#I swear it was like such a widespread theme

[sw33tsnow]

Sculpture and you

Keegan x Artist!F!Reader (18+)

Summary: It was an accident which led to you both separation but Keegan knew how to fix his wrong doing, fixed it real good.

Warnings: NOT FOR MINORS, College!au: older!reader & younger!Keegan, mentions of injury, slight angst, fluff, heavy plot, smut: mommy!kink, desperate (?), swearing, footjob (m!receiving), oral (f!receiving), heavy praises, nipples play, mating press, unprotected sex (p in v), cum on stomach, etc. Wordcount: 8k1

NOTE(s):

I'M TERRIBLY APOLOGIZE FOR ANY GRAMMAR ERRS

Here are the paintings that've been mentioned in my writing: The Triumph of the Name of Jesus , Michelangelo’s titanic portrayal of the Old Testament Book of Genesis , Starry Night , Café Terrace At Night

So sorry for the wordcount ૮(˶╥︿╥)ა

Love equals a piece of artwork. It is brittle and prone to being damaged when it's initially incomplete, yet becomes remarkably solid when subjected to heat. But, it'll eventually shatter if you don't treasure it or put your mind to it well.

Situated on a nearby hill, your university is prominently displayed in the city flanked by the scent of damp soil and vibrant lush foliage that varies in shades depending on the seasons. A vast campus is formed on either side of the river that flows through the middle with the ever-present fog on the surface creating the most picturesque scenery you'd ever catch in your entire life. The majestic yet graceful architecture of seven buildings took years to design by the brilliant professors from all departments and to build, standing tall and proud like sentinels guarding your campus from all directions.

It could never be boastful to state that your university has a significant influence on the fine arts scene globally, and that you have worked so hard to succeed here.

The Visual Arts building - your course's tower, which housed the painting, drawing, and sculpture, was placed between the Architecture and Literature ones. That's quite convenient for you because, despite receiving excellent comments on your expertise and collaboration, you failed to get along with others in your course because nearly all of your buddies were Architecture department alumni. Perhaps that helped explain why you're sitting happily in the study hall which did not belong to your building, where from the librarian to the sophomores were so familiar with your constant presence that they didn't care to question.

However, you didn't show up to have fun this time. The theme for the architects' project was History and Religion and your bestfriend reached you because her junior had picked a topic closely related to the Visual Arts and required assistance.

"As an exemplary senior, I've to help my juniors as much as I can. Especially when it only costs three meals to repay the favor, right bestie?" And she batted her lashes at you, only to get a nod of approval from you to escape the cringeness that she offered. 

Since your closest friend chose the construction of the Kölner Dom, a stunning specimen of Gothic architecture, as her topic, you must admit that you were a little dubious about this proposal. Architecture's learners do not show interest in any particular paintings, drawings, or sculptures. What fascinates them are the construction, the length of time the projects require to develop, the value and backstory.....blah blah blah, so much dull information that you couldn't help but groan each time she babbled into your ear.

Until you met Keegan.

He was a freshman, passed the tensing admission of your college four months ago. On the opening day, there was one pastime that the girls of all faculties had in common: gushing on the new students. Although you're not one of them, the seemingly never-ending parties and overwhelming adoration towards outstanding individuals undoubtedly added to the widespread fervor for Keegan. 

A picture is worth a thousand words.

The boy had deep blue eyes and a remarkable height, he even had to bend down when going through the doors. You mistakenly thought he was a model because with that attractive visage and that masculine jawline, not to mention that his sturdy yet slim waist and protruding chest muscles were flaunted beautifully in a simple black T-shirt tucked into matching trousers. Silver belt buckle and chain necklace swing rhythmically with each step he took, the leather backpack hanging off one shoulder and those Timberland boots; it's awkward knowing that the keen eyes and meticulousness you inherited from your mother and have utilized primarily in your studies has proven to be so beneficial.

"Keeg, over here" One of the group's friends yelled.

The dark head spun around, his eyes shone like a lost child who had just found his siblings. He marched over to your table and took a seat opposite to you right away. Much to your surprise, Keegan’s quite reserved, which is pleasant for you because at least the boy still has something in common with those who constantly have a pair of thick glasses glued to their face; and because you’re pretty bad at dealing with arrogant punks.   

Impressively, not focusing on gigantic and iconic geometric features, Keegan has picked two of the finest ceiling decorations in Rome. 

“I still can't decide between The Sistine Chapel and The Gesù, so I need your advice. You don't mind, right?”

Attentive and respectful. He was probing your expression, as if didn't want you to feel uncomfortable working with him.

"Of course not"

Keegan grumbled softly at hearing your courteous response and turned away to retrieve his laptop from his rucksack.

"Uhm hmm, not yet" Your best friend murmured, prompting you to turn and stare at her with a puzzled frown.

Then the boy took out his laptop, and instead of the original casing, there was the well-known Starry Night painting by the begetter Vincent Van Gogh.

"Did you draw that?" Pointing at the case, the corners of your mouth curved up and your eyes widened slightly in amusement. 

"Ah, yes.....this's just my own taste cus I'm not really drawn to Picasso's blocks and color scheme nor adopt the surrealism like Salvador Dalí" Genuinely he spoke, "Do you also like Van Gogh as well?"

Raising your eyebrows before flipping the phone onto a table over, the drawing of Café Terrace At Night was likewise repainted on your phone case. That successfully earned a comfortable chuckle from Keegan, and you casted a innuendo glance at your best friend, who was already beaming mischievously at you.

From his penchant for style to his distinct standpoint on artists to the two religious structures he opted for as the focus of his task, Keegan has more surprises than you expect from him. There also did not appear to be a disagreement between your ideas, since your aesthetic preferences were clearly comparable.

The venue that he selected was Rome, also referred to as the Eternal City. Any discussion on ceiling paintings in this ‘never-ending array of fabulous churches and palaces’ city must start with what is arguably the most well-known artwork in art history: Michelangelo’s titanic portrayal of the Old Testament Book of Genesis. It’s hard to envision the sheer scale of the work of 175 separate pictorial fields containing over 300 monumental figures, including thundering prophets, ancient seers and statuesque nudes, also known as ignudi, framing the central narratives of the creation of the world. At the very centre of this epic biblical narrative is the most iconic scene of all - the moment when God gives life to his magnificent human creation with a single touch of index fingers. Elsewhere God is working diligently to complete the endeavor of creating a world that his human charges can thrive in. Here he divides light from darkness, and there he separates land from ocean. Tosses the sun, moon, and distant planets into the void in one scenario, and becomes a divine horticulturist by conjuring flora and fauna out of thin air in another. Yet not each and every detail is rosy upon the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Not too long do Adam and Eve find themselves in challenges, incapable to resist the forbidden fruit that an evil serpent offers, and all that follows falls to hell in the next scenes as the sorrowful couple is banished from Eden. Things only become worse as humanity descends deeper into depravity, culminating in the horrific Flood sequence where much of the world is submerged beneath the swelling waves of God's wrath. When Michelangelo's astounding fresco cycle was eventually shown in just four years of almost superhuman activity to a feverish public in 1512, the world was suitably amazed. He was hailed as the greatest artist of his, or any other generation, and the history of art was to be altered forever. 

About The Triumph of the Name of Jesus, which you suggested more. In the wake of the call to arms of the Counter-Reformation for a renewed emphasis on the ability of art to astound the faithful with astounding feats of painterly virtuosity, Roman artists went above and beyond in their pursuit of pushing the boundaries of their craft in the numerous magnificent new churches that were appearing all over the city. Among the most luxurious of them all was the Gesù, the mother church of the newly founded Jesuit order. The magnificent church's interior, finished in 1584, is a treasure trove of priceless artwork, but what truly excels visitors is the spectacular paintings that were painted on the dome and ceiling a century later. Il Baccicio, the artist, seemed to have created a miracle that is solely appropriate for the hallowed surroundings. As you cast your gaze upwards, the church's vault appears to vanish into a whirling mass of clouds, providing a clear glimpse into the celestial sphere of heaven. The Triumph of the Name of Jesus was the one dear subject matter to the Jesuits' hearts. Immersed in dazzling rays of celestial light, the monogram of Christ's name looms at the very core of the ceiling, encircled by a plethora of angels and holy beings enthralled with the miracle. By the mere mention of Christ's name, rebel angels tempted by Satan's hollow promises of power were defeated and tumbled illusionistically from the vault in a tangle of grotesque limbs and painful poses. Baroque bombast at its best together with the free combination of painting, sculpture, and architecture fosters a theatrical, multi-sensorial, and three-dimensional ensemble - Baccicio's enormous fresco guaranteed The Gesù's place as one of the most significant pilgrimage sites in Rome during the 17th century.  

The fact that Keegan shared and conversed the knowledge which every Visual Arts learner has plainly knew like the back of their hands with you was certainly impressive. Disparities with shapes, colors, and patterns; the balance between the frames and, more especially, Keegan's art-related approach is incredibly unrestricted and free. Much too refined an aesthetic sense for an architect of his caliber.

You two were so wrapped up in your work that the other friends had to remind you that it's almost time for the study hall to close, not realizing the two hours went by rather quickly. Silently, you sighed as you packed up your stuff, aware that you might not get to see Keegan again. It's extremely difficult to come across someone who suits you like that, after all. Despite your pout of discontent, you said everyone farewell and began to leave.

"Wait!" The boy called after you in a hurry, so you stopped and gestured to your best friend to wait for you in the parking lot.

Even though you're shorter than Keegan, this posture of him was as if he just got scolded by you as the boy scratched his head and stared down to the floor. Humming speechlessly because he couldn't find the right word , you were patient to wait for him to continue.

"Every day after school.....are you free?" He raised his voice timidly.

"It depends, what's wrong?" You inquired again, carefully, so as not to press the issue.

"Just, if it's okay, can you teach me how to paint.....I mean, doodling is fine" He quickly added, "Please....don't say no"

With a grin, you lifted that attractive face to face you by your index finger under his chin, "I can teach you everything about visual arts, as long as you don't criticize my limited abilities sweet boy"

Keegan flushed as he heard your teasing and the pet name you gave him, but managed to nod with his lips pursed.

For several months, Keegan consistently showed up on time. He waited for you to finish your lectures before the two of you headed to any random tools room in order to practice. You taught him almost everything: molding ceramics, sketching then painting on canvas frames, or how to create tertiary hues......

Exams requiring greater expertise, such those for oil painting or sculpturing, could come around sometimes. If you allowed Keegan to assist you, you'd stand right next to him, holding his hand, and pressing his larger fingers onto those details that needed extra attention. Of course, you were deliberately interacting closely with the boy but there was no denying the sparks between you both as well.

You're different from the people Keegan knew. You refuse to care about things that didn't concern you, so when you first met you seemed quite formal; you also possessed quite dark humor, which definitely interfered with your artistic fancy. 

Actually, you admired Italian painter Roberto Ferri even more. Roberto's works reflected what you're seeking in various pieces of art - the shading and coloration, the nudity and amalgamating were not jarring or confusing, but rather extremely precise and incisive. You elaborated once that 'Contrariety is necessary', nevertheless, as with other fields. It was previously remarked by your professor that your taste in artistry is sort of….dark and vulgar, they suggested that an extremely distinct portrayal would be beneficial for stimulating the artist's brain system. So you decided to go with Vincent Van Gogh. You valued him because he was influenced by painters like Monet and Renoir, who embraced New Impressionism, and shared a fascination in light with them. But he quickly established his own unique: powerful brush technique, mainly using warm reds, oranges, and yellows. Subtle brush strokes resulted in powerful and striking visualizations.

“And basically because a tiny frame as my phone case couldn’t fully convey Ferri's painting and the content was also more sensitive” Similar to Van Gogh's art was definitely the more suitable option.

That's how you explained when the younger one started to ask way too many questions rather than focusing on his work. 

Keegan found it fascinating that you're quite flirty and enjoy calling others by pet names as he got to know you better. The boy flushed upon hearing you calling your best friend by tons of intimate names that you gave her. You also compliment a lot, but what's bothered Keegan was the way, the tone in which you delivered them. 

Your voice is a bit lower, sounding like you're purring. Good job, That's it, Perfect for his efforts and Pretty boy, Sweetheart, Love for the times when you two talked outside the box.

Keegan always felt as though there was a dulcet shiver traveling down his spine after earning praises from you; itching but intriguing somehow. And in return, he called you Tutor, his tutor, to both tease and offer his appreciation for the guidance which you're happily imparted without assuming any explanations from him. For instance, why did he choose Architecture and not Visual Arts?

You respect his privacy, he knew. You still tended to him, but not in an uncomfortable way, making him willing to be lured to your side more and more. 

Everything was going so well until a few weeks ago. Keegan abruptly grew more and more aloof. Frequently, he would either cancel in the last-minute or the night before, leaving you disappointed and not understanding why. You assumed there was something special between you and him. Yet, after he returned, you were overjoyed at first but eventually grew uneasy around him as he became angrier, more easily agitated, and no longer wanted to be close to you.

He wanted to try whittling this time. Unlike stone or clay, which could be readily crafted, the main substance used was wood. 

Wood and other hard materials are usually tough to mold, and Keegan was plainly not capable of handling them given his greeness. But whenever he gave up and you just sighed then redone the whole log, it still simply caused disappointment if it didn't turn out the way he wanted. You knew that Keegan was under a lot of pressure due to the art program's periodic exams so you've attempted to steer him toward a more agreeable subject, but his stubbornness proved to be a bothersome obstacle. 

So you merely stood in the corner of the room and gazed at that enormous back for that reason. Your head slightly tilted to take a better view of a coating of sweat adhered to his forehead and his eyebrows furrowed as his lips pursed when the boy was unable to come up with ideas. The soft gestures in stark contrast to his veiny arms always made you wet your lips in silence.

They said ‘Men are most charismatic when they're focused’. And you couldn’t agree more.

If he caught you, like before, he would purposefully poke fun at you and garner an eye roll from you before your enraged fingers pinched a part of his sculptures. Superb reprisal.

But shit was different that day....

"Fuck me, why is it so difficult?" Keegan complained with his raspy voice, throat as parched as the Sahara desert from dehydration for quite a while.

"I'll go fetch something to drink” 

“No need….here” You quickly stopped him, reached into your bag and pulled out your water bottle, and tossed it to him, “Don’t want you to get kicked out of here” 

According to the rules at your university, you risk being expelled if, after office hours, you enter the wrong building as a non-student belonging to that specific department.

“Alright, whatever you say” He spoke as holding up his hands in a surrendering gesture.

Which made you scrunch your face due to his disrespectful manner.

"Are you upset about me raising my voice?" Catching your grimace, Keegan mockingly raised his question.

He was always playful, but at the time, he's being snarky toward you. And you detest that so much.

"Concentrate on your work" Maintaining the monotone tone but lowering your voice a bit in order to show authority, you slowly moved closer to his standing. 

"Don't touch" The boy glared.

You folded both hands behind you, focusing entirely on the piece of wood rather than Keegan. He also resumed his motion, occasionally crouching down to search for sketches that had been discarded somewhere or different carving knives. 

Interruptedly, you and Keegan would talk about approaches to improving the origin log, but the discussion quickly devolved into another argument, so he snubbed you and turned away to continue. For fuck sake, these teenage lads' egos are so goddamn tremendous. You're solely offering advice, not imposing; why would he behave like that? 

Just take a look around....The floor beneath his feet, where tools were being flung and numerous strewn bits of pared timber scattered all over. Your mother used to frequently nag you when you were a kid because of your untidy traits, plus, that terrible habit would get you into trouble eventually. 

And as predicted, when the boy turned to retrieve his palette, he neglected to take out the blade, leaving it lodged in the wood. So undoubtedly, you have to remove it to avoid any potential dangers.

"I told you not to touch it!" 

Turning back and seeing you touching the most difficult mosaic area that he had just completed, Keegan barked and quickly paced to violently nudge your hand away.

There was a faint sound of something sharp cutting through the spongy softness, and the knife had left a sweet, delicate line which broadened from your palm all the way to your chelidon. Because the blade is designed to precisely carve into small spaces so your veins did not splash out any gallon of your sweet crimson; instead, one drop, then two drops, and at last, like sap oozing out from a tree trunk - your arm have unleashed waves of red fluid, dripping onto the chilly surface below. 

With a hiss, you quickly reached for your thin blouse and tightly wrapped it around your arm to halt the bleeding. It wasn't painful, but the stinging and burning that were given seemed as if your skin was being roasted over an intense flame, forcing you to shut your eyes to block out the suffering.

"F-fuck...oh fuck..." Keegan's voice trembled, "I told you not to come closer"

You slowly turned around, tightly sealed lids opened and penetrated straight into his sapphire pupils. Menacing expression made him gulp.

"Don't blame others for your carelessness, Russ" You gritted your teeth, "If it weren't for me, you would have to ask the professor’s permission for submitting your assignment late, so be grateful and quit that attitude of yours, eh?"

Every word, laced with venom as you amplified them. It's true that he's also working on his test, so the boy was too stunned to speak, dumbfounded and did not dare to chase after you as you stormed out of the room. 

_-_-_-_-_-_-_

It's the beginning of autumn, the sky was pouring, and dry leaves that are tinted with ocher and lemon were falling everywhere throughout the campus, adding to your already melancholy mood.

Two weeks of nonattendance on account of an implausible excuse, such a car accident, as it's a violation to the law to arbitrarily use the college facilities and supplies other than during regular instructional sessions.

The lobby, which was crammed to excess and devoid of standing space, had become vacant by now. After all, your class was the last one of the day, thus it's unsurprising that the place was quiet without a soul in sight. You stayed back late to wait and chat with the professor about some unfinished school work since you dislike having to jostle, surely not to avoid meeting somebody.

Dark green moss off-shoulder knitted sweater with stretchy jeans and a pair of Dr.Martens leather boots. As you drainedly opened the locker to store your things, the voice that had become ingrained in your memory appeared somewhere behind you. 

“I texted you about the injury, but you didn’t reply”

Fucking bad timing, you cussed under your breath.

“My mother said she’d chop me into pieces if I dare to hold a paintbrush, let alone texting” You answered curtly, wanting to shoo Keegan away. 

“Oh….so is yo—”

“My arm ‘s alright by now, you don’t have to worry ‘bout it…” You shutted him off, clearly didn’t have enough patience to deal with him, “I have to go, bye Keegan”

Turning swiftly on your heel then immediately getting captured by the younger person by your wrist, you pushed out a deep sigh before frowning and glancing up at the person who was blocking the path in front of you.

“Slow down, hey, I just want to talk—” He retreated his palm right away, “I-I want to apologize for what…uhm...”  

It's been a while since you've witnessed this withdrawn and reserved side of him, but you're so fatigued that you didn't want to talk to or give a damn about anyone. The boy seemed to have realized how you were suppressing your discomfort and has moved back, returning you back your personal space.

“Please, I’m terribly sorry for my precipitation, I didn’t mean to make you bleed”

Keegan didn't want you to ever leave on your own again because of his past foolishness, so he reminded himself to maintain his distance and remain composed. You understanded that Keegan was truly sincere in his intention to make it up to you, and yet you did not ask him to. It's not like you saved him or something, plus, you hate the thought of someone owing you a favor or anything similar.

“It’s just an accident, Keegan” You exhaled, punctuation, end of discussion. 

If possible, you wish to never see him again. You always find a way to avoid confronting your complex emotions since you're not very good at facing them and nothing else can give you a sense of security other than that.

"Then can you, please, one last time...." He spoke in a somewhat softer, more beseeching tone, ".....Be my tutor"

As if being haunted by his previous mockery, you searched for irony in those stunning eyes, and you found none. There's also a determination that rendered it impossible to argue against, so you have no choice but to approve.

Keegan followed you to your regular spot. Because it's the weekend, even the janitors had fled as soon as their shifts ended, leaving the entire campus to you two. You were correct to assume that, all thanks to the two-way, one facing the parking lot and the other towards the campus, which had taken the place of the room's two walls, showing only Keegan's bike there. Since the art building is regarded as your university's maze, students from other departments couldn't find you two so you certainly wouldn't be disturbed.

Unfortunately, there weren't enough necessary items and tools, you decided to paint on the canvas as usual.

Setting down your backpack, you faced the exterior and silently observed the younger one, waiting for his request. Keegan swallowed hard, hating the distance between you two. You fixed your gaze on him as though a slight movement of yours might result in a reprimand.

Fucking fool, he scolded himself.

"I....I want you to model f-for me" He scratched his head.

"A-and I got this piece of white silk....y-you can do whatever you want with it" he said hurriedly, frightened you might turn him down.

Seriously? Do whatever you want with it. What Keegan just said made him truly want to smack the shit out of him so bad. 

You tilted your head in silent thought. Obviously, sketching the body lines proved difficult enough but adding the garments unveiled an extra challenge entirely. That explained for your nod and your gradual removal of the clothing covering your body. Starting with your boots, then your jeans and panties, but for your upper body, you couldn't do it yourself.

"Get the silk then come here, please, I need a hand"

The request wasn't coerced, and you did not send it out like a command. Though you were not a people pleaser, Keegan always both loathed but admired your civility. The boy was aware that you're not the type to readily undress for others to view, yet something about your professional face unnerved him.

Grabbing the silk, Keegan cleared his throat and walked over to you. He waited for you to grant him permission before gingerly catching the edge of your sweater and pulling it over your head. Then the bra, which was simple to unclasp with one hand. The final bit of cloth slipped off your body, revealing you to the boy whose ears and face were as red as a ripped tomato due to your angelic bare physique.

"Are you gonna start?" You inquired and took the silk from the other person's hand.

And Keegan frantically ran to drag a divan for you to sit on.

The white silk piece was extremely lengthy but thin, resembling a stream that covered your entire body. The feather-like friction caused your nipples to tighten a bit, and your palm nonchalantly covered the tender region between your legs, creating an elegant yet equally alluring sight. You were aware that you weren't blessed with an aesthetically pleasing figure, but the tent that could not be appeased at the crotch of the artist across from you was enough to provide you a boost in your performance. 

Whether it's an ordinary biological response or another type of reaction... 

Your muscles were sore from maintaining the same posture for a long time. As you raised your gaze to Keegan, he saw and paused to give you both a moment to rest.

"Tired?" You asked when the boy stretched.

"I'm the one who should ask that, tutor" Keegan snickered. Oh the sound he made never failed to make you smile as well.

Standing up, the boy pushed past his work and knelt down before you to gently massage your calf with his warm hands. Keegan didn't raise his head, rather, he concentrated on aiding you in stretching your muscles. Needless to say, Keegan was deeply ashamed for his reckless behavior as well as the impulsive words that followed. Though it's clearly not between the two of you, there's still a problem, and since you're not a nosy person, you weren't sure how to approach him.

"My parents found out...." He bitterly confessed, "They broke the clay piece I made with you - two halves of the face kissing each other"

At that moment, your breathing stopped and your chest tightened when you learned the reason for the boy's sudden alienation.

"But that's not an excuse" He bit his lip, "I was an asshole, a truly fucking asshole.....You know, art a-and you are the only safe place I ever had. But I’ve treated you wrong, so wrong" 

Reaching for your wounded arm, he planted kisses along the sunken scar that owned a brighter pigmentation on your flesh. His tender and mindful gestures truly broke your heart.

"I'm sorry...I'm really sorry, I shouldn’t have, I should never treat you that way" His voice sounded ruptured, like it had been violently trodden upon, yet it likewise sounded like a growl.

"Why didn't you tell me?" You gingerly whispered.

Keegan's eyes were glassy and his orbs compared to two polished pearls, constantly wavering in misery. He didn’t know what to say or how to say it.

The divorce that resulted from one of Keegan's parents having an affair was the lowest point in his life. They filed a lawsuit in court, but neither one was willing to give the other child custody, so he ended up living under a rotten roof. All the dreams the boy had have been extinguished, they no longer meant anything. Allowing them to control his life in the way they wanted, forcing him to study like a dog day and night, and only bringing him the meals that were enough to meet his basic nutritional needs. When his passion for painting was once again re-awakened, Keegan did all in his ability to persuade his parents for the first time to let him decide his future, but they disdained art so much that they made him study architecture instead. Once again, Keegan's purposeless life has returned. He took a gap of four years to join the military, but his parents refused to leave him in solitude. They threatened to use greater punishments if he resisted again, stating that they forbade him from dying on the battlefield. 

How ironic, can you be forbidden to die? Ever?

Thankfully, after entering in this university, Keegan no longer had to live with his parents, letting him have more freedom for himself. Up until Keegan met you, it appeared that his typical university years were not proceeding along in the same way anymore. 

The boy fought to not shed a tear in front of you as his lips quivered whilst he recalled those painful memories. Knowing that no matter what, you wouldn't defame him, but vulnerability has never been on Keegan's mind.

“Hush, my sweet boy” Bending down and connecting yours with the boy's forehead, you cooed.

It was some time before the younger one calmed down. As Keegan's breathing steadied, you gradually withdrew to look him in his eyes, your hands caressing his cheeks and your thumbs lightly rubbing them in comfort. It made you smile warmly to hear him purring in his throat like a cat being cuddled by its master.

“Feel better now?” 

“Mhmm” He shook his head.

“Oh poor baby, what can I do to cheer you up then?” You giggled.

Out of the blue, Keegan took hold of your foot and placed it on his crotch, gently applying pressure and moving it back and forth to arouse the sensitive area beneath the fabric. And you were so taken aback that you couldn't take your eyes off where the boy was using your foot to pursue his pleasure. You've never imagined Keegan would be so straightforward.

"Ah...I-I'm...oh g-god..." He lowered his head and nibbled the skin on your thigh, "Can you -ah- feel my cock twitching f-for you, ma’am?"

Ma’am? 

“Can I call you ma’am….?” He’s breathing heavily, “In the end….ha a-ah…you’re still gonna be my tutor anyways, right?”

You blinked and then suddenly burst out laughing, and Keegan foolishly laughed along with you. Whipped your head down and moved your digits closer to his lips, you eagerly allowed Keegan to play with your foot as he moistened your fingers with his tongue. His soft tongue gilded back and forth between your pointer and middle fingers, and each time you bit your lip, his cheeks would sink in to suck them. It's amazing how different Keegan looked from what you imagined.

“How ‘bout mommy?” Poking your tongue to your inner cheek, you asked while still dancing your fingers with his tongue.

Of course, without hesitation, he nodded aggressively and continued to suck harder on your digits. But then you withdrew your hand and leg, making the boy whined in frustration and rubbed his head in your lap.

"N-no...no please don't do that...." He pouted, "I was so close...."

"Shhh...be a good boy and you'll get what you want" You murmured softly, and Keegan's body shivered as your lips touched his sensitive ear.

You raised an eyebrow and gave Keegan a satisfied smile in response to his yearning gaze. Instantly the boy drew closer, his lips meeting yours. Tongues intertwined, teeth scraping and lower lips bitten and swollen, you lowered your head to deepen the lustful, making Keegan groaned in pleasure.

"Moan for me, Keeg" You broke away from the kiss, moved down and bit his neck, "I wanna hear you, loud and clear"

And he obediently tagged along, his lips trembling as he continually let out muffled whines and mellow groans. The boy's body swayed in response to the sensation of your lips against his flesh.

"C-can I make you feel good, too, mommy?" He wetted his lips, hands reaching up to gently knead the soft plumpness on your chest with an unabashed greed.

"Hmm? You wanna suck my tits?" Your voice trailed off, teasing him

"Yes, yes, please" 

As soon as you nodded, the boy reached to the thin layer of silk and started squeezing your breasts which were set underneath. His large palms dutifully kneaded your feminine parts, mouth bit and sucked, leaving countless love marks from your jawline to your cleavage. You're just so soft, he couldn't get enough of it, of these beautiful breasts waiting to be fed to him. As his movements took over his mind, Keegan threw away the unhandy cloth, lunged forward to nibble the sides of your chest; his tongue circled each, constantly retreating to bounce them in his hands, making satisfying noises while latching on them again and again, non-stop.

“C’mon, don’t be shy” You cocked your head down to your chest, beckoning the younger person who was drooling over your delicious rosy nipples.

Keegan was indeed a good boy when you didn't have to repeat, shoving his face right into one of your bosoms without wasting anymore time. The first sensation you felt was his lips; he kissed them, then kept pinching and rotating them around with his teeth, prompting you to growl at the sting he brought. His fingers massaged the other one, taking good care of both sides equally, just like that - the boy was too devoured into you. However, that was still not enough. With a 'pop' as Keegan released you, he lifted your breasts and pulled them in, pointing your nipples towards the middle of your chest. Warm, pink tongue deftly rolled up and down, in between, wrapping around your buds. He twirled it, circled it around your hard nipples; lusty saliva was way too audible, irresistible ecstasy clenched your legs together and you kept pushing your chest harder to his face. 

“F-fuck…you’re doing so good -ha- so good” And he glazed his teeth tighter, “Yes! Fuckin— just like that pretty boy”

Your fingers reaching the boy's scalp, your nails clasped and lightly scratched his cleanly shaven nape, evoking more sinful groans from Keegan. His orbs, dilated with need, blown wide to meet yours, and his lashes fluttered somewhat, as though he wanted you to keep praising him. 

The thought of Keegan focusing on you as if you're a goddess, a faith, to be treasured and worshiped only by him, gave you chills.

Tilting your head back, your own feverish thoughts had heightened your arousal yet left the younger person unfulfilled.

“Tch…no” Keegan let go of your breasts, cupping your cheeks with both of his hands and pulling your face back into its place, “No, no….why’re you turning away, mommy? Keep those eyes on me, let me see…let me see them piercing a hole into my soul”

Trailing his strong, muscular arms down your lower body, Keegan grabbed you by the waist and pulled you closer to him. The suddenness of your knees buckled by your shoulders, exposing the glistening pussy dragged a quite loud yelp out of your lips. As your back sank down the divan cushions, your midsection had been folded in and the stomach rolls which always gave you insecurity made you hesitant to keep extending your legs. So you attempt to sit up, how on earth did Keegan allow that?

“I know what you’re thinking mommy, and I don’t give a fuck ‘bout that” The boy spoke, maintaining his intense eyes on you.

“I want you to own me, treat me like your fucking slave, use me as much as you fucking want, yeah?” He spitted on your cunt, making you moaned out like a bitch in heat. “I’m your little slut” he grunted, “I’m your little toy….I am, I am, fucking just for you” he whispered, teeth gritted as he punctuated on each word.

The boy kissed your ankle, bent down and nibbled on the back of your thighs and the sides of your buttocks. His large palms greedily caressed your asscheeks, not forgetting to add a few spanks.

“Use me, give me fucking confidence….give me a will to live, mommy” He plead, “Give me that fucking pussy”

All your embarrassment has vanished into thin air, leaving only devastating elation. And Keegan, who had been waiting for that, launched himself at your glistering cunt and immediately became addicted to the taste of your arousal. He lavishly covered your entire pussy with open-mouth kisses, his lips pressed firmly and gulping nonstop, smearing your juices all over his visage and down to your asshole, getting some fucking prohibited moans out of you.

The younger then stopped, long enough to take in your beautiful two holes close up as he examined the sweet long slit.

“Lemme sniff on it”  He inhaled the sweet, musky scent of your cunt, “Let your boy breathe on it, mommy, lemme look at it twitching for me”

Your body responded instinctively, pussy quivering beneath his heated breaths. Before you realized it, he had already let go of your legs to fully spread out your folds and was burying his face against your bare cunt once more. His nose nudged above your entrance and his tongue began to work in seconds, sinking and churning the inside of you. 

“Oh fu— YES, more Keeg….more” Your body trembled violently as your desire for additional pleasure grew, reaching out to clutch on him.

Keegan’s four fingers pressed firmly on your lower abdomen as he began to lick up and down your slit while using his thumb which was only inches above your pearl to pull the folds around away. And when your hood moved away, the boy finally had your blood-swollen clit sitting there in front of his lust blown pupils. It’s puffy, aching and throbbing. It’s calling for him, he assured that. Receiving your loud moans as an encouragement, Keegan softly hummed directly on your rock hard clit as he continued to stimulate your hole by landing his tongue against it. His digits buried deeply inside your pussy and he increased the pace, pumping in and out, rotating them, and curling them so as they scratched your walls vigorously.  

Without backing down, the younger one flicked his tongue, rubbing it up and down unforgivingly on your pearl. You jointed and fought to squirm out of Keegan's hold, only to be held back by him as his teeth bit down. You were too fucked out when his lips swallowed on your clit, thighs began to squeeze either side of his head due to the fantastic feeling.

“Mhm hmm, that’s it….” The boy continued to work his tongue and fingers on you as quickly as possible, “That’s my mommy, c’mon, keep squeezing me with those thighs….yeah, stare at me -uhm- stare at your pretty boy as he eat your pussy out”

Those fucking praises and the way he avaricious desire to attain your climax at all costs as a reward has successfully pushed you to the edge. The familiar hot cramping in your womb beneath your lower belly was fleeting for just a moment and then your scream of satisfaction came out, your hands clamped down on Keegan's head above your cunt to jerk your hips on his naughty mouth, riding out your high.

“Fuck…f-fuck” Your chest heaved rapidly, “You’re a fucking beast”

“And you did not let me go, tho I’m not intending to pull away either” The boy peered up with the shit-eating grin on his face before lowering down to smooch around your cunt one last time.

You giggled as Keegan scattered a trail of kisses all over your physique. Your lips, your navel, and your collarbone. You additionally show your gratitude by tucking your arms around his solid shoulder blades, lifting him above you to prolong the passionate kiss.

Exquisite - the divine taste of your release from his mouth, delicate - the way your lips clung firmly, and submerged - the way your tongues entwine without separating.

The moment was short lived since your waist was scraped by something stiff. You winced a little as you recoiled from the kiss, peered down, and were enchanted to catch a glimpse of Keegan's manhood - it was just... gorgeous. Only when you two pressed right against each other did the freshly shaven pubic hair of his gave you a nice itchy sensation. Your pelvises were adhered together so you could gauge the length, and the tip of his cock, which was already partially hard, was leaking precum onto your stomach. 

“Satisfied?” Keegan lifted his brows and inquired when he noticed you gulping and staring at his lower torso.

You beamed up at the younger one, stretching down to grab his ass, “I promise to make a sculpture of it”

The boy's low and seductive laugh was suppressed when he forced retained his breath while your grip moved lightly to position him directly in front of your awaiting cunt, not before brushing his head to gather the most of your slick. As a gesture to allow him to climb up to kneel on the divan, your other elbow pushed down to slightly elevate the center of your body up a bit. 

“Ready?” 

Keegan only gave you a brief kiss on your temple and leaned your foreheads together without saying anything. The two of you seemed to share the same breath, holding together when he plunged into you and exhaling together as he truly bottomed out. Your own eyes blurred with the startling fullness he provided you with.

“You’re so warm mommy, fuck, too warm” The younger hissed through a barely contained growl. 

Swallowing hard, you shifted your airflow and wiggled your hips in an attempt to adjust with the new intrusion. Fortunately, you're not an imposing person. Little by little, your pussy gradually loosened and accepted him, and his head flew back as his unwavering control slipped inch by inch, not so different from the way his shaft was slowly entering you.

“Move, love, need to feel you deep inside me” 

Sheathing Keegan deeper into you, you purposefully pressed your hips against his, whispering into his ear. For a few while, the younger one remained idling, realizing that you were showing him the sweet spots inside you. So whenever you heard him mewling like a horny dog, biting upon your lower lip gently as he felt your walls fluttered around him. You knew he was memorizing for his own pleasure, as well as that of you.

Failing to bear it any longer, Keegan sat up and tenderly pulled out his manhood. At first, you assumed him to be gentle, but you were incredibly naive. He struck with such ruthlessness that your breath left your lungs in a passionate symphony of his name and contented moans. Angling your legs on one side of his shoulder, Keegan caged your thighs with both of his arms and pinned them there. His pace was too rough, and the tension that followed made it simpler to sense the boy's steadfast heartbeat as your skin rested smoothly on his broad chest. 

“Keeg– Keegan, shit…” 

Keegan knelt in front of you - hair slightly damp from perspiration that partially stuck to his forehead and partially dangled with the tempo of his body's movements, those massive biceps, muscular legs, and taut waist all flexed as he hammered into your core. The room's dim lighting and your glassy eyes granted the younger person the appearance of a finely sculpted statue, an unreal portrait.

Fuck, “You look so beautiful, oh my beautiful boy”

I knew it might be an exaggeration but here, is your Björn Johan Andrésen. Exclusively yours.

“Ha–ah….yours, I’m all yours” With an ominous grin, Keegan drew forward to murmur, "And you're also mine, right?"

However, you were so engrossed in the pleasure that you failed to respond. That explained why the person above suddenly pulled back, leaving you there clenching around nothing. When you started to prop yourself up, he swiftly folded you in half, locking you in that position.

“Put your co—”

“Nah….you’re gonna say it” With one hand, Keegan pressed your knees to your chest while the other was lazily stroking his cock. Glazing the tip so damn nigh to your bloated entrance.

“For fuck sake, of course I’m yours” You huffed out, “As if any fucking cock could ever allowed to be inside me”

Surely the younger one's erection had returned because a lustful stupor hit you as his pelvis immediately slammed into your plump ass. Up to the hilt. He had reached your cervix with the tip of his cock, ache yet madly numb.

“You’re my mommy, my mistress, my fucking big tough mistress aren’t ya?” He eagerly pounding into you, in a more primal way, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckkk…..you’re so damn hot when you’re mad, y’know that?”

“Yeah?” You smirked.

“Fucking yeah”

The harder Keegan pounded into you, the louder the moans of you both came to a crescendo, almost at the peak. Since you knew you wouldn't be able to hold off for much longer, you had to encircle him more tightly with your legs, flutter your walls, and swallow his cock more deeply to ensure that his body would soon follow you.

“You're gonna cum mommy? Yeah, yeah, cum for me mommy, cum, cum, cum” Keegan shifted down and rubbed your swollen clit with great effort, making you cry as his finger plucked nonstop on it.

The younger person's chants ended with a growl from both you and him. He replaced his shaft with his thick digits, slipping out barely in time since you didn't have a condom. You both focused on the earth-shattering orgasm, on how his cock twitched in his palm and on his ropes of hot seed shooting onto your abdomen, dripping down to your wide-opened cunt, unable to stop.

Swore that you two had never felt so euphoric.

You laid limp under his sight, eyes flooded in darkness as you looked to the drop of sweat slowly leaving his chin then down to your navel, mixed together with his cum. 

Keegan collapsed on top of you, head buried into your neck. His weight was comforting, and as your fingers trailed to your lower body, you collected the white thick texture there and brought it to your lips, sticking out your tongue to taste then smiled with a satisfied hum. 

"I want to draw you like this" The boy stared upward at you, smiling brightly.

“Should take a photo too, in case you mess up and let me down for posing for you” Keegan tickled you when you kissed him on the lips in response to your cruel mocking.

Having said that, you still truly want to see his painting - of you, what it'll turn out once completed. 

Taglist: @shadowlali , @ghostlythots , @fl3xgio (is it alright if i add you?? 😫😫) , @brickwall035 (saw u a lot on my posts, wondering if i can add u?? 👉🏻👈🏻)

[the-fenton-anticreep-stick]

@little-pondhead i wanted to add more to the fic from ask I sent you and that you added to so I did :3 (in a separate post because I’ll probably add even more, and others are welcome to as well!! and i didnt want to take up people’s entire dashes snfnfj) @cinturon-cadena

Dan had never quite mastered portals or long-distance teleportation, and he doubted he would be able to while he was so limited by this form, but it was a moot point when his top speed was far faster than Danny’s and he had Clockwork’s Time-Outs at his disposal. He took a quick trip around the globe, tipping over landmarks, moving some buildings, splashing around in some foul-smelling pools of ectoplasm and stealing some left shoes from the ninjas guarding said pools.

Once he was pleased with his mischief, (and more importantly: starting to get hungry,) he headed towards the familiar feel of the cursed city. It was significantly less destroyed than he had left it the last time he’d visited. He understood the necessity of Clockwork’s interference, but it was still disappointing. He had put effort into such widespread destruction!

At least the city’s curse-spirit-mind-whatever it was didn’t remember what he’d done, and as such no longer wanted to give him a slow and torturous End. That didn’t mean it approved of him being there, though.

Time unpaused and he’d barely had the chance to tear down some walls before Gotham slunk out of the shadows.

“Calm yourself!” He growled as he squirmed out of its grasp, wishing he could still turn his form into mist. Intangibility was of little use with a creature like this. “I’m not here for you, or any of those mortals you are so fond of.”

Gotham screeched, and if he had bones, several of them would have undoubtedly been broken. "You are Other! An outsider! You are not welcome here!" It’s voice mingled with the screams of the alarms and the shouts of inmates and guards alike. “You set the Madness loose!“

Their tussle was nonexistent to the mortals as they rolled beneath and through stampeding feet, clawing at each other like alley cats. “All in good fun, Gotham!” He snarled and bit through one of the tendrils intent on relieving him of his eyes. He grimaced at the sludgy texture. “Time Itself sends me, to play with your favored mortals and avenge your dead!”

“You are evil! You will cause harm!“ Gotham screeched.

Dan rolled his eyes. “I will kill the insect who terrorizes what is yours,” He promised as if it were an offering to her, and not something he’d been planning for some time. (Danny had been so upset when the insect who called itself the Batman and its brood were absent from one of his schemes, because they were busy with this Joker insect. It was annoying. No insect, no need for Danny to complain. Danny had even agreed to the plan!) “Decide his fate, and I will enact it!”

The city’s spirit relaxed its grip on him. “You swear it? You will rid me of him, you will leave my Knights alone?"

“I’ll leave them alive.” Unless they challenged him. Then he would destroy them. But that didn’t need to be said.

“I will watch you..." Gotham slipped back into the shadows.

“Oh, how spooky.” Dan grumbled sarcastically as he shook himself in a vain attempt to remove the lasting sensation of Gotham’s touch.

That little disagreement had eaten up much of his precious time before the heroes of this realm could catch up to him. He lifted himself off the floor, startling a few inmates, and surveyed the chaos for a moment, selecting the perfect target. He darted towards the plant themed-villain- Poison Ivy, if he recalled correctly. (He always did.)

The woman staggered, clutching at her head as she tried to force him out. Overriding her will was laughably easy, but he admired her attempt to fight.

“Ah- Hey! You leave her alo- EEP!” With a flick of Ivy’s wrist, Dan suspended the other- Harley, Ivy’s memories named her, -in the air, leaving her dangling from some vines. The baseball bat she’d tried to clobber him with fell to the floor. He kicked it aside as he strode down the hall.

“I’ll give her back.” He said with a shrug, overexerting the woman’s powers to restrain every person he could find within the prison. His plants dragged all the pitiful, trapped mortals to the largest room available, stringing them up from the ceiling in cocoons like the insects they were. There. That would make it easier to find that awful clown.

Unless he’d already escaped. That would be unfortunate. Not for Dan, of course, but unfortunate for anyone who got in the way while he searched the city. And unfortunate for that clown, when Dan caught up.

The clown wasn’t in Arkham, so Dan left the unconscious Poison Ivy on the floor and shot through the roof, grumbling to himself. He flew clear of the building just in time to see Batman enter through a window. He paused, spectral tail flicking back and forth as he thought, before diving back in after the hero.

Danny had said to see how many things he could steal from that utility belt without being caught... And it wasn’t like there was anywhere the clown could go that Dan couldn’t follow.

He slipped out of the visible light spectrum and bit back his gleeful cackles as he liberated some of those delightful green rocks from the confines of the Bat’s pockets.

[littleroaes]

[ COMPILED ] Moon Tales by Boys, tbz

a compilation of stand alone one shots that’s based on loona songs. can be in form of storyline lore inspiration ( loonaverse ), music video themes and aesthetics, characters, lyrics etc !

AUTHORS NOTE it was never supposed to be an actual series, but i figure, as I’m thinking of my third loona based fic, i better just compile them all!

The Apple of His Eye ( love4eva ), c.ch

— Upon a private boarding school, Choi Chanhee falls from grace after seeking out the forest. Despite his sudden change in perception, his desk mate, Y/n, is determined to secure her place as a distinguished student, with or without Choi Chanhee as her concurrence. With lost innocence and opened eyes, he comes to tempt her to fall from heaven with him…or escape it.

PAIRING choi chanhee x fem!reader

GENRE Garden of Eden!au, enemies to lovers(ish)!au, academic rivals to lovers(ish)!au (formal to each other), boarding school!au, suggestive, TENSION(literary, rivalry, suggestive...),

WARNINGS kissing someone without consent, so much tension, bird mating(youll get it), slight symbolism, proofread once!

WORD COUNT 7.1 k

oh darling, take my heart! ( heart attack ), k.sw & jc.b

To save Sunwoo from his own self destruction by his undying love for Y/n as he admires her but cannot get her attention. His guardian angel comes to his side in human form to prevent the inevitable fall from Eden. Though the desperation for his preservation might just come from the egoistic wounds of his heart and the awareness of the ugliest fall of them all, it being his own.

PAIRING ⏵ kim sunwoo x fem!reader, guardian angel!jacob not a love triangle

GENRE ⏵ fluff, slight angst, one sided pining, unrequited love ( not all the way through ), comedy/ crack ( hopefully ), sunwoo is down so bad, and he’s stubborn as heck, not a love triangle, slight fantasy, jacob is stressed bc of sunwoo, sweetheart!Jacob, winter!au, college!au but they’re just in the library and walk between lectures and have own apartments lol( F EXAMS ), epic bromance, epic eric feature, not as epic changmin feature, europe aesthetic ( this is a candlestick idk how widespread they are )

WARNINGS ⏵ y/n is just a little evil, loonaverse lore ( lol ), romanticised college!au bc I don’t want to write my reality 🫠, surface level world building ( don't ask me about the angel lore ), y/n & sw calls jacob angel & cupid either teasingly/mockingly/literally, y/n refers to sunwoo as loverboy once, sunwoo swears like three times, sunwoo calls people losers, heart attack by chuu is very gay mine is not😭, proofread twice

WORD COUNT ⏵ 18.8 k

coming …

… ( love & live )

… Everyday I Love You

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 06/03/2024

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and the days of high quality rips?

Season 7 Featured on: Rips of Christmas Present

Ripped by berg8793

Requested by itsyeeted! (Discord)

Funny thing - I was supposed to have posted this far closer to new years, but then somehow convinced myself that I'd...already posted it? Just marked it as done in the spreadsheet and everything. Bizarre. Well, its never too late to celebrate the new year, is it? Especially not with a rip as sincere, wholesome, downright pleasant as Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and the days of high quality rips? - This is the kind of rip to remain on the laid-back playlist all year long.

I'm sure a lot of people were a bit puzzled to see a game like Tetris on CDi even *get* rips, let alone any form of non-ironic memes. I mean, its the Philips CDi, it's the meme console with Hotel Mario and the bad Zelda games! But this is another case of what I brought up back in Viva La Robocop, another case of one of SiIva's most fascinating phenomena: when otherwise wholly obscure games are kept in discussion through the surprising quality of their music. With only some exceptions (such as the games composed by the Follin brothers) that discussion seldom becomes widespread, usually staying contained to enthusiasts of VGM: such as the very people behind the SiIvaGunner channel itself! And while many of these soundtracks are kept relevant by chiptune artists, with examples like the aforementioned one, Never Gonna Give Up Mahjong and Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston - Tetris on CDi is, as the name of the console suggests, full-on CD quality, with a sound so stunning beautiful and atmospheric for a game series otherwise so content in reusing and remixing the typical Tetris theme. In the words of Jack Yarwood - "Before 'Tetris Effect,' There Was the Vaporwave Bliss of Tetris on the CD-i".

The wonderous atmosphere of this otherwise entirely obscure release of Tetris has kept its heart beating ever so faintly in the 32 years since its release, and Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and the days of high quality rips? feels just as much like a love letter to this game's vibes as it does a soothing celebration of the new year's beginning. Level 6's soothing tune is used as the backing instrumental to an original cover of the Scottish folk song Auld Lang Syne, one typically sung to inaugurate the beginning of the new year. And it's one that I, despite being from all the way over in Sweden, swear I must've heard in a film or show at some point - its lyrics and melody felt immediately comforting and familiar as soon as I started listening to the rip. Part of that comfort is of course the vocals, berg8793's vocal performance is positively soothing, but it may also be from how the vocal performance is implemented into the rip. It's given a layer of compression to it that matches the quality of early CD games, and indeed the quality of the CDi games' soundtracks themselves, a comfy faint noise and static stitching the two pieces of the rip together as a seamless whole. berg8793 has previously mostly been featured on here in rips that appeared as if they were borderline painful to make, such as Banjostruck and Kirby Joins the Circus!, so it was a delightful surprise to see him having made a rip like this. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and the days of high quality rips? not only feels like a welcome break in energy from the guy's typical output, but also shows me that he's got a genuine talent for singing - one I hope he finds use of in rips to come!

There's little else to say - Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and the days of high quality rips?, much like Wham! Into Dreams, feels like a cover from the heart, a cover made with the intent of pure celebration, to band us faithful viewers together for the new year in the comments section. Amidst all the shitposts and insane-scale collaborations, it's...nice, to have rips like these to return to for the quieter moments in life.

[talenlee]

Decemberween ’23 — Behind The Bastards

I like depressing media, apparently.

Produced by Robert Evans and a bunch of other people I can’t immediately credit off the top of my head, Behind the Bastards is a podcast that releases about three episodes a week, with a standardised format of Robert, with research on hand, explaining a historical narrative about the worst goddamn people in history, both current and in the past, and the ways in which their ways of being have resulted in a suckier world. Evans’ particular style of journalism is extremely dry and sarcastic, but also seems to project just holding tight on a deeply white hot held rage about the world and the way it is.

And he podcasts about it, reading this story to a friend, who gets progressively more sad and upset over the course of the episode.

Because of the scope of Behind the Bastards, a podcast that releases something like three episodes every week, is so vast, I don’t recommend just grabbing a starting point and plowing through it. There are trends, subjects that the host, Robert Evans relies on, and they tend to be expressed in who he brings on board to talk to.

There’s a lot of general content warning stuff of course. I mean it’s a podcast about terrible people, so sexual assault, both of adults and children comes up. Genocide is pretty common, both in the big one everyone knows about (the Holocaust) but also all the other examples of it as executed in less holistic ways. Things like schools that sought to exterminate a language, that’s genocide. An attempt to sterilise a population based on racial lines? That’s a genocide too! And of course, all the talk about White Genocide is by people who want an excuse to kill all the nonwhite people which is also genocidal. Attempts to drive people out of the country they’re living in, like the ethnic cleansing in Syria? Oh that’s genocide too.

I guess what I’m saying is: You’re going to learn a lot about awful people.

There’s a real philosophy behind what constitutes being a bastard. What does it mean to be a completely arsehole? Some people in this podcast are thoughtless and stupid and make mistakes on minor scales, that nonetheless involve doing something really bastardly. Sometimes it’s people who are important in a massive, widespread way to a whole bunch of people you have no reason to think about in your day to day life. Like did you know the dictator of Turkmenistan built a golden statue of himself, but more handsome and jacked, and made it turn to always face the sun? Weird, huh? Bet you didn’t know Turkmenistan existed before now.

The result is a really interesting kind of mix of general world history, current events, journalistic ethics, deep dives into modern political figures, and sometimes, incredibly important things that the podcast can get you started on. It’s well-sourced, consistently thorough and open about its position on such things.

But if it’s a big dense podcast, with lots of threads to work from. Where to start?

All Fertility Doctors Are Bastards | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

Watch this video on YouTube

First of all, I recommend checking out the early episodes that Evans made with Billy Wayne Davis, which centre on themes of quack medicine. Billy Wayne has a particularly drawling delivery that presents an incredible sarcasm in response to Evans’ overreach. This thread will involve talking about balls.

Then there’s the times Dr Mister Cody, former Cracked Alumnus, and Katy… not-Stoll? Oh it’s Katy Stoll? And I could go back and edit it at any time and not have this extra clause in it? But I’m not? Anyway, those two, who make the Youtube Channel Some More News. Thing is, that’s really funny, is that these three, together, made me swear off Behind the Bastards on my first impression because the first time they showed up was on an episode where they made a bunch of jokes about the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. It was in this episode that they called a ska band with multiple black members ‘the whitest band in the world,’ which I mean, look, like, Paramore? Brooks & Dunn? Most Yacht Rock? Reel Big Fish is right there.

I kidf you not, this opening of hearing them talking about Ska music as ‘the whitest thing’ just convinced me this was another group of people who huff their own farts and figure ‘if I haven’t heard of it, I can discard it as being inadequately leftist.’

Then Dicky Barrett came out as an anti-vaxxer and the Bosstones broke up over that, which, y’know, that sucks as well.

Eventually I needed some long form content and I saw there’s an early episode on King Leopold of Belgium, who sucked shit and I thought I’d check it out and give the show another chance. I’m really glad I did, I really enjoyed it!

What We Learned From Ben Shapiro's Racist Novel | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

Watch this video on YouTube

Oh yeah anyway, point is, they get in these two in to talk about reasonably current events, or going over things like Ben Shapiro’s attempts to write dramatic fiction. That’s funny!

But there’s also some more serious stuff, like roundtables and discussions of what it was like protesting the police in Portland, or the ways that outside agitators at the Unite The Right tried to manipulate leftists into giving the police an excuse. And of those, there’s my favourite, which is a two parter on the history of the Black Panthers, which was cohosted by a guy who grew up with Black Panthers in his household:

Part One: The Bastards Who Killed the Black Panthers | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

Watch this video on YouTube

If you like bastards, or more specifically if you hate bastards and want to confront the way that the world we live in is populated by and peopled by a tiny fraction of people who are complete shitheads. You get that right? Like, this isn’t ‘wow the world is fucked’ but rather ‘the ways the world are fucked are the result of people doing things, and those people are historically, underpunished and undercontrolled and maybe that doesn’t need to be permanent as a way to treat the world?

But you know, that’s just a thought.

Hey, do you own bolt cutters?

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[ephemeral--ingenue]

Does anyone else remember a period in the 90′s (and probably early 2000′s as well) where a lot of children’s media focused on the family unit being broken apart, the parents getting divorced or the parents neglecting/being emotionally abusive to the kids of the story. And it almost always resolved itself at the end. Either the parents would finally realize their kid needed their attention or understanding or the parents would get back together.

I wonder how damaging that actually was to watch as a child with divorced and abusive parents. I wonder how much I used those tropes to wait for my parents to give me compassion or get back together and made excuses for their behavior because “it will stop, at the end they’ll take accountability for how they acted” and it just never happened lol. 

This sounds really depressing so sorry if it makes anyone sad, but I really wonder, you know? And I wonder if there is anyone else out there that can relate to little kid me in this way.

[harmonictechnicality]

Eddie's Memory Log: Day 30

part 1 here | part 2 here | part 4 here | part 5 here | part 6 here

(ao3 link here)

After one whole month of documenting Eddie Munson’s semi-fucked memory levels, Steve has come across a few crucial bullet points:

Eddie never forgets his own name.

If Eddie’s pain levels are bad, so are his memories.

Eddie likes the lime jello better than the chocolate pudding, except he always forgets.

Eddie’s memory is worse after the weekend, but it gets better throughout the week.

Eddie can hum the theme songs to all of the shitty soap operas (even on bad days).

Eddie’s memory is at its best if he’s had multiple visitors the day before.

And maybe the most important bullet of them all:

Eddie always remembers three people (Wayne, Dustin, and Steve).

Memory Log: Day 31

It’s Monday, which means Steve hasn’t seen Eddie all weekend. The knuckleheads and Hellfire lemmings take the weekend shift since they don’t have school. Steve should be grateful for the time off, but he can’t help but wonder how Eddie is feeling - if he’s throwing hissy fits or being confectionery sweet to all of his guests.

The curiosity and concern has settled its way into Steve’s routine during his days off. That’s just how it is.

And that’s exactly why Mondays are becoming Steve’s (secret) favorite day, despite Eddie’s brain managing the slightest soft-reset after the weekend.

“Is he a Hyde or a Kathy today?” Steve asks the nurse at the visitor check-in counter.

He knows the majority of the staff by now, and they’ve all adopted his Eddie Behavioral Lingo. Steve is getting far too cocky about being the hospital trendsetter.

“He’s um…” the nurse's gaze drifts up to Eddie’s door.

Shit. Steve bursts into the room because he already knows exactly what that translates to.

It’s a high-pain day. Eddie affectionately calls them Grendel Days - he finally decided to play along with their lackluster literary references.

Oh yeah… Eddie remembers Beowulf

“Hey, hero.” Steve speaks in a lower volume because loud noises are brutal on days like this. “I heard that Grendel crashed the party today, huh?”

Admittedly, Steve had Dustin retell the important chunks of Beowulf to him cause there’s no way in Nerd Hell that Steve was going to read that fantasy bible of theirs.

Eddie squints one eye open to look at Steve. “That son of a bitch is trying to slice open my goddamn kidneys, I swear.”

“Should I get my nail bat?”

“You’re what?”

Damnit.

Eddie remembers zero fucking percent about their monster battles (and it’s probably best to keep it that way while he’s still recovering).

“Not important.” It is but whatever. Best to just change topics. “Can I interest you in any pain distractions?” 

“What are you gonna do exactly - open your letterman jacket and offer me a lollipop?”  Eddie snorts at his own joke before slumping over, holding his sides.

Steve wags his finger at him. “See, that is karma for being so mean to me all the time.”

“That?”

“All this pain you’re having.”

“Actually, I think it’s because I’m some type of Demonic Tinker Bell.” Eddie offers, fake coughing into his hand. “If not enough people are calling me freak, I start to die.”

It’s just a joke, but Steve is not so keen on his friends joking about things like Mortality anymore.

Still, he laughs. Plays along easily. “All hail the freak.”

Eddie stops his fake coughing fit.

“And just like that, my wings of darkness have returned.” Eddie flicks his wrist theatrically, giving Steve the weakest smile. “See? Much better.”

But it’s not Much Better. Eddie spends the rest of the visit seething with internal pains. Switchboard style - one area inflicting jolts of throbbing agony, then another. Eddie grabs wherever it hurts the most. Sometimes he can’t touch every pain point, it’s just too widespread.

Maybe Steve should… No. He’s not sure his hands could stop the hurt any better. He’s not a doctor and he’s not fucking magic. Steve is just the guy that wears offensively bright sweaters and watches Eddie’s torture spectacle from a front row seat.

They don’t talk much after that. 

Eddie can’t talk through the pain. And apparently… neither can Steve.

Memory Log: Day 35

The pain has been monstrous all week long. They’ve had to plug Eddie’s heart monitor back in because his heart rate tends to skyrocket when waves of pain hit. It used to be easy to forget that Eddie suffered anything other than head trauma.

Not anymore. Not with his room beeping like a terminal metronome at all hours.

Steve stops asking Eddie’s novel-based behavior levels because he already knows the answer. Wishes he didn’t.

“Munson?” The lights are off, which helps with Eddie’s headaches. That’s good. Less pain in his head, behind his eyes. Small victories.

“Go home.” Eddie’s breathing sounds labored.

Steve settles into his chair anyways. “Can’t.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Me neither.”

“Steve, I swear.”

“Like a sailor.”

Eddie chuckles. “Hurts to laugh.”

Seeing Eddie like this is god awful. He should be shredding on his guitar or mocking Dustin senseless for his clashing pattern combinations. He shouldn't be wrapping his arms around his torso, confining the pain that’s mangling him from the inside out.

“We’ve gotta find a way to get Grendel out of your system, man.” Steve bends down to Eddie’s eye level. “Cause this fucking blows.”

Eddie opens both eyes this time - they’re so sunken in. “… Grendel?”

Shit no.

If Eddie’s pain levels are bad, so are his memories.

Steve tries again anyway. “You know… from Beowulf?”

“Sounds cool.” Eddie eye’s close again. “Are they a band?”

Eddie doesn’t remember Beowulf.

“You think everything sounds like a band name…” Steve mumbles, ignoring the disappointment pinging in his mind.

Eddie reaches for the guitar pick on his neck - one of his bandmates brought it by a couple weeks ago. He rubs his thumb over it as if he can transfer memories through fingerprints.

“Hometown Slut.” Eddie sends a sideways smile over towards Steve. “Snatching virginities and record deals.”

Okay. Fuck. Eddie remembers inside jokes. That seems like a big fucking deal.

Steve attempts to not overreact with this revelation. Avoid another hair ruffling/thumbs-up situation. “Did you have to use the word ‘snatch’ in your weird little slogan?”

“Oh the word choice was very unavoidable, Stevie boy.”

Steve shuts the notebook, focuses on keeping Eddie distracted from his pain. “What about your band?”

“What about it?”

“Do you remem…” Steve searches for another phrase. “Do you think you can tell me the name?”

“Alright, please stop treating ‘remember’ like it’s a dirty word.” Eddie whines. “I’m not the fucking cable version of Breakfast Club. Stop censoring yourself around me.”

“Right.” Steve opens the binder back up.

Eddie doesn’t remember…

“Corroded Coffin.” 

Phew. Eddie does remember his band.

“Do you remember what instrument you play?” Steve puts emphasis on the un-censored word.

“Accordion.”

“Be serious.”

“Polka is dripping in sincerity.”

Steve pinches the skin between his eyebrows. Truly, it’s impressive that Eddie can still manage to be a massive prick, even when he’s writhing in pain. It’s like he’s going for the goddamn gold medal of assholery.

“Guitar.” Eddie dangles the pick around, somewhat peeved. “Now can we chill with the third degree for today, officer?”

Steve notices Eddie’s monitor is beeping faster than it was when he first entered the room. That sobers him up from his irritation.

“Yeah, sure.” He sighs. “No more questions for today.”

Eddie cuts him a devious look. “Well I didn’t say that now, did I?”

“Huh?”

“Oh the vapid look is not nearly as cute as you think it is.” Eddie lifts himself up slightly from his stack of pillows. He flattens them out and into a pillow wall as he sits upright. “How about I ask the questions today?”

“Why? I’m not the one who’s struggling with brain stuff.” Steve walks over to give him a hand. Eddies seems to be struggling with his strength, which is to be expected after becoming a fucking bat buffet.

“That’s debatable.” Eddie mumbles.

Steve’s close enough to feel his breath as he pushes the pillows comfortably around Eddie’s new sitting position. 

It’s not weird, the close contact or the breath. Steve has been helping Eddie with gross shit for a month - holding his hair when he starts puking or coughing up blood. Unraveling him from tubes and cords because Eddie is notorious for twisting himself into a medical straight jacket with this shit.

It’s not weird… it’s just weird how aware Steve is of Eddie’s breath. How warm and jagged it feels, even through his layered clothes.

Maybe Eddie is aware too, because he starts breathing through his nose the longer the silence is drawn out between them. Steve finally takes a step back, creates a non-breath-touching distance once again.

“Humor me then.” Eddie fills the tense pause.

Steve crosses his arms. “Don’t I always?”

“No. Usually, you aggravate me.” But see, why do Eddie’s eyes get all shimmery when he says snarky shit? And why does Steve suddenly use words like shimmery to describe Eddie Munson?

Why does it remind him of those sequined dresses that girls wear to homecoming dances when Eddie’s eyes do that shimmery thing? It’s like his mind is taking the insults and turning them into compliments, which is so bizarre.

“Steve?”

Shit, right. Say something instead of thinking about Eddie’s sequined eyes, goddamnit. “Yeah?” 

Real original, asshole.

“Just… look.” Eddie taps his fingers against this side of his bed. “There’s sharp pains shooting through every fucking limb on my body right now. I just need a distraction today - not a pop quiz.”

Yeah, Steve offered the distraction idea at the beginning of the week. But really, that’s not what he’s here to do. He’s here for the kids. He’s here to fill his jobless life with a meaningful task. Help Eddie the way he couldn’t help him in the Upside Down.

But the kids have no idea what it’s like every day. How some days, they are friendly and comfortable with one another. How some days, there’s a verbal boxing match between them - and on those days, they’re both the losers.

How some days, Steve is the one getting flustered instead of Eddie (who’s usually being called out for staring at Steve’s hair or arms or whatever else his eyes decide to fixate on).

Nobody else knows how many climates this hospital room can hold. Nobody besides Steve and Eddie.

“Fine.” Steve decides after mulling it over for far too long. “I’ll be your distraction.”

“Careful, Steve.” Eddie breaks the non-breath-touching distance, poking Steve’s wrist. “You almost sound flattered.”

“Hardly.” Bad time to bring up the word hard - when they’re seesawing between taunts and flirtations. Thank god for the binder Steve’s holding, obscuring any part of his anatomy that could potentially betray his coolness at the moment.

“Go ahead, Munson.” Steve backs away from Eddie’s touch. “Ask your questions.”

Eddie runs the entire thing as if he were a late night talk show host. Uses his hospital side table as his interview desk. Pretends his empty jello container is his microphone. Calls Steve his ‘special guest’ the whole time. Steve scoots his chair right next to Eddie’s bed, just to keep up the talk show charade. 

An hour into it, they’re both feeding off one another’s energy and attention. Steve can tell by the way Eddie’s fingers unclench from his sides and his teeth stop gritting together, that his pain is subsiding - or perhaps it’s no longer at the focal point of his mind. His heart monitor is at a tempo that seems ideal - less fast and less choppy. More like a ballad than a pop song.

Eddie’s questions range from common to outright strange. He asks Steve shit like, ‘what’s your favorite breakfast food?’ And then follows it up with, ‘okay - but if you could only eat scrambled eggs for dinner, would they still be your favorite breakfast? Or does time of day play a vital role in your food preferences?’

“Does it fucking matter?” Steve rolls his eyes. More than annoyed by Eddie’s constant need to play devil’s advocate.

“Nothing matters, Harrington.” Eddie replies. “And please stop answering my questions with more questions. This isn’t a goddamn improv game.”

Eddie remembers how to be a pain in the ass.

Steve doesn’t write it down, doesn’t really need to. “What the hell is an improv game?”

“I swear to Johnny Carson, I’ll kick you off my show.”

“Whatever.” Steve isn’t any less confused, but what’s new. “I guess time of day does matter a little bit.”

“Ha! Knew it. You’re so predictable.”

“And you’re a fucking handful.”

“That’s high praise coming from such an esteemed guest of the show.” Eddie’s hand is splayed over his chest, over his heart. The heart that’s beating like a ballad and not a pop song according to his monitor.

Okay stop.

Steve knows this is a game. A shtick. So why is his face heating up? Why are his palms sweatier than they were twenty minutes ago? Why does Steve keep wondering what Eddie’s eyelashes feel like against his cheek when he flutters them in that overly dramatic way?

The clock interrupts his questioning. Probably for the best.

They exchange goodbyes. Eddie always gets a little concerned that Steve might not show up again. Steve always tucks his bitchiness away to reassure Eddie that he’ll be back on Monday.

It’s their routine. Not just Steve’s routine. It’s theirs now.

Memory Log: Day 38

It’s Monday. Soft-reset day. Steve’s new favorite day.

“Hey, Steve.” One of the nurses stops him on his way to Eddie’s room. 

Her name is Sam - Steve likes Sam the best because she lets him stay longer on days when Eddie feels his shittiest. She also gives him gum to help with his nerves. 

Hospitals do that sometimes. They just activate his nerves like glow sticks. Snapping and crackling the radioactive colors that make his stomach churn.

Anyways, the gum helps.

“What’s up?” Steve asks.

“Just wondering,” Sam gives him a pleasant smile. “Do we have a code for Eddie’s good days?”

“Good days?” They don’t hear that phrase often around here. “I don’t think so.”

“Maybe you should think of one.” She starts flipping through some files. “He’s been in great spirits for three days now.”

Three days? Steve rarely gets three hours of Eddie being in great spirits. The guy is a perpetual ghoul, so this is definitely something to celebrate.

Steve makes a pit stop to the vending machine. Grabs them a couple of root beers and candy bars for the occasion. Look, it’s not champagne and hors d’oeuvres, but it’ll suffice. Besides, Eddie doesn’t strike him as a ritzy kind of dude anyways. He’d probably make some joke like, ‘you mean to tell me that a whore made these d’ouevres?’

Jesus christ, Steve’s been hanging out with Eddie for too long.

“There’s my favorite lady killer.” Eddie is already grinning as Steve walks in the door. 

Still remembers Steve is a Hometown Slut (of all the things that would stick to his brain… why that?)

“Seriously, you look sharp today.”

Steve’s knees lock at the compliment. “Um. Thanks. So do you.”

And the crazy part is, he means that. There’s a peachy color returning back to Eddie’s skin. The bags under his eyes are a faded gray instead of an Almost Black. 

And his hair. Eddie’s hair is actually untangled. His curls are fluffed out, sort of feathery at the ends. Maybe somebody trimmed all of the dead pieces off because it looks... Well, it looks nice.

Steve kind of hates to admit that.

“Guessing your pain levels are better?”

“You guess right.” Eddie nods. “Whatever meds they gave me Friday night finally kicked Grendel’s lousy ass.”

Eddie remembers Beowulf again.

“Glad to hear it.” Steve is trying to process how great things are going. Eddie’s complexion. Eddie’s memories. It’s never this clear on Mondays. Steve tries to just be grateful to have a day like this, but he can’t help but wonder why.

Why now?

“Eggs for breakfast?” Eddie is fiddling with his necklace again.

Steve jerks his head up. “You… didn’t forget?”

“Don’t get too excited.” Eddie gestures to Steve’s pants. “Because I wish I could forget those ridiculous khakis that you always wear on Mondays.”

“Shit, really?”

“What’s the deal with that anyways?” Eddie’s nose scrunches up at the question. “Laundry day or something?”

“I…” Yes.

“Or do you think your ass just looks better in lighter colors?”

“Well…” Also yes.

Eddie winks. “Looks like your ability to complete a sentence is just as fucked as my memory, huh Stevie?”

Steve nervously runs his hands through his hair. “This is just a lot to process, sorry.”

And it is. Steve starts jotting everything down before he starts to forget:

Eddie remembers Steve’s favorite breakfast food.

Eddie remembers Steve wearing khakis on previous Mondays.

Eddie remembers Steve’s Memory Fucked inside joke.

Eddie remembers a shit ton about Steve.

Eddie remembers.

Very lightly, Steve scribbles on the corner of the page:

Eddie notices Steve’s ass…

The rest of the visit is pretty awesome, one of the best ones they’ve ever had. Eddie recalls practically everything from Friday, which is blowing Steve’s mind. They talk about his visit with Dustin on Sunday, and how excited Eddie is to see Wayne on Thursday. Steve doesn’t even bother with taking more notes because Eddie remembers it all.

They talk like real friends today. Friends that occasionally notice other friend’s asses or get lost in their sequined eyes, but still. It’s somewhere in the ballpark of friends, right? Whatever it is, it’s better than ripping each other apart with insults. That’s gotta count for something.

Eddie falls asleep an hour before visiting hours are over. He falls asleep still smiling from the last joke he told before dozing off. Steve studies his facial features because he can finally see more of them (Eddie’s bangs were trimmed too, thank god). 

He’s still pretty banged up. Cuts that overlap and bruises that change gradient the further up they spread. As if the softer parts of Eddie are still freshly wounded. That’s not how it works, Steve has been beaten up enough to know that people don’t bruise like fruit. Not really.

Steve can just see more of Eddie now, which is proving to be a dangerous road to travel down. Way too many detours to let his mind wander. Think. Overthink.

He thinks Eddie is attractive. That’s the detour he’s taking tonight. And if this person didn’t already occupy so much space in his mind, that detour might be more shocking to him. But it’s barely registering on the shock-meter.

Eddie’s unharmed features are highlighted in attractiveness against the purples and grays and reds. It’s almost impossible not to notice that he’s attractive when his face has this many colors. This much character.

Steve doesn’t know what’s going on. This could all be his exhaustion kicking in. Or maybe Eddie’s great spirits has twisted Steve’s outlook on things. Or maybe it’s an illusion from the Better Day they’ve shared together.

The only clear answer that Steve has right now is that Eddie remembers him. And that fucking means something.

Steve stops by to tell Sam the good news on his way out.

“I think he’s getting better.”

Sam nods once. “He definitely feels better, I’ll give you that.”

“Sure, but…” Steve begins. “I think his memory is getting better too. He remembers the littlest details about me.”

“Steve.”

“That’s huge, right?” Steve is so awestruck. “Like… I don’t know, Sam. Maybe he’ll get to go home soon.”

She doesn’t respond right away. Her eyes just keep shifting between Steve and Eddie’s door.

“I think I need to show you something.”

That can’t be good. Her tone is very, ‘speak with me after class, young man.’

They quietly walk back into Eddie’s room. Sam motions her head for Steve to approach Eddie’s bedside. Cautiously, Steve does.

She gently pulls back Eddie’s thin blanket, and Steve feels the air vacate his fucking lungs.

Eddie’s arms. There’s tape and IVs and tattoos and scars - all of the usual stuff. 

But then there’s writing. Eddie is covered in black ink, scribbled notes filling in all the gaps of his pale skin. Steve can’t make out most of the words - it’s all messy.

But there’s one word he spots over and over again.

‘Steve.’

It’s all messy, sure. But it’s all about him.

“Holy shit.” Steve whispers, quickly looking towards Sam. “Sorry, didn’t mean to swear.”

“No, that’s an appropriate response.” Of course she’d be cool about him swearing.

Without waking up Eddie, he begins to decipher the notes as best as he can: 

Scrambled eggs. Extra hold hairspray. Hyde or Kathy. Yellow sweater. Khakis on Mondays.

There are notes on things they haven’t talked about as well. Things that Eddie has just observed:

Steve visits Mon-Fri.

Steve laughs at all of your jokes, even the mean ones.

Steve applies chapstick when he’s nervous.

Steve will untangle your wires without making it weird.

The name Steve no longer sounds the same after reading it fifteen times over.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie.” Sam places a hand on Steve’s back. “It’s not that he’s remembering everything again.”

“Oh.”

“He just doesn’t want to forget you.”

No. That can’t be right. That can’t be possible. Of course Eddie knows who Steve is. Of course he does.

Steve finds a shitty excuse to get the hell out of this place. He’s polite about it because Sam is a kindhearted person, but this is so fucking unfair. Every last bit of it, down the last ink stain on Eddie’s nondominant arm.

Max isn’t awake. Eddie still has a skim-milk memory. Nothing has gotten better?

Well that shit ends today. Because whatever detour Steve’s mind discovered tonight, it’s leading him down a fucking freeway of tenacity. He’s fueled by whatever attraction or feelings he’s developing for Eddie. Whether it’s friendship or something more, it really doesn’t matter. Not after tonight.

Steve just cares about Eddie way too much to let his mind rot away like this. He’s too close, too connected to the problem to let it go unsolved forever.

As soon as Steve gets home, he calls Robin.

“Really, dingus?” Robin answers the phone like that. Annoyed and groaning already. “It’s late and I’m neck-deep in a John Hughes marathon.”

“It’s about Eddie.” Steve gets right to it.

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh fuck.” She exhales loudly. “How can I help?”

“You’re friends with his bandmates, right?”

“Yeah, kinda. Why?”

Steve flips through the memory log. Locates one of his crucial bullet points:

Eddie can hum the theme songs to all of the shitty soap operas (even on bad days).

“I need you to ask them to make a mixtape of Eddie’s favorite songs.” Steve requests. “And it should be in chronological order. From stuff he liked as a kid, to stuff he’s into now.”

“Okay…” Robin pauses. “And you think this will help?”

“I don’t know.” Which is true, it could be a big waste of time. “But I’ve gotta try something.”

This might be dumb. But music helped them defeat(ish) Vecna. So there’s a possibility it could massage the knots in Eddie’s mind. Relax him enough to remember his life. All of it.

“Oh, and one more thing.” Steve adds before hanging up.

“What?”

Steve hits the accelerator on his freeway of tenacity.

“I need my fucking car back.”

[starlightcleric]

Next Steps

Started off as a prompt fill idea that veered off course, so I’m claiming it for @owlcatober 2022 Day 31: Searching.

Fandom: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous

Relationships: Commander/Woljif

Other: sexual themes

What exactly do you do after you’ve already accomplished the impossible?

Also on AO3

-

The first thing I did upon getting back to Drezen after closing the Worldwound was get rip roaring drunk. Not that I usually need an excuse. I am part of Cayden Cailean’s clergy, after all. This just seemed like a particularly good one.

Enough other people agreed with this being a good idea that we had quite the party going on. Fye was certainly making good money tonight. Which would hopefully counteract the mess we were making.

My memories are a bit hazy, but I found myself dancing on top of the table with Thaberdine, having a grand old time until I slipped on a spoon and took a tumble.

“Gotcha–ahck.” Woljif tried to catch me, but being taller and heavier than he is, my momentum just sent both of us crashing to the ground to the laughter of everyone around us.

“Why, hello there,” I said, twisting a finger through a lock of his hair.

Woljif coughed from under me. “Not to be a buzzkill, but I think you’ve prooobably had enough.”

“I’ve only had…” I tried to count, but numbers were hard. “Lots.” I pushed myself up. “Okay, maybe, yeah.”

The crowd, done with us, had turned their attention to a drinking competition between Seelah and Nenio (for science). Considering I thought Seelah might be immune to hangovers and Nenio could forget being drunk, I was not laying any money anywhere near that.

Woljif wrapped an arm around my waist under my wings and guided me towards the door.

“Wait,” I tried to turn back. “I need to pay my tab.”

“It’s fine, Poetry.”

“Did you cover it?”

“Uh…” he scratched the back of his head.

“Woljif.” I stopped walking. “Look, I’ve stolen a lot of things in my life–we stole some WMDs from the merfolk once–but I never, ever steal from barkeeps. I think I’d lose my spell slots.”

“Fine, fine.” He tossed a pouch of coins over to Fye on the counter, who caught it with a nod. “Now can we get you to bed?” He steered me out the door.

“Hmmm,” I leaned over to nibble on his ear. “So that’s your motive, is it?” 

Someone wolf whistled. Even this late, there were still people out on the street. Evidently the party in Drezen was more widespread than just the tavern.

Woljif laughed nervously. “I think you’re a bit far gone for that, chief. How about some nice sleep?”

I blinked at him, tripping on my own feet. This did not compute in my fuzzy brain. Usually, when I was drunk was when people did want to have sex with me. And there was a whisper in the back of my brain that said I could walk back into that tavern and find someone to share my bed for the night, the fun way.

But that would hurt Woljif. And should I throw away my chance with the boy that would still be there in the morning for some temporary pleasure? And when did I get sentimental?

“Being responsible sucks,” I muttered. “And here I was wondering how I had suddenly become the responsible one,” said Woljif. “When did I sign up for that?”

“When you took up with the divine agent of chaos,” I kissed his cheek, sending both of us stumbling. “If I can’t have sex, I at least demand cuddles.”

He squeezed my waist. “Can do.”

-

I woke up with the worst headache. I mean, every headache feels like the worst headache, but this was pretty bad. Swearing under my breath with spots in front of my eyes, I sat up, extracting myself from the limbs of a sleeping Woljif. Lesser restoration was enough of a relief that I was able to see straight again.

The room was basically the same as when I left it for Threshold. Clothes on the floor, papers on the desk, the closet slightly ajar–

I had to get out of this room and away from that stupid closet. After pulling myself out of bed and quietly putting on some comfy clothes–I think that shirt might have once belonged to Pierre, that’s awkward. Well, he’s not going to want it back now with the giant hole in the back for my wings–I tiptoed out into the hallway and softly closed the door behind me, trying not to wake Woljif. I leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief. After not going through with the Council’s stupid plan with the cauldron, I really didn’t want to talk to them again. Ever.

I winced with the pangs of my headache still threatening to press back against my skull. Fresh air. Fresh air would help. I made my way down the hallway, through the command room to the balcony. The sun was just starting to rise.

That Council. All my other councils. Sweet barely brew, Galfrey was going to want a detailed report.

Too much. Too, too much.

The deed was done, my part was spent, my soul was saved (again). It was time to get out of here.

I looked out over Drezen. I had accomplished a lot in this town. There was a lot I would miss, the people the most, but I could already feel myself begin to vibrate with the thrill of a new journey.

“There you are, chief,” followed by a large yawn. I turned my head to see Woljif’s mop of curls in the doorway. “Didn’t you party a little hard to get up this gods damned early?” He approached to lean against the balcony edge next to me. He was still shirtless and my eyes wandered down his chest, then farther down–

“It’s time to leave,” I said, pulling my thoughts back up the loop. “How does Vudra sound? That’s where I was headed before I wound up, well, here. I only made it as far as Jalmeray. Or Qadira? Or maybe all the way to the Dragon Empires?”

“Wha…?” Woljif stared at me, dumbstruck.

“I just can’t do this anymore,” I said. “I’ve been here too long. This is the longest I’ve stayed anywhere in my adult life. Because I’ve had to. But we won. Galfrey can clean up the mess; it’s her country.”

“If, if that’s what you want.” His voice cracked and he turned his face away from me, folding in on himself. “I’ve still got my thiefling contacts, I can start again there. Or maybe Daeran’ll give me a place to stay–”

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait,” I interrupted him. “Are you not coming with me?”

“Oh, uh.” Woljif relaxed, turning back to me now. “I, well, I’ve never left Mendev before. The Abyss aside. Hell, I’d barely left Kenabres before… all of this happened.” He awkwardly ran a hand through his messy curls. “But, yeah. I love you, Poetry. I don’t want to lose this. I’ll come along if you’ll have me.” He gave me the biggest puppy dog eyes.

My chest tightened and I had to look down. I still hadn’t said it back yet. It was a permanency I hadn’t been able to face. Previously, whenever things had gotten too serious, too comfy, I ran. And it would be so easy to leave Woljif behind. To not face whatever this was. To just pack a small bag and skedaddle in the early morning light.

But if that’s really what I wanted, I would’ve been gone already.

“Yeah,” I smiled over at him, hoping I hadn’t paused for too long. “Of course. How’d you like to meet my dad?”

[demetriandelibinaryboyfriends]

WELP, I have in fact not yet finished my Episode 10 review, so today y’all get a moodboard instead :P

Look, you can’t just give me Canon Purple Hawk, and then...what??? NOT expect me to moodboard it???

Lowkey been wanting to make a purple-themed moodboard for these dudes for a while now (what better combination of Red Gay and Blue Gay???), but I was waiting to see if I’d get an actual purple-mohawked Hawk to pepper it with. AND SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH, HERE WE ACTUALLY ARE

I swear, Purple Hair Eli was one of the few things S4 gave me, and then of course they immediately took him away again D: I hope he dyes it back when it grows out, because it looked rad af!!! For the five minutes we got it, at least ;____;

Also have I mentioned how hysterical it is that Cobra Kai deadass dyed this man’s hair the most iconically gay color in existence AND has canonically dyed his hair ALL the colors of the bisexual pride flag, and they still tell us with complete seriousness that he is just a normal heterosexual dude who only likes kissing women??? Absolutely insane. Like do they NOT realize the insanely queer implications that purple hair has or

Also speaking as a bisexual who once dyed my entire head of hair cyan...if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the hair-dyeing scene, it’s that NO ONE who dyes their hair bright-ass colors like Hawk does is straight. NO ONE. I have never met one person with colored hair Like That who is not queer in some way, and I would testify this in a court of law. It’s like...so widespread among the LGBT+ community that it’s become essentially an accepted “I’m Not Cishet” signal. Yet ANOTHER reason why dyeing this man’s hair bright purple and then claiming he does not want to kiss any men is a truly outrageous and honestly not at all believable writing choice. Anyways Cobra Kai, let this fucker come out of the closet PLEASE. Anyways, more purple moodboards for these lads coming up soon!

Pic credits available upon request!

[peenalize]

Okay the fishtank chronicles made a post and as they requested no one directly interact with them on that post I'm going to respect their wishes, but that doesn't mean I have nothing to say about this.

Brief warning going forward, I will be swearing and I may sound aggressive at times. If that is off-putting to you then my blog is not the place for you. It has nothing to do with how "wrong" or "angry" I am, it's simply the way I operate and think.

Firstly, I'm going to start by debunking or at least attempting to debunk one or two of their linked sources. I don't have the time nor patience to debunk them all but I've linked them in case you want to see them and formulate arguments against them for yourself.

Starting off with the 1st article. After giving it a quick read I've decided it's complete and utter bullshit! For those of you who don't have the patience to read it I'll summarize for you. It essentially says that many people experience a phenomenon of hearing a character's voice in their head and feeling like a fictional character.

I'd like to say: this is completely normal and has nothing to do with personality. Oftentimes characters you're attached to will follow you throughout your day-to-day life and they'll be on your mind. Simply day dreaming about a character, imagining them with you, or hearing their voice is not sufficient evidence an alter has formed nor is it grounds to call it "plurality." Though excessive amounts of hearing a characters voice, believing yourself to be them, or fantasizing about them may be indicative of psychotic disorders of MADD.

The other articles are too long for my attention span to allow me to read but if any of you wish to feel free to reblog with your own additions and rebuttals.

We'll start with their first argument against sysmeds: saying that we're cruel, abusive, or exclusionary. While how you view us is up to you and I won't deny many anti-endos engage in harassment I also want you to realise that endos abuse and harass traumagenics too.

Just take a look at tubendos blog and see how many posts they have dedicated to mocking and harassing people. Or this ask @/bitter-bloodbank received. Sure it may only be two examples and not sufficient evidence to prove this is a widespread issue but it does prove my point that endos are just as guilty of harassment and abuse as "sysmeds."

As for the argument that sysmeds are all children I'd like to say that's also bullshit! I'm the youngest anti-endo that I'm aware of? I only have 4 real anti-endos I see often in the syscourse tag or keep up with, two of which being bodily adults and the others bodily 17, just shy of being an adult. I won't get too much into that part though because I don't want this to transform into your word against mine.

But even so, if a ton of sysmeds are young why does that matter? Many endos/endo supporters are also relatively young and endo spaces appeal to a young demographic with their pastel MOGAI-esque themes.

Moving onto your main argument in addressing that sysmeds are largely young. You have no argument here other than "you are hurting people because you're traumatized" which is gross? You're doing nothing but weaponizing our traumas against us and trying to appeal to our feels which is honestly, fucked up. I won't call it manipulative because I'm not that bitch but be aware behaviors like this can be read as manipulative.

Honestly? That whole section felt more infantilizing and condescending than anything. It wasn't an argument, in fact it was nothing more than "oh you poor grumpy baby let's get you a snack and a nap." Like? If you can't formulate a proper argument and need to dumb down the opponent and act like they're some young naive child making mistakes to make a point, maybe don't try making one?

Next, our possessiveness over our spaces. This is just natural? We're a group of mentally ill people who've faced severe trauma, obviously we're going to be possessive of our safe spaces. Being young, or having no control in life has nothing to do with that.

But also if you aren't traumatized yourself or claim to not have trauma or "be different" then you have no business being in this space. It's not meant for you. We have repeatedly asked endos to make their own communities separate from us as they are not the same as us. We don't ask you vanish, we simply ask you move elsewhere.

"A lot of you will feel ashamed of the shit you've said!" Okay, but some of us aren't being hateful? We're simply trying to exist in our own spaces we have every right to. The same can be said of endos. You'll feel ashamed one day when you look back at the harm you've caused to a group of mentally ill people and how you tried to make it aesthetic and palatable. Again, you have no real argument here. You're throwing words at the wall in hopes they stick.

Not to mention comparing a group of literal trauma survivors, many of which are victims of abuse to abusers for not wanting their space invaded and wanting their own safe space is gross. You don't need to empathize with us or even understand us but that does not make it okay to compare us to people who've hurt us.

Our goal is not to destroy others. We want to create a safe space for ourselves and if it means fighting back and hurting those who hurt us, we'll do so. We're not trying to hurt anyone, that's just what endos tell themselves to feel oh-so-holier than thou.

So what have we learned? Some of y'all will really say any shit you want to feel righteous and justified rather than listening and actually attempting to educate yourself on your opponents stance or a trauma disorder.

Also! If your blog has been linked and you wish to have it removed let me know and I'll remove it for you!

[beetlemancy]

Violence against young kids is a pretty huge trigger for a lot of ppl though. I think even D20 put up a content warnings for that in one of their seasons. There is a difference between wanting an extremely common and widespread trigger like that tagged compared to something like cw: geese. I’ve never been triggered by anything in CR, but it seems like they’re a little behind the ball on this. Even TVMA shows on actual TV give basic content warnings at the top (violence, swearing, drugs, etc.).

It reminds me of how slow they were to get professional captioning. Not like super bad or anything, but later than a lot of their contemporaries. F@tT uses content warnings for a whole bunch of stuff, so it’s not absurd to have a real play tabletop show do that kind of stuff on a basic level. Obviously I’m not going to scream at the cast on Twitter about it, but I think it’s be nice to either get an official “we don’t do content warnings” message from CR company or just like an official policy of some kind. (If that exists and I’ve just never seen it, uh, my bad)

I don’t think it’s a huge deal, but it also doesn’t seem fair to write it all off as classic fandom entitlement.

Well, first of all, THEY were not slow to getting captioning. Legendary was. This is blatant misinformation that continues to permeate this fandom. As soon as CR was their own company, captions were made a priority. This needs to stop being erased because its a source of constant nonsense in this fandom.

Also, I never said that TW “kid death” would be difficult - I was specifically referring to the many, many tweets asking for EVERY episode to list EVERY possible trigger. I literally said that I have zero issues with people going through proper channels to request a different approach (as in, more than what is already on the CR official site). By the way, since apparently this will keep coming up, here is what that site says specifically:

[img description: CR’s FAQ page Is Critical Role kid-friendly? Our shows are intended for adult audiences and you may want to watch an episode or show first and then decide if its appropriate for the little ones in your life. A note about content warnings - Due to the improv nature of Critical Role and other RPG content on our channels, some themes and situations that occur in-game may be difficult for some to handle. If certain episodes or scenes become uncomfortable, we strongly suggest taking a break or skipping that particular episode. Your health and well-being is important to us and Psycom has a great list of international mental health resources here, in case its useful.]

As a sidenote, you can also find out more information about CR’s captioning services via that FAQ as well. Link is HERE. 

[the-wonderous-wolf-spider]

Okay… lets try this again.

“Well damn uh… how do I go about this? This working? Oh shit- yep, yes it is.

I’m good with technology I swear. I work with teenagers.

Hello widespread multiverse! The name’s Jesse Benson Foster. Pronouns are he/him/his. Or as everyone else knows me as, “The Wondrous Wolf Spider” or just The Wolf Spider. I know, stupid name… geez…

Anyways, happy to be here! Happy to help any of you or just chat with you and hopefully offer some assistance when needed. Enough rambling, I’ll tell you a bit more about myself yeah?

Well, I’m a football coach at Westview High for the Westview Wolves. Used to be a professional football player, was pretty popular until I retired early to teach. I don’t wish to be that cheesy guy but working with the boys really did help me grow as a person outside of crime fighting. I love helping them in anyway I can. Mentally, emotionally, physically… I just want to be there.

Some of my powers are speed uh, agility, I can shoot webs out of my wrists? Pretty cool, don’t need any mechanism to do it for me it sort of just uh… comes out…. Only at the wrists… uh I can also control time! Yeah…. Not sure why yet but uh I can. Wonky stuff though, eh, don’t recommend. Oh! And of course spidey sense or as uh… my brother used to call it my spidey tingle heh.

Anyways I uh can’t wait to meet all of you… hope to see you all more often soon. Bye.”

WARNING: Please be aware that some lore posts on this blog will contain some mature and dark themes like death, depression, greif, major injuries, and other sensitive topics in depth. Though not always mentioned, it’s heavily implied most of the time. The proper trigger warnings will be posted on each lore post depending on the severity of each topic and how it is handled.

Ooc: Hello there! Just a heads up that any lore posted about Jesse will be under #Jesse B. Foster Lore. This will include any updates and lore chapters. They will all be numbered so you can read in chronological order. :D

Side Blogs:

@symbiote-siblings (symbiote sonas)

@the-carnage-of-new-york-city (symbiote oc)

@the-tangle-web (spider oc)

[qqueenofhades]

How was yellow journalism at the turn of the 19th century different then the fake news and media insanity we see today? Do you know? It seems like this has been going on for a really long time.

And you would be correct, because this has in fact been going on for a very long time (indeed, much further back than the 19th century) and is essentially the basic practice of history: figuring out how to understand, vet, classify, believe, and treat the stories that humans tell about themselves. Or as that musical that came out the other day put it: “you have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.” We’re all just telling stories about things constantly, and we all want people to believe our story and treat it as the best version. Some of these stories are more fictional (and more harmful) than others, but it’s been going on for as long as there have been people.

(Or: “A Brief History of Fake News” follows below. If it doesn’t make sense, blame the fact that I had to rewrite half of it after Tumblr ate it.)

Globalization and the 24-hour news media has made it possible for “fake news” narratives to become transnational: in other words, no matter where you are in the world or what country you’re originally from, you can use some of the same content, techniques, arguments, or beliefs. For example, coronavirus deniers, no matter where they are in the world, can use the same stable of arguments: it’s fake, it’s a Chinese lab conspiracy, it’s a political stunt, it’s not that bad, you shouldn’t wear a mask, etc. They are drawing from the same essential pool of content and replicating the same themes in their particular contexts. Obviously, everyone has instant access to these narratives now and we are seeing the large-scale and damaging effects, because they can be amplified to a degree unheard-of in human history thanks to social media, TV, phones, etc, but also: it’s what humans have been doing since, well, forever.

A caveat I often have to give undergraduate students, when introducing them to medieval chronicle sources, is that they’re subjective -- that is, they’re more interested in promoting one individual, kingdom, religious viewpoint, version of events, etc, rather than aiming for an inclusive and “real” version of how things went by taking into account the experiences and arguments of all sides. This is obviously disingenuous, because it suggests that modern historians don’t do this, that they just objectively report “real facts” and there is no human bias or agenda at work in producing the result. This reflects the influence of Leopold von Ranke, a 19th-century German historian who is often viewed as the founder of the modern critical source-based historiographical method. He was a proponent of the idea that historians had to “describe the past as it actually happened,” i.e. they had to select the correct facts and build an objective narrative so that people could discover the One True Version of reality. Of course, you may realize that you.... can’t actually do that.

Historians still have to select which facts they report, how a “fact” is constructed to start with, what methodology they use, what conclusions they draw, what they focus on, what moral lessons or overall takeaways they present for their audience, etc. This reflects the 19th century’s effort to make history similar to hard science: they liked the idea that there was one single methodology that would reveal an empirically provable single ideal, that there was no human agency or bias that would influence this narrative, and the facts would magically assemble themselves into one central version that everyone would agree upon. Except this still isn’t and has never been the way it works. Historians, as human agents, mediate and manage and influence the facts they use and the conclusions they draw from sources, and it’s our job to figure out which ones are more valid and which ones are not. It’s a system of collective memory, and as I’ve said before, that collective memory is always particularly susceptible to what people (especially the rich and powerful people, who install the version of history that the rest of us learn) want to remember. This rarely includes their flaws, or things that show them to be wrong, or any challenge to their status.

Prior to the invention of film/TV/audiovisual methods in the 19th century (and since they didn’t become commercial or widespread until the 20th), everything we know about human history before that, we know because someone wrote it down. In the Western tradition, the ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides are often viewed as the “fathers” of history, because they deliberately assembled a curation of (allegedly) empirical facts in a constructed narrative with a self-stated historiographical purpose. They also make use of what, in fancy academic-speak, we might call the “topos of authority.” Every single historian has been aware that they have to provide some way for their reader to independently verify their content, or decide to believe what they’re saying against a competing version. In the olden days, they often did this by self-certifying: “I swear that everything I write here is true/I heard only from wise and trustworthy people/I spoke to an eyewitness of these events/I read a book by such-and-such authority.” But just because they SAY these things doesn’t mean they’re true, and no modern historian can take this at face value: they can’t just say, “well, my source said they were telling the truth, so that’s good enough for me.” They have to supplant with other accounts, they have to perform textual criticism and close reading, they have to find other pieces of evidence to compare. Because in a sense, all of history might be fake news. We just have to figure out which parts those are, and sometimes that’s not even the point, because it’s impossible.

For example: take the sixth-century Byzantine court historian Procopius, who wrote about the reigns of the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian (r. 527-65) and Empress Theodora (r. 527-48). All of his official accounts of them are largely positive and flattering. But Procopius is probably best known for a work called the Secret History, where he rips into them as horrible awful people, relates lurid sexual scandals (especially about Theodora), dishes on all the bad things they did behind the scenes, so on and etc. This means that historians have been arguing ever since about which versions of Justinian and Theodora -- indeed, Procopius’s own versions of them -- we’re supposed to believe. If you want to read the Secret History, which you can do at the link above and which you should because it has amusing chapter titles like “Proving That Justinian and Theodora Were Actually Fiends in Human Form” and “How Justinian Killed a Trillion People,” you’ll come across this unrelentingly negative depiction of them, and... what? Is this a (somewhat) accurate account of the darker side of Justinian and Theodora’s bad behavior, written by an embittered Procopius after he fell out of royal favor? Is it just a total hatchet job? Was it written purely in case there was a palace coup, so Procopius could hand it to the new emperor and be like “see, I totally didn’t like those losers either, you can rely on me” and didn’t represent his actual views on the imperial couple at all? You can  already see the problem if the idea is, a la von Ranke, to prove “what really happened.” Almost nobody treats the Secret History as a straightforward factual document, but they also disagree about how truthful it is, why, for what reasons, and whether it is, in fact, even a History per se.

To return (belatedly) to the idea of newspapers and yellow journalism particularly. I would say that there was no more significant event in all of human history (well, maybe a few, but not many) than the invention of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. It instantly and permanently transformed the way humans acquired, stored, recalled, and learned knowledge, and it lasted (and is still lasting) even in the face of smartphones and internet. Once books were no longer rare, labor-intensive, and expensive, their use exploded, it became standard practice to publish your research (by the sixteenth century, this was already happening), to learn from a book, to use other books in constructing your knowledge, and thus to encounter these narratives. The other architecture of a culture of public and general literacy developed along with it, until it was the primary medium in which all people, not just the rich and educated, learned about things. Newspapers and books and pamphlets and other printed material intensely drove the revolutions of the eighteenth century, both in America and in Europe. And obviously, these weren’t trying to tell “both sides of the story.” It became standard practice to publish your manifestos, your papers, your essays and arguments, all your supporting documents, and you were trying to convince people to your side for concrete political reasons.

So by the time you get to the 19th century, you’ve had literal CENTURIES of people deciding what they want to believe, what’s beneficial for them to believe, their viewpoint on the world, etc. Except as we discussed above re: our friend Leopold von Ranke, the 19th century develops the idea of “scientific objectivity.” Of course, in the social sciences, this often gets applied (pause for sighing) to support the idea that there is a real racial hierarchy, that western European white men are the best not because they said so, but because it’s science, it’s provable, it’s not just an opinion, It Is Trufax. Newspapers, books, and other printed material are widely available to everyone, and the 19th century is making claims to universal truth that can be discovered and applied in all disciplines, but which is just a continuation of the same subjective storytelling as before, now elevated to the status of Unimpeachable Truth. Yellow journalism isn’t really that different from what humans have always done in crafting a narrative that supports their purposes and the story they want to tell (or that they think will sell papers, because people have an endless appetite for secrets, scandals, and drama, especially if they think there is a conspiracy, real or fake, to hide it from them). They just have different tools for doing it. Of course in the 21st century, we now have journalistic ethics and a set of standards and codes of conduct for how you’re supposed to write these things, and we have respected publications that do all that, but we also still have tabloid media, when the relationship with the facts is... tenuous, at best. These institutions and tendencies never go away. They just evolve.

I realize that this was a long and rather dull ramble about the origins of historiography, but the point is this: “fake news” is literally as old as humanity and history itself, and humans have always been predisposed to select and believe the narrative that personally benefits them, fits with their ideology, makes sense of events in the way they feel is most compelling, and so on. It’s just now in the hyperconnected 21st century, “fake news” can go instantly around the globe and be exposed to anyone with an internet connection. This is not helped, as I talked about in my “death of expertise” ask, by a public forum where everybody’s contributions supposedly have to be treated “equally,” in the name of “fairness,” no matter whether someone knows anything about the topic or not. So the impact of this tendency to believe whatever the hell anyone wants has been magnified far past what has ever been the case in history before, because no matter what someone wrote or believed in the pre-internet era, they didn’t have the multi-million-exponential ability to reach absolutely everybody at once. Even print books have to be printed, circulated, purchased, read, etc, and that takes time and money, rather than just instantly having it appear on your smartphone. And we are obviously seeing the real-world consequences of that as a result.

[hysteriium]

Dazzling Devil;

(A/N): I made this for @jokerfleckk​ because she had an amazing idea and I couldn’t resist???? Also just want to say @pennyship​ is my BABE AND I LOVE HER SM FOR GOING OVER THIS BEFORE I POSTED!

Summary: Literally rewrote the whole Murray sequence lol rip. 

Pairing: Joker x reader

Warnings: smutty themes (not entirely), violence, swearing! 

////

Anxiously, you tugged at the threading of your dress. The loose strings which, although hidden for the most part, twisted between your relentless digits, acting as an escape from the simmering pressure of your surroundings. Though, as the enthusiastic, high-spirited melody of the live band, to your right, resonated in one explosive blow, this momentary retreat was short-lived. 

“We’re back with our guest, Dr. (L/n)!” 

His introduction speedily brought you back to reality, and you promptly dropped the hem of your dress, eyes snapping towards him. 

“Now!” Murray paused, immediately, turning to you.

His expression was beaming as he leaned forward in his chair, “you gotta see our next guest for yourself. Will you stick around? Maybe you can help, I’m pretty sure he could use a doctor.”

“Oh,” you paused, brows furrowing, “does he have sexual problems?” 

“He looks like he’s got a lot of problems.” Murray retorted, and you internally cringed at his mocking tone. You weren’t sure who his next ‘guest’ was, though if what Murray said was in some way true, you couldn’t imagine being ridiculed for it made the mystery guest very happy. 

The audience, as always, laughed.

“You’ll see,” he grinned, pointing towards one of the monitors. 

“Play the clip!” 

Everyone, the audience included, watched as the monitor transitioned from Murray to a man on stage. In what you assumed was provoked by his nervousness, sweat coated his forehead, trailing down his face.  

It quickly became apparent that the man had pseudobulbar affect, a condition while you knew of, weren’t particularly acquainted with – your field mainly contrived of sex therapy. 

You watched, sadly entranced, as his hands desperately clenched at his throat, trying to force his planned jokes out, only for a flurry of broken phrases to wryly pass his lips. Composing himself appeared to be an arduous task, and the dread that built up at the sight of those making fun of him, of those laughing, neared its peak. The sensation was a prominent discomfort in your gut; his suffering was deemed as a hilarity – an oddity to poke fun at – and you were the only one who empathised; who understood the anguish lost in the gloss of his eyes. Murray was wrong for making fun of this man, wrong for making fun of someone who had a condition. 

As you gazed at the audience’s thundering hysterics in shame – reflecting on the filth Gotham had become, the video ended shortly after. Murray’s voice returned once more. 

“Okay, you may have seen that clip of our next guest when we first played it two weeks ago. Now before he comes out, I just want to say that we’re all heartbroken and sensitive to what’s going on here in the city. But, honestly, I think we’re in need of a good laugh, and this is how he wanted to come out. So, please welcome, Joker!” 

On cue, the audience prompts flashed, begging for applause. The public complied and projected their excitement while the band played its specific introductory piece.  

A man strutted on stage, and an abundance of adjectives filled your mind. ‘Colourful’ had been one among the heavy flow, ‘confident’ was another and following short behind, dare you say, ‘magnetic.’

Within nanoseconds, your eyes had snapped to the male, drinking in his features. Even though they were hidden behind a thick coat of white greasepaint, as well as the ever so widespread symbolism of the clownish makeup, it wasn’t hard for you to conclude that the man who prowled his way on stage in an ostentatious manner, like a lion, was damn near gorgeous. The clip truly hadn’t done him justice.   

‘Joker’ as Murray had called him, was a name which failed to relinquish its robust hold on your thoughts; a metronome – repetitious and in tune. 

With a certain finesse, the man, after flicking his cigarette behind him uncaringly, propelled himself to his right in a series of twirls. His striking pine green hair floated behind him, and the carmine jacket followed similarly. 

Joker’s entrance secretly had you squirming in your seat. 

It was something you hated to admit, let alone acknowledge. You barely knew the guy – yet there was something about him that had you aching for more. Maybe it was the air of danger which stuck to him like a potent kind of glue, fabricating his demeanour. Or perhaps it was how those frozen eyes snapped towards you; harsh and determined, forcing you to scramble up from your seat. 

Shit, maybe you needed a doctor. 

You didn’t have time to dwell on it because once he halted the rhythmic snapping of his fingers and shook Murray’s hand, he strode right for you. The flickering twitch of his right eyebrow, complemented with his heart-stopping grin, was the last visible feature of his face as he grabbed your own with large, delicate hands. 

When he so unexpectedly pressed his painted lips to yours, you glaciated. Slender were his digits, majority sliding behind your ear, while his ring and pinky pressed up against the distinctive bone of your cheeks. His thumbs occasionally stroked the skin of your neck obliging a deep, thrilling, full-bodied shiver.

Immediately, the peculiar tang of his face paint flooded your senses, and this only worsened when you kissed back. Eyes long since fluttered shut, you felt his surprise when you responded, a gentle vibration – a grunt – tingling against your lips. The fury of the crowd’s applause, wolf whistles and shouts included, were lost on you as you focused on the softness of Joker’s lips, his rhythm slow and sensual, taking their time to sync with yours. 

When he suddenly pulled you closer to him, a sultry growl left his lips; a noise riddled with an enticing hunger. No longer were those hands at your chin, they had slithered down your body, seizing your waist with an abrasive squeeze. 

To say your body was on fire was an understatement. 

You’re unsure as to whether Joker had noticed the applause dramatically stop at his bold movements, the room worryingly silent except for the occasional awkward cough. To this, you were conscious of, very much so, but the lingering exhilaration coursing through you like a fever – at the prospect of millions of eyes watching the two of you clinging to each other – had you grinding against him. It was a move equally as brazen, though one he was equivalently pleased at; reciprocating. As he pushed up against you, a muffled moan left your stained lips, swollen, as you felt the outline of his stiffened cock in his trousers. You were completely, and utterly, devoid of shame.   

What you were both unaware of, however, were the producers signing desperately to cut the show. Many, too shocked, upon weirded out to do so, had missed the infamous ‘t’ signal, hypnotised by the bizarre scene ahead. 

Fuck you, Murray.

When you opened your mouth a little wider, Joker, not missing a beat slid his tongue past, hardly asking permission. Well and truly, the slickness between your legs had built up, and you were hyper-aware of it pooling in your panties. Giddiness was hardly the feeling you would associate with your shared moment, more accurately a carnal lust; a need displayed in the fervid movement of your leg and how it moved against his hip. The very same hands which were once gentle, eagerly maneuvered to your thigh, supporting the limb. Then, without warning – the other. 

The swift movement had you breaking away from the man – only for a second – with a titter. Furious steps, which sounded more like stumbles, filled the silent room, then a frantic voice.

“We’ll be right back folks!” 

At this, Joker, with a dramatic roll of his eyes, pulled away to look at the hollering mystery man. His make up was smudged beyond belief – namely his lips, though his sinful grin seemed to be something that couldn’t be rubbed off. When he directed his attention back to you, his tongue trailed over his teeth, placing you down. With a dangerous glint in his eye, he turned towards the audience, adjusting his waistcoat and his lapels. 

“Y-you – uh – alright...doctor?” Murray asked you, bewildered. 

You refused to look at Murray, while you were red-faced and fidgety, it was hardly because you were embarrassed. 

Joker’s eyes hadn’t left yours as his nose wrinkled in laughter. 

////

If you knew of the events which would inevitably transpire that night, there would have been a small part of you that wished you never met Joker. That you were never given the opportunity to swallow the pill that so willingly established your addiction. He was unlike any man you had met before. 

Wild, eccentric, unafraid.

Mysterious. 

Curiosity killed the cat, however, and before you knew it, you were at Joker’s side. The havoc of the studio was nothing compared to the blaze raging within his eyes. He was chaos, beauty and grace – a madman all wrapped into one. 

His hand reached out to yours, Murray’s bloodied corpse an afterthought. The Joker, who had thrown the gun somewhere, a move similar to the cigarette he had tossed prior, was void of concern. While you had been shocked at the violent move, Murray’s blood splattering across your dress, a morbid interest had you reach out for him.

His exuberance, almost child-like, heightened when you interlaced your hands together. Yet to depart from the camera’s view, he pulled you up from your seat and spun you around, then, finally dipped you. His hands had once again snaked your waist. His lips were mere centimetres from yours as his breath, warm, tingled against yours; teasing. You wanted to kiss them again – badly – and you knew he could tell from the wicked grin contorting his face. 

Oh, how absolutely enthralled you were.   

“Burn Gotham with me,” he whispered.

It was almost comedic. The way that poisonous phrase was uttered like it had in fact been something so innocuous, the way his eyes glistened with a newfound hope; hell, you would have thought he had asked you to prom. 

Perhaps a demagogue, perhaps not; what you did know was that he had changed Gotham. Propelled it into chaos with the deaths of those three men. Tension had been building up for God knew how long, but he had been the catalyst for the end. Gotham had finally reached its boiling point. 

Without thinking, you breathed an agreement. 

And, at that moment, you had sold your soul. 

To the dazzling devil.

[firelxdykatara]

I think if fiction didn’t matter we wouldn’t be rallying for better representation. But at the same time, there’s plenty of fiction that so clearly doesn’t try to impose a moral. Are you of the opinion that any fiction that displays objectively horrible things in a gratifying lense should be banned? Would you call people who liked the saw films monsters? What about first person shooter games? Any porn that features power imbalances as a kink?

Short answer, to all of those questions: No. Absolutely not.

But of course, as it’s me, have a much longer answer:

Here’s the thing that the ‘FICTION AFFECTS REALITY’/’IF YOU LIKE DARKFIC YOU’RE A MONSTER’ crowd fails to realize: when we say ‘fiction is not reality’ we are not saying ‘fiction doesn’t matter’ or ‘fiction has no affect on reality whatsoever’. What we are saying is that fiction does not have a direct, 1:1 affect on reality. ‘Normal’ people will NEVER read a piece of fiction and suddenly become a pedophile. Normal people will not read a piece of fiction and forget about boundaries. Normal people will not read a piece of fiction and suddenly think that societal taboos which used to disgust them are A-OK and then try to enact them in their real lives.

Antis really love to cite the Jaws Effect when talking about how fiction affects reality, but they miss one crucial point--Jaws was playing on the pre-existing fears of the movie-going public. (And also the fact that Jaws had millions of viewers worldwide and reached a far greater audience, and therefore had far greater impact, than some niche darkfic on ao3 ever will.) It’s the same argument that’s been trotted out again and again by the ‘violent video games turn normal happy kids into school shooters’ crowd. Can playing violent video games temporarily heighten someone’s aggression/make someone already prone to violence even more aggressive? Sure. Will playing violent video games (or watching/reading violent media) make someone with a normally healthy emotional responses to stimuli suddenly become a violent person? Absolutely not.

Like, I love games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. I love slipping into Ancient Greece and running around, merrily hacking and slashing my way through Athenians and Spartans. I’ve never once gotten the urge to pick up a sword and go outside and start sticking it in people. I know plenty of people who love Grand Theft Auto and don’t have a violent bone in their body. I greatly enjoy taking head shots as a sniper in Mass Effect, but I’ve never picked up a high-powered rifle in my life. (I go to the shooting range sometimes, with my grandad’s old .22, but I certainly have never wanted to shoot anyone with it.) My taste for video game violence has never translated to my reactions or interactions with other people in real life. Because I’m not a violent person, and while I can’t say I’m mentally healthy, I can say that I’ve never wanted to hurt other people. (And I have one of those ‘scary’ mental illnesses that get demonized all the time in popular media.)

So like, here’s the thing: first of all, the argument that video game or media violence (or abuse, rape, incest, pedophilia, etc) creates violence (or etc) in otherwise normal people is absolute bullshit. You may hear antis trotting out the Slenderman killings as another example, but they again fail to take into account that even if the game was the trigger, it was not the cause, and if it hadn’t existed, something else would have set them off. (And that was 2 people out of the, I’m gonna guess, millions of people who’ve played the game or watched let’s plays or whatever else. Not exactly terrifying odds.)

Secondly, you have to remember that while fiction and reality do have a relationship and do have an affect on one another, that affect is far more noticeable from the other direction. Fiction informs reality--it is often a direct reflection of it. This is why Greek tragedies became so popular--because people saw in them the human condition, in all its ugliest parts, and found extreme catharsis in watching it unfold. And this is part of why, yes, representation is so important--because, right now, most fiction is not an accurate reflection of reality, and that creates an unbalanced dynamic that’s going to take a very long time to fix.

Which leads to my final point, that is most often overlooked by antis who insist that fiction cannot be separated from reality: mass media reaches a far greater audience than fanfiction. Yes, it’s bad that so much of Hollywood fare is white--because Hollywood has reach. Billions of people tune in to watch the latest blockbuster. Your average niche darkfic on ao3 will never reach that kind of audience, not in a million years. The effect of that reach is simply not comparable. If someone who is already prone to violence plays a game or watches a movie or tv show that glorifies it, sure, it may heighten their violent response, but that’s because it’s playing on something that’s already there. The fiction itself is not to blame for whatever the person who viewed it chooses to do.

One last thing, since this is something that I feel doesn’t get mentioned enough in these debates: if you’ve been following me long enough, you’ll probably have seen me rag on Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey. I hate both of those series’ with a burning passion. I think they’re badly written tripe, one of which began as fanfic of badly written tripe (and if 50sog had languished in the annals of internet obscurity as Master of the Universe and not become a multi-million dollar hit, I’d probably never have heard of it--again, the difference in reach between niche fanfic and a mass media sensation), and I hate the way the abusive relationships in both of them are glorified. I think the ‘themes’ Twilight spoonfed preteen girls who ate it up are harmful. I think the racism involved in its depiction of the Quileute tribe was despicable. I think everything 50sog had to say about BDSM and the kink community is horrific, and deserves to be called out.

But you know what else these books did?

They started conversations. Conversations that may not have happened to such a wide degree had these books not become famous. (Not that I’m saying it’d be any great loss if they’d never seen the light of day, but hey, they did, and we have to live with the fallout, so at least something good came out of it.) Conversations that desperately needed to be had--about red flags in abusive relationships, about what is ok and not ok to do or say to your partner, about what consent is and what healthy relationships are, and what a healthy BDSM/kink relationship should look like. (I swear to the gods if any anti kinksters start crawling all over this post, I will eat their toes. Stay out of consenting adults’ bedrooms for the love of all that is fucking holy.) Conversations about safe words and how to use them, and how it is always ok to use them please dear lord do not let things progress past the point of your comfort. Conversations about the real life Quileute tribe who has been trying for years to talk about the realities of tribal life, which were so butchered by Twilight, but that hopefully brought more awareness and helped show what not to do when you’re incorporating a real life culture into your work.

These are important conversations, which may not have been had to the widespread degree that they were and are were it not for the cultural phenomena that sparked them. So no, I don’t think it’s wrong to point out if an author is, for instance, glorifying harmful things in their works--however, I do think that the reach of the work in question matters. If you’re targeting a work with a few thousand hits at most, ask yourself: why? Why this work, and not an actual cultural powerhouse like, say, Game of Thrones, which features such hits as the showrunners openly admitting they waited for a teenage actress to turn 18 so they could film a scene where her character is brutally raped on screen? Why is it so important to draw attention to some niche work of darkfic (especially if it’s properly tagged so that it can be avoided by anyone to whom it would be harmful; and by the way, these tags don’t exist for things like, oh, VC Andrews novels, which any kid can pick up in a library without warning; I think that even a glorified/romanticized rape scene that is tagged as rape on ao3 is less harmful than similar themes occurring without warning in a book I picked up because it had pretty flowers on the cover), when you can easily find the exact same things in published, popular fiction?

Just something to think about, before trying to insist that fanfics that reach an audience of a few thousand at most are anywhere on the level of ‘affecting reality’ the same way that mass media that reaches billions is capable of.

[storybookhall]

The Journey Pt. 6- In Sickness And In Health

a/n- Some death in this one. This entire series will have a LOT of spoilers so i apologize. I’ll try to put a warning before a death. I forgot to warn about Merle’s death and I’m sorry <3

Summary- Being free from The Governor, Rick’s group begins to grow again. Until they are struck with widespread tragedy...

TW-Death, Sickness, Slight Fluff, Strong Language, Adult Themes.

A long time has passed since Woodbury, you still hurt but find time to start healing a little more each day. This place has begun to thrive, raising pigs, planting crops, and having a community. The night you had with Daryl almost seems like a dream at this point, you don’t let him get close. You can’t. You lost daddy, momma, Tia… You can’t love anyone, you can’t handle it. You wake up to a gunshot ringing out from the other side of the prison. ‘Shit’...

“Daryl! Rick!?” You scream sprinting down the hallway towards cell block D

As you run closer you hear shots and screaming ringing through the halls, opening the door you see walkers. Your friends. Your family. You go straight to clearing it. As you frantically scan the area with your back against the wall, one final walker pins you against the wall.

“ Shit… Fuck.” you mutter to yourself as you have your knife knocked from you. Your arms start to get weaker as you fight for your life.

“ Drop!” you hear Daryl’s gruff voice yell. 

You drop and not even 2 seconds later Daryl shoots an arrow into the walker. It collapses on you as you lay on the floor panting.

“ I totally had that.” You say “smiling” trying to make light of this terrifying situation. 

“ get up.” He says with slight panic in his voice.

You stand up and he starts checking every inch of you for bites or scratches, when he felt like he checked you well enough he pulled you into a bear hug and squeezed you tight. You both stood there for a moment thankful for each others’ safety. Until you hear your name from the bottom cells.

“ Y/n!! Come quick!” You hear carol yell. You break from Daryls’ grip but he grabs your hand and turns you towards him again.

“Be safe… please” Daryl’s eyes glaze over with worry.

You run down the stairs to Carol’s voice, stopping in your tracks as you see her looking at Ryan’s back and seeing a bite mark. 

“ y/n, I need you to go get Mika and Lizzie for me.” She looks at you with fearful eyes.

“ Wait! Wait… y/n.” Ryan tries to sit up while begging you to wait.

You turn around and see tears streaming down his face, he is aware this is the end. So are you.

“ Will you please take care of my girls… You and Carol are good with kids, I’ve seen y’all.” He pleads looking into your eyes.

“ Of course, I’ll treat ‘em as my own.” You assure him as you turn to walk out the door hearing a faint “thank you” slip his lips.

After grabbing the girls you walk in and Ryan isn’t looking good, sweat and tears mix as they race down his face. He puts on a front for the girls but you see the pain in his eyes.

“ Girls… Be good for Carol and y/n. Listen to everything they say… Do that for me.” Ryan chokes out while hugging the girls. You lead them out of the room as Carol takes care of him.

As they cling to you, you feel eyes on you. Looking up you see Daryl with sympathy in his eyes. Picking up Mika you bring her into a big hug and promise to be there for her forever.

“Girls. Go with carol for a bit, I’m going to go sit in my room for a bit.” Giving them a kiss on the cheek they walk off hand in hand.

That night was sleepless, worrying about how your life is going to be having “daughters” now. You swear to protect them with your life, as long as you shall live. The next morning Daryl knocks on the wall outside of your cell.

“ Hey y/n, there’s an issue. We need you.” There’s a seriousness in his voice that you can’t quite put.

You go with Carol, Rick, and Daryl outside. Before you even walk out the door you smell something you know too well, burned flesh. Tyreese is out there waiting for you. As he starts raging about what went on, Rick attempts to calm him down and Tyreese punches him. Daryl pulls him off and gets pinned against the bars.

“ Tyreese!! Please stop… I’m sorry about what happened but we’ll find out what happened.” You softly speak to him, as you put your hand on his shoulder he swings his elbow back hitting you in the nose and eye.

Rick immediately tackled him and started beating on him while you lay on the ground. Daryl helps you up and you walk away cursing to yourself. You go to your cell and hang your head into your hands.

Letting yourself cry after weeks, it all comes flowing. Daddy, Tia, Momma, Merle… Death is all around you, as much as you hated Merle for what he did, he was Daryls’ brother and his love for Daryl got him killed. As you sob you lay down and just feel the weight of the world press on you. Unknown to you Daryl was sitting outside of your door, wanting to just walk in and hold you. Keeping his feelings for you on the down-low is tiring. He hears you get up and walks away. You walk out after wiping your face, and go to take a shower. You let everyone know so they don’t walk in. Stripping down you wait for the water to warm up. You hear a cough behind you.

“ Can I join?” Daryl’s voice is soft behind you but you still jump.

“ Of course.” You quietly say trying not to continue crying in front of him.

He strips and steps in pressing his torso into your back and wrapping his arms around you and holding you to him. You melt under the pressure of his big arms, you lay your head back on his chest letting the water hit your face. He grabs the shampoo and starts to massage it into your hair as you enjoy this new side of him, he’s gentle, sweet, loving. You turn towards him to rinse your hair and you see his eyes, not wondering about your body. They are locked on your face, with pure admiration. A smile creeps on your face and a tear slips out, hidden by the water. He brings his face to yours and just when you thought he was going to kiss you, he lightly rubs his nose against yours. You finish rinsing your hair and start cleaning his body while he scrubs the shampoo into his scalp. With his eyes closed you bite your lip looking at the man in front of you, completely naked but you know he didn’t come in here for sex. You are blown away by the intimacy of this, the cleansing of 2 bodies. He presses his body to yours putting the soap from him onto you. You stand there caressing each other’s bodies, memorizing every curve and dip. 

“Daryl I...” you start to speak but he lightly kisses you.

“ Shhh. Let’s just enjoy this.” He whispers as he moves to kiss your forehead gently.

He puts conditioner in his hands and ran it through your hair, getting every strand. You put your arms around his neck and just hold yourself to him feeling his warm skin against yours. Rinsing all the soap off of you, you turn off the shower. Before even registering what is going on he grabs your towel and wraps you up hugging you in your little fuzzy cocoon. As he pulls it over your head and dries your hair like a wet dog you laugh, something you don’t get to do often. You get dressed and begin to go back to your cell, before getting too far Daryl clears his throat.

“I’m sorry for how I’ve been actin’... Y/n you are amazin.” Daryl sheepishly said as his gaze locks onto you.

Daryl walked quite a bit behind you so that no one suspects you two. He slips into your “room” when no one was looking to see you half-asleep on the bed. He sits down and places your head on his lap. Grabbing your brush he started brushing your hair as you slip into sleep. That night you don’t dream about walkers, the look on tia’s face before she died, or even your time at Woodbury. That night you dream of Daryl, years and years later. You are taking care of Lizzie and Mika but also have a baby of your own. You have a house, a dog, a fence, a car, and most of all… You have peace. 

The next day you sleep in, head still hurting from the blow you took from Tyreese. You hear arguing between Daryl and Rick. It sounds heated so you just wait to go to talk to them. 

“ What was that all about.” You ask Daryl with concern splayed on your face.

“ I can’t tell you the details but Carol is gone, she’s not dead but she ain’t coming back.” He tries to sound collected but he speeds through his words.

“ I’m so sorry” You try to hug him but he shakes you off walking away.

Later that day a group goes out to get supplies for Hershel to help everyone. You stay home although Daryl begged you to go with him. You assured him you’d stay safe and keep the girls away from the sickness. You sit for hours and wait, Lizzie starts coughing.

“ Lizzie sweetie… I’m going to bring you to Hershel okay?” You hold her hand and lead her to death row. How fitting….

“ Okay Momma” She stops quickly after saying that.

“ Sorry..” She says looking at the floor.

“ It’s fine. If you feel comfortable calling me that then go right ahead. I don’t mind” You say kissing her on the forehead and handing her off to Hershel.

Going back to Mika you sit on the other side of the door and feel a love you never felt towards anyone… A mothers love. You assure her that you are okay and that Lizzie is fine before walking away to rest. Once you wake you make a decision that could get you killed.

“ Hershel! Hey..” You stand outside the door to death row and get his attention.

“ y/n!? Are you alright?” He asks worried.

“ No, I’ve been coughing and shaking.” You lie but shudder to sell it.

Hershel lets you in and immediately sees through your lie, his eyes drop to the floor.

“ Why?” he asks quietly

“ I know where I need to be.” you say walking in to start rounds.

a/n- I must say… Soft Daryl has my entire heart, I thought y’all would enjoy him being a sweetie pie and me adding the song in. I am actually hella proud of this part, next part holds a LOT of drama.

@aquariusfangirl @mysterious-398 @onlydarylnormanfic