick to reply, so the delay stings a little.

in the evening, your phone buzzes.

baker boy: did you like it?

baker boy: sorry for the late response, i was at the stadium

you: yeah. it was cool

you: you watched the game at the stadium?

baker boy: you could say that

something tugs at you, a question beginning to form in the back of your mind. but before it can take root, you push it aside.

another week goes by, and you find yourself with a friend seated in the stands of the santiago bernabeu, soaking up the electric energy of the match. it pulls you in completely, the roar of the crowd, the sea of white jerseys. you try and keep track of the ball, but your eyes keep drifting back to one player in particular: rodrygo goes, with his quick darts and beautiful footwork. you get it now, why baker boy is obsessed with him. there's an elegance to the man, something about his game that draws you in completely.

as the final whistle blows and madrid claims victory, you anxiously glance down at your phone to check for any new messages. you'd texted baker boy a picture of the view from your seat, hoping that maybe he'd be here as well. but alas, no response throughout the game.

the players have all retreated into the tunnel and you and your friend are about to start leaving when your phone buzzes.

baker boy: you're here?

you: yup!

a pause, and then:

baker boy: which section?

you quickly type it to him, a nervous feeling growing in your stomach.

baker boy: stay where you are

you gulp. a million anxious questions flood your mind. what if he’s been lying this whole time? what if he’s actually a 50-year-old creep? who even thought it was a good idea to start a friendship over text? what if he’s exactly who he says he is, but there’s no spark in real life?

no, this was a bad idea. a really, really bad idea. panic rising, you grab your friend by the sleeve and practically drag her to the exit. you don't let out the breath you were holding until you're in her car zooming away, watching the stadium fade in the rearview mirror. a part of you feels guilty, but another part, the part that's responsible for self preservation feels that it's the right decision.

baker boy: i can't find you. where are you?

baker boy: did you leave?

baker boy: hello??

you don't respond to any of the messages.

"remember the girl i introduced to you last week?" sofia asks brightly, leaning over the divider between your desks.

"huh?" you pull your tired eyes away from your computer screen to look at your cubicle neighbor.

"thaynara! i brought her to happy hour on thursday?" she tries to jog your memory.

ah,yes. thaynara was a pretty, bubbly brazilian that you'd gotten along with. you'd even swapped numbers.

you nod. and sofia continues, "her cousin is having a small get together tonight at his house. she said you should come."

"sure" you mutter. " why not?"

it's been a week since you last spoke to baker boy, the day you bolted from the stadium to avoid meeting him. since then, his messages have sat unanswered, and each time you open the chat, a wave of guilt washes over you. you tell yourself it's the right call, that forming and keeping a friendship with a complete stranger over text is at best idiotic, and at worst, dangerous. no matter how much it felt like he was a normal, genuine guy who occasionally made your heart flutter, it just wasn't worth it.

sofia's invitation seems like a nice distraction though, so after work, you quickly head over to your place for an outfit change before grabbing a ride from sofia to head to thaynara's cousin's place.

as you enter the gated community and pull into a long, tree lined driveway, you can't help but ask the question at the tip of your tongue: "thaynara's rich?" you blurt.

"her cousin's rich" sofia corrects with a small smile.

"right.." you mutter, admiring the beautiful villa in front of you. "what does she do?"

"it's a he" sofia softly chuckles as she parks the car. "and you'll see"

you shoot her a quizzical look, but before you can ask any more questions, she's already out the car and leading the way. you quickly follow.

you catch up just as she rings the bell, and a moment later thaynara opens the door. she greets you both enthusiastically, pulling you inside the house.

soon the three of you are sitting in the spacious living room, chatting with the rest of the guests. you quickly pick up on the effortless closeness between all of them and you're not shocked when you find out they're all childhood friends who grew up in the outskirts of sao paulo.

“where’s—“ sofia begins to ask, glancing around curiously.

“he’s upstairs taking a nap” thaynara says. “I swear he’s like a koala bear, every day after training he has to go sleep”

you smile to yourself, thinking about baker boy and his insistence that daily naps were a non-negotiable part of his day.

“don’t listen to her” you hear a deep, groggy voice interject.

you look up, and your eyes immediately widen. at the top of the stairs stands rodrygo goes, clad in sweatpants and a cozy looking hoodie. his eyes are slightly bloodshot, a tell tale sign he's just woken up. he walks down the stairs delicately, body obviously worn out.

"sorry guys" he grimaces as he limps over. "tough training today"

he sinks onto the couch next to thaynara with a sigh. he still hasn't noticed you.

"rodry" she nudges him. " this is sofia's friend, y/n. i told you she was coming"

his eyes snap up. now he sees you.

he pauses for a moment too long, eyes fixed on you. he visibly stiffens, and you see a hint of something on his face, maybe shock. was he...blushing?

you're about to open your mouth to ease the awkwardness when he finally responds quietly: " it's nice to meet you, y/n. i'm rodrygo."

you offer a polite smile, but inside you're trying to decipher his reaction. "nice to meet you,too"

the evening goes on. there's more chatter and laughter, and you're swallowed in conversation with the friendly brazilians. the tv hums in the background, drawing a couple people in with a basketball game. meanwhile, another group has started a game of monopoly. you enjoy the casual atmosphere, swept up in stories and jokes in portuguese and english.

except there's rodrygo. he doesn't make any effort to start a conversation with you after your initial greeting. he stays across the room, laughing and mingling with everyone but you. you would think he absolutely hates your guts, except you catch him glancing at you from the corder of your eye once or twice. you tell yourself not to dwell on it too much, but there's something about him. something that makes you feel like there's tension simmering beneath the surface.

you’re pouring a drink in the kitchen when you sense someone behind you. you turn, and there he is, leaning casually against the doorway, his eyes finally meeting yours.

“hey,” he says softly, a hesitant smile playing on his lips. “you enjoying yourself?”

“yeah” you reply, trying to match his casual tone. “it’s been nice. everyone’s been really welcoming.”

he nods, looking down as if gathering his thoughts. “i didn’t expect you here tonight,” he admits, meeting your gaze again. there’s something vulnerable in his eyes.

your face falls. "oh, i'm sorry. i didn't - thaynara said you were fine with having me over. i- "

his eyes widen in return, and he raises his hands in defense. "no, no, no. that's not what i meant. i-" he searches for something in your face, then seemingly gives up. "never mind"

you stare at the floor. you feel so embarrassed. you shouldn't have come at all.

"um" he swallows. "gabriel asked me to grab him a glass of water"

you don't know why he feels the need to explain his presence in his own kitchen but you nod. you watch as he reaches the highest cupboard. as he does, the bottom his hoodie lifts just a bit, revealing a sliver of tanned, toned stomach. and there, unmistakable, is the eagle tattoo. your breath catches, eyes widening.

it's him.

realization hits you like a speeding freight train. you feel your cheeks heat up, and you slap your hands over your face, peeking through your fingers to look at rodrygo's now smirking face.

"i feel like an idiot" you murmur, before bursting in to laughter. "you're.. you're baker boy"

"took you long enough" rodrygo chuckles along with you.

his fingers are warm against yours as he gently pulls your hands away from your face. his touch lasts longer than necessary, but when he lets go, you find he's looking at you with an amused yet nervous look.

"i thought i'd never get to talk to you again" he says, voice low.

you stare at the ground guiltily. "i'm sorry. i just- i thought it was getting weird, being that devoted to a friendship with a stranger"

he nods. "no, i get it. thank god you somehow made it to my house, huh?"

"yeah." you say quietly. "thank god"

a beat of silence ensues.

"so, uh, how about we take things offline" he fiddles with the bottom of his sleeve nervously. you find extremely it cute. " there's this brazilian restaurant. they have a new dessert on their menu i want to try. do you want to go?"

a warm smile spreads across your face as you nod, unable to hide the excitement bubbling up inside. “i’d like that,” you say softly.

his eyes light up, and his nervous fidgeting gives way to a confident grin. “great. I’ll send you the details then”

you head back together and continue to mingle with friends. he steals glances at you, and you flush each time. now, there's a spark between you two. something familiar, yet new. you can't help but feel like this is a fresh start. the beginning of something great.

[veliseraptor]

top 5 fictional villains

oh man how am I supposed to choose from my entire villain warehouse. let's see.

1. Xue Yang. I mean, if this wasn't obvious from my [gestures] whole blog. But boy did I fall hard from pretty much scene one of my first watch of The Untamed, and then never looked back from there. He's just! What a guy. An icon. I love him so much. Fucks up his own life irreversibly and doesn't even realize he's doing it until too late. Whoops.

2. Maeglin. #my trash son. I waffled between putting him and Celegorm on this list (I could've done both, but, well, I felt like I should pick one per canon) and decided to go with Maeglin because he's arguably worse? Though I guess it probably depends on your metric. (I'm not really interested in arguing on that one, I don't particularly care, they're both my beloveds and there's no changing that at this point.) Seriously fucked up childhood that's got to fuck some things up in one's head to begin with, and then making some terrible choices later on that just go rapidly downhill, and again, tragedy of condemning oneself but also how doomed was he from the beginning (pretty doomed).

3. Vegas Theerapanyakul. I kind of hesitated about putting him on here because it feels sort of weird to call him a "villain" but like. He did sexually assault the protagonist in an early episode and threaten to kill him later on, so, like. Even if the story turns around and gives him a happy ending (iconic) I feel like he counts. Disaster of a man, kind of an awful person ("kind of?", you say, and okay, that might be so), and it's very sexy of him. Pete thinks so too, apparently.

4. Shen Jiu. Yest all right I know he's technically Sir Not Appearing In This Book but he is technically the titular scum villain so I'm counting him. Awful man. Miserable history, miserable story. I'm irresistibly drawn to tragedies created by characters themselves and that's what this guy's got going on.

5. Moridin/Ishamael/Elan Morin Tedronai. We! Love! A nihilistic villain just craving the end of everything! Of tenuous sanity and an abiding obsession with the protagonist! Anyway I didn't have a lot of feelings about this guy the first couple times I read Wheel of Time but then on my second to latest reread he came roaring out in front and plop, in the villain warehouse he goes.

thought about including He Xuan but he only sort of feels like he counts as a villain somehow; honorable mentions here go to Celegorm (disney prince murderer), Jun Wu (king of creating a toxic work environment), Clytemnestra (queen of my heart), Azula (since I just mentioned her), Jin Guangyao (generator of infinite discourse) and Jinx. I feel like I'm forgetting folks here. but that happens, I suppose.

and this is not including villains who are just so much fun for me to watch, who live in a slightly separate corner of my brain but are beloved of me nonetheless.

[transhawks]

I have to agree. I will argue that cwac is well written but it's essentially just different characters with a bnha coat of paint, it was written so many years ago where it could've technically been a direction taken but canon has deviated so far from it no longer resembles anything close to it. The problem begins when some take it as a canon interpretation when it was not leading to infighting and misreading of canon events and character, although this is no fault of the author who I believe is still very talented.

When I first got into the fandom circa 2018, right before Hawks debuted, I was super obsessed with Deku and so CWAC was up my alley. But the moment I started paying attention to the villains, somehow it clearly dawned on me how not only OOC the story was but just how much the author clearly dislikes characters like Shigaraki or Dabi and how much it shows, fairly juvenile-y.

I won't argue that the author isn't talented, but over the years a friend who was also a very Big Writer at the time of CWAC's popularity 2018-ish has told me how discussions about the League went very badly.

The issue still is the fandom. I absolutely blame DFO on CWAC and the other work of the author that the name escapes me. Even now, when I look at DFO dynamics or the weird afo inko obsession they absolutely clearly have elements from the fic, so essentially what CWAC did was establish such a clear fanon that even non-fic readers have taken it as part of the theory.

I mean, again this is more the issue of the fandom in general just clinging on to very old perceptions of characters and plots. I'm going to rant about that below.

I'll use Tomura as an example because what made me dislike CWAC was the handling of him when I started to realize just how rich Horikoshi made Tomura 's character. Some shig-haters never get passed Kamino in what they think of him, and there are the LOV stans who haven't caught up with the idea that actually the MLA arc was *bad* for the League and are still in the viewpoint that the villains are revolutionaries. So there's these spaces where Shigaraki is just seen as a murderous incel versus Shigaraki is Che Guevara incarnate.

And these echo chambers are so removed from each other that very often little nuance penetrates, so you have incredibly established fanon truths that are rarely deviated from and people just stop examining the source material. Then conflict arises when you leave the echo chamber and talk to someone else.

Also worth mentioning is that the fandom echo chambers manage to function as they do by assigning moral values to any "thought crimes" that don't line up with accepted fanon-"canon". Don't think the League are super-radicals who will actually liberate society and create a Marxist utopia? Well you're a capitalist pig who supports cops, bye. You can see it with the very hardcore hero stans who think liking a villain means condoning murder too, "why do you like terrorists?" Or come into my inbox to tell me Jin's murder was justified. Fandom is very good at policing itself into cliques, to the detriment of everyone, I think.

It also, I think, created the situation where people in this fandom genuinely hate the work, keep reading it in bad faith due to those ingrained fanon expectations and preconceptions of what the work should be, and then get more and more resentful as time goes on and their views are not even acknowledged.

Seriously, just look back at the reaction of hero stan Twitter and reddit bros at Himiko's whole fight with Ochako. There was so much hatred of how Himiko was being redeemed.

There are still canon DFO fans. I feel sorry for those who had to look at this chapter and realize that what they've sunk so much time into was not real. Disappointment hurts, man.

Anyway, thanks for listening to me rant. I find it fascinating in an academic sense how so much of fandom was shaped by a fic and I wonder if at some point someone will examine it critically.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Sooooo I am very curious about your Durge and how they are built. Do they link into the lore of the earlier games? Are they a resist or accept type? Tell us more! 👀

You mean built as in "how Bhaal made him", or as in character build, or as in characterisation? Well, I'll answer them all anyway. Here's more rambling information than anyone needed about my fucked up, socially-unacceptable mess who needs therapy!

[Be aware dead doves may be present, ymmv]

Resist, technically. He woke up with a tadpole in his head and no memories, he wasn't going to trust a presence in the back of his head that kept stealing his bodily autonomy until he understood what it was. As he grew fond of his party, he began to be pushed towards doing good things and helping people to please them (and because it honestly does feel good to see people happy, even as it makes the Urge hurt him).

Of course there were a few exceptions where nobody except Astarion was looking where he was a bit pragmatic or just plain mean, because it was funny.

Then he got his memories back in Act 3 and had a full blown nervous breakdown as he realised how badly he had failed Father and his sole reason for existence by allowing himself to fall for the delusion that he was a real person. He tried to go back to just being Bhaal's evil little puppet, but it was too late and his loyalties were torn between being what his friends wanted and being what Bhaal wanted. There was another panic attack when he couldn't bring himself to kill Minsc because it would upset Jaheria, Wyll and Karlach. Still murdered a few innocent people and a celestial being behind their backs. Also every Flaming Fist in the Lower City, but that was their own fucking fault for having stupid AI. Turns out you can't have everyone you love, but luckily he got to solve this issue by letting Father kill him as punishment for his failure! He repents for his failure and his friends get to believe that he died a heroic sacrifice and move on with their lives - win-win! Except that Jergal interfered and now he has to carry around this tainted, stolen flesh he doesn't want to claim - damn you, old man.

Post-game he's living with Astarion; both having their bad days where they have time to stop and process their trauma now, and also having good days where they adventure; grow into being fully free willed individuals; hunt and kill people for fun, blood and profit where socially acceptable; and get some research done on stuff like Bhaalspawn and vampires. He'll probably be ok in, like, a decade or twenty, once he's finished coming to terms with the idea that he was genuinely miserable and terrified living under Bhaal's control and has formed his own life and a stable identity. In the meantime - abandonment issues, identity crises, issues about autonomy, paranoia about retaliation and religious guilt!

If he had failed in his duel against Orin and been condemned to lose his autonomy (and seen his friends immediately give up on him), or had he not been given death as a choice, he probably would've forsaken the party and fulfilled his original purpose in the end game. But he would've quickly killed them in their sleep first as a mercy! He's not totally heartless! He's an absolute mess.

He doesn't have much in the way of connections to the original games.

I go back and forth on how old I want him to be and haven't settled yet. I don't think he's young. Originally I had him be born in the temples before the Time of Troubles, along with the other Bhaalspawn but then it turned out that Durge's backstory is weird.

Going off of what we're told about being carved from Bhaal's dead flesh, having no birthday and being conceived beyond mortality, I'm assuming he was created from a part of Bhaal's corpse on the Astral Plane, where there was no time. Probably shortly after the end of Throne of Bhaal, in 1369 DR - maybe Bhaal was paranoid about Amelyssan and Bhaal's failure to be resurrected triggered the failsafe and initiated plan B: the Dark Urge.

Or Vel was born after 1372 DR, when Bane was reborn and Bhaal maybe felt a little insecure.

I have contemplated having my Charname meddle with his "birth" to piss Bhaal off, adding part of her own essence into the mixture. Technically it's not incest, because it's purely by magic, but it's still enough to make her sort of his mother and make it weird. Just to make the family tree even more complicated. Also technically makes him a half-human, half-hin, sun elf, quasi-deity. Nothing in this guy's life makes sense.

He's a ranger, because hey, he's a hunter - he just hunts people. He's comfortable hunting and surviving in urban or natural environments; he learned to live off the streets while being homeless after his foster family's death (and the subsequent massacre at the Ilmatari shrine that sheltered him) and learned to live off the land after fleeing into the wilds to lie low. It's also how he's familiar with poisons and venoms. He has an interest in death as part of the natural cycle, so the nature class suits him. Also likes animals, who are significantly less judgemental and more pragmatic about killing. Scavengers tend to follow him around for the corpses he leaves, and he ended up with a few rat and corvid animal companions (though Bhaal often forced him to kill them if he got too attached). It also lets me play a divine spellcaster, although I assume in his case the power is coming from his own soul rather than a patron god.

He's a divine being and an excellent killer, he knows this and it gives him self-confidence in his actions that some have described as "insufferably arrogant" or "suicidal". His go-to tactics for dealing with a problem are: Step 1) Promise death if subject does not submit Step 2) If subject does not submit; kill them Skipping to step two is also always on the table. All problems can be solved with murder.

His dump stat is intelligence, because the poor kid who ended up alone and homeless didn't have much time or resources for education. In another life he would've been a bard, he has a knack for carrying a tune and writing prose. I like to think Orin would've enjoyed art and maybe the theatre in her own alternate Bhaal-free universe, so it's an interesting parallel for them.

He takes an approximation of elven form because Bhaal decided to reverse engineer the Blessing of Corellon, using the soul of one of his elven kids as a reference, to give Vel a physical fluidity/flexibility that would be useful to his plan to breed an army of Bhaalspawn using Durge. Also works as a threat; obey, or there are other uses I have for you, and some of them will see you locked up for nine months. (Vel goes by male pronouns and presents as a cis man, but is somewhat flexible and accepts they/them pronouns. Not she/her though.)

Vel also has a million and one hang-ups about sex because of stuff like this; namely that he won't have any kind of sex that might cause pregnancy, and he used to kill the partners he begrudgingly took so that they wouldn't be able to perceive him during the act or remember him sexually. He makes a special exception for people who he's assigned an "equal" or "higher rank" over himself - they can do what they like with him and it's their right. Those exceptions would be Bhaal (Vel's body is Bhaal's body, as far as he's concerned), sort-of Gortash (except Vel didn't fully trust him and their relationship makes Bhaal irritated, so every time they had sex Vel had to leave and have a panic attack afterwards) and Astarion (who has his own hang-ups). There might have been something kind of going on with Orin, partly due to pressure for them to have "sacrificial lambs" together, but neither want to talk about it. He considered Ketheric, but Ketheric can't die and that would ruin it because Vel would be too busy trying to kill him to actually have sex.

Originally he was going to be the son of a member of the Eldreth Veluuthra, who turned to Bhaal for divine aid because the Seldarine still won't aid the terrorist organisation in committing genocide against the human race, for some strange reason. She would've raised her little abomination into be a weapon to set on them, and enjoyed the irony of humans being slain by an abomination spawned by of one of their own gods.

Since "the Dark Urge" gets you some funny looks when you use it in public, mine concedes to being called "Vel" - a name that only gets you funny looks from the minority that speak elven, because you've just introduced yourself as "dagger/knife." It's a description of him as a tool, not a person. His foster family did give him a name, but he refuses to acknowledge it because it was intended for a person who only existed in their imagination and he'll stab you if you call him by that name. He technically got the name from Gortash, who once "jokingly" referred to him as his favourite weapon one evening, enjoying the success after one of their joint plots to exploit some noble or other and advance both their goals via assassination/politicking. Vel has identity issues and complicated relationship with real Tel'Quessir, so he chose the elven word for the irony (no real elf would accept association with a Bhaalspawn, least of all this one).

Mostly he goes by no name at all. He might pick a new one, in a few decades when he's grown, healed a bit and feels secure in having his own identity.

Vel is Lawful, and alternates between Evil and Neutral depending on his mood and situation. He will fall to pieces without a purpose to structure his life around. He doesn't care if people around him are more Chaotic though, it's purely a personal code. If he takes a mercenary or assassination contract or something, he will fulfil it to the letter and make no attempts to backstab his employer or get any more than the agreed upon payment. He makes zero promises about the actions of anyone working with him, they can do what they want and it's not his problem.

He has a hierarchy in his head: Bhaal > Himself, Gortash, Astarion > Orin, the party > everyone else

His moral compass is a twisted thing that he's cobbled together out of scraps over the course of under two months, it's not very complete or useful. On the good-evil axis, he doesn't usually have second thoughts about taking actions that are evil, and he's not keen on the concept of morality as a whole; there was never any point in developing a sense for it. He never had any real say in his actions and he kind of resents people who judge him for them.

He kind of misses Sceleritas, his "great purpose" and all the power he used to wield, and he would make a fantastic Sharran.

[howdoesagrapewrites]

dam the angst poly!gayatrixpavitrxreader fic was so good it broke me man :( /pos

Maybe some fluff time? please? Like they do stuff for their first anniversary? Maybe the reader wants to surprise them but they find out that all of them individually had a surprise for the other two? i think that would be nice :)

Thank u and have a great day! :)))

𝙃𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 (𝙪𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙙) 𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙨

Cw: fluff, poly!gn!reader x Pavitr Prabhakar x Gayatri Singh,

Notes: a little break from the yandere stuff, I hope you like it!

>If we're following the tricycle storyline, Pavitr and Gayatri technically have their anniversary before, but none of them want to celebrate it that way, they weren't really happy since they were crushing on you and feeling guilty about it

>They still remember it and give little presents to eachother, but nothing too big, Pavitr calls it a "pre-versary" and he has one for you too, it's the day you bumped into him in the hallway, but you don't remember it and just assume is a little gift without much meaning (just a nice thing to do y'know)

>Pavitr isn't great at keeping secrets when it comes to the most important people in his life, but he's determined to keep your anniversary a surprise

>But so is Gayatri, and so are you

>Which leads to incredibly awkward exchanges

>"You said you'd be at the park, but I passed on my way to the bus stop, and I didn't see you" you asked

>"I was at the other side, near the pond. Feeding ducks" Gayatri sounded oddly serious about it

>"There's ducks now?" You excitedly questioned

>"Yes, it's very recent..."

>Gayatri had to create a community plan and run it through the city hall to have ducks at the park so you didn't suspected, at least you and Pav were happy about it. Pav got extremely attached to one of the ducks and now you have to visit them every week or he cries

>This has been going on for at least three months, And you're pretty sure you've been seduced to ignore certain things

>"Pav why were you- he cut you off, a finger to your lips and another hand gently holding your chin so you look up to his deep set eyes, he kisses you softly, leaving you dumbfounded and uninterested in whatever you were about to ask

>Since it's your first anniversary, you are still in highschool, making things even more complicated

>You stayed after school and stole their locker keys (for a good reason), and spent the whole afternoon stuffing flowers in their lockers so that they'd be showered in petals when they open them

>You were practically unable to sleep that night, you planned the whole day to surprise them, the fanciest dinner a high school student could afford, heartfelt long letters, and trinkets here and there that you knew they'd like, you were also really excited to see what they got for you

>But you woke up to anything but a happy anniversary

>First thing in the morning and you heard ruckus coming from a few blocks

>You looked through your window and see a weird looking villain of the week

>"Ah, spiderman will handle it, it doesn't matter" you said calmly until you remembered "wait- Spiderman's my boyfriend"

>You get dressed in a rush, grab a fruit and start running/biking to the center of whatever's going on, you know Pavitr wouldn't want you there, but you can't help it

>You're horrified when you see Gayatri tied up to some sort of machine, she wiggles around to try and free herself

>You get to the building without catching Pavitr's attention and start running the lots of stairs it takes to reach the rooftop

>As you're finally get to it, climbing the firescape ladder (I hope you know what I'm referring to)

>"Jaanu! You're not-" he uses his webs to stick the villain to the wall "You're not supposed to be here"

>"What do you mean? I already kidnapped your girlfriend, who's this?!" The villain said, he had a green enlarged head looking like a skull

>"For such a big head you're pretty close minded you know?" Pavitr said, he triumphantly swinged to the rooftop as he left the webbed up villain to the police

>You ended up recurring to your teeth to break the rope with odd materials holding your girlfriend captive

>"sweetie! Thank you, thank you, but you shouldn't have come in here!" Gayatri said between kisses and hugs

>Pavitr joined the hug and apologized for everything, of course you told him it wasn't his fault

>"Happy anniversary, I guess" you smiled

>Gayatri started looking in her pockets and found the three lockets she got for you "I'm so lucky they didn't fell off" the gold heart shaped lockets had a photo of you three you took on a photo booth almost a year ago

>Maybe it wasn't like you planned, like any of you planned, but it was a good day, any day you spend with them is beautiful in its own ways, and you hope you can keep having days like these (maybe with a little less kidnapping) for the rest of your life