#AND THEN OFC BLOCK THEM IF THE KINDS OF THINGS THEY POST HURTS YOU!!

[scissorcraft]

next time they show up i vote everyone responds with ‘marshaaaaall hey buddy good to see you how you doing you still hate me? cool bro hope your day is dandy’ because i think this guy needs some positivity in their life but also needs to be treated as a nonthreat

i know ur not like, supposed to ‘feed the troll’ but the guy is a lukewarm troll and hey if posting the ask alerts ppl whp need to block him to block him - gonna do it!

confused as hell though personally on why i keep getting asks though, esp based on context bc liiiike…? do y’all think i’m in a discord or smth? or hate this person i’ve never met? i’m still a little too nervous to start setting up my own discord (still going to! excited about it!) to be on anyone elses??? idk, i hope you find help guy, please stop seeking attention in this way because it is unhealthy and unfulfilling, also your url this time is swag and you use it for evil… smh… (/s but fr come on SIFFRINAUTISM?? that’s such a good url!!!!!)

[worth-this-and-more]

my speculations on how bree's purple power would be like: which majorly stems from when i was wondering how bree's power smells like and half the post is just that

[spoilers for legendborn and bloodmarked, read at your own caution ;)]

so there are a few...things related to magic in the legendborn series; it's abilities, specialties, weaknesses, aftereffects, smells, color, common form etc etc so i wanted to make some headcanons which may or may not be true but yeah these are my thoughts;

so now that we are here, let us begin;

her power is purple as everybody and their mamas know but just let's get into this?? purple has been like a symbol of yk rarity and royalty in literature since ages before, which goes perfectly with the fact that bree is our king. now since it is so rare her powers will have the usual and added benefits, which i have headcanoned before but i just wanted to put them in one place.

firstly, aether was usually used to cast hard constructs, harder than diamond if needed, but selwyn has proved that aether could be forged into practically anything you wish to as long as you're capable and willing. so bree's power can surely be used like an all-encompassing building block to forge everything from weapons to mundane things like i said here. so this is aspect one.

secondly, rootcrafting is mainly for healing and perseverance. so bree could now possibly have the ability to heal herself, and because she is seen to have at least some knowledge of medical field or can like basically guess which part is hurting and which one is not, i mean isn't it possible now she has her own unlimited (debatable since she collapsed after jessie healed alice but i have a point for that too??) healing powers?? surely she will be able to heal herself pretty fine, yk like a quick break between things because rootcraftng doesn't allow use of much power because it is borrowed but like now she has her own furnace so yeah.

about the collapsing part, it is possible that because in legendborn she hadn't completely unlocked and accepted her powers yet, she was running on a limited-time root that was supposed to be an "emergency" supply. and also that it was used by someone else through her, she did not willingly give it like she did in bloodmarked (she wouldn't have refused to, just that she didn't realize quick enough what jessie meant when she said you'll have todo from your side so like kind of different from when she gave her root to selwyn) and in bloodmarked she also had like yk 70% set unlocked ig.

thirdly, because these powers are now merged, it would be so badass if she is able to actively defend herself and heal herself at the same time, after mastering her control over powers now that arthur is no longer manipulating her with his "too much aether, too fast" strategy.

along with this, we saw that bree's healing gave alice like permanent immunity from mesmer, either triggered by pain or just not able to stick properly in the head, but either ways mesmers don't work now. so after they all reunite, one task in her to-do list could be to have sel or anyone mesmer everyone and then to reverse the mesmer so that everybody now has immunity from mesmer. yk for future reference or relevance to the plot perhaps. and ofc you can't forget anna (nick's mom) i strongly believe her mesmer is gonna be broken by bree.

also, THE DAGONNN. so the question is about her fuel and sustenance, so like if she's in her dragon form can she eat what dragons eat (obviously meat i don't think vegetarian dragons exist?? and also does bree eat meat is this ever mentioned?? if not then i hope she eats meat she gonna need that protein to fly) will it affect her?? like in her human form ofc she wouldn't want to eat uncooked meat but like become a dragon breathe fire and you have your medium rare steak ready. is this possible. same question for selwyn btw, can he eat worms in his owl form or does he like throw up after turning human or have food poisoning like is this a thing guys.

anyways, back to topic, so these are like her abilities, but what about the physical descriptions?? now her rootcraft was mage flames, and aether was the solid armor construct. so her new powers could either be something in between or a combination that she can wield in whichever way she needs. technically it should be a combination, harder constructs for weapons and armor, flames for large defense and flowy to make her own wards (i mean she would need them sometime?? ig?? after they reunite and shit so yeah)

and the smell, her new power should have different smells and purple is the rare royal color and hella nostalgic vibes there don't ask me why so here are my guesses;

petrichor; the smell of earth after the first rain. not exactly rare, but it is kind of a nostalgic smell that has been on earth hundreds of years even before humanity. like it ties with the fact that bree's power was more from the shadow king so the smell is also like yk ancient af.

i don't know the name but the smell of salt on the beach, waves rolling in and the sprayed misty scent. correspondence to, again, it has been here since ages and is one of the smells that has a different type of nostalgia. anybody who has ever been to a beach or water body will know but it just smells different.

now this one a kind of hard to explain but yk when you go to your grandparent's house, maternal grandparents, and it has like this distinct smell that is different for every family?? the smell of generations of mothers growing up in the same house, like their childhood, puberty, old age everything in one place. (yes i thought of this while i was at my own grandma's house and i wondered what it would be like if bree also had the chance to be in a house which had all the memories and elements of her line of mothers lives). it will be a difficult smell to explain because i do not have the proper vocabulary to say it but it is a guess of mine and probably possible.

yk that very powdery smell of silk?? the one that doesn't go away even after washing the cloth many many times, its very hard to explain but silk has been a major symbol of royalty in history (yk the silk road?? yeahhh) so it could also be one of the scents, depending on which type of royalty you mean.

i ran out of scents but you get the point now.

now, weaknesses. i am hoping she doesnt have to like yk collapse after every fight, at least not until the adrenaline wears off. i hope her powerhouse can heal her and replenish her energy levels. at least for short term, like yk coffee makes you forget you're tired. not exactly good but will be good while she's on the run. may or may not happen but hey I'm just making theories.

this is all ig?? could make a pt.2 or add something here but yeah this is all i guess.

[sarahowritesostucky]

📖"Body Heat: a Snowpiercer-Marvel Mashup Story pt 2

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Curtis Everett x ofc

Tags: food insecurity, post apocalypse, age difference (18/34), dark!fic, implied/referenced suicide, poverty, arranged marriage, implied/referenced past cannibalism, hurt/comfort, attempted sexual assault

Summary: She’s too young for him to be eyeing her up the way he has been, but this is the Tail section, and Curtis has caught other men looking more than once. Everything is a commodity in the Tail. Everything. It won't be too long before he has to step in and claim her.

Author's Note:

On Tumblr, forbidden ToS content categories are: "terrorism, hate speech, harm to minors, self harm, sexually explicit material, violence, threats, gore, and mutilation."

And while you ARE apparently allowed to write a fictional story about incestuous, torturing, anorexic racists who rape their siblings, murder babies, kidnap, hate minorities, cannibalize, terrorize, and self-injure in the plotline of said story,

you ARE NOT allowed to write a teenage character who engages is any sort of sexualized conduct in a story.

For this one category and this one category alone, Tumblr staff (or at least one particular individual 🧌 😏on staff) makes no distinction between fictional stories with teen sexuality and C.S.A.M (which is frankly gross and unintelligent). They can and will delete your blog without any notice.

So, in the face of this VERY SPECIFIC criteria for Tumblr's censorship choices, I have changed the age of a character in this story from 16 to 18. That's not how the story was originally written, and the story can still be read on Ao3, which does not arbitrarily censor their content. But my m/f stories seem to be most popular on Tumblr, so I wanted to include the altered version in my library here.

(To be spiteful, however, I have changed the ofc from 16 to 18 and Curtis from 28 to 34, thus WIDENING the original age gap from 12 yrs to 16 yrs😆) 🖕you, staff troll

🖤With that said, this is a dark story regardless, so if you're looking for fluff, I suggest you look elsewhere.🖤

(Wait! I haven't read Part 1 yet!)

Part 2 - "A Microcosm of Humanity, Boiled Down to its Base Elements"

Mealtimes in the Tail are more about social interaction than they are about food—Kind of hard to have a dinner party when the only things there are to feast on are protein blocks and a meat that you’re pretending is chicken, after all. But they make due.

They have dishes now, at least. A couple hundred plastic bowls and cafeteria cups, dimpled and chipped at the rims, but still serviceable. They’re some of the newer amenities, part of the package that the council negotiated for in last year’s talks. It’s never much but it’s something, brings them just a smidge closer to being able to live like human beings, rather than animals.

It’s been twelve years, and still they’re celebrating over bowls when they should be aiming for antibiotics. But conditions were so miserable after Boarding that even the smallest concession from uptrain feels like a luxury now. Curtis would prefer the progress be faster, but he’s not in charge. He’s Gillam’s second in command, and Gillam’s so old and frail now. After the turmoil of the Year Two (and Three, and Five) Revolts, Curtis made him a tacit promise to not resort to such violent measures again lightly. For now, negotiated castoffs and increased recyclables from uptrain will have to do.

He doesn’t see Rose again for the rest of the afternoon. Four hundred people living in a metal box tend to brew discontent and interpersonal problems over the tiniest of things, and as one of the Tail’s five elected, a big chunk of Curtis’ days are spent solving petty conflicts between the Tailies. He navigates his way through a list of waiting disputes in the market car and in the bunks, making his rulings on what’s fair, and trying not to worry obsessively over Rose and where she is and how she may be doing and who may be bothering her.

But he’s not entirely successful, because something still loosens in his chest when he catches sight of her—looking peaceful and sitting quietly alone at dinnertime. He walks over, grinning the closer he gets as she continues not to notice his approach. “... Hey Petal!” he whisper-yells right beside her as he taps her shoulder and sinks down to sit next to her on the floor.

She gasps and almost drops her bowl, but a relieved smile splits her face when she sees that it’s him. “Curtis! Hey. It’s you.”

“Course it’s me.” He frowns quizzically at just how relieved she looks. “Who’d you think it was?”

“Nobody,” she excuses quickly, shaking her head and inching over to make more room for him. “Just glad to see you, is all. Today’s been … long.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Did you get the clothes to Gilliam?”

Her smile softens and she nods. “Yeah. And the arm to Coulson.” She gestures down the car to where Phil is sitting, using the rudimentary limb with clumsiness but steadfast determination. “He has to practice, but I think it’s gonna work pretty well for him.”

“I’ll bet.” Curtis smiles, happy for him. Phil’s also one of the elected, and along with Gilliam, Curtis, The Man, and Banner, he’s always done his best to help the people in the Tail survive. … That’s why he’s currently missing his arm from just above the elbow.

Curtis remembers the taste of human flesh. He wishes he didn’t, but he does. And what’s more, he wishes it’d tasted worse than it had, wishes he didn’t have the memory of how his mouth had watered when he’d finally gotten to eat for the first time in over a week. He averts his eyes from Coulson, ashamed, setting his bowl on the floor and sliding his right hand up under his left coat sleeve to trace the jagged evidence of his own failure.

It hadn’t tasted bad. That’s something he’s never said out loud. Because it’s too shameful. Talking about the early days isn’t forbidden, per say, but there’s an understanding amongst the Tailies that you don’t discuss the actual experience of eating human flesh. Unless it’s in private with someone very, very close to you, you don’t talk about the worst things that went down in those days.

Curtis glances back to Phil, wondering. He doesn’t actually know who he’s eaten. Back in the Desperation, there had been a decision amongst the volunteers that their donations would be mingled and prepared anonymously, to avoid people knowing—even family members, even the donors themselves. Curtis gets lost in the horror of the memory for a minute or two as he stares across the car at Phil, wondering, remembering the taste …

He snaps out of it when Rose says something to him, and he realizes that he’s still got his right hand stuck up his left coat sleeve, touching the scar. Rose’s voice pulls him out of it, like a fog suddenly lifting, and Curtis hastily picks his bowl back up, asking Rose to repeat herself and then mustering a cheerful answer for her as he puts the memories of the past back in the box on the shelf in his mind.

He and Rose sit shoulder to shoulder and converse over their bowls of stew. It’s one of only a few things that Tailies ever get to eat, and consists of broth made from cooked down protein blocks, and chunks of meat from the only other animal that shares the tail section with them.

Yeah, they eat rats. Curtis has stopped caring at this point. In fact, he’s not sure he ever really cared in the first place. Once you start with cannibalism, the only way to go is up. And it doesn’t taste too bad—especially since they’ve graduated from catching the rats to actually breeding them in cages. Between that and the artificial salt substitute that Curtis negotiated as part of last year’s package, things have a nicer flavor to them than they used to.

“Didn’t you work in the kitchen car for a hot second?” he says between one sip and another, when he’s paused to try and use his fingernail to get a stringy bit of meat out from between his teeth. “What’d MJ have you doing in there?”

Rose makes a face. “There are only a couple steps to making this slop, Curtis. Use your imagination.”

He laughs at the comical shudder she gives, and she kicks him for laughing at her. “So dramatic,” he teases. “What do you have to compare it to, anyway, huh?” He rolls his eyes. “Train babies. Don’t realize how good you have it.”

She gasps and pokes him as though he’s heaved a grave insult at her. “I am not a train baby!”

“Barely.”

“I’m eighteen!” she says, as if that makes her a full fledged adult (Curtis swallows heavily as he thinks that in some ways, it does). “I remember food from Before,” she insists, and Curtis shakes his head in amusement at her.

“Fine. What do you remember?” He’s breaking one of his own rules for her, talking about Before. It should alarm him but it doesn’t. “What food?” he taunts.

She sticks her chin out haughtily and thinks about it, before declaring, “Goldfish. And noodles. I remember noodles.”

It takes all Curtis has inside him not to snicker at her expense. He does want this girl to like him, after all. He looks down at his own bowl of stew and smiles fondly. “Goldfish crackers and noodles. That’s very specific.” The kind of thing a young child would remember. “Is that all?”

She twists her lips and admits, “Yeah.”

You have blocked a lot of it out, Curtis thinks sadly. Just not the parts that happened after Boarding. “It’s better that way,” he tells her. “Makes all of this more bearable.” Rose has never really had a life that was anything other than “bearable,” and while that is something of a mercy for her, it also makes Curtis want to be the one to give her more; be the one to introduce her to finery and pleasure, show her what it can taste like, what it can feel like. “There’s things I want to get for us,” he tells her, speaking quietly because he doesn’t need the people nearby overhearing and getting themselves worked up. “Things for the Tail, food I want to negotiate for. I think this might be the year.”

Rose looks intrigued. “What?”

“Lean closer,” Curtis whispers. “This is top secret.”

She smirks and scootches even closer to him, until they’re pressed together from hip to shoulder. “What?” she whispers.

Curtis looks her in the eye and lets the tension build for a moment, trying his damnedest to keep his expression serious, and then he declares, “Goldfish and noodles.”

She gives an outraged squawk and moves to swat at him for making fun of her, though she’s laughing herself. “You suck!”

Curtis stays her hand, pulling her into a one-armed hug and apologizing through his own laughter. “Wait, wait, wait. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Shh. I’ll tell you.” He calms down from laughing. “I’ll tell you, I will.”

“Jerk,” she mutters, but he can hear the fondness in her voice.

“Chickens,” he whispers in her ear. “You remember those?”

She purses her lips thoughtfully, then shrugs in a way that tells him she really doesn’t. “That’s an animal,” she says, in what she doesn’t realize is a sad demonstration of her limited knowledge. “A bird.”

“Yeah,” Curtis says. “Yeah it is. You know the New Year’s eggs?” Every year since Year Five, a wheelbarrow from uptrain arrives on New Year’s Day bearing the coveted gift of hundreds of gleaming white, hard-boiled eggs—one for each blasted soul who lives trapped in the Tail section. Rose hums and Curtis nods. “Those come from chickens. They lay the eggs and you can eat them. It’s a good source of food. And you can kill the chickens and eat them, too. Eat their meat.”

“But … don’t baby chickens come from the eggs?” Rose asks naively.

Curtis smirks. “Yeah, but that’s when they’re fertilized. If a male chicken isn’t around fucking the hens, then the eggs just come out, and you can eat ‘em. They don’t have baby chicks in them.” He watches Rose’s face screw up at the stark visual, and is surprised when she bluntly declares,

“Oh. So … like a period, with us.”

Curtis almost swallows his tongue. First of all, he wouldn’t have expected Rose to be able to make the comparison. Because she may be old enough to bleed, but they don’t exactly have comprehensive sex ed in the Tail. As far as Curtis knows, the girls are taught young—very young—what sex is, what it leads to, and how to avoid it at all costs. Curtis doesn’t think he’s heard a person talk openly about these things since before Boarding. It just isn’t done. The women handle their stuff themselves, and the men have their heads bitten off if they interfere.

“Um,” he says, face heating. “Yeah, I guess. Except you don't lay eggs." Rose snorts and Curtis winces and scratches awkwardly behind his ear. “So anyway, I want to get us some chickens. If we had those, it’d help a lot.”

Rose stares pensively into the depths of her soup bowl, with its globulous broth and stringy bits of meat. “It’d taste better than this?”

Curtis scoffs. “Most things do, Petal.”

“Oh God, you’re really sticking with that, aren’t you?”

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and gives her a squeeze, laying out his vision for the future. “I want to negotiate for another car. With dirt and chickens.”

“Dirt?”

“Yeah. They grow things uptrain. Crops. We could too. We could raise chickens in half of it, grow potatoes in the other half.”

Rose looks at him like he’s just announced he’ll be negotiating for the moon. “They’ll never give it to you,” she whispers. “Why would they?”

“If I could threaten them with something big enough. We might have the bargaining power.”

“What would you threaten them with?”

He smiles sadly and squeezes her shoulder. “I dunno. That’s what I’ve gotta figure out.”

“But you’re not gonna … I mean there’s not going to be another war, is there? Not like before …”

There’s genuine fear in her voice when she asks, which makes Curtis feel like crap. Everyone had suffered back then. Many had died. He thinks about how Rose would’ve only been eleven or so, during the Year Five Rebellion. Just a kid, still playing with the crummy little doll Curtis made for her. “No, Hon,” he promises gently. “No. There are other ways. Other things we can do to gain leverage. It just takes time.”

“What ways?”

He shakes his head and smiles. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t help it,” she pouts. “I may not know many things. But I like to know them.”

He smiles fondly. “I know, Petal. You’re curious. Always have been. You like to know the scuttlebutt, as they say. You’re not afraid to ask questions. I like that about you.”

“You do?”

“... Among other things.” He sees her cheeks color prettily, and realizes he’d better stop talking. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’d tell you if I could, but these things are above your paygrade. Me and Gilliam’ll figure it out.” He shoots her a wink. “That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

She titters at that, because they both know that there’s no such thing as money in the Tail. Oh there’s currency, for sure, just not the kind that’s handed over as stacks of bills. Curtis lets his eyes drag over the few parts of Rose’s body that he can see: her attractive face and the slope of her neck, the delicate suggestion of a collar bone where it peeks out before it’s swallowed up by her sweater. He looks away. “I want to improve things for us. Change is possible. There are things we can get. We just have to work for it.”

“What things?” she presses, leaning closer.

He thinks about brushing her off, but he can see that she’s genuinely curious, and the interested gleam in her eyes sways him. Because ideas can mean hope, and he wants her to have hope. They’ve both seen what can happen when there isn’t any.

He tells her about the basic medicines and medical supplies that could be useful, tells her about the items they could receive if people uptrain were more willing to bargain. “More castoffs would go to us, instead of into the recycling machines,” he tells her. While it is true that some old and unwanted items eventually make their way into the Tailies’ “market,” the sad fact is that many more materials are cleansed, disintegrated, and recycled for use through the train’s 3d printing machines. Curtis has never seen them, but due to his yearly talks with a woman named Melanie, he now knows that they exist, and they’re why not much gets sent back to the Tailies.

“We’d have more clothes, toys and books, all sorts of new things.” Of course when he says “new” he only means new in the sense of new to them. To people in the front, Tailies are second class citizens at best, subhumans at worst. The funny thing is, Curtis doesn’t take offense at it like he used to. He’s learned by now that it’s human nature to kill, cheat and steal, clamoring all over each other whenever resources are limited. They’ve literally eaten the weak in the Tail, after all. It’d be hypocritical to hold the first class passengers to a higher standard.

No, Snowpiercer is just a microcosm of humanity boiled down to its base elements. Nine-hundred people surviving on a miserable little train, barreling endlessly around the frozen corpse of the planet. Of course there’s going to be subjugation of the weak so that others can have more. Curtis doesn’t hold it against them anymore, but he sure as hell isn’t going to take it lying down. The Tailies were never ticketed passengers. They forced their way on, they scraped and scrounged and earned their survival. And if they ever get the chance, they’ll turn the tables on the passengers uptrain in a heartbeat. Curtis makes speeches about “leveling the playing field,” but he doesn’t have visions of utopia. Not really. He just wants to die in a feather bed.

“What would we have after chickens?” Rose asks, drawing Curtis out of his gloom. She knows as well as he does, what the definition of a “pipe dream” is, but it’s fun to pretend with someone you like, and Curtis likes her. Always has. He likes that she hasn’t turned grey and dull like everyone else in the Tail. So he indulges her “what ifs” and they continue to tease each other over various colorful and increasingly stupid imaginings: how they’ll have potatoes, and then beef, then televisions, bathtubs, a swimming pool.

At some point, Curtis realizes that he’s actually managed to make her smile, and giggle. Even sitting on a cold steel floor slurping at a bowl of rat and god-knows-what stew, he feels like a king knowing he was able to do that. “You’re really beautiful when you smile,” he blurts out, soaking up the way that her eyes get just a little bit wider and her lips part in surprise. He averts his attention back down to his bowl, pleased as punch. “‘Course, I always think you’re beautiful,” he murmurs, fully intending for her to hear.

She gets quiet after that, bashful and seemingly deep in thought. Curtis doesn’t worry though, because when everybody settles in to listen to that night’s story, she goes to fetch one of the blankets off her bunk and brings it back. She plops herself right back down next to Curtis and hands him a corner of the blanket to wrap it around both of their shoulders. He obliges. The assembly car fills up for that night’s entertainment, and just before the lights are dimmed down to their lowest level, Curtis locks eyes with Tanya from across the car, who’s shooting him a scrutinizing look. He’s grateful to escape her judgment for the moment, but he knows she’ll be on him before long.

They set out the tall stool at the head of the car, and Painter, the Tail’s historian, climbs up and settles on it.

A quiet man of short stature, Painter’s been performing the nightly stories since almost from the very beginning. He has a way of seeing things that others don’t, a way of weaving words and details together in graduating, elaborative cadence; like his drawings, like strings on a loom, always managing to convey the true heart of a matter in a way that resonates with people. It’s the closest thing to watching a movie any of them will probably ever get again, and in Curtis’ opinion it has just as much value as the food they feed their bodies with. People need more than just food to survive. They need community, they need love, they need hope.

Painter sits silently at first—a sign that he hasn’t decided on the topic and is taking suggestions that night. Someone calls out in the dimness to suggest The Man for tonight’s story, and a murmur of general agreement goes through the crowd. Up ahead on his stool, Painter nods. The Man was well known in the Tail, having long-served on Gillam’s council, among other things. Curtis hadn’t been lying to Rose, when he’d said that her father had been a good leader.

In the crook of his arm, he feels her shift subtly. Aware that this might be hard for her, he leans over and kisses the top of her head. “Hey, are you okay?” he whispers, giving her the option. “You want to go?” But she shakes her head and tucks herself further into him, so Curtis relaxes back, looking forward to getting to hold her in his arms for the next hour or two.

Painter does The Man justice. Children are always kept in another car during storytime, so that the plotlines don’t have to be watered down for their sensibilities, but even still, Curtis doesn’t doubt that Painter knows Rose is present, because he takes care to soften the corners of the story where she features, and to use gentle words when the most painful memories are fleshed out.

For over an hour, Curtis lets his eyes slip closed and the words wash over him. He tucks his nose into Rose’s hair and breathes the scent of her in, holding her small, soft body against him. He can feel every shift and sway that she gives as she hears the story, too, and they enjoy their time together, connecting over the shared intimacy of Painter’s words.

At some point, he brings her into his lap, and she comes so easily—like she was just waiting for the invitation, and is relieved that he wants her there. This isn’t something they’ve done before. Not like this. And he can tell by the slight tension in her body that she knows it, too. This is new. It could be the first time a man has ever showed her attention like this, and Curtis wants it to be good and easy for her. He gently rubs her back as the story stretches on, relieved when he can feel all the tension slowly leaving her. “Good girl,” he whispers against her hair.

She hums and rubs her cheek on his chest with complete trust, and Curtis suddenly remembers what it used to feel like to sink into a full, hot bath. Is this what it means to be touch starved? he wonders. Probably. It’s been so long since he’s been genuinely intimate with another person, that he’d almost forgotten the feeling.

Eventually he can hear the tone of Painter’s words changing, can hear it all coming to a close as he wraps up his retelling of that night’s story. Curtis has never hated anything more. Please, he thinks. Please let him keep going. Let him keep talking just a little bit longer so she’ll stay in my arms. He doesn’t want to let her go.

… Maybe if he plays his cards right, he won’t have to.

Tanya does confront him that night, cornering him by her spot before he can follow after Rose on her path to the wash car. “Pretty sure that girl knows how to bathe herself,” she says, hand planted firmly on Curtis’ chest. “She doesn’t need you, Curtis.”

Curtis loses sight of Rose going into the next bunk car, and he settles back onto his heels, glaring at Tanya. “I’m trying to look out for her.”

Tanya raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “You sure that’s all you’re trying to do?”

Curtis’s eyes narrow. “Have you been paying attention? Look around.” He nods at the crowded bunk car around them and speaks in a hushed tone. “You’re in charge of all the female stuff, you should know better than anyone what’ll happen now that her father’s gone. I’m only trying to protect her.”

Tanya purses her lips. “Uh huh. Protect her with your penis, is that how?”

“Jesus.” Curtis takes a step back, crossing his arms in frustration. He leans back against a metal rail. “I’m just being realistic,” he eventually says, after sulking over it for a moment. He respects Tanya—she’s a crucial part of the Tail, helping the women who get pregnant and give birth, helping the girls when they start developing (and, eventually, when they start attracting the attention of the men). “You’ve seen them looking?” he asks, not having to look at Tanya to know that she understands him. “So what am I supposed to do? Just wait until somebody else stakes their claim?”

Tanya makes an angry sound, though it isn’t directed at Curtis. “I stop them.”

“You stop the ones you can,” Curtis says lowly. “But eventually—”

“Eventually is eventually. Right now is right now,” she hisses.

Curtis turns back to her. “We play it your way and the first guy who stakes his claim gets her. That’s how it works. You know that. Is that what you want, huh?” Tanya’s face works in frustration, and Curtis softens. “Hey,” he says, placing a consoling hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like it either. We do the best we can with what we have.” He feels her shoulders rise and fall in a beleaguered sigh.

“I boxed Batroc’s ears last week,” she tells him; her way of giving tacit approval. “Keep an eye on that dirtbag.”

Curtis nods. He’s aware of who the biggest threats are, currently. It’s the men in their twenties and thirties who prey on the up and coming girls. Marriage isn’t a thing in the tail so much as claiming is. The men have a sort of ‘first dibs’ honor system that Curtis despises, but that he can’t change on his own. Not when the majority is so set on it. “I’m not going to force her,” he promises Tanya. “Okay? I’ll give her the choice. You know I will.”

Tanya’s jaw works, but eventually she nods and turns to the side to let him pass. Curtis pats her shoulder in thanks and heads off in the direction that Rose went with her towel.

He gets there just a few seconds too late—or at least, that’s what he thinks when he hears her crying out from the women’s side of the wash car. Curtis barrels around the partition, heedless of whoever else may be in there when he can hear Rose in distress.

There’s a man standing at her back, pushing her face up against the wall of one of the stalls. She’s naked, the shower spraying aimlessly not even a foot away. She’s struggling, crying … and the man’s pants are halfway down his thighs.

Curtis sees red. “Get the fuck off her!”

Everything happens in a blur: him pulling the man back by his shirt and throwing him onto the floor at the opposite side of the car, the man’s head hitting the wall, Rose crying out in fear, Curtis going over to gather her naked body into his arms. “Are you okay?” he asks breathlessly, holding her as she sobs and presses her head of soaked hair against him. His hands slide over the water-slicked skin of her back, his heart in his throat. “Did he hurt you?”

She sobs and shakes her head, clinging to him. “Curtis!”

“Shh, you’re okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” He looks across the car at the man, who’s now rubbing his head with a pained wince. Curtis feels rage consume him and he has no control over his actions as he abandons Rose by the stall and stalks across the car to punch the guy square in the face. He immediately grabs his shirt collar and hauls him back in. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!” he roars.

“Stop!” the man��a guy Curtis knows only as Hodge—coughs out, speaking through blood and what’s likely a broken nose. He holds up his hands to defend himself from further assault, and Curtis shakes him with a furious growl.

“Did you touch her?! What did you do? I’ll kill you!”

“I didn’t!” Hodge coughs, pushing against Curtis. “I didn’t do anything! I was just—”

Curtis slams him back into the wall of the car. “Then why’s your dick out?!” Hodge sinks down the wall to the floor and Curtis follows him down. “Answer me!”

“I just wanted to talk to her!”

He’s about to reach down and rip this guy’s nuts off, but Rose calling to him from the other side of the car draws his attention away: “Curtis, please. Curtis!” She’s standing there—naked, wet and shivering, futilely trying to cover herself. She looks at him pleadingly through her tears. “He didn’t. You stopped him. He didn’t.”

It’s enough to make Curtis rein himself in from further violence. Rose needs him more than he needs to hurt Hodge. Still, he shakes the man again as he hauls him back up to standing and shoves him towards the exit of the car. “This isn’t finished,” he warns him at the door, pushing him through hard enough that he falls to his ass on the other side. Curtis points at him. “You’ll pay for this.”

He slams the door and goes back to Rose, who’s still standing there looking lost, shivering, cold. The shower’s still running, so Curtis hurries over to turn the water off. He grabs the towel that’s hanging on the hook and brings it to Rose, intending to bundle her up as quickly as he can. She takes it and wraps it around herself, but it ends at mid thigh and Curtis’ eyes are drawn to a trickle of red running down her inner thigh. All the blood drains from his face. “You’re bleeding,” he says, horrified.

Rose looks down at it and sniffles. “Oh.”

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Curtis breathes, already turning to go back out and finish the job.

“Curtis! Curtis wait!” Rose grabs his arm with both hands as she shakes her head frantically. “I’m fine. It’s my period. He didn’t hurt me.”

Curtis calms down, his chest heaving from adrenaline. “You swear?” he urges, grabbing her upper arms and holding her in front of himself to get a better look at her. Now that he’s paying attention, he can see that she’s dripping wet and rattled, but not visibly hurt.

“I swear. I’m okay.”

His eyes track back down to the blood on her leg, suspicious until he looks beyond and sees her pile of clothing sitting over on a shelf. There’s a small folded rag there the likes of which he’s seen before; what the women pass around silently amongst themselves when they bleed. Curtis calms down as he realizes that Rose is telling the truth and not just lying to keep him from murdering Hodge. He lets go of her upper arms, suddenly aware that she may not want him touching her right at this moment. “Sorry,” he mutters, not knowing what else to say. He feels like he’s just run a marathon, his heart is beating so fast.

Rose surprises him by throwing herself into his arms again, a sob making her whole body heave against him. “Thank you,” she cries, hugging him, hiding her face against his chest. “Curtis, god. If you hadn’t come in …”

“Shh. I did. I did come,” he reassures her, wrapping his arms around her fully again now that he knows it’s welcome. She feels so small. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

They stand there for who knows how long. Minutes, at least. Calming down together. Rose’s crying fades, and Curtis’ blood pressure re-enters the stratosphere. He can feel the red hot anger and instinct to kill bleeding out of his mind the longer that time stretches on. He becomes aware of how cold Rose must be in only her towel and still all wet. “Here,” he says, ushering her back towards the shower. The stalls have changing areas right in front of them, and he steps back so that she can have privacy. “Get dried off. Get dressed,” he says. “I’ll …” his gaze falls back down to the trail of red on her leg. He swallows thickly and averts his eyes. “I’ll be right here.”

Shakily, she nods and pulls the curtain. She gets dressed, and when she opens the curtain again, her hair has been towel-dried and hangs limply about her face. She looks shyly up at Curtis. “Hey.”

“C’mere, Honey.”

She folds back herself into his arms eagerly, whining and pressing into him. “Thank you,” she whispers. “God, Curtis. Thank you.”

“I should’ve been here,” he grunts, thinking of how Tanya had held him back. He silently curses her. “I knew something like this would happen,” he hisses to himself, though he regrets saying it when he feels how it makes her shudder against him.

“Can we get out of here, please?”

He nods and starts to lead them towards the door of the car. He’s not surprised to find Hodge gone on the other side. Curtis silently fumes about what he’d walked in on, as he leads Rose backtrain. They walk through the car where her spot is, and Curtis gives her hand a squeeze when she looks back at it and makes a questioning noise. “I want you with me tonight,” he tells her, gentle but firm, because no way in hell is he leaving her alone now. “Please?” he coaxes, pleased when she looks up to him and nods.

“Okay.”

He smiles softly. “Good girl.”

Curtis has a good sized spot. Certainly big enough for two, which he’s grateful for when he guides her to scoot in across the bed. His is the third bunk up out of four, which means climbing a few rungs, but once you’re up there it affords a fair sense of privacy, especially once he draws the curtain across to close them in together. He flicks the small lamp on, its dim bulb flickering to life and giving just enough light to see by.

He’s got his blankets spread out on the bed. There’s plenty of room enough to sit up and move around, all of his worldly possessions hung to the wall or else strapped against the top of the bunk above. “Home sweet home,” he says, gesturing around half heartedly. “Nothing special.”

“It’s nice.” Rose looks around with a little curiosity before tucking her head down. She shrugs. “You’ve got one of the lights. Our spot doesn’t. I mean … my spot,” she amends quietly. “Our neighbor has the light.”

The lights are built into the walls, meant to faintly illuminate what were once the train’s original baggage racks, powered by the Arc Reactor and impossible to move. But some people have managed to rig up their own lamps from salvaged materials and a little creative wiring over the years. There are no windows in the Tail. Curtis has heard that there are windows uptrain, but he doesn’t know whether to be jealous or not. Would it really improve anything, to have a view of the wasted, frozen world they left behind? He’s not so sure. At least this way they can pretend that Snowpiercer is all there is, the delusion only ruined whenever the Jackboots arrive to deliver food or raid them.

Curtis settles beside her and knocks their legs together. “I’ll keep my eye out for something in the market,” he promises. “Someone as pretty as you shouldn’t be in the dark.”

She smiles as though pained, looking down at her lap. “Being pretty is what got me into this mess.”

Curtis sighs. “No. It’s not just that, Hon.” He cups her face, stroking his thumb over her cheekbone. “It’s not just that.”

“What then?”

He smiles sadly. “Look, if there’s one thing you gotta understand about men, it’s that we covet the rare … and the pure. You’re good. Truly good, in a way most of us aren’t. In a way we can’t afford to be.” He drops his hand and turns away, feeling gross for having told her that, for having included himself in the roster of ‘men’ who think like that. But it’s true. “That’s why you stand out,” he mutters. “None of us are good the way you’re good.”

“What? But you’re good.”

Curtis scoffs. “Please.”

“You are! You’re on council aren’t you?”

He rolls his eyes. “That means I’m good with people, not good. There’s a difference.”

“No,” Rose insists. “No, you help everyone. You lead us, try to make life better for us.” She gets incensed when he continues to disagree. “You do! You … you make dolls for little girls who’ve lost all their toys. You protect us.”

Curtis slumps back against the wall. “Is that what I did back there? Protected you?”

“Yes. Curtis you saved me. You stopped him from …” She falters, unable to say the word, and the silence grows uncomfortable between them. Eventually she stares down at her lap and scoffs bitterly.

Curtis looks over. He doesn’t like the pinch that’s settled between her eyebrows. There’s something strangely self-deprecating about it, and he can’t figure out what’s going on in her head. “Hey.” He nudges her knee with his. “What are you thinking, Hon?”

She shakes her head. “Hodge,” she whispers. “He said things.”

“Oh god. Don’t. Rosie, don’t pay attention to anything that cretin said. Did he threaten you? Because if he did, you know I still have half a mind to rip off his—”

“He said that somebody would choose me, and if it isn’t him it’ll be someone else ‘staking their claim’.” She looks rather mortified as she repeats it. “And he’s not wrong. I mean that’s the way it’s done, isn’t it?” she asks bitterly. “The men. They choose who they want. We don’t get a say. Not really.”

“Rosie,” Curtis mourns, wishing that he could spare her, wishing he could tell her that she has choices, choices that people will respect. But he doesn’t want to lie. She doesn’t deserve to be lied to. “Hey,” he says instead. “You know I care about you, right?”

She nods, sniffling. “Yeah.”

“You should sleep here. Not just tonight but every night.” He can tell by her reaction that she realizes what he means, and he’s pleased when she leans against his side, still seeking comfort in him. He relaxes now that the hardest part is done. “Would you like that, Petal?” he asks softly, wrapping his arm around her and holding her close. She scoffs at the nickname, and Curtis kisses the top of her head. It’s been a long time since he’s had another person in his bunk—a long time. Not having a partner is lonely, sure, but with the way things are in the tail, it’s easier just to jerk off. Romance is all but dead, as is evidenced by the Tailies’ near-transactional customs regarding sex and relationships. “Will you?” he checks, relieved when she gives a little nod and a sniffle.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t want that either.”

They sit there in silence for a while, and just as Curtis starts to wonder if Rose has fallen asleep, she whispers, “What was it like?”

“What was what like?”

“Men and women. Before. How did it …” she pauses, considering what she wants to say, or perhaps how to ask. “My dad and my mom,” she settles on. “They were married. They loved each other. Nobody chose my mom. They chose each other.”

Curtis nods and gives her arm a squeeze. “Yeah. That’s how it was.”

“Tell me?” she asks, sounding for all the world like a child asking for a bedtime story. “Please?”

Curtis rubs her back, resigning himself to telling her the truth. “People met,” he says. “At school, at work, through friends. If they liked each other romantically, they dated.”

“What’s ‘dated’?”

He winces where she can’t see. “When you liked someone, you’d ask them out on a date. You’d meet them and go do something nice together. Something fun. Get a drink or see a movie, eat a meal in a restaurant.”

“Did the man decide the dates?”

He frowns. “Sometimes. Women would too, though. Sometimes they’d be the one to ask the guy out. It just depended.”

“What happened next?” Rose asks.

“Well … you’d just keep spending time together, you’d keep dating. If the people decided not to date anybody else, they’d agree to be a couple. Boyfriend and girlfriend. … Or husband and wife.”

“What’s the difference?”

Curtis winces at how sad it is that she doesn’t know that. The long term implications of their confinement in the Tail section are obvious and jarring, at times like this. He licks his lips. “Marriage was more serious than dating. More permanent. You might break up with your girlfriend eventually, but if you made her your wife, then that was like saying you wanted to be together forever.” He doesn’t bother getting into the concept of divorce, knowing that she just needs a basic understanding of the matter. “That’s how it was,” he finishes. “Before.”

Rose is quiet for a long while, thinking it over. Eventually she says, “And now the men choose.”

Curtis hates how resigned she sounds about it. “What happened in the wash car isn’t allowed,” he says, aware of the way her body tenses against him. “I’ll make sure Hodge is punished. But the thing is, Sweetheart … I’m worried he won’t be the last.”

Rose sniffles. “It’s ‘cause my dad’s gone, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t help the matter. But you’ve been old enough for a while now, for some. And I’ve seen them looking.”

“For some?” Rose peeks up at him. “Not you?”

Curtis hesitates to answer. “... You’re young, Honey.” It’s not like he can say that he wants her. But saying that he doesn’t would be a total lie. He might not be looking yet, if he didn’t have the other men to worry about; but he does have to worry about them, and so he has been looking. “I’ll make sure Hodge is punished,” he reiterates. “Severely. Even with the way things are now, that was completely beyond the pale.” He feels that hot surge of fury boil up inside him again as he thinks about it: Rose standing there, shivering and crying, Hodge with his hands on her, his dick hanging out of his pants. “He was going to rape you,” Curtis growls. “He needs to pay.”

“And the others?” she asks. “You’ll stop them?”

His chest aches at her unshakable faith in him and what she thinks he can do. “I can only protect you one way,” he murmurs, pulling her close and burying his nose in her hair so that she can’t look up at him with those big doe eyes again. “Has Tanya talked to you much?” he asks. Her head moves against him in a little nod, but she doesn’t say anything. Curtis kisses her hair. “What happened in the wash car could happen again. Someone’ll want to claim you.” She whines and rubs her face against his sweater, clinging to him. He pulls her into his lap just like he had during storytime, earlier that night. “Hey,” he soothes, “I wish it could be different, you know? Wish I could take you outta here, make other people respect your choices.” He sighs sadly. “That’s just not how it works anymore, Petal.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “Would you take me on a date, Before?” He hesitates, and she notices. She looks up at him. “You wouldn’t?”

“You’re too young for me,” he admits. “Or you would’ve been. Before.”

“Now I’m not?” she asks, and Curtis averts his eyes uncomfortably, because of course she’s still too fucking young. If they were still in the World she’d be in highschool, going to prom and the mall, glued to her phone. Learning about sex from school and porn and from fumbling encounters with boys her own age, not from some jaded midwife in a squalid train car.

“Now …” he sighs. “Now, it’s different. It doesn’t make it right, but girls become fair game once they’re about your age. And any man who’s interested can try for you.”

“I know that,” she whispers. “But what about you? Are you interested?”

Curtis’ mouth is dry. He can’t answer. So he nods smally instead. He’s surprised when she doesn’t seem frightened or upset by this admission. He lets his hands hold her more securely, fingers dipping into the curve of her waist from over her sweater. “I care about you,” he croaks. “I want to protect you. And the only way I know to do that is to claim you myself.”

“Will you?” she asks. She lays her cheek back against his chest and yawns. “Claim me?”

Above her resting head, Curtis grinds his teeth. “Let’s just take it one day at a time, okay Hon?”

“Mm.” She nods sleepily. “Okay. I trust you, Curtis. Thank you for helping me today.”

He doesn’t answer her, just holds her against him and rubs her back as she gradually falls to sleep. He’s not the man she thinks he is, and she should be in her own spot right now, not tucked away in here with him, because sooner or later he knows he’s going to take advantage. He’ll have her, and he’ll make sure that every other man in the train knows that she’s his. That may not be what she really wants, or even what’s good for her.

But oh well, he thinks. At least it’s better than the alternative.

Masterlist

If you liked what you read and feel so inclined, please consider dropping a tip in the Kofi🍵 cup

This has been a fill for:

Event: @badthingshappenbingo

Card: sarah-writes-stucky

Square N4: "to serve man"

[spinnysocks]

Boundaries!

For my pinned.

Last updated: 14/08

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Basic things I do not want to see / I will block over:

-Anything in the DNI in my bio.

-ANY sui / sh mentions or jokes, even “lighthearted” or fictional. Includes general off mentions of hurting oneself on purpose.

-ANY mention / talk of hurt or deceased small pets or animals, especially: rabbits, hamsters, rodents, fish, etc. (If you are mourning a lost pet, that is obviously fine, but I have seen way too much about small animal ab^se and de@th as if it is funny.)

-Pictures of anything deceased (Does not include art, just tag correctly please.)

-Reblog bait (It causes me paranoia. Please tag as “#reblog bait” or the such.)

Please correctly tag these.

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Filter tag list:

I filter a lot of stuff, but sometimes non-tagged things slip through, so I am adding a “filtering out of my feed” list. This is basically things that I kindly ask my mutuals to tag.

-Insects

-Clowns

More to add but can't think of them at this moment.

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I usually won't Follow Back those who post/have:

I have nothing against those who post such content, this is just for my own comfort!

-Vivziepop/anything to do with her media such as Hazbin Hotel or Helluva Boss

-MLP content

-Most anime media

-Any other fandoms I do not wish to see content of (too many to list, but they're all in the Blacklist of my moodboard blog.)

-Heavy clown content

-Heavy blood/gore content

-Heavy horror media

-K!nk posting

-Omegaverse

-Yandere of any kind

-Empty blogs / without a clear pinned

-Generally no shared fandoms etc

There are exceptions, such as those who have things tagged. Don't worry if you're my mutual!

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General info:

-IMPORTANT: I love to interact most of the time, but I struggle to due to a multitude of reasons stemming from neurodivergence and mental illness - I am anxious and forgetful. Sometimes I will take seconds to respond, and sometimes I will take hours, days or weeks. This is not against you but rather something I personally struggle with, so please don't take my lack of response to heart and please don't hold it against me because I cannot control it. I ask you please not to pressure me in any way about responding quicker.

Also, just to note, I don't usually like “*bites you*” even in a platonic or silly way so please don't unless I say it's okay!

-Tone tags! I appreciate the use of tone tags! I think most of my mutuals use them so it's usually not an issue, but sometimes I can misunderstand things. Usually I just don't interact if I don't understand tbh.

-Tag / ask games! I love these and feel very honoured when I am tagged! I often join in on chains I'm not tagged in too. If I do not respond to a tag, don't worry about it, some of them just don't take my fancy plus I'm often forgetful! I probably won't respond to furry tag games as I am not one for example. ^^

-Asks! I love getting asks (provided they are appropriate, which has been the case thus far)! I may take a bit to respond to them (see 'Important' above) but I see them! :D

-Mentions! Feel free to mention me in anything, as long as it is appropriate ofc. :)

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This will be updated as I am forgetful. ^^

[msmontanaa]

Mea’s Intro 🎀 .

- Hey my loves 🌸 , I’m Tamea but I go by Meaa , meme , or Montana but mainly known by MeaaKaior on my platforms. I’ve been a reader for so long on wattpad and I really wanted to expand my focus here too because I wanted to connect with more poc girlies and even try out writing.Im also a matt girl most definitely but i love all three of them ofc!

- ⚠️ 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑 ⚠️

Although i am a Matt girl , i have many more things and PEOPLE that i am interested in and will have content about but Matt and the Sturniolos will have content too ..

- 𝐒𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞 : I am a beginner and i am entering a new territory . I want to build bonds with you all and show you guys something you haven’t seen . PLEASE don’t attack me if you do not agree with what i post and / or things of that sort , but i will accept kind constructive criticism ofc ( I’m a pussy so my feelings get hurt easily) 😂 . This will resort in you being 𝐀. Blocked or 𝐁 . Cursed tf out 😘 .

𝐌𝐲 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐞 🎀.

- I love hello Kitty and Stitch , I love pink and black (litteraly the best colors) , I love coquette aesthetics and anything y2k , i literally love Lana del ray , laufey and mitsky and the whole Priscilla Presley aesthetic too so yea . Pinterest, TikTok and Wattpad are literally my life fr so if you guys want to connect w/ me anywhere else you can find me pretty much everywhere @Meaakaior 💖

𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐜 𝐓𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 🎶

- 𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐞𝐫 , 𝐉𝐡𝐞𝐧𝐞 , 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐤𝐞 , 𝐊𝐞𝐡𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐢 , 𝐓𝐢𝐧𝐤 , 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲𝐍𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐃𝐨𝐨𝐫 , 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐃𝐞𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐲 , 𝐌𝐢𝐭𝐬𝐤𝐲 , 𝐋𝐚𝐮𝐟𝐞𝐲 , 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 , 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 , 𝟐𝟏 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐠𝐞 , 𝐒𝐙𝐀, 𝐁𝐫𝐲𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 , 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐧𝐚𝐢𝐣𝐚 , 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓 , 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐠 , 𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐞𝐞 , 𝐝𝐝 𝐨𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐚 , 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲𝐛𝐚𝐠𝐠 𝐲𝐨 , 𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐞 , 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐞 🫶🏼.

Like I said earlier I’m totally new to this so again PLEASE bare with meee , but I can’t wait to connect with you all fr 🫧🎀🩰 .

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

Follow my bff @teddybearbad she’s also a writer and has books on wattpad so you guys can connect with her as well and show her some love 💖.

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐰 💕..

[christotokos]

💫 🤍 🕯️☯️ 🧿

💫 what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

play-by-play comments and/or long comments/reviews. i like hearing how readers felt at certain times, but i also love a carefully composed, long comment/review. even if it has some "i don't like x" i like hearing an explanation as long as it's not just being negative. i like these bc it gives me insights on how readers things, on how my writing is and i like observations.

i know not everyone's into them but these kinds of comments are things i'd like to print out and put on my fridge.

🤍 what's one fic of yours you think people didn't "get"?

hard to say. i think my readership now understands me a lot more than when i started out but there is certainly a subset of readers who are very upset that i don't have soda/steve as anything close to endgame 99% of the time whether they get angry that soda/ivy is happening — going so far as to comment to me telling me that ivy's barely there presence in chpt. 40 was making the fic "unreadable" — to being annoyed that i usually have soda/sandy happen. and i don't understand why they express this to me in ways that are increasingly rude or don't seem to understand that i view sandy like almost anyone else and that's not ever going to change.

🕯️ was there a fic that was really hard on you to write, or took you to a place you didn't think it would take you?

trap au. i'm still working on the next part, but i had no clue that writing dallas as an active serial killer would be so... interesting in how he views things? making things omegaverse certainly brings about a change in things, but making it omegaverse in this way brought to the forefront ideas around prey drive and hunting, and how dallas' viewpoint while fucked up... makes more sense if you think of him as a feral alpha who's been repressing more of those feral instincts and once they're allowed to really metasize, he winds up violent in a different way and in a way that if he expressed it almost makes sense if you view him as a wild animal.

he's a wild animal who's been forced not to, essentially, hunt the way he's supposed to. and now that he is doing it, ofc he's healthier. but it's also insanely, you know, harmful.

☯️ how do you think engaging with each other through tumblr, twitter, comments, kudos, creates healthy fandom experiences? How do you deal with that if you're not a social person/experience social anxiety?

honestly, and i'm guilty of this at times myself, being on tumblr is not a good fandom experience for fandom in general but in particular, this fandom bc not only is it small but many corners of this fandom encourage surveilling others or at least having to know what's going on or else you'll suddenly be hit with waves of harassment out of nowhere. either you don't engage on looking at others and then i suddenly have anons calling me the n-word and trying to call me a pedo bc i wrote something they didn't like and someone with obvious mental problems will make escalatingly alarming posts about me though we've never interacted or interacted years ago once or twice or i keep an eye out but find myself reading hurtful comments about me, people i know, and blocking a lot but it still makes for misery at the end of the day.

i don't like it. it brings out the worst behavior for everyone involved, and i wish we could go back to forums. (and i mean. i do have one.)

i do however, think ask games like this, posting in a small group on discord or tumblrs like this, kudos and comments should be curated more and be healthier. i think comments really encourage conversation, being able to talk to friends in small groups help. i don't enjoy fandom being this fractured but frankly, until there's some sort of control exerted so less people under eighteen and less people who've solely been socialized on line occurs, it's all we got.

🧿 what steps do you take to not take things personally if a fic doesn't do well, or if your writing/posting/sharing experience isn't going how you'd like it to?

take a break, block people, whine in private (having a public sideblog or posts with a dedicated tag where you whine in public is not a good idea. that's not private.), keep my cool in public as best i can and move on. things also have a weird shelf life online; it's shocking to me that my main soc au fic, while i've stopped receiving comments (you guys can comment completed fics!!!!!!) it receives consistent kudos to the point it's close to my #2 fic. so you really never know.

[type1diabetesinfandom]

In a different, yet just as important, viewpoint jumping off of my last post:

@ people with diabetes or diabetes advocates

When you see someone say or post the ignorant 'this iz so sweet imma get diabeetus' idiocy

Do NOT respond with wishing harm on them!

Seriously, what?

I know a lot of diabetics overreact when someone says the thing, and i've been there done that got the crappy shirt etc

It's frustrating, SO frustrating, to see this disease taken so lightly and ignorantly almost everywhere, especially if you're having a bad time or feeling burnt out. But if you really feel the need to respond, whether specifically to the person OR just in general

DO NOT RESPOND BY WISHING HARM ON THEM!

First off, it's a horrible, genuinely morally reprehensible thing to do. Step back, give yourself space, and cool off. Vent in private if you feel the need to. That's what friends and DMs are for! :D

Second, when your behavior is worse than that of the person you're upset with, YOU ARE NO LONGER IN THE RIGHT. You are no longer a victim—you're a jerk. I don't care how upset or hurt you are. Act like a normal fucking human.

Also

TELLING SOMEONE YOU HOPE THEY DEVELOP T1D IS WISHING HARM ON THEM

If you see a joke or, in this case, something that's unfortunately become a common phrase, that makes light of diabetes or is based on ignorance and stereotypes or otherwise upset you, here's what you do:

1. Step away.

Yes, I'm serious. Breathe. It's a stupid phrase—do not let words, especially some random stranger's words, hurt you! Do not give people that kind of power over you.

2. Decide if you're up to getting (civilly!) involved.

2a. If you decide you're calm enough to talk to them about it and why that little thoughtless thing they said and then totally forgot about was upsetting to you, take this as an opportunity to educate. Especially when here on tumblr, because you're not talking to just that person! (Unless ofc it's in DMs). You're talking to everyone who will see that post!

Take the opportunity and use it wisely!

2b. Block 'em.

Again, perfectly serious here. Never be guilty about blocking someone, even if it's for as simple a reason as they popped up on your screen and were annoying.

I block people who say diabetes jokes, all the time! Especially when I'm browsing a tag and that kind of content is cluttering it. The button is right there: use it!

Tldr: be nice to each other

[murcielagatito]

idk how even to start this post bc wile im using miles morales as an example his actual comic race differs and this is the fault of people just straight up not understanding how race in regard to us puerto ricans works. and its all thanks to racism colorism and the depiction and representation of latinos in media

to fully understand this and how deeply we are affected we need to go alllll the way back to the beginning

its 1490whatever and cristobal colon has just discovered the americas. and on one particular island, boriken, he discovers a tribe, the tainos <3. we brought him gold and showed him kindness. and to make a long story short he fucked us over immensely. if we didnt bring meet his gold quota it was chopped off hands. he killed us he raped us he did countless atrocities. we were given a new name: puerto rico “rich port”. most americans know what happened to the many indigenous nations on the mainland but not many are taught about us the indigenous islanders. los tainos. we spanned across el caribe: jamaica, cuba, haiti, dominican republic and puerto rico (where im from!)

but dont get it twisted we didnt just roll over and take it. the very first freedom fighter, cacique (chief) hatuey fought with many other tainos to be liberated. unfortunately, he was executed in 1512 and that was that

one year later, in 1513, what imma call ‘phase two’ began. with him this time, colón brought enslaved africans to work the fields alongside tainos. its over for us. we are miserable, malnourished, and theres no escape. and as one does when youre live and work and die together, you love together. and love we did!

everyone who lived in puerto rico loved and loved and every combination possible of taino, african, and spaniard was born. and this has continued for 500 years. a caste was created. and that caste still hurts and affects us to this day. because all it was is colorism and racism. and after seeing the horrid takes about latinos in the spiderverse fandom and beyond…. well here we are now because somebodys gotta say it

but hellbaby? why did you have to add all the history stuff?because the way miles’ family was portrayed could have been awesome representation for many afrolatinos. and they fumbled big time. its not bad representation so dont twist my words. it just could have been better

the representation of latino families in hollywood has always been a bit…. stereotypical. and not just sterotypical but homogenized and caricaturized. anyone remember george lopez (the show)? when someone thinks about latinos NOW, the household names are pedro pascal, gina rodriguez, or oscar isaac. pale people!!! and then as fame works, jenna ortega and all the other pasty latina biddies are who rise to fame and household name status. everyone recognizes them ofc

but what about gina torres, laz alonso, rosie perez, judy reyes, tatyana ali, selenis leyva, amara la negra and many more? how many of these actors can you recognize from name alone? did you know theyre all afrolatino? (and did you know theyre in extemely well known movies and tv?)

how many stories in television do you know in this day and age that have afrolatino characters whose latinidad isnt ignored? i can name one off the top of my head. monse from on my block. a show revolving latinos that was relentlessly made fun of. like i get it its a comedy and its funny and fun. but latinos may as well be synonymous with getting laughed at at this point and we are soooooo fucking tired of it

it all boils down to one simple message. the erasure of black and indigenousness from the latino community. “miles is latino because his mom is latina” “miles is black and latino” its not something you can put into two separate labels. miles is a black latino. he is afrolatino. and that means a lot of things for a lot of different people but until you can understand that black people can also just be latino we will always be stuck in this horrible era of people assuming that afrolatinos cant just literally be black hispanics…

when miles morales was first announced to be the protagonist of spiderverse so many rasict ass latinos were upset. “why does an afrolatino have to be the first representation we get of a latino spiderman?” and many other things like that were said about him. “well the reason hes latino is only because of his mom” and just like that, the knowledge of the existence of black people that have been latino for centuries has gone down the drain. a new (old) misconception was brought back to the surface and popularized. and its gutwrenching and heartbreaking and horrible. black latinos exist and miles morales is afropuertoriqueño

there are so many nuances when it comes to race and latinodad that ppl just dont bother learning more about and how racism and colorism plays into it. and it has had many negative effects to how real life afrolatinos and indijenolatinos are perceived and treated. we arent asking for the impossible we’re just asking for recognition and understanding

[lovemyromance]

They post all that but not a peep of all the nasty comments on SJMs post yesterday about Elain. Tbh there’s crappy people in each ship and it’s very narrow minded and immature when they assume it’s just their anti ship but what can you expect from people who can’t read context clues and proper foreshadowing 🤷🏼‍♀️

There's no point in arguing with people who use random words pulled out of context and fanon/HCs to form entire arguments for the foundation of their ship.

If you disagree with them, you are "rude and dumb". We are using canon to back our ship and they are using their personal feelings on the matter because all they have in canon is 3-4 uncomfy Elucien interactions and a ribbon(?) and sparky sparky glow glow.

Every time I've told an anti (and mind you, they come to my posts, I don't go out and comment on anti-Elriel posts unless for it's truly a diff reason altogether) that their argument isn't wholly correct because it goes against canon, here are screenshots from the text - I get called stupid and dumb and "toxic to the fandom" and blocked.

If someone genuinely calls out something incorrect I have said from canon (which, mind you has only happened once and wasn't even the related to the purpose of my post), I have thanked them for keeping me honest because sometimes we all make mistakes. That same person has gone on to trash me on their blog and other blogs indirectly for that one interaction where I was nothing but kind to them.

They love to point fingers a lot and say "well I've only encountered Ewriels that are mean" like they aren't incredibly biased and ofc other Eluciens wouldn't snap at you like y'all snap at us. There are bad apples on every side of this fandom and to act like "oh well I've only encountered mean Ewriels so therefore that is the case" should tell you all you need to know about their logic.

I can't control what they think. What I can control is how I react to things and how I treat people. If everyone else took a little more accountability for their actions, this fandom would be a better place to be in, but alas.

So... yeah... I don't like to interact with antis because citing the actual text of the book hurts their feelings and threatens their personal (mis)interpretations of canon. Then they feel like that gives them authority to be rude and mean and so the toxicity continues.

[skinnybinnietitties]

Im bouta kms I sWEAR😀

HELLOOOOO Fellow kind my first post bouta be a stupid ass rant bc I got into shit😭

(My spelling and grammar are literally shit I'm so sorry...)

So basically on last weekend my mom caught me cutting in my room and taking pictures of it. I was in my room trying to blow off some steam w my slicey bcuz my mom kept calling me and needing me to get stuff for her and my lil siblings because she was doing my sisters hair and around the middle end of my session my mom calls me while I have a bunch of blood still on my and a good bit of the blood smeared on my thigh bc thts my safe zone but I didn't have any pants on bc it was easier to access the area I was cutting. Before I come out of my room my mom is calling me and getting more and more pissed off bc I'm not coming and when I do she keeps asking me what took me so long and what the hell I'm doing so I obviously tell her nothing while trying to pull my shirt down (it stops at the beginning of my knee) and cover my bloody nails so she doesn't see them. And after I fin8sh doing what she asked me to do I go back to my room and decided it would be a good idea to take a few pictures and videos bc why not (wanna punch my self in the face jst thinking about this shit😭) and after I'm done making 2 more cuts on video I decide I need music so I was picking some then all of a sudden I hear my mom's footsteps coming to my room and mind you I had FUCKIJG gasue packets and wipes that were sufficiently bloody enough to need an explanation. Anyways she bust in my room and I wasn't thinking properly ofc bc I jump up and grab a tissue off my dresser and hide it in my hand and turn off my phone. When I so that dumb shit I leave my blade on my nightstand and when she walks to my side of the room because we have a division curtain because I share a room she looks at me and is like "what's in your hand??" "what were you just doing??" type shit and when she sees me try to leave the room she goes and closes the door and when she does that I swipe my blade onto the floor and start panicking thinking "oh yeah your cooked your so done😭" so eventually she sees what sin my hand and makes my ass sit down and originally the excuse I used was that I hurt my self trying to cut something off my bra with a knife BUT😮‍💨 tht evolves into cutting my nipple and soo after my kitty cat by accident and her thinking I was going at it🥲😭. She believed the last one not before asking me if I hurt my self and when I told her I acted like that because I was embarrassed asf about it and panicked but during those poorly made excuses she says something about my phone and I yeet it behind my bed to "get later" because mind you I had the video plus other cutting sessions along with ana progress and just other screenshots and downloads I don't want her to see PLUS I have this hellish thing called Family link where she can lock my device and block apps (clearly didn't help because I have accessed the internet from an app that doesn't even show how much time I've spent on it plus other things) so I'm not supposed to have YouTube or tiktok or anything like that so if she were to go through my phone it would get taken away and I really got this phone in may becau6my last one was taken away for more than a year so obvi don't wanna get in trouble. Okay getting side tracked but anyways so when I yeeted my phone she made me get it and told me ima check your stuff so I go into the living room and ask can I watch her look and she says yes with a side eye. When she checks everything and doesn't see anything she says I feel like I'm missing something and finally clicks my pictures and before she can click the gallery I tell her you shouldn't click that because it's stuff you don't wanna see on there but obvi she does anyways and gasps when she sees my thighs and when I try to grab the phone she grabs my wrists and makes me get away. Eventually she makes me go in her room and strip to my undies and bra off and checks but she only sees cuts on my once safe zone and time skip blah blah blah she asking me a bunch of questions and stuff I end up saying too much about how I am essentially a people pleaser and I'm not satisfied with my life yada yada.

Not enough space so making a part 2 to the story for who ever wants to read this💀

[coastxlwaters]

*cough* hullo i hope this isnt a strange or rude thing to say- but as like. a person from the side of sams who likes to ship things, i very much love and appreciate how kind you are!!! some people who dont like to ship things (which is 1000% okay btw, we all have our preferences) are. very big on harassment (and so are some people who *do* ship things, to be fair), but you are just. a nice person!!! ive seen you advocate to leave shippers alone and to not harass them, and that you should just block people you dont agree w instead of pestering them. and i thank you for that a whole lot, sincerely!!!

okay thats it buh bye

-bird

You just made my day, its not weird! I love to get these kinds of things, and yes im against harassing others for their own preferences. I do not like to make my blog about this stuff, and i do follow many shippers! Their art is super cool, and i just avoid the shipping parts they make. I mean, im not a romantic shipper (other than solruin) but i do have a QPR ship of dark sun/solstice x eclipse. I have lost many, many followers and mutuals from that and i dont want other people to have that feeling of dread or sadness when they watch their follower count go down or be blocked by sm they would once call their friend. It really does hurt even if you understand the reason why.

I do draw the line of shipping when it comes to minor x adult though, so i am not some amazing person who has the ability to forgive everything. I appreciate that i have had several asks like this that have made it seem like that, but i am not that great of a person.

I also think there are some that do not ship that go and harass others that dont ship under the disguise of being sm who does ship so it throws more hatred to the ones who do ship and enjoy that. I think that as i have seen it happen many times IRL and in other fandoms. Its a way to make the other side look bad, it usually works.

Im not saying that shippers do not harass, as i have seen some that do, but i am saying both sides are in the fault here.

Im adding this here:

Do. Not. Hate. The. Show. For. Disliking. Some. Ships.

They are real people who also have boundaries and preferences, we understand that yall ship the characters and not the VAs (i mean, some have done that and you really shouldnt do that) but think of it like this.

You and your sibling/close friend (just sm who you dont feel romantic attraction to) make ocs, you post them online. Then people start shipping them. You would get uncomfortable, right? Since a part of your brain is thinking: “but me and my (non romantic partner) dont like eachother like that, but now yall are making this stuff and making us uncomfortable.“

Ofc i feel as if the VA’s could have handled some things better, but we are all human and make mistakes. Just dont bring them into this. So tag your stuff correctly, do not harass, and enjoy the stuff that you enjoy and ignore the stuff you dont. Thats what you call basic human decency, you can be mad at them all you want in your head as long as you dont say it.

Sorry for the long rant, but i cant reblog stuff like this due to being blocked by people who do say stuff like this so i wanted to get this out and on my blog. And i swear to god do not go annoy or harass the people who do say this stuff and saying “why did u block this person!“ they have their reasons for blocking me and others and we should respect them. I have seen people who do this and i dont like it. So dont go harass another person for blocking sm you may think is nice. For all you know i could be a bitch and asshole irl and they know me irl and thats why they blocked me.

Dont harass or get angry at sm until you can see it from their point of view. Since you dont know what they are seeing that you are not.

(but this ask did make my day! Im literally so happy rn cause i try to practice what i preach but smt i feel like i fail or do the wrong thing that makes me look like a hypocrite!!)

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

hi there, ive been following you for a little bit now and all of your thoughts and wisdoms mean a lot to me, as well as your art and creative things like your photography. ive been wanting to do little confessions about lots of different things over time but im very afraid that the people hurting me will see them and know its me and hurt me more. im very lost & scared & trapped rn and everyone closest to me punishes me for it. idk i just wanted to get it out somewhere.. but it really means a lot to me to see you happy and well. you inspire me and i want there to always be good waiting for you

hi ^^ im sorry u have those feelings i used to struggle immensely w this .. i always kinda posted /this way/ but for most my 20s i only used private accounts cus i was so afraid of ppl irl reading my posts, as well as stalkers, there were incidents of both these things that made me go into hiding for foreverrrr !!!

The only reason i post publicly now is cus when i first came back to tumblr in 2021, it was like a blank slate, all my old oomfies had moved to ig or twitter. So i cld relax more and eventualy over time new ppl came who made sense to be here. And i didnt feel like i had to hide anymore ! it was extremely slow process. like literally took all of my 20s to feel fine doing this

And Ofc im sure tons of ppl who want to harm me read my blog and make fun of me, i know i seem insane to many, but i just....Dont care like.....You need to realize....Anyone who does that to you is SO weak, you are not lost at all compared to them. They're upset because they want to express themselves earnestly too but they feel blocked. Many ppl lash out for this reason..

if ur really afraid u could start by maybe doing a private blog .. i would also recommend doing protection prayers for yourself, i like listening to psalm 91, i have my archangel michael candle lit rn actually, i take a lot of measures to keep my shield up, i really believe in these energies, i ask the angels to send any unwanted energy back to sender, simple as. it has helped me become much more comfortable showing myself, online and irl.

Just dont give up, even if it takes a long time to open up, practice each day to strengthen ur soul, work on the things yu want to work on with the intentions of love in your heart, when u Know ur doing it for the right reasons it becomes really hard to let anyone stop u. But take it slow. no matter how scared u feel rn, know it can be a total 180, even if u dont see the path clearly yet ^^ Thanks for your kind message..i'm here to help!! Stay protected & cherished Anon...PMD9 <3 <3 <3

[sarahowritesostucky]

📖"Body Heat" : A Snowpiercer-Marvel Mashup Story

Part 2 - "A Microcosm of Humanity, Boiled Down to its Base Elements" (Wait! I haven't read Part 1 yet!)

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Curtis Everett x ofc

Tags: dystopia, food insecurity, post apocalypse, age difference (18/34), dark!fic, implied/referenced suicide, background character death (offscreen), poverty, arranged marriage, implied/referenced past cannibalism, hurt/comfort, attempted rape, dub-con

Summary: Curtis stops a would-be assailant in the wash car. Still worried for Rose's safety, he brings her back to his bunk to sleep.

Author's Note: This fic is dark. This chapter includes explicit, non-gory mentions of: past cannibalism, the consumption of rat meat, and a character who attempts to rape another character but is stopped just in time. 🖤DNI if you can't handle it 🖤

Part 2 - "A Microcosm of Humanity, Boiled Down to its Base Elements"

Mealtimes in the Tail are more about social interaction than they are about food—Kind of hard to have a dinner party when the only things there are to feast on are protein blocks and a meat that you’re pretending is chicken, after all. But they make due.

They have dishes now, at least. A couple hundred plastic bowls and cafeteria cups, dimpled and chipped at the rims, but still serviceable. They’re some of the newer amenities, part of the package that the council negotiated for in last year’s talks. It’s never much but it’s something, brings them just a smidge closer to being able to live like human beings, rather than animals.

It’s been twelve years, and still they’re celebrating over bowls when they should be aiming for antibiotics. But conditions were so miserable after Boarding that even the smallest concession from uptrain feels like a luxury now. Curtis would prefer the progress be faster, but he’s not in charge. He’s Gillam’s second in command, and Gillam’s so old and frail now. After the turmoil of the Year Two (and Three, and Five) Revolts, Curtis made him a tacit promise to not resort to such violent measures again lightly. For now, negotiated castoffs and increased recyclables from uptrain will have to do.

He doesn’t see Rose again for the rest of the afternoon. Four hundred people living in a metal box tend to brew discontent and interpersonal problems over the tiniest of things, and as one of the Tail’s five elected, a big chunk of Curtis’ days are spent solving petty conflicts between the Tailies. He navigates his way through a list of waiting disputes in the market car and in the bunks, making his rulings on what’s fair, and trying not to worry obsessively over Rose and where she is and how she may be doing and who may be bothering her.

But he’s not entirely successful, because something still loosens in his chest when he catches sight of her—looking peaceful and sitting quietly alone at dinnertime. He walks over, grinning the closer he gets as she continues not to notice his approach. “Hey Petal!” he whisper-yells right beside her as he taps her shoulder and sinks down to sit next to her on the floor.

She gasps and almost drops her bowl, but a relieved smile splits her face when she sees that it’s him. “Curtis! Hey. It’s you.”

“Course it’s me.” He frowns quizzically at just how relieved she looks. “Who’d you think it was?”

“Nobody,” she excuses quickly, shaking her head and inching over to make more room for him. “Just glad to see you, is all. Today’s been … long.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Did you get the clothes to Gilliam?”

Her smile softens and she nods. “Yeah. And the arm to Coulson.” She gestures down the car to where Phil is sitting, using the rudimentary limb with clumsiness but steadfast determination. “He has to practice, but I think it’s gonna work pretty well for him.”

“I’ll bet.” Curtis smiles, happy for him. Phil’s also one of the elected, and along with Gilliam, Curtis, The (recently deceased) Man, and Banner, he’s always done his best to help the people in the Tail survive. That’s why he’s currently missing his arm from just above the elbow.

Curtis remembers the taste of human flesh. He wishes he didn’t, but he does. And what’s more, he wishes it’d tasted worse than it had, wishes he didn’t have the memory of how his mouth had watered when he’d finally gotten to eat for the first time in over a week. He averts his eyes from Coulson, ashamed, setting his bowl on the floor and sliding his right hand up under his left coat sleeve to trace the jagged evidence of his own failure.

It hadn’t tasted bad. That’s something he’s never said out loud. Because it’s too shameful. Talking about the early days isn’t forbidden, per say, but there’s an understanding amongst the Tailies that you don’t discuss the actual experience of eating human flesh. Unless it’s in private with someone very, very close to you, you don’t talk about the worst things that went down in those days.

Curtis glances back to Phil, wondering. He doesn’t actually know who he’s eaten. Back in the Desperation, there had been a decision amongst the volunteers that their donations would be mingled and prepared anonymously, to avoid people knowing—even family members, even the donors themselves. Curtis gets lost in the horror of the memory for a minute or two as he stares across the car at Phil, wondering, remembering the taste …

He snaps out of it when Rose says something to him, and he realizes that he’s still got his right hand stuck up his left coat sleeve, touching the scar. Rose’s voice pulls him out of it, like a fog suddenly lifting, and Curtis hastily picks his bowl back up, asking Rose to repeat herself and then mustering a cheerful answer for her as he puts the memories of the past back in the box on the shelf in his mind.

He and Rose sit shoulder to shoulder and converse over their bowls of stew. It’s one of only a few things that Tailies ever have to eat, and it consists of broth made from cooked down protein blocks, and chunks of meat from the only other animal that shares the tail section with them.

Yeah, they eat rats. Curtis has stopped caring at this point. In fact, he’s not sure he ever really cared in the first place. Once you start with cannibalism, the only way to go is up. And it doesn’t taste too bad—especially since they’ve graduated from catching the rats to actually breeding them in cages. Between that and the artificial salt substitute that Curtis negotiated as part of last year’s package, things have a nicer flavor to them than they used to.

“Didn’t you work in the kitchen car for a hot second?” he says between one sip and another, when he’s paused to try and use his fingernail to get a stringy bit of meat out from between his teeth. “What’d Wanda have you and MJ doing in there?”

Rose makes a face. “There're only a couple steps to making this slop, Curtis. Use your imagination.”

He laughs at the comical shudder she gives, and she kicks him for laughing at her. “So dramatic,” he teases. “What do you have to compare it to, anyway, huh?” He rolls his eyes. “Train babies. Don’t realize how good you have it.”

She gasps and pokes him as though he’s heaved a grave insult at her. “I am not a train baby!”

“Barely.”

“I’m eighteen!” she says, as if that makes her a full fledged adult. “I remember food from Before,” she insists, and Curtis shakes his head in amusement at her.

“Fine. What do you remember?” He’s breaking one of his own rules for her, talking about Before. It should alarm him but it doesn’t. “What food?” he taunts.

She sticks her chin out haughtily and thinks about it, before declaring, “Goldfish. And noodles. I remember noodles.”

It takes all Curtis has inside him not to snicker at her expense. He does want this girl to like him, after all. He looks down at his own bowl of stew and smiles fondly. “Goldfish crackers and noodles. That’s very specific.” The kind of thing a young child would remember. “Is that all?”

She twists her lips and admits, “Yeah.”

You have blocked a lot of it out, Curtis thinks sadly. Just not the parts that happened after Boarding. “It’s better that way,” he tells her. “Makes all of this more bearable.” Rose has never really had a life that was anything other than “bearable,” and while that is something of a mercy for her, it also makes Curtis want to be the one to give her more; be the one to introduce her to finery and pleasure, show her what it can taste like, what it can feel like. “There’s things I want to get for us,” he tells her, speaking quietly because he doesn’t need the people nearby overhearing and getting themselves worked up. “Things for the Tail, food I want to negotiate for. I think this might be the year.”

Rose looks intrigued. “What?”

“Lean closer,” Curtis whispers. “This is top secret.”

She smirks and scootches even closer to him, until they’re pressed together from hip to shoulder. “What?” she whispers.

Curtis looks her in the eye and lets the tension build for a moment, trying his damnedest to keep his expression serious, and then he declares, “Goldfish and noodles.”

She gives an outraged squawk and swats at him for making fun of her, though she’s laughing herself. “You suck!”

Curtis stays her hand, pulling her into a one-armed hug and apologizing through his own laughter. “Wait, wait, wait. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Shh. I’ll tell you.” He calms down from laughing. “I’ll tell you, I will.”

“Jerk,” she mutters, but he can hear the fondness in her voice.

“Chickens,” he whispers in her ear. “You remember those?”

She purses her lips thoughtfully, then shrugs in a way that tells him she really doesn’t. “That’s an animal,” she says, in what she doesn’t realize is a sad demonstration of her limited knowledge. “A bird.”

“Yeah,” Curtis says. “Yeah it is. You know the New Year’s eggs?” Every year since Year Five, a wheelbarrow from uptrain arrives on New Year’s Day bearing the coveted gift of hundreds of gleaming white, hard-boiled eggs—one for each blasted soul who lives trapped in the Tail section. Rose hums and Curtis nods. “Those come from chickens. They lay the eggs and you can eat them. It’s a good source of food. And you can kill the chickens and eat them, too. Eat their meat.”

“But … don’t baby chickens come from the eggs?” Rose asks naively.

Curtis smirks. “Yeah, but that’s when they’re fertilized. If a male chicken isn’t around fucking the hens, then the eggs just come out, and you can eat ‘em. They don’t have baby chicks in them.” He watches Rose’s face screw up at the stark visual, and is surprised when she bluntly declares,

“Oh. So … like a period, with us.”

Curtis almost swallows his tongue. First of all, he wouldn’t have expected Rose to be able to make the comparison. Because she may be old enough to bleed, but they don’t exactly have comprehensive sex ed in the Tail. As far as Curtis knows, the girls are taught young—very young—what sex is, what it leads to, and how to avoid it at all costs. Curtis doesn’t think he’s heard a person talk openly about these things since before Boarding. It just isn’t done. The women handle their stuff themselves, and the men have their heads bitten off if they interfere.

“Um,” he says, face heating. “Yeah, I guess. Except you don't lay eggs." Rose snorts and Curtis winces and scratches awkwardly behind his ear. “So anyway, I want to get us some chickens. If we had those, it’d help a lot.”

Rose stares pensively into the depths of her soup bowl, with its globulous broth and stringy bits of meat. “It’d taste better than this?”

Curtis scoffs. “Most things do, Petal.”

“Jeez, you’re really sticking with that, aren’t you?”

He wraps an arm around her shoulders and gives her a squeeze, laying out his vision for the future. “I want to negotiate for another car. With dirt and chickens.”

“Dirt?”

“Yeah. They grow things uptrain. Crops. We could too. We could raise chickens in half of it, grow potatoes in the other half.”

Rose looks at him like he’s just announced he’ll be negotiating for the moon. “They’ll never give it to you,” she whispers. “Why would they?”

“If I could threaten them with something big enough. We might have the bargaining power.”

“What would you threaten them with?”

He smiles sadly and squeezes her shoulder. “I dunno. That’s what I’ve gotta figure out.”

“But you’re not gonna … I mean there’s not going to be another war, is there? Not like before …”

There’s genuine fear in her voice when she asks, which makes Curtis feel like crap. Everyone had suffered back then. Many had died. He thinks about how Rose would’ve only been eleven or so, during the Year Five Rebellion. Just a kid, still playing with the crummy little doll Curtis made for her. “No, Hon,” he promises gently. “No. There are other ways. Other things we can do to gain leverage. It just takes time.”

“What ways?”

He shakes his head and smiles. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t help it,” she pouts. “I may not know many things. But I like to know them.”

He smiles fondly. “I know, Petal. You’re curious. Always have been. You like to 'know the scuttlebutt', as they say. You’re not afraid to ask questions. I like that about you.”

“You do?”

“... Among other things.” He sees her cheeks color prettily, and realizes he’d better stop talking. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’d tell you if I could, but these things are above your paygrade. Me and Gilliam’ll figure it out.” He shoots her a wink. “That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

She titters at that, because they both know that there’s no such thing as money in the Tail. Oh there’s currency, for sure, just not the kind that’s handed over as stacks of bills. Curtis lets his eyes drag over the few parts of Rose’s body that he can see: her attractive face and the slope of her neck, the delicate suggestion of a collar bone where it peeks out before it’s swallowed up by her sweater. He looks away. “I want to improve things for us. Change is possible. There are things we can get. We just have to work for it.”

“What things?” she presses, leaning closer.

He thinks about brushing her off, but he can see that she’s genuinely curious, and the interested gleam in her eyes sways him. Because ideas can mean hope, and he wants her to have hope. They’ve both seen what can happen when there isn’t any.

He tells her about the basic medicines and medical supplies that could be useful, tells her about the items they could receive if people uptrain were more willing to bargain. “More castoffs would go to us, instead of into the recycling machines,” he tells her. While it is true that some old and unwanted items eventually make their way into the Tailies’ “market,” the sad fact is that many more materials are cleansed, disintegrated, and recycled for use through the train’s 3d printing machines. Curtis has never seen them, but due to his yearly talks with a woman named Melanie, he now knows that they exist, and they’re why not much gets sent back to the Tailies.

“We’d have more clothes, toys and books, all sorts of new things.” Of course when he says “new” he only means new in the sense of new to them. To people in the front, Tailies are second class citizens at best, subhumans at worst. The funny thing is, Curtis doesn’t take offense at it like he used to. He’s learned by now that it’s human nature to kill, cheat and steal, clamoring all over each other whenever resources are limited. They’ve literally eaten the weak in the Tail, after all. It’d be hypocritical to hold the first class passengers to a higher standard.

No, Snowpiercer is just a microcosm of humanity boiled down to its base elements. Nine-hundred people surviving on a miserable little train, barreling endlessly around the frozen corpse of the planet. Of course there’s going to be subjugation of the weak so that others can have more. Curtis doesn’t hold it against them anymore, but he sure as hell isn’t going to take it lying down. The Tailies were never ticketed passengers. They forced their way on, they scraped and scrounged and earned their survival. And if they ever get the chance, they’ll turn the tables on the passengers uptrain in a heartbeat. Curtis makes speeches about “leveling the playing field,” but he doesn’t have visions of utopia. Not really. He just wants to die in a feather bed.

“What would we have after chickens?” Rose asks, drawing Curtis out of his gloom. She knows as well as he does, what the definition of a 'pipe dream' is, but it’s fun to pretend with someone you like, and Curtis likes her. Always has. He likes that she hasn’t turned grey and dull like everyone else in the Tail. So he indulges her 'what ifs' and they continue to tease each other over various colorful and increasingly stupid imaginings: how they’ll have potatoes, and then beef, then televisions, bathtubs, a swimming pool.

At some point, Curtis realizes that he’s actually managed to make her smile, and giggle. Even sitting on a cold steel floor slurping at a bowl of rat and god-knows-what stew, he feels like a king knowing he was able to do that. “You’re really beautiful when you smile,” he blurts out, soaking up the way that her eyes get just a little bit wider and her lips part in surprise. He averts his attention back down to his bowl, pleased as punch. “‘Course, I always think you’re beautiful,” he murmurs, fully intending for her to hear.

She gets quiet after that, bashful and seemingly deep in thought. Curtis doesn’t worry though, because when everybody settles in to listen to that night’s story, she goes to fetch one of the blankets off her bunk and brings it back. She plops herself right back down next to Curtis and hands him a corner of the blanket to wrap it around both of their shoulders. He obliges. The assembly car fills up for that night’s entertainment, and just before the lights are dimmed down to their lowest level, Curtis locks eyes with Tanya from across the car, who’s shooting him a scrutinizing look. He’s grateful to escape her judgment for the moment, but he knows she’ll be on him before long.

They set out the tall stool at the head of the car, and Painter, the Tail’s historian, climbs up and settles on it.

A quiet man of short stature, Painter’s been performing the nightly stories since almost from the very beginning. He has a way of seeing things that others don’t, a way of weaving words and details together in graduating, elaborative cadence; like his drawings, like strings on a loom, always managing to convey the true heart of a matter in a way that resonates with people. It’s the closest thing to watching a movie any of them will probably ever get again, and in Curtis’ opinion it has just as much value as the food they feed their bodies with. People need more than just food to survive. They need community, they need love, they need hope.

Painter sits silently at first—a sign that he hasn’t decided on the topic and is taking suggestions that night. Someone calls out in the dimness to suggest The Man for tonight’s story, and a murmur of general agreement goes through the crowd. Up ahead on his stool, Painter nods. The Man was well known in the Tail, having long-served on Gillam’s council, among other things. Curtis hadn’t been lying to Rose, when he’d said that her father had been a good leader.

In the crook of his arm, he feels her shift subtly. Aware that this might be hard for her, he leans over and kisses the top of her head. “Hey, are you okay?” he whispers, giving her the option. “You want to go?” But she shakes her head and tucks herself further into him, so Curtis relaxes back, looking forward to getting to hold her in his arms for the next hour or two.

Painter does The Man justice. Children are always kept in another car during storytime, so that the plotlines don’t have to be watered down for their sensibilities, but even still, Curtis doesn’t doubt that Painter knows Rose is present, because he takes care to soften the corners of the story where she features, and to use gentle words when the most painful memories are fleshed out.

For over an hour, Curtis lets his eyes slip closed and the words wash over him. He tucks his nose into Rose’s hair and breathes the scent of her in, holding her small, soft body against him. He can feel every shift and sway that she gives as she hears the story, too, and they enjoy their time together, connecting over the shared intimacy of Painter’s words.

At some point, he brings her into his lap, and she comes so easily—like she was just waiting for the invitation, and is relieved that he wants her there. This isn’t something they’ve done before. Not like this. And he can tell by the slight tension in her body that she knows it, too. This is new. It could be the first time a man has ever showed her attention like this, and Curtis wants it to be good and easy for her. He gently rubs her back as the story stretches on, relieved when he can feel all the tension slowly leaving her. “Good girl,” he whispers against her hair.

She hums and rubs her cheek on his chest with complete trust, and Curtis suddenly remembers what it used to feel like to sink into a full, hot bath. Is this what it means to be touch starved? he wonders. Probably. It’s been so long since he’s been genuinely intimate with another person, that he’d almost forgotten the feeling.

Eventually he can hear the tone of Painter’s words changing, can hear it all coming to a close as he wraps up his retelling of that night’s story. Curtis has never hated anything more. Please, he thinks. Please let him keep going. Let him keep talking just a little bit longer so she’ll stay in my arms. He doesn’t want to let her go.

… Maybe if he plays his cards right, he won’t have to.

Tanya does confront him that night, cornering him by her spot before he can follow after Rose on her path to the wash car. “Pretty sure that girl knows how to bathe herself,” she says, hand planted firmly on Curtis’ chest. “She doesn’t need you, Curtis.”

Curtis loses sight of Rose going into the next bunk car, and he settles back onto his heels, glaring at Tanya. “I’m trying to look out for her.”

Tanya raises an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “You sure that’s all you’re trying to do?”

Curtis’s eyes narrow. “Have you been paying attention? Look around.” He nods at the crowded bunk car around them and speaks in a hushed tone. “You’re in charge of all the female stuff, you should know better than anyone what’ll happen now that her father’s gone. I’m only trying to protect her.”

Tanya purses her lips. “Uh huh. Protect her with your penis, is that how?”

“Jesus.” Curtis takes a step back, crossing his arms in frustration. He leans back against a metal rail. “I’m just being realistic,” he eventually says, after sulking over it for a moment. He respects Tanya—she’s a crucial part of the Tail, helping the women who get pregnant and give birth, helping the girls when they start developing (and, eventually, when they start attracting the attention of the men). “You’ve seen them looking?” he asks, not having to look at Tanya to know that she understands him. “So what am I supposed to do? Just wait until somebody else stakes their claim?”

Tanya makes an angry sound, though it isn’t directed at Curtis. “I stop them.”

“You stop the ones you can,” Curtis says lowly. “But eventually—”

“Eventually is eventually. Right now is right now,” she hisses.

Curtis turns back to her. “We play it your way and the first guy who stakes his claim gets her. That’s how it works. You know that. Is that what you want, huh?” Tanya’s face works in frustration, and Curtis softens. “Hey,” he says, placing a consoling hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like it either. We do the best we can with what we have.” He feels her shoulders rise and fall in a beleaguered sigh.

“I boxed Batroc’s ears last week,” she tells him; her way of giving tacit approval. “Keep an eye on that dirtbag.”

Curtis nods. He’s aware of who the biggest threats are, currently. It’s the men in their twenties and thirties who prey on the up and coming girls. Marriage isn’t a thing in the tail so much as claiming is. The men have a sort of ‘first dibs’ honor system that Curtis despises, but that he can’t change on his own. Not when the majority is so set on it. “I’m not going to force her,” he promises Tanya. “Okay? I’ll give her the choice. You know I will.”

Tanya’s jaw works, but eventually she nods and turns to the side to let him pass. Curtis pats her shoulder in thanks and heads off in the direction that Rose went with her towel.

He gets there just a few seconds too late—or at least, that’s what he thinks when he hears her crying out from the women’s side of the wash car. Curtis barrels around the partition, heedless of whoever else may be in there when he can hear Rose in distress.

There’s a man standing at her back, pushing her face up against the wall of one of the stalls. She’s naked, the shower spraying aimlessly not even a foot away. She’s struggling, crying … and the man’s pants are halfway down his thighs.

Curtis sees red. “Get the fuck off her!”

Everything happens in a blur: him pulling the man back by his shirt and throwing him onto the floor at the opposite side of the car, the man’s head hitting the wall, Rose crying out in fear, Curtis going over to gather her naked body into his arms. “Are you okay?” he asks breathlessly, holding her as she sobs and presses her head of soaked hair against him. His hands slide over the water-slicked skin of her back, his heart in his throat. “Did he hurt you?”

She sobs and shakes her head, clinging to him. “Curtis!”

“Shh, you’re okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you.” He looks across the car at the man, who’s now rubbing his head with a pained wince. Curtis feels rage consume him and he has no control over his actions as he abandons Rose by the stall and stalks across the car to punch the guy square in the face. He immediately grabs his shirt collar and hauls him back in. “Who the fuck do you think you are?!” he roars.

“Stop!” the man—a guy Curtis knows only as Hodge—coughs out, speaking through blood and what’s likely a broken nose. He holds up his hands to defend himself from further assault, and Curtis shakes him with a furious growl.

“Did you touch her?! What did you do? I’ll kill you!”

“I didn’t!” Hodge coughs, pushing against Curtis. “I didn’t do anything! I was just—”

Curtis slams him back into the wall of the car. “Then why’s your dick out?!” Hodge sinks down the wall to the floor and Curtis follows him down. “Answer me!”

“I just wanted to talk to her!”

He’s about to reach down and rip this guy’s nuts off, but Rose calling to him from the other side of the car draws his attention away: “Curtis, please. Curtis!” She’s standing there—naked, wet and shivering, futilely trying to cover herself. She looks at him pleadingly through her tears. “He didn’t. You stopped him. He didn’t.”

It’s enough to make Curtis rein himself in from further violence. Rose needs him more than he needs to hurt Hodge. Still, he shakes the man again as he hauls him back up to standing and shoves him towards the exit of the car. “This isn’t finished,” he warns him at the door, pushing him through hard enough that he falls to his ass on the other side. Curtis points at him. “You’ll pay for this.”

He slams the door and goes back to Rose, who’s still standing there looking lost, shivering, cold. The shower’s still running, so Curtis hurries over to turn the water off. He grabs the towel that’s hanging on the hook and brings it to Rose, intending to bundle her up as quickly as he can. She takes it and wraps it around herself, but it ends at mid thigh and Curtis’ eyes are drawn to a trickle of red running down her inner thigh. All the blood drains from his face. “You’re bleeding,” he says, horrified.

Rose looks down at it and sniffles. “Oh.”

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Curtis breathes, already turning to go back out and finish the job.

“Curtis! Curtis wait!” Rose grabs his arm with both hands as she shakes her head frantically. “I’m fine. It’s my period. He didn’t hurt me.”

Curtis calms down, his chest heaving from adrenaline. “You swear?” he urges, grabbing her upper arms and holding her in front of himself to get a better look at her. Now that he’s paying attention, he can see that she’s dripping wet and rattled, but not visibly hurt.

“I swear. I’m okay.”

His eyes track back down to the blood on her leg, suspicious until he looks beyond and sees her pile of clothing sitting over on a shelf. There’s a small folded rag there the likes of which he’s seen before; what the women pass around silently amongst themselves when they bleed. Curtis calms down as he realizes that Rose is telling the truth and not just lying to keep him from murdering Hodge. He lets go of her upper arms, suddenly aware that she may not want him touching her right at this moment. “Sorry,” he mutters, not knowing what else to say. He feels like he’s just run a marathon, his heart is beating so fast.

Rose surprises him by throwing herself into his arms again, a sob making her whole body heave against him. “Thank you,” she cries, hugging him, hiding her face against his chest. “Curtis, god. If you hadn’t come in …”

“Shh. I did. I did come,” he reassures her, wrapping his arms around her fully again now that he knows it’s welcome. She feels so small. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

They stand there for who knows how long. Minutes, at least. Calming down together. Rose’s crying fades, and Curtis’ blood pressure re-enters the stratosphere. He can feel the red hot anger and instinct to kill bleeding out of his mind the longer that time stretches on. He becomes aware of how cold Rose must be in only her towel and still all wet. “Here,” he says, ushering her back towards the shower. The stalls have changing areas right in front of them, and he steps back so that she can have privacy. “Get dried off. Get dressed,” he says. “I’ll …” his gaze falls back down to the trail of red on her leg. He swallows thickly and averts his eyes. “I’ll be right here.”

Shakily, she nods and pulls the curtain. She gets dressed, and when she opens the curtain again, her hair has been towel-dried and hangs limply about her face. She looks shyly up at Curtis. “Hey.”

“C’mere, Honey.”

She folds back herself into his arms eagerly, whining and pressing into him. “Thank you,” she whispers. “God, Curtis. Thank you.”

“I should’ve been here,” he grunts, thinking of how Tanya had held him back. He silently curses her. “I knew something like this would happen,” he hisses to himself, though he regrets saying it when he feels how it makes her shudder against him.

“Can we get out of here, please?”

He nods and starts to lead them towards the door of the car. He’s not surprised to find Hodge gone on the other side. Curtis silently fumes about what he’d walked in on, as he leads Rose backtrain. They walk through the car where her spot is, and Curtis gives her hand a squeeze when she looks back at it and makes a questioning noise. “I want you with me tonight,” he tells her, gentle but firm, because no way in hell is he leaving her alone now. “Please?” he coaxes, pleased when she looks up to him and nods.

“Okay.”

He smiles softly. “Good girl.”

Curtis has a good sized spot. Certainly big enough for two, which he’s grateful for when he guides her to scoot in across the bed. His is the third bunk up out of four, which means climbing a few rungs, but once you’re up there it affords a fair sense of privacy, especially once he draws the curtain across to close them in together. He flicks the small lamp on, its dim bulb flickering to life and giving just enough light to see by.

He’s got his blankets spread out on the bed. There’s plenty of room enough to sit up and move around, all of his worldly possessions hung to the wall or else strapped against the top of the bunk above. “Home sweet home,” he says, gesturing around half heartedly. “Nothing special.”

“It’s nice.” Rose looks around with a little curiosity before tucking her head down. She shrugs. “You’ve got one of the lights. Our spot doesn’t. I mean … my spot,” she amends quietly. “Our neighbor has the light.”

The lights are built into the walls, meant to faintly illuminate what were once the train’s original baggage racks, powered by the Arc Reactor and impossible to move. But some people have managed to rig up their own lamps from salvaged materials and a little creative wiring over the years. There are no windows in the Tail. Curtis has heard that there are windows uptrain, but he doesn’t know whether to be jealous or not. Would it really improve anything, to have a view of the wasted, frozen world they left behind? He’s not so sure. At least this way they can pretend that Snowpiercer is all there is, the delusion only ruined whenever the Jackboots arrive to deliver food or raid them.

Curtis settles beside her and knocks their legs together. “I’ll keep my eye out for something in the market,” he promises. “Someone as pretty as you shouldn’t be in the dark.”

She smiles as though pained, looking down at her lap. “Being pretty is what got me into this mess.”

Curtis sighs. “No. It’s not just that, Hon.” He cups her face, stroking his thumb over her cheekbone. “It’s not just that.”

“What then?”

He smiles sadly. “Look, if there’s one thing you gotta understand about men, it’s that we covet the rare … and the pure. You’re good. Truly good, in a way most of us aren’t. In a way we can’t afford to be.” He drops his hand and turns away, feeling gross for having told her that, for having included himself in the roster of ‘men’ who think like that. But it’s true. “That’s why you stand out,” he mutters. “None of us are good the way you’re good.”

“What? But you’re good.”

Curtis scoffs. “Please.”

“You are! You’re on council aren’t you?”

He rolls his eyes. “That means I’m good with people, not good. There’s a difference.”

“No,” Rose insists. “No, you help everyone. You lead us, try to make life better for us.” She gets incensed when he continues to disagree. “You do! You … you make dolls for little girls who’ve lost all their toys. You protect us.”

Curtis slumps back against the wall. “Is that what I did back there? Protected you?”

“Yes. Curtis you saved me. You stopped him from …” She falters, unable to say the word, and the silence grows uncomfortable between them. Eventually she stares down at her lap and scoffs bitterly.

Curtis looks over. He doesn’t like the pinch that’s settled between her eyebrows. There’s something strangely self-deprecating about it, and he can’t figure out what’s going on in her head. “Hey.” He nudges her knee with his. “What are you thinking, Hon?”

She shakes her head. “Hodge,” she whispers. “He said things.”

“Oh god. Don’t. Rosie, don’t pay attention to anything that cretin said. Did he threaten you? Because if he did, you know I still have half a mind to rip off his—”

“He said that somebody would choose me, and if it isn’t him it’ll be someone else ‘staking their claim’.” She looks rather mortified as she repeats it. “And he’s not wrong. I mean that’s the way it’s done, isn’t it?” she asks bitterly. “The men. They choose who they want. We don’t get a say. Not really.”

“Rosie,�� Curtis mourns, wishing that he could spare her, wishing he could tell her that she has choices, choices that people will respect. But he doesn’t want to lie. She doesn’t deserve to be lied to. “Hey,” he says instead. “You know I care about you, right?”

She nods, sniffling. “Yeah.”

“You should sleep here. Not just tonight but every night.” He can tell by her reaction that she realizes what he means, and he’s pleased when she leans against his side, still seeking comfort in him. He relaxes now that the hardest part is done. “Would you like that, Petal?” he asks softly, wrapping his arm around her and holding her close. She scoffs at the nickname, and Curtis kisses the top of her head. It’s been a long time since he’s had another person in his bunk—a long time. Not having a partner is lonely, sure, but with the way things are in the tail, it’s easier just to jerk off. Romance is all but dead, as is evidenced by the Tailies’ near-transactional customs regarding sex and relationships. “Will you?” he checks, relieved when she gives a little nod and a sniffle.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t want that either.”

They sit there in silence for a while, and just as Curtis starts to wonder if Rose has fallen asleep, she whispers, “What was it like?”

“What was what like?”

“Men and women. Before. How did it …” she pauses, considering what she wants to say, or perhaps how to ask. “My dad and my mom,” she settles on. “They loved each other. Nobody claimed my mom. They chose each other.”

Curtis nods and gives her arm a squeeze. “Yeah. That’s how it was.”

“Tell me?” she asks, sounding for all the world like a child asking for a bedtime story. “Please?”

Curtis rubs her back, resigning himself to telling her the truth. “People met,” he says. “At school, at work, through friends. If they liked each other romantically, they dated.”

“What’s ‘dated’?”

He winces where she can’t see. “When you liked someone, you’d ask them out on a date. You’d meet them and go do something nice together. Something fun. Get a drink or see a movie, eat a meal in a restaurant.”

“Did the man decide the dates?”

He frowns. “Sometimes. Women would too, though. Sometimes they’d be the one to ask the guy out. It just depended.”

“What happened next?” Rose asks.

“Well … you’d just keep spending time together, you’d keep dating. If the people decided not to date anybody else, they’d agree to be a couple. Boyfriend and girlfriend. … Or husband and wife.”

“What’s the difference?”

Curtis winces at how sad it is that she doesn’t know that. The long term implications of their confinement in the Tail section are obvious and jarring, at times like this. He licks his lips. “Marriage was more serious than dating. More permanent. You might break up with your girlfriend eventually, but if you made her your wife, then that was like saying you wanted to be together forever.” He doesn’t bother getting into the concept of divorce, knowing that she just needs a basic understanding of the matter. “That’s how it was,” he finishes. “Before.”

Rose is quiet for a long while, thinking it over. Eventually she says, “And now the men choose.”

Curtis hates how resigned she sounds about it. “What happened in the wash car isn’t allowed,” he says, aware of the way her body tenses against him. “I’ll make sure Hodge is punished. But the thing is, Sweetheart … I’m worried he won’t be the last.”

Rose sniffles. “It’s ‘cause my dad’s gone, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t help the matter. But you’ve been old enough for a while now, for some. And I’ve seen them looking.”

“For some?” Rose peeks up at him. “Not you?”

Curtis hesitates to answer. “... You’re young, Honey.” It’s not like he can say that he wants her. But saying that he doesn’t would be a total lie. He might not be looking yet, if he didn’t have the other men to worry about; but he does have to worry about them, and so he has been looking. “I’ll make sure Hodge is punished,” he reiterates. “Severely. Even with the way things are now, that was completely beyond the pale.” He feels that hot surge of fury boil up inside him again as he thinks about it: Rose standing there, shivering and crying, Hodge with his hands on her, his dick hanging out of his pants. “He was going to rape you,” Curtis growls. “He needs to pay.”

“And the others?” she asks. “You’ll stop them?”

His chest aches at her unshakable faith in him and what she thinks he can do. “I can only protect you one way,” he murmurs, pulling her close and burying his nose in her hair so that she can’t look up at him with those big doe eyes again. “Has Tanya talked to you much?” he asks. Her head moves against him in a little nod, but she doesn’t say anything. Curtis kisses her hair. “What happened in the wash car could happen again. Someone’ll want to claim you.” She whines and rubs her face against his sweater, clinging to him. He pulls her into his lap just like he had during storytime, earlier that night. “Hey,” he soothes, “I wish it could be different, you know? Wish I could take you outta here, make other people respect your choices.” He sighs sadly. “That’s just not how it works anymore, Petal.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “Would you take me on a date, Before?” He hesitates, and she notices. She looks up at him. “You wouldn’t?”

“You’re too young for me,” he admits. “Or you would’ve been. Before.”

“Now I’m not?” she asks, and Curtis averts his eyes uncomfortably, because of course she’s still too fucking young. If they were still in the World she’d be finishing up high school, going to prom and the mall, glued to her phone. Learning about sex from school and porn and from fumbling encounters with boys her own age, not from some jaded midwife in a squalid train car.

“Now …” he sighs. “Now, it’s different. It doesn’t make it right, but girls become fair game once they’re about your age. And any man who’s interested can try for you.”

“I know that,” she whispers. “But what about you? Are you interested?”

Curtis’ mouth is dry. He can’t answer. So he nods smally instead. He’s surprised when she doesn’t seem frightened or upset by this admission. He lets his hands hold her more securely, fingers dipping into the curve of her waist from over her sweater. “I care about you,” he croaks. “I want to protect you. And the only way I know to do that is to claim you myself.”

“Will you?” she asks. She lays her cheek back against his chest and yawns. “Claim me?”

Above her resting head, Curtis grinds his teeth. “Let’s just take it one day at a time, okay Hon?”

“Mm.” She nods sleepily. “Okay. I trust you, Curtis. Thank you for helping me today.”

He doesn’t answer her, just holds her against him and rubs her back as she gradually falls to sleep. He’s not the man she thinks he is, and she should be in her own spot right now, not tucked away in here with him, because sooner or later he knows he’s going to take advantage. He’ll have her, and he’ll make sure that every other man in the train knows that she’s his. That may not be what she really wants, or even what’s good for her.

But oh well, he thinks. At least it’s better than the alternative.

Masterlist

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This has been a fill for:

@badthingshappenbingo

Card: sarah-writes-stucky

Square N4: "to serve man"

[arcadianico]

for the choose violence ask game (for qsmp ofc): 2, 4, 6, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 24 (you don't have to answer all of them if you don't want, especially becausee i feel like i already know the answer)

i have already answered 6 and 16 but here are the rest:

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

meh. i think qq is probably a switch. i don’t think position matters that much to him. also i dislike the idea of assigning sexual preferences based solely on personality because that’s not really how that works, and it plays into fandom dynamics which quite frankly bore me. elq is a power bottom though. source: trust me

4. what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

tallulah and wilbur fic clogging the quackity tag. i’m so sick of being unable to navigate that tag. it doesn’t matter who it’s about, even people who i like, but when i see qsmp shit in the quackity tag but quackity isn’t involved at all it pissed me off. stop using the quackity smp tag. #qsmp works fine!

10. worst part of fanon

qtntduo. that’s all i have to say

13. worst blorboficiation

oh boy. elq. i love him but he’s an asshole and erasing that sucks. i’ve seen some posts which are,,, woah boy. sometimes i read them and i’m like oh yeah he would say that, but he would not think that. the elq falling in love with qwilbur? boring. also why are people trying to woobify him in the same way they tried to woobify qq (which i also hate. let characters be complicated and messy and difficult). he’s a dick and i like that about him

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

honestly can’t think of anything i’m ashamed of liking. i don’t believe in guilty pleasures. if i like something, i like it and i have no reason to feel bad about that

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

qq’s breakdown after the fake wedding! i wanted him to talk to sophia so bad. i want him to deal with his, quite frankly pretty arospec, emotions. his relationship to love as a concept fascinates me, especially as an aro person because his comments hit home. i think exploring that sort of idea is much more interesting than ship stuff tbh. i wouldn’t want a ship to happen in canon with him before he’s allowed to work through those feelings

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

i think it’s fine if the eggs die actually. like i’m not begging for it to happen or anything (except i did occasionally as a joke because i wanted rubius back which… success) but egg death has caused some of the most interesting things on the server imo. like the relationships with mortality and love and loss are all so beautiful and poignant and they hurt but i also like that. it reminds me a bit of a poem i wrote about my grandfather’s death and not being able to go to his funeral. there’s something about grief that hasn’t settled yet that aches in this bittersweet way, like if nostalgia could cut with a knife. tbh i don’t know what i’m saying anymore. but yeah egg death is honestly fine imo

[imagionationstation]

Just saw ur post/answer to an ask, and:

"I have a Mutant World au, MW AU, which is my 2012 separated AU-type project. Tis my baby. So young, but so full of trauma"

And God, I am now in love with this AU. I love me a good separated type AU.

And one that Leo and Donnie separated together in the TMNT 2012 version (honestly, I just love Leo and Donnie's relationship/dynamic in general, so I am always happy to see more of it. And TMNT 2012 is a fav. of mine too), and basically alone/only have each other. And being the only humans in a world full of mutants, but like, also Kraang experimented on humans (Damn, they got Leatherheaded, April/April family'ed. The poor boys; happy they escaped. Even if they still have to be in hiding) - which makes me wonder if they might got some April powers stuff going on; that would be so cool, and then when two mutant bros (Raph and Mikey) do stumble in their lair, Leo tries to just straight up murder them (protective mama bear mode. We only have each other mode), and Donnie has to talk him out of it, and then they get to be not so alone anymore with Raph, Mikey, and Splinter.

It is just great, and now I want this as actual story or something someday; it just sounds so good.

Also makes me curious about some of the human characters (well, kinda/mostly/sometimes human characters for some of these) like April and her Dad (kindaaaa to both of those though), Casey (also kinda a bit), Shredder (until later on), and Karai (again, until later on). Oh the blind chef that I love a lot, but his name is hard for me to spell/remember.

The hypothetical other separated AU you talked about was interesting to me. Not the usually my cup of tea (i.e., how and/or who was separated and who stayed), but you did make it sound interesting. And I liked Leo and Raph just trying not to hurt their missing, now found little bros, and Mikey believing them first after trying to kill them for a bit, and Donnie being a little slower doing so, because he is loyal. It is just all very good.

Last of all, and not related to that one post at all, but thank you for making that post, about how the universes/dimensions and the people of the different universes/dimensions; in that case 2012 and ROTTMNT are different and each universe/dimension has different laws, because God, do I feel like some people forgot that/don't' realize that/don't take it into account as much as they should imo. Not all ofc; just you, some/a few at least.

First off: I totally forgot this ask existed and I am so sorry for that! Things have been hectic or else I would have responded much sooner 😓😓

Secondly: No problem! I think people forget how different so many aspects of the universes are, and that the differences are what make them awesome, and not flawed!

Thirdly: YEEE, MY BOIS *hugs BB and LB* 2012Leo&Donnie never get their own outcasted separated world together (or so I’ve seen) and so I have lowkey given them one. Raph and Mikey have their own kind of traumatic past, but these boys are on a whole ‘nother level…

I love Big Brother(BB) and Little Brother(LB) so much because they understand very little, and yet what they do understand matters more than anything else. They need each other, they can’t let the Kraang find them, and Mutants are never to be trusted.

They pick up the basics of the world outside the Kraang labs as they go, but BB spends so much time protecting LB from it that LB never gets his chance to see the ✨wonders✨ of the planet so unlike Dimension X. He has his books, but it’s not the same. BB gets surface time, but his fear blocks him from seeing anything other than dangers up there.

Of course, then they meet the boys, and Mikey helps LB to see everything he missed, and Raph helps BB to understand there’s a balance between protecting and shielding. If BB shields LB from everything, then LB won’t learn to really protect himself and will never get the freedom he deserves~

I briefly considered giving them psychic powers, but that’s still a ‘to be decided’ for now. We shall see ;)

HAVE THIS THING THAT BRINGS ME JOY

M7Craft from DeviantArt made this. It’s how she imagines Leo, and even though that’s not how I see him- I LOVE IT WITH MY HEART AND SOUL BECAUSE BB HAS LIFE! LOOKIT THE BROODING BOY!

They have names and designations. The names are what they call each other (Big Brother and Little Brother), but they consider themselves to be the Kraang experiment designations, 1683(Leo) and 1684(Donnie).

We talk story sometimes and M7Craft is working on art for me because we want to give it life since I’ve already got too much on my plate to write a full story and comics are not my forté.

One day 🥺

I make clips and stuff sometimes, which spawn from a random statement or question. Like this-

"How much longer?"

1683's whisper came out harsher than intended, but he felt too exposed in the alleyway, in full view of any mutants who happened to be walking by. 

They wore their protective armor, their hoods and mouth pieces- what had Little Brother called them? Visors?- that hide a fair amount of their face from view, but anything could happen on the surface, and he was experienced enough with mutant mindsets to know that they did not trust anyone whose face they couldn't see. 

A wise suspicion to uphold, but dangerous nonetheless. 

Unable to use his hands to speak while picking the lock, 1684 consented to vocal communication. "New lock. Different than practice one... Almost- there..." 

There was a click and 1684 quietly cheered, "Success!" 

1683 ruffled his hair in congratulations and then moved to push open the door as his Little Brother got to his feet. 1684 remained in the alley until 1683 reasoned it safe. After a quick motion for him to enter, his Little Brother darted past him and through the back room, searching through the boxed and canned items.

All his senses on alert, 1683 left the door ajar to keep from being locked in and then placed an empty can in front of it, as a warning if someone tried to enter. Little Brother began filling his bag, so 1683 allowed him out of his sight long enough to move from food to supplies, examining the options.

Little Brother already tinkered with anything that they could get their hands on, so necessities other than food were few and far between.

Considering everything 1684 did was for them, he always indulged his Little Brother's comforts whenever he could, paying special care to the stacks of books, trying to aim for ones that could prove useful.

He picked out two, both with words that he could not understand, and knew that Little Brother might get another chance to use his prized dictionary. He grabbed more matches for their lantern and then joined Little Brother once more. Sitting on the floor, his finger seemed to tap the air as he counted the prices in his head, slowly moving his collected items into his bag. 

1683 placed his objects on the pile and Little Brother paused, giving him a curious look that questioned the decision. He gave one nod and 1684 picked up his prizes with interest, a warm feeling flooding 1683's chest as tired eyes slowly lit up. Even that bit of subtle joy was enough to make this trip worth it.

Little Brother checked the price on the cover- they only took the books that had those because they seemed cheaper than the rest- and then picked up the other one. 

1683 let him have a minute to browse that one as well before he raised a hand, the motion gathering his Little Brother’s attention. He informed him that they needed to get moving, and 1684 apologized, adding that he had something for Big Brother as well. 

Before he could deny the gift, his Little Brother pulled out a package of mint tea leaves and 1683 lowered his hand, realizing that his one weakness had been discovered. Brown eyes danced as Little Brother put it back in the bag, adding what he'd brought and closing the flap, zipping open a side pocket and then counting out the mutant's trading paper- money- from what they had. 

1684 handed it to him and he held up five fingers, reminding him that if he didn't come back in five minutes, he was to head to the Bunker and not look back. Little Brother rolled his eyes, and 1683 huffed at his inability to take the danger seriously. 

They didn't know if there was someone waiting in the store itself, and just because they'd never seen anyone yet, didn't mean that wouldn't change. 

1683 waited until he got a nod of consent, one that seemed more to pacify him than anything, and then he made his way out into the store. He remained on the defensive as he located one of the money storing machines and then slipped their payment within, racing to the back again. 

There was a moment of intense panic when Little Brother was nowhere to be found, and then he realized the can had been moved and he was standing by the door.

The adrenaline in his veins hardened the glare 1683 gave him, but Little Brother was undisturbed, locking the door and silently heading out into the alley. 

He let his nerves out in a long sigh, but obediently followed suit. It was about time they got below anyway. They had their supplies, and Little Brother would be safe and underground for another week or so. He'd check the windows for new projects after Little Brother was settled in the Bunker. 

1684 shivered and 1683 realized that the temperature had dropped some. Knowing how easily Little Brother tended to get sick, he locked a hand on his elbow and urged him forward. They didn't have the resources that mutants did and their Bunker was surrounded by area that was far from sanitary, so the less they taunted fate, the better. 

Little Brother allowed it, taking one last look at the street lights behind them before they dived deeper into the alley. Sometimes he felt bad that Little Brother didn't get to see much of the city, and was wary of the ignorance of mutants that 1684 bore because of it. 

However, this was the price he was willing to pay. Little Brother was safe and healthy, though he probably wouldn't sleep that day since he had new books to read. Even if his choices to keep him protected left Little Brother bitter on hard nights, as long as he still had a Little Brother to be annoyed with him, 1683 would have no regrets.

Waving him down the open manhole, he watched Little Brother descend into the dank sewers. With one last careful scan around them, 1683 leapt after him, leaving the dangers and worries of the surface behind.

This is one of my earliest works while examining the bros and their relationships and BB’s thoughts on everything and sometimes they seem pretty bland in my writing because even I cannot do them justice but that’s okay because I love them so much!

Perhaps one day the world shall too. 💚💜💙💚

[fantasy-fields-bitty-center]

can we get some info on the danger zone?? any kind of lore or stuff like that please!

Sure!!

-

Bitties from outside of the danger zone tend to be a little wary of those that are just from the fact that the ones in the danger zone can be kinda(or super) aggressive! They can easily get along with them and there are plenty of types they arent wear of(like all the Alphatale ones, since the only thing they have about them is heats for the most part) and things like that!

All the 'easy' bitties are kept out and about in the main area, and the danger zone has smaller zones outside walled off completely for bitties that need to be watched! I wont name any say for some generlizations since the blog will be public in Sep! which is only in like what, 2 or 3 weeks? And it'll be public earrllyyy September!!

Since not a lot of ppl look at the other masterposts it seems heres the floors of the danger zone! B meaning basement(the zones in the area arent available to the public at all so they arent stated here, but they're just the main area zones we have but a lil smaller!(aka staff and bitties only))

vvvvvvvvvvvvv

-5/B5:

The Danger zone takes up this floor, the main staircase and elevator ends here due to the fact you need a staff member with you to roam around below this floor!

This floor has meet and greet rooms, you can meet any bitty from the Danger Zone here but if they are from level B6 or lower then a staff member has to stay in the room with you for your safety!

-

-6/B6:

This floor is apart of the Danger Zone but it is where the more dangerous bitties go! You need a staff member with you to roam around here,

-

-7/B7:

This floor is apart of the Danger Zone as well but this is were our most dangerous bitties go! Only staff members are allowed here!

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Bitties from lvl B5/floor one of the danger zone are allowed to be in the main area but typically they just stay in the more private outside area set up for them, mostly because it's just easier to do that!

The danger zone is called the danger zone for a reason!!! Its where actually dangerous bitties are kept!(mostly bitties that'd need actual trigger warnings! Which are kept in the tags just in case so you can block them! Like gorey bitties or bitties that'd actually hurt people and some nsfw stuff(it’s an 18+ blog, or at least a 13-15+ blog?? You can block the more nsfw posts but so far there arent any(the blog is not open but its made and people in the server can see it!))

-

Aaaaand some sneak peaks into some bitties we have:(for the ppl that want it lol)

Like I mentioned before, Alphatale bitties!! Complete with art! They're different to Alphamama's bitties(by a good bit lol) with a lot more ranks and different looks and all that!

We also have new Fandom bitties! Not going to name those tho lol, but we have more 'Normals' and FNAF bitties! We only have about 60 bitties as of writing this but ofc more are to come! I'm just not focused on it bc 60 is a good amount for a bitty blog lmfao, even if it feels tinnnyyy compared to the main blog- but we have over 500 bitties there so that's to be expected!

So far most of the new bitties are the new fandom types and the Alphatale bitties, but theres types planned that are new species and just for the blog! And new og bitty types! But that’s all in the wips lol so I have no idea when ima get to them since I have like 2k wips for the main blog alone-