#I didn't want to sound like I'm complaining when I originally wrote it

[allisonreader]

Sometimes I wonder why I bother to share my writing. I do write mostly for myself, but I enjoy sharing my work, even if there's no one to screech with over my ideas. But I do miss/look forward to those times where someone does enjoy it enough to say so. It doesn't seem to happen often though, so it feels like yelling into the void. Yet I understand it too. My writing won't be for everyone because it is written for a very narrow audience. Me. And anyone who might happen to enjoy similar things to me. There's many pieces of writing that I've never gotten a single word commented about. And those are stories that I'm particularly happy with, but the one that I'm thinking about in particular is extremely niche. But I love it all the same.

Recently, I think I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't even matter how much or little of a response you get to your writing, you're always going to want more. To be reassured that yes, it is actually good/has merit, that it's not just friends telling you such. It doesn't alleviate that desire to hear such, but makes it more reasonable of a thought.

[fandomfluffandfuck]

(Ignore the fact that this is a screenshot of this ask, lmao, I posted this before I was ready on accident (my app updated and I pressed post rather than safe as a draft because the buttons moved and I'm dumb like that, lol) and didn't have time right then to write what I wanted to for this so I just screen-shotted, then deleted the original post. It's fine, haha. It's here now.)

This reminded me of a fic I wrote a while ago! It's not big dick Steve and it's not mocking in a fun way (in the past, instead, people have been cruel about such a big dick), but... it's big dick Bucky who gets lightheaded when he gets a hard one with size queen Steve praising him and making him feel like no one else, so I just think it's something you might enjoy as well:

"Strangers Who Fit Together More Like Soulmates"

Now, though, YES, we can talk about big dick Steve who gets light-headed and thoughtless whenever he's hard:

If Bucky were feeling confessional, he would describe the way he feels like this--luxuriously pressing his chest up against Steve's broad back and gluing his hips to bubble butt--and, oh, boy, is it a lot of feeling. He can feel the slow, thick rush of his blood through his body, turning the heat up to a feverish, summer level--the kind of summer night that you spend sweating, lying back on your bed over top of your sheets. After all, it's that humid and sticky. So hot that you're thinking about how bad it would really be if some monster came up and snagged your uncovered ankle because... it can't fucking be as bad as this heat. He's fucking hot.

Sweating.

Bucky can feel that, too, his sweat pooling on his skin underneath his clothes. Steve has to be sweating, too. They're going to have to peel apart...eventually. But more pressingly than the heat and sweat and flush afflicting him, he can feel the strain and twinge in his wrist. His muscles ache as he grips and strokes, jacking Steve off while he pretends to be able to wash the dishes. And Bucky hasn't even been at this teasing torture for long!

You'd think after so many months of getting so, so intimately aquatinted with Steve's monster cock, that his body would be used to it. But his body isn't--it still doesn't know what's hit it because he's colliding, regularly, with a fucking semi-truck. Bucky doesn't stand a chance.

With another handful of fast, sloppy strokes that tease more than feel satisfying, Steve sways forward into the counter with a low, aching noise. It's like a tree threatening to fall, Bucky swears it. His big, big body and matching cock. Bucky could climb him like a tree if not for how unsteady Steve gets whenever he's turned on.

The way he twitches and weakens leaves Bucky's arm pinned between Steve's body and the counter, one of the sharp points of Steve's hips and the equally sharp edge of the countertop dig into Bucky. He doesn't care. He's ignoring that ache alongside the lactic acid building up in his muscles--that acid, too, stokes the flames inside him, he burns hot--Bucky murmurs, husky into Steve's ear, "biiiiig boy, yeah, that's it." He won't stop teasing him, no matter how much his arm complains or how stuck it gets.

Instead, Bucky switches tactics, he didn't start this ambush for nothing. So, he squeezes him with his whole hand. He can't touch all of him like this, but it doesn't matter. More than a handful. Regardless, it's more than enough for Steve to be gripped and grabbed based on how he jerks forward quickly, gasping low, under his breath with a barely there huff of, "Buck-!"

Bucky pays his breathy sound no mind, replacing it in the tension-thick air between them with his own words, "I fucking love feeling you swell up in my hand," Steve moans, dropping a thankfully plastic container with a clatter, "gimme it, baby," Bucky goads him, hyping him up, giving up the pretense of just an innocent reach-around-and-cop-a-feel to an all-out fuck-session. "Gimme it. I wanna feel it." Bucky squeezes his hand around his shaft under his sweatpants. Steve's gone from soft and sweet to solid and thick so fast that Bucky's fingers no longer meet around his dick. "One day," Bucky muses, stretching onto his tip-toes to whisper right in Steve's ear, letting his lips brush his skin just a little, just enough to make him shudder, "I'm gonna shove you in me when you're half hard and I'm just gonna sit on this fat cock," Bucky squeezes unforgivingly until Steve makes a stupid guh sound, punched-out, "feeling it get bigger in me."

Steve shivers again, this time more intense. Oh, yeah, he's getting weaker.

Bucky nips at the hot shell of his ear, already turning red. How he still has enough blood in his body to blush while his cock fills up so heavy and thick will remain a mystery to Bucky.

"How's that sound, huh?" He teases.

Steve just whimpers.

Bucky had to get on his tip-toes before, but he relaxes now because Steve is falling, slowly, uncontrollably slouching down the counter. He'll end up on the floor if Bucky keeps going, getting dizzy as his blood finally decides it all has to go where Bucky wants it... in this nice, fat dick.

There's no harm in speeding the process up, making him dizzy, "you're such a slut with this huge thing, getting it up so fast, so often."

"Buck!" Steve gasps again, his muscle-bound body pressed so harshly against the restricted pressure and friction of Bucky's hand in his pants that Bucky starts to feel sharp tingles in his fingers, pins and needles that somehow make the silky hard sensation of Steve's dick in his hand sweeter.

"I can't believe you. I can't believe how slutty you are," Bucky kisses the nape of his neck lushly, then he scrapes his teeth against the top bump of his spine when Steve lets his head hang, the rest of him wilting as his dick swells. "Do you know how eager you are? You'll fucking crumble to your knees for me any time, any day, all I gotta do is get that blood flowing south and you're a goner, babyy--"

Steve inhales so shakily it sounds like he's at the end of a really good cry.

Perfect.

Bucky uses his weakness, his going limp, to his advantage, curling his other hand around his cinched waist to pull him back--giving himself more room to work. That way his hand doesn't tingle so much as he works hard to stroke all the way up and all the way down that big fucking gun he's packing in his sweats. Armed and dangerous.

Steve, with this little (not so little) head talking louder than his big head, lets him move him. Mold him. Stroke him. Jerk him off. Faster. harder.

He slouches another inch. his hands have long since stopped trying to clean their dishes, instead, wet and sudsy, he's gripping the edges of the sink for dear life.

"Should I get you a fainting couch, big guy?" The more he talks, the wider Bucky's Cheshire smile stretches. He's sure he looks feral, how could he not? The weight of his dick in his hand, more and more of Steve's whole body weight pressing back against Bucky, leaning into his chest, letting him have it all. "'Cause we sure as shit need something to catch you when you fall every time I bend over and you see my ass? You fuckin' horndog."

Steve scrambles, suddenly, to touch him. His dish-water-soaked, red-hot hands the size of dinner plates wrap themselves around both of Bucky's forearms. Bucky feels the squeeze as he jerks him slower but harder, much less teasing and more pleasuring. Steve is unsteady. Bucky is all that's holding him up and he won't be able to for long, he's fucking heavy. When his cock twitches in his grip once, twice, leaving Bucky with a mouth full of drool, he starts taking his big guy toward the living room. Walking slow and carefully--pushing really. Pushing this fucking tank toward the nearest soft place for him to crash.

"I can't fucking believe you, big boy," Bucky's mouth runs as he goes, "where do you keep this thing?" As he says it, he goes alllll the way from the base to the tip. Bucky still can't believe how long and how thick he is. He feels like it's a fucking joke. When he first saw Steve naked, he couldn't pick his jaw up off the floor. He thought, o-fucking-kay, you're a show-er then? But as he got to touch and taste and explore, running wild. And it turns out Steve's actually a grower, and then Bucky couldn't only not close his mouth but he couldn't speak. He couldn't fit the whole thing in his mouth and stuffed down his throat either.

"How do you fit it in your pants?" The questions pour out as they get into the living room, Steve stumbling worse now, dizzier. He wouldn't be able to differentiate up from down if he tried, Bucky's pretty sure. The only up and down he knows is Bucky's fist fighting to stretch around his cock, Bucky's mouth gaping to suck him down, Bucky's asshole struggling to swallow him whole. Up and down, up and down, up and down--bouncing on that unreal cock. "How do you fit it in me? I can't believe you do, every time I look at it. Jesus Christ."

For such a big guy, his voice is so cute and small, mewling, whining, and pawing at him with clumsy hands, trying to get him to do more than talk and jerk him off. He wants faster. He wants more. Slut.

"It's good you go so dumb, baby," Bucky murmurs, taking his hands off him and throwing him onto their couch instead. Tiiiimber, Bucky snickers to himself, watching him bounce on the couch. The springs squeak and Steve whimpers, writhing with the unfair treatment. Why'd you stop?, those huge puppy dog eyes, rimmed red, threatening to spill tears, ask. "'Cause if you didn't get so dumb, you'd get some big ideas of doing the work, wouldn't you?"

Steve's too out of it to nod, but it doesn't matter. Bucky doesn't need his silly little input, all he needs is that cock, that gorgeous body, and the stupid expression on his face--eyelids heavy, mouth slack, cheeks hot.

Out. of. it.

"And we can't have that!" He bites, teasing as he climbs onto Steve's prone, sprawled form, straddling his tree-trunk thighs and unceremoniously shoving his sweats down just to watch that horse cock bounce up and slap his clenching tummy. Steve's chest heaves, a wail ripped out of him and causing him to almost double over. Bucky shoves him back, "if you're thinking, you're trying to finger me open and you're just too impatient with a dick like that."

Steve makes some garbled noise, it sounds like he's drowning.

Bucky chuckles, half-amusement, half-breath, throwing his head back with it. He's enjoying himself so fucking much, his hands working that cock and his hips grinding against Steve's solid thigh. "I gotta stretch myself open for you with a dick like what you got. I, I gotta drag it out," he pauses to moan, still grinding, "'cause I'd split at the seams with dick if I didn't get nice and loose for you."

Steve bucks underneath him, nearly throwing him off. It just makes Bucky chuckle more--more moan and breath in the sound. He's so sweet and dumb. Nothing matters to him like this, blissed out, and it's so easy to get him here that it's a wonder Bucky doesn't keep him like this all the time. Yeah, that sounds good, a living, breathing, fuck-machine.

There's no lube over here, though, so unfortunately, Bucky can't start getting sloppy and loose for his human dildo. He'll just have to do the next best thing and jack him off until he cums, then, once he's pumping buckets all over himself, Bucky can scoop it up and use it, along with all his eager, slippery pre-cum to slick himself up so Steve can fill him fuller. More dick. More cum.

It won't be hard to get Steve there--

"If only that brain was as big as that big dick, hm, sweetie? Then maybe you could actually get something done rather than just letting me lead you around by the cock."

Steve whines roughly.

--yeah. No sweat. Give Bucky a challenge, c'mon.

[relevant-wikipedia-articles]

merry christmas!!!!!

This may seem weird, but I do this all of the time and I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I'm not sure if this is your first time or not, so I'm going to explain your situation just in case, as well as how I tend to go about dealing with it

It's a fairly uncommon issue, so hopefully others who see this post will learn how to identify when this happens and how to support people in this situation while they work through it

Anyways, there's no easy way to put this so I'm just going to say it outright: you've accidentally time travelled. I recommend taking at least a few seconds to sit with that thought

Now, just trust me on this, you'll want to go back to your original time. You may think it'll be fun to be in the past/future, but time is no joke. It takes A Lot of energy to stay outside of your time, and there's so many other downsides to not being in the right time that you'll just want to trust me when I tell you that you'll want to go back to your own time. You'll see what I mean as you try to sort all of this out

With that out of the way, you're probably thinking something along the lines of "how on earth did I time travel at all, let alone without even realising it‽", and, unfortunately, there's no simple answer to that

Every so often, there'll be something that you do that makes you travel through time. It can be either forwards or backwards, but it'll always be in the same direction each "season". The amount that you travel can vary though. For me, it's usually anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days. To get back to your own time, you're going to have to identify this action, and, whenever you do it, simply do it again but swap when you inhale and exhale. It sounds silly, but it's the best way I've found to fix it. Idk why it works, but if there's a better way to go about fixing this then I don't know about it

Actually fixing it is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what you're doing that causes you to time travel, since it can pretty much be anything. I do this by keeping a journal of what I do each day, as well as a list of days that I notice I've travelled farther away from my own time. Then I'll compare the two every so often and work my way towards narrowing down the exact action. This can sometimes take a Very Long Time, so the best advice I can give you is to just take life one day at a time

Now, you'll notice I didn't tell you *how* to tell when you've gotten farther from your own time, and that's because it's yet another tricky thing to pin down. Usually, I'll be able to tell from inconsistencies between my memory and my journal. Maybe I don't remember answering this ask, but I wrote in my journal that I did. Maybe Alice is complaining I never texted her back, even though I literally have screenshots of me texting her back in my journal (said screenshots have since irrecoverably corrupted). *Maybe* my phone's battery percentage doesn't line up with how quickly my phone charges and the time my journal says I plugged in my phone

Yeah. Like I said, this is the hardest part. Once you get out of "action id hell" though, getting back to your own time is a fairly straightforward process (though you will feel like an idiot while doing it): you just gotta alternate doing that action, followed by doing that action with the inhaling and exhaling swapped. I think doing the action triggers the time shift or whatever, and then doing it again with the breaths swapped reverses the direction, but, again, I have No Clue how or why this works

Some other things to note:

While you're going back to your own time, don't worry about the people from the time you're leaving. There's an uncountably infinite number of yous all going through the same process right now, and the you from the time you're leaving will replace you when it's all over

You probably won't get the action right on your first try. In fact, it'll probably take a few attempts to get it right. Just remember to be patient and take things one day at a time

Don't worry too much about being out of the loop when you get back to your own time. In a few days, the memories from the you that made it to your time will come back to you and it'll be like it never happened

Now, if this has never happened to you, and you want to know how you can help those going through this, my biggest piece of advice is to just be patient. You can offer your own theories as to what the action they're looking for is, but be respectful if they aren't comfortable talking about it. For some people, it can be a very personal thing

One thing you can do is offer to help them with everyday tasks. Like I said, being outside of your own time takes A Lot of extra energy, so taking some of their work upon yourself is a great way to help them through this. Don't overwork yourself though. They'll find consistency much more comforting than sudden bursts of help (also, overworking yourself is generally a bad idea)

Above all though, just be patient. It's going to take a while for them to sort this out, and I'm sure they're just as annoyed at it all as you are

[the-lark-ascending69]

Near-future, black mirror esque AU in which Nancy, stressed college student with loads of childhood trauma, gets recommended by her psychologist to get an emotional support robot. That's what they're called, yes. They're sold to very lonely people to pretty much look after them emotionally. Nancy has always hated the idea, and doesn't really like androids or robots of any kind. Plus, she thinks it's quite sad that she's so lonely she needs an android to keep her company. She also couldn't possibly afford it.

Her friend Steve, though, who hasn't seen her in a year despite living 15 minutes away (she has a tendency to isolate herself and use her studies as an excuse), got her one. It's a second-hand unit, a slightly older model that's seen several repair shops in the past, but it works, and it was half the price of a new one. He shows up to her apartment with the box, looking smug and proud of himself. If anything, Nancy feels insulted.

She doesn't touch the box for a few weeks, and doesn't get rid of it either, because her studies take her so much time, she can't bring herself to keep her apartment clean. When her mother visits and sees the mess she's living in, with a perfectly functional android willing to help her, she finally caves, and as soon as she's alone, she decides to see if this thing can at least help her clean up.

It surprises her that it looks so... human. Its skin is soft and warm, with all the natural imperfections of a human's skin. Same as her hair. She's dressed in old worn-out clothes, and she curls into herself, in fetal position, inside the box. Only the button under her skin on the back of her neck reveals her as an android. Nancy reads the instructions, presses there for 10 seconds, and waits.

Or she planned to wait - eight seconds in with Nancy's fingers pressed on that spot, and the android's eyes flew open. She cried out, screambled out of the box and looked around, breathing heavily and hugging herself. Her eyes fix on Nancy, look her up and down with a frown, and asks:

"Who are you?"

Nancy opens her mouth to reply, then looks down at the instructions, hoping they'd say something about this kind of scenario, and that her new robot didn't go rogue and try to kill her.

"Wait, are those my instructions?" The robot asked. She looked down. "I really don't mean to complain about my living situation going from extremely fucked to simply fucked, but that is not my original box. Mine was smaller, and it had a bunch of little dots on the side. Did they sell me again?"

The instructions said nothing about this possibility, so Nancy decided it was time to improvise.

"I... my friend got you at a garage sale, I think."

"Oh. Well, that is low, even for me," the robot said. She rubbed the back of her neck. "Should my neck hurt this much?"

Nancy blinked.

"Shouldn't you know that?"

"Honestly, I don't even know what levels of pain are normal for me. It always hurts just a little bit somewhere, like, right now, my whole spine really hurts." She laughs. "At least I think it's supposed to feel like pain? I don't think we're wired to feel pain, exactly, I mean, that would be just sadistic. Talk anti-natalism to me. But I swear this spot right here just feels really really bad. Or maybe it's anthropocentric to... perceive it as pain, don't you think? It's very existentialist, actually, the whole... perceiving thing - I bet Berkeley wrote something about it, at some point, but I haven't read him in ages."

"You read books?"

"What? Oh. Oh, uh... I - I think I'm offline? Like, I don't have access to the database, so I kinda have to do it the old-fashioned way if I want to learn somethin," she said. "It's cool, though! I like reading a lot."

"...Okay. So, um... here it says your model is..."

"Robin," the android said. Nancy looked up.

"I'm sorry?"

"That's my name," she said. "I came up with it, I - I thought it sounded nice. Do you like it?"

Nancy stared at this... thing, a million thoughs coursing through her head. The first one was a newfound understanding of her low price.

She made a movement with her head that could be understood as both a shake and a nod at the same time.

"Yeah, yeah, sure" she said, brows knit together. What the hell did Steve get her into? "It's... nice."

"Oh, thank God, because Mom and Dad hated it."

"Mom and...?"

"My first owners - Richard and Melissa, I always called them Mom and Dad. They... they, uh, they hated that, too."

Jesus Christ.

"So... Robin," Nancy said. "I was wondering if you could help me put away some of my things while I study."

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure." She stood there, eyes wandering, around, until they fell on Nancy's bookshelf "Holy shit, you have Dostoyevski! Is it in Russian?"

Nancy blinked, opened her mouth, took a step back and shook her head. Robin was already striding towards her bookself, tracing the spines of books with her fingers.

"Actually, why don't you read after you clean this up?"

Robin turned to see her, eyes wide and a growing smile, like a kid in a candy shop.

"I - I can read all of this?"

Nancy was going to kill Steve.

She shrugged and shook her head.

"Sure," she said. "After you clean this mess."

"Aye aye, cap!" Robin chirped, making a quick salute with her hand and getting to work.

Nancy was, for certain, going to murder Steve for making her responsible for this... thing. There was something wrong in her system, and that was very much obvious. She looked down at the instructions manual - surely there would be a way to turn her off for the night. She wouldn't want Robin to murder her in her sleep, or worse - wake her up at 4 am to talk about books.

Or she could just tell her to shut up. She was a robot, anyway. It's not like she could feel anything.

[dee-the-red-witch]

This originally posted here a few days ago for members, but I wanted to also release here as audio- for one, it has some beautiful quotes and poetry in there, and for another, it's more where I'm really at- disconnected, discombobulated, spun around and trying to figure out which way to go next and what of the million things I need to be moving forward on, but hopeful and feeling better despite all of that. Text of the original post to follow:

Transition Notes Part Five: Final Girl? Monster?

This got started a few months ago as two different posts in my drafts. I'm including these bits here because they're relevant to a chunk of what I'll be talking about. Shame patreon doesn't give me dates from when I start a post, just the date I last looked at the edits, which for both was a few months ago. I'm just gonna label them "Earlier" for the one post, and "quotes" for the other, since the second post was largely me shoving quotes together for a later analysis. Also a "Now" tag for the current additions. Is it a jumbled mess? Yes. But that's also very much where my brain is at this point, so it makes a kind of sense. Plus, it unintentionally flows, so I'm going with it.

Earlier: My hair touches shoulders constantly now. I've never had hair this long in my life, and despite the curl, it is constantly in contact with my shoulders or my upper back depending on how I sit, and it's amazing. I'm also in crisis and have been for a few months. Getting regularly paralyzed by executive dysfunction while being trans (and having some of the concurrent Life Events that happen when you're trans) seems to have that effect. And so help me, though parts of this are going to sound like me complaining about my life, I'm not just jotting stuff down to vent or get sympathy, but hopefully more so other folks can learn from it.  Quotes: The monster is a liminal creature embodying the very boundaries humans have overreached. The identification of something as monstrous denotes its place outside and beyond social norms and values. Such extraordinary warnings or reminders proceed from divine power to humankind when they have transgressed, or are about to transgress, the limits of what humans are supposed or rather allowed to do. -Daniela Carpi, Monsters and Monstrosity

Now: I'm moved. I've been living in my own apartment for over a week now and settling in. It's... different. Better. Safer. I still end up breaking down in tears on a daily basis over feeling alone, or grieving what I left, or realizing and just starting to come to terms with some of the trauma I'd been living with and covering up, or just for making the choices I had to for my own survival. This is a better place. I feel safe here. I'm worried as hell about everything I sacrificed to get here and how I'm going to be able to keep it. Quotes:

"They made a monster of Medusa as well. Hated how loud her trauma was. Couldn’t believe she had the audacity not to take it lying down. They made a war-ground of her body so she made one of theirs." -Trista Mateer, Aphrodite Made me Do It

Now: I know I'm going to be called a monster for it by people at various points. I've already seen a few of the people my ex is still friends with come right up to it without actually saying it. People will choose the narrative they want, the people they stick or agree with, and just who to demonize in any given situation. I can't help any of that. All I could do was take actions that could easily get seen as being monstrous, while at the same time, being one of the only paths I could secure to staying alive. You're either the monster or the final girl, and sometimes the one looks like the other. But y'know, when I wrote this months and months ago on tumblr:

I didn't think I was writing it about myself at the time.

Earlier: I knew my odds when I came into this. Too many trans stories of heartbreak from friends as they cut people out of their lives, lost relationships and more. I knew how common it was. I wasn't expecting all of it myself, but it's where I'm at. Final Girl mode. The realization that you're very likely going to have to be walking out of the movie alone at the end right before the credits.  Now: I knew the odds going in. It had been one of the facts that haunted me and kept me from coming out before. A conservatively placed 70% of marriages where one partner comes out as a trans woman after the fact end in divorce. Often very badly, with the woman in question finding herself homeless, alone, and dying on the streets without resources or any kind of network to fall back on. I came out thinking I was safe from that after my oldest kid had had a fairly smooth go of it. Turns out, I was wrong, very wrong, like a lot of people are. I ended up with three very real choices- wait and try to make it work, and see the all too stereotypical story play out. Wait until my surgeries were done with, and likely end up with massive complications and health problems because I'd still be having to push myself like mad to take care of and support more people than just me. Or get out and get out as soon as I possibly could. Obviously, I went for the last option. So, why write this? Because I know at least half of you are cis or unfamiliar with the transfem side of the experience. Because people need to know that this stuff happens, still, even in today's somewhat more accepting climate. Because I needed to exorcise all this before I felt like I could move on to newer things. And the biggest, the number one thing that I want anyone to take from this? Because I wouldn't undo any of it. If I could somehow snap my fingers, re-boy myself and make no-one the wiser, slip the denial blinders back over my own eyes and all... I wouldn't do it in the slightest. This is what I'll be moving forward from, even if I am currently hurt and just scrambling forward, I'm still moving and surviving. And I will make it out through all of this in the end.

[wisteriaadamo]

Oh man, I just can't stand people who gets furious because other people's headcanons/AU. Like, if you don't like this kind of thing, just don't search, don't follow anyone, and stay in the group that just like the exactly same thing as the original work wants to say.

I'm doing college about Arts, I know that the moment a piece of art is available to other people, the piece isn't mine anymore. When you share something you created, you have to know that the viewers/followers will have their own interpretation and meaning of that.

And that's ok!

It's like a song! A group of people can listen to the same song, but surely they will have different meanings for them, and it's very possible that the meaning is different from the author original meaning. And that's ok, that's not a problem. Will you complain to someone else just because the meaning of a song for them it's different of yours? Or because they have created a meaning that just meant for them?

Different meanings are what makes art being art. If the art didn't have viewers, it would lost its meaning. If art didn't have different meanings for each one, it would lost its meaning.

I saw many people fighting and complaining about people who are wrinting about Gojo being alive. Like, man.... Just leave this people alone! Anyone can do your own headcanons and AU's! It's how many fandoms works. Just because I do an AU or a headcanon that isn't exactly same thing as the original work, it doesn't mean I hate the author or the work or I'm disrespecting or anything else. I just want to do something thinking about "how would it be if a thing/chatacter/event/time was different?" It's just for fun.

If I did everything like the original work, well, what I'm doing? It doesn't makes sense to make something thats equal to the original, and sounds like just a copy/plagiarism.

Like I said before, if you don't like those things, just don't spend your time with that, specially saying things not very cool to those people who are fans too and are just having fun.

If a headcanon or AU isn't a crime (like, envolving bad things and etc), it' ok to create one!

Do you know What If from Marvel? It's something like that, you imagine a thing/a world/whatever with something different in the story.

Stop complaining with fan authors/artists with their fan work. If you don't like because isn't the same as the original, just go out and go see the original piece!

For example, there is AUs/headcanons that I don't like, but isn't because of that I have the right to scold the author/artist. I just don't consume! It's so simple!

"OH, but you have to accept the fact that (whatever) happened!"

Oh my dear, I accept the facts of the things, if the original author made a decision, it's their decision. Nobody will changes it.

And that's alright! But it doesn't mean that in my fanwork I can't do something different from the original decision. Because I'm doing my decisions, and they will be different from the original. It doesn't mean I don't accept the facts.

Like, Gojo is dead. And nothing will change it. I know. And I know it is very hard that Gege will do a Jujutsu Kaisen 2, and I'm okay with that. Gege made their decisions, somethings I agree, another ones, not so much. But that's ok! Nobody will agree 100% with the decisions of an author. (or anybody else tbh)

If someone wants to do an AU where Gojo/Nanami/Choso/Sukuna/whatever is still alive or whatever, just let the person do it! Isn't of your business to say what a fan author/artist (or any person) should or shouldn't do.

Again, if you don't like, just leave! Stop bothering the other people who just want to have a little joy in this hard life.

I don't know if what I wrote is understandable, English isn't my first language, but I hope I could imply what I wanted to say.

If you like doing AUs/Headcanons, go on! Have joy!

And if you don't like it, just leave and be happy with other things.

Sorry for the vent, but I have seen many people complaining about AUs/headcanons that aren't faithfully equal to the original, people saying that "you have to accept that it happened, you can't deny, you can't change it"

For the God sake, just let the people have fun. Nobody is committing a crime for creating an AU where a character isn't dead!

I think that's all I have to say. Again, sorry for the vent, but I can't stand these behaviors.

Be respectful with other people. And if you have a different opinion of mine (or any other person), It's totally OK! Just don't be an asshole.

[watcheraurora]

Deleted Opening Scene [Walls of Fire Burn Out]

Hi! For everyone who has read "Walls of Fire Burn Out," this is the original opening scene I wrote waaay back when I was still working on "Even Ice Walls Fall Down." And, tbh, it's not bad... But I hated it so much and felt so painted into a corner by it that I much later restarted completely with the chapter 1 opening that I have today for it. I also changed some things in-between so Canary can in fact, hover in place in Walls of Fire Burn Out but couldn't originally

Enjoy this little deleted scene!

—

"What in the—!" Blaze exclaimed, twisting out of the way as something gold shot through the sky. He spun to see the gold figure's enormous wings unfurl and beat at the clouds. Blaze cursed under his breath, turned, and shot after. He wasn't bound to the limits of wings—just the limits of his Rods. Which meant he could catch up. "Canary!" he shouted.

His voice was snatched away by the wind, and he doubted Canary even heard him. His Rods orbited his head and left a trail of fire behind him from his hair.

With a swooping sensation in his stomach, he dropped lower than Canary and approached from behind and below. He rotated so he was facing the high blue sky instead of the blanket of clouds. "Fancy seeing you here!" he called.

Canary shrieked, wingbeats hitching, slowing him down. "Oh no," Canary complained. "What are you doin' 'ere?"

Blaze raised a brow behind his mask. "I should be asking you that." He hurled a fireball, knowing they were both moving too fast for it to have a chance of actually hitting anything, but just wanting to see how Canary would react.

Canary squawked in alarm and twisted into an aileron roll. Blaze watched him dodge with a small smile on his face. He liked watching Canary fly. There was a power to it that CuTeGuY just didn't have. Grian was smaller. He flew with nimble grace. The dexterity of a small frame, like Blaze himself. But Canary's wings were enormous and could redirect a storm if he flapped hard enough—or, at least, that was how it seemed to Blaze.

Grinning, Blaze banked and shot after him. "You get back here, pretty bird!" he called, his Rods whizzing around his head. The clouds flashed by below them, and he was just waiting for a skyscraper to be hidden in the clouds that either he or Canary were going to plow right into.

He caught up, reaching out a hand and grabbing Canary's ankle. His hand was too small to fit around the combat boot, but it had the intended effect. Canary shrieked in surprise.

"Slow down, birdie," Blaze said. "I'm just here to talk this time."

It was a lie. They both knew he was lying. But Canary pulled up short anyway. His wings—enormous and yellow-gold and canary-structured—weren't built for hovering, so he moved in slow circles, Blaze rotating slowly in the air to follow him. "What do you want?" Canary snapped. He had an accent from far away that he'd never bothered to hide.

Blaze's Rods spun around his head, keeping him in place. No one at the division knew how his Rods allowed him to fly, and neither did he really, but he had his suspicions.

"Just wanted to chat. See how you're doing."

Canary's dark-brown brow rose behind his mask. "Why?" He sounded suspicious.

"Because—" Blaze swooped a little closer. "Canary, you've always been pretty restrained, as a villain. You keep yourself in check and you don't go beyond necessary measures. I've seen you actively avoid civilians and try not to cause property damage. But whatever's going on with you now... you're not caring about those things. I'm concerned for you. That you're not okay." He reached out a hand.

[heartbeatbookclub]

I feel like in general on this blog, I really do undersell exactly how private & introverted of a person I am used to be creatively, particularly in fandom spaces. When I say I've been entrenched in fandom for a long time, I am not joking. Despite this, you'd be hard-pressed to find most fandom content I produced until...well, until this blog!

In fact, unless you know me in real life, it's unlikely you've ever seen any art which I've posted OUTSIDE of this blog, which is saying something, because there is a LOT of it, both original, and for shitloads of different fandoms. I am, at my core, an artist, as pretentious as that sounds; I create ad nauseam.

Despite this, I very rarely post publicly. The few times I have created a public page to post art, it was incredibly infrequent. And most of them are deleted, now. In fact, this blog is possibly the first time I've made an online account for fan content (or art in general) that has achieved general notoriety anywhere, and it's incredibly fun, but it has made me painfully aware that there's something of a reason I deleted most of my public art accounts...(/lh)

But seriously, I keep a comically low profile, despite enjoying both creating and receiving praise for creating. Part of it has to do with the particular way inspiration strikes me (the periods where I don't post to this blog are mostly actually because I'm looking for proper vision, despite wanting to create) which is why my creation of these sorts of things is so infrequent, because I know most people (particularly artists) don't do that, and it can be very concerning or frustrating to anyone paying attention.

It also creates a rather daunting prospect of creating something "good enough to share", which I have been increasingly working on not giving a shit about. And sometimes building relationships with people who sort of expect you to post/message them often, because that's the only way they know you're alive. I barely even talk to my irl friends as often as some people want to over the internet with me. It's wild.

I'm not complaining about the popularity of this blog by any means, nor how people have been interacting with it, I mostly just wanted to share that despite how it might look, it's actually significantly more normal for me to post basically nothing for months at a time and then have a burst of inspiration leading me to make like 3 posts that leave people raving for a week, then disappear of the face of the earth completely.

Like, you wanna talk how I normally am with art, I have piles of old Undertale doodles & fanfiction, which almost no one has seen, and I probably won't ever post again. I have art for a fandom I was in for maybe a week and have never done anything for again. I have drawn YouTubers I no longer watch. I have OCs which I haven't thought about in actual years. I have world concepts I literally used for a single drawing and nothing else. I have Omori fics and drawings I literally never posted publicly. There are probably people waiting on an update to a fic I wrote 6 years ago (when I was 15).

You wanna talk me in fandom spaces? There are people I know from my Undertale fandom days who I'm surprised are still posting. I know nearly every major artist in the Omori fandom on some sort of personal note (I'm still in a Discord with some of them), and they're the people who've seen my unpublished Omori art/fics. I would post stuff maybe once every month or two in that server. Most of them probably don't even realize they know me.

I know fandom drama I didn't even care about when it was happening.

For the better part of my life I've been the fandom equivalent to a mysterious stranger, blowing into a fandom maybe once a week, then once a month, then never again, people forgetting I was even ever there. There are friends I've made over social media who I've not seen or spoken to in an actual decade.

I just live my life. I make shit. Sometimes I'm active in a particular space on social media for a while. I meet some new people. I am cheesed to meet them. The case goes cold. I continue living my life. I go elsewhere.

I think this is both vitally important to understand on the internet, especially in a fandom sense (The Internet is not your life, please remember that you can literally turn your computer off and leave) and also a really bad habit I have that, while somewhat amusing, means that by nature a lot of the new friendships I make are temporary.

Also, if ever we message each other and I stop talking to you, that's not because I'm mad or forgot you or something; if I don't have anything to say I don't say anything. Small talk is my bane because it feels dishonest. Offer to play TF2 or Overwatch with me or something.

Now that I'm thinking about it, this is actually generally applicable to all online spaces I'm in, which might make the entire thing seem a little silly... There are people I've met on online games like Roblox, or old flash games, or old websites where you can PLAY those flash games, who I just disappeared from one day. A lot more of my life than I thought is intrinsically ephemeral...hm.

It's to the point that a lot of people know who I am but don't realize who I actually am because my name is sorta generic, so they don't make the connection. I make a lot of jokes about it on my main but most people don't even realize I'm The Mind Electric Guy who made the big mash-ups and also the Catboy Electric. And Johnny Johnny Electric but we don't talk about that one.

There are times where I'll have people in my comments/messages going "wait YOU'RE THAT GUY? YOU MADE THAT?!?!" about something completely unrelated, and i'm just like "yeah i was bored on a saturday". I'm like the Neil Cicierega of obscure internet/niche fandom bullshit.

Wait, so I'm like Neil Cicierega. And I've been told I resemble him more than once, so maybe that's fitting.

As a reward for making it through my silly ramblings, here's a little proof in the pudding! Here's some incredibly old DDLC fanart from my initial obsession to a little later, not exactly in chronological order. You can really see my improvement as an artist, which is actually pretty funny, because imitating some other DDLC fanartists is specifically how I started getting better at drawing people

These are incredibly old! You can tell, because they look like SHIT! I didn't really know a lot about how to draw people at this point in time, and what became my style was super poorly defined here! I have some other super old art which really shows off how bad i was at drawing people, particularly in the waist. Believe it or not, this is a better showing than most others around this time.

Hey, at least they're recognizable, right?

This right here, this is the exact moment where drawing faces started to click for me. I still think this is one of my best showings from this particular time period, even though it's still got a lot of line jank, and I'm pretty blatantly ripping from a different artist (who no longer has an online presence, so weh, have at it). I still really like this drawing, and a lot of the experimentation that was on this page.

also, you can see me trying to draw boobs for the first time! ain't that a sight!

These are a weird period where I'm drawing a lot of different things on the same sketchbook page just to fill them up, which...I mean, I guess I should be proud I used to draw that much! They certainly do look cool, too. This image of Sayori in an Adidas tracksuit is directly referenced from a picture of a Sayori cosplayer I found on Instagram once upon a time. The @ you see pictured there is my old private instagram--you can try to follow it, but I doubt you're going to get anywhere!

I think a big problem you see in a lot of these is just that I'm uncertain in my lines, even in sketching and doodling, which is still a problem I struggle with sometimes. Also I don't really get how clothes work. But this is significantly better than how some of my old art used to look like, so I'm glad for that!

Can you identify all of the other pictured characters? There are 3 musicians and 2 YouTubers present!

I drew this in 8th grade? I think? These might be slightly out of order. I really liked drawing Sayori.

I really didn't like how this turned out when I first did it. I don't often do digital pieces and even less often work in color, but when i do, they tend to take a lot of time and effort. I think this is definitely rough around the edges, but the amount of work I put in to really make this pop is something I enjoy. Just wish I'd spent longer on those hands...

Remember how I said I used to really vibe with MC x Sayori?

Yeah.

Here's some more, including a more fleshed out MC design. I think I did this my senior year of high school?

And this, dear viewers, is a Sayori I doodled from memory roughly a year ago.

I didn't really have much direction here, I just wanted to talk about this stuff, and I had these that I wanted to share. These drawings were all from roughly 2018-2023.

[bearpillowmonster]

you should know that I don't like the live action Lion King, and I'm not sure I would've, that's not something you can just 'do' in my head but I wanted to believe it anyway because we were in such a flowing river at the time. I accepted 2 and 11/2 and somewhat even the Lion Guard but the live action movie was a glorified tech demo to show that they 'could' make lions look convincing and move convincingly but they're emotionless, it's very cheesy and showhow despite it looking more realistic is more sanitized in the long run. I didn't expect there to be blood but it would've made more sense to me if it was there. I might complain about a lot of little bits and bobs that aren't there from the original film and alone, they're not going to seem fair but they stack up real easily. It was caught in a stalemate between changing stuff, which people would've been pissed over, or staying the same but being overall lesser because it's not animated, which people were pissed about. Needless to say, when a prequel was announced, I wasn't really convinced.

But it is entirely its own thing in a way so I feel I have to look into it, Lion King is basically apart of me, it's my favorite movie, it's my childhood movie, it's right there with Kingdom Hearts for most substantial media in my life. So, right off the bat, new director, don't know this guy but ok, don't have to. It seems to move away from the 'realism' in a way, showing those raindrops so stylistically and the way they move off his mane, it's more fantasy elements at least as far as the environment is concerned. What I really want is to see their expressions, they didn't give a good display whether it'll 'act' more animated or not. The designs seem to stay the same but at least they're varied as far as what we've seen. And for some reason there's a bunch of snow...wait...

Oh. It's a marketing strategy.

Overall, looks better but we're not there yet. As far as story, I don't know, it sounds like a side story because surprise, it's not just a prequel, it's a flashback prequel where they continue off the last one with Simba, Nala and Kiara and Rafiki tells Kiara a story or series of stories seeing as they show multiple eras of Mufasa's life. And the one description that really irks me is 'Timon and Pumbaa lending their signature schtick' like who wrote that?  You might as well say "Remember Timon and Pumbaa? they're in it and guess what? They act goofy and tell jokes. Ha."

I'm also getting really tired of using the same music all the time, even for the trailer. I know they redid tracks but it excites me to hear...Lin Manuel Miranda? Um. That's not what I expected, I thought maybe someone more in tune with tribal like Ludwig Goransson but even him I feel has been doing everything now and days so-

[temporalbystander]

Oh wow. I actually wrote something. It's a short little nonsense fluff piece but hey, I'll take it. It was originally meant to be something that took place a little later in my "lies of..." Series but all I had to do was cut a single line and it works perfectly as a stand alone story. Also cut a line at the end but that ones not important. Not too long but it doesn't need to be. Enjoy. Story below the cut as always.

An Open Door Policy

Once again Faybon was lying on his rooftop waiting for his companion to finish phrasing what he wanted to ask. He had known when he had first made this offer that it might be uncomfortable. After all, he had essentially offered to become the therapist for two superheroes, yeah that wasn't going to be easy. Still, he had made his choice and he wouldn't change it. Even if he did wish his visitors would figure out what they were going to say before they arrived here. Still, he wouldn't complain, they'd eventually say what they needed to.

“Do you think it's possible to love more than one person at the same time?” That was, however, not something he ever expected Chat Noir to ask. Even knowing the issues he was going through it seemed strangely open for the leather feline hero.

It was a moment of vulnerability Faybon had never expected from his friend, someone who had gone from one form of isolation to another and had barely any time to be himself. For him to be this open meant it had to be something that he had put a lot of thought into. So, for that alone, he had to be honest. “Well, first of all, Chaton, I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask.” Faybon started off slowly as he tried to give a worthy answer. “Any attraction I may have had with anyone has been minimal at best, never reciprocal, and has fizzled like a match in a rainstorm before I had the chance to ever fully analyse it.” This was the type of thing he couldn't really talk to Ladybug about, or anyone really, he'd get reassurances that the way he felt was completely normal and all that. He knew that, he wasn't bemoaning a loss, just stating a fact. Reciting his past as it were.

“That sounds simple. Wish I knew what simple was like.” With Chat though, he knew when to let things rest, regardless of how annoying he could be with his jokes. “Still, what's your opinion, as the all knowing Faybon?” Speaking of jokes.

“Well I may have no idea regarding romantic love.” He said after a while, still staring up at the stars as the cold night wind brushed his hair over his face, requiring a pause to scratch his suddenly itchy nose, before deciding to continue his thought. “But I've spent my entire life here in this orphanage, watching children be accepted into families even as others are taken from those who mistreat them.” It took Faybon a moment to continue after that, there were many sad memories he was trying not to recall right now. “Each and every one I've known, I have loved like the rest.” The big brother said, even as he continued to ponder the question.

“Do you think it's the same with romantic love too?” Chat Noir prompted when it seemed like Faybon wasn't going to continue anytime soon.

“From what I've seen in Paris, among my classmates, and even with the interactions between you and Ladybug,” Faybon started his answer slowly, “I would be inclined to say yes.” If that sentence gave Chat any relief he didn't show it, just waiting for the other one to continue. “From what Ive seen, love isn't about giving your heart to someone and telling them it's theirs, it's giving them the key to come and go as they please. To let them take whatever they need and, what's more, to run out the door after them to give them everything else.”

“That's a very sweet thought Faybon. Never took you for the romantic type.”

Faybon just rolled his eyes as he shifted on the cold tiled roof, suddenly envying the suit that protected his visitor from uncomfortable movements like that, before replying. “Yeah well, just because mine seems to be welded shut doesn't mean I can't tell it's a door.” He muttered grumpily before continuing. “Some may see you handing the key out to others and think that makes it less special, that inviting everyone in makes the place crowded.”

“Really like the metaphor huh?” Chat interrupted again, finally causing Faybon to look over and spot that wide grin and playful spark on the green eyes behind the mask.

“If it's too complex for you to follow I can go inside and get a block puzzle, maybe that would be more your speed?” He shot back without a hint of hesitation.

“Meowch. You wound me.” The feline drama king exclaimed while placing a clawed hand to his chest. “How will I ever recover?”

“You've got nine lives, though if that's all it takes you may need 90.” That got a chuckle and, with a wave of his hand, he prompted Faybon to continue. “Anyway, as long as each person can have their own moment in the room?” He shot the hero a glare at the chuckle before rephrasing it. “As long as each person gets their own time with you, for you to show them that they are your number one priority in that moment alone? And that they are as open with you in return? I think it would be no different than if it was just you and them.” Faybon shrugged before sitting up, the tension in his muscles starting to get to him. “So yes Chat, I do believe it's possible to love more than one person, what you do with that love is entirely up to you.”

“Thanks Faybon.” The leather suited cat said, jumping to his feet in one smooth motion, the bell at his neck jingling lightly, before stretching up, tail swinging lazily behind him. “I needed to hear that.”

Joining him in standing, in a much less refined manner, Faybon just shrugged. “It's what I'm here for, it's why I made the offer after all.”

If Faybon had thought that would be it, then he was quite surprised when Chat stepped forward to hug him. Faybon was a hugger, this was known amongst his friends, but it was normally him initiating the contact. This? Was quite new. It was also different to the regular hugs he'd shared with either of the heroes, this was more personal, something he'd feel with the children or maybe Miss Netta. It was a hug that contained gratitude, relief, and an all around need for that to continue. When Faybon finally returned it, he made sure all his feelings of acceptance, support, and care shone through as clearly as he could.

Another minute passed before Chat Noir stepped back, looking a little sheepish at what he had done, before the bright goofy grin was back on his face. “Well I best get going before anyone thinks something of our late night rendezvous.” He said, jumping to the edge of the roof without a sound, even as Faybon rolled his eyes again. “Oh and, for what it's worth?” Faybon tilted his head in curiousity as Chat turned back to look at him. “I think you're more of an open door policy.” The cat said with that playful Cheshire grin. “You just need to remember to turn the light on more often.”

With that the feline wielder of destruction bounded away across the rooftops, leaving the other teen to carefully make his way back inside without waking anyone. What Chat said playing on his mind even as he drifted off. “An open door policy on my heart, huh?” He thought as he slowly closed his eyes. “The cat's right. That is a ridiculous metaphor.” Still, he fell asleep with a smile happy that he'd been able to make a difference to one of his closest friends.

[retrouvailleschronicles]

Retrouvailles, after we left 1.3

Retrouvailles, After We Left a fan sequel to Before We Go

Ten years after meeting in Manhattan, Brooke seeks Nick out, with a terrible secret. ​ Act one, scene three. Providence.

The back door closed behind them as they stepped into the late sun.

"Just a little warmer than the last time I saw you," Nick chuckled.

"Le ciel san!" Brooke raised her hands to the sky, dropping Nick's arm.

"La sill san?" Nick repeated.

Brooke laughed. "The cloudless sky," she grinned. (1)

Nick laughed. (2)  "Guess I haven't learned any more French since Manhattan." 

Brooke laughed too. "Anyways, when are the reservations?" Brooke smiled.

"Seven, we've got some time." Nick relaxed, and his pace slowed.

Brooke slowed to match Nick's pace.

Brooke spoke first. "It looks like life has been good to you! Things have changed a lot since Manhattan."

Nick returned the grin. "It's nice having working credit cards. But yeah, I can't complain. Hopefully, you saw the end of the show. I like to end with 'Retrouvailles'," his face beamed. (3)

Brooke frowned. "No, I got here late." (4)

"You did?" Nick tilted his head.

Brooke gave a blank look.

"Thought I saw you. Well, I guess I've thought I'd seen you at other shows," he mumbled.(5)

"Haven't seen you live," Brooke gave a half-smile. "But I bought your album," she brightened. "And maybe I can catch a show in the future."

Nick grinned. "Well, night shows are better anyways. More intense. Danny can get you a ticket."(6)

Brooke gave a bemused smile. "Guess I'm old. I don't go out at night much anymore." She paused. "And I like recordings better anyway." (7)

"That's true," Nick mused. "No mistakes. When we record for the album, the song is as clean as we can make it."

"The guitar is a nice touch. Though I miss your trumpet," Brooke teased.

Nick grinned. "That happened after Hannah and I got married. Danny pushed me into it, you know. I was already writing lyrics. All I needed was an instrument that let me sing."

"Makes sense," Brooke agreed. "Can’t sing with the trumpet. I could tell you wrote the lyrics."

"It's me believing," Nick sang.

"My believing," Brooke corrected.  "Believing is a gerund, a type of noun, so it should be 'my believing,' " Brooke chewed a strand of hair.

"Wow," Nick feigned shock. "Correcting my grammar again?"(8)

"Again?" Brooke asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, you know," Nick looked at Brooke, smiling. "Like when we were in New York."

Brooke gave a blank look in response. "Never mind," Nick mumbled. "I know how to use a gerund. But Hannah said the songs don't play as well, and the focus groups agreed."

Brooke searched for something to say, but nothing came out. (9)

"You know, I invited you to our wedding. Hannah would have liked to meet you," Nick continued.

"Didn't want to make her jealous," Brooke breezed. (10)

They paused again, unsure of what to say.

Nick looked at his phone. "Let's see which way we go," he said.

"It's this way. We'll walk through the Quad," Brooke motioned.

"Looks like you know your way around Providence," Nick observed.

"Guess that night we hung out in New York, it never came up," Brooke mused.

Nick raised an eyebrow.

Brooke laughed. "I went to college in Providence. I graduated from Brown. It was a big change for an Arizona girl. They called me the Desert Rose," she laughed again.

"And you came back to Providence to sell me some art?" (11)

"What? Oh, no. I'm back to my original job, art restoration."

Nick chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Art restoration. That sounds so..."

"Nerdy?" Brooke finished. They snickered, and Brooke continued.

"Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed selling art. But I really prefer the restoration. It took me back to France, and I travel a bit to different museums. Michael didn't like it," she frowned. (12) But she quickly smiled. "But it keeps me busy. I guess it's one of the reasons I haven't been back to Providence since graduation. I used to live there, in Metcalf," she pointed.

"How is Michael?" Nick studied Brooke.

"He's good.  We're good!  Coming up on our 15th anniversaire."  Brooke watched a bird fly by.

Nick nodded.  Then he smiled.  "Glad to hear, things are going well for you."

"Thank you," Brooke turned back.  She looked about the campus.  "It's too bad he's not here, he would have loved see Brown."

"So you haven't been to Providence in a while," Nick changed the subject.  "Why haven't you been back?" Nick queried.

"Now that," Brooke reflected, "is a good question."

"You didn't like it here?"

"I love Brown. I even consider Providence my hometown. I had all the freedom in the world. Brown encouraged us to pursue our passions, and I ended up with Chemistry and Art History."

"And that's how you ended up with art restoration," Nick mused. "Is it good being back?" Nick grinned again. (13)\

"I'm getting too old to dream of going back to my college days," Brooke's voice tinkled. (14)

"Guess we can't go back again," Nick agreed. "But we can miss it."

"Exactly! Young and full of passion. Eager, easy to make changes," Brooke reflected.

"You should talk to Danny," Nick remarked.

"How so?"

"You remember that Danny majored in philosophy?"

"Not really, but go on," Brooke encouraged.

Nick's eyes fell. "He went to law school afterwards. He was working as an attorney at a big firm."

"I take it he didn't like it," Brooke observed.

"Called it dying slowly every day," Nick gave a wry look.

"Was it hard for him to make changes?"

"Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it's easier to go with the devil you know." (15)

"And now he works with you. So you saved him," Brooke glowed.

"We saved each other. He needed a change, and I needed someone I could trust."

"I imagine it's hard in your business, people always wanting something," Brooke sympathized. (16)

"You have no idea," Nick snorted. "You never know what angle people may be playing. Luckily, I had Hannah and Danny from before my first hit." Nick exhaled slowly. "Hannah, Danny, his wife Claire, we were too poor to go on expensive vacations. So we'd all go camping. Make wishes as the fire died. I think it was by the campfire that Danny convinced me to start singing," Nick remembered.

"The deepest wishes come out at night," Brooke agreed. "So how did Danny meet his wife?" Brooke deflected. (17)

"He and Claire have been friends since high school. They had a pact to get married by 35 if they were still single."

"Settle down, have kids?"

"Well, I wouldn't call it settling. Maybe they have the best marriage of all of us," Nick looked back at Brooke.

"Why didn't they get married earlier?" Brooke wondered.

"Guess they were worried about ruining their friendship. But like all things, in retrospect, they should have known better," Nick looked down the hill. "In any case, I'm glad you're here. I wasn't relishing eating alone. With you here, I won't have to make small talk." (18)

"Don't you like your fans?" Brooke tilted her head.

"Love my fans. But sometimes it's weird. People know a lot about me, but I can't know much about them."

Brooke looked at Nick from the side. "You could just cancel your reservation."

"Maybe, but Danny told me the maitre d is a fan. I've got to get out in the public eye, Danny says."

"Have you eaten there before?" Brooke asked.

"This is not exactly the place Hannah would frequent," Nick guffawed.

Brooke looked down. "How so?" she stammered.

"She's... kinda a health nut.  No carbs.  I was surprised she agreed to come initially." (19)

Brooke smiled. "Well, you're in for a treat. I haven't eaten here since graduation, but it's fantastic!"

Nick's eyes narrowed. "Is this the kind of restaurant you and Michael would go to?"

Brooke tilted her head.  "He'll come to restaurants like this for me.  But I'll eat like this alone.  I often do, when I travel."

Nick looked back.  "Alone?"

Brooke laughed.  "Alone!  I appreciate the food better by myself.  Here we go," she pointed to the Capriccio.

Click here to go to act one, scene four: Behind the Window. Click here to go to blog commentary for act one, scene three: How the Sausage Gets Made.

Authors notes and spoilers here:

Title for the next movie!  Le Ciel San, the Cloudless Sky.  

Fakegreat!  When you see someone you haven’t seen in a while, pretend everything is great, even when it’s not.

Callback to first movie, when Nick doesn't have any working credit cards.

Brooke will spend this chapter denying both to Nick and herself how she feels about Nick.  Similar to Before Sunset.

Not subtle!  Nick has been thinking of Brooke.

Setup, Nick will bring up Danny getting tickets again in 3.4.

Subtext.  By saying she prefers the recording to a live show she is saying that the memory of Manhattan is good enough, and there’s no need to bring their relationship to the present.

More denial.  Like Before Sunset.  By forgetting details Brooke is saying that night 10 years ago wasn’t so important that she remembers everything.

Brooke should be uncomfortable every time Nick brings up Hannah.

Lesson from the Dark Knight.  The reason Brooke didn’t go to the wedding should change every time, until the real answer in 3.4.

Nick should be trying to figure out why Brooke has come back to see him.  

A slip.  Hints at the problems Brooke and Michael have.  But quickly should pivot back to Fakegreat.

More subtext.  Really Nick is asking if Brooke is glad to see him again.

Brooke’s theme of growing old.

 Bring back this idea in 3.2., the Devil you Know.

Nick’s theme of loneliness and isolation.

Brooke changes the subject away from Hannah.

Back to Nick’s theme of loneliness and isolation.

A stand in for the problems in Nick and Hannah's relationship.

[neil-gaiman]

Ahoy, sir.

I know full well it's not going to sound great, but it's a question and you might have the answer, so here we go. It's about Johanna Constantine in Sandman.

I saw a tweet you wrote about Johanna being her own character - it was, i believe, in response to her being cleaner than John. You said she can be cleaner for the simple fact that she isn't John, or at least she isn't a gender-swapped John.

I have a question about that. If she's a different character, why is there so much that she takes from John ? Why giving her a Newcastle (even if it's not quite the same), why not modernize or reinject a version of her story with Pandora's box ? I think it's awesome to see a modern version of Lady Johanna, but I wonder what were your ideas behind keeping so much of John's in her episode, and why she wasn't push more into what makes her character different - money, sure, but also henchmen, guns and magic instead of tricks, to name a few.

I know how it sounds like - I met a few fans ever so annoying about the casting. I'm not trying to complain or bash the work you and so many talented people put behind the Sandman. I like this serie, I want more, I like Jenna Coleman as well as I'm thrilled by a Johanna Constantine in modern setting. I'm just curious about how she was thought about.

I also know you must get a whole lot of asks of the type, and i suppose it ends up souding like I'm asking for some justification. I'm not, I'm just curious - and if it seems to mean anything else, note that I'm sorry and that it's not what I meant.

Thanks, anyway, for all you do and have done, and for your attention ~

Because when you move the life essence of a character from universe to universe you keep some things and you change others. I grew up with DC Comics having Earth 1 and Earth 2, and a Batman and a Superman and a Flash on each. Both Batmans were Bruce Wayne, both Supermans were Clark Kent and Kal-El, but one Flash was Jay Garrick and one was Barry Allen. And these were ways of solving problems of time, of dealing with three decades of continuity. The John Constantine in Vertigo who was in his mid-thirties in 1989 is now a pensioner. And the Morpheus of that world escaped in September 1988.

In those terms, the TV version of Sandman exists on Earth-Sandman, a world that starts three decades on. It's not beholden to 1988 comics continuity, but it uses it when it wants to. The person holding the Constantine life essence in this world is Joanna. She didn't sing in a punk band in the 1970s. Her Astra Logue went to Hell, but it wasn't Joanna's fault in the way it was John's in 1979 in Hellblazer 12. She didn't spend the time in Ravenscar Secure Facility from 1979-1982.

She's smart, not grubby, a lot more like the original dandyish John Constantine who showed up in Swamp Thing in 1984 than the unshaven wreck of a man he became.

And we will get to see a lot more of Lady Johanna in Sandman, if we get future seasons.

Does that help?

[teenandbeyond]

Hi dear, may i ask for Raph x broadway musical actress reader headcannons pls? And remember to hydrate love 💗

Raphael x Fem. Broadway Reader

Thank you, you too! Edit: Honestly, I wrote this way better originally, but my computer randomly decided to update and Tumblr doesn't automatically save, soooo yeah.

Want more from me? M a s t e r l i s t 2

☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆☆*: .｡. .｡.:*☆

🧶The Mutant of the Opera🧶

Warning(s): ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Among your admirers, there's one special turtle who's your biggest fan.

✨✨✨✨

The first thing about you that Raph fell in love with?

Your voice.

It was strong and soulful, drawing him in, but warm enough to keep him rooted one night at practice.

It was your third musical, first in New York, and you were a supporting character, so you didn't have to come every night considering you didn't have many parts.

And opening night? He was mad you weren't the leading role.

You had the looks, the voice, and the charisma.

Hence, the giant turtle currently on the roof ignoring his communication device.

He made sure to show up each night, soon coming to the roof mere moments before you appeared. He had you timed.

🎶"Lift your head up, darlin'!... Never let them see ya' down. Never be afraid of yourself, keep your feet up off the ground...as you fly! To the sky! Reach your dreams, way up high!"🎶

He hoped to see you again.

And he did, the next year, you were a main character, yet not a leading role.

He hated not being able to watch you like everyone else.

But you had such a presence, it honestly didn't even matter.

And after that musical, you had a fanbase.

Raphael created an anonymous account to fanboy with the others.

Then he was waiting, waiting for you to come back.

Then news came, you were coming to New York to stay.

You lived there now!

And a year and a half later, you got that leading role.

"'Bout time. She ain't fit for anythin' else but lead," Raph complained.

"What're you talking about?" Mikey peeked over his shoulder at the newspaper article Raph was reading.

"Don't worry about it--"

"That broadway star you have a crush on?"

Raph scoffed, awkwardly looking away, "It's not a crush..."

"Dude, you've been talking about her for at least three years. It's a crush."

"Is not!" he weakly defended.

It kinda was.

He didn't tell anyone about the magazine he stole that you did an interview in.

And he refused to actually show Leo how excited he was when he came home with a poster of you for him.

He was excited for tomorrow night, you got a role that you deserved and he couldn't wait to see you play it out.

Okay

He was not ready

Your voice sounded different, a good different like you've been working hard on it. It had a different strength to it.

You pulled off a dark, edgy look quite well

And combined with your stage presence being stronger than ever, he was quite flustered by your performance.

🎶"I might be the good girl goin' bad. Getting hotter by the degree. But this freedom makes me glad. I'm happier just bein' me!"🎶

Okay, yeah.

He could admit the dark look was hot on you.

Well, what he could see from this angle anyway.

By the time the show ended, he hadn't even realized it.

No one had, you were that captivating to your audience.

Thundering applause.

And then the musical was over.

But something, something that night had him following you as you left the theater after everyone was gone, your shoulders sagged in relief as you stopped in the alley for a moment.

"Sheesh. That was so nerve-wracking! I hope I did well..."

Are you crazy? You could've been a tree and still be the star of the show, Raphael thinks.

"But I suppose I always get nervous the first night..."

He might have a thing for your voice.

You bite and release your lip as you go into thought.

"Now I have to drink all that wine by myself, everyone kinda just dipped out on me. Even the staff left..."

And the worst thing happens.

Raphael unconsciously adjusts his footing and you hear movement.

"Who's there?"

Raph wished it wasn't him.

Your arm snapped up in defense, "I have pepper spray and I'm not afraid to use it!"

He couldn't help but smile at the cute case the painful spray was in. If not for the contents inside, it wouldn't be very intimidating.

"Come out! I know you're there! Don't bother trying to leave now!"

Fierce little thing, aren't ya'?

"I don't wanna scare ya' doll face," he graces you with a response after some silence.

"I don't scare easily, I lived in Baltimore for a while, so I've seen a lot."

"You ain't seen me."

"Try me."

He sighed, time to scare his crush.

He eased down and out of the darkness, hands up in surrender.

You dropped your pepper spray in shock.

"Well. You're right, I haven't seen someone like you, before."

Your eyes were wide, trying to process what you were looking at.

"I won't hurt ya'...I was just watching you--That don't sound right, uh..."

You tilted your head, the large man--was he a man, he seemed more like an animal...a shell, a turtle--seemed to be more afraid than you were.

"Are you male?"

He didn't expect that to be the first question you asked...he didn't expect you to ask anything at all.

"Yeah. I'm a guy, why?"

"Just checking...I...I know some animals are genderfluid or whatever. I don't know how it is for...turtles, right? You're a turtle. Not a tortoise?"

"I'm a turtle."

You blinked, "A...big...turtle. I don't remember them being that big."

"Mutant turtle, princess."

"I...see."

"You're not scared?"

"Honestly? I'm too confused to be scared at the moment."

"Suppose that's fair."

You apprehensively put away the pepper spray after eyeing his weapons. "I'm [Name]."

"I know."

"..."

"I-I didn't mean for that to sound creepy...I just--I'm a fan..."

A giggle bubbled from your chest, "You're a fan of mine?"

"How could I not?"

Then he continued to go into a ramble.

Which was flattering.

"Eh...That's so embarrassing."

"It seems you've been watching my work for a while."

"I've watched every show you've done here."

"Really? Where? I would've thought you'd be noticed for sure."

"The roof."

"The roof? You could hardly see much from up there."

"Well, I mainly just listen to ya'. I see what I can."

"Hm..."

Raphael did not expect to get a private performance in the empty theatre.

After double-checking everyone was gone and the cameras were off, of course.

You were such a doll and ordered pizza, too.

He snuck in a little wine.

No one had to know.

He'd crack some jokes in between, cutting off your singing and trading it for laughter.

"Raphael--let me--let me finish!"

He had lots of fun.

And during the ordeal...he found his heart beating even harder for you.

[plxviofiles]

this is a repost bc my dumbass deleted the original post I'm obsessed with her too dw 😭, also fun fact I didn't see the lighting bolt and initially wrote the reader with ice powers, but I changed it when I noticed I got it wrong 🧍‍♀️. I hope I did this prompt justice !! I just kinda wrote this really quickly bc I liked the prompt but I think I liked the way it turned out <3

---

Stupid Cupid (if you know this song ilysm *princess diaries flashbacks*)

#kate bishop x fem!reader, ft. yelena, clint, and natasha (my besties) (requests are open!!) WARNINGS: a swear word, reader is really clumsy with her lightning powers lmao 😭, bad jokes (you're welcome) A/N: italics are flashbacks! I AM BACK WITH ANOTHER KATE FIC as i should tbh #girlboss. I actually wanted to have 5 fics of her by now bc hawkeye- 5 eps- yk? ANYWAY. Idk what I wrote and I hope you like it <3. my dickinson reference 😋 (I keep referencing things I need to stop). also i'm gonna go watch nwh soon 😈 ! word count: 2.5K (so unlike me I know idk what's going on either) --- “Y/N!!” You ungracefully fall off your chair at the sudden shout from what sounded like your mentor. “Nat, it’s a Sunday!” you complain, yelling so she could hear you, “It’s technically an off day!” “And technically, as your mentor, I can kick your ass if you don’t come outside right now, so help me.” You sigh loudly, closing your book, leaving your phone on the bed, and you open the door. Natasha, with a very unamused glare was standing next to Yelena, your best friend, who was failing to hide her amused expression. “You’re such a mom,” you whine playfully, making Natasha glare even harder (if that was remotely possible). “Why are you disturbing me?” and when you see steam coming out of Natasha’s ears, you immediately correct yourself, “Is there something you need me to do?” “We’re meeting someone new,” Natasha said simply, and Yelena nodded, taking a random grape out of her vest and eating it, “I think you’d really like her.”

It’s like your puppy mode was activated, your ears twitching, eyes sparkling, and adrenaline pumping, “A GIRL?”

Natasha looks like she regretted saying so, “A girl. Now come on, you’re delaying everyone.”

You burst out of the room and jog to the avengers’ compound entrance, Yelena and Natasha following you from behind.

“She’s like a puppy,” Natasha mumbles, taking a packet of m&ms out of Yelena’s vest, and Yelena nods, “She IS a puppy.”

You see the new girl already surrounded by the boys, no doubt interrogating her, or just being excited to see her.

Sam notices you trying to catch a glimpse of the girl, “Hey, guys move away, y/n wants to greet her.”

The sea of men parts for you and you got a bunch of ruffling of hair, pats on the back, and hellos, before finally being face-to-face with the girl.

She was facing her back towards you, talking to Clint.

Clint sees you and tells Kate to turn around.

Both of you lock gazes and your smile widens. She’s really pretty.

Kate’s smile mirrors your own when Clint introduces you.

“Kate, this is y/n, Natasha’s mentee, and y/n, this is Kate, my-“

“Partner slash best friend,” Kate intervenes, not looking away from you.

“Mentee,” Clint corrects, shaking his head, “She’s around your age too.”

“Hi!” you hold out your hand, and Kate shakes it vigorously, “I like your bow.”

“Oh my god, thank you,” Kate responds enthusiastically, “What’s with the burnt patch on your clothes? It looks new. Did you burn yourself?”

She was referring to your shirt, now partly burnt to a crisp, and you shake your head, “Well yes, but no, I mean- I’m an electrokinetic meaning I have electrical-based powers, so.”

Kate nods, “So you’re kinda like Zeus.”

You laugh vociferously, “Exactly! Except I don’t sleep around as much as he does,” you joke, making her laugh.

The avengers watch your interaction with a smile, already knowing that the both of you put together would be instant chaos.

And they were right.

Within a day, you and Kate were practically best friends (which Yelena complained about, but you constantly reassured her that she was like a sister to you).

Clint and Natasha had a blast, since both of you liked each other, they decided to train the both of you together, which saved a lot of time (and more time for the two to go drinking together).

Days, weeks, months, passed, and Yelena, Kate, and you were like the chaotic trio NO one asked for.

A million stupid activities, like acting you were married to try wedding cake samples for free, playing laser tag with actual lasers, balancing apples on people’s heads for Kate to shoot them off with arrows (there were many complaints for that one), accidentally adopting 5 cats (don’t ask).

It was all fun and games, but it usually ended with you and Kate getting “grounded,” and Yelena getting away because she ALWAYS has a way out.

You didn’t mind though, it just meant spending more time with Kate, who never failed to make your day better.

“I’M SORRY!”

“HOW THE FUCK DID YOU PUT THE BLUE HAIR DYE IN MY SHAMPOO BOTTLE AND NOT NATASHA’S?”

You were chasing Kate across the compound, the brunette screaming bloody murder, and you trying to avoid using your powers.

“YOU KNOW WHAT?”

You raised your hand, summoning your powers, and a minor bolt of lightning struck one of Kate’s feet, making her fall flat on the ground.

“Fuck,” Kate groans, and you stalk over to her patting her on the head and smugly smirking, “Thanks for playing.”

“What are you guys doing now,” Yelena complains, her room door opening as she yawns, “You dimwits woke me up from my nap.”

Then Yelena takes one look at your hair, and bursts out laughing, so loud, that Natasha and Clint came running.

“What’s wrong?” Natasha looks around hastily before spotting the two of you on the ground, “Oh.”

Clint just tries not to laugh, and Yelena gestures between you and Natasha, “She looks just like you when you were a kid, sestra!”

Natasha smiles crookedly, ruffling your hair and sighing, “Clean up guys, training in 10.”

Kate and you prepare to complain before Clint shot you pointed looks, “Yes, Natasha.”

They leave and so does Yelena, claiming she needed more “beauty sleep” and you pick up the strands of your hair, frowning.

“I’m sorry.”

Kate looked genuinely afraid that you were upset with her, “It’s nothing.”

“You seemed angry though.”

“But I’m not. I could never stay angry with you for long.”

“Really?” Her eyes shot up to look into yours, and it felt like déjà vu was slapping you in the face.

“Yeah,” your voice is weak, straining.

“You look pretty, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

You hear her mission went wrong.

You don’t even pay attention to anyone else, as you ignored the calls from the rest of the team, rushing to your friend’s room.

You knocked frantically.

“Katie?”

A few seconds later, the door opens, and you meet her sad expression.

“My poor baby,” you joke lightheartedly, wrapping your arms around her body, pulling her close, and using your foot to push the door closed.

Kate buries her face in your shoulder, breathing heavily, and you rub her back in calming circles.

“I messed up.”

You hate hearing her sound this vulnerable. So different from the bubbly girl she always was.

One thing some people failed to see, was that Kate Bishop, was not always the joker, the one who can take everyone and everything on with a confident smile.

She was just like everyone else, with feelings, worries, insecurities.

You pull her closer.

“Everyone messes up. You’re not alone.”

Kate shuts her eyes tightly.

You feel like you’re the only one who gets to see her this way.

“What if I always mess up?”

You contemplate your next words, knowing that there’s no right way to comfort someone.

Especially when it’s someone you love.

“Then I’ll be there to help you clean up. Every single time.”

Kate’s ragged breaths slowly stabilise, and she detaches herself from your, her arms still around your neck.

“You really are my favourite person in the world.”

Maybe it’s the way she looks at you.

The way her touch makes more goosebumps appear on your skin more than any lightning bolt.

The way she words things.

“I love you more than words can say.”

“They SO like each other.”

“Clint, there’s no way,” Natasha replies exasperatedly.

“Look, can you just accept that I’m right and you’re wrong for once?”

“No.”

“Fine,” Clint pulls his best friend’s arm and leads her to the kitchen, “I’ll prove it to you.”

He looks around like he’s in a mission, and Natasha rolls her eyes.

He gestures for her to follow his movements, peeking in the kitchen.

Natasha places her head below his, peeking as well.

It seems normal at first, just you and Kate in the kitchen, in your usual morning routine.

But then it’s like you were unconsciously making each other’s light breakfast before training, like you knew exactly what the other wanted, and silently at that.

You grabbed the bowl and slid it towards Kate, who took a cup out and slid it towards you. You grabbed two spoons and she grabbed the sugar and cereal. You placed a spoon in her bowl and a spoon in your teacup, while Kate dropped tea bags into it. You poured cereal into her bowl as Kate fills your cup with hot water.

Natasha watches the whole exchange with a surprised expression, while Clint just smugly smiles from above her.

“See? I’m right,” he whispers, near to Natasha’s ear.

“Stop breathing down my neck,” Natasha grits her teeth, slapping the man’s leg.

“No, you stop breathing down my neck.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“No, you don’t make sense.”

Soon, they start bickering, and when Clint starts getting a little too loud, Natasha grabs him away from the entrance.

You sip your cup of tea, and look around, thinking you heard something.

“Did you hear that?” you ask Kate, who smiles at you and shakes her head, “Nope.”

“I thought I heard like, really loud whispering,” you murmur, and Kate snorts, “You’re just tripping.”

“You’re so annoying.”

“You’re annoying -er.”

“That isn’t even a word.”

Kate sticks her tongue out at you, and you reciprocate childishly.

Natasha hears everything and sighs in relief, “They didn’t hear us.”

Clint nods seriously, “No, they didn’t.”

Then, he jumps in front of Natasha and starts doing a ridiculous victory dance, “I was right, you were wrong. I was right, you were wrong.”

Natasha curses him in Russian, “So what now?”

Clint’s brows furrow, “What?”

“We can’t just leave them like that,” Natasha places a hand on her chin, thinking, “We have to do something.”

“Oh, so now we’re matchmakers.”

“Shut up and help me think.”

Clint agrees to work on Kate, and Natasha agrees to work on you.

They both have different approaches, determined to make this work.

“You know, you and y/n are meant to be together.”

Kate freezes in the mario kart game, looking to Clint in awe, as he continues racing.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You and y/n would be great together.”

Kate chokes on air, and Clint glances at her knowingly.

“N-No, I’m pretty sure you got it wrong,” Kate chuckles awkwardly, “We’re just friends.”

“So, friends just sleepover at each other’s room every day, makes each other breakfast and knows exactly what the person wants without asking, excessively touches the other person and exchanges hugs and kisses randomly, gets a little grumpy whenever the other person gets a date-“

Kate pauses the game, “FINE. Fine, you’re right,” she confirms miserably.

Clint puts his controller down, “Then why do you sound so sad about it?”

“I just don’t think she likes me that way,” Kate fiddles with the joystick, “She’s always so good to me, and I can’t help but feel like whatever this is, is all in my head.”

Clint nods in understanding, “I think you’re wrong though.”

“About what?”

“She does like you that way.”

Natasha opens your door without a knock, and you were on your bed, reading a book, and not bothering to look up, “Natasha.”

Natasha smirks, “You’re getting more alert, that’s good.”

“No, it’s just that you’re the only one who opens my room door without knocking,” you correct her, closing your book, “Well, you and Yelena, but she makes sure to pounce on my bed the second she comes in and is always asleep during this time of day.”

Natasha narrows her eyes, “Touche.”

“I learned from the best.”

She holds out two tickets to the movies.

“You want to watch a movie with me?” you seem confused, “Look, I’m all for milfs, and you are really pretty, but-“

“God, you really are an idiot,” Natasha pinches her nose bridge, “Clint and I wanted to go, but we both happened to be busy so.”

She places the tickets in your hands, and you stare at them blankly.

“You can bring whoever you want,” Natasha emphasizes each word without sounding too suspicious.

“Right,” you mutter, already knowing who you wanted to bring.

Natasha crosses her fingers, hoping you wouldn’t be a dumbass and just make a move, “Enjoy.”

You make your way to Kate’s room, rehearsing in your mind how you wanted to ask her out. This was so much harder than you imagined it to be. Kate was just this perfect girl.

You didn’t notice Kate heading in your direction, also focused on something else.

Before you knew it, you bumped into her, and managed to grab her arms before she fell.

“Sorry,” you wince, and she just brushes herself off, her cheeks flushing for no apparent reason, “It’s no problem.”

Then the awkward silence. Something was definitely wrong. Silence was never awkward between you two.

“Was there anything you wanted to tell me?” you spoke up, hiding the tickets behind your back, “You looked pretty determined and you seemed to be heading to my room.”

Kate blinks, “Yeah! Yeah, I just wanted to, uh-“

You gather up enough courage to suddenly hold the tickets in front of you, right in her face.

Kate stares at it.

“Do you wanna go out with me?” you ask quickly, “Like on a date. God, I’m embarrassing myself aren’t I?”

At first glance, you might not have appeared that nervous, but Kate notices the electric sparks on your fingers, the air smelling slightly of ozone.

“Y-You’re asking me?” Kate stutters characteristically.

“Yes,” you weakly respond, “We don’t have to talk about this right now but, I just really like you and I want to take you out on a date.”

Kate’s knees felt like they were about to give out, and a grin slowly appears on her face, “I would love to.”

“Great! Great, yeah, um, I’ll pick you up at 7?”

“If you mean you’ll meet me at my door at 7, then yes.”

The movie date goes well, and you come back with matching smiles, holding each other’s hands.

Clint and Natasha were already waiting at the entrance, and she whispers to him, “Do you think it worked?”

“I mean, they’re holding hands.”

“They’re always holding hands.”

“Good point.”

The happy couple approaches them, and the mentors hold their breath.

“They played cupid didn’t they?” Kate asks you once you reached them.

“I mean, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to ask you out if it weren’t for Natasha.”

“And I probably wouldn’t have acknowledged my feelings for you if it weren’t for Clint.”

“Which means you should be thanking us,” Clint says excitedly, nudging Natasha as if she weren’t standing next to him and seeing exactly what was happening, “We worked very hard you know.”

“I did the thinking,” Natasha cuts in with very important information.

“Thank you, I guess,” you rub the back of your neck, and Kate snorts.

“What’s so funny, Bishop?”

“Want me to tell them about how you summoned lightning and burnt our chairs because you were so nervous when I kis-“

“STOP.”

[galadhir]

i think that there was a fanwriter named Nemis that wrote a lot of fics about E/C? i liked those fics!

My memory has never been good and after 20 years away it's completely unreliable, but still, that name rings a bell. I vaguely remember her being a nice person that I was aware of but never really interacted with because our areas of interest didn't quite intersect.

i hoped the show would give some spot to Celebrian … and instead. lol.

Indeed! I can just picture the show writers turning their noses up at the thought of writing Galadriel as a mother. She can't be a mother! Whoever heard of a mother being interesting? No one would think it was cool for Galadriel to be an actual queen and seasoned diplomat and seer, with a husband and a child.

Not to mention that Celebrian can't be interesting at all because she dies as a damsel in distress, so she must be a wimp all her life (ignoring the fact that everybody dies in distress.) People can't imagine that her life could have been interesting before that :( Sexism and failure of imagination again.

it would be interesting to see if anyone else had my idea … of course i have not read all the Galadriel/Celeborn fics out there so if someone has those, feel free to drop!

LOL! I'm sorry to end up dropping my own fics on you, but it sounds like you might enjoy my Oak and Willow

(Ignore all the tags, they were auto-imported from Henneth Annun when that archive backed up all its stories on Ao3 and then shut down.) And you can probably ignore chapters 1-4 if you're just in it for the C/G romance. They are world building for Doriath and setting up Celeborn's position in his home, with Thingol, Melian, Luthien and Daeron.

I originally started out intending this one to be a Sindarin history of the world, from the rising of the sun and the moon. But it rapidly became the story of C&G in the First Age. If I had known it was just going to be their love story against a backdrop of the events of the First Age, I might have left off chapter 1 at least, as that was setting up something I didn't actually write in the end.

But it is more or less what you're talking about. So if you're interested, you might like it :)

oh that's interesting, may i ask if it's still online? my beef with peter jackson started muuuuch later with the hobbit movies, but i like to see how other people reacted to the LOTR trilogy when it comes out

Yes, Battle of the Golden Wood is on Ao3 too - also imported from HASA (Henneth Annun Story Archive, which was the place to post elf fanfic back in the day.)

I agree with you about the Hobbit movies! Way too much bloat. There was the occasional nice thing in them - I enjoyed seeing Beorn's house and his bees, for example - but almost everything that PJ put in was grotesque and unfunny and unnecessary. The Hobbit would have made one great film, but there just isn't enough story in it to stretch to three.

as for what you say … i think that that's the current approach of Warner Bros, with its War of the Rohirrim stuff or whatever. i'm not enthusiast about it at all and i would probably complain about it too,

I know what you mean. I'm not enthusiastic either about a Rohirrim spin-off because it seems like they've picked the most low-effort story imaginable. Yes, you can use props from The Vikings and Game of Thrones. You can probably crib story lines from Bernard Cornwell's Anglo-Saxon stories. Have we not seen enough pseudo-early-medieval stories already?

I would have liked to see something we haven't seen before! (Which doesn't mean I won't at least check out the first season. But my hopes are not high.)

i do not want to be mean but btw i do have the feeling that a lot of rop fans are mostly migratory dark romance fans

Oh, the Reylo folks from Star Wars? That would actually make an awful lot of sense. They certainly behave like them. I managed to avoid them by being in the Kylux fandom at the time, and the Kylux fandom was numerous enough to just block them all and carry on doing our own thing regardless. Also a good time :)

it's lowkey … limitating? flattening? because neither galadriel nor sauron fit into this archetype and i do think that forcing them in this dynamic … just doesn't make them sauron and galadriel anymore? but i digress

I know exactly what you mean. I've mostly spent my fandom life in slash (m/m) fandom and there is a migratory slash fandom which is the same. If a pairing gets big enough then the msf will arrive and reduce it to a set of tropes and stereotypes, and then move on to the next big thing as soon as it arrives. In that case, you just have to wait for the next big thing and hope there is someone left still writing to pick up the fandom once they've gone.

Yeah at this point i do honestly wish that everyone can write its own retelling of lotr and publish it.

At least there is the opportunity for us to do it in Ao3, even if we're not allowed to make money on it. We can do it for love :)

Hoo, boy. I am definitely going to unfollow the Celeborn tag again, since it's full of Haladriel shippers arguing that Celeborn stans are harassing them.

I'm not getting into whether that's true. I have no interest in Rings of Power, and as far as I am concerned, Halbrand does not exist in Tolkien's world. I can't be somewhere where people mix Amazon's fanfiction with actual lore.

Also ship wars are not for me. I was a massive Celeborn defender during the release of the movies, and I wrote several novels worth of fanfic then. I think I'm spent.

Still, as a Celeborn fan I thought the Celeborn tag would be a great place to go to find stuff about Celeborn. How could I have been so foolish!

My poor lad! Not even his own tag is about him. Which is exactly what I should have expected, now I come to think about it.

[beananacake]

Dear Diary

A Savior one-shot

Ikaris x fem!guardian angel!reader

Summary: Ikaris has felt a him for millennia and he's never questioned it, until he found the source.

One-shot Summary: While you expected some of your past to come back and haunt you, you just didn't realize that it was not only a one-time thing.

Word Count: 2.2k words

Warnings: I don't know how these occupations work so I'm so sorry if I make mistakes of archaeologists and anthropologists and historians, attempt at trying to read cuneiform and construct sentences in Sumerian style, the word 'ass', angel being a pest, written really quickly so it might not even make sense, fLUFF!

A/N: Hey, everyone! I miss writing about Ikaris and Angel so here you guys go! This was a concept I talked about with @mentallyscreamingsincebirth and it was too good to ignore so, on a whim, I just wrote it. It ends abruptly and awkwardly so I'm really sorry about that. As uzhe, not betad. Reviews, comments, suggestions, requests (and reblogs) are super welcome! Enjoy Dear Diary!

Catch Ikaris and Angel's origin story here! (SAVIOR)

Main Masterlist

There were advantages to being alive for over seven-thousand years. You got to live throughout civilizations, saw them rise and fall. Saw the dawn of the invention of a lot of things—thank you, Phastos—and be one of the first to see it all happen. Live out the history and have every right to call out people who say the wrong things about them. And because you had lived such a long life, you had your pick of whichever occupation you want—other than being Ikaris’s guardian angel, of course.

Sersi worked as a history professor. Makkari considered the museum curator job since she liked collecting things. Phastos worked in an engineering laboratory. Ikaris, an archaeologist, and you became an anthropologist.

You were fine with your job. You liked it, actually. You loved history and people and people all throughout history (except for the nasty ones, of course). Plus, your extensive life gave you an edge over your colleagues since most of the events you were studying had happened to you personally. Case in point: The Weeping Goddess. You were The Weeping Goddess (before your wings got sliced off during the Emergence) and all the records of that account, you had taken and personally annotated. Of course, you added a few pizzazz to jazz things up but you stayed true to what had happened.

And while you expected some of your past to come back and haunt you in your line of work, you just didn’t know that that was not the only time it would happen.

Because when Sersi sent a photo on your family group chat, you did not expect it would be one of your pieces of history. Or at least, something that was made by you.

Your phone pinged and you reached over Ikaris’s bare chest, to his side table, to grab your phone. Your husband was still sound asleep and you placed a gentle kiss on his chest as you took your mobile device.

“Angel, what are you doing?” he asked, voice still raspy from sleep. He tightened his arms around you.

“Just grabbing my phone, my love.” You brought your phone to you and checked the notification.

“It’s too early for you to be on your phone,” he complained, turning on his side and taking you with him.

You chuckled as you let yourself go along with him. “Sersi sent a photo on the family chat. I just want to see if it’s a baby announcement.”

He nuzzled your neck, breathing against your skin. You shivered. “Us Eternals can’t have babies, Y/N.”

“I know but doesn’t hurt to hope, right?” You kissed his head and opened the notification. “And besides, it could be their wedding invite.”

But it wasn’t. What it was was a photo of a stone slab with etchings from a dead language. Dead to the world, anyway. But to you, a seven-thousand-year-old guardian angel, it was as recent as yesterday.

Beneath the photo was your tagged name and the message: Is this you?

You enlarged the photo and read the stone slab after finding the right orientation, gasping when you decoded the message. Then, you laughed. You made a mental note to tell Sersi to turn it 180 degrees so it would be readable.

“Angel,” Ikaris said again. He planted his chin on your shoulder to have a look at you. He rubbed his nose against yours. “What’s so funny?”

You looked at your bed partner and kissed his nose. “You are.”

“Me?”

You nodded, grinning.

“What’s so funny about me?”

You closed your phone and returned it to your nightstand. You wrapped your arms around Ikaris once more and sighed contentedly.

“I love you,” you murmured.

“Hmm.” He laid his lips against yours, kissing you, as he pulled your naked body closer to his bare form.

But you still couldn’t shake off the image and you giggled when you felt him pressing against you. Your husband took offense in this and he pulled back, watching you with a frown.

“You weren’t laughing last night when we did more than just kiss,” he complained.

“I’m sorry. I promise it’s not you.” You said then retracted your statement. “Well, it is you but not you now.”

He raised a brow and even when you had spent the whole of your life looking at—at, after. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to—him, he could still take your breath away.

“Y/N, I love you, I really do, but even you should know it’s too early for your sense of humor.”

You faked offense at that. “Excuse me, you told me you loved my humor. You said as much on our wedding.”

He only gave you a flat look. You chuckled and pecked him on the lips.

“Fine. Go have a look at your phone if you want to know what made me laugh.” You said, pulling from him.

He did as he was told, taking his phone to open the family chat. You snuggled closer to him, wrapped an arm around his waist and rested your cheek against his arm as you read the message with him.

“Is this… Sumerian?” he asked after he turned his phone this way and that until he found the perfect angle for the slab.

“Technically, the writing style is cuneiform but the language is Sumerian.” You told him, pointing at the etchings.

“Okay. I don’t see what’s funny here.” He said.

You rolled your eyes even though he couldn’t see it. “I thought you knew how to read texts. How far back does your vocabulary go?”

“Far enough.”

“Greek?”

“Yes.”

You snorted. “And you call yourself a verified archaeologist, Dr. Ike Harris.” You teased, using his human name that wasn’t far off his real one.

He chuckled at you. “It’s a front. And I only did it in case someone excavated something Phastos made that would be too modern for that time.”

You kissed his arm. “Of course you did and I love you for that, but your vocabulary needs work. I need to teach you Sumerian.”

You plucked the phone from his hands and sat up. You heard him groan.

“What? Now?” he grumbled.

“Yes, now.”

“It’s still too early, Y/N.”

You pouted prettily at him and gave him a look you knew he wouldn’t resist. “Do you want to laugh with me or not?”

“You said the writing is about me. Why would I laugh at myself?”

It was your turn to grumble. “Fine. It’s on you when we go to Sersi’s and we share an inside joke about you.” You turned back from him and plopped down in bed.

His arms snaked on your waist and pulled you flush against his chest. “Am I going to regret decoding the slab?”

“Yes.”

He sighed. You felt his lips against the patch of skin that once connected you to your wings.

“But at least you’ll learn a new language. You can add it to your resume. I know there are some people who would die just to learn a dead language.” You said with a grin, holding the hands on your waist.

“There’s that sense of humor again,” he chuckled. “Okay. Let’s go learn Sumerian.”

You spent the better part of the morning in your home library, pulling out all of the books you wrote about the Sumerians and the Akkadians and anything about Mesopotamia. Ikaris was a still grumbly while he studied but the chocolate chip pancakes you made for him lifted his mood. You never realized how difficult a student your husband was until you started to teach him about cuneiforms. He was impatient and he complained a lot, especially when he couldn’t immediately read and write perfectly.

Always a perfectionist, this stubborn Eternal. It was a thing of wonder you still loved him, even if he was a pain in your ass.

Your phone pinged again after a few hours. It was well into the day now. You and Ikaris had no jobs scheduled for that day so it was just perfectly okay to waste it learning a dead language.

You pressed on the notification, seeing that Sprite had chatted in the family group chat.

Sprite: HAHAHAHAHA

Sprite: Please tell me he’s read this

Sprite: @Y/N Send a video of his reaction!

You chuckled, replying in the affirmative. You weren’t selfish. Ikaris was more open around you and you shared that teensy-tiny side of him to everyone. Much to his chagrin, of course.

“Are you ready?” you asked, watching him.

He was still hunched on a paper where you had written in cuneiform. “No.”

“You don’t have to be perfect at it.” You took the pencil from his hand. “Because if you are, you wouldn’t take me to your excavations anymore.”

You said out loud the simple sentence you wrote. “Ikaris is my husband,” you said as you pointed at the symbols on the paper. You put emphasis on his name and wrote a new sentence for him to decode.

“Ikaris… is… an ass…?” He read slowly then looked at you sharply with a mockingly offended frown.

You laughed. You bent down and kissed him. “Am I wrong, though?”

He only smiled. You taught him more words, especially ones that were on the stone slab. When he looked like he could read through it without difficulty, you drew up the photo on his phone. On yours, you put it on video to capture the look on his face.

“What’s the video for, Angel?” he asked.

“Oh, you know,” you said with a dismissive wave of your hand. “Records. As an archaeologist, you should know how important it is to do record-keeping. At least, that’s what we anthropologists do.”

He rolled his eyes at you. “Yes, Dr. Y/N Harris, anthropologist extraordinaire.”

You grinned at the mention of your name. “Now, go. Read through it. It’s just about two sentences.”

“Two really long sentences,” he grumbled again. “Today… I saw Ikaris… fly… into a… tree… because he was… looking… and—No, that’s an at… at… Sersi.” He frowned at the sentence and reread it, with more conviction this time. “Today, I saw Ikaris fly into a tree because he was looking at Sersi—Angel—”

All the while he was reading, you were laughing behind the camera. Ikaris read it so seriously the first time that you doubted he even realized what he had just said out loud.

“I did not—”

“Read the next,” you said between guffaws.

He huffed and resumed position, squinting at his phone as he read slowly and out loud again. “It… was funny… to see… What’s this? Is this supposed to be ‘big man?’… Big man… Poke Ikaris… with a… stick… to get… him… down—What?”

You laughed louder at his embarrassed expression. Your belly started to ache at how much you cackled.

“Read it straight, my love,” you urged.

“No.”

“Please?”

“Y/N.”

“If you’re not going to read it, I’m just going to say it out loud.”

He made a face and turned to his phone again. He cleared his throat. “Let me just explain—”

“No. Read it.” You grinned.

Ikaris sighed and nodded. “It was funny to see ‘big man’ poke Ikaris with a stick to get him down—Okay, in my defense—”

“My love, everyone else who’s seen you get stuck in a tree has been dead for over seven thousand years. You don’t need to explain yourself.” You said once you got your composure back, then broke down again. “You got stuck on a tree!”

“Angel—”

You laughed harder at the exasperated look on his face. God, how you loved being the pain in his ass now.

“Did you write this?” he asked once you stopped laughing.

You had just sent the video and the chat had been blowing up with comments and reactions of it.

“Yes,” you said with a sly grin. “My handwriting is still the same. See?” You pointed at his name on both the paper and the photo.

“How many people know?” he asked as he looked.

You turned to your phone, at the notifications that were piling up by the second. “Sprite does. So do Kingo and Druig and Gil—everyone, I think.”

He groaned.

“Don’t worry. No one reads Sumerian anymore. It’s just us.” You assured him with an impish smile. And anthropologists and archaeologist and possibly historians, you refused to add.

“Us and the people who have the same job as us,” he said as he pulled you closer. “What’s that one word I can’t read? Big man? Giant man?”

You howled in laughter again, remembering that day vividly. “It was Gilgamesh. He had to poke you with a stick to dislodge you from the branches!”

“He did not—”

You kissed him deeply. When you pulled back, you grinned widely at the adoring expression he had on his face. It was the same expression he wore when he flew into a tree because he was watching Sersi. And now, he had the same look on his face while looking at you and it had been Sersi who sent you a slab of that time.

Not entirely a full-circle moment but it was as close as having one for you.

“Ikaris, my love, I’m your guardian angel. Deny it all you want; I still know what I saw. Proof is in the pudding, or at least, in my six-thousand-year-old diary entry. Let's just hope no one else digs up the rest of that slab.”

He just groaned.